Jimmy The Kid

by Donald Westlake

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Murch said. “Last night I started reading again the chapter where they do the kidnapping. You know, where they go and grab the kid.”

  “Chapter eight,” Kelp said. “Page seventy–three.”

  Dortmunder gave him a look. “You memorized it?”

  “I’m just careful, that’s all,” Kelp said.

  “Anyway,” Murch said, “we got a hell of a lot of stuff we’re supposed to put together for that job. Not just the abandoned farmhouse and the side road and all that, but a lot of stuff, you know.”

  “Not that much,” Kelp said. “Just a couple things.”

  “Not that much?” Murch started counting them off on his fingers. “A big tractor–trailer rig. A school bus. A car. Guns. Mickey Mouse masks. A detour sign.”

  “None of that is tough,” Kelp said. “I can get the car myself, I’ll borrow one from a doctor.”

  “The tractor–trailer? The school bus?”

  “We’ll pick them up,” Kelp said. “Don’t worry about it, Stan, we can do it. The detour sign I’ll paint myself and bring it along.”

  “It’s a lot of stuff,” Murch said.

  “Just don’t worry about it,” Kelp told him.

  May said, “Let’s get back to the boy. How old is he?”

  “Twelve,” Kelp told her. “That’s the adventurous age, May. The kid’ll have a ball, it’ll be like living out one of his favorite television shows.”

  “I’m beginning to feel sorry for him anyway,” May said, “even if we don’t take him. Living all alone with nobody around but servants, hasn’t seen his mother since he was six years old. That’s no life for a little boy.”

  Kelp said, “So this’ll make a nice change.”

  May stared at him. “To kidnap him? A nice change?”

  “Why not?” Kelp seemed perfectly sincere about it. “A break in the routine, everybody likes that.”

  “I just wish I knew,” May said, “what kind of specialist he goes to when he comes to the city.”

  “Maybe it’s a speech therapist,” Kelp suggested, “like the kid in the book.”

  Dortmunder plunked his glass down on the table. Exasperated, he said, “How many coincidences you want out of that book?”

  “Well, what difference does it make anyway?” Kelp shrugged. “The point is, he comes to the city on a regular schedule.”

  May said, “I was just thinking about special medicines or treatments or something that we might have to have.”

  “He looks healthy, May,” Kelp said. “Besides, we’ll only have him a day or two. He probably won’t even miss a session.”

  “I’d still like to know who he sees,” May said. “Just what kind of specialist. Just to know.”

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  Jimmy Harrington, lying on the black naugahyde couch in Dr. Schraubenzieher’s office, looking over at the pumpkin–colored drapes half–closed over the air–shaft window, said, “You know, for the last few weeks, every time I come into the city I keep having this feeling, someone is watching me.”

  “Mm hm?”

  “A very specific kind of watching,” Jimmy said. “I have this feeling, I’m somebody’s target. Like a sniper’s target. Like the man in the tower in Austin, Texas.”

  “Mm hm?”

  “That’s obviously paranoid, of course,” Jimmy said. “And yet it doesn’t truly have a paranoid feel about it. I think I understand paranoid manifestations, and this seems somehow to be something else. Do you have any ideas, Doctor?”

  “Well,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said, “why don’t we study the implications. You feel that you are being watched, that you are somehow a target. Is that right?”

  “That’s right. A very specific sensation of eyes, of being observed for some purpose. It’s like that well–known phenomenon of being on a plane and feeling that one is under observation, and then looking around to see that some other passenger actually is looking at you.”

  “And in the current situation? Is anyone actually looking at you?”

  Jimmy frowned at the drapes. They moved slightly, stirred by the quiet air–conditioner in the wall below. “I don’t know,” he said. “So far I haven’t caught anyone at it.”

  “Caught anyone? A very suggestive phrase, that.”

  “But that’s the way it feels.” Jimmy concentrated, trying to get in touch with his feelings. He’d been in analysis for nearly four years, and was very professional about it by now. “There’s an element of … sport in it,” he said. “As though it’s a game, and I win if I catch them looking at me. I know that sounds childish, but that is the sensation.”

  “As I am forced to remind you frequently, Jimmy,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said mildly, “you are a child. A childlike response, even from you, is not necessarily a negative event.”

  “I know,” Jimmy said. One of his unresolved and so–far unstated disagreements with the doctor concerned this aspect of childlike behavior; Jimmy felt that his own disapproval of such behavior in himself was so instinctive and so strong that it simply had to be trusted. He was not, however, prepared as yet to debate the issue with Dr. Schrauhenzieher, so he altered the subject slightly, saying, “Why did you say that ‘caught anyone’ was a suggestive phrase?”

  “You know very well why,” the doctor said; he himself knew very well why Jimmy was veering away from the topic of childishness, but he wouldn’t push the matter. In the course of the analysis the debate must eventually arise, and it would be better to wait for Jimmy to feel strong enough to raise the subject himself.

