Jimmy The Kid

by Donald Westlake

  It was quite long, but maybe not as thick or as strong as he would have liked it. Still, it would have to do, and once it was doubled it surely would do. Fine. So now there was nothing to do but depart.

  So why did he hesitate? Why did be glance ruefully toward that small cot with its inadequate blankets?

  Childishness, he told himself. Babyishness and weakness. And not to be given in to.

  Taking a deep breath, squaring his shoulders, he hesitated just a second longer, then abruptly began to move, and from then on continued to move steadily and smoothly, doing everything just as he had planned it.

  First, all four boards were taken out, and stacked next to the window. Next, one end of the rope was slipped through between the still–attached fifth and sixth boards, in a tiny space showing down by the windowsill. That end of the rope was played through and around the outside of the fifth board and back into the room, until the center of the rope rested on the windowsill, against the bottom of the fifth board, inside the room. Dirt smudged on that length of rope made it virtually invisible.

  Now. The two lengths of rope were allowed to hang down along the outer wall of the house. Jimmy, leaning out, feeling now the force of the wind and rain on his head, grasped the two lengths, brought a part of it back into the room, and tied a loop in it that would hang about three feet below the window. Then he dropped it outside again.

  The rest would have to be done in darkness. Switching off the flashlight, Jimmy put it in his jacket pocket and felt his way to the window. Climbing carefully over the sill, he grasped the rope, pulled it up till he felt the loop, and put the loop like a stirrup over his right foot. Then he lowered himself slowly out the window until he was standing on the loop of rope, his forearms resting on the windowsill.

  Now for the tricky part. Reaching inside, he took the first board, which he knew belonged in position number four, and working by feel he slipped it back into place. Then three, and then two. Number one was the most difficult, since he had such a narrow space to bring the board out through, and he almost gave the whole thing up as an over–elaboration, but at last he did get the thing out and in place, and felt better for having done it.

  The idea was, whenever the gang next decided to check on him the room would appear to be unchanged. They would have to believe that he’d managed to turn the key in the lock from inside, and that while he was no longer in the room he must still be somewhere in the house. So they would confine their search, at least for a while, to the interior of the house, thus giving him longer to get away.

  And if worse came to worst, if they did catch him again, he would say that he’d turned the key with his ballpoint pen insert, had locked the door again behind himself, and had snuck downstairs, going out the front door while they were all searching elsewhere. If they swallowed that and put him back in the same room–which they probably would, since they didn’t have any other room prepared for him–he could simply take the boards down again and escape all over.

  So. Having been as clever as possible in his departure, Jimmy now rappelled down the side of the house, permitting the back of his jacket to take most of the stress and most of the friction of the rope passing through, and all at once he found himself standing in mud, on the ground, outside the house.

  Escape; he’d done it.

  Now all that was left was to walk to the highway, hail a passing car, and inform the police. This gang would be rounded up, probably in less than an hour, and by midnight Jimmy would be safely at home and asleep in his own bed.

  He almost felt sorry for the kidnappers. But they couldn’t say they hadn’t asked for it.

  For the first leg of the journey he wouldn’t be able to use the flashlight, and it really was dark out here. Also wet. Also cold. Already drenched to the skin, Jimmy reached out in front of himself, patted the weathered boards of the house, and then moved off to his right, keeping his left hand constantly in touch with the house.

  Traveling that way, he walked around the house to the front, and there at last he did see some light; flickering yellowish light showing through chinks in the boarded–up living room windows. So, if he turned his back on those lights, the farm road should lead directly away in front of him. Turning that way, looking over his shoulder to be sure he was facing exactly away from the light, he made off cautiously into the rain–drenched darkness.

  The first two times he looked over his shoulder those faint lines of light were still there, but the third time they were gone. “Ten more steps,” he whispered to himself, and made ten slow slithering steps through the mud before hesitantly switching on the flashlight, keeping his fingers dosed over most of the glass so not too much light would come out.

  He was in a field. At one time under cultivation, it had apparently come recently into a state of semi abandonment. That is, no crop was grown here, but it seemed as though someone was keeping the rougher vegetation cut back, and any case, it wasn’t a road.

  To the left? Jimmy flashed the light that way, and couldn’t see any road.

  To the right? No.

  Okay. So he’d have to do it differently; go back to the house and start all over, with quick on–offs of the flashlight right from the beginning, so he wouldn’t get lost. Flashlight off, he turned around and headed back the way he’d come.

  No house. After a while he became pretty sure he should have reached the house, and there just wasn’t any house. No thin lines of yellow light at all, not a one.

  Oh, the hell with this darkness! Switching on the flashlight, not putting any fingers over the glass at all, he aimed the beam all around himself, and didn’t see a damn thing.

  Where was the house? Where was the road?

