But all he had now was hope; the hope that he could trust the kidnappers, the hope that he could trust the police. Turning, he walked to the concrete railing of the overpass, looked over, and saw no one down below. The far verge was to his left. He walked that way, hoisted the suitcase onto the railing, and let it drop. He saw it hit the ground down there, amid the weeds, and then he turned and walked heavily back to the Lincoln.
Down below, Parker got out of the Dodge. A little dust settled where the suitcase had landed. No traffic came down the ramp, nothing moved anywhere. Parker walked swiftly back, picked up the suitcase, carried it to the car. Krauss was shifting into drive as Parker got into the seat beside him.
Chapter 22
* * *
At exactly five minutes after four Murch’s Mom, in a pay phone at a Mobil station in Netcong, New Jersey, made the second call.
“Hello?”
“Let me talk to Herbert Harrington.”
“Speaking.”
“What?”
“This is Herbert Harrington speaking,” the voice said in her ear. “Aren’t you the kidnapper?”
“Wait a second,” Murch’s Mom said. She was trying to turn the page of a paperback book one–handed.
“Oh, dear,” the voice said. “Have I made a mistake? I’m expecting a call from a kidnapper, and–”
“Yeah yeah,” Murch’s Mom said, “that’s me, it’s me, only hold on a second. There!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you have the money?”
“Yes,” Harrington said. “Yes, I do. I want you to know it wasn’t easy to assemble that much cash in so short a period of time. If I didn’t have some some personal friends at Chase Manhattan, in fact, I don’t believe it could have been done.”
“But you’ve got it,” Murch’s Mom said.
“Yes, I do. In a small suitcase. I do have a question on that.”
Murch’s Mom frowned, scrinching her face up. Why couldn’t it ever go smooth and simple, like in the book. “What kind of question?”
“This suitcase,” Harrington said. “It cost forty two eighty–four, with the tax. Now, should that come out of the hundred fifty thousand, or is that to be considered my expense?”
“What?”
“Please don’t think I’m being difficult,” Harrington said. “I’ve never handled a negotiation like this before, and I simply don’t know what’s considered normal practice.”
Shaking her head, Murch’s Mom said, “You pay for the suitcase. We don’t pay for it, you pay for it.” She was thinking, There’s nothing cheaper than a rich person.
“Fine, fine,” Harrington said. “I merely wanted to know.”
“Okay,” Murch’s Mom said. “Can we get on with it?”
“Certainly.”
“I want you to get into your car with the money,” Murch’s Mom read. “Use the Lincoln. You can–”
“What was that?”
Murch’s Mom gave an exasperated sigh. “Now what?”
“Did you say a Lincoln? I don’t have a–”
“The Cadillac!” She’d meant to make a pencil change to that effect, and she’d forgot. “I meant the Cadillac.”
“Yes. Well, that’s the only automobile I have.”
Murch’s Mom gritted her teeth. “So that’s the one you’ll use,” she said, and this time she was thinking, If I could get my hands on him, I’d strangle him.
“Very well,” Harrington said. “Am I to meet you somewhere?”
“Let’s not rush me,” Murch’s Mom said. “So you’ll use the Cadillac. You can bring your chauffeur along, but–”
“Well, I should think so,” Harrington said. “I don’t drive.”
Murch’s Mom was completely speechless. She had never in her life met anybody who didn’t drive. She had been a cab driver herself for a hundred years. Her boy Stan was always either in a car, driving it, or under a car, fixing it. Not drive? It was like not walking.
Harrington said, “Hello? Are you there?”
“I’m here. Why don’t you drive? Is it some religious thing or something?”
“Why, no. I’ve simply never felt the need. I’ve always had a chauffeur. And in the city, of course, one takes cabs.”
“Cabs,” Murch’s Mom said.
“They’re perfectly satisfactory,” Harrington said. “Except that recently, to tell the truth, I think the quality of the drivers has gone down.”
“You’re absolutely right!” Murch’s Mom stood up straighter in the phone booth, and even jabbed the air with her finger two or three times, to emphasize a point. “It was the Seventy–one contract,” she said. “It was a sellout to the owners, it screwed the cabby and the riding public both.”
“Oh, is that the time the fare went up so drastically?”
“That’s right,” Murch’s Mom said. “But I’m not talking about the fare, that was realistic, your New York City cab driver had not been keeping up with inflation. It was a big jump, but it was just to get the cabby up where he used to be.”
“It seemed a large leap somehow, almost double or something. I did notice it at the time.”
“But where the cabby was screwed,” March’s Mom said, “and where the riding public was screwed, was in the split. They changed the formula on the split.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Murch’s Mom was only too happy to explain; this whole union problem was a big hobbyhorse with her. “You work for a fleet owner,” she said, “you split the meter take with him. You get maybe fifty–two percent, fifty–five, whatever.”
