The customer wasn’t in the office. “Now what?” Max said. “I’ll tell you, he’s out front breaking windshields. We had one just last spring, came in, complained about all that stuff they always complain about, and first thing you know he’s got a wrench, he’s breaking windshields right and left. Terrible.”
“Terrible,” Murch agreed.
The two of them walked out the front door. Used cars were lined up on three sides of them, with placards in their windshields. Max pointed. “There he is! And who’s that with him?”
“That’s my friend Kelp,” Murch said.
Kelp and the customer were standing next to a dilapidated green Chevrolet. They were talking. The customer seemed less aggrieved than before. In fact, he chuckled at something Kelp said, and he didn’t seem to mind it when Kelp patted his arm.
“Ho ho,” Max said. He looked and sounded awed.
Kelp and the customer shook hands. The customer got into the green Chevrolet and started the engine. It sounded awful. Kelp waved to him and the customer waved back and drove off. Something under the car was scraping, causing an even worse noise than the engine and also causing sparks. The Chevrolet jounced down the driveway and went away.
Kelp came walking over, a cheerful smile on his face in the sunshine. “Hi, Stan,” he said.
“Mister Cheep,” Max said, “could you use a job?” “What? No, thanks, I’ve got something on the fire.” Murch said, “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Right. You want a lift somewhere?” “I left my car at a diner on Jericho Turnpike.” “I’ll take you there,” Kelp said.
Murch said so long to Max, who was still looking dazed, and went with Kelp to the car he had parked at the curb. It was a Mercedes, with MD plates. Murch said, “Still copping doctors’ cars, huh?”
“They got the best taste,” Kelp said. “Power steering, power seats, power everything. You never catch a doctor cranking his own window down. Get in.”
They got into the car, Murch pushing a paperback that was resting on the seat out of his way. Kelp started the engine, and they rolled away from the curb.
Murch said, “What’s the story?”
Kelp, pointing to the book on the seat between them, said. “That.”
Murch laughed politely.
“No, on the level,” Kelp said. “What I want you to do, I want you to read that book.” -
“Read a book?” Murch read the Daily News and several car magazines, but he didn’t read books.
“You’ll like it,” Kelp told him. “And I’ve got an idea that hooks up with it.”
Murch picked up the book. He would like it? Child Heist, by Richard Stark. “What’s it about?”
“About a crook,” Kelp said. “A crook named Parker. He’ll remind you of Dortmunder.”
“That sounds great,” Murch said, but without much enthusiasm. He riffled through the book: words on every page.
“