Jimmy The Kid

by Donald Westlake

  “In a hurry for what?”

  “Let’s take a little drive, okay?”

  Dortmunder shrugged. “Do what you want.”

  “Fine,” Murch said. The light turned green and he headed up Tenth Avenue.

  Dortmunder brooded for forty blocks, as Tenth Avenue changed its name to Amsterdam Avenue and its language to Spanish, but as they crossed Eighty–Sixth Street he finally sat up, looked out at the world, and said, “Where we going?”

  “Up to Ninety–Sixth,” Murch said, “and over to Central Park West, and then down. After that I’ll take you home.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  Murch shrugged, and seemed slightly embarrassed. “Well, you never know,” he said.

  “You never know what?”

  “In the book, the car goes to Central Park West.”

  Dortmunder stared at him. “You think the Caddy’s going to be on Central Park West because the car in the book was on Central Park West?”

  March showed increasing discomfort. “I figured,” he said, “what the hell, it won’t cost us anything. Besides, in the book the kid’s coming in for special speech therapy, right? So this kid, in the Caddy, he’s got to be coming in to see some specialist like that, too, and Central Park West is full of those guys.”

  “So’s Park Avenue,” Dortmunder said. “So’s a lot of other places, all over town.”

  “If you don’t want to do it,” Murch said, “it’s okay with me. I just figured, what the hell.”

  Dortmunder looked at the sign for the cross street they were passing; Ninety–Fourth. “You want to go to Ninety–Sixth, and then down?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, we’re here already, so go ahead.”

  “It probably won’t come out to anything,” Murch said, “but the way I figured, what–”

  “Yeah, I know,” Dortmunder said. “You figured, what the hell.”

  “That’s the way I figured,” Murch said, and made the turn on Ninety–Sixth Street. They traveled two blocks to Central Park West, turned right again, and headed south, with the park on their left and the tall apartment buildings on their right. They traveled south for twenty–five blocks, Murch looking more and more awkward and Dortmunder feeling more and more fatalistic, when all of a sudden Murch slammed on the brakes and shouted, “Son of a bitch!”

  A cab behind them honked, squealed its brakes, and twisted on around them with various words shouted out into the air. Dortmunder looked where Murch was pointing, and he said, “I just don’t believe it.”

  The Caddy. Silver–gray, whip antenna, Jersey plate number WAX 361. Parked in a bus stop, big as life. When Murch drove slowly by, the chauffeur was sitting behind the wheel in there reading a tabloid newspaper. His hat was off.

  Murch found a space in front of a fire hydrant in the next block. He was grinning all over his face when he switched the engine off and turned to say to Dortmunder, “I just had a hunch, that’s all. I figured, what the hell, and I just had a hunch.”

  “Yeah,” Dortmunder said.

  “You get things like that sometimes,” Murch said. “It’s just a hunch you get, they come on you sometimes.”

  Dortmunder nodded, heavily. “We’ll pay for this later on,” he said, and got out of the car, and walked back up toward the Cadillac. It was parked facing this way, and the chauffeur’s head was hidden behind his open newspaper.

  Dortmunder didn’t look right on Central Park West, and he knew it. He felt eyes on him, mistrusting him. It seemed to him that doormen, as he walked by, glared at him and clutched their whistles. Cruising cabs accelerated. Dog walkers stood closer to their Weimaraners and Schnauzers. And old men in wheelchairs, being pushed by stout black ladies in white uniforms, scrabbled at their blankets.

  Dortmunder walked slowly by the Cadillac. The back seat was empty and the side windows were open, but it was very hard to see inside. Aware of being an alien here, still feeling the eyes on him, Dortmunder didn’t want to stop, so he kept on walking even though he didn’t know if there was a telephone in the limousine or not.

  Well, he couldn’t keep walking north forever. At the next corner he stopped, looked indecisive, then patted himself all over, pantomiming a search for some small but necessary object. In a large elaborate movement, he snapped his fingers, suggesting the sudden realization that the small but necessary object had been left behind; at home, perhaps. He then turned around and walked the other way.

  The Cadillac was getting closer. Coming from behind it he had a clearer view of the interior, but it still wasn’t good enough. He walked more and more slowly, squinting, trying to see into the damn car.

  Well, screw it. He went over to the Cadillac, leaned down, stuck his head in the open window by the back seat, and saw that indeed there was a telephone mounted on the back of the front seat. He nodded in satisfaction. The chauffeur remained inside his newspaper.

  Dortmunder got his head out of the Cadillac and walked briskly on down to the Renault. He opened the Renault door, but before getting in he looked back up at the Cadillac. The chauffeur still hadn’t moved, but as Dortmunder watched he suddenly jumped, yanked the newspaper down into his lap, spun around and stared at the empty back seat. He then faced front again, looking baffled. He turned his head this way and that, staring suspiciously all around. His eyes met Dortmunder’s, and he frowned, deeply.

