Cleo, her smile sympathetic, said, 'Porky really does know about art. If he says it can't be done, it can't be done."

"So that's that," Dortmunder said.

Kelp was frowning so hard he looked like a crumpled piece of paper. "But that can't be that," he insisted. "There has to be a way."

"Sorry," Porculey said.

Dortmunder slugged down the rest of his coffee. "Maybe I will have some wine after all, he said."

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house floated the aroma of May's tuna casserole. The apartment was filling up with guests, and Dortmunder, a cup of bourbon-spiked eggnog in his hand, sat in his personal chair in the living room – partly because he felt like sitting there, but mostly because if he stood up somebody else would be sure to cop his seat – and contemplated the Christmas tree. He wasn't sure about that tree. He'd been dubious about it from the beginning, and he was still dubious about it.

He'd been dubious, in fact, from before he'd actually seen the thing. Two days ago, when May had walked in with a cardboard carton the right size and shape to hold maybe four rolled-up window shades, and had said, "I bought us a Christmas tree at the hardware store," Dortmunder had been dubious at once. "At the hardware store?" he'd said. "And it's in that box?"

"Yes and yes. Help me set it up."

So then she'd opened the box and taken out a lot of fuzzy silver sticks. "That's no tree," Dortmunder's said. "That's a lot of imitation corncobs."

"We have to put it together," she'd told him, but when they did all they wound up with was a tapering fuzzy silver thing that didn't look at all like a Christmas tree. "There, now," May said. "What does that look like?"

"A man from Mars."

"Wait till we put the ornaments on."

Well, now it had the ornaments on, and a lot of gift-wrapped presents underneath, but it still didn't look like a Christmas tree. In the first place – and this is just the first place, mind, this isn't the whole objection – in the first place, Christmas trees are green.

Still, whatever the thing was it did give off a kind of cheerful glitter, and it made May happy, so what the hell. Dortmunder kept his doubts to himself and his feet up on his old battered hassock, and he grinned and nodded at his guests. A funny thing to have, guests. Not people in to talk about setting up a score, or splitting the take afterward, or anything else in the way of business. Just people to come over and eat your food and drink your liquor and then go home again. Strange sort of idea, when you thought about it. It had been May's idea, like the Christmas tree, intended to cheer Dortmunder up.

One thing about throwing a party; you offer people free food and free drink, they're very likely to show. Astonishing number of familiar faces here, some of them people Dortmunder hadn't seen in years. Like Alan Greenwood over there, a fellow he'd worked with a bunch of times until all of a sudden it turned out Greenwood had been leading a double life; all the time Dortmunder had thought of him simply as a good utility-infielder-type heist man, Greenwood had had this secret life as an actor. Boom, he got discovered, he got his own television series, he didn't need to run around on fire escapes any more. And here he was, in his blue denim leisure suit and his string tie and his lace-frilled shirt, with this incredible gaunt blond beauty named Doreen on his arm. "Nice to see ya, Greenwood."

"What's happening, baby," Greenwood said, and shook hands with his left.

Then there was Wally Whistler, one of the best lock men in the business, just out of prison, having got sent up for absentmindedly unlocking a lock while he was at the zoo with his kids; it had taken hours to get the lion back in his cage. And Fred Lartz, a onetime driver who had given up driving after an experience he had one time when he got drunk at a cousin's wedding out on Long Island, took a wrong turn off the Van Wyck Expressway, wound up on Taxiway Seventeen out at Kennedy Airport, and got run down by Eastern Airlines flight two-oh-eight, just in from Miami. Fred's wife Thelma – the lady out in the kitchen with May, with the funny hat – did all the driving for the family these days.

Also present, and scoffing down the eggnog pretty good, was Herman X, a black man whose other life as a radical political activist in no way interfered with his primary career as a lock-man. The lady he'd brought with him, and introduced as Foxy, was another stunner, tall and skinny and stylish and gleaming black. Foxy and Alan Greenwood's Doreen tended to stalk in slow circles around one another, remote and wary.

The crew from the painting fiasco were present, in force. Roger Chefwick had showed up with his round, pleasant, motherly wife, Maude. Tiny Bulcher was there with a small, sweet-faced, rather plain girl named Eileen, who looked terrified; Dortmunder kept expecting her to slip somebody a note reading, "Rescue me from this man." Stan Murch was there with his Morn, who had come direct from work and so was still in her taxi-driving duds: checked slacks, leather jacket, soft cap. And Andy Kelp was there, of course, with his nephew Victor.

Oh, it was quite a party. Besides the eggnog, there was straight bourbon, or beer in the refrigerator, and a big jug of Gab Hearty Burgundy exactly like the stuff Dortmunder had drunk at the shopping center the other night. Christmas music played on the phonograph, Herman X and Foxy and Greenwood and Doreen danced from time to time, and Stan Murch and Fred Lartz and Wally Whistler sang along with some of the more well-known songs, such as "Jingle Bells" and "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen," and "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." May and Thelma Lartz and Maude Chefwick were putting together a nice buffet supper in the kitchen, and generally people were having a real nice time. Also, most of the guests had showed up with a gift, and from the size and shape of those gifts, now under the poor excuse for a tree, Dortmunder suspected most of them were bottles of bourbon, so the party couldn't be considered a dead loss. All in all, Dortmunder would have to describe the occasion, and even himself, as damn near cheerful.

Over came Munch and Fred Lartz and Wally Whistler, grouping themselves around Dortmunder in his chair, Murch explaining, "We need a fourth, and you're it. All together now. Good King Wen-ces-las–"

Dortmunder knew about half the words, but it hardly mattered. He mumbled along in his throat, his usual singing style, and the other three belted the tune back and forth among them like a medicine ball, occasionally fumbling it enough to make nearby conversations falter. Joy and good cheer flowed like floodwaters through the apartment, and Dortmunder grinned around his eggnog cup and let the flood float him away.

The next album was orchestral music, so the glee club wandered off to refresh its drinks. Kelp came by with a new cup of eggnog for Dortmunder, then hunkered down next to his chair and said, "Nice party."

"Not bad," Dortmunder agreed.

"Listen, do you mind a little discussion for a minute?"

Dortmunder looked at him, uncomprehending. "A little discussion? About what?"

"Chauncey," Kelp said.

Dortmunder closed his eyes. "And just when I was sort of feeling good," he said.

Kelp patted his arm. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, I wouldn't break in on the party spirit and all that, but I got an idea, and it means Porculey doing a copy after all, and if you think it's as good an idea as I do then he ought to start right away."

Dortmunder's eyes opened, the better for frowning. "A copy? Porculey said it wouldn't work."

"It'll work with my idea," Kelp told him. "Can I give it to you?"

"You might as well," Dortmunder said, "but my guess is it stinks."