"You need work, I bet," Kelp said. "Unless you got something lined up."

"I don't have anything lined up," Dortmunder said. Now that he thought about it, that irritated him too.

"Well, I got a sweetheart for you," Kelp said. He was smiling all over his face.

Dortmunder decided to stop grousing. "All right," he said. "I can listen. What's the story?"

Kelp said, "Did you ever hear of a place called Talabwo?"

Dortmunder frowned. "Isn't that one of those South Pacific islands?"

"Naw, it's a country. In Africa."

"I never heard of it," Dortmunder said. "I heard of the Congo."

"This is near there," Kelp said. "I think it is."

"Those countries are all too hot, aren't they? I mean temperature hot."

"Yeah, I guess they are," Kelp said. "I don't know, I never been."

"I don't think I'd want to go there," Dortmunder said. "They got disease too. And they kill white people a lot."

"Just nuns," Kelp said. "But the job isn't over there, it's right here in the good old USA."

"Oh." Dortmunder sucked his knuckle, then said, "Then why talk about this other place?"

"Talabwo."

"Yeah, Talabwo. Why talk about it?"

"I'll get to that," Kelp said. "You ever hear of Akinzi?"

"He's that doctor did that sex book," Dortmunder said. "I wanted to get it out of the library in stir, but they had a twelve-year waiting list. I put my name on, just in case I got turned down for parole, but I never got the book. He's dead, isn't he?"

"That's not what I'm talking about," Kelp said. There was a truck moseying along in his lane, so Kelp had to do some driving for a minute. He steered into the other lane, went by the truck, and got back into his own lane again. Then he looked at Dortmunder and said, "I'm talking about a country. Another country. It's called Akinzi." He spelled it.