“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 contact 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 attach� 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 attach� 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 of! 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 8aid.
“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!”
Murch’s Mom, leaving the phone off the hook, stepped out of the booth and went over to the Roadrunner. She had seen tools on the back seat; yes, there was a nice big monkey wrench. She picked it up, hefted it, and went over to stand in front of the motorcyclists, who were sitting on their throbbing machines, filling their faces with whoppers. She didn’t say anything; not that it would have been possible in any event. She stood looking at them. She thumped the monkey wrench gently into the palm of her left hand. She lifted it, thumped it gently again, lifted it, thumped it, lifted it, thumped it.