Why Me?

43

Every edition of the paper. From the bulldog edition that had come out last night before Mologna had left the city for Bay Shore and home, right up to the late final that hadn't hit the street until he was already back in his office this morning, every last rotten edition of that rotten paper had carried the same rotten editorial. "The Cost Of Blowing Your Top" it was headed, and the subject matter was Mologna's now-famous incident of hanging up on the guy with the Byzantine Fire.

Was it those FBI assholes who'd given the story to the paper? Probably, though it had to be admitted Mologna had one or two enemies right here within the sheltering arms of the NYPD. All morning his friends on the force had been calling to commiserate, to tell him the same thing could have happened to them—and they were right, the bastards, it could have—and to assure him all the pressure in the world had been put on the editors of that rag to drop the editorial from the later editions, but in vain. The bastards had known they were safe, Chief Inspector Francis Xavier Mologna was down, they could kick him with impunity now. "There's nothin lower than a newspaperman," Mologna said, and swept the late final edition from his desk onto the floor.

Where Leon skipped over it on his way in, saying, "Another phone call."

"Friend or foe?"

"Hard to say," Leon told him. "It's that man again, with the Byzantine Fire."

Mologna stared. "Leon," he said, "are you havin fun at my expense?"

"Oh, Chief Inspector!" Leon's eyes fluttered.

Mologna shook his head. "I'm not in the mood today, Leon. Go away."

"He insists on talking with you," Leon said. "I quote—" he made his voice a kind of deep falsetto " — 'for our mutual advantage. That's what he said."

Wait a minute. Was it possible to recoup after all, to make a comeback, to shove that editorial down those craven editors' throats? Mutual advantage, huh? Reaching for the phone, Mologna said, "Which line?"

"Two."

"Record it and trace it and track it," Mologna ordered. His own voice deepening, he said, "I'll keep him on the line." Then, as Leon skipped from the room, Mologna said into line two, "Who's this?"

"You know," said the voice.

It was the same voice. "John Archibald Dortmunder," Mologna said.

"I'm not Dortmunder," Dortmunder said.

"Is that right," Mologna said comfortably, settling into his seat for a good long chat.

"The frame won't hold," the voice said. "You'll find out Dortmunder isn't the guy, and you'll keep looking till you find me."

"Interestin theory."

"I'm in trouble," said the voice.

"That's the understatement of the year."

"But you're in trouble, too."

Mologna stiffened. "Meanin what?"

"I read the paper."

"Every son of a bitch reads the paper," opined Mologna.

"We could maybe help each other," the voice said.

Mologna glowered, from deep within his soul. "What are you suggestin?"

"We both have a problem," said the tired, weary, pessimistic and yet self-confident voice. "Maybe together we got a solution."

Leon tiptoed in, hopped over the newspaper on the floor, and put a note on Mologna's desk, reading, "Phone company says untraceable, no such phone." Mologna glared at that, and said to the voice, "Hold it a second." Pushing the hold button, he glared at Leon and said, "What the fuck is this?"

"The phone company's bewildered," Leon told him. "They say the call's coming from somewhere south of 96th Street, but they can't track it down. It's just there, in their relays."

"That's too fuckin stupid to be believed," Mologna said.

"They're still working on it," Leon said, not with much display of hope. "They said please keep him on the line as long as you possibly can."

"Are you insultin me, Leon?" Mologna demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he pushed the two-line button, and heard a dial tone. The son of a bitch was gone. "Oh, Jesus," Mologna said.

"He hung up?" Leon asked.

"I lost him again." Mologna stared at infinity as the phone on Leon's desk outside began ringing. Leon trotted away, and Mologna leaned forward, elbows on desk, head in hands, thinking the unthinkable: Maybe I should retire, like the fuckin paper said.

Leon was back. "It's him again. This time he's on one."

Mologna moved so fast he almost ate the phone. "Dortmunder!"

"I'm not Dortmunder."

"Where'd you go?" Mologna demanded, while Leon danced back out to contact the phone company once more.

"You put me on hold," the voice said. "Don't put me on hold, all right?"

"It was only a second."

"I've had a lot of trouble with phones," the voice said. (Perhaps another voice in the background made a complaining noise.) "So just don't put me on hold. No gizmos."

"No gizmos?" Honest rage and accumulated frustration bubbled up within Mologna. "You're one to talk, you've been makin a mental case out of me with your telephones."

"I just—"

"Never mind that, never mind that. I call you at a pay phone, right out on the street in the sunshine, you answer the phone, and there's nobody there! Right now, right this minute, you're talkin to me big as life, the phone company can't trace the call! Is that honest? Is that playin the game?"

"I just don't like to be on hold," the voice said, sounding sullen.

Which brought Mologna back down out of his luxurious bad temper. "Don't hang up again," he said, squeezing the receiver hard, as though it were his caller's wrist.

"I won't hang up," the voice agreed. "Just so you don't put me on hold."

"You've got a deal," Mologna told him. "No hold. I'll just sit here and you'll tell me your story."

"My story is," said the voice, "I don't want this ruby thing."

"And?"

"And you do. It'll make you the big man again around Headquarters, never mind what they say in the papers. So what I want, I want to propose a trade."

"You'll give me the ring? For what, immunity?"

The mirthless voice said, "You can't give me immunity, nobody can."

"I hate to say it, pal," Mologna told him, "but you're right." And yet, the strange thing was, he felt within himself a desire to help this poor son of a bitch. Some echo in that world-weary voice reached out to him, called out to their common humanity. Maybe it was just because he was depressed after that stinking editorial, but he knew in his heart he was closer to this fourth-rate burglar, in some cockamamie way, than to anybody else involved in the whole case. He pictured FBI Agent Zachary in an interrogation with this clown, and despite himself, his heart just reached out. "So what do you want?" he said.

"What I want," said the voice, "is another burglar."

"I don't follow."

"You're the cops," the voice explained. "You can make up a name, make up a guy, some guy that doesn't exist. Frank Smith, say. Then you announce you got the burglar and his name is Frank Smith and you got the ring back and it's all over. Then nobody's mad at me any more."

"Nice try, Dortmunder," Mologna said.

"I'm not Dortmunder."

"The problem is," Mologna went on, "where is this Frank Smith? If we set up a make-believe guy, we've got nobody to show the press. If we set up a real guy, maybe the frame doesn't stick."

"Maybe Frank Smith commits suicide in the House of Detention," the voice suggested. "Such things have been known to happen."

"Too many people involved," Mologna said. "I'm sorry, but there's no way we could work it." He laid out the parameters of the problem: "It would have to be a real guy, with a record, somebody known to the courts and to the underworld. But at the same time, it would have to be a guy nobody's ever goin to find, he'll never come back with an alibi or a—Holy Jesus!"

In sudden hope, the voice said, "Yeah? Yeah?"

"Craig Fitzgibbons," Mologna said, an almost religious awe trembling in his voice.

"Who the hell is that?"

"A guy who will never come around to call us liars, Dortmunder."

"I'm not Dortmunder."

"Sure, sure. I can do your setup for you, that's all. I sit here astonished at myself. Now, what about the quo?"

"The what?"

"The Byzantine Fire," Mologna explained.

"Oh, that. You get it back," the voice said, "as soon as you make the announcement."

"What announcement?"

"Police breakthrough. Proof positive the thief with the Byzantine Fire is this fella Craig Whoever. Arrest expected any minute."

"All right. Then what?"

"I get the ring back to you, my own way. Indirect like."

"When?"

"Today."

"And if you don't?"

"Another police breakthrough. Proof positive it isn't Craig Thingummy."

"Okay," Mologna said, nodding. Leon came in and made the world's most expressive shrug of incredulity, representing in himself all of the thousands and thousands of employees of the New York Bell Telephone Company. Mologna nodded, waving him away, not caring any more. "I'm in a good mood today," he told the phone. "You've got yourself a deal, Dortmunder."

"Call me Craig," said Dortmunder.