"Not a cop, Tiny," Dortmunder said. "Not for seventeen months."

"I think that transition takes a little longer," Tiny suggested. "Maybe three generations."

"You could be right."

"Again," Tiny agreed. "You wanna talk about it, Dortmunder?"

"Not until I think about it a while," Dortmunder told him. "And I don't really want to think about it, not yet."

"So some other time," Tiny said.

"Oh, I know," Dortmunder said, and sighed. "I know, there will be some other time."

Tiny looked around the bar. "Looks like everybody else is around back."

"Yeah, they went back there."

"Maybe we oughta do likewise," Tiny said. "See what Stan has in mind. It isn't that often a driver has an idea." He gazed down at Dortmunder. "You coming?"

With a second sigh — that made two in one day — Dortmunder shook his head. "I don't think I can, Tiny. That guy kinda knocked the spirit out of me, you know what I mean?"

"Not yet."

"What I think," Dortmunder said, "I think I should go home. Just, you know, go home."

"We'll miss you," Tiny said.

3

"SO, JOHN," MAY said, over the breakfast table, "what are you going to do?"

After a troubled night, Dortmunder had described his meeting with Johnny Eppick For Hire to his faithful companion, May, over his usual breakfast of equal parts corn flakes, milk, and sugar, while she listened wide-eyed, ignoring her half-grapefruit and coffee black. And now she wanted to know what he was going to do.

"Well, May," he said, "I think I got no choice."

"You say he isn't a cop any more."

"He's still plugged in to the cops," Dortmunder explained. "He can still point a finger and lightning comes out."

"So you have to go there."