Jimmy the Kid

Bob Dodge came back on the phone. "Are you familiar with the rules of our game?" he asked, but before Jimmy could answer he gave them anyway, talking at top speed. There seemed to be something about levels, options of subject matter, various other sophistications, but the main idea was that they would ask him questions and he would try to answer them. "Are you ready, James?"

"Yes, sir," Jimmy said. He sometimes listened to this program in the car on the way home from Dr. Schraubenzieher, and it always seemed as though he knew the right answers whenever the contestants got them wrong. About six months ago he'd sent in a postcard, giving both his home phone and the mobile telephone unit in the car, but he'd never expected them to call him. Particularly not the mobile telephone number.

And he sure wished it hadn't happened now. It was embarrassing to be here on the phone like this, answering some quiz show's silly questions, with a lot of strangers looking on.

"And here's your first question," Bob Dodge said. "Name four of the states of Australia."

Australia. Concentrating, Jimmy said, "New South Wales. Queensland. Victoria. And Northern Territory."

"Very good! Next, give the atomic number of samarium."

"Sixty-two."

"What is hemialgia?"

"Pain on one side of the head."

"I've got pain on both sides of my head," Dortmunder muttered.

"Sshh!" Kelp said.

"Who wrote Adrienne Toner?"

"Anne Sedgwick."

"What year was the battle of Lancaster Abbey?"

Jimmy hesitated. The others in the car all tensed, looking at him, waiting. Finally, with the question apparent in his voice, he said, "Fourteen ninety-three?"

"Yes!"

Everybody in the car sighed with relief; three Mickey Mouse masks ballooned.

Jimmy answered four more questions, on astronomy, economics, French history and physics, and then the next question was, "In astrology, what are the signs before and after Gemini?"

Astrology; that was one of Jimmy's weak areas. He had no belief in it, and so had never studied it. He said, "The signs before and after?"

"Before and after Gemini, yes."

"Before Gemini. . is Taurus."

"Yes! And after?"

"After Gemini."

Kelp whispered, "Cancer."

Dortmunder glared at him. He whispered, "If you're wrong-"

"Time is almost up, James."

Jimmy took a deep breath. He didn't like accepting help on a test, but what else could he do? He hadn't asked for it, and it might not even be right. He said, "Cancer?"

"Absolutely right!"

Again, general relief. Even with the mask over his face, Kelp could be seen smiling.

"You, James Harrington," Bob Dodge was saying, "have won our Hotline Jackpot!"

"Thank you," Jimmy said, and when he saw Dortmunder gesturing violently at him he added, "I have to hang up now," and hung up.

"Well," May said. "Jimmy, that was really impressive."

"Okay," Dortmunder said. "Now that the kid got his dog food and his dinner for two, let's get back to-"

And the planks gave way; both of them at once. The Cadillac slapped down onto the road like a palm slapping down on a table. Everybody was tossed up, ricocheted off the roof, and jolted into their seats again. In the process, Dortmunder's gun went sailing out the open window next to him, and Kelp's gun bounced off the roof, the steering wheel and the dashboard before landing in Van Gelden's lap.

"Hands up!" Van Golden yelled, and scrabbled in his lap for the gun. Both Dortmunder and Kelp were obediently lifting their arms, and Van Golden was still bobbling the gun, when May reached over his shoulder, took it away from him, and handed it to Dortmunder.

"All right," Dortmunder said. "All right, that's enough fooling around." To May he said, "Put the mask on the kid and put him in our car." To Kelp he said, "Put the cuffs on this guy. If it won't upset you too much, we're gonna rewrite that book of yours a little bit."

"Anything you say," Kelp said. He was puffing the handcuffs out of his hip pocket.

"And you," Dortmunder told the chauffeur, "you just sit there and keep your mouth shut. 'Hands up,' is it?" Giving the chauffeur a look of disgust that the chauffeur couldn't see through the Mickey Mouse mask, Dortmunder got out of the Cadillac, picked up his gun from the road, and said to Murch, "Forget that goddam truck. We'll go straight to the hideout from here. All that other crap was more complicated than it had to be anyway?'

"Right," Murch said. "I'll get my Mom," he said, and jumped down out of the truck.

May had put the Mickey Mouse mask with the taped eyeholes over Jimmy's head. She'd considered using the dialogue from the book about pretending it was night and all that, but somehow it didn't seem to fit the case, so all she'd said was, "I'm going to blindfold you now."

"Of course," Jimmy said.

Murch rid himself of his mask and went over to the school bus, where his Mom was impatiently tapping her fingernails on the steering wheel. She pushed the lever on her left, the door accordioned open, and she said, "So? You want to tell me something?"

"We're all taking off in our car, Mom. Run the bus out of the way and come on over."