Jimmy the Kid

by Donald E. Westlake

  Judson, at the wheel of the Lincoln, tapped the brake when he saw the sign blocking the road ahead. Bobby, behind him, looked up from his comic book and said, "What's the matter?"

  "Detour. We have to take Edgehill Road."

  "The detour wasn't there before."

  Judson, turning off onto the secondary road, said, "I guess they just started. Maybe they'll fill in those potholes down by the bridge."

  "Boy, I hope so," Bobby said. "Sometimes I could throw up along there."

  "Don't do that," Judson said, grinning in the rear-view mirror at the boy, and as he did so he came around a curve in the road and saw vehicles stopped ahead. A school bus, facing this way, its red lights flashing, meaning it was unloading passengers and traffic wasn't permitted to pass it in either direction. And a truck, a big tractor-trailer rig, facing the same direction as the Lincoln and obediently standing still. The two vehicles between them blocked the road completely. Judson braked, and the Lincoln slid to a stop directly behind the truck. Bobby said, "Why's the bus stopped there?"

  "Must be letting somebody off."

  "Nobody's getting out."

  Judson, who was sometimes irritated by Bobby's questions, said, "Then they're waiting for somebody who's supposed to get on."

  Back at the intersection, Parker stopped long enough for Henley to get out and move the detour sign so that it now blocked the road the Lincoln had just gone down. Then they drove on, following the Lincoln.

  Judson too was beginning to think the school bus was taking too long to do nothing. Glancing in the rear-view mirror again, seeing the blue Dodge coming to a stop behind him, almost close enough to touch the Lincoln's rear bumper, he said, "Pretty well-traveled road."

  In the Dodge, Parker and Henley and Angie were putting on the large rubber Mickey Mouse masks. "I feel like a clown in this thing," Henley said. His voice was muffled and altered by the rubber.

  "It's to make it easier for the kid," Parker said. "We don't want a hysterical kid on our hands. Angie, you do the talking to him."

  "Right."

  "It's a game, it's fun, we're all just playing."

  "I know," Angie said.

  "Let's go," Parker said.

  They got out of the Dodge, Parker and Henley carrying revolvers, and walked swiftly up next to the Lincoln, Parker on the left and Henley and Angie on the right.

  Judson, who was frowning now toward the school bus, wondering why it wasn't finishing its business and moving on, caught a glimpse of something moving in his outside mirror. He looked at it, and saw a man coming this way with something glittery and strange over his head. "What the-?" He twisted around to his left, to look back, and the man closed the distance, pulled open Judson's door, and said, fast and low, "Not a move. Not one move."

  There was a gun in the man's hand, down by Judson's elbow. "Uh," said Judson The Lincoln's engine was running, but the gearshift was in park. Also, the car was wedged in both front and back by the truck and the Dodge. Still, Judson's hand started to move almost instinctively toward the gearshift lever, when the door on the passenger side opened, and another one got in. Another gun, another mask over the head. Judson, looking at him, suddenly terrified at this apparition sitting next to him, realized what he was looking at was a Mickey Mouse mask, and for some reason that only made things more frightening.

  Meanwhile, Angie had gotten into the backseat. "Hi, Bobby," she said. "Do you know whose face this is I'm wearing?"

  Bobby hadn't seen the guns of the two men dealing with the chauffeur, but he'd heard the toughness in the one man's voice, and he sensed the strangeness of what was happening. Frightened, not sure what to expect or how he should act, he said, "Who-who are you?"

  "Who do I look like, Bobby?"

  "You're not Mickey Mouse!" He knew that much; and being able to say so, loud and clear, helped to calm and reassure him.

  "But I'm making believe to be Mickey Mouse," Angie said. "We're all going to play make-believe for a while now."

  Up front, Henley had pressed his revolver into Albert Judson's side. His voice soft, muffled by the mask, he said, "Let's not scare the kid. Nobody's gonna get hurt."

  "What do you-?" Judson's mouth was dry. He coughed, and started again. "What do you want?"

  "Think about it," Henley said.

  Parker. seeing that the chauffeur was under control, shut the Lincoln's door again and went up to rap on the rear doors of the tractor-trailer. The doors swung open, pushed out by Krauss, who looked critically out and down at the Lincoln and said, "You'll have to back it up."

