Television isn’t something you watch.

Television is something you appear on.

NOËL COWARD

DORTMUNDER DID NOT like to stand around on street corners. A slope-shouldered, glum-looking individual in clothing that hadn’t been designed by anybody, he knew what he looked like when he stood for a while in one place on a street corner, and what he looked like was a person loitering with intent. The particular intent, as any cop casting an eye over Dortmunder would immediately understand, was beside the point, and could be fine-tuned at the station; the first priority was to get this fellow in charge.

Which was why Dortmunder didn’t like standing around on street corners: he hated to give cops the feeling there was duty to be done. And yet, here he was, in the middle of a weekday morning in April, as obvious as a carbuncle in the pale glare of the weak spring sunshine, the near-beer equivalent of real sunshine as in, say, August, but still plenty bright enough to pick out a questionable detail as large as John Dortmunder, who happened to be waiting, in fact, for a cab.

But not just any cab. The cab he wanted to see before he became a known loiterer would be driven by Stan Murch’s Mom, Stan being a fellow with whom Dortmunder had engaged in for-profit activities from time to time in the past. Murch’s specialty was driving; when it became necessary to leave a location at speed, Stan was your man. And his Mom drove a cab; so that was probably an argument for nurture.

Earlier this morning, Stan had phoned Dortmunder to say, “My Mom had an interesting fare yesterday, she wants to tell us about it.”