Stan looked alert. "This time?"

"It's kind of an ongoing story we've got here," Dortmunder told him.

Kelp put his gla.s.s down, smacked his lips, and said to Stan, "It's trains again."

"Let's do it from the beginning, okay, Andy?" Dortmunder said.

"Sure," Kelp said.

Stan sprinkled a little salt into his beer and looked around, expectant.

FORTY-ONE.

Stan Murch and his Mom rode around Brooklyn all morning in Mom's cab, with the off-duty light on. Having to drive this vehicle during her leisure hours, when she was already behind the wheel of the d.a.m.n thing eight to ten hours a day, put Mom in a crusty mood. "I don't see it," she kept saying as they drove through the sunny spring day. "I don't see the why so picky. A car is a car."

"Not this time," Stan told her. "This time it's a gift. A gift has to be something special, Mom, you know that. Hondas and Acuras he's got. Max has an entire used-car lot of Toyotas and Datsuns. Whenever I bring him an Isuzu or a Hyundai, he nods and he looks bored and he says, 'Put it over there.' "

"He pays you, Stanley," his Mom pointed out. "It's a business relationship. You bring him cars in off the street, and he pays you for them. Bored and excited aren't what it's about."

"But this time," Stan told her, "I don't want to be paid. This time I want a favor. So this time I can't show up with a Chevy Celebrity Eurosport or a Saab. This time I gotta attract Max's attention."

His Mom looked all around to be sure there weren't any cops in the vicinity and made an illegal right turn on red into Flatbush Avenue. "On the other hand," she said.

"You don't have to run lights, Mom," Stan told her. "We're not in any hurry."

"I am," Mom corrected him. "I'm in a hurry to get out of this car and into a tub. And you interrupted me when I was speaking."

"Sorry."

"What I was about to say," Mom went on, "was on the other hand, you don't want to give your friend Maximilian a car that's so special and customized and different that the owner can recognize it so well that Max gets put in jail. That's a gift he doesn't need."

"Don't worry, Mom," Stan said, "I'll know it when I see it."

"Then look at it," Mom said, applying the brakes and pointing.

They had just pa.s.sed through Grand Army Plaza and were running along Prospect Park West, with the park on their left and the fine old stone apartment buildings on their right. Some well-to-do people live in this neighborhood, and one of them-or, more likely, a visitor to one of them-had left his dove-gray Aston Martin parked at the curb in the sunlight.

"Well, well," Stan said as his Mom brought the cab to a stop beside this gift. "Right you are, Mom."

"Make sure, Stanley."

So Stan got out of the cab, and the first thing he saw was that the Aston Martin was parked next to a fire hydrant. And the second thing he saw was the red, white, and blue diplomat license plate; diplomatic immunity, as the frustrated cops well know, extends also to fire hydrants.

Stan grinned at the plate and turned back to the cab to lean in the pa.s.senger window and say, "It's okay, Mom, it's a diplomat. The cops won't even write this one down."

"See you at Maximilian's," Mom said, and took off as Stan brought out his bunch of keys from his pocket and turned back to the Aston Martin.

The fifth key did the trick, and the same key worked in the ignition. Stan swung the Aston Martin out away from the fire hydrant, made his U-turn, went back up through Grand Army Plaza, and headed east northeast across Brooklyn and Queens to Maximilian's Used Cars, near the Na.s.sau County line. When he got there, he took the side street beside the gaudily flagged car lot and turned in at the anonymous driveway behind it. He stopped in an area of tall scraggly weeds, flanked by the white clapboard backs of garages. Climbing out of the Aston Martin, patting it affectionately on the hood, he stepped through an unlocked gate in a chain-link fence and followed a path through more weeds and shrubbery to the rear of Maximilian's office, a small pink stucco structure with a shabbily California look. Going through the rear door into a gray-paneled office, Stan nodded to a skinny severe hatchet-faced woman typing at one of the two nondescript desks and said, "Hi, Harriet. Where's Max?"

The woman went on typing, as though her hands were separate creatures with an independent existence of their own, while her head turned and she smiled and said, "Hi, Stan. Your Mom's waiting out front. And Max is out there selling."

"Not to my Mom," Stan said.

Harriet laughed. "He wouldn't even try," she said, and went back to observing her hands type.

Stan opened the connecting door to the outer office, stepped through, and looked out the window at the lot, filled with Colts and Golfs. Beyond them, Mom's yellow cab sat at the curb in the sunlight. To the right was Max, over where the poorest, cheapest, most hopeless cars were kept, the cars with!!!ULTRASPECIAL!!! and!!!CREAMPUFF!!! and STEAL THIS CAR!!! written on their windshields in whitewash. Max was a big old man with heavy jowls and thin white hair who looked as though he'd been put out there in the sunlight by mistake; a windowless room with damp industrial carpet on the floor seemed more appropriate. But there he stood, glaring in the sunshine, hands on hips, dressed in his usual dark vest, hanging open over a white shirt smudged from leaning against used cars, plus shapeless s.h.a.ggy black trousers and shoes like loaves of black bread.

