Jimmy the Kid (16 page)

Murch's Mom said, “There's things we need. Don't complain all the time.”

Dortmunder said, “What's with the Air France bag?”

May was pulling clothing out of it: sweater, socks, trousers, all boy-size. “Jimmy doesn't have anything to wear,” she said. “It's too cold for what he had on, and that's all dirty now anyway.”

Murch said to Jimmy, “I'm sorry, kid, they didn't have an avocado.”

“That's okay,” Jimmy said. “We can make a fine salad without it.”

Dortmunder said, “Avocado?” Things, it seemed to him, were getting out of hand: Air France bags, avocados. However, nobody else in this room seemed to think things were getting out of hand, and he knew better than to raise the question with any of them, so he went back to the dining room.

Where Kelp was wide awake, sitting up, reading
Child Heist.
“Morning,” Kelp said, grinning from ear to ear. “I slept like a top. How about you?”

“Like a bottom,” Dortmunder told him. “My mattress leaked.”

“Oh, that's a shame.”

“Don't you ever get tired of that book?”

“Well, we got the money switch coming up this afternoon,” Kelp said. “I thought I ought to refresh my memory, read that chapter again. You oughta take a look at it, too.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Absolutely,” Kelp said. “Chapter twelve. Page a hundred and nine.”

21

CHAPTER TWELVE

At exactly four P.M. Ruth, in a pay phone at a Shell station in Patchogue, Long Island, made the second call.

“Myers residence.”

“Let me talk to George Myers.”

“Who's calling, please?”

“Tell him,” Ruth said, “it's the people who have his kid.”

“One moment, please.”

But it was only fifteen or twenty seconds before Myers was on the phone, saying, “How's Bobby? Is he all right?”

“He's fine,” Ruth said. “You've got the money?”

“Yes. Can't I speak to him?”

“He isn't here. You do right, you'll have him back tonight.”

“I'll do what you say, don't worry about that.”

“I'm not the one has to worry,” Ruth said. “I want you to get into your car with the money. Use the Lincoln. You can bring your chauffeur along, but nobody else.”

“All right,” Myers said. “All right.”

“Drive over to Northern State Parkway,” Ruth told him, “and get up on the eastbound. Drive at a steady fifty. We'll meet you along the way.”

“Yes,” Myers said. “All right.”

“Do it now,” Ruth said, and hung up. Going outside, she got into the Pinto, drove away from the Shell station, and headed for the other phone booth.

Northward, a block from the Myers estate, Parker and Krauss sat in the Dodge and waited. Henley and Angie were back at the farmhouse, watching the kid.

“Here he comes,” Krauss said.

They watched the Lincoln go by, the chauffeur driving, Myers hunched forward nervously on the back seat. When it was two blocks away, Krauss started the Dodge, and they moved off in its wake.

After a few blocks Parker said, “He's going the right way. And there's nobody else with him.”

“Right. There's a phone in this drugstore up here.”

They let the Lincoln go on, heading for Northern State Parkway. While Krauss stayed in the car, Parker went into the drugstore and called Ruth at the other pay phone. She had just arrived, and picked it up on the first ring. “Yes?”

“He's on his way,” Parker said. “He'll be taking the ramp in maybe two minutes.”

Ruth checked her watch, “Right,” she said.

Parker got back into the Dodge, and Krauss took off again in the wake of the Lincoln, which was no longer in sight. They entered the parkway, Krauss lifted them to sixty-five, and soon they passed the Lincoln, moving obediently at fifty in the right lane. In the back seat, Myers was still hunching forward.

In the phone booth, Ruth dialled the operator, and told her, “I want to call a mobile unit in a private car.”

“Do you have the number?”

“Yes, I do.”

Krauss reached their exit, took the off ramp, looped around under the parkway, and stopped next to the wall of the overpass. They'd chosen this exit with care, it having no nearby buildings or population. Potato fields stretched away flat and dry in all directions, with stands of trees in the distance. To the south the secondary road led to the first fringes of a town, but northward there were merely trees and the black top curving away out of sight.

