Jimmy the Kid Page 4

  "I don't know what we're talking about," Dortmunder said, "but I think I'm getting caught up in it. Why do they do it in French?"

  "I don't know. Maybe because it's more classy. Like chifferobe."

  "Like what?"

  She could sense the whole thing getting out of hand. "Never mind," she said. "The point was, you could be the aw-tour on this kidnapping idea. Like a movie director."

  "Well, I think that whole aw-tour theory is-" He stopped, and his eyes squinted. "Wait a minute," he said. "You want me to do the job!"

  She hesitated. She clutched her paper napkin to her bosom. But there was no turning back now. "Yes," she said.

  "So you can take care of the kid!"

  "Partly," she said. "And also because all of these late-night burglaries aren't good for you, John, they really aren't. You go out and risk life imprisonment for-"

  "Don't remind me," he said.

  "But I want to remind you. If you get caught again, you're habitual, isn't that right?"

  "If I stay away from Kelp," Dortmunder said, "I won't get caught. And if I stay away from him, my luck'll get better. I've had a string of bad luck, and it's all from hanging around with Andy Kelp."

  "Like tonight? That store going out of business? You haven't seen Kelp for two weeks, not since you threw him out of here."

  "It takes time to wear off a jinx," he said. "Listen, May, I know I'm not pulling my weight around here, but I'll-',

  "That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it. These small-time stings just aren't right for you. You need one major job a year, that you can take some time on, do it right, and feel comfortable with a little money in the bank afterwards."

  "There aren't any of those jobs any more," he said. "That's the whole problem in a nutshell. Nobody uses cash any more. It's all checks and credit cards. You open a cash register, it's full of nickels and Master Charge receipts. Payrolls are all by check. Do you know, right here in Manhattan, there's a guy sells hot dogs on a street corner, he's on Master Charge?"

  May said, "Well, maybe that shows Kelp has a good idea. You can take the story in that book, and adapt it around, and turn it into something. Andy Kelp couldn't do it, John, but you could. And it wouldn't just be following somebody else's plan, you'd adapt it, you'd make it work. You'd be the aw-tour."

  "With Kelp for my actor, huh?"

  "I'll tell you the truth, John, I think you're unfair to him. I know he gets too optimistic sometimes, but I really don't think he's a jinx."

  "You've seen me work with him," Dortmunder said. "You don't think that's a jinx?"

  "You didn't get caught," she pointed out. "You've been collared a few times in your life, John, but it was never while you were working with Andy Kelp."

  Dortmunder glowered over that one, but he didn't have an immediate answer. May waited, knowing she'd presented all the arguments she could, and now all she could do was let it percolate through his head.

  Dortmunder frowned toward the opposite wall for a while, then grimaced and said, "I don't remember the book so good, I don't know if it was such a hot idea in the first place."

  "I've still got it," she said. "You could read it again."

  "I didn't like the style," he said.

  "It isn't the style, it's the story. Will you read it again?" He looked at her. She saw he was weakening. "I don't promise anything," he said.

  "But you will read it?"

  "But I don't promise anything."

  Jumping to her feet, she said, "You won't be sorry, John, I know you won't." She kissed him on the forehead, and ran off to the bedroom to where she'd hid the book.

  6

  Kelp walked into the 0. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue at five minutes after ten. He hadn't wanted to make a bad impression by showing up too early, so he'd hung back a little and the result was he was five minutes late.

  Two customers at the bar, telephone repairmen with their tool-lined utility belts still on, were discussing the derivation of the word spic. "It comes from the word speak," one of them was saying. "Like they say all the time, 'I spic English.' So that's why they got the name."

  "Naw," the other one said. "It didn't come like that at all. Don't you know? A spic is one of those little knives they use. Din you ever see one of the women with a spic stuck down inside her stocking?"

  The first one said, "Yeah?" He was frowning, apparently trying to see in his mind's eye a spic stuck down inside a woman's stocking.

  Kelp walked on down to the far end of the bar. Rollo the bartender, a tall meaty balding blue-jawed fellow in a dirty white shirt and dirty white apron, came moving heavily down the other side of the bar and pushed an empty glass across to him. "The other bourbon's already here," he said. "He's got the bottle."