  "I know."

  Parker walked back past the Lincoln to the Dodge. Inside the Lincoln, Henley was controlling the chauffeur and Angie was controlling the boy. She was talking to him, chattering at him, keeping him calm with a soothing flow of words.

  Parker got into the Dodge, ran it backward about fifteen feet, got out of it, walked up to the Lincoln, opened the chauffeur's door again, and said, "Slide over."

  Henley made room, and Judson slid over into the middle of the seat. He said, "You're going to kidnap the boy!"

  Henley said, "Keep it down. I told you, we don't scare the kid."

  Krauss had pulled the metal ramp out of the truck partway and now, when Parker put the Lincoln into reverse and backed up till he was nudging the Dodge's bumper, Krauss brought the ramp out the rest of the way and lowered it to the ground. Parker shifted into low and eased the Lincoln forward, up the ramp and inside the truck.

  Bobby, wide-eyed, said, "What are we doing?"

  "Have you ever been inside a truck before?" Angie tried to make it sound like a treat, or a game. "Inside a car that's inside a truck?"

  "I don't think I want to do this," Bobby said.

  "Don't be afraid, Bobby," Angie said. "Nobody's going to hurt you, I promise."

  Parker switched off the Lincoln's engine, took the keys, and climbed out. It was a tight fit between the side of the car and the inner wall of the truck. Parker went sideways to the rear of the truck, dropped down to the ground, and helped Kraus slide the ramp back up inside the truck.

  In the Lincoln, Judson had moved over behind the wheel again; not so he could drive, but so he would be further from the gun. Henley, facing him but staying on his own side, said, "Switch on the interior lights," and Judson did so, without question.

  Parker and Krauss closed the truck's doors; inside, now, the only illumination came from the lights inside the Lincoln. Bobby, his fright being slowly overcome by curiosity as time went by with no attack against him, looked around and said, "It's like being out at night, isn't it?"

  "That's right," Angie said. "We'll pretend we're going for a drive now, at night."

  Outside, Krauss and Parker had removed their masks. Ruth, at the wheel of the school bus, switched off the flashing red lights, put the bus in gear, and drove it off the road. Krauss got into the cab of the truck, started the engine, and drove off, accelerating slowly, the engine whining up through the gears.

  Ruth got out of the bus and walked across the road to the Dodge. Peeling rubber gloves from her hands, she tossed them into the weeds beside the road, then got into the Dodge on the passenger side as Parker slid in behind the wheel. She said, "How'd the kid take it?"

  "Fine," Parker said. "Angie's talking to him."

  Parker swung the Dodge around in a U-turn, drove back to the intersection, and picked up the detour sign there. He tossed it in the trunk, went back the other way again, passed the abandoned school bus, and caught up with the tractor-trailer at the next crossroad, where Krauss was removing the second detour sign, the one that had diverted traffic away from Edgehill Road while they were collecting the Lincoln.

  Inside the Lincoln, Henley had taken out the handcuffs, and had cuffed the chauffeur to the steering wheel. Now, when Krauss knocked on the trailer doors, Henley turned to Angie, nodded at the boy, and said, "Get him ready."

  "I know." Despite the muffling effect of the mask, Angie's nervousness could clearly be heard, and she fumb
led at first when she tried to take the other mask out from under her shirt. Then she got it, and showed it to Bobby, and said, "This is for you. The same kind of mask as the rest of us, see? Mickey Mouse."

  "For me?" Then he looked at it more closely, and said, "The eyes are taped up."

  "That's because we're going to go on playing nighttime," Angie said. "We'll be leaving the truck now, but you're still going to make believe it's night."

  "I won't be able to see anything!" Renewed fright made the boy's voice shrill.

  "You'll be holding my hand," Angie told him. "It's all right, it really is. Ask your chauffeur, there, he knows."

  Bobby looked doubtfully toward Judson, whose back was to him. "Albert?" he said. "Am I supposed to do that?"

  Judson turned his head just enough to see Henley and the gun in Henley's hand. "Answer the boy," Henley said., his voice soft. He was holding the gun too low for the boy to see it.

  Judson nodded. Not facing Bobby, he said, "It's all right, Bobby. You do what these people say. There's nothing to worry about."

