Donald Westlake: Thieves' Dozen

"It's a Rodin," the elegant man was saying. "One of my wiser acquisitions, in my youth." His mouth forming a practiced moue, he said, "One of my less wise acquisitions, more recently, was a flesh-and-blood young woman who did me the disservice of becoming my wife."

"I really got an appointment uptown," Dortmunder said.

"More recently still," the elegant man persisted, "we came to a particularly bitter and unpleasant parting of the ways, Moira and I. As a part of the resulting settlement, the little bitch got this nymph here. But she didn't get it."

"Uh-huh," Dortmunder said.

"I have friends in the art world," the elegant man went on, "and all men have sympathizers where grasping ex-wives are concerned. Several years earlier, I'd had a mold made of this piece, and from it an exact copy had been cast in the same grade of bronze. A virtually identical copy; not quite museum quality, of course, but aesthetically just as pleasing as the original."

"Sure," said Dortmunder.

"It was that copy I gave to Moira; having, of course, first bribed the expert she'd brought in to appraise the objects she was looting from me. The other pieces I gave her with scarcely a murmur, but my nymph? Never!"

"Ah," said Dortmunder.

"All was well," the elegant man said. "I kept my nymph, the one and only true original from Rodin's plaster form, with the touch of the sculptor's hand full upon it. Moira had the copy, pleased with the thought of its being the original, cheered by the memory of having done me in the eye. A happy ending for everyone, you might have said."

"Uh-huh," said Dortmunder.

"But not an ending at all, unfortunately." The elegant man shook his head. "It has come to my attention, very belatedly, that tax problems have forced Moira to make a gift of the Rodin nymph to the Museum of Modern Art. Perhaps I ought to explain that even I cannot with any certainty bribe an appraiser from the Museum of Modern Art."

"He'll tell," Dortmunder said.

"He will, in the argot of the underworld," the elegant man said, "spill the beans."

"That isn't the argot of the underworld," Dortmunder told him.

"No matter. The point is, my one recourse, it seems to me, is to enter Moira's town house and make off with the copy."

"Makes sense," Dortmunder agreed.

The elegant man pointed at his nymph. "Pick that up," he said.

Dortmunder frowned, looking for the butcher's thumb.

"Go ahead," the elegant man insisted. "It won't bite."

Dortmunder handed his bourbon and water to one of the plug-uglies; then hesitant, unfamiliar with the process of lifting teenaged girls dressed in curtains-whether of bronze or anything else-he grasped this one by the chin and one elbow and lifted . . . and it didn't move. "Uh," said Dortmunder, visions of hernias blooming in his head.

"You see the problem," the elegant man said, while the muscles in Dortmunder's arms and shoulders and back and groin all quivered from the unexpected shock. "My nymph weighs five hundred twenty-six pounds. As does Moira's copy, give or take a few ounces."

"Heavy," agreed Dortmunder. He took back his drink and drank.

"The museum's expert arrives tomorrow afternoon," the elegant man said touching his white mustache. "If I am to avoid discomfort-possibly even public disgrace-I must remove Moira's copy from her possession tonight."

Dortmunder said, "And you want me to do it?"

"No, no, not at all." The elegant man waved his elegant fingers. "My associates"-meaning the plug-uglies-"and I will, as you would say, pull the scam."

"That's not what I'd say," Dortmunder told him.

"No matter, no matter. What we wish from you, Mr. Dortmunder, is simply your expertise. Your professional opinion. Come along." The elevator door opened to his elegant touch. "Care for another bourbon? Of course you do."

"Fortunately," the elegant man said, "I kept the architect's plans and models even though I lost the town house itself to Moira."

Dortmunder and his host and one plug-ugly (the other was off getting more bourbon and sherry) stood now in a softly glowing dining room overlooking a formal brick-and-greenery rear garden. On the antique refectory table dominating the room stood two model houses next to a roll of blueprints. The tiniest model, barely six inches tall and built solid of balsa wood with windows and other details painted on, was placed on an aerial photograph to the same scale, apparently illustrating the block in which the finished house would stand. The larger, like a child's dollhouse, was over two feet tall, with what looked like real glass in its windows and even some furniture in the rooms within. Both models were of a large, nearly square house with a high front stoop, four stories tall, with a big square many-paned skylight in the center of the roof.

Dortmunder looked at the big model, then at the small, then at the photograph of the street. "This is in New York?"

"Just a few blocks from here."

"Huh," said Dortmunder, thinking of his own apartment.

"You see the skylight," suggested the elegant man.

"Yeah."

"It can be opened in good weather. There's an atrium on the second level. You know what an atrium is?"

"No."

"It's a kind of garden, within the house. Here, let me show you."

The larger model was built in pieces, which could be disassembled. The roof came off first, showing bedrooms and baths all around a big square opening coinciding with the skylight. The top floor came off, was set aside and showed a third floor given over to a master bedroom suite and a bookcase-lined den, around the continuing square atrium hole. The details impressed even Dortmunder. "This thing must have cost as much as the real house," he said.

The elegant man smiled. "Not quite," he said, lifting off the third floor. And here was the bottom of the atrium-fancy word for air shaft, Dortmunder decided-a formal garden like the one outside these real-life dining-room windows, with a fountain and stone paths. The living and dining rooms in the model were open to the atrium. "Moira's copy," the elegant man said, pointing at the garden, "is just about there."

"Tricky," Dortmunder commented.

"There are twelve steps down from the atrium level to the sidewalk in front. The rear garden is sunk deeper, below ground level."

"Very tricky."

"Ah, our drinks," the elegant man said, taking his, "and not a moment too soon." He sipped elegantly and said, "Mr. Dortmunder, the workman is worthy of his hire. I shall now outline to you our plans and our reasoning. I ask you to give us your careful attention, to advise us of any flaws in our thinking and to suggest whatever improvements come to your professional mind. In return, I will pay you-in cash, of course-one thousand dollars."

"And drive me uptown," Dortmunder said. "I'm really late for my appointment."

"Agreed."

"OK, then," Dortmunder said, and looked around for a place to sit down.

"Oh, come along," said the elegant man. "We might as well be comfortable."

Tall, narrow windows in the living room overlooked a tree-lined expensive block. Long sofas in ecru crushed velvet faced each other on the Persian carpet, amid glass-topped tables, modern lamps and antique bric-a-brac. In a Millet over the mantel, a French farmer of the last century endlessly pushed his bar-rowload of hay through a narrow barn door. The elegant man might have lost his atriummed town house to the scheming Moira, but he was still doing OK. No welfare housing necessary.

With a fresh drink to hand, Dortmunder sat on a sofa and listened. "We've made three plans," the elegant man said, as Dortmunder wondered who this "we" was he kept talking about; surely not the plug-uglies, giants with the brains of two-by-fours, sitting around now on chair arms like a rock star's bodyguards. "Our first plan, perhaps still feasible, involves that skylight and a helicopter. I have access to a heli-"