  "Thanks," Kelp said.

  Rob said, "And the draft beer with the salt on the side."

  "Right."

  "Gonna be any more of you?"

  "Naw, just the three of us. See you, Rollo."

  "Hey," Rob said, in a confidential manner, and made a head gesture for Kelp to come in closer.

  Kelp went in closer, leaning toward him over the bar. Was there trouble? He said, "Yeah?"

  Rob, in an undertone, said, "They're both crazy," and made another head gesture, this one indicating the two telephone repairmen down at the other end of the bar.

  Kelp looked down that way. Crazy? With all those screwdrivers and things, they could get kind of dangerous.

  Rollo murmured, "It comes from Spic-and-Span."

  A confused vision of people eating a detergent and going crazy entered Kelp's head. Like sniffing airplane glue He said, "Yeah?"

  "On account of the cleaning women," Rollo said.

  "Oh," Kelp said. Cleaning women had started it apparently, drinking the stuff. Maybe it was a kind of high. "I'll stick to bourbon," he said, and picked up the empty glass.

  "Sure," Rollo said, but as Kelp turned away Rollo began to look confused.

  Kelp walked on down past the end of the bar and past the two doors marked with silhouettes of dogs and the words POINTE and SETTERS, and then on past the phone booth and through the green door at the back and into a small square room with a concrete floor. All the walls of the room were lined floor to ceiling with beer and liquor cases, leaving only enough space in the middle for a battered old table with a green felt top, half a dozen chairs, and a dirty bare bulb with a round green tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire.

  Dortmunder and Murch were seated together at the table. A glass was in front of Dortmunder, next to a bottle whose label said AMSTERDAM LIQUOR STORE BOURBON- "OUR OWN BRAND." In front of Murch were a full glass of beer with a fine head on it, and a clear glass saltshaker. Murch was saying to Dortmunder, ". -. through the Midtown Tunnel, and-oh, hi, Kelp."

  "Hi. How you doing, Dortmunder?"

  Fine," Dortmunder said. He nodded briefly at Kelp, but then looked away to pick up his glass. Kelp could sense that Dortmunder was still feeling very prickly about this, still wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be friends or go along with this kidnapping idea or anything. May had told Kelp to go slow and easy, not push Dortmunder too hard, and Kelp could see that May had been right.

  Murch said, "I was just telling Dortmunder, as long as they've got that construction on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I give up on the Midtown Tunnel at all. At night like this, I can come right up Flatbush, take the Manhattan Bridge, FDR Drive, come through the park at Seventy-ninth Street, and here I am."

  "Right," Kelp said. He sat down not too near Dortmunder, and put his glass on the table. "Could I, uh…" He gestured at the bottle.

  "Help yourself," Dortmunder said. It was brusque, but not really unfriendly.

  "Thanks."

  While Kelp poured, Murch said, "Of course, going back, what I might try is go down the west side, take the Battery Tunnel, then Atlantic Avenue over to Flatbush, down to Grand Army Plaza, then Eastern Parkway and Rockaway Parkway and I'm home."

  " ,
>
  Is that right, Kelp said.

  Dortmunder pulled a paperback book out of his hip pocket and slapped it down on the table. "I read this thing again," he said.

  "Oh, yeah?" Kelp sipped at his bourbon.

  Dortmunder spread his hands. He shrugged. He seemed to be considering his words very carefully, and finally he said, "It could maybe be used a little."

  Kelp found himself grinning, even though he was trying to remain low key. "You really think so?" he said.

  "It could maybe be adapted," Dortmunder said. He glanced at Kelp, then looked at the book on the table and gave it a brushing little slap with his fingertips. "We could maybe take some of the ideas," he said, "and work up a plan of our own."

  "Well, sure," Kelp said. "That's what I figured." He had his own copy of the book in his jacket pocket. Pulling it out, he said, "The way I saw it-"

  "The point is," Dortmunder said, and now he looked directly at Kelp, and even shook a finger, "the point is," he said, "what you got with this book is a springboard. That's all, just a springboard."

