Jimmy The Kid

In the Lincoln, Judson had moved over behind the wheel again; not so he could drive, but so he would be further from the gun. Henley, facing him but staying on his own side, said, “Switch on the interior lights,” and Judson did so, without question.

Parker and Krauss closed the truck’s doors; inside, now, the only illumination came from the lights inside the Lincoln. Bobby, his fright being slowly overcome by curiosity as time went by with no attack against him, looked around and said, “It’s like being out at night, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Angie said. “We’ll pretend we’re going for a drive now, at night.”

Outside, Krauss and Parker had removed their masks. Ruth, at the wheel of the school bus, switched off the flashing red lights, put the bus in gear, and drove it off the road. Krauss got into the cab of the truck, started the engine, and drove off, accelerating slowly, the engine whining up through the gears.

Ruth got out of the bus and walked across the road to the Dodge. Peeling rubber gloves from her hands, she tossed them into the weeds beside the road, then got into the Dodge on the passenger side as Parker slid in behind the wheel. She said, “How’d the kid take it?”

“Fine,” Parker said. “Angie’s talking to him.”

Parker swung the Dodge around in a U-turn, drove back to the intersection, and picked up the detour sign there. He tossed it in the trunk, went back the other way again, passed the abandoned school bus, and caught up with the tractor-trailer at the next crossroad, where Krauss was removing the second detour sign, the one that had diverted traffic away from Edgehill Road while they were collecting the Lincoln.

Inside the Lincoln, Henley had taken out the handcuffs, and had cuffed the chauffeur to the steering wheel. Now, when Krauss knocked on the trailer doors, Henley turned to Angie, nodded at the boy, and said, “Get him ready.”

“I know.” Despite the muffling effect of the mask, Angie’s nervousness could clearly be heard, and she fumbled at first when she tried to take the other mask out from under her shirt. Then she got it, and showed it to Bobby, and said, “This is for you. The same kind of mask as the rest of us, see? Mickey Mouse.”

“For me?” Then he looked at it more closely, and said, “The eyes are taped up.”

“That’s because we’re going to go on playing nighttime,” Angie said. “We’ll be leaving the truck now, but you’re still going to make believe it’s night.”

“I won’t be able to see anything!” Renewed fright made the boy’s voice shrill.

“You’ll be holding my hand,” Angie told him. “It’s all right, it really is. Ask your chauffeur, there, he knows.”

Bobby looked doubtfully toward Judson, whose back was to him. “Albert?” he said. “Am I supposed to do that?”

Judson turned his head just enough to see Henley and the gun in Henley’s hand. “Answer the boy,” Henley said., his voice soft. He was holding the gun too low for the boy to see it.

Judson nodded. Not facing Bobby, he said, “It’s all right, Bobby. You do what these people say. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Bobby relaxed a bit, then, but still kept looking doubtfully at everybody, and when he said, “All right, then, I’ll wear the old mask,” his reluctance was clear in his voice.

Angie slipped the mask on over the boy’s head. “Is that all right? It isn’t too tight, is it?”

“No, it’s okay. It smells fu

“That’s the smell of rubber,” Angie told him. “Take my hand, now, we’re going to get out of the car.”

Henley led the way, opening the rear doors of the truck, then handing Bobby down to Parker. Angie got down, took the boy’s hand again, and led him over to the Dodge. Henley and Krauss closed the truck doors while Parker got into the Dodge and started the engine. Angie and Henley had gotten rid of their masks now, leaving Bobby the only one with his face covered.

They all got into the Dodge, the three men in front, the two women in back with the boy between them. Angie said, “Bobbie, this is Gloria, a friend of mine.”

“Hello, Bobby.”

Bobby said, his face toward Angie, “You took your mask off. Your voice sounds different.”

“You’re the one with the mask on now,” Angie told him. “We take turns.”

“And be sure to leave it on,” Ruth said. She sounded colder, more stern than Angie.

“I will,” Bobby said. Angie had been continuing to hold his hand, and now Bobby squeezed her fingers, holding on.

13

WHEN DORTMUNDER got to the intersection he made a U-turn and stopped, facing back the way he had come. He and May waited in the Caprice while Kelp got out and went around to the back of the car. Then he came around to the side again, rapped on Dortmunder’s window, and when Dortmunder rolled the window down Kelp said, “I need the key.”

“The what?”

“The key. For the trunk.”

“Oh.” The keys were all together on a key ring. Dortmunder switched off the engine and gave the keys to Kelp, who went and unlocked the trunk, then gave the keys to Dortmunder, then went back and got his sign. He stood there holding it, looking around but not doing anything, until Dortmunder leaned his head out and yelled, “What are you doing?”

“I forgot which one to block.”

Dortmunder pointed. “That one. The one on the kid’s route.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

Kelp went over and set up the sign. It was a three-by. four piece of thin metal that had once advertised 7-Up, and the shape of the bottle could still be seen vaguely through the yellow paint. Kelp had also thought to bring a triangular arrangement of sticks to lean the sign against, a detail not mentioned in Child Heist. He put the sign in place, then trotted back over to the Caprice and said, “How’s that?”

Dortmunder looked at it. It said ROAD CLOSED—DETORE. He said, “Jesus H. Goddam Christ.”

“What’s the matter?” Kelp looked all around the intersection, worried. “Did I put it in the wrong place?”

“Do you have that goddam book on you?”

“Sure,” Kelp said.

“Take it out,” Dortmunder said, “and find the page where they set up the sign.” Turning to May, he said, “I’m following a book he read, and he doesn’t even know how to read.”

Kelp said, “I got it.”

“Look at it. Now look at the sign.”

Kelp looked at the book. He looked at the sign. He said, “Son of a gun. Detour. I thought sure you—”

“You can’t even read!”

May said, “It’s okay, John, it really is. They’ll just think some local highway department people didn’t know how to spell.”

Dortmunder considered that. “You think so?”

Kelp hopped into the back seat. “Sure,” he said. “It makes it more realistic, like. Who’d expect a kidnap gang to put up a sign that’s spelled wrong?”

“I would,” Dortmunder said. “In fact, I’m surprised I didn’t think to check.”

“Listen, I don’t want to push you,” Kelp said, “but we ought to get down there to that dirt road.”

“I wonder what next,” Dortmunder said. He started the engine, drove a quarter mile back toward the city, then backed off into the dead-end dirt road Murch had been astonished to find last week.

“Now there’s nothing to do but wait,” Kelp said.

“I’ll lay five to two,” Dortmunder said, “some farmer comes along in a pickup truck, drives in, wants to know what we’re doing here, and pulls out a shotgun.”

“You’re on,” Kelp said.

Four miles away, the silver-gray Cadillac limousine took the curving ramp down from Interstate 80 to the county road and turned south. The chauffeur, Maurice K. Van Golden, drove at varying speeds above fifty-five, competing with the occasional other car he met. In the backseat, Jimmy Harrington read the “Letter from Washington” in the current New Yorker and wished he had the self-confidence to tell Maurice to quit racing the other drivers. Maurice behaved himself when Jimmy’s father was in the car, but when it was just Jimmy back there he obviously thought he could get away with being a cowboy. And the a