Dortmunder's Crew Trivia Quiz

Answer: Andy Kelp

In "Why Me", Kelp and Dortmunder break into a phone equipment wholesaler, and steal a phone for Dortmunder to use in their scheme.
"Dortmunder picked up the receiver and closed his hand around it and the receiver disappeared; a little bit of plastic stick out of Dortmunder's mitt at each end, like segments of a mouse on both sides of a cat's smile. He opened his hand and looked at how close the ear-part and the mouth-part were, then held it tentatively to his cheek, then frowned at Kelp and said, 'This is for people with tiny heads.'
'You get used to it, ' Kelp assured him. 'I've got one of those in the hall closet.'
'In case you're hanging up your coat when the phone rings.'
'Sure.'"
("Why Me")

Answer: She was a chain smoker

"She was a chain smoker and kept the current cigarette always propped in the left corner of her mouth; when that area got warm, she knew it was time to start a new cigarette. There was a small callus on the tip of her left thumb, caused by plucking cigarette embers from her lips, but for some reason her fingertips never callused at all. She flipped the half-inch butt from her mouth into the kitchen sink, with one practiced wrist movement, and while it sizzled she took the crumpled pack of Virginia Slims from the waist pocket of her green sweater, shook one up, folded the corner of her mouth around the end and went looking for matches. Unlike most chain smokers, she never lit the new one from the old, because the old one was never long enough to hold onto; this meant a continuing problem with matches, similar to the continuing problem of water in some Arab countries."
("Bank Shot")
By the time of "Drowned Hopes" (1990) May has quit smoking.

Answer: Drives a cab

Stan comes by his driving skills honestly. Conversation between the two tends to be an argument on the best route for driving - anywhere.

Answer: Rollo

The crew almost lost the OJ as a meeting place in 2005's "Watch Your Back!", but some clever thinking on the part of Dortmunder and the original owner saved the day.
One of my favorite things about the OJ is the regulars at the end of the bar. One short story, "The Dortmunder Workout", originally published in the Health supplement to the "New York Times Magazine" deals entirely with one of their wonderfully loopy conversations.

Answer: Murch

Stan Murch, being the driver, can't drink as much as the others. He uses the salt to keep his beer from getting flat. When I was a young beer drinker, salt shakers were standard equipment on tavern tables, but they seem to have gone the way of the elasticized terry cloth table cover, in recent years.
Chetwick, who appears in some of the earlier books, drinks sherry, and Tiny of course is the red wine and vodka.

Answer: Doctors' cars

"Murch said, 'Still copping doctors' cars, huh?'
'They got the best taste,' Kelp said. 'Power steering, power seats, power everything. You never catch a doctor cranking his own window down. Get in.'"
("Jimmy the Kid")

Answer: Diddums

"'What's your first name, Diddums?'
'Please don't say Dan', Dortmunder begged himself. 'Please, please, somehow, anyhow, manage not to say Dan'. His mouth opened. 'John,' he heard himself say, his brain having turned desperately in this emergency to that last resort, the truth, and he got weak-kneed with relief."
("Too Many Crooks")

Answer: At a supermarket

In fact, that is how John and May meet:
"...when they'd first met, the time she caught him shoplifting in Bohack's. That time, he hadn't run or lied or complained or caused any trouble at all; he'd just stood there, looking so defeated she hadn't had the heart to turn him in. She'd even helped him stuff the sliced cheese and the packaged baloney back into his armpits, and had said 'Look, why not hit the Grand Union from now on?' And he'd said, 'I always liked the Bohack coffee.' It was the first thing he'd ever said to her."
("Jimmy the Kid")

Answer: He is a fence

Arnie is a obnoxious character; nobody will do business with him unless there is no other fence available. Also, his apartment smells funny.
Arnie has a calendar collection hung all over the walls of his apartment, with the 'incompletes' (calendars starting in June, or August) laminated to the top of his table.
"The top halves of all these calendars were pictures, mostly photographs, (fall foliage, kittens in baskets, the Eiffel Tower), except that the pictures of the girls bent way over to pump gas into a roadster were drawings. Excellent drawings in very bright colors, really artistic. Also, the religious pictures, mainly the Sermon on the Mount (perspective!) were drawings, but generally not as artistically interesting as the girls."
("Jumble Sale")

Answer: Richard Stark

Richard Stark is of course Donald E Westlake - it is the pen name he uses for his series of novels (not at all funny and sweet) starring the master thief Parker.
"Drowned Hopes" shares a chapter with a Joe Gores novel, "32 Cadillacs", telling the same situation from the points of view of the different characters in the different books. I had read the Westlake novel, and had glossed over the one slightly odd chapter, just figuring I didn't get whatever the joke was. Then, years later, I read "32 Cadillacs", and it all made complete (if slightly wacky) sense.
Dortmunder himself, of course, came about because of a Richard Stark "Parker" novel; as Westlake writes, in "Thieves' Dozen":
"It all began when my regular guy stood me up. I have been, intermittently, a writer known as Richard Stark, who chronicles the incidents in the life of a character called only Parker. In 1967, Parker refused the role I'd planned for him in what was supposed to have been his next book; he thought it was beneath his dignity. So that's when I first turned, just as a substitute, a temp, a one-time hire, to John Archibald Dortmunder."