Jimmy The Kid

by Donald Westlake

  Like now, for instance. There were no matches at all in the kitchen. Rather than carry the hunt through the rest of the apartment she turned on a front burner of the gas stove, crouched down in front of it, and crept up on the flame like a peeping tom creeping up on an open window. The smell of cigarette smoke mingled in the air with the smell of singed eyebrow. Squinting her eyes shut, she ducked back, puffed, shook her head, wiped her eyes, turned off the burner, and saw to dinner.

  Dortmunder was sitting at the table in the dinette end of the living room when she carried the two hot plates in, using potholders with cartoons on them. Dortmunder looked at the food as she put it before him, and he almost smiled. “Looks real nice,” he said.

  “I thought you’d like it.” She sat down opposite him, and for a while they just ate together in companionable silence. She didn’t want to rush into this conversation, and in fact she wasn’t even sure how she would start it. All she knew was that she wasn’t looking forward to it.

  She waited till they were having their coffee and Jell–O, and then said, “I had a call today from Murch’s Mom.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He sounded neither interested nor suspicious. What a simple, honest, trusting man, May thought, looking at him, feeling for him again the same tenderness as 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.

  She cleared her throat; she was feeling misty and emotional, and that would never do. Much as she hated the role, what she had to do now was start manipulating her man; it was, after all, for his own good. So she said, “She told me, Murch’s Mom told me, that Andy Kelp is still trying to organize that kidnapping idea.”

  Dortmunder paused with a spoonful of Jell–O, gave a disgusted look, and went back to his eating.

  “He wanted Stan to drive,” May said, “but Stan wouldn’t go into it without you.”

  “Good,” Dortmunder said.

  “I’m worried about Kelp,” May said. “You know what he’s like, John.”

  “He’s a jinx,” Dortmunder said. “He’s also an ingrate, and besides that he’s a bigmouth. Let’s not spoil a nice dinner with talk about Kelp.”

  “I’m just afraid of the kind of woman he’ll get,” May said. “You know, to take care of the child.”

  Dortmunder frowned. “What child?”

  “The one they kidnap.”

  Dortmunder shook his head. “He’ll never get it off the ground. Andy Kelp couldn’t steal third in the Little League.”

  “Well, that would make it even worse,” May said. “He’s really determined to do it, you know. He’ll get the wrong people, some awful woman who doesn’t care about children, and some barfly to do the driving, and they’ll just get themselves in trouble.”

  “Good,” Dortmunder said.

  “But what if the child gets hurt? What if the police surround the hideout, what if there’s a shoot–out?”

  “A shoot–out? With Kelp? He’s so gun–shy, he goes out to the track, he surrenders at the beginning of every race.”

  “But what about the other people with him? There’s no telling who he’ll wind up with.”

  Dortmunder looked pained, and May remembered that he and Kelp really were old friends; so maybe there was a chance, after all. But then Dortmunder’s expression became mulish, and he said, “Just so he doesn’t wind up with me. He’s jinxed me long enough.”

  May cast around for another argument, considered a specific mention of the friendship between Dortmunder and Kelp, and finally decided not to do that. If she did, he might just be angry enough now to deny the friendship, and then later on he’d think he had to stand by the denial. Better to let the dust settle for a minute.

  They were finishing the Jell–O when she started again, coming in from another direction entirely, saying, “I read that book again. It isn’t bad, you know.”

  He looked at her. “What book?”

  “The one Kelp showed us. The one about the kidnapping.”

  He straightened and looked around the room, frowning. “I thought I threw that out,” he said.

  “I got another copy.” She’d gotten it from Kelp, but she didn’t think she should mention that.

  He turned his frown toward her. “What for?”

  “I wanted to read it again. I wanted to see if maybe Kelp had a good idea after all.”

  “Kelp with a good idea.” He finished his Jell–O and reached for his coffee.

  “Well, he was smart to bring it around to you,” she said. “He wouldn’t be able to do it right without you.”

  “Kelp brings a plan to me.”

  “To make it work,” she said. “Don’t you see? There’s a plan there, but you have to convert it to the real world, to the people you’ve got and the places you’ll be and all the rest of it. You’d be the aw–tour.”

  He cocked his head and studied her. “I’d be the what?”

  “I read an article in a magazine,” she said. “It was about a theory about movies.”

  “A theory about movies.”

  “It’s called the aw–tour theory. That’s French, it means writer.”

  He spread his hands. “What the hell have I got to do with the movies?”

  “Don’t shout at me, John, I’m trying to tell you. The idea is–”

  “I’m not shouting,” he said. He was getting grumpy.

  “All right, you’re not shouting. Anyway, the idea is, in movies the writer isn’t really the writer. The real writer is the director, because he takes what the writer did and he puts it together with the actors and the places where they make the movie and all the things like that.”

  “The writer isn’t the writer,” Dortmunder said.

  “That’s the theory.”

  “Some theory.”

  “So they call the director the aw–tour,” she explained, “because that’s French for writer.”

  “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 comfor
table 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.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  Kelp walked into the O.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.

  Rollo 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,” Rollo 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?”

  Rollo, 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 POINTERS 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.”