8
WHEN DORTMUNDER walked into the apartment, Kelp was asleep at the window with the binoculars in his lap. “For Christ’s sake,” Dortmunder said.
“Huh?” Startled, Kelp sat up, scrabbled for the binoculars, dropped them on the floor, picked them up, slapped them to his face, and stared out at the Lincoln Tunnel exit.
They hadn’t been able to find an apartment overlooking the Midtown Tunnel. This one, in a condemned tenement on West Thirty-ninth Street, had an excellent view of the Manhattan exit of the Lincoln Tunnel, bringing cars in from New Jersey. It also, since it faced south, got a terrific amount of sun; even though it was now October, they were all getting sunburns, with white circles around their eyes where they would hold the binoculars.
Kelp was sitting in a maroon armchair with broken springs; this was a furnished apartment, three rooms full of the most awful furniture imaginable. The floor lamps alone were cause for weeping. Kelp’s notebook and pen were on a drum table next to him, the drum table having been painted with green enamel and its top having been covered with Contac paper in a floral design. The walls were covered with a patterned wallpaper showing cabbage roses against an endless trellis. Some of this wallpaper had peeled itself off, and curls of it lay against the molding in all the corners. On the floor beside Kelp’s chair stood three empty beer cans and three full beer cans.
Dortmunder slammed the door. “You were asleep,” he said.
Kelp put the binoculars down and turned an innocent face. “Huh? I was just resting my eyes a minute.”
Dortmunder crossed the room and picked up the notebook to study the entries. “You been resting your eyes since one-thirty,” he said.
“There wasn’t anything useful since one-thirty,” Kelp said. “You think chauffeured limousines with a kid alone in the back seat come through every minute?”
“It’s all that beer you drink,” Dortmunder told him. “You drink that stuff and then you sit in the sun here, and you go to sleep.”
“For maybe two minutes,” Kelp said. “Maybe at the most five. But not what you could call a deep sleep.”
Dortmunder shrugged and dropped the notebook back on the drum table. “Anyway,” he said, “we’ve got that Caddy to follow.”
“Sure,” Kelp said. “It’s a natural. And I bet it’s got a phone in it. Why else would it have that big antenna thing?”
“Because it’s probably the police commissioner of Trenton, New Jersey,” Dortmunder said, “and they’ll see Murch and me following the car, and we’ll get picked up for anarchists.”
“Ha ha,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder looked out the window. “Traffic,” he said.
“You know,” Kelp said, “I have a very hopeful feeling about this operation.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” Dortmunder said. He looked at his watch. “If the Caddy’s coming through, it’ll be pretty soon.”
“Sure it’s coming through,” Kelp said. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday, right around two-thirty.”
“Uh huh. If it turns out it’s no good, Murch’ll come take over here at four. Try to stay awake until then.”
“I wasn’t really asleep,” Kelp said. “Not really. Anyway, I’m wide awake now.”
“Uh huh. If Murch doesn’t show up here at four, that means we’re either following the Caddy or some damn thing has gone wrong, and you should pack up everything and go home.”
“Right,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder glanced toward the tunnel, looked at Kelp, sighed and said, “See you later.”
“Sure.”
Dortmunder left and went down the warped wooden stairs and out to the street. He walked to the corner, went a block up Tenth Avenue, and got into the Renault just around the corner on Fortieth Street. Murch, at the wheel, said, “Anything new?”
“Kelp was asleep,” Dortmunder said.
“It’s all that beer he drinks,” Murch said. “He drinks that beer and then he sits in the sun, and he falls asleep.”
“I just told him that.”
“So what do we do? Follow the Caddy?”
“If it shows up.”
“Right.” Murch started the Renault, drove a block, waited for a green light, turned left on Dyer Avenue, and parked over against the left-hand curb.
There wasn’t much room in the Renault, and Dortmunder had long legs. While he shifted around, trying to get comfortable, Murch rolled down his side window and took a long narrow cigar out of his shirt pocket. Dortmunder stopped squirming to watch him light it, and then said, “What’s that? You don’t smoke cigars.”
“I thought I’d try one,” Murch said.
“It stinks,” Dortmunder said.
“You think so? I kind of like it.”
Dortmunder shook his head. He scrunched around again, moving himself an inch farther away from Murch, and then rolled his side window down. He hung his right arm outside, and watched the incoming tunnel traffic stream past his right elbow and on up Dyer Avenue.
Dyer Avenue, on the west side of midtown Manhattan, has almost no true existence at all. It runs eight blocks, from Thirty-fourth Street to Forty-second Street, and contains no houses, no shops, no churches or schools or factories. Lined with the blank walls of warehouse backs and overpass supports, it is partially roofed by ramps leading to the upper levels of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and is used exclusively to funnel traffic coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel. There’s no reason to park there, and in fact no parking is permitted.
Which was what the mounted policeman told them, ten minutes later. Coming up on Dortmunder’s side of the car, he leaned down beside the neck of his horse and said, “There’s no parking here, fella.”
Dortmunder looked up and back, and saw this policeman’s face suspended in midair. Then he saw it was a policeman’s head with a horse’s body. He just stared.
“Didn’t you hear me, fella?” the policeman said.
Dortmunder reared back, as best he could in the Renault, closed one eye, and finally managed to get the right perspective. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Yeah.” Nodding to the policeman, he turned to tell Murch to drive them away from there.
“Just a minute,” the policeman said, and when Dortmunder looked at him again he was climbing down off his horse. Now what? Dortmunder thought, and he waited while the policeman got himself down onto the blacktop and leaned his head close to the window. He gave Dortmunder a hard look, and then gave Murch a hard look. He also sniffed loudly, and Dortmunder realized the police. man thought they were drunk. He sniffed again, and wrinkled his face up, and said, “What’s that stink?”
“His cigar,” Dortmunder said. “I told him it stunk,” he said, and watched the Caddy go by. Silver-gray Cadillac limousine, whip antenna, gray-uniformed chauffeur, kid in the backseat, Jersey plate number WAX 361. Dortmunder sighed.
“Urp,” Murch said. Then, being very hasty, he said, “Okay, officer, I’ll move it now.” He even shifted into gear.
“Just hold on there,” the policeman said. The Cadillac went on up to Forty-second Street and turned right. The policeman, leading his horse, walked slowly in his tight riding boots around the front of the Renault. He studied the car and the license plate, and frowned through the windshield at the two men inside there. Murch gave him a big wide smile, and Dortmunder just looked at him.
There wasn’t room for the horse between the left side of the Renault and the brick wall of the overpass support, so the policeman left it standing broadside in front of the car.
Still smiling broadly at the policeman, Murch said out of the corner of his mouth, “What if he asks for license and registration?”
“Maybe there’s a registration in the glove compartment.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have a license.”
“Wonderful,” Dortmunder said, and the policeman leaned down to look in Murch’s window and say, “What are you parked here for, anyway?”