They became aware of her. Their eyes followed the small movements of the monkey wrench. They looked at one another, and they looked at Murch’s Mom’s face. Methodically, without any appearance of undue haste but nevertheless efficiently, they stuffed their mouths with the rest of their whoppers, packed their pockets with french fries, tied their Cokes to their gas tanks with little leather straps, and drove away.
Murch’s Mom went back to the phone booth. She put down the monkey wrench and picked up the phone. “Hello,” she said. “You still there?”
“I’m still here!”
“You don’t have to yell,” Murch’s Mom said. She was being very calm.
“I don’t?”
“No. But you have to call that goddam car!”
The Cadillac breezed past the tomato juice bottle with the instructions in it; milk doesn’t come in bottles any more, it comes in plastic cartons. Harrington, on the phone, said to his secretary, “Tell him our client’s feeling is he can loan him the seventeen, but he’ll need some form of security other than the department store. Tell him, off the record, our client is quite frankly worried about that marital situation of his.”
“Yes, sir,” said the secretary.
“Should be any second now,” Murch said.
Dortmunder twisted around and looked back. No suit. case came falling through the air.
The Cadillac sailed past the Hope exit, over the overpass and on, toward the Delaware Water Gap.
Back at the deserted farmhouse, May and Kelp and Jimmy sat at the card table. “Knock with two,” Jimmy said, and spread out his rummy hand.
“Ouch,” said Kelp.
“I have to get through to that car!”
“When Fm in Washington, we can arrange the meeting with Congressman Henley and then perhaps get a little action.”
Murch said, “I think maybe something went wrong.”
Dortmunder didn’t say anything.
“And if anything else comes up,” Harrington said, “you should be able to reach me at home certainly by six o’clock.”
“Yes, sir,” said the secretary.
Harrington hung up. He said to Maurice, “Nothing’s happened yet, eh?”
“No, sir,” said the man, who wasn’t Maurice at all. That’s right; it was the FBI man, Kirby.
“What’s that up ahead?” Harrington asked.
“The Delaware Water Gap.”
“Oh, really?” Harrington said, and the phone rang. Expecting his secretary to be calling back, he picked it up and said, “Hello?”
Some woman screamed gibberish at him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“What the hell are you doing on the goddam phone!”
“What? Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s the kidnapper!”
Kirby slammed on the brakes, and the Caddy slued all over the road. Kirby shouted, “Where? Where?”
“Don’t drive like that!” Harrington cried. “Maurice never drives like that!”
“Where’s the kidnapper?” Kirby had become calmer again, was driving forward, was looking all around without quite acknowledging the glares of the other drivers passing him, the ones he’d just barely missed when he’d braked so abruptly
“On the phone,” Harrington said. The woman was babbling away on the phone, rancorous and belligerent, and Harrington said, “I am sorry. I had no idea. If you’d told me, of course, I would have-”
“Where are you?”
“Where am I? Where you told me to be, on route 80.”
“But where?”
“Just crossing the Delaware Water Gap,” Harrington said. “Isn’t that strange. I’ve lived so close to it for so many years, and I’ve just never had occasion to travel this way before. It’s really quite-”
“The Delaware Water Gap?” You’ve over-you’re way the hell and-you went too far!”
“I did?”
“You’ve got to come back. Listen, what you do, you turn around and come back, and I’ll go get a road map. Come back, don’t drive too fast, stay off the goddam phone and I’ll call you again.”
“All right,” Harrington said, and leaned forward to say to Kirby, “We have to go back.”
Kirby said, “Do you have a quarter? It’s a toll bridge.” Murch’s Mom left the phone booth and went over to the Roadrunner. She tossed the wrench on the back seat and went through the glove compartment, looking for a road map. Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, Connecticut, Utah. Utah? No New Jersey.
There was a Mobil station across the highway from the Burger King. Murch’s Mom risked life and limb to run across route 46, get a New Jersey map, and run back again. She studied the map, and then called Harrington again. This was costing a fortune; she’d brought almost ten dollars in change, and it might not be enough.
“Hello?”
