same thing.”
12
MURCH’S Mom stood smiling and blinking in the sunlight in front of
Kresge’s holding her purse strap with both hands, arms extended down and in
front of her so that the purse dangled at her knees. She was wearing a dress
with horizontal green and yellow stripes which did nothing to improve her figure,
and below that yellow vinyl boots with green laces all the way up. Above the
dress she wore her neck brace. The purse was an ordinary beige leather affair,
which went much better with the neck brace than with the dress and boots.
Standing next to a parking meter, peering at Murch’s Mom’s image in an
Instamatic camera, was May, dressed in her usual fashion. The original idea was
that May would be the one in the fancy clothes and Murch’s Mom would take
the pictures, but May had absolutely refused to buy the kind of dress and boots
Dortmunder had in mind. It also turned out that Murch’s Mom was one of those
people who always take pictures low and to the left of what they were aiming at.
So the roles had been reversed.
May kept frowning into the camera, apparently never being quite content with
what she saw-which was perfectly understandable. Shoppers would come
along the sidewalk, see Murch’s Mom posing there, see May with the camera,
and would pause a second, not wanting to louse up the picture. But then nothing
would happen except that May would frown some more and maybe take a step
to the left or right, so the shoppers would all finally murmur, “Excuse me,” or
something like that, and duck on by.
At last May looked up from the camera and shook her head, saying, “The
light’s no good here. Let’s try farther down the block.”
“Okay,” said Murch’s Mom. She and May started down the sidewalk
together, and Murch’s Mom said under her breath, “I feel like a damn fool in
this get-up.”
“You look real nice,” May said.
“I know what I look like,” Murch’s Mom said grimly. “I look like the Good
Humor flavor of the month. Lemon pistachio.”
“Let’s try here,” May said. Coincidentally, they were in front of the bank.
“Okay,” Murch’s Mom said.
“You stand against the wall in the sunlight,” May said.
“Okay.”
Murch’s Mom backed up slowly across the brick rubble toward the trailer,
and May backed up against the car parked there. This time, Murch’s Mom held
the purse at her side, and her back was against the trailer wall. May took a fast
picture, then stepped forward two paces and took a second one. With the third,
she was at the inner edge of the sidewalk-too close to get all of Murch’s Mom
in the picture and with the camera angled too low to include her head.
“There,” May said. “I think that’s got it.”
“Thank you, dear,” Murch’s Mom said, smiling, and the two ladies walked
around the block.
13
DORTMUNDER and Kelp quartered around the remoter bits of Long Island
like a bird dog who’s lost his bird. Today’s car was an orange Datsun 40Z with
the usual MD plates. They drove around under a sky that kept threatening rain
but never quite delivered, and after a while Dortmunder began to grouse. “In the
meantime,” he said, “I’m not making any income.”
“You’ve got May.”
“I don’t like living on the earnings of a woman,” Dortmunder said. “It isn’t in
my makeup.”
“The earnings of a woman? She’s not a hooker, she’s a cashier.”
“The principle’s the same.”
“The interest isn’t. What’s that over there?”
“Looks like a barn,” Dortmunder said, squinting.
“Abandoned?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“Let’s take a look.”
They looked that day at seven barns, none of them abandoned. They also
looked at a quonset hut that had most recently contained a computer-parts
factory which had gone broke, but the interior was a jumble of desks and
machinery and parts and junk, too crowded and filthy to be useful. They also
looked at an airplane hangar in front of a pock-marked blacktop landing strip-a onetime flying school, now abandoned, but occupied by a hippie commune, as
Dortmunder and Kelp discovered when they parked out front. The hippies had
mistaken them for representatives of the sheriff’s office and right away began
shouting about squatters’ rights and demonstrations and all and didn’t stop
shouting until after Dortmunder and Kelp got back in the car and drove away
again.
This was the third day of the search. Days one and two had been similar.
