Thieves Dozen Read Free

with paintings on the walls, and antique furniture shared the polished wood floor with statuary, some on pedestals, some, like this bronze of a young girl, on low platforms. Dortmunder and the elegant man and the armed plug-uglies had come down here by elevator: apparently, the only route in and out. There were no windows and the air had the flat blanketlike quality of tight temperature and humidity control.
    “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