Dortmunder sighed.

"I'll buy two bottles," Kelp said.

"You remember my nephew Victor," Kelp said.

"The FBI man," Dortmunder said.

"The ex-FBI man," Kelp corrected him. "It makes a difference."

"They threw him out," Dortmunder said, "because he kept putting a suggestion in the FBI suggestion box that they oughta have a secret handshake, so they'd be able to recognize each other at parties."

"That's not necessarily so," Kelp said. "That's just a theory."

"It's good enough for me," Dortmunder told him. "It helps me remember the guy. What about him?"

"I was talking to him at Thanksgiving," Kelp said, "at my grandmother's. She makes the most fantastic turkey, you wouldn't believe it."

What was there to say to a remark like that? Nothing; so that's what Dortmunder said. He settled himself more comfortably in his personal easy chair in his warm dry living room – May was out at the Safeway, where she was a cashier – and he sipped a little more bourbon. It was bottled in Kentucky (as opposed to being distilled in Kentucky, shipped north in railroad cars and bottled in Hoboken) and it was pretty good; a firm stride upward from the stuff at the O.J. Bar and Grill, which was probably also distilled in Hoboken, from a combination of Hudson and Raritan waters.

Kelp was going on with his story. "The point is," he said, "Victor was telling me about a guy that lives in his neighborhood now, that he'd worked on his case back in the FBI. The guy was a counterfeiter."

"Yeah?"

"Only he didn't print the money," Kelp said. "He drew it." He made vague drawing gestures in the air. "One bill at a time. All twenties."

Dortmunder frowned past his glass at Kelp. "This guy drew individual twenty-dollar bills?"

"Apparently he was terrific at it. He'd take a sheet of paper, he'd paint five or six bills on it, cut them out, paint the other side, pass em all over town."

"Strange fella," Dortmunder decided.

"But terrific," Kelp said. "According to Victor, you couldn't tell his bills from the real thing. Every one of them, a work of art"

"Then how'd they get him?"

"Well, a couple ways. First off, he always worked in watercolor. With oils, you get too much build-up on the paper, the texture's wrong. So his bills, they were fine when he first passed them, but pretty soon they'd begin to run."

"This sounds exactly like the kind of guy you'd know," Dortmunder said.

"I don't know him," Kelp said. "My nephew Victor knows him."

"And you know Victor."

"Well, he's my nephew."

"I rest my case," Dortmunder said. "What was the other way they caught this guy?"

"Well, he usually stayed right there in his own neighborhood," Kelp said. "He's a very unworldly sort of guy, he's really an artist, he just did these twenties to keep himself in potatoes and blue jeans while he did his own art. So like, when all these twenties kept getting traced back to the same Shop-Rite, the same drugstore, the same liquor store, the Feds staked out the neighborhood, and that's how Victor met this guy Porculey."

"Porculey?"

"Griswold Porculey. That's his name."

"It is, huh?"

"Absolutely. Anyway, the Feds nailed Porculey, but all he got was a suspended sentence when he promised not to do it any more."

"They believed him?"

"Well, yeah," Kelp said. "Because it made sense. Once they got him, and they figured out how he was doing those things, they talked to him, and it turned out he was spending five hours just to do one side of one bill. You know, those twenties, they're all full of tricky little stuff."

"Yeah, I've seen some," Dortmunder said.

"Well, anyway, that means ten hours per bill, and not even counting the cost of materials and overhead, paper, paint, depreciation on the brushes, all the rest of it, the most he's making is two bucks an hour. He could do better than that delivering for the Shop-Rite, part time."

Dortmunder nodded. "Crime doesn't pay," he said. "I'm gradually coming to that conclusion."

"Well, the point is," Kelp went on, "this guy used to live up in Washington Heights, he had his studio up there and all, but the rent kept going up, they priced him out of the neighborhood and he moved out to Long Island. Victor ran into him in the shopping center."

"Passing twenties?"

"No," Kelp said, "but he's thinking about it. He told Victor he was looking for some way to do a bunch of bills all at once. Victor figures he's about halfway to inventing the printing press, and he's worried the guy'll get in trouble. And that's where we come in."

"I was wondering where we came in," Dortmunder said.

"We can put a little honest cash his way," Kelp said, "help him avoid temptation."

"How do we do that?"

"You don't get it?" Kelp was so pleased with himself he was about to run around in front and kiss himself on both cheeks. Leaning forward, gesturing with his half-full bourbon glass, he said. "We fake the painting!"

Dortmunder frowned at him past his own half-empty glass. "We what?"

"This is a famous painting, right, the one we copped from Chauncey? So there'll be pictures of it, copies of it, all that stuff. Porculey's a real artist, and he can imitate anything. So he runs up a copy of the painting and that's the one we give back!"

Dortmunder studied Kelp's words one by one. "There's something wrong with that," he said.

"What?"

"I don't know yet. I just hope I find it before it's too late."

"Dortmunder, it's better than getting shot in the head."

Dortmunder winced. "Don't talk like that," he said. Already in anticipation, the last few weeks, he was getting headaches every time he passed a window.

"You gotta do something," Kelp told him. "And this is the only something in town."

Was that true? Dortmunder considered again his dream of escaping to some South American seacoast town with May, opening a little restaurant-saloon – May's famous tuna casserole would make them an instant success – he himself would run the bar; he wasn't sure whether to call it May's Place or The Hideaway. But as he visualized the dream once more, himself behind a gleaming black bar with bamboo fittings – somehow South America was very South Pacific in his imagination – in walks a tall narrow fellow with a bad limp. He ups to the bar and he says, "Hello, Dortmunder," and his hand comes out of his topcoat pocket.

"Un," said Dortmunder.

Kelp looked at him, concerned. "Something wrong? Bourbon no good?"

"Bourbon's fine," Dortmunder said.

Kelp said, "Listen, why don't I call Victor, have him set up the meet? Dortmunder? I'll do that, right? Why don't I?"

May's Place faded, with its unwelcome customer. "Okay," Dortmunder said.

"I don't see why we had to meet him at a shopping center," Dortmunder grumbled, watching the windshield wipers push snow back and forth on the glass. Today's doctor's car was a silver gray Cadillac Seville, with a tape deck and a selection of tapes by Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Gary Puckett & The Union Gap. (The Seville was Cadillac's response to the oil crisis and the need for smaller cars; dan de was removed from the middle of the Cadillac Sedan de Ville, resulting obviously in a shorter lighter car: the Seville.)

"What difference does it make?" Kelp said, slithering through the erratic traffic on the Southern State. "We meet Victor at the shopping center, he takes us on to Porculey's place."

"It's Christmastime," Dortmunder pointed out. "That's what difference it makes. We're going out to Long Island in a snowstorm to a shopping center a week before Christmas, that's what difference it makes."

"Well, it's too late to change it now," Kelp said. "It won't be that bad."