“Yes, I see. And they changed the split?”
“They changed the formula,” Murch’s Mom said. “They fixed it so the owner has to give a bigger percent to a driver with more seniority.”
“But surely that’s only right. After all, if a man drives a cab for years and years, he–”
“But that’s not what happens,” Murch’s Mom said. “What happens is, if the owner pulls in some bum off the Street, can’t find his way to the Empire State Building, gives him a job, puts him in a cab, the owner gets to keep a higher percentage of the meter!”
“Oh!” Harrington said. “I see what you mean; the contract makes it more advantageous to the owner to hire inexperienced drivers.”
“Absolutely,” Murch’s Mom said. “So that’s why you had all them pot heads, them beatniks, driving around, playing cab driver.”
“I did have one last summer,” Harrington said, “who didn’t know his left from his right. At first I thought it was only because he didn’t speak English, but in fact he didn’t know left from right in any language. It’s very hard to give travel directions to someone who doesn’t know his left from his right.”
Northward, a block from the Harrington estate, Dortmunder and Murch sat in a freshly stolen Mustang and waited. And waited. Murch said, “Shouldn’t he come out pretty soon?”
“Yeah, he should,” Dortmunder said.
“I wonder what he’s doing,” Murch said.
He was talking taxis with Murch’s Mom. They were trading horror stories–the hippie driver fresh from Boston who didn’t know there was a section of the city called Queens, the Oriental who didn’t speak English and who drove at twelve miles an hour to the wrong airport–until finally it was Harrington who said, “But I’m sorry, I’ve changed the subject. I do apologize. We were talking about the ransom.”
“Oh, yeah,” Murch’s Mom said. She looked at her watch, and it was almost quarter after four. “Right. Okay, let me start again. You’ll get in the Cadillac with your chauffeur, but no other passengers.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll drive to Interstate 80, and get up on it westbound. Drive at a steady fifty. We’ll meet you along the way.”
“Where?”
Murch’s Mom frowned again. “What?”
“You’ll meet me where along the way?”
“I don’t tell you that now. You just get up there, and we’ll cont
act you.”
“But I don’t understand. Where is it I’m going? What’s my destination?”
“You just get on 80,” Murch’s Mom told him, “and travel west at fifty miles an hour. That’s all you do, and we’ll take over from there.” The sense of camaraderie she’d felt with him over the issue of New York taxicabs had vanished; once again, what she really wanted to do was wring his neck.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Harrington said. “No destination. I don’t know anyone who travels that way.”
“Just do it,” Murch’s Mom said, and hung up in exasperation. Going outside, she got into the Roadrunner her son had stolen for her this morning, and headed for the other phone booth. She had originally objected to this move, saying she didn’t see why she couldn’t make both calls from the same booth, but Kelp had showed her where in Child Heist it was explained the cops might be tracing the first call, and might show up pretty soon at the phone booth where the call was made. So okay, she’d go to the other phone booth.
Northward, Dortmunder and March continued to sit in the Mustang and wait. March said, “Do we have the number of the phone booth where Mom makes her first call?”
“No. Why should we?”
“I thought we could call her, see if anything went wrong.”
“The smart guy that wrote the book,” Dortmunder said, “didn’t say anything about that.”
On the Harrington estate, Herbert Harrington stood beside his Cadillac and argued with the head FBI man. “I don’t see,” he said, “why I can’t have my own chauffeur. I like the way he drives.”
“Kirby’s a good driver,” the head FBI man said. He was being patient in a way to show how impatient he really was. “And he’s along just in case anything happens. Like they decide to kidnap you, too.”
“Now, why on earth would they kidnap me? Who’d pay the ransom?”
“Your wife,” the head FBI man said.
“My what? Oh, Claire! Hah, what a thought! She doesn’t even know Jimmy’s been stolen. She won’t answer my calls.”
“For your own protection,” the head FBI man said, “we’re going to insist that Kirby drive you. Believe me, he’s a competent driver, he’ll bring you back safe and sound.”
Harrington frowned at the man in the front seat of the Cadillac, sitting there with Maurice’s hat on his head. The hat was too large. “His hat is too large,” Harrington said.
“It doesn’t matter.” The head FBI man held the door open. “You ought to get moving now, Mr. Harrington.”
“I just don’t like anything about this,” Harrington said, and reluctantly slid into the back of the car. The suitcase full of money and his attaché case with some business papers were already in there, on the floor.
The head FBI man shut the door, perhaps a trifle more emphatically than necessary. “Okay, Kirby,” he said, and the Cadillac slid forward over the white gravel of the driveway.
“Son of a gun,” March said. “Here it comes.”
“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 attaché 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 off 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 said.
“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!”
Jimmy The Kid Page 14