The Fourth 'R' (1959)

by George O. Smith

  He entered the next one he came to. It was dirty; the windows held several years’ accumulation of cooking grease, but the aroma was terrific to a young animal who’d been without food since yesterday afternoon.

  The counterman did not like kids, but he put away his dislike at the sight of Jimmy’s money. He grunted when Jimmy requested a dog, tossed one on the grill and went back to reading his newspaper until some inner sense told him it was cooked. Jimmy finished it still hungry and asked for another. He finished a third and washed down the whole mass with a tall glass of highly watered orange juice. The counterman took his money and was very careful about making the right change; if this dirty kid had swiped the five-spot, it could be the counterman’s problem of explaining to someone why he had overcharged. Jimmy’s intelligence told him that countermen in a joint like this didn’t expect tips, so he saved himself that hurdle. He left the place with a stomach full of food that only the indestructible stomach of a five-year-old could handle and now, fed and reasonably content, Jimmy began to seek his next point of contact.

  He had never been in a big city before. The sheer number of human beings that crowded the streets surpassed his expectations. The traffic was not personally terrifying, but it was so thick that Jimmy Holden wondered how people drove without colliding. He knew about traffic lights and walked with the green, staying out of trouble. He saw groups of small children playing in the streets and in the empty lots. Those not much older than himself were attending school.

  He paused to watch a group of children his own age trying to play baseball with a ragged tennis ball and the handle from a broom. It was a helter-skelter game that made no pattern but provided a lot of fun and screaming. He was quite bothered by a quarrel that came up; two of his own age went at one another with tiny fists flying, using words that Jimmy hadn’t learned from his father’s machine.

  He wondered how he might join them in their game. But they paid him no attention, so he didn’t try.

  At lunchtime Jimmy consumed another collection of hot dogs. He continued to meander aimlessly through the city until schooltime ended, then he saw the streets and vacant lots fill with older children playing games with more pattern to them. It was a new world he watched, a world that had not been a part of his education. The information he owned was that of the school curriculum; it held nothing of the daily business of growing up. He knew the general rules of big-league baseball, but the kid-business of stickball did not register.

  He was at a complete loss. It was sheer chance and his own tremendous curiosity that led him to the edge of a small group that were busily engaged in the odd process of trying to jack up the front of a car.

  It wasn’t a very good jack; it should have had the weight of a full adult against the handle. The kids strained and put their weight on the jack, but the handle wouldn’t budge though their feet were off the ground.

  Here was the place where academic information would be useful—and the chance for an “in.” Jimmy shoved himself into the small group and said, “Get a longer handle.”

  They turned on him suspiciously.

  “Whatcha know about it?” demanded one, shoving his chin out.

  “Get a longer handle,” repeated Jimmy. “Go ahead, get one.”

  “G’wan—”

  “Wait, Moe. Maybe—”

  “Who’s he?”

  “I’m Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy who?”

  “Jimmy—James.” Academic information came up again. “Jimmy. Like the jimmy you use on a window.”

  “Jimmy James. Any relation to Jesse James?”

  James Quincy Holden now told his first whopper. “I,” he said, “am his grandson.”

  The one called Moe turned to one of the younger ones. “Get a longer handle,” he said.

  While the younger one went for something to use as a longer handle, Moe invited Jimmy to sit on the curb. “Cigarette?” invited Moe.

  “I don’t smoke,” said Jimmy.

  “Sissy?”

  Adolescent-age information looking out through five-year-old eyes assayed Moe. Moe was about eight, maybe even nine; taller than Jimmy but no heavier. He had a longer reach, which was an advantage that Jimmy did not care to hazard. There was no sure way to establish physical superiority; Jimmy was uncertain whether any show of intellect would be welcome.

  “No,” he said. “I’m no sissy. I don’t like ‘em.”

  Moe lit a cigarette and smoked with much gesturing and flickings of ashes and spitting at a spot on the pavement. He was finished when the younger one came back with a length of water pipe that would fit over the handle of the jack.

  The car went up with ease. Then came the business of removing the hubcap and the struggle to loose the lugbolts. Jimmy again suggested the application of the length of pipe. The wheel came off.

  “C’mon, Jimmy,” said Moe. “We’ll cut you in.”

  “Sure,” nodded Jimmy Holden, willing to see what came next so long as it did not have anything to do with Paul Brennan. Moe trundled the car wheel down the street, steering it with practiced hands. A block down and a block around that corner, a man with a three-day growth of whiskers stopped a truck with a very dirty license plate. Moe stopped and the man jumped out of the truck long enough to heave the tire and wheel into the back.

  The man gave Moe a handful of change which Moe distributed among the little gang. Then he got in the truck beside the driver and waved for Jimmy to come along.

  “What’s that for?” demanded the driver.

  “He’s a smarty pants,” said Moe. “A real good one.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “Jimmy—James.”

  “What’cha do, kid?”

  “What?”

  “Moe, what did this kid sell you?”

  “You and your rusty jacks,” grunted Moe. “Jimmy James here told us how to put a long hunk of pipe on the handle.”

  “Jimmy James, who taught you about leverage?” demanded the driver suspiciously.

  Jimmy Holden believed that he was in the presence of an educated man. “Archimedes,” he said solemnly, giving it the proper pronunciation.

  The driver said to Moe, “Think he’s all right?”

  “He’s smart enough.”

  “Who’re your parents, kid?”

  Jimmy Holden realized that this was a fine time to tell the truth, but properly diluted to taste. “My folks are dead,” he said.

  “Who you staying with?”

  “No one.”

  The driver of the truck eyed him cautiously for a moment. “You escaped from an orphan asylum?”

  “Uh-huh,” lied Jimmy.

  “Where?”

  “Ain’t saying.”

  “Wise, huh?”

  “Don’t want to get sent back,” said Jimmy.

  “Got a flop?”

  “Flop?”

  “Place to sleep for the night.”

  “No.”

  “Where’d you sleep last night?”

  “Boxcar.”

  “Bindlestiff, huh?” roared the man with laughter.

  “No, sir,” said Jimmy. “I’ve no bindle.”

  The man’s roar of laughter stopped abruptly. “You’re a pretty wise kid,” he said thoughtfully.

  “I told y’ so,” said Moe.

  “Shut up,” snapped the man. “Kid, do you want a flop for the night?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. You’re in.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Jimmy.

  “You call me Jake. Short for Jacob. Er—here’s the place.”

  The “Place” had no other name. It was a junkyard. In it were car parts, wrecks with parts undamaged, whole motors rusting in the air, axles, wheels, differential assemblies and transmissions from a thousand cars of a thousand different parentages. Hubcaps abounded in piles sorted to size and shape. Jake drove the little pickup truck into an open shed. The tire and wheel came from the back and went immediately into place on a complicated gadget. In a couple o
f minutes, the tire was off the wheel and the inner tube was out of the casing. Wheel, casing, and inner tube all went into three separate storage piles.

  Not only a junkyard, but a stripper’s paradise. Bring a hot car in here and in a few hours no one could find it. Its separated parts would be sold piece by piece and week by week as second-hand replacements.

  Jake said, “Dollar-fifty.”

  “Two,” said Moe.

  “One seventy-five.”

  “Two.”

  “Go find it and put it back.”

  “Gimme the buck-six,” grunted Moe. “Pretty cheap for a good shoe, a wheel, and a sausage.”

  “Bring it in alone next time, and I’ll slip you two-fifty. That gang you use costs, too. Now scram, Jimmy James and I got business to talk over.”

  “He taking over?”

  “Don’t talk stupid. I need a spotter. You’re too old, Moe. And if he’s any good, you gotta promotion coming.”

  “And if he ain’t?”

  “Don’t come back!”

  Moe eyed Jimmy Holden. “Make it good—Jimmy.” There was malice in Moe’s face.

  Jake looked down at Jimmy Holden. With precisely the same experienced technique he used to estimate the value of a car loaded with road dirt, rust, and collision-smashed fenders, Jake stripped the child of the dirty clothing, the scuffed shoes, the mussed hair, and saw through to the value beneath. Its price was one thousand dollars, offered with no questions asked for information that would lead to the return of one James Quincy Holden to his legal guardian.

  It wasn’t magic on Jake’s part. Paul Brennan had instantly offered a reward. And Jake made it his business to keep aware of such matters.

  How soon, wondered Jake, might the ante be raised to two Gee? Five? And in the meantime, if things panned, Jimmy could be useful as a spotter.

  “You afraid of that Moe punk, Jimmy?”

  “No sir.”

  “Good, but keep an eye on him. He’d sell his mother for fifty cents clear profit—seventy-five if he had to split the deal. Now, kid, do you know anything about spotting?”

  “No sir.”

  “Hungry?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “All right. Come on in and we’ll eat. Do you like Mulligan?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. You and me are going to get along.”

  Inside of the squalid shack, Jake had a cozy set-up. The filth that he encouraged out in the junkyard was not tolerated inside his shack. The dividing line was halfway across the edge of the door; the inside was as clean, neat, and shining as the outside was squalid.

  “You’ll sleep here,” said Jake, waving towards a small bedroom with a single twin bunk. “You’ll make yer own bed and take a shower every night—or out! Understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. Now, let’s have chow, and I’ll tell you about this spotting business. You help me, and I’ll help you. One blab and back you go to where you came from. Get it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  And so, while the police of a dozen cities were scouring their beats for a homeless, frightened five-year-old, Jimmy Holden slept in a comfortable bed in a clean room, absolutely disguised by an exterior that looked like an abandoned manure shed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jimmy discovered that he was admirably suited to the business of spotting. The “job turnover” was high because the spotter must be young enough to be allowed the freedom of the preschool age, yet be mature enough to follow orders.

  The job consisted of meandering through the streets of the city, in the aimless patterns of youth, while keeping an eye open for parked automobiles with the ignition keys still in their locks.

  Only a very young child can go whooping through the streets bumping pedestrians, running wildly, or walking from car to car twiggling each door handle and peering inside as if he were imitating a door-to-door salesman, occasionally making a minor excursion in one shop door and out the other.

  He takes little risk. He merely spots the target. He reports that there is such-and-such a car parked so-and-so, after which he goes on to spot the next target. The rest of the business is up to the men who do the actual stealing.

  Jimmy’s job-training program took only one morning. That same afternoon he went to work for Jake’s crew.

  Jake’s experience with kids had been no more than so-so promising. He used them because they were better than nothing. He did not expect them to stay long; they were gobbled up by the rules of compulsory education just about the age when they could be counted upon to follow orders.

  He felt about the same with Jimmy Holden; the “missing person” report stated that one of the most prominent factors in the lad’s positive identification was his high quality of speech and his superior intelligence. (This far Paul Brennan had to go, and he had divulged the information with great reluctance.)

  But though Jake needed a preschool child with intelligence, he did not realize the height of Jimmy Holden’s.

  It was obvious to Jimmy on the second day that Jake’s crew was not taking advantage of every car spotted. One of them had been a “natural” to Jimmy’s way of thinking. He asked Jake about it: “Why didn’t you take the sea-green Ford in front of the corner store?”

  “Too risky.”

  “Risky?”

  Jake nodded. “Spotting isn’t risky, Jimmy. But picking the car up is. There is a very dangerous time when the driver is a sitting duck. From the moment he opens the car door he is in danger. Sitting in the chance of getting caught, he must start the car, move it out of the parking space into traffic, and get under way and gone before he is safe.”

  “But the sea-green Ford was sitting there with its engine running!”

  “Meaning,” nodded Jake, “that the driver pulled in and made a fast dash into the store for a newspaper or a pack of cigarettes.”

  “I understand. Your man could get caught. Or,” added Jimmy thoughtfully, “the owner might even take his car away before we got there.”

  Jake nodded. This one was going to make it easy for him.

  As the days wore on, Jimmy became more selective. He saw no point in reporting a car that wasn’t going to be used. An easy mark wedged between two other cars couldn’t be removed with ease. A car parked in front of a parking meter with a red flag was dangerous, it meant that the time was up and the driver should be getting nervous about it. A man who came shopping along the street to find a meter with some time left by the former driver was obviously looking for a quick-stop place—whereas the man who fed the meter to its limit was a much better bet.

  Jake, thankful for what Fate had brought him, now added refinements of education. Cars parked in front of supermarkets weren’t safe; the owner might be standing just inside the big plate glass window. The car parked hurriedly just before the opening of business was likely to be a good bet because people are careless about details when they are hurrying to punch the old time clock.

  Jake even closed down his operations during the calculated danger periods, but he made sure to tell Jimmy Holden why.

  From school-closing to dinnertime Jimmy was allowed to do as he pleased. He found it hard to enjoy playing with his contemporaries, and Jake’s explanation about dangerous times warned Jimmy against joining Moe and his little crew of thieves. Jimmy would have enjoyed helping in the stripping yard, but he had not the heft for it. They gave him little messy jobs to do that grimed his hands and made Jake’s stern rule of cleanliness hard to achieve. Jimmy found it easier to avoid such jobs than to scrub his skin raw.

  One activity he found to his ability was the cooking business.

  Jake was a stew-man, a soup-man, a slum-gullion man. The fellows who roamed in and out of Jake’s Place dipped their plate of slum from the pot and their chunk of bread from the loaf and talked all through this never-started and never-ended lunch. With the delicacy of his “inside” life, Jake knew the value of herbs and spices and he was a hard taskmaster. But inevitably, Jimmy learned the rou
tine of brewing a bucket of slum that suited Jake’s taste, after which Jimmy was now and then permitted to take on the more demanding job of cooking the steaks and chops that made their final evening meal.

  Jimmy applied himself well, for the knowledge was going to be handy. More important, it kept him from the jobs that grimed his hands.

  He sought other pursuits, but Jake had never had a resident spotter before and the play-facilities provided were few. Jimmy took to reading—necessarily, the books that Jake read, that is, approximately equal parts of science fiction and girlie-girlie books. The science fiction he enjoyed; but he was not able to understand why he wasn’t interested in the girlie books. So Jimmy read. Jake even went out of his way to find more science fiction for the lad.

  Ultimately, Jimmy located a potential source of pleasure.

  He spotted a car with a portable typewriter on the back seat. The car was locked and therefore no target, but it stirred his fancy. Thereafter he added a contingent requirement to his spotting. A car with a typewriter was more desirable than one without.

  Jimmy went on to further astound Jake by making a list of what the customers were buying. After that he concentrated on spotting those cars that would provide the fastest sale for their parts.

  It was only a matter of time; Jimmy spotted a car with a portable typewriter. It was not as safe a take as his others, but he reported it. Jake’s driver picked it up and got it out in a squeak; the car itself turned up to be no great find.

  Jimmy claimed the typewriter at once.

  Jake objected: “No dice, Jimmy.”

  “I want it, Jake.”

  “Look, kid, I can sell it for twenty.”

  “But I want it.”

  Jake eyed Jimmy thoughtfully, and he saw two things. One was a thousand-dollar reward standing before him. The other was a row of prison bars.

  Jake could only collect one and avoid the other by being very sure that Jimmy Holden remained grateful to Jake for Jake’s shelter and protection.