  It was getting cold out here. The rain didn’t help and the wind didn’t help, and even without them it would have been cold. With them, it was becoming almost terrifying.

  Well, he couldn’t just stand here. If he didn’t get to someplace pretty soon, he’d be in big trouble. He could die of exposure out here, and wouldn’t that be a dumb thing to do!

  Apparently he’d come farther from the house than he’d thought. It had to be out in front of him, invisible in the pounding rain. So the thing to do was keep moving forward.

  He moved forward. His shoes were becoming heavy with mud, and after a while it became easier to just drag his feet through the puddles rather than try to lift them.

  Heavy. Cold. Hard to see in this light. And now the flashlight was starting to dim.

  A road.

  He didn’t believe it. He almost walked across it and off the other side, except that his sliding foot got caught briefly in one of the ruts. He looked down to see what the problem was, saw the parallel lines going from left to right, and shone the dimming light off to his right. A definite road, a farm road, two deep ruts with a grassy lane in the center.

  Which way? He had to have overshot the house somehow, so it would be off to the left there. The highway would be to the right, so that’s the direction he took.

  It was easier walking now, on the high grassy mound between the ruts. He made good time, all things considered, and he just didn’t believe it when he saw those yellow lines of light out in the darkness ahead of himself and to the right, just outside the yellow cone from the flashlight.

  The house.

  He could see the way it went now. The road didn’t go directly to the house, it came in from an angle and swept across in front of it. His ideas of his location and direction had been wrong at every single stage of the journey.

  So the highway was back the other way. Jimmy turned and shone his feeble light down the road he’d just come along. He looked back over his shoulder at the house.

  He sighed.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  A luminous afternoon in the black–and–white forest. The monster, played by Boris Karloff, pauses as he hears the sweet notes of a violin. His face lights, he lumbers through the woods, following the sound. He comes to a cozy cottage amid the trees, very ginge
rbread. Inside, the violin is being played by a blind hermit, who is being played by O.P. Heggie. The monster approaches, and pounds on the door.

  Someone pounded on the door.

  “Eee!” Murch’s Mom said, and jumped straight up out of her folding chair. Which folded, and fell over with a slap.

  They had all been sitting around the battery–operated small television set they’d brought out to follow the kidnapping news. There’d been no kidnapping news–apparently the cops were keeping a news blackout on–so now they were watching the late movie. The three kerosene lamps, the hibachi in the fireplace, and the flickering television screen, all gave some light and less heat.

  Someone pounded at the door again. On the TV screen, the blind hermit opened his door to the monster.

  The others had all scrambled to their feet too by now, though without knocking over their chairs. Harshly Kelp whispered, “What do we do?”

  “They know we’re here,” Dortmunder said. “Let me do the talking.” He glanced upstairs, and said, “May, if the kid acts up, say something about him having nightmares and go up there and keep him quiet.”

  May nodded. The pounding sounded at the door for a third time. Murch’s Mom said, “I’ll go.”

  They all waited. Dortmunder’s hand was near the pocket with his revolver. Murch’s Mom opened the door and said, “Well, for God–”

  And the kid walked in.

  “Holy Toledo!” Murch said.

  Kelp, slapping his hands to his face, yelled, “Masks! Masks! Don’t let him see your faces!”

  Dortmunder didn’t believe it. He stared at the kid, looking as wet and muddy and ragged as a drowned kitten, and then he looked upstairs. And then he ran upstairs. He didn’t know what he thought, maybe that the kid was twins or something, but he just didn’t believe he wasn’t in that room.

  The door was locked, and Dortmunder fumbled with the key for a few seconds before remembering he had a flashlight in his other pocket–the pocket without the revolver in it–but once he had the flashlight out and shining he swiftly unlocked the door, pushed it open, stepped inside, aimed the light beam all around, and the room was empty.

  Empty. How could that be? Dortmunder looked under the bed and in the closet, and the kid was gone.

  But the door had been locked. The boards were still on the windows. There were no holes in the ceiling or the floor or any of the walls. There were no other exits from the room. “It’s a locked–room mystery,” Dortmunder told himself, and stood in the middle of the room, flashing the light slowly this way and that, completely baffled.

  Downstairs, Kelp was the first one to find and don his mask, and then he ran over to grab the kid. “I’m not trying to get away,” the kid said. “I’m just closing the door.”

  “Well, just stay put,” Kelp told him.

  “I came back, didn’t I? Why should I try to get away?”

  May too had put on her mask by now, and she came over to say, “You’re drenched! You’ll catch your death! You’ve got to get out of those wet clothes right now.” To Kelp she said, “Go up and get his blankets,” and to the boy she said, “Now get out of those clothes.”