Max was, as Harriet had said, selling, or trying to sell, something out of his tin collection to two customers. Leaning on the windowsill, Stan observed these customers, who looked as out of place in the healthy brightness of day as Max. They were short and young, barely twenty, with thick black hair and bushy drooping mustaches and swarthy black-eyed faces. They were dressed in bulky dark sweaters and corduroy pants and rope shoes, and while one talked with Max the other kept looking out at the street. Then they'd switch, and the second would listen to Max's line of c.r.a.p for a while.

Stan watched them dismiss a Honda hatchback without a pause, then as quickly refuse a Renault Le Car and an American Motors Hornet. They paused briefly over a Subaru station wagon, but then one of them pointed at the rear window and the other one nodded, agreeing this wasn't their car. Max, misunderstanding, showed them a couple times how well the tailgate worked, but they weren't interested, so at last Max shrugged and they moved on to a puke-green Chevy Impala, which sparkled both customers right up; they almost danced at the sight of it.

Which wasn't rational. The Impala was at least eighteen years old, probably the most ancient vehicle on the lot. The side panels were half rusted out, deep rust pits circled the headlights, and the antenna was a wire coat hanger. It was also one of the biggest cars still in existence, a mastodon, a huge heavy gas guzzler, one third hood, one third trunk, and one third pa.s.senger s.p.a.ce.

But the two young mustachios loved it. They stopped looking out at the street so both could examine this beauty at the same time. While one went around to the front, poking and prodding at the b.u.mper to be sure it was solid, the other had Max open the trunk so he could bring a tape measure out of his pocket and confirm the vastness of the interior.

When Max started the engine and let them take turns behind the wheel-they cared about the steering, that's all, doing little runs forward and back in the lot, whipping the wheel left and right-Stan decided it was time to interfere. Obviously, Max was prepared to sell these clowns a car, which it would be better if he didn't do.

First, Stan went back over to the connecting door, opened it, leaned his head in, and said, "Harriet, would you call the precinct and ask them to run a car by here? Not to stop, just drift by."

"Right," Harriet said, without asking questions, and reached for the phone.

Stan shut the door, recrossed the room, went out into the sunlight, and gave his Mom a little stick-tight wave as he walked over toward Max and his customers, who were out of the Impala now, standing on the blacktop, nodding impatiently as Max went through the rest of his spiel, the double talk about guarantees and stuff he always rushed through once the sale was secure. Approaching him, Stan said, "Max, I want to-"

"In a minute," Max said, glowering in surprise at Stan, who after all should know the etiquette of never interrupting a sale.

But Stan went blithely on, as though he'd never heard of etiquette. "The precinct just called," he said.

Max glowered even more at that news, while the customers gave each other a quick startled look. Max said, "The law? Now what do they want from my life's blood?"

"I dunno," Stan said. "Something about being on the lookout for terrorists or some d.a.m.n thing."

"Terrorists?" Max demanded. "In a car lot?"

The customers were getting less swarthy. Ignoring them, being open and innocent, Stan said, "I think it's something about car bombs. You know?"

"No, I don't know," Max said, trying to turn away.

But Stan wouldn't let him get back to his spiel. "I mean those suicide car bomb things," he said, "where one of them just drives into a place and blows everything up. Usually, you know, they use some old clunker, a big car, something with a lot of power under the hood, something tough that can crash a barricade, good steering to go around the obstacles, lots of room in the trunk for the dynamite." As though just noticing the Impala, Stan gave it a careless wave and said, "This kinda car, like."

Max didn't say a word. The customers again looked at each other, and then turned to watch a police car prowl slowly past, both cops gazing toward the lot. The customers spoke to each other in a language.

Max licked his lips. He said, "Stan, you'll be so good, you'll wait in my office." Turning, he said, "Gentlemen, excuse the inter-"

But the gentlemen were leaving, walking away between the rows of hopeless wrecks in the Ultraspecial department of Maximilian's Used Cars, moving unhurriedly but steadily until Max raised his voice, calling, "Gentlemen, don't you want this car?" Then they walked faster, not looking back.

Stan said, "They were gonna pay cash, right?"

"You're G.o.dd.a.m.n right they were," Max said. "Until you come along."

"Max," Stan said, "don't you still get it? Don't you know what those guys were?"

"Customers," Max said. Then, before Stan could speak, Max raised a grimy-knuckled and nail-bitten hand, showed Stan its callused palm, and said, "But even if you're right, so what? If you're right, you know what I got? The perfect customer. Not only do they give me cash, so there's no problem with the paper, the credit line, discounting with the bank, having to eat the d.a.m.n car when they repossess, none of that, but these are customers who will never bring the car back to argue the way they always do. The transmission, the brakes, all this stuff they b.i.t.c.h about. These customers weren't like that. Even saying you're right, Stan, and I don't say you're right, these customers were the best kind of customers you could get. They're like the army. They buy the product, they blow it up, everybody's happy."

"Except you," Stan said.

Max glowered at him. "The sun is baking your brains," he decided. "Come into the office, explain me this favor you did."

"Be right there," Stan told him, and walked over to Mom's cab, where Mom looked up at him out her open window and said, "This is taking long."

"There was a little complication," Stan told her. "I'll tell you on the way home."

"You're done? He said yes?"

"A few minutes," Stan promised, and went back over to the office, where Max was seated behind his desk, chewing an imaginary cigar, the only kind the doctor would let him have.

"Good," Max said, looking at him as though he'd believed Stan might run away rather than face him. "The expressman with the downside. Deliver."

"The FBI," Stan said.

Max shifted the imaginary cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. "The FBI? Whadda they gotta do with me?"

"Your customers," Stan explained, "your perfect customers out there, they go away with that heap, and a week or two from now some emba.s.sy blows up, maybe some airline office, maybe even a police station, the UN Building."

"Good," Max said. "The car is out of my inventory and out of my inventory."

"But there's enough of it left," Stan said, "for identification, registration, history of the car. The FBI likes to say it checks out every lead, and that car's a lead, and it leads here."

"So what?" Max demanded, taking the imaginary cigar from his mouth and waving it in his hand. "This happens to be a time I'm innocent! I don't know those people! I sold them a car! That's what I do!"

"Max, Max," Stan said, "don't use the word innocent, okay? I look out the window here, I see half a dozen cars I sold you, and I know where I got them. You want police attention, Max? For any reason at all?"

Max didn't answer. He gazed at Stan wide-eyed. The imaginary cigar had gone out.

Stan said, "The FBI comes in here looking for evidence on crime number one, checking you out, going through the records, studying the paper. But there isn't any evidence on crime number one, because you're innocent, you aren't involved. So do they go away? Do they just ignore all the evidence they pick up on crimes number two through twenty-eight? Or do they turn over this big thick report to the local cops?"

"You're right," Max said. He sounded stunned. Shaking his head, dropping the imaginary cigar in an imaginary ashtray, he said, "I'm not used to innocence, it clouded my judgment. You saved me, Stan," he went on, his agitation pushing him up onto his feet. "I owe you on that. I owe you a big one."

Stan looked interested. "You do?"

Max spread his hands. "Name it. I know you come here to sell me a vehicle, but that-"

"Well, kinda, yeah," Stan said, shifting gears, moving straight into plan B. "A beauty, actually, better than-"

"But that can wait," Max said firmly. "I can see you got something in mind. What is it?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, Max," Stan said, "I was gonna ask your advice."

"Ask."

"You see, I need a car, and-"

"You need a car?"

"This is a special car," Stan explained, "with special kinds of modifications on it. I was thinking, the guys in your body shop-"

"Can do anything," Max finished. "So long as you don't need a vehicle more than, say, two, three weeks, my boys can give you whatever you want."

"This is short-term," Stan promised.

"Everything I do here is short-term," Max said. "That's what the customers refuse to accept. Whadda they want for fifteen ninety-five? Would they buy a TV set as old as these cars?"

"A good point," Stan said. "Maybe you should put it in the advertising."

"There are fine points of business, Stanley," Max told him, "you'll never understand. Tell me about this car you need. Fix up the engine? High speed?"

"Well, no," Stan said. "The fact is, one thing we need is the engine taken out."

Max looked at him. "Is this humor?" he asked. "Harriet keeps telling me about this stuff, humor; is that what this is?"

"Absolutely not," Stan told him, and took the specifications out of his pocket. "Now, the most important thing is, the dimension side-to-side between the tires has got to be four feet, eight and a half inches, from the middle of the tread to the middle of the tread. The front tires got to be that wide apart, and the back tires."

"Sure," Max said.

"Then," Stan said, "no engine. And either a convertible, or we cut the top off the car."

"Cut the top off the car," Max said.

"Well, here's the list," Stan said, and gave it to him. "You want to see the creampuff I brought?"

"In a minute." Max studied the list, nodding slowly. "My boys are gonna laugh and laugh," he said.

"But can they do it?"

"They can do anything," Max repeated. "When do you need it?"

"In a hurry," Stan said.

"How did I know?" Max put the list in his pocket. "So let's see this creampuff you brought me."

"And in appreciation for what you and your boys are doing," Stan said as they went through Harriet's office and out the back to go look at the Aston Martin, "I'm gonna let you call your own price on this one. Max, I'm almost giving it away!"