“Look,” Murch’s Mom said. “This is very simple, so just do it and don’t screw up.”
“I really don’t think you have to take that tone with me,” Harrington said. “If you’d told me earlier that you meant to contact me on this phone, I would have made sure the line was kept open.”
“So you and the cops could set up some sort of trap,” Murch’s Mom said. “That’s what we didn’t want.”
“The authorities have assured me they will do nothing to endanger-”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get on with it, all right?”
“Certainly. The ball’s in your court.”
“The what?”
“You’re in charge,” Harrington said.
Murch’s mom sighed “Sure,” she said. “Do you have a New Jersey map in the car?”
“I’ll check with Maurice. I mean Kirby. I mean Maurice!”
Under the overpass, Murch said, “What the hell do you suppose is going on?”
“I suppose,” Dortmunder said, “I suppose I let myself get talked into another Kelp special, that’s what I suppose. You notice he isn’t here.”
“Somebody had to watch the kid.”
Dortmunder opened the car door and got out.
“Where you goin’?”
“Look things over,” Dortmunder said. He walked along the verge of the road, out from under the overpass and far enough away so he could look up at the highway. He stood there looking at cars go by in both directions. He stood there, trucks and cars going by. The Cadillac went by, in the wrong direction. It was too far away to see the license plate, but it was the right color and it had the whip antenna and that was definitely somebody in a chauffeur’s cap at the wheel. And somebody else in the back seat.
Harrington leaned over the New Jersey map. “Yes,” he said. “Hackettstown. I see it.”
Dortmunder walked back and got into the Mustang. “It just went by the wrong way,” he said.
Murch stared at him. “The Cadillac?”
“I think something’s wrong,” Dortmunder said. “That’s my personal opinion.”
“We better go talk to Mom,” Murch said. He started the Mustang and headed south on the county road.
It was ten miles south on the county road to route 46. Then they had to turn left and travel five more miles to get to the Burger King, where they found Murch’s Mom sitting morosely in the Roadrunner, eating a whopper. They stopped beside her, and Murch got out and said, “Mom, what-”
Murch’s Mom sprayed whopper in all directions. Leaping out of the Roadrunner she cried, “What are you doing here?”
Dortmunder said, “They went by the wrong way. What’s going on?”
“They’re on the way back! I just went through the whole thing with them, they’re turning around at the Hackettstown exit. They’re on the way!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Dortmunder. “What happened the first time?”
“He was on the phone, I couldn’t get through. Will you hurry? He’ll get there, somebody else’ll pick up the suitcase.”
Murch and Dortmunder jumped back into the Mustang and took off. Murch’s Mom watched them go, and shook her head. “I swear to God,” she said aloud. “I just swear to God.”
At the Hackettstown exit, the Cadillac took the off ramp onto county road 517, turned left, took 517 north for about a hundred feet, took the westbound on ramp, and got back up on Interstate 80. Kirby said, “I suppose I can step it up a little bit now.”
“I should think so,” Harrington said. “We’re terribly late, apparently.”
Kirby, grinning a little, tipped the chauffeur’s cap back on his forehead and hunched a bit over the wheel. His foot became heavy on the accelerator. The Cadillac tires began to dig in. Harrington, feeling the pressure of the seat back against his spine, began to regret his acquiescence.
State Trooper Hubert L. Duckbundy, driving in an unmarked patrol car which made it possible for him to catch speeders but impossible for rape or robbery victims to contact him in their moment of travail, cruised along at sixty-one, eleven miles an hour above the speed limit, enjoying the fall scenery and waiting for somebody else to do sixty-two, when he suddenly was passed. A silver gray Cadillac, New Jersey plate number WAX 361, chauffeur driven, was abruptly out front, and going like hell.
Well, well. Trooper Duckbundy accelerated and started the clock. There was nothing more pleasing in the life of a man who brought fifteen thousand, two hundred eighty-seven dollars and ninety cents a year home to his wife and three children than slapping a speeding violation on the operator of a luxury car. There, you bastard, was the general theme of the encounter, and for Trooper Duckbundy its satisfactions never palled.