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to Hopatcong before they could back up and leave there and drive on up the public road and take the right turn up a very steep hill to a place from which they could look down and see Yerba Buena Ranch spread out below, like a pool table with fences. The ranch was pretty extensive, with irregularly shaped fields all enclosed by those white wooden rails and connected by narrow roads of dirt or blacktop. Here and there were small clusters of trees, like buttons in upholstery, plus about ten brown or white barns and sheds scattered around out behind the main farmhouse. They saw about 30 horses hanging out and watched a little cream-colored pickup truck drive back and forth, and then Dortmunder said, “Doesn’t look easy.”
    Kelp paused in taking many photos of the place to stare in astonishment. “Doesn’t look easy? I never saw anything so easy in my life. No alarm system, no armed guards, not even anybody really suspicious.”
    “You can’t put a horse in your pocket,” Dortmunder said. “And how do we get a vehicle down in there without somebody noticing?”
    “I’ll walk him out,” the old coot said. “That’s no trouble; I know horses.”
    “Do you know
this
horse?” Dortmunder gestured at the pretty landscape. “They got a whole lot of horses down there.”
    “I’ll know Dire Straits when I see him, don’t you worry,” the old coot said.
    So now was the time to find out if that was an idle boast or not. Using the photos they’d taken from all around the ranch, plus New Jersey road maps and a topographical map that gave Dortmunder a slight headache, he’d figured out the best route to and from the ranch and also the simplest and cleanest way in, which was to start from a small and seldom-traveled county road and hike through somebody else’s orchard to the rear of the ranch, then remove two rails from the perimeter fence there. They would go nowhere near the front entrance or the main building. The old coot would go with them to identify Dire Straits and lead him away. Going out, they’d restore the rails to confuse and delay pursuit. The old coot had rented a station wagon and a horse van with room for two horses— Dortmunder and Kelp couldn’t get over the idea that they were working with somebody who rented vehicles rather than steal them—and so here they were, around two A.M. on a cloudy, warm night.
    But where was Dire Straits?
    Could he be off partying somewhere, for heavy money? The old coot insisted no; his anonymous boss had ways of knowing things like that, and Dire Straits was definitely at home these days, resting up between dates.
    “He’ll be in one of them buildings over there,” the old coot said, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of planet Earth.
    “I can still hear some back that way,” Kelp said. “Now they’re going, “Floor-flor.’”
    “That’s a snort,” the old coot said. “Those old plugs stay outside in good weather, but Dire Straits they keep in his stall, so he stays healthy. Down this way.”
    So they went down that way, Dortmunder not liking any bit of it. He preferred to think of himself as a professional and for a professional there is always the one right way to do things, as opposed to any number of amateur or wrong ways, and this job just wasn’t laying out in a manner that he could take pride in. Having to case the joint from a nearby hilltop, for instance, was far less satisfactory than walking into a bank, or a jewelry wholesaler, or whatever it might be, and pretending to be a messenger with a package for Mr. Hutcheson. “There’s no Mr. Hutcheson here.” “You sure? Let me call my dispatcher.” And so on. Looking things over every second of the time.
    You can’t show up at a
ranch
with a package for a
horse.
    Nor can you tap a horse’s phone or do electronic surveillance on a horse or make up a plaster imitation horse to leave in its place. You can’t drill in to the horse from next door or tunnel in from across the street. You