“Yah. Stan?”
“Sure. Listen, Max, you still interested in good recent acquisitions?”
“You mean where I got to do my own paper?”
“That’s the kind.”
“That’s a little tricky, Stan. Depends on the vehicle.”
“A creampuff white Continental. Like new.”
“You’re reading me my ad out of Newsday.”
“What do you think, Max?”
“Bring it over, we’ll have a look.”
“Right,” Murch said, and was about to hang up when another vehicle made the turn from Jericho Turnpike into the diner’s parking lot. It was a car carrier, with four Buick Riviera’s on it; a powder blue, a maroon, and two bronzes. “Wait a second,” Murch said.
“Hah?”
“Just hold on.”
The car carrier growled up to the diner, puffing diesel exhaust out a pipe at the top of the cab, and came at last to a shuddering stop. The driver, a stout fellow in a brown leather jacket, climbed down to the blacktop as though both his legs had fallen asleep, and then stood there yawning and scratching his crotch.
“Stan? You there?”
“Wait a second,” Munch said. “Just a second.”
The driver, done with his yawning and scratching, walked over to the diner entrance, leaving Murch’s sight for a few seconds. Murch turned around and looked through the phone booth’s interior window. He watched the car carrier driver amble across to the rear part of the diner and sit in the next booth to the sprawled driver of the Continental. Neither of them could see the parking lot from where they were.
“Stan?”
“Listen, Max,” Murch said. “You interested in more, maybe? Other cars, maybe?”
“I’m always interested in top quality, Stan, you know that.”
“See you soon,” Murch said. Hanging up, he left the booth and the diner and strolled over to the car carrier. About to climb up into the cab, he glanced over at the Continental, sorry to have to leave it behind. Oh, well, four was better than one. Or … Hmmmm. Murch moved away from the cab and considered the entire length of the car carrier. It was made to carry six automobiles, three on top and three on the bottom, but it only had two in each part. The rear spaces were unoccupied, top and bottom.
Hmmmmm. Murch walked around to the rear of the vehicle and considered it carefully. A kind of heavy metal tailgate was up across the back, with looped chains at both ends. Wouldn’t that tailgate double as a ramp if it were lowered?
Murch moved closer, studying the tailgate’s operation. Opening those two hooks should release the thing, then one should pay out his chain through that ratchet, and …
Might as well try it. He released the hooks, he grasped the chain, he began to feed it slowly through the ratchet. The tailgate lowered itself. Murch fed the chain faster, and the tailgate lowered faster. Tonk, the tailgate went against the blacktop. It was now a ramp.
Fine. Leaving the car carrier, Murch walked briskly but not too hurriedly across the lot to the Continental. He had his bunch of keys in his hand when he got there, but the Continental’s door was unlocked. He slid behind the wheel, tried three keys, and started the engine with the fourth. There was a strong smell of bourbon inside the car.
Murch put it in reverse, backed the Continental around in a loop, switched to drive, and steered across the parking lot and up the ramp and into the car carrier. He switched off the engine, set the hand brake, and got out of the car. He climbed through the metal struts of the side, attained the blacktop, and quickly raised the tailgate again. There wasn’t any way to chain the Continental in place, the way the Buick’s were chained, but he’d be taking it easy. He also didn’t have that far to go.
Key number two started the car carrier engine. Murch turned the big flat wheel, the car carrier lumbered forward, and slowly he made his getaway out onto Jericho Turnpike.
It took twenty–five minutes to drive to Maximilian’s Used Cars. When he got there, Murch took the side street next to the car lot, then turned in at the anonymous driveway behind it. He stopped amid tall weeds and the white clapboard backs of garages, climbed down out of the cab, and went through an unlocked gate in a chain–link fence. A path through weeds and shrubbery led him to the rear of Maximilian’s office structure, a California–looking thing in pink stucco. He opened a door, went through into a gray–paneled office, and heard Max in the next room saying, “What you got to read in the guarantee is every word.”
A very angry male voice said, loudly, “If you read every word of that guarantee, you don’t guarantee anything!”
“That’s how you say,” Max said.
Murch opened the connecting door, and stuck his head in. The customer was big and muscular, but intellectually out of his depth. He had the bewildered look of a swimmer who hadn’t known there were whirlpools anywhere around here. Murch, ignoring him, said to Max, “Max, could I interrupt?”
“I hope so,” Max said. A big old man with heavy jowls and thin white hair, he always wore a dark vest, wide open, and no tie. His white shirt was usually smudged from leaning against used cars. Now, getting to his feet from behind his desk, he said to the customer, “Read a little. Read the words. I’ll be back.”
“You better be,” the customer said, but there wasn’t any real threat in it. He was buffaloed, and he was himself beginning to understand it.