  Hearing the authoritarian maternal voice, both Kelp and the kid promptly obeyed. Meantime, Murch and his Mom were squabbling over the mask they’d both been using. Murch’s Mom hadn’t worn one during the kidnapping, and when she’d gone upstairs with May earlier she’d borrowed her son’s. It hadn’t been anticipated the whole gang would be in the boy’s presence at once. Now they were both holding the mask, and tugging a little. “Stan,” Murch’s Mom said, “you give me that. I have a much more memorable face than you.”

  “You do not, Mom, you look like every other cabdriver in New York. I really need that mask, and anyway it’s mine.”

  Going upstairs, Kelp found Dortmunder in the kid’s room, walking around in circles, shining his flashlight here and there. Kelp said, “What are you doing?”

  “It’s impossible,” Dortmunder said. “How’d he get out?”

  “I dunno.” Kelp picked up the blankets and the pajamas from the bed. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “He must of walked through the wall,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp went out, leaving Dortmunder still making circles, and hurried downstairs. May had the boy over by the fireplace now, where there was still some heat from the charcoal in the hibachi. She had him stripped down to his underpants, and she immediately began rubbing him down with one of the blankets, using it as a towel. “You’re really wet,” she said. “You’re really wet.”

  “And cold,” the boy said. “It’s no–fooling cold out there.” He yawned.

  On the other side of the room, Murch’s Mom was triumphantly wearing the Murch family Mickey Mouse mask. Murch, showing his irritation by the set of his shoulders, sat at the card table with his elbows on the table and his hands over his face. Lantern light glinted on his eyes as he peered between his fingers.

  Dortmunder came downstairs. He marched across the living room to where May was drying the boy with a blanket, glowered down at him, and said, “All right, kid. How’d you do it?”

  May, on one knee in front of the boy, folded him in her arms, glared up at Dortmunder, and said, “Don’t you strike this child.”

  “What strike? I wanna know how he got out of the goddam room.”

  Kelp whispered with harsh urgency, “Your mask! Your mask!”

  Dortmunder looked around. “What?” Then he felt his bare face and said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” His mask was near him, on the mantel, and when he picked it up it was warm from hibachi heat. He pulled it angrily over his head and said, “It stinks worse when it’s hot.”

  May said, “You men get some wood, build a real fire in this fireplace. We need some heat in this room.”

  “What wood?” Dortmunder said. “Everything outside’ll be too wet to burn.”

  “There must be wood in here,” she said. “Something to make a fire.”

  “All right,” Dortmunder said, looking around. “All right, I’ll find something.”

  “I can’t help,” Murch said. His voice was muffled by his hands, so that he sounded as though he too had a mask on. “I can’t very well carry wood with my hands over my face,” he said, and even through the muffling effect the tone of grievance could be heard in his voice.

  “So you’ll sit there,” his Mom told him.

  Dortmunder and Kelp went out to the kitchen, where they found some built–in shelving they could rip out, and for a time the empty house echoed with ripping, rending, crashing sounds from the kitchen. Meantime, Murch’s Mom moved the hibachi to a corner of the fireplace and made a bed for the fire out of ripped–up pieces of cardboard from the cartons that had contained their provisions. Murch sat at the card table and watched the action through his fingers, and May dressed the boy in pajamas and wrapped the other blanket around him. On the television screen, which no one was watching, the blind hermit was playing his violin for the monster.

  Dortmunder and Kelp brought a lot of jagged pieces of wood in, stacked them in the fireplace, and lit the cardboard underneath. The fire started up at once, and smoked terrifically for half a minute, during which time everybody coughed and waved their arms and shouted unintelligible and unfollowable orders about the flue. Then all at once the chimney began to draw, the fire flared up, the smoke was sucked away into the rain and the wind outside, and heat wafted out across the room.

  “That’s nice,” May said.

  Jimmy, warm now and dry, turned at last and noticed the television set. “Oh!” he said. “Bride of Frankenstein! There’s some beautiful shots in that. It was directed by James Whale, you know, he also did the original Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Just incredible camera angles. Can I watch?”

  “It’s past your bedtime,” May said.

  “Oh, that can’t count now,” Jimmy said. “Besides, my room is cold, and you want to keep me warm, don’t you?”

  “An exercise–yard lawyer,” Do
rtmunder said.

  Murch said, “Put the kid upstairs, will you? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with my hands over my face.”

  Dortmunder said, “And I don’t want to keep this goddam mask on any more.”

  Jimmy said, “I’ll make you a deal.”

  They all looked at him. Murch’s Mom said, “You’ll make us a what?”

  “I already saw your faces anyway,” Jimmy said, “when I first came in. But if you let me stay and watch the movie, you can take your masks off and I promise I’ll make believe you kept them on. I’ll never identify you, and I won’t tell the police or anybody else that I ever saw you or that I know what you look like. I’ll make a solemn vow.” He held his right hand up in the three–finger Boy Scout oath sign, though he was not now and never had been a Boy Scout. But he meant it just the same.