“Shut that door,” Murch’s Mom called. “It’s nice and warm in here, let’s keep it that way.”
Dortmunder shut the door. “Where’s Stan?” he said.
Murch’s Mom said, “He went to get some groceries.”
“Groceries?”
May said, “Jimmy says he’s an expert at scrambled eggs.”
“I always make my own breakfast,” Jimmy said. “Mrs. Engelberg is hopeless.” Looking slyly at Murch’s Mom he said, “You wouldn’t be shooting the moon, would you?”
“Of course not,” Murch’s Mom said. “With this hand?” Dortmunder walked slowly around the room, bending this way and that, shrugging his shoulders, twisting his head around. Everything hurt. His wrists hurt. He said, “Isn’t that hand over?”
“Not quite,” Murch’s Mom said.
Dortmunder went over and looked at the hand. They each had two cards left and it was Murch’s Mom’s lead. Dortmunder, kibitzing over her shoulder, saw that she had the ace of clubs and the ten of diamonds left. “Well, I might as well get rid of my last winner,” she said, and tossed out the ace of clubs.
Dortmunder walked around to kibitz May’s hand, while Jimmy said, “I thought you weren’t shooting the moon.”
“I’m not,” Murch’s Mom said. “I just don’t want to get stuck with the last lead.”
“Sure,” Jimmy said.
May had to play second, on Murch’s Mom’s ace of clubs, and she had the ace of hearts and the jack of diamonds. Dortmunder watched May’s hand hover over the jack of diamonds, which would beat Murch’s Mom’s final ten of diamonds lead, then hover over the ace of hearts.
Then it hovered over the jack of diamonds again. Then the ace of hearts again.
Dortmunder’s stomach growled. Loudly.
“Oh, all right,” May said, and threw the jack of diamonds, holding back the ace of hearts.
“I didn’t say anything,” Dortmunder said.
“Your stomach did,” May told him.
“I can’t help that.” Dortmunder went on around the table to look at Jimmy’s hand. The kid had the king of hearts and the queen of diamonds, and he barely hesitated at all before throwing the king of hearts. “If you want to shoot the moon,” he said, “I might as well help.”
Murch’s Mom, drawing in the trick, looked at the kid with sudden sharp suspicion. “What have you done, you bad boy?” she asked, and tossed out the ten of diamonds.
“Oh, dear,” May said, and dropped the ace of hearts on it.
“I kept a stopper,” Jimmy said calmly. He dropped the queen of diamonds and said, “That’s twenty-five for you and one for me.”
“And coffee for me,” Dortmunder said.
“Yes yes,” May said.
Murch’s Mom, who was well-known as a poor loser, wrote down the scores and said, “You think you’re pretty cute, don’t you?”
“I’ve learned over the course of years,” Jimmy told her, “that defensive play is much more profitable in the long run.”
“The course of years? Are you kidding me?”
His face as innocent as a choirboy’s, Jimmy said, “What’s the score, anyway?”
Murch’s Mom tossed the pad across the table to him. “Read it yourself,” she said.
Dortmunder got his coffee from May, who then went back to her game. Dortmunder walked around and around, drinking coffee and trying to limber up, and after a while Murch came in, with eggs and milk and butter and bread and a newspaper and a frying pan and a pale blue flight bag that said Air France on it and God knows what else. Dortmunder said, “We gonna live here?”
Murch’s Mom said, “There’s things we need. Don’t complain all the time.”
Dortmunder said, “What’s with the Air France bag?”
May was pulling clothing out of it: sweater, socks, trousers, all boy-size. “Jimmy doesn’t have anything to wear,” she said. “It’s too cold for what he had on, and that’s all dirty now anyway.”
Murch said to Jimmy, “I’m sorry, kid, they didn’t have an avocado.”
“That’s okay,” Jimmy said. ‘We can make a fine salad without it.”
Dortmunder said, “Avocado?” Things, it seemed to him, were getting out of hand: Air France bags, avocados. However, nobody else in this room seemed to think things were getting out of hand, and he knew better than to raise the question with any of them, so he went back to the dining room.