  At the moment, Jimmy had hared off after this semantic scent. “I don’t see that ‘caught anyone’ is a particularly pertinent phrase,” he said. “It’s merely the standard idiom in that circumstance, normal American usage. I caught him looking at me is simply the way that’s said. I suppose it’s the mind’s instinctive aversion to the duplication of idea implicit in ‘I saw him looking.’ On the other hand, I could merely be evading the issue, analyzing it away.”

  “One of the great problems in analysis,” the doctor said, “is that the patient may merely become cleverer at avoiding self–comprehension. To evade my suggestion by offering the titillation of a friendly discussion on idiomatic usage is wily enough, but then to suggest to yourself that you are trying an evasion technique is almost too clever. The idea being, of course, that we will now go off on the tangent of your evasion mechanisms, and therefore safely avoid discussion of either your dislike of childhood mannerisms or your fear of competition.”

  “Fear of competition?” Once again Jimmy avoided the childish–behavior problem, this time realizing just a second too late that in dodging away from that he had landed himself squarely in the topic the doctor really wanted to discuss. Before seeing the trap, though, he had already blundered ahead by asking, “Where does that come in? We weren’t discussing my fear of competition.”

  “Oh, but we were,” the doctor said, and Jimmy could hear the smugness of victory in the man’s voice. “You spoke of being someone’s target. You said it was like a sport or a game. You said you hadn’t caught anyone yet, but that you felt if you did catch someone you would win.”

  “I think you’re just playing semantics with me.”

  “You mean you’d rather I would play semantics with you. But I won’t. I will instead point out that in being in the top two percentile of IQ, you naturally know that you stand out from your peers, even among the boys of Bradley School. Being wealthy also sets you apart. You are inevitably and naturally the target of many eyes. You have been taught that much is expected of you, and you are aware of the level of performance that you should be capable of maintaining. Your competition is with your own excellence, it is played out very much in public, and you fear your inadequacy to maintain your own standard. Thus your desire to make motion pictures, to be the director and have the opportunity to safely be in charge; first to define the action and then to capture it permanently on film, where it can’t g
et out of your control.”

  “I thought we’d agreed,” Jimmy said coldly, “not to mention that ambition of mine.”

  “You’re right,” the doctor said. “I do apologize.”

  The fact was, the only time Jimmy had ever demonstrated real anger toward Dr. Schraubenzieher had been on this subject of movies. He knew that he wanted to make movies because he was an artist; the doctor, assuming him to be a child, assumed the desire to be childish. He had asked for movie equipment, and the Christmas before last he had been given a Super 8 silent camera and projector. Super 8! Would they have given Mozart a toy piano? Wasn’t Mozart a child?

  Well, he’d been through those arguments, to no effect. Except that this last Christmas he’d been given some basic 16mm equipment, with a potential capacity for sound. Still, it wasn’t home movies he was interested in, it was film art.

  But they weren’t going to talk about that; it had been agreed, after his one outburst, to let the subject lie. The doctor had made a mistake in bringing it up, but had immediately apologized, and that at least was something. Jimmy, who had gone rigid, relaxed again and said, “I’m sorry. Where were we? Competition with myself, wasn’t it?”

  “Exactly. Competition with your own high standard. Thus your fear of being childlike, as though to act your age would be somehow to fail to live up to your potential. You have a brilliant mind–for your age. You are extremely imaginative and resourceful–for your age.”

  “But isn’t there a fallacy,” Jimmy asked, “in the concept of competition with one’s own capabilities? There can’t be failure, because an apparent failure would merely indicate a faulty original estimate of the capabilities. The estimate should then be geared down to the actual accomplishment, thus obliterating the apparent failure. And if failure is impossible, ipso facto victory is also impossible. Without the potential for either victory or failure, how can there be competition?”

  Dr. Schraubenzieher smiled at the back of the boy’s head. Very well, he would give the child a rest; particularly since Jimmy had behaved so decently about the motion picture slip. For the remainder of the session they played word games.

  At the end, when Jimmy was leaving the consulting room, he paused in the doorway, looked at the doctor with a troubled frown, and said, “Do you suppose by any chance somebody is watching me?”

  The doctor smiled indulgently. He’s projecting the motion picture director theme, he thought, but of course didn’t say that. “Certainly not,” he said. “We both know better, don’t we?”

  “I suppose so. See you Friday.”

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  Kelp, sitting in the back seat with the Mickey Mouse masks, said, “Here he comes.”

  “I see him,” Dortmunder said. Dortmunder was driving, and May was sitting next to him. Kelp was the one who had gotten this car, a blue Caprice with MD plates, and it had been his intention to drive it, but Dortmunder had said, “I’ll drive.” No explanation, just a sort of heavy determination that Kelp had found it impossible to argue with. So Kelp was now in the back seat, leaning forward between Dortmunder and May, watching through the windshield as the kid–somewhat tall for his age, but very skinny–came out of the apartment building and was escorted into the gray Cadillac by the doorman.

