Jimmy the Kid

"I been sitting here," she said. "Wondering what's going on."

"It would take a while to tell, Mom."

"I saw the Caddy bounce," she said.

"That was part of it."

"I wish I had springs like that in the cab," she said. "Climb aboard." She shifted into first, and Murch stepped up into the bus as she eased it forward and off onto the shoulder of the road.

May had now led the boy from the Cadillac to the back seat of the Caprice, Kelp had handcuffed Van Golden to the steering wheel, and Dortmunder had filled his pockets with guns and was standing beside the Cadillac looking mulish. When Murch and his Mom came over from the school bus Dortmunder said, "Stan, you drive."

"Right."

Murch's Mom got in the back seat with May and Jimmy. "Well, hello, Jimmy," she said. "I see you're playing Mickey Mouse."

May shook her head. "It's not quite like that," she said. Inside his mask, Jimmy said, "I really am a bit old for this kind of psychological reassurance."

"Hmp," Murch's Mom said. "A smart aleck."

In the front seat, Kelp sat in the middle, with Murch on his left and Dortmunder on his right. As Murch started the engine, Kelp said to Dortmunder, "Can I have my gun back?"

"No," Dortmunder said. He looked around at the setting they were leaving, giving everything the same impartial look of disgust: truck, school bus, planks, Cadillac, chauffeur. "Hands up," he muttered, and the Caprice drove off in a flurry of falling leaves.

14

Dortmunder said, "What's taking so long? We been driving for forty-five minutes."

"I've been taking some extra turns and cutbacks," Murch said, "to confuse the boy's sense of direction. That's what they did in the book."

"In the meantime," Dortmunder said, "the cops are out looking by now."

"We should have picked up the detour signs," Kelp said. "We shouldn't have left them behind like that."

"We don't need them any more," Dortmunder told him. "And I don't want to waste any more time." To Murch he said, "So let's go straight to the farmhouse. No more extra turns?'

"Well," Murch said.

Dortmunder looked at him. "What do you mean, well?"

"Well, the fact is," Murch said. He was blinking a lot as he drove, and looking troubled, even embarrassed. "The fact is," he said, "I think I took too many extra turns and cutbacks already."

"You're lost?"

"Well," Murch said, "not exactly lost."

"What do you mean, not exactly lost?"

"Well, there was a road I thought was down this way, and it isn't here. I can't seem to find it."

"If you can't seem to find the road you're looking for," Dortmunder said, "that means you're lost. Exactly lost."

"It would help if the sun was out," Murch said. It was late afternoon now, and the sky was filling with clouds.

"I think it's gonna rain," Kelp said.

Dortmunder nodded. "And we're lost."

"If I take the next left," Murch said, "we should be all right."

"You think so," Dortmunder said.

"Maybe," Murch said.

15

"There it is," Murch said. "This time I'm positive."

"The last time you were positive," Kelp said, "I almost got bit by a dog."

The three men peered squinting out the windshield, through the streaming sheets of rain at the structure vaguely showing in the headlights. This was the fourth dirt road they'd taken since the simultaneous arrival of darkness and rain, and tempers in the car were generally frayed. Jimmy had gone to sleep, with his head propped against May's arm, but everybody else was wide awake and jittery. Twice on other dirt roads they'd become stuck in the mud, and Kelp and Dortmunder had had to get out and push. Once, when they'd found a house that had looked right to Murch, they'd discovered just after Kelp got out of the car that it was the wrong house, occupied by several human beings and at least one big German shepherd.

"Right house or wrong house," Dortmunder said, "just don't get us stuck again."

"I'm doing my best," Murch said. "Besides, that's definitely the right house."

"I'm your mother, Stan," Murch's Mom said, "and I'll tell you right now, if you're wrong again, don't ever stand in front of my cab."

Murch, leaning forward over the steering wheel, scrinching his face up as he tried to see, kept the gearshift in low and his foot gently on the accelerator. They thumped and jounced slowly through the potholes, and the structure out front gradually became more and more visible. A house, weathered clapboard, with an open front porch. Boarded-up windows. No lights anywhere.

"It is the right house!" Murch cried. "By golly, it really is!"

"How come you sound surprised?" Dortmunder asked him, but Murch's Mom was leaning forward, her head between Dortmunder and her son, and she said, "Stan, you're right. That's the place, it definitely is."

"By golly," Murch said. "By golly."

The dirt road made a sweep around the front of the house, then petered away into the woods to the right. Murch jounced them as close to the stoop as he could, then stopped the ear and said, "We made it."

"Leave the headlights on," Dortmunder told him.