In the limousine moving along the parkway like a slow black whale amid darting dolphins, George Myers leaned forward in his seat, staring at the road ahead, wondering when and how they would contact him. The suitcase full of money was on the seat beside him. Albert Judson, the chauffeur, kept his eyes on the road and the pace of the car at a steady fifty.

The telephone rang.

For the first few seconds, Myers was too disoriented to realize what that sound was. His concentration had been too exclusively outside the car, out ahead of him where the kidnappers were waiting. Now, startled, he looked quickly around, then suddenly understood. That's why they wanted him to use the Lincoln; they intended to phone him.

He picked up the receiver, almost afraid of the black plastic. Tentatively, he held it to his face. “Hello?”

“Myers?” It was the same woman's voice, cold and impersonal, with a tinge of roughness.

“Yes,” he said. “I know who you are.”

“Tell your chauffeur to stop at mile marker eighty-seven. At the small green sign. You'll find a milk bottle there with a piece of paper in it. That will give you your instructions.”

“Yes, I will. But when—”

She had hung up. Myers held the phone a second longer, anxious, frustrated, then leaned forward again, saying, “Albert.”

The chauffeur slightly turned his head, offering an ear. “Sir?”

Myers cradled the telephone. “We're to stop at mile marker eighty-seven,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” And, a second later, “There's number eighty-six.”

Myers watched the small green sign go by, then looked forward again.

It was a long mile, but at the end of it the chauffeur eased the Lincoln off onto the gravel and came to a smooth stop next to the sign with the cream numerals 87 on it. “Wait, Albert,” Myers said, and climbed from the car.

The milk bottle, looking like any piece of rubbish littering the edge of the highway, was on its side next to the sign. Picking it up, Myers fished the scrap of paper out of it, then tossed the bottle away and read the instructions:

Stop at next overpass. Drop suitcase on far verge of road below. Drive on.

Myers got back into the car. “We have to stop again at the next overpass,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

The chauffeur eased them back out amid the traffic, and now drove even more slowly than before, waiting for the overpass.

It was less than a mile later, just beyond an exit ramp. The chauffeur stopped the limousine on the gravel again and Myers got out, this time carrying the suitcase. Looking around, hearing the
whish whish whish
of traffic hurrying by, he wondered if the police were living up to their promise. They'd assured him they wouldn't try to interfere with the money transfer in any way, wouldn't try to set any traps. “Let's get Bobby back first,” one of them had said, “and then we'll go after the kidnappers.” That was the way Myers felt, too, and the condition he would have in any event insisted on. But was it possible they'd been lying to him? Could some of these other cars rushing by him contain plainclothes policemen?

But all he had now was hope: the hope that he could trust the kidnappers, the hope that he could trust the police. Turning, he walked to the concrete railing of the overpass, looked over, and saw no one down below. The far verge was to his left. He walked that way, hoisted the suitcase onto the railing, and let it drop. He saw it hit the ground down there, amid the weeds, and then he turned and walked heavily back to the Lincoln.

Down below, Parker got out of the Dodge. A little dust settled where the suitcase had landed. No traffic came down the ramp, nothing moved anywhere. Parker walked swiftly back, picked up the suitcase, carried it to the car. Krauss was shifting into drive as Parker got into the seat beside him.

22

A
T EXACTLY FIVE
minutes after four Murch's Mom, in a pay phone at a Mobil station in Netcong, New Jersey, made the second call.

“Hello?”

“Let me talk to Herbert Harrington.”

“Speaking.”

“What?”

“This is Herbert Harrington speaking,” the voice said in her ear. “Aren't you the kidnapper?”

“Wait a second,” Murch's Mom said. She was trying to turn the page of a paperback book one-handed.

“Oh, dear,” the voice said. “Have I made a mistake? I'm expecting a call from a kidnapper, and—”

“Yeah yeah,” Murch's Mom said, “that's me, it's me, only hold on a second.
There!
”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you have the money?”

“Yes,” Harrington said. “Yes, I do. I want you to know it wasn't easy to assemble that much cash in so short a period of time. If I didn't have some personal friends at Chase Manhattan, in fact, I don't believe it could have been done.”

“But you've got it,” Murch's Mom said.

“Yes, I do. In a small suitcase. I do have a question on that.”

Murch's Mom frowned, scrinching her face up. Why couldn't it ever go smooth and simple, like in the book? “What kind of question?”

“This suitcase,” Harrington said. “It cost forty-two eighty-four, with the tax. Now, should that come out of the hundred fifty thousand, or is that to be considered my expense?”

“What?”

“Please don't think I'm being difficult,” Harrington said. “I've never handled a negotiation like this before, and I simply don't know what's considered normal practice.”

Shaking her head, Murch's Mom said, “You pay for the suitcase. We don't pay for it, you pay for it.” She was thinking,
There's nothing cheaper than a rich person.

“Fine, fine,” Harrington said. “I merely wanted to know.”

“Okay,” Murch's Mom said. “Can we get on with it?”

“Certainly.”

“I want you to get into your car with the money,” Murch's Mom read. “Use the Lincoln. You can—”

“What was that?”

Murch's Mom gave an exasperated sigh. “Now what?”

“Did you say a Lincoln? I don't have a—”

“The Cadillac!” She'd meant to make a pencil change to that effect, and she'd forgot. “I meant the Cadillac.”

“Yes. Well, that's the only automobile I have.”

Murch's Mom gritted her teeth. “So that's the one you'll use,” she said, and this time she was thinking,
If I could get my hands on him, I'd strangle him.

“Very well,” Harrington said. “Am I to meet you somewhere?”

“Let's not rush me,” Murch's Mom said. “So you'll use the Cadillac. You can bring your chauffeur along, but—”

“Well, I should think so,” Harrington said. “I don't drive.”

Murch's Mom was completely speechless. She had never in her life met anybody who didn't drive. She had been a cabdriver herself for a hundred years. Her boy Stan was
always
either in a car, driving it, or under a car, fixing it. Not drive? It was like not walking.

Harrington said, “Hello? Are you there?”

“I'm here. Why don't you drive? Is it some religious thing or something?”

“Why, no. I've simply never felt the need. I've always had a chauffeur. And in the city, of course, one takes cabs.”

“Cabs,” Murch's Mom said.

“They're perfectly satisfactory,” Harrington said. “Except that recently, to tell the truth, I think the quality of the drivers has gone down.”

“You're absolutely right!” Murch's Mom stood up straighter in the phone booth, and even jabbed the air with her finger two or three times, to emphasize a point. “It was the Seventy-one contract,” she said. “It was a sellout to the owners, it screwed the cabby and the riding public both.”

“Oh, is that the time the fare went up so drastically?”

“That's right,” Murch's Mom said. “But I'm not talking about the fare, that was realistic, your New York City cab-driver had not been keeping up with inflation. It was a big jump, but it was just to get the cabby up where he
used
to be.”

“It seemed a large leap somehow, almost double or something. I did notice it at the time.”

“But where the cabby was screwed,” Murch's Mom said, “
and
where the riding public was screwed, was in the split. They changed the formula on the split.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

Murch's Mom was only too happy to explain; this whole union problem was a big hobbyhorse with her. “You work for a fleet owner,” she said, “you split the meter take with him. You get maybe fifty-two percent, fifty-five, whatever.”

“Yes, I see. And they changed the split?”

“They changed the
formula
,” Murch's Mom said. “They fixed it so the owner has to give a bigger percent to a driver with more seniority.”

“But surely that's only right. After all, if a man drives a cab for years and years, he—”

“But that's not what
happens
,” Murch's Mom said. “What happens is, if the owner pulls in some bum off the street, can't find his way to the Empire State Building, gives him a job, puts him in a cab, the owner gets to keep a higher percentage of the meter!”

“Oh!” Harrington said. “I see what you mean; the contract makes it more advantageous to the owner to hire inexperienced drivers.”