Thieves Dozen by Westlake Donald E

Author:Westlake, Donald E. [Westlake, Donald E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: FIC022000
ISBN: 0446693022
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published: 2004-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Returning to the party, Dortmunder saw Larry at the drinks table, a wrinkled look around his mouth as he poured a glass of white wine. Dortmunder kept out of his way as he circulated, distributing shrimp. The two suspects from the bedroom came back, looking shaken but relieved, and both beelined to the drinks table, where they made quite a dent.

A few minutes later, the apartment door thudded shut with a sound that gonged all the way down the hall and into the room with the party, where a whole lot of tense smiles suddenly loosened up.

Really? Gone? Given up? Dortmunder, suspicious by nature and cautious by necessity, carried his half-full tray of shrimp and sauce down the empty hall, glanced into the empty bedroom, opened the apartment door and looked out at five cops looking in.

Umm. Two of them were women cops. All five were just standing around the corridor with faintly eager and hungry looks, like lions in the Colosseum. Behind them, the door to the apartment across the hall was propped half-open.

OK. So they still think the odds are that their missing burglar is at the party, so they’ve set up this corridor equivalent of a radar trap. Each partygoer on the way out will be taken into the apartment across the hall—with that good citizen’s cooperation and approval, no doubt—and frisked. The women cops are for the women partygoers. And all five were looking at Dortmunder as though he were their first customer.

Uh-uh. True, he didn’t have the stash on him, but the identity papers he carried were in case of routine stops, not for anything serious. These documents were like vampires, they crumbled when exposed to light.

Dortmunder extended the tray, “Have a shrimp?”

“We’re on duty,” one of the women cops said, and the other cops looked faintly embarrassed.

“Maybe later,” Dortmunder suggested, and he closed the door on all those official eyes before they got the idea to dry-run their little gauntlet on the help.

What now? Eventually, this party, like all good things, must end. Until then, he was probably more or less safe, but as things stood, there was absolutely no way for him to get out of this apartment. Until they got their hands on the burglar, the police would not relax their vigilance for a second.

Until they got their hands on the burglar. Until they got their hands on somebody.

Play the hand. Dortmunder slipped sideways into the bedroom, balancing the tray one-handed as he opened the dresser drawer where he’d stashed the stash. He was careful about his selection; a proper Christmas gift should be something you’d like to receive yourself, so he resisted the impulse to keep the best swag for himself, instead choosing to sacrifice two brooches and a bracelet that were definitely cream of the crop. These went into his pants pocket and back out of the bedroom he eased, on the alert.

And here came Larry and Sheila down the hall away from the party, he still assuring her that

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