Where Kelp was wide awake, sitting up, reading Child Heist. “Morning,” Kelp said, grinning from ear to ear. “I slept like a top. How about you?”
“Like a bottom,” Dortmunder told him. “My mattress leaked.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of that book?”
‘Well, we got the money switch coming up this afternoon,” Kelp said. “I thought I ought to refresh my memory, read that chapter again. You oughta take a look at it, too.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Absolutely,” Kelp said. “Chapter twelve. Page a hundred and nine.”
21
CHAPTER TWELVE::
At exactly four P.M. Ruth, in a pay phone at a Shell station in Patchogue, Long Island, made the second call.
“Myers residence.”
“Let me talk to George Myers.”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Tell him,” Ruth said, “it’s the people who have his kid.”
“One moment, please.”
But it was only fifteen or twenty seconds before Myers was on the phone, saying, “How’s Bobby? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” Ruth said. “You’ve got the money?”
“Yes. Can’t I speak to him?’
“He isn’t here. You do right, you’ll have him back tonight.”
“I’ll do what you say, don’t worry about that.” I’m not the one has to worry, Ruth said. I want you to get into your car with the money. Use the Lincoln. You can bring your chauffeur along, but nobody else.”
“All right,” Myers said. “All right.”
“Drive over to Northern State Parkway,” Ruth told him, “and get up on the eastbound. Drive at a steady fifty. We’ll meet you along the way.”
“Yes,” Myers said. “All right.”
“Do it now,” Ruth said, and hung up. Going outside, she got into the Pinto, drove away from the Shell station, and headed for the other phone booth.
Northward, a block from the Myers estate, Parker and Krauss sat in the Dodge and waited. Henley and Angie were back at the farmhouse, watching the kid.
“Here he comes,” Krauss said.
They watched the Lincoln go by, the chauffeur driving, Myers hunched forward nervously on the back seat. When it was two blocks away, Krauss started the Dodge, and they moved off in its wake.
After a few blocks Parker said, “He’s going the right way. And there’s nobody else with him.”
“Right. There’s a phone in this drugstore up here.”
They let the Lincoln go on, heading for Northern State Parkway. While Krauss stayed in the car, Parker went into the drugstore and called Ruth at the other pay phone. She had just arrived, and picked it up on the first ring. “Yes?”
“He’s on his way,” Parker said. “He’ll be taking the ramp in maybe two minutes.”
Ruth checked her watch, “Right,” she said.
Parker got back into the Dodge, and Krauss took off again in the wake of the Lincoln, which was no longer in sight. They entered the parkway, Krauss lifted them to sixty-five, and soon they passed the Lincoln, moving obediently at fifty in the right lane. In the back seat, Myers was still hunching forward.
In the phone booth, Ruth dialed the operator, and told her, “I want to call a mobile unit in a private car.”
“Do you have the number?”
“Yes, I do.”
Krauss reached their exit, took the off ramp, looped around under the parkway, and stopped next to the wall of the overpass. They’d chosen this exit with care, it having no nearby buildings or population. Potato fields stretched away flat and dry in all directions, with stands of trees in the distance. To the south the secondary road led to the first fringes of a town, but northward there were merely trees and the black top curving away out of sight.
In the limousine moving along the parkway like a slow black whale amid darting dolphins, George Myers leaned forward in his seat, staring at the road ahead, wondering when and how they would contact him. The suitcase full of money was on the seat beside him. Albert Judson, the chauffeur, kept his eyes on the road and the pace of the car at a steady fifty.
The telephone rang.
For the first few seconds, Myers was too disoriented to realize what that sound was. His concentration had been too exclusively outside the car, out ahead of him where the kidnappers were waiting. Now, startled, he looked quickly around, then suddenly understood. That’s why they wanted him to use the Lincoln; they intended to phone him.
He picked up the receiver, almost afraid of the black plastic. Tentatively, he held it to his face. “Hello?”
“Myers?” It was the same woman’s voice, cold and impersonal, with a tinge of roughness.
“Yes,” he said. “I know who you are.”
“Tell your chauffeur to stop at mile marker eighty-seven. At the small green sign. You’ll find a milk bottle there with a piece of paper in it. That will give you your instructions.”