  Bobby relaxed a bit, then, but still kept looking doubtfully at everybody, and when he said, "All right, then, I'll wear the old mask," his reluctance was clear in his voice.

  Angie slipped the mask on over the boy's head. "Is that all right? It isn't too tight, is it?"

  "No, it's okay. It smells funny." His voice, too, was muffled now.

  "That's the smell of rubber," Angie told him. "Take my hand, now, we're going to get out of the car."

  Henley led the way, opening the rear doors of the truck, then handing Bobby down to Parker. Angie got down, took the boy's hand again, and led him over to the Dodge. Henley and Krauss closed the truck doors while Parker got into the Dodge and started the engine. Angie and Henley had gotten rid of their masks now, leaving Bobby the only one with his face covered.

  They all got into the Dodge, the three men in front, the two women in back with the boy between them. Angie said, "Bobbie, this is Gloria, a friend of mine."

  "Hello, Bobby."

  Bobby said, his face toward Angie, "You took your mask off. Your voice sounds different."

  "You're the one with the mask on now," Angie told him. "We take turns."

  "And be sure to leave it on," Ruth said. She sounded colder, more stern than Angie.

  "I will," Bobby said. Angie had been continuing to hold his hand, and now Bobby squeezed her fingers, holding on.

  13

  When Dortmunder got to the intersection he made a U-turn and stopped, facing back the way he had come. He and May waited in the Caprice while Kelp got out and went around to the back of the car. Then he came around to the side again, rapped on Dortmunder's window, and when Dortmunder rolled the window down Kelp said, "I need the key."

  "The what?"

  "The key. For the trunk."

  "Oh." The keys were all together on a key ring. Dortmunder switched off the engine and gave the keys to Kelp, who went and unlocked the trunk, then gave the keys to Dortmunder, then went back and got his sign. He stood there holding it, looking around but not doing anything, until Dortmunder leaned his head out and yelled, "What are you doing?"

  "I forgot which one to block."

  Dortmunder pointed. "That one. The one on the kid's route."

  "Oh, yeah. Right."

  Kelp went over and set up the sign. It was a three-by. four piece of thin metal that had once advertised 7-Up, and the shape of the bottle could still be seen vaguely through the yellow paint. Kelp had also thought to bring a triangular arrangement of sticks to lean the sign against, a detail not mentioned in Child Heist. He put the sign in place, then trotted back over to the Caprice and said, "How's that?"

  Dortmunder looked at it. It said ROAD CLOSED — DETORE. He said, "Jesus H. Goddam Christ."

  "What's the matter?" Kelp looked all around the intersection, worried. "Did I put it in the wrong place?"

  "Do you have that goddam book on you?"

  "Sure," Kelp said.

  "Take it out," Dortmunder said, "and find the page where they set up the sign." Turning to May, he said, "I'm following a book he read, and he doesn't even know how to read."

  Kelp said, "I got it."

  "Look at it. Now look at the sign."

  Kelp looked at the book. He looked at the sign. He said, "Son of a gun. Detour. I thought sure you-"

  "You can't even read!"

  May said, "It's okay, John, it really is. They'll just think some local highway department people didn't know how to spell."

  Dortmunder considered that. "You think so?"

  Kelp hopped into the back seat. "Sure," he said. "It makes it more realistic, like. Who'd expect a kidnap gang to put up a sign that's spelled wrong?"

  "I would," Dortmunder said. "In fact, I'm surprised I didn't think to check."

  "Listen, I don't want to push you," Kelp said, "but we ought to get down there to that dirt road."

  "I wonder what next," Dortmunder said. He started the engine, drove a quarter mile back toward the city, then backed off into the dead-end dirt road Murch had been astonished to find last week.

  "Now there's nothing to do but wait," Kelp said.

  "I'll lay five to two," Dortmunder said, "some farmer comes along in a pickup truck, drives in, wants to know what we're doing here, and pulls out a shotgun."

  "You're on," Kelp said.