Max and Murch crossed the empty office and went out the rear door. Murch said, “That the same customer as when I called?”
“Some of them just won’t go away,” Max said. “Don’t they got homes? Some friend of yours called. On the telephone. You shouldn’t go away without him coming here.”
“Who?”
“A little name,” Max said, as they followed the path toward the chain–link fence. “Chip? Shep?”
“Kelp?”
“If you say so,” Max said, and they stepped out onto the driveway, now filled with the bulk of the car carrier. Max looked at it. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said. “You stealing now in bunches? They ain’t grapes!”
“It was there,” Murch said. “I put the Continental on the back.”
Max went down along the side of the car carrier, looking at the automobiles in there. “In broad daylight,” he said. “You go talk to the customer.”
Murch shook his head. “I don’t talk to customers,” he said. “What I do, I drive.”
“So I see.” Max looked at the cars and the car carrier. “I’ll take them,” he said.
“Fine.”
“Come around next week, we’ll talk money.”
“Okay.”
Max pointed down the driveway. “You’ll put them around by the body shop,” he said.
“Have your people do it,” Murch said. “I’d rather not stick around.”
“What about the truck?”
Murch frowned at the truck. “What about it?”
“I don’t want it,” Max said. “You read the sign out front, it says used cars. I got no use for a truck.”
“Neither do I, Max.”
“Take it back where you got it.”
“I don’t want to drive it any more.”
“You can’t dump a stolen truck on me, Stanley, that isn’t a thing to do.”
“Take it someplace else tonight,” Murch told him. “Just park it out along the road. Have one of your people do it.”
“Why not keep it?” Max suggested. “You could drive around in it, every time you see a nice car just toss it in.”
Murch looked at the truck, considering the idea. It had a certain appeal. But finally he shook his head and said, “No, it wouldn’t be any good. Too noticeable.”
“Stan, if I got to unload this truck, it’s got to cost you.”
“Sure, Max, we’ll take ten bucks off.” Murch shrugged it away, and turned to go back to the used–car lot. Behind him, Max looked at the car carrier the way the dissatisfied customer had looked at Max. Then he shook his head, and followed Murch through the cha
in–link fence.
The customer wasn’t in the office. “Now what?” Max said. “I’ll tell you, he’s out front breaking windshields. We had one just last spring, came in, complained about all that stuff they always complain about, and first thing you know he’s got a wrench, he’s breaking windshields right and left. Terrible.”
“Terrible,” Murch agreed.
The two of them walked out the front door. Used cars were lined up on three sides of them, with placards in their windshields. Max pointed. “There he is! And who’s that with him?”
“That’s my friend Kelp,” Murch said.
Kelp and the customer were standing next to a dilapidated green Chevrolet. They were talking. The customer seemed less aggrieved than before. In fact, he chuckled at something Kelp said, and he didn’t seem to mind it when Kelp patted his arm.
“Ho ho,” Max said. He looked and sounded awed.
Kelp and the customer shook hands. The customer got into the green Chevrolet and started the engine. It sounded awful. Kelp waved to him and the customer waved back and drove off. Something under the car was scraping, causing an even worse noise than the engine and also causing sparks. The Chevrolet jounced down the driveway and went away.
Kelp came walking over, a cheerful smile on his face in the sunshine. “Hi, Stan,” he said.
“Mister Cheep,” Max said, “could you use a job?”
“What? No, thanks, I’ve got something on the fire.”
Murch said, “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Right. You want a lift somewhere?”
“I left my car at a diner on Jericho Turnpike.”
“I’ll take you there,” Kelp said.
Murch said so long to Max, who was still looking dazed, and went with Kelp to the car he had parked at the curb. It was a Mercedes, with MD plates. 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.”
They got into the car, Murch pushing a paperback that was resting on the seat out of his way. Kelp started the engine, and they rolled away from the curb.
Murch said, “What’s the story?”
Kelp, pointing to the book on the seat between them, said. “That.”
Murch laughed politely.
“No, on the level,” Kelp said. “What I want you to do, I want you to read that book.”
“Read a book?” Murch read the Daily News and several car magazines, but he didn’t read books.
“You’ll like it,” Kelp told him. “And I’ve got an idea that hooks up with it.”
Murch picked up the book. He would like it? Child Heist, by Richard Stark. “What’s it about?”
“About a crook,” Kelp said. “A crook named Parker. He’ll remind you of Dortmunder.”
“That sounds great,” Murch said, but without much enthusiasm. He riffled through the book; words on every page.
“You read it,” Kelp said. “Dortmunder’s reading it, too. And have your Mom read it. Then when everybody’s had a chance to go through the book, we’ll have a meeting.”
“Dortmunder’s in on this?”