  Dortmunder got into the Renault. He arranged his feet as best he could, closed the door, and said, “The amazing thing is, there’s a goddam telephone in there.”

  Murch was still grinning from ear to ear, and he had his paperback copy of Child Heist open in his hands. “Now we wait for the kid to come out again,” he said, reading the words from the book. “Then we’ll take a look at his route home.” He slapped the book shut and said, “Just like it says in the book!”

  “Yeah,” said Dortmunder.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  When Dortmunder escorted May into the O.J. Bar and Grill, Rollo the bartender was in the process of separating two customers who had come to blows during a statistical discussion of the New York Mets. Stools and chairs were being kicked as the customers thrashed around on the floor with their arms around one another. Rollo, avoiding their feet, circled them looking for an opening. Dortmunder gestured for May to move off to the left, and the two of them got in behind the cigarette machine, in the front corner of the room.

  “So this is the O.J.,” May said, as a stool went crashing over on its side. The seat part of the stool separated from the chrome legs and went rolling away toward the rear, making metal noises on the floor. The three other customers in the place were all straining toward the television set, trying to make out what George Peppard was saying to Jill St. John.

  “It’s usually quieter than this,” Dortmunder said.

  Out there on the floor, Rollo had gotten hold of a shoulder and was shaking it. Then, with his other hand, he got hold of a different shoulder and tried throwing it away. The shoulders, though wearing different colored jackets, didn’t want to separate at first; Rollo had to do a lot of shaking with his left hand while making three strong throwing gestures with his right before they popped apart. Then the one customer went skidding away on his back under a booth, and Rollo picked the other one up by his shoulder and hair and carried him to the front door. On his way by the cigarette machine he nodded to Dortmunder and said, “How ya doin?”

  “Fine,” Dortmunder said.

  Rollo pushed the door open with the customer’s head, and ejected the customer. Then he turned and went back for the other customer, who was scrambling out from under the booth. Rollo picked him up by his belt, in the middle of his back, and half–carried half–ran him across the floor and through the door and out onto Amsterdam Avenue. When he came back in, he nodded again to Dortmunder, who was escorting May out from behind the cigarette machine, and said, “When he asked for white cream de mint I knew there was gonna be trouble.”

  “Rollo,” Dortmunder sai
d, “this is May.”

  “How ya doin?” Rollo said.

  “I’m fine,” said May. “Does that happen a lot?”

  “Not so much,” Rollo said. “We mostly got beer drinkers in here. Beer drinkers got a low center of gravity, they don’t like to fight much. They just like to sit there, mind their own business.”

  “I like a nice beer myself,” May said.

  “I seen you were a good person when you walked in,” Rollo said. To Dortmunder he said, “The other bourbon’s in the back. I give him your glass.”

  “Okay.”

  “Expecting anybody else?”

  “The draft beer and salt,” Dortmunder said. “And he’ll be bringing his mother.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember her. She’s also a draft beer, right?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s nice,” Rollo said. “I like ladies in the place, it makes for a better atmosphere.”

  “Thank you,” May said.

  “You go on back,” Rollo said, “I’ll bring you your beer, little lady.”

  Dortmunder and May went to the back room, and Kelp was sitting there with the bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He got to his feet and said, “Hi, May. Sit down. What was all the noise out there?”

  “That was Rollo,” Dortmunder said, “cutting back on his services.”

  “He’s very gallant,” May said.

  Kelp, looking at his watch, said, “Murch and his Mom are late.”

  Dortmunder nodded. “I know. And the worst of it is, he’ll tell us why.”

  “And,” Kelp said, “what route he should of took.”

  May said, “Maybe he couldn’t find a deserted farmhouse.”

  Kelp said, “Why not? We found the kid, didn’t we? We followed the book and we found the kid. So now the book says we want a deserted farmhouse, we’ll find a deserted farmhouse.”

  Dortmunder said, “You know, there are these little moments when that book gives me a swift pain in the ass.”

  “It’s been right so far,” Kelp said. “You got to give credit where credit is due.”

  May said, “Tell me about this boy. John says you found out about his family and all.”

  “Right,” Kelp said. “His name is Jimmy Harrington. His father’s a lawyer on Wall Street, in the firm of McIntire, Loeb, Sanderson and Chen. He’s a partner there.”

  Dortmunder said, “He’s a partner? I thought his name was Harrington.”

  “It is,” Kelp said.

  “There isn’t any Harrington in the company name. Just those other people.”

  “McIntire,” Kelp said, “Loeb, Sanderson and Chen.”

  “Right,” Dortmunder said. “That bunch. If Harrington’s a partner, where’s his name?”

  “They got a whole bunch of partners,” Kelp said. “I saw a piece of their stationery, there’s this whole line of names down the left side, they’re all partners. I think maybe McIntire, Loeb, Sanderson and Chen are maybe the first partners.”

