Why Me?

42

The jewelry store door said snnnarrrkk. Dortmunder pressed his shoulder against it: "Come on" he muttered.

snik, responded the door, yawning open. This time, knowing this particular door's wiles and stratagems, Dortmunder already had one hand gripping the frame, so he didn't lose his balance but merely stepped across the threshold into the store, where he stopped to look back at Kelp, standing lookout at the curb in the rain, gazing assiduously up and down empty Rockaway Boulevard. Dortmunder gestured, and Kelp happily squelched across the sidewalk and joined him in the warm interior of the store. "Nice little place," he said, as Dortmunder shut the door.

"This ski mask itches," Dortmunder said, peeling the thing off.

Kelp kept his on; his eager eyes sparkled amid gamboling elks on a field of black. "It sure keeps the rain off," he said.

"It isn't raining in here. The safe's over this way."

The "Closed For Vacation To Serve You Better" sign was still in the front window, and the mustiness of the air inside the store suggested no one had been in it since the cops had arrived Wednesday night to find the Byzantine Fire missing. The store owner was in jail now, his relatives had things other than his shop to think about, and the law had no more use for the place.

Or at least that's what they thought.

"Forty-eight hours," Dortmunder said. "See those clocks?"

"They all say twenty to one."

"That's what they said Wednesday night, when I came in. What a forty-eight hours!"

"Maybe they're stopped," Kelp said, and went over to listen to one.

"They're not stopped," Dortmunder said, irritated. "It's just one of those coincidences."

"They're working," Kelp agreed. He came back and watched Dortmunder seat himself cross-legged, tailor-fashion, on the floor in front of the familiar safe, spreading his tools out around himself. "How long, you figure?"

"Fifteen minutes, last time. Shorter now. Go watch."

Kelp went over to the door to watch the still-empty street, and twelve minutes later the safe said plok-chunk as its door swung open. Dortmunder shined his pencil flash in at the trays and compartments, now stripped of everything except the junk he'd rejected last time, and saw one tray full of junky pins—gold-plated animals with polished stone eyes. That would do.

Reaching into his pocket, Dortmunder took out the Byzantine Fire, then spent a long moment just looking at it. The intensity of the thing, the clarity, the purity of the color. The depth—you could look down for miles into that damn stone. "My greatest triumph," Dortmunder whispered.

Over at the door, Kelp said, "What?"

"Nothing." Dortmunder put the Byzantine Fire on the tray with the junky animals; dubious peacocks and lions stared pop-eyed at this aristocrat in their midst. Dortmunder sort of piled the animals around the ruby ring, obscuring it slightly, then slid the tray back into place.

"How you doing?"

"Almost done." Chock-whirrr; he shut and locked the safe and spun the dial. His tools went back into their special pockets inside his jacket, and then he got to his feet.

"Ready to go?"

"Just one second." From another pocket he took May's watch and pressed the button on the side: 6:10:42:11. Crossing to the display case, he beamed his pocket flash at the watches behind the glass until he found another of the identical kind, in a small felt-lined box with the lid up. Going behind the counter, opening the sliding door in the back of the display case, he took out this new watch and saw that in the box with it was a much-folded paper headlined INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE. Right. 6:10:42:11 went back on the counter display where he'd originally found it, and the new one with its box and its instructions went into his jacket pocket. And the itchy ski mask went back on his face. "Now I'm ready," Dortmunder said.