Murch said to Dortmunder, “What if we just let him off near his house? Tonight, I mean.”
“No,” Dortmunder said. “He immediately gets the law on us. We have sixty miles to get to New York, and they know that’s where we’re headed, and we never make it.”
“We can give ourselves an edge,” Murch said. “I happened to notice that for the last half mile on the county road to the kid’s place there isn’t any phone booth at all. No gas stations, no stores, no bars, nothing, just a couple farms, a couple private estates. And you know the way those places are set up for protection from strangers. The kid wouldn’t dare just walk in some driveway after dark. He’d get eaten up by a dog first thing, and he knows it.”
“That’s true,” Jimmy said. “On Halloween, when I used to go trick or treating, Maurice had to drive me.”
“You keep out of this,” Dortmunder told him. To Murch he said, “That still only gives us maybe fifteen minutes head start. In Jersey I can’t disappear. In New York I can fade away like that.” And he snapped his fingers.
Murch’s Mom said to her son, “It’s okay, Stan. He’s really right, and I can put up with this place one more night. I’m almost getting used to it.”
May said, “What about the boy’s father?” Dortmunder said, “What about him?” “He’ll be expecting Jimmy back. I think we should call him, so he won’t worry all night.”
“You’re right,” Dortmunder said. “Stan, you and your mom and Andy take the kid to a phone. Let him talk to his father, but make sure he doesn’t say too much.”
“Oh, good,” Jimmy said. “I’ll go get my jacket.” They watched the boy trot upstairs. May said, “You know, I’m going to miss that kid.”
“Me, too,” Murch’s Mom said.
“He’s an okay kid,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder said, “I don’t intend to make any big issue of this, but I just want to say one thing. This is not what I had in mind when I decided to go in for a life of crime.”
24
EVERYTIME the phone rang it was for the head FBI man. Harrington kept picking up the receiver and saying hello and some very male voice would invariably say, “Let me talk to Bradford.” Bradford was the head FBI man’s name.
When the phone rang again at six-fifteen, Harrington said, “Why don’t you answer it? It won’t be for me.”
“Right” The head FBI man was very brisk. He spoke into the phone, nodded (which the other party surely couldn’t see, even if he was a detective), and smiled in grim satisfaction when he cradled the receiver. “Got them,” he said.
Harrington sat up. “You captured them?”
“No, we won’t move in till tonight, not till we’re sure they’re all asleep. We don’t want to endanger the boy.”
“But you know where they are?”
“Yes.” The head FBI man was very pleased with himself and displayed that by flexing his muscles and by making a kind of closed-lip smile in which his mouth became a straight horizontal line with parentheses around it. “They’re professional, all right, our kidnappers,” he said, “but sooner or later they had to make one mistake, and now they’ve made it. I was hoping they wouldn’t think to get rid of that suitcase.” His mouth corners drooped slightly, thoughtfully. “I’m surprised at that oversight,” he said, and he sounded almost disappointed that he hadn’t been outwitted. “And I’m glad the mechanism didn’t get broken when you threw the suitcase over the bridge,” he added. “It must have landed on something relatively soft to break its fall.”
“And I’m glad I didn’t know about it beforehand,” Harrington said. “It would have made me a nervous wreck.”
They’d told him the story after Kirby had brought him back to the house. It seemed they’d “bugged” the suitcase; it now contained a miniaturized radio transmitter, beaming a continuous signal, which could be picked up from as far as a mile and a half away. Three small trucks equipped with radio receivers, always being careful to stay out of sight, had followed that signal from the moment Harrington had entered his Cadillac; they had trailed the suitcase from Harrington to the kidnappers, and then from the kidnappers to their lair. Triangulating on the signal, the three trucks had pinpointed that lair’s location, and the kidnappers were now under intense observation.
Harrington said, “Where are they, exactly?”
“Not twenty-five miles from here,” the head FBI man said. He was washing his hands together with satisfaction. “They’ve holed up in an abandoned farmhouse off a county road down toward Hackettstown.”
“An abandoned farmhouse? I thought they’d all been snapped up by commuters.”
“There’s still a few,” the head FBI man said. “My cousin found a deal in Rockland County that—”
The phone rang. Harrington said, “You get that.”
“Right.” The head FBI man picked up the receiver. “Bradford.” He listened, looking very stern. “Right.” He listened again. “Keep them under surveillance,” he said. “If they leave him, move in. Otherwise, we stick to Plan A.” With which, he hung up and turned back to Harrington. “They’ve left the farmhouse,” he said. “With the boy. Apparently they’re planning to release him now. If they do, naturally we’ll move in. If they’re simply transferring to another location—”
“You’ll stay with Plan A.”
The head FBI man frowned. “Exactly,” he said, and the phone rang again. “I’ll take it,” he said, picked up the receiver, and said, “Bradford.” Then he looked startled, and said, “Hold on a minute.” Cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, he called to the technician dozing over his machinery, “Switch on! Switch on!” To Harrington he stage-whispered, “It’s them! Her! She wants to talk to you!”
“Oh,” Harrington said. He suddenly felt nervous and faint. He was intensely aware of the technician busily switching on and blinking his eyes to wake up.
“Be very careful,” the head FBI man said, and handed Harrington the phone.
Harrington put it to his face as though it were a spider. “Hello?”
The familiar voice said, “Oh, there you are. Who’s that Bradford?”
“Urn— An FBI man.”
“Oh. Sounds like a jerk.” (The head FBI man transformed his eyebrows into a bushy straight line low over his eyes.) “Anyway,” the kidnapper went on, “I got somebody here to talk to you.”
“What?” Harrington felt more and more nervous. Had the kidnappers discovered the transmitter in the suitcase? Were they about to make further demands?
“Hello, Dad?”
“Jimmy!” A flood of warmth suffused him. “By golly, boy, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“You, too, Dad.”
“I wasn’t looking forward to the ride out tomorrow without you, I can tell you that.”
“Well, I’ll be there, Dad,” Jimmy said.
“I know you will,” Harrington said, but when he saw the head FBI man gesturing wildly at him he realized he must be sounding too confident. It wouldn’t do to make the kidnappers suspicious at this stage. “That is,” he amended, “I was hoping you would.”
Jimmy said, “These people want you to know they haven’t hurt me, and they’re going to let me go in New York tomorrow morning.”
“In New York?” Harrington and the head FBI man stared at one another, both startled.
“That’s right. Should I come down to your office, or go on up to Dr. Schraubenzieher?”
“Well, I—well—”
“I think I’d rather go to Dr. Schraubenzieher first,” Jimmy said. “If that’s okay with you.”
“Yes, certainly,” Harrington said. “After this ordeal, I’m sure you’ll want to see him, talk to him.”
“It hasn’t been much of an ordeal,” Jimmy said. “Anyway, it’s almost over. Would you call the doctor and change my appointment? Tell him I’d want to get there around noon.”
“Yes, I will.”