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bastard’s finger.

    I’m going to get that ring back, Dortmunder swore, a mighty oath, if I have to chew that finger off. Meantime, finishing his interrupted journey from earlier, he went upstairs again for some pillowcases.

    Half an hour later, Dortmunder stepped through the side door to find a long garage with spaces for five cars, three of the spaces occupied. The nearest vehicle was a twelve–passenger Honda van, good only for bringing middle management here from the railroad station. The farthest was a little red sports car, the Mazda RX–7, meant for upper–echelon executives when they wanted to take a spin around the cove. And the one in the middle was a gleaming black four–door Lexus sedan; trust corporate America to buy all its cars from Asia.

    The Lexus was Dortmunder’s choice. He loaded the back seat with eight full and clanking pillowcases, then found the button that opened the overhead door in front of his new transportation, and drove on out of there, pausing like a good houseguest to push the other button that switched off the garage lights and reclosed the door, before he drove away from Twenty–Seven Vista Drive, possibly forever.

    There were a lot of police cars out and about at the moment, roaming here and there in the world, but none of them were concerned with a nice new gleaming black Lexus sedan. Dortmunder found the Long Island Expressway, switched on the stereo to an easy–listening station, and enjoyed a very comfortable ride back to town.

    Where he had two stops to make before going home. The first, on the West Side in Manhattan, was to drop in on a fella named Stoon, who was known to exchange cash for items of value; Stoon liked the stuff in the pillowcases. And the second was to drop the Lexus off at the rear of a place called Maximilian’s Used Cars in Brooklyn. The lot was closed at this hour, of course, but Dortmunder put the Lexus keys into an envelope with a brief and enigmatic note, tossed the envelope over the razor wire for the dobermans to sniff, and then took a cab home, where May was still up, watching the eleven o’clock news. “I always look at that,” she said, gesturing at the set, “just in case they might have something to say about you.”

    “I’m sorry, May,” Dortmunder told her, as he dropped twenty–eight thousand dollars in cash on the coffee table. “I’ve got bad news.”

Chapter 11
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    Dortmunder walked into the kitchen around nine the next morning, yawning and scratching and blinking his eyes a lot, and Andy Kelp was there, smiling, seated at the kitchen table. “I don’t need this,” Dortmunder said.
    May was also present, already making his coffee, having heard him ricochet around the bedroom and bathroom the last quarter hour. “Now, John,” she said, “don’t be grumpy. Andy came by to say hello.”

    “Hello,” Dortmunder said. He sat at the table already half–covered by Andy’s elbows and reached for the Cheerios, on which he liked to put a lot of sugar and a lot of milk.

    Andy, a bony cheerful guy with a sharp–nosed face, sat smiling like a dentist as he watched Dortmunder shovel on the sugar. “John,” he said, “why have an attitude? May said you scored terrific last night.”

    “She did, huh?”

    May, bringing his coffee — a lot of sugar, a lot of milk — said, “I knew you wouldn’t mind if I told Andy.”

    You think you know a person. Dortmunder hunched his shoulders and ate.

    Andy said, “So, if you scored and you’re home free, what’s the long face?”

    May said, “John, the ring isn’t that important.”

    “It is to me,” Dortmunder said.

    Andy looked alert, like a squirrel hearing an acorn drop. “Ring?”

    Dortmunder gave them both a look. To May he said, “That part you didn’t tell him, huh?”

    “I thought you’d want to.”

    “No,” Dortmunder said, and filled his mouth with enough Cheerios to keep him incommunicado for a week.

    So it was May who told Andy about the