“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.”
“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?”