  "Oh, sure," Kelp said.

  "It still needs a plan," Dortmunder said.

  "Absolutely," Kelp said. "That's why the first thing I thought of, I thought to bring it to you."

  Murch said, "What, are we back with that book? I thought we weren't gonna do that."

  Dortmunder was being very dignified, very judicious, and Kelp was hanging back and letting him have his head. Turning to Murch now, Dortmunder said, "I give the book another reading. I wanted to be fair, and we don't have that much on the fire that we ought to turn something down without giving it a chance."

  "Oh," Murch said. He pulled out a copy of the book and said, "I brought this along to give back to Kelp."

  "Well, hold onto it," Kelp told him.

  He was immediately sorry, because Dortmunder apparently hadn't liked that. "Hold onto the book if you want," he said, "but what we'll do is, we'll work out our own plan from it. We do what we do, not what the book does."

  "Sure thing," Kelp said, and tried to flash Murch a high sign that he should go along with it.

  Whether Murch saw the sign or not, all he did next was shake his head, look baffled, and say, "Fine with me. You want my Mom in on it?"

  "Right. She and May can take care of the kid."

  "Okay," Murch said. "Only, where's the kid?"

  "Up till now," Dortmunder said, "we're going along with the idea this book can tell us how we get one."

  "That's right," Kelp said. "How to find just the kid we want, it's all in the book here."

  Picking up his copy, Dortmunder said, "Well, I got an open mind. I'm always ready to have a book writer tell me my business. Let's take a look at that part."

  Kelp, riffling hurriedly through his own dog-eared copy, said, "It's chapter four. Page twenty-nine."

  Dortmunder said, "Thanks," and turned to the right page. He read slowly and patiently, his lips not quite moving, his blunt fingertip following the words from line to line.

  Kelp watched him for a few seconds, then began to read the same chapter in his own copy of the book.

  Murch sat there by himself. He looked at Dortmunder, and then at Kelp. It took him quite a while to figure out what they were doing; until, in fact, both of them had turned a page. Then he shrugged, picked up his own copy of the book, shook a little salt into his beer to get the head back, drank a bit, and settled down to read.

  7

  CHAPTER FOUR::

  When Parker walked into the apartment, Krauss was at the window with the binoculars. He was sitting on a metal folding chair, and his notebook and pen were on another chair next to him. There was no other furniture in the room, which had gray plaster walls from which patterned wallpaper had recently been stripped. Curls of wallpaper lay against the molding in all the corners. On the floor beside Krauss's chair lay three apple cores.

  Krauss turned when Parker shut the door. His eyes looked pale, the skin around them wrinkled, as though he'd spent too long in a swimming pool. He said, "Nothing."

  Parker crossed the room and looked out the window. A clear blue cloudless day. Three stories down and one block to the north was the Manhattan exit of the Midtown Tunnel. Two lanes of cars and trucks streamed out of the tunnel, fanning apart into half a dozen lanes of traffic, curving away to the left or the right. Parker watched for a few seconds, then picked up the notebook and studied the entries. The numbers were license plates and dates and times of day. Parker said, "The Pontiac came through today, huh?"

  "So did the Mercedes," Krauss said. "But there isn't any phone in either of them."

  "We may have to change things around." Parker dropped the notebook on the chair and said, "We'll try the Lincoln today, if it comes through."

  Krauss looked at his watch. "Ten, fifteen minutes," he said.

  "If it isn't any good," Parker said, "Henley will come take over here at four. If he doesn't show up, that means we're on the Lincoln, so just pack in everything here."

  "Right," Krauss said.

  Parker glanced out the window again. "See you later," he said, and left the apartment. He went down the warped wooden stairs and out to the street, then crossed Second Avenue and got into a blue Plymouth just around the corner on Thirty-seventh Street.

  Henley, at the wheel, said, "Anything new?"

  "The Lincoln's still the best bet."

  Henley looked in the rearview mirror. "That's due pretty soon, isn't it?"

  "Maybe ten minutes."