  “The founders,” May suggested.

  “I get it,” Dortmunder said. “Okay, fine.”

  “Anyway,” Kelp said, “Harrington is maybe fifty–five, he’s got four grown–up kids and grandchildren, the whole thing. He’s also got a second wife, and she’s got grown–up kids. But when they got married they had a kid together, and that’s Jimmy. The father’s name is Herbert and the mother’s name is Claire.”

  “I feel sorry for the mother,” May said. “She’s going to feel terrible.”

  “Maybe,” Kelp said. “She and Herbert broke up six years ago, she lives down in Palm Beach, Florida. From what I found out so far, she hasn’t been north in six years, and I don’t think Jimmy travels south. Jimmy lives out on the family estate in New Jersey, way over by Pennsylvania.”

  Rollo came in with May’s beer while Kelp was saying that; he put it on the table, looked around, and said, “Everybody set?”

  “We’re fine,” Dortmunder said.

  “The beer and salt and his mother didn’t show up yet,” Rollo said.

  “They’ll be along,” Dortmunder said.

  “I’ll send them back,” Rollo said, and went out front again.

  May said to Kelp, “How did you find out all this?”

  “There’s a little town out near the estate,” Kelp said. “I went out there and hung around in a bar and talked to a couple guys. The guy that drives the oil truck that makes deliveries there, and a carpenter that did some work on the estate, and a bulldozer operator that worked there when they put in their swimming pool a couple years ago.”

  “They didn’t have a swimming pool before?” May asked.

  “No. The estate’s on the Delaware River. Only I guess the river isn’t so hot for swimming any more. Anyway, these guys told me the story. Workmen like to talk about their rich clients, it’s one of their fringe benefits.”

  “Sure,” May said. “So the mother left six years ago, and the boy lives on the estate with his father.”

  “Sometimes,” Kelp said. “The father has an apartment in town. The kid comes in three afternoons a week, Monday and Wednesday and Friday, and sees some specialist in that apartment building on Central Park West. Fridays, after he’s done there–”

  “What specialist does he see?”

  “I can’t find out,” Kelp said. “There’s all kinds of medical people, and specialty therapists, and I don’t know what in that building. And it’s tough to hang around in there. And the maintenance people don’t know Jimmy Harrington from a special delivery letter. Anyway, when he leaves there on Fridays, he goes down to Wall Street in the limousine, and his father rides out to the estate with him. The father stays there all weekend, and rides in with him on Mondays. But Monday to Friday the father stays in town.”

  “The boy’s all alone out in the estate?” May was truly shocked.

  “There’s four servants that live in,” Kelp said. “The chauffeur, and the–”

  The door opened and Murch’s Mom came in, followed by Murch. They were both carrying beers, and Murch was also carrying a saltshaker. May looked up and said, “So there you are.”

  “It’s real nice out there,” Murch’s Mom said. She sat down at the table, placing the beer in front of her. “Especially at this time of year, with the leaves all turning.”

  “We thought you got lost,” May said.

  “Naw,” Murch said. “It’s simple. You go out 80, you get off at the Hope interchange, you take county road 519. Our big problem was, we had a hell of a time finding an abandoned farmhouse.”

  “I knew it,” Dortmunder said. He gave a triumphant glare toward the book lying on the table in front of Kelp.

  Kelp said, “But you did find one, huh?”

  “Yeah, finally.” Murch shook his head. “All the abandoned farmhouses out there, people from the city already went out and found them and bought them and filled them up with fancy barn siding and cloth wallpaper and made country houses out of them.”

  “They’ve all got Great Danes,” Murch’s Mom said. “We went out some of those driveways pretty fast.”

  “But the point is,” Kelp said, “you did find an abandoned farmhouse.”

  “It’s a mess,” Murch said. “There isn’t any electricity, and there isn’t any plumbing. There’s a well out back, with a handle thing that you pump.”

  Murch’s Mom nodded. “It’s not like anything in the twentieth century,” she said.

  “But it’s isolated,” Kelp suggested. “Is it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Murch said. “It’s isolated, all right. Way to hell and gone isolated.”

  “Well, that’s the important part,” Kelp said. Primarily speaking to Dortmunder, he said, “We’ll only be there for a couple days, and the more abandoned and isolated it is the better.”

  Dortmunder said to Murch, “How far is this from where we grab the kid?”

  “Maybe twenty miles.”

  “And how far from the kid’s house?”

  “Maybe forty.”

 
Dortmunder nodded thoughtfully. “It’s kind of close,” he said.

  Kelp said, “That’s got a big advantage, when you think about it. The cops won’t be looking in that close.”

  “The cops,” Dortmunder told him, “will be looking everywhere. A rich man’s son is gone, they’ll look for him.”

  “If they find that abandoned farmhouse,” Murch said, “I’ll be surprised.”

  “We’ll all be surprised,” Dortmunder said. “Unpleasantly.”