absentminded and all, butââ
Tiny said, âHeâs the guy let the lion out at the zoo, isnât he?â
âJust fiddling with the lock on the cage,â Stan said. âAbsentminded, thatâs all.â
âNo good,â Kelp said. âWallyâs in Brazil, without any extradition.â
âWithout what?â Dortmunder asked.
âIn Brazil?â Tiny asked.
âHe was helping some people at Customs down in Brooklyn,â Kelp told them. âYou know, people that didnât want to tie up the government with a lot of red tape and forms and stuff, so they were just going to get their imports at night and leave it at that, you know the kind of thing.â
âYou said Brazil,â Tiny reminded him.
âYeah, well, Wally, what Wallyâs problem is, heâs just too good at his line of business.â Kelp shook his head. âYou show Wally a lock, he just has to caress the thing, and poke at it, and see how it works, and the first thing he knew he went through a door, and then a couple more doors, and like that, and when he tried to go back the ship had sailed.â
âThe ship,â Dortmunder said. It didnât seem to him thereâd been a ship in the story up till then.
âThat he was on,â Kelp said, âthat he didnât know it. They were just leaving, and one of those doors he went through was into the ship from the warehouse, and it turned out they had some reasons of their own to leave in the middle of the night, so they didnât want to go back to let him off, so he rode along and now heâs in Brazil without extradition.â
â That was the word,â Dortmunder said. âExplain that.â
âWell, most places in the world,â Kelp explained, âyou find yourself broke and you donât speak the language and all, you go confess to a crime in, like, Duluth or St. Louis or somewhere, and then the governments get together and do a lot of legal paper on you and they extradite you and the government pays your air fare and you get to St. Louis or Duluth or wherever it was, and you say, âOops, my mistake, I didnât do that after all,â and youâre home. Only with Brazil, we got no treaty, they wonât extradite, so Wallyâs stuck. And he says Brazil is so poor, most places donât have locks, so heâs going crazy. So heâs trying to get to Uruguay.â
âFor the extradition,â Dortmunder guessed.
âYou got it.â
Stan said, âHow about Herman X?â
Tiny, who had been observing Kelp so carefully that Kelp was beginning to fidget, now swiveled his head around to look at Stan. âHerman what?â
âX,â Stan said.
âHeâs a black power radical,â Dortmunder explained, âbut heâs also a good lockman.â
âHe was with us that time we took the bank,â Stan said.
âNow, the problem with Herman,â Kelp started, and everybody turned to look at him. âDonât blame me ,â he said. âIâm just telling you the situation.â
âTell us the situation,â Tiny suggested.
âWell,â Kelp said, âthe problem with Herman is, heâs in Africa.â
Dortmunder said, âWithout extradition?â
âNo, Herman doesnât need extradition. Heâs vice-president of Talabwo.â
Tiny said, âIs that a country?â
âFor now,â Kelp said. âThereâs a lot of unrest over there.â
Dortmunder said, âTalabwo. Thatâs the country wanted the Balabomo Emerald that time.â
âThatâs right,â Kelp said. âAnd you gave Major Iko the paste emerald and he brought it home and when they found out it wasnât real they ate him, I think. Anyway, there was trouble back and forth, and Herman was with his radical friends at the UN to steal some secret documents that proved the drought was a plot by the white