  Four miles away, the silver-gray Cadillac limousine took the curving ramp down from Interstate 80 to the county road and turned south. The chauffeur, Maurice K. Van Golden, drove at varying speeds above fifty-five, competing with the occasional other car he met. In the backseat, Jimmy Harrington read the "Letter from Washington" in the current New Yorker and wished he had the self-confidence to tell Maurice to quit racing the other drivers. Maurice behaved himself when Jimmy's father was in the car, but when it was just Jimmy back there he obviously thought he could get away with being a cowboy. And the annoying part of it was, he could; Jimmy wouldn't complain to his father, since that would be the act of a baby, but on the other hand he hadn't yet felt quite secure enough to complain to Maurice directly.

  Pretty soon I will, Jimmy thought, and read about the administration's hopes for a settlement in the Middle East.

  Five minutes later, May and Kelp both simultaneously said, "Here they come."

  "I see them," Dortmunder said, and put the Caprice in gear as the Cadillac rocketed by them. The Caprice moved out from the dirt road and accelerated in the Cadillac's wake.

  "That's five dollars you owe me," Kelp said.

  Dortmunder didn't answer.

  Van Gelden, at the wheel of the Cadillac, suddenly slammed on the brakes and swerved all over the road when he saw the sign blocking the road ahead. Jimmy, flung off the seat, came sputtering up, crying, "Maurice! What in the name of God is going on?"

  "Goddam denture!" Van Celden cried. He thought the word was spelled that way.

  Jimmy got one quick flashing glimpse of the sign as the Cadillac slewed around, tires squealing, and roared off down the secondary road. "Detour?" He frowned out the back window; there'd been something about that sign, he wasn't sure what. It had gone by so fast. As a soft drink commercial's jingle started up in his brain, distracting him, he said to himself, "The detour wasn't there before."

  This secondary road was narrower, bumpier, and curvier than the county road. Van Gelden, taking out his rage at the fact of the denture by flinging the car forward as rapidly as possible, was tossing Jimmy around the back seat like a sneaker in a dryer. Jimmy, holding on for dear life, found at last the maturity to shout out, "Damn it, Maurice, slow down!"

  Van Celden didn't touch the brake, but he did lift his foot from the accelerator. "I'm just trying to get you home," he snarled, glaring in the rearview mirror at the boy, and as he did so he came around a curve in the road and saw vehicles stopped ahead. A school bus, facing this way, its red lights flashing, meaning it was unloading passengers and traffic wasn't permitted to pass it in either direction. And a truck,
a big tractor-trailer rig, facing the same direction as the Cadillac and obediently standing still. The two vehicles between them blocked the road completely.

  "Goddammit," Van Gelden said, and tromped on the brake again. He had to brake hard to stop in time, but it was less violent than if his foot had still been pressed on the accelerator when he'd rounded the bend. Jimmy, since he'd been clutching the armrest and a strap anyway, managed to stay on the seat as the Cadillac nosed down to a shuddering stop directly behind the tractor-trailer.

  "One thing after another," Van Golden said.

  "Maurice," Jimmy said, "you drive too fast."

  "It's not my fault there's all this stuff in the way." Van Golden gestured angrily toward the truck and the bus.

  "You drive too fast all the time," Jimmy insisted. "Except when my father is in the car. From now on, I want you to drive me the way you drive my father."

  Van Golden, becoming sullen, jammed his uniform cap farther down on his forehead, folded his arms, and said nothing.

  Jimmy said, "Did you hear me, Maurice?"

  "I hear you."

  "I hear you!"

  "Thank you, Maurice," Jimmy said, and sat back to savor his triumph. After a moment he picked up the New Yorker again.

  Back at the intersection, Dortmunder stopped the Caprice and Kelp jumped out to move the sign. He picked it up, moved it to another side, and started back, when Dortmunder leaned out the window and shouted, "Not there! Where we follow the Cadillac!"

  "Huh?" Kelp looked around, pointing at various places, reorienting himself. Then, with a sudden sunny smile of recognition, he waved to Dortmunder and shouted, "Gotcha!" He ran back to the sign, picked it up, and put it back where it had been.

  "Not there!" Dortmunder yelled. He was leaning his whole upper torso out of the car, pounding the door panel with his arm and the flat of his hand. Waving that hand violently around, he yelled, "Over there!"

  "Right!" Kelp yelled. "Right! Right! I got it now!" And he picked up the sign and started trotting toward the last possible wrong choice.