“Sure,” Kelp said, casual and convincing. Murch opened the book, feeling the stirrings of curiosity.
• • •
When the guard came to open the cell door, Parker said to the big man named Krauss, “Come see me next week when you get out. I think I’ll have something on.”
Chapter 3
* * *
Kelp was very excited and very happy. He couldn’t sit in one place, and the result was he got to Dortmunder and May’s place half an hour early for the meeting. He didn’t want to risk annoying Dortmunder again, so he spent the half hour walking around the block.
He was so sure of this idea that he didn’t see any possible way for Dortmunder to turn it down. With Dortmunder and May in, plus Murch to do the driving and Murch’s Mom to handle the kid, it was all going to work just beautifully. Just like the book.
The way Kelp had come across that book, he’d been in jail at the time; a fact he didn’t intend to mention to anybody. It had been upstate in Rockland County, a small town where he’d run into a little trouble when some cops stopping cars to look for drugs had found a whole lot of burglar tools in his trunk. It had taken five days to get the whole thing squashed because of the element of illegal search, but during those five days Kelp had been kept locked up in the local pokey. And a very poky pokey it had been, too–nothing to do but roll Bugler cigarettes and read paperback books donated by some local ladies’ club.
Several of the books had been by this writer Richard Stark, always about the same crook, named Parker. Robbery stories, big capers, armored cars, banks, all that sort of thing. And what Kelp really liked about the books was that Parker always got away with it. Robbery stories where the crooks didn’t get caught at the end–fantastic. For Kelp, it was like being an American Indian and going to a western movie where the cowboys lose. Wagon train wiped out, cavalry lost in the desert, settlement abandoned, ranchers and farmers driven back across the Mississippi. Grand.
Child Heist was the third of the Parker novels he’d read, and even while he was reading it he’d known it meant something special to him, even more than the others. And as he was finishing the book the revelation had come on him like a sudden flood of heavenly light, like his little gray cell had just been illumined by a thousand suns. That’s the way it had been. And when, the next day, the Public Defender had finally gotten him sprung, he’d walked out of there with Child Heist concealed inside his shirt, and as soon as he’d made it back to the city he’d gone to a bookstore and picked up half a dozen more copies.
Would the others see it the way he had? May probably would, she was smart, and in any case she’d go along with it if Dortmunder did. Murch probably not, he tended not to understand anything that didn’t have wheels, but that wouldn’t really matter, not if Dortmunder went for it. Murch would follow Dortmunder’s lead, and Murch’s Mom would follow Murch.
So it all came down to Dortmunder, and how could Dortmunder say no? It was a natural, it had struck Kelp in that jail cell as a natural, and it was going to strike Dortmunder as a natural. Going to. Have to. No question.
Kelp, growing more and more terrified that Dortmunder wasn’t going to think it was a natural, walked around and around the block for half an hour until a voice called to him from amid the traffic, “Hey, Kelp!”
He looked up and saw a cab going by, with Murch in the back seat, waving at him out the window. Kelp waved back and the cab continued on, toward the building in the middle of the block where Dortmunder and May lived. Kelp turned around and walked briskly after it, and saw the cab pull in next to a fire hydrant down there. Murch got out, waving at Kelp again, and then the driver got out and walked around the front of the cab to the sidewalk. The driver was short and stocky, wearing gray pants and a black leather jacket and a cloth cap.
“Hi,” Kelp shouted, and waved.
Murch stood waiting, and when Kelp got there he said, “Hey, Kelp. How come you were going the wrong way?”
Kelp frowned at him. “The wrong way?”
“You were going that way. You miss the address?”
“Oh, right!” Kelp said. He didn’t want to display nervousness or indecision, so he shouldn’t mention about walking around the block for half an hour. “Ha ha,” he said. “How do you like that, I walked right on by it. I guess I must have been thinking, huh?”
The cabdriver said, “We going in or what are we gonna do? I could be out making a buck.” She pulled the cloth cap off, and it was Murch’s Mom.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Murch,” Kelp said. “I didn’t recognize you. Sure, let’s go in.”
“This is my shift,” Murch’s Mom said. “I’m supposed to be working now.”
“It’ll be a short meeting, Mom,” Murch said. “Then maybe you’ll get somebody that wants to go to the airpo
rt.”
The three of them had entered the tiny vestibule of the building, and Kelp was pressing the button for Dortmunder and May’s apartment. Murch’s Mom said, “You know the kind of fare I’ll get? You know the way it’s been lately? Park Slope, that’s what I’ll get, into darkest Brooklyn for a two–bit tip and no customers and drive back to Manhattan empty. That’s what I get.”
The door buzzed and Kelp pushed it open. He said, “Mrs. Murch, your days of driving a taxicab are over.”
Jimmy The Kid Page 2