  Dortmunder started the engine of the Caprice. Kelp said, “You don’t want to follow too close. Hang back a couple cars.”

  “Shut up, Andy,” Dortmunder said, and May turned to look at Kelp and give him a little nod, suggesting that he should humor Dortmunder at the moment by leaving him alone.

  “Anything you say,” Kelp said, and relaxed against the seat back as Dortmunder eased the Caprice into the line of traffic.

  The Cadillac led the way down Central Park West to Sixty–Ninth Street, then across to Ninth Avenue and straight down to the Lincoln Tunnel. It was shortly after four on a Wednesday afternoon, and the rush–hour traffic had already started to build. It was stop–and–go through the tunnel, but over on the Jersey side things loosened up, and they were driving almost up to the speed limit as they headed west, across route 3.

  Kelp had been nervous and full of anticipation all day, but now that they were actually in motion he found himself growing increasingly calm. In fact, sitting in the back seat of a car heading west across New Jersey was essentially a dull and monotonous occupation no matter what the purpose, and Kelp soon had to admit he was getting bored. Conversation might have helped, but he suspected Dortmunder wasn’t in any mood for chitchat, and in any event it’s always hard to maintain a conversation between the front and back seats of an automobile. So after a while he pulled from his pocket one of his copies of Child Heist and began to read again the part where they grabbed the kid. Chapter eight.

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  When Parker got to the intersection he made a U–turn and stopped, facing back the way he had come. He and Angie waited in the Dodge while Henley took the ROAD CLOSED–DETOUR sign out of the trunk and set it up blocking the numbered county road, with the arrow pointing toward the smaller blacktop road leading off into the woods to the right. This was a completely empty intersection, the crossing of a minor county road and an almost–abandoned old connector road, with no buildings of any kind anywhere in sight. On two sides there were dense woods, on the third a scruffy weed–grown meadow, and on the fourth a cornfield now dry and brown after the harvest.

  Henley got back into the car, and Parker drove a quarter mile back toward the city, then backed off into the dead–end dirt road he’d found last week. There was nothing to do now but wait; Krauss and Ruth had already been dropped off, Krauss would be setting up the other detour sign, and everything was set.

  Six miles away, the black Lincoln limousine took the curving ramp down from Northern State Parkway to the county road and turned north. The chauffeur, Albert Judson, drove steadily at fifty–five, undisturbed by other traffic in this sparsely populated area early on a Tuesday afternoon. In the back seat, Bobby Myers read his comic books, sprawling comfortably across the seat.

  Seven minutes later Henley said, “Here they come.”

  “I see them,” Parker said, and put the Dodge in gear as the Lincoln sailed by them. The Dodge moved out from the dirt road and accelerated in the Lincoln’s wake.

  Judson, at the wheel of the Lincoln, tapped the brake when he saw the sign blocking the road ahead. Bobby, behind him, looked up from his comic book and said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Detour. We have to take Edgehill Road.”

  “The detour wasn’t there before.”

  Judson, turning off onto the secondary road, said, “I guess they just started. Maybe they’ll fill in those potholes down by the bridge.”

  “Boy, I hope so,” Bobby said. “Sometimes I could throw up along there.”

  “Don’t do that,” Judson said, grinning in the rear–view mirror at the boy, and as he did so he came around a curve in the road and saw vehicles stopped ahead. A school bus, facing this way, its red lights flashing, meaning it was unloading passengers and traffic wasn’t permitted to pass it in either direction. And a truck, a big tractor–trailer rig, facing the same direction as the Lincoln and obediently standing still. The two vehicles between them blocked the road completely. Judson braked, and the Lincoln slid to a stop directly behind the truck. Bobby said, “Why’s the bus stopped there?”

  “Must be letting somebody off.”

  “Nobody’s getting out.”

  Judson, who was sometimes irritated by Bobby’s questions, said, “Then they’re waiting for somebody who’s supposed to get on.”

  Back at the intersection, Parker stopped long enough for Henley to get out and move the detour sign so that it now blocked the road the Lincoln had just gone down. Then they drove on, following the Lincoln.

  Judson too was beginning to think the school bus was taking too long to do nothing. Glancing in the rear–view mirror again, seeing the blue Dodge coming to a stop behind him, almost close enough
to touch the Lincoln’s rear bumper, he said, “Pretty well–traveled road.”

  In the Dodge, Parker and Henley and Angie were putting on the large rubber Mickey Mouse masks. “I feel like a clown in this thing,” Henley said. His voice was muffled and altered by the rubber.

  “It’s to make it easier for the kid,” Parker said. “We don’t want a hysterical kid on our hands. Angie, you do the talking to him.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s a game, it’s fun, we’re all just playing.”

  “I know,” Angie said.

  “Let’s go,” Parker said.

  They got out of the Dodge, Parker and Henley carrying revolvers, and walked swiftly up next to the Lincoln, Parker on the left and Henley and Angie on the right.