*************
Victor’s car was a black 1938 Packard limousine, with the bulky trunk and
the divided rear window and the long coffin-like hood and the headlights sitting
up on top of the arrogant broad fenders. The upholstery was scratchy gray
plush, and there were leather thongs to hold onto next to the doors on the inside
and small green vases containing artificial flowers hanging in little wire racks
between the doors.
Victor drove, and Herman sat beside him and stared out at the countryside.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “There’s got to be something you can hide a trailer
in.”
Casually, Victor said, “What newspapers do you read mostly, Herman?”
*************
Dortmunder walked into the apartment and sat down on the sofa and stared
moodily at the turned-oft television set. May, the cigarette in the corner of her
mouth, slopped in from the kitchen. “Anything?”
“With the encyclopedias,” Dortmunder said, staring at the TV, “I could’ve
picked up maybe seventy bucks out there today. Maybe a hundred.”
“I’ll get you a beer,” May said. She went back to the kitchen.
*************
Murch’s Mom brooded over the pictures. “I never looked so foolish in my
life,” she said.
“That isn’t the point, Mom.”
She tapped the one in which she appeared headless. “At least there you can’t
tell it’s me.”
Her son was hunched over the three color photographs on the dining-room
table, counting. The lace holes in the boots and the stripes on the dress made a
ruler. Murch counted, added, compared, got totals for each of the three
pictures, and at last said, “Thirty-seven and a half inches high.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. Thirty-seven and a half inches high.”
“Can I burn those pictures now?”
“Sure,” Murch said. She gathered up the pictures, and as she hurried from the
room he called, “Did you get rid of that dress?”
“You know it!” she sang out. She sounded almost gay.
*************
“The way I figure it,” Herman said, riding along in Victor’s car, scanning the
countryside for large abandoned buildings, “what we got to deal with here is
three hundred years of slavery.”
“Myself,” Victor said, pushing the Packard slowly toward Montauk Point,
“I’ve never really been political.”
“You were in the FBI.”
“That wasn’t for politics. I always thought of myself as being involved in
adventure. You know what I mean?”
Herman gave him a quizzical look and then a slow grin. “Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“For me, adventure meant the FBI.”
“Yeah, that’s right! See, for me, it was the Movement.”
“Sure,” Victor said.
“Naturally,” said Herman.
*************
“I don’t like that sound,” Murch said. Sitting there behind the wheel, head
cocked, listening to the engine, he looked like a squirrel driving a car.
“You’re supposed to be looking for abandoned buildings,” his Mom said. She
herself was turning her head slowly back and forth, like a Navy pilot looking for
shipwreck survivors.
“You hear it? Ting, ting, ting. You hear it?”
“What’s that over there?”
“What?”
“I said, what’s that over there?”
“Looks like some kind of church.”
“Let’s go look at it.”
Murch turned in that direction. “Keep your eye peeled for a gas station,” he
said.
This current car-he’d had it seven months-had started life as an American
Motors Javelin, but since he’d owned it Murch had changed some things. By
now, looks aside, it bore about as much similarity to a Javelin as to a javelin. It
growled like some very large and savage but sleepy beast as Murch steered it
through bumpy streets of prewar one family housing toward the church with the
sagging roof.
They stopped out front. The lawn was weedy, the wooden walls needed
painting very badly, and a few of the window panes were broken. “Let’s take a
look,” Murch’s Mom said.
Murch shut off the ignition and listened attentively to the silence for a few
seconds, as though that too could tell him something. Then he said, “Okay,” and
he and his Mom got out of the car.
Inside, the church was very dim; nevertheless, the priest sweeping the central
aisle saw them at once and hurried toward them, clutching his broom at port
arms. “Yes? Yes? Can I help you?”
Murch said, “Never mind,” and turned away.
His Mom explained, “We were wondering if this place was abandoned.”
The priest nodded. “Almost,” he said, looking around. “Almost.”
*************
“I think I have an idea,” May said.