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John.”
    â€œHe’s a jinx,” Dortmunder said. “He’s also an ingrate, and besides that he’s a bigmouth. Let’s not spoil a nice dinner with talk about Kelp.”
    â€œI’m just afraid of the kind of woman he’ll get,” May said. “You know, to take care of the child.”
    Dortmunder frowned. “What child?”
    â€œThe one they kidnap.”
    Dortmunder shook his head. “He’ll never get it off the ground. Andy Kelp couldn’t steal third in the Little League.”
    â€œWell, that would make it even worse,” May said. “He’s really determined to do it, you know. He’ll get the wrong people, some awful woman who doesn’t care about children, and some barfly to do the driving, and they’ll just get themselves in trouble.”
    â€œGood,” Dortmunder said.
    â€œBut what if the child gets hurt? What if the police surround the hideout, what if there’s a shoot-out?”
    â€œA shoot-out? With Kelp? He’s so gun-shy, he goes out to the track, he surrenders at the beginning of every race.”
    â€œBut what about the other people with him? There’s no telling who he’ll wind up with.”
    Dortmunder looked pained, and May remembered that he and Kelp really were old friends; so maybe there was a chance, after all. But then Dortmunder’s expression became mulish, and he said, “Just so he doesn’t wind up with me. He’s jinxed me long enough.”
    May cast around for another argument, considered a specific mention of the friendship between Dortmunder and Kelp, and finally decided not to do that. If she did, he might just be angry enough now to deny the friendship, and then later on he’d think he had to stand by the denial. Better to let the dust settle for a minute.
    They were finishing the Jell-O when she started again, coming in from another direction entirely, saying, “I read that book again. It isn’t bad, you know.”
    He looked at her. “What book?”
    â€œThe one Kelp showed us. The one about the kidnapping.”
    He straightened and looked around the room, frowning. “I thought I threw that out,” he said.
    â€œI got another copy.” She’d gotten it from Kelp, but she didn’t think she should mention that.
    He turned his frown towards her. “What for?”
    â€œI wanted to read it again. I wanted to see if maybe Kelp had a good idea after all.”
    â€œ Kelp with a good idea.” He finished his Jell-O and reached for his coffee.
    â€œWell, he was smart to bring it around to you,” she said. “He wouldn’t be able to do it right without you.”
    â€œ Kelp brings a plan to me .”
    â€œTo make it work,” she said. “Don’t you see? There’s a plan there, but you have to convert it to the real world, to the people you’ve got and the places you’ll be and all the rest of it. You’d be the aw-tour.”
    He cocked his head and studied her. “I’d be the what?”
    â€œI read an article in a magazine,” she said. “It was about a theory about movies.”
    â€œA theory about movies.”
    â€œIt’s called the aw-tour theory. That’s French, it means writer.”
    He spread his hands. “What the hell have I got to do with the movies?”
    â€œDon’t shout at me, John, I’m trying to tell you. The idea is—”
    â€œI’m not shouting,” he said. He was getting grumpy.
    â€œAll right, you’re not shouting. Anyway, the idea is, in movies the writer isn’t really the writer. The real writer is the director, because he takes what the writer did and he puts it together with the actors and the places where they make the movie and all the things like that.”
    â€œThe writer isn’t the writer,” Dortmunder said.
    â€œThat’s the theory.”
    â€œSome theory.”
    â€œSo they