“Yes, I will. But when-”
She had hung up. Myers held the phone a second longer, anxious, frustrated, then leaned forward again, saying, “Albert.”
The chauffeur slightly turned his head, offering an ear. “Sir?”
Myers cradled the telephone “We’re to stop at mile marker eighty-seven,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” And, a second later, “There’s number eighty-six.”
Myers watched the small green sign go by, then looked forward again.
It was a long mile, but at the end of it the chauffeur eased the Lincoln off onto the gravel and came to a smooth stop next to the sign with the cream numerals 87 on it. “Wait, Albert,” Myers said, and climbed from the car.
The milk bottle, looking like any piece of rubbish littering the edge of the highway, was on its side next to the sign. Picking it up, Myers fished the scrap of paper out of it, then tossed the bottle away and read the instructions:
Stop at next overpass. Drop suitcase on far verge of road below. Drive on.
Myers got back into the car. “We have to stop again at the next overpass,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
The chauffeur eased them back out amid the traffic, and now drove even more slowly than before, waiting for the overpass.
It was less than a mile later, just beyond an exit ramp. The chauffeur stopped the limousine on the gravel again and Myers got out, this time carrying the suitcase. Looking around, hearing the whisk whisk whisk of traffic hurrying by, he wondered if the police were living up to their promise. They’d assured him they wouldn’t try to interfere with the money transfer in any way, wouldn’t try to set any traps. “Let’s get Bobby back first,” one of them had said, “and then we’ll go after the kidnappers.” That was the way Myers felt, too, and the condition he would have in any event insisted on. But was it possible they’d been lying to him? Could some of these other cars rushing by him contain plainclothes policemen?
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.
22
A T E X A C T L Y 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 cabdriver 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 cabdriver 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 potheads, them beatniks, driving around, playing cabdriver.”
“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.”