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the bridge getting close. The two watchful guys in the booth on the right were not the same as the two from last night, but they weren’t that different, either. Rollo had a newspaper folded open on the bar at the right end, far from the immobile regulars, and was bent over it with a red Flair pen in his hand.
    Approaching the bar, Dortmunder felt the eyes of the guys in the booth on him, but ignored them. Then he saw that Rollo was not reading the Daily News, like a regular person, but the larger paper, the New York Times. And then he saw that what Rollo was reading in the New York Times was the want ads.

    Rollo didn’t raise his eyes from the columns of jobs awaiting the qualified when Dortmunder and Kelp bellied up to the bar in front of him, but he was not unmindful of their presence. “Sorry, fellas,” he said, eyes down, pen poised. “Still no go.”

    “Rollo,” Dortmunder said, “all’s we want’s a beer.”

    “Two beers, in fact,” Kelp said.

    Now Rollo did look up. He seemed wary. “Nothing else in mind?”

    “What else?” Kelp asked him. “It’s a hot August day, the time seems right for a nice beer.”

    Rollo shrugged. “Coming up,” he said, and went away to draw two.

    While they waited, Kelp said, “I think it’s my round, John.”

    Dortmunder looked at him. “What are you up to?”

    “What up to? I feel like I wanna buy you a beer. It happens, we have another one, then you buy for me. That’s how it works, John.”

    Dortmunder said, “What if we only have the one?”

    “My feeling is,” Kelp said, whipping out his wallet and putting cash money on the bar next to the glasses Rollo was putting down in front of them, “some day we’ll be in a bar again.”

    Dortmunder could only agree with that. “You’ll keep track, I guess,” he said, as Rollo took Kelp’s money away to his open cash register and rummaged around in there a while.

    “No problem,” Kelp assured him, and lifted his glass. “To crime.”

    “Without punishment,” Dortmunder amended, and they both drank.

    Rollo came back to put crumpled bills on the bar in front of Kelp, who took a few, left one, and said, “Thanks, Rollo.”

    Rollo leaned close over the bar. Very softly he said, “I just wanna say, this isn’t the best place right now.”

    “We noticed that, Rollo,” Kelp said, and nodded, and smiled in an amiable way, inviting confidences.

    “The thing is,” Rollo said, more sotto voce than ever, “there are people around here right now, what they are, they’re criminals.”

    Dortmunder leaned very close to Rollo over the bar. “Rollo,” he murmured, “ we’re criminals.”

    “Yeah, John, I know,” Rollo said. “But they’re organized. Take care of yourselves.”

    “Everything okay, Rollo?” demanded a nasty voice.

    It was one of today’s organized men, come from his booth to stand at the bar in front of Rollo’s Times. His strange shirt was off–puce.

    “Everything’s jake,” Rollo assured him. Scooping the loose dollar from the bar, he went back to his newspaper, while the puce, after one quick, dismissive look at Dortmunder and Kelp, headed back to his booth.

    Dortmunder said, “You think everything’s okay in life, and then something different happens.”

    Kelp gave him a look. “John? On one beer you’re turning philosophical?”

    “It’s the environment,” Dortmunder told him.

    Meanwhile, returning to his want ads, Rollo called toward the entrance, “Just put ‘em in back,” and when Dortmunder turned to look, a blue–uniformed deliveryman was wheeling in a dolly piled five–high with liquor cartons.

    “Right,” the deliveryman said, and wheeled the dolly on by. The regulars didn’t even turn to watch.

    Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a silent glance as they sipped their beer. Soon the deliveryman returned, pushing his empty dolly, and Dortmunder stepped back from the bar to say, in a normal volume of voice, “I gotta hit the