AROUND THE BACK ROOM TABLE, they sorted themselves by order of appearance, Dortmunder facing the door, Tiny and the kid flanking him with their oblique views toward the door, Kelp first closing the door and then taking the chair beyond the kid, with its oblique view away from the door.

As they settled into their places Tiny said, “Stan is the one called this meet, and Stan is the one that isn’t here. I call this rude.”

Dortmunder said, “There’s probly an explanation.”

Tiny lowered a brow at him. “You always think the best of everybody,” he accused.

“Not always,” Dortmunder said, and the door opened and Stan came in.

“Uh-huh,” Tiny said.

Stan, closing the door, saw he had a choice between the chair next to the irritated Tiny or the chair with its back fully to the door. As he hesitated over these selections, he said, “Sorry I’m late, but I got an explanation.”

“I thought you would,” Dortmunder said.

Stan put his beer and his salt on the table and his body on the chair next to Tiny. “This time a year,” he said, “you got your tourists, that flood just picking up, you got your Europeans with their luxury apartments in Manhattan just opening them up for the new season, you even got your American travelers wanna see is New York as scary as their uncle said. So this time a year,” he concluded, “I don’t take the Belt Parkway. It’s fulla sightseers that don’t know how to drive in New York. Or anywhere else.”

Kelp said, “This is the explanation?”

“This is the preamble,” Stan told him. “I just want you to know I know what I’m doing. So on city streets, I know where the construction is, I know where the national pride day parades are, I know where the strikes and the demonstrations are, so I pick my route. Tonight, I come up Flatlands and Pennsylvania and Bushwick and the LIE to the Midtown Tunnel, because inbound isn’t that bad in the evening hours, and then up the FDR to Seventy-ninth and through the park. This is the plan.”

“This isn’t a plan,” Tiny said. “This is a travelogue.”

Dortmunder said, “Tell us, Stan. What went wrong?”

“It’s all working,” Stan said. “I’m all the way to Manhattan, I’m on the FDR. There’s pretty thick traffic, but it’s moving along. I’m in the middle lane and I see, maybe three cars up in the right lane, this Honda that the left front wheel comes off.”

That got everybody’s attention. Kelp said, “What? It just fell off and lay on the ground?”

“Hell, no,” Stan said. “It kept going. And the Honda has this balance, so it keeps going, too. But the wheel’s going faster than the cars, and when the guy driving the Honda sees this wheel pull out in front of him, he panics.”

Tiny nodded. “Many would,” he said.

“So he hit the brakes,” Stan said. “And there goes his equilibrium. He’s doing fifty, his left front hits the roadway, all at once he looked like six Hondas going in six different directions all at once, including straight up. It was like a dance, only fast. And now everybody else’s hitting the brakes, and the Honda’s all over the road, and when it finally stops it’s blocking all three lanes, with parts falling off and scattered around the general neighborhood. All the traffic from behind is pressing way up, there’s no way to go forward, and there’s no exit anywhere near there. We’re stopped.”

The kid said, “What happened to the wheel?”

“It kept going,” Stan said. “It was in front of the crash, so it just kept going. Unless it took the Triborough it’s in Westchester by now.”

Dortmunder said, “What about the guy in the Honda?”

“Well, I guess he’s all right,” Stan said, “only the Honda has kind of closed around him so he can’t get out. Eventually they had to cut him out, so that was another delay.”

The kid said, “Who cut him out? The cops?”

“No,” Stan said. “The cops got there first and just stood around and made phone calls. Then the ambulance, that can’t do anything because this guy’s like a canned ham and they still gotta open the can. Then the fire department shows up and they got this special machine for opening up vehicles at times like this that things have gone a little worse than usual.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “there was no way you could plan for that.”

Stan said, “Oh, you can plan for anything, that doesn’t matter. The point is, though, they finally got us outa there and the rest of it was a snap. Even the bicycles popping wheelies on the park transverse weren’t a problem. But I’m late, and I’m sorry, and that’s the reason.”

“And you got,” Tiny said, “something to tell us.”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re here.”

Kelp said, “We also got something to tell you, but you called the meet, so you go first.”

“Okay,” Stan said. “While you guys’ve been playing with the reality people, I’ve been dropping into Varick Street a little later at night.”

“We know that,” Kelp said.

“Oh, yeah?” Stan shrugged and said, “Well, anyway, last night I decided to take a look at Knickerbocker Storage, and I know that’s what we got our hopes fixed on, now that the cash for Europe thing doesn’t work out, but the truth is it’s no good. I hate to tell you this, guys, because I know you’re counting on it, but there’s just no caper there.”

“That’s funny,” Kelp said. “That’s the same news we were gonna tell you.”

“Not that funny,” Tiny said.

Stan said, “So you guys saw it, too, all that crap in the storage place?”

“No,” Kelp said. “We didn’t look in there. That was always supposed to be the fake thing anyway, so we could go after the cash going to Europe. But that didn’t work either, so finally we just walked off.”

“We walked off,” Tiny said, “because we were accused of stealing cars.”

“Oh,” Stan said.

Kelp said, “If you planned to go back there tonight, bring a toothbrush.”

“So that’s over, is what you’re saying,” Stan said. “The whole reality thing. And we all knew it at the same time. So now what we got to do is figure out what we are gonna do.”

Kelp said, “Anybody got any prospects? Anything might help?”

Stan said, “Hold that for a minute. All that storytelling, I used up my beer.” Rising, he said, “Anybody else? Kid?”

“Sure,” the kid said.

“Tiny?”

“I’m okay,” Tiny said.

Kelp said, “John and me, we’ve got this bottle.”

“Fine,” Stan said. “I’ll be right back.”

Holding his empty glass, he turned and opened the door, and Doug was standing there. Doug’s anxious expression switched to pleased surprise and he said, “Stan! When’d you get back?”

Stan closed the door.

NO. THEY COULDN’T DO THAT. They couldn’t just ignore him, could they? Doug stared at the closed door, right there in front of his nose, and he couldn’t believe it. He’d seen them, the four guys sitting around the table just exactly like the OJ back room footage they’d shot, plus Stan right there in the doorway, and the next thing, Stan slams the door. Right in front of him.

They can’t do that. They can’t pretend they’re not in there, not after he saw them. Did they think he’d just go away? Well, he wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t go away. He needed those guys. He needed The Heist, now more than ever.

When he’d discovered, this afternoon, how circumstances had changed, and how much he now needed The Heist to get itself up and running again, he’d tried to think of some way to get back in touch with the guys. He’d known immediately there would be no gain in trying to work through Stan’s Mom. She’d just brush him off and promise to pass on a message and then go out and drive her cab some more.

He couldn’t have that. He needed to talk to the guys themselves, he needed to explain to them what dire straits he was in, call on their better natures, convince them to come back to The Heist, no matter what. But how could he reach them?