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groceries!’
    They both looked at her as she lunged to her feet, the cigarette in the corner of her mouth giving a puff of smoke like a model train as she exhaled. She said, ‘I forgot to put the groceries away,’ and hurried for the kitchen, where everything in the shopping bags was wet from the frozen foods defrosting. ‘Turn up the sound, will you?’ she shouted and quickly put things away. In the living room they turned up the sound, but they also talked louder. Also, the sound was mostly sound effects, with little dialogue. Then a heavy voice that sounded as though it had to be Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Did ever a President come to his inauguration so like a thief in the night?’
    The groceries were away. May walked back into the living room, saying, ‘Do you suppose he really said that?’
    Dortmunder and Kelp had still been talking about somebody named Victor, and now they both turned and looked at her. Dortmunder said, ‘Who?’
    â€˜Him,’ she said and gestured at the television set, but when they all looked at it the screen was showing a man standing knee deep in water in a giant toilet bowl, spraying something on the under part of the lip and talking about germs. ‘Not him,’ she said. ‘Abraham Lincoln.’ She felt them both looking at her and shrugged and said, ‘Forget it.’ She went over and switched off the set and said to Dort-munder, ‘How’d it go today?’
    â€˜So-so,’ he said. ‘I lost my display. I’ll have to go get another.’
    Kelp explained, ‘Some woman called the cops on him.’
    May squinted through cigarette smoke. ‘You getting fresh?’
    â€˜Come on, May,’ Dortmunder said. ‘You know me better than that.’
    â€˜You’re all alike as far as I can see,’ she said. They’d met almost a year ago, when she’d caught Dortmunder shoplifting at the store. It was the fact that he hadn’t tried any line at all on her, that he hadn’t even asked for her sympathy, that had won her sympathy. He’d just stood there, shaking his head, with packages of boiled ham and American cheese falling out of his armpits, and she just hadn’t had the heart to turn him in. She still tried to pretend sometimes that he couldn’t pierce her toughness, but he could.
    â€˜Anyway,’ Kelp said, ‘we’re none of us gonna have to work that penny-ante stuff for a while.’
    â€˜I don’t know about that,’ Dortmunder said.
    â€˜You’re just not used to Victor,’ Kelp said, ‘that’s the only problem.’
    â€˜May I never get used to Victor,’ Dortmunder said.
    May dropped backward into the sofa again; she always sat down as though she’d just had a stroke. ‘What’s the story?’ she said.
    â€˜A bank job,’ Kelp said.
    â€˜Well, yes and no,’ Dortmunder said. ‘It’s a little more than a bank job.’
    â€˜It’s a bank job,’ Kelp said.
    Dortmunder looked at May as though hoping to find stability and reason there. ‘The idea is,’ he said, ‘if you can believe it, we’re supposed to steal the whole bank.’
    â€˜It’s a trailer,’ Kelp said. ‘You know, one of those mobile homes? The bank’s in there till they put up the new building.’
    â€˜And the idea,’ Dortmunder said, ‘is we hook the bank onto a truck and drive it away.’
    â€˜Where to?’ May asked.
    â€˜Just away,’ Dortmunder said.
    â€˜That’s one of the things we’ve got to work out,’ Kelp said.
    â€˜Sounds like you’ve got a lot to work out,’ May said.
    â€˜Then there’s Victor,’ Dortmunder said.
    â€˜My nephew,’ Kelp explained.
    May shook her head. ‘I never saw a nephew yet,’ she said, ‘that was worth his weight in Kiwanis gum.’
    â€˜Everybody’s somebody’s nephew,’