  Henley rolled down his side window and lit one of his narrow cigars. They waited in the car, neither of them saying anything, until Henley, looking in the mirror again, said, "Maybe."

  Parker twisted around and looked out the back window. Among the cars crossing Second Avenue, coming this way, was a black Lincoln Continental. Squinting, Parker could make out the uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. "Right," he said.

  Henley turned the key in the ignition. When the Lincoln went by, an eight-year-old boy could be seen alone, reading a comic book in the backseat. Henley shifted into drive and eased the Plymouth into line two vehicles back from the Lincoln.

  The black car led them across to Park Avenue, then north to Seventy-second Street, then through the park and north again on Central Park West. At Eighty-first Street the Lincoln made a U-turn and stopped in front of the canopied entrance to a large apartment house. Henley eased into a bus-stop zone across the street, and Parker watched as a livened doorman opened the Lincoln's door, and the boy stepped out, not carrying his comic book. The doorman shut the Lincoln's door and the boy went into the building. The Lincoln moved forward along the curb and stopped in a no-parking zone just beyond the canopy. The chauffeur took his cap off, picked up a tabloid newspaper from the seat beside him, and settled down to read.

  Parker said, "I'll be right back." He got out of the car, crossed the Street, and walked slowly down the block past the Lincoln. Looking in on the way by, he saw the telephone built into the back of the front seat. Good. He went on down to the corner, crossed to the park side of the street again, went back to the Plymouth, and slid in next to Henley. "It's got one," he said.

  Henley smiled, drawing his lips back to show his teeth clenched on the cigar. "That's nice," he said.

  "Now we wait for the kid to come out again," Parker said. "Then we'll take a look at his route home."

  8

  When Dortmunder walked into the apartment, Kelp was asleep at the window with the binoculars in his lap. "For Christ's sake," Dortmunder said.

  "Huh?" Startled, Kelp sat up, scrabbled for the binoculars, dropped them on the floor, picked them up, slapped them to his face, and stared out at the Lincoln Tunnel exit.

  They hadn't been able to find an apartment overlooking the Midtown Tunnel. This one, in a condemned tenement on West Thirty-ninth Street, had an excellent view of the Manhattan exit of the Lincoln Tunnel, bringing cars in from New Jersey. It also, since it faced south, got a terrific amount of sun; even though it was now October, the
y were all getting sunburns, with white circles around their eyes where they would hold the binoculars.

  Kelp was sitting in a maroon armchair with broken springs; this was a furnished apartment, three rooms full of the most awful furniture imaginable. The floor lamps alone were cause for weeping. Kelp's notebook and pen were on a drum table next to him, the drum table having been painted with green enamel and its top having been covered with Contac paper in a floral design. The walls were covered with a patterned wallpaper showing cabbage roses against an endless trellis. Some of this wallpaper had peeled itself off, and curls of it lay against the molding in all the corners. On the floor beside Kelp's chair stood three empty beer cans and three full beer cans.

  Dortmunder slammed the door. "You were asleep," he said.

  Kelp put the binoculars down and turned an innocent face. "Huh? I was just resting my eyes a minute."

  Dortmunder crossed the room and picked up the notebook to study the entries. "You been resting your eyes since one-thirty," he said.

  "There wasn't anything useful since one-thirty," Kelp said. "You think chauffeured limousines with a kid alone in the back seat come through every minute?"

  "It's all that beer you drink," Dortmunder told him. "You drink that stuff and then you sit in the sun here, and you go to sleep."

  "For maybe two minutes," Kelp said. "Maybe at the most five. But not what you could call a deep sleep."

  Dortmunder shrugged and dropped the notebook back on the drum table. "Anyway," he said, "we've got that Caddy to follow."

  "Sure," Kelp said. "It's a natural. And I bet it's got a phone in it. Why else would it have that big antenna thing?"

  "Because it's probably the police commissioner of Trenton, New Jersey," Dortmunder said, "and they'll see Murch and me following the car, and we'll get picked up for anarchists."

  "Ha ha," Kelp said.

  Dortmunder looked out the window. "Traffic," he said.

  "You know," Kelp said, "I have a very hopeful feeling about this operation."