Jimmy the Kid

"Damned if it doesn't," Dortmunder said.

The silver-gray Cadillac came purring around the curving blacktop road, scattering dead leaves in its wake. The right car: WAX 361, whip antenna. The chauffeur was at the wheel, and the father was in the back seat. As it was disappearing around the far curve-there were no straight streets in this wealthy section of New Jersey-Murch started the Mustang, and they moved off in its wake.

It was two miles to Interstate 80. While March and Dortmunder hung well back, Kirby steered the big car around the bends and through the dales. It was fun driving a Caddy; maybe on the way back he could really open it up.

In the back seat, Harrington picked up his attachй case, opened it on the seat beside him, and riffled through the sheaves of documents. He hadn't been able to get to the office at all today, naturally, with all this mess going on, and the work was piling up. He picked up the phone and called his office in the city; his secretary had already been alerted to expect a late-afternoon call. At least he'd be able to get some of this accumulation cleared away during the drive.

Murch's Mom reached the other phone booth. It was next to a Burger King on route 46. She parked the Roadrunner and went over to stand in the booth and wait. Outside, a group of juvenile delinquents showed up on motorcycles.

The Cadillac reached Interstate 80. Murch stopped at a Chevron station by the on ramp and Dortmunder phoned Murch's Mom at the other phone booth. When she answered, there was such a loud buzzing noise, hoarse and raspy, that he could barely hear her. "You got trouble on your line," he said.

She said, "What?"

"You got trouble on your line!"

"I can't hear you with all these stinking motorcycles!"

"Oh. He's up on 80!"

"Right!"

Dortmunder got back into the Mustang, and Murch took of! again in the wake of the Cadillac. They went up on the Interstate, Murch put the Mustang up to sixty-eight, and soon they passed the Caddy, moving obediently at fifty in the right lane. "Mom's already talking to him," Murch said.

They could see the father on the phone in back. The chauffeur glanced at them out of his reflecting sunglasses as they went by. Look at that Mustang, Kirby thought, and hated the frustration that he couldn't lean into this Caddy and run a couple rings about that little beast. Later; on the way back.

At the Burger King, Murch's Mom dialed the operator, and yelled, "I want to call a mobile unit in a private car!"

"Well, you don't have to yell about it," the operator said.

"What?"

"You have trouble on your line," the operator said. "Hang up and dial again."

"What? I can't hear you with all these motorcycles!"

"Oh," said the operator. "You want to call a mobile unit?"

"What?"

"Do you want to call a mobile unit?"

"Why do you think I'm putting up with all this?"

"Do you have the number?"

"Yes!"

Harrington was saying, "Now in the matter of that prospectus. I think our posture before the SEC is that while the prospectus did speak of homesites, it does not at any point say anything about a community. A community would necessarily imply the existence of available water. A homesite would not. Country retreat, weekend cottage, that sort of thing. Have Bill Timmins see what he can root up by way of precedents."

"Yes, sir," said the secretary.

"Then call Danforth in Oklahoma and tell him that Marseilles crowd just will not budge on the three-for-two stock swap. Tell him my suggestion is that we threaten to simply bow out on the railroad end of it and carry our venture capital elsewhere. If he approves, try and arrange a phone conference with Grandin for nine-thirty tomorrow morning, New York time. If Danforth has a problem, give him my home number, and tell him I should be there in, oh, two hours at the very most."

"Yes, sir," said the secretary.

"But the line's busy!" the operator 8aid.

"Well, try again!" Murch's Mom said.

Murch reached the off ramp for the Hope exit, and slowed for the curve. In all of New Jersey, this was the closest Interstate 80 exit to the one described in the book. There was one small commercial building down on the county road, just north of the off ramp, but that was all. As for a main highway exit with no buildings or population around it, there was no such thing on Interstate 80 in New Jersey, and Dortmunder doubted there was any such thing along Northern State Parkway on Long Island, the site of Child Heist. The writer had just been making things easy for himself, that's all.

Murch pulled to a stop next to the wall of the overpass. Interstate 80 made a humming roof over their heads. "It won't be long now," Murch said.

Dortmunder didn't say anything.

"The line's still busy!" the operator said.

"Hold on a minute!"

"What?"

"I said hold on! Wait! Don't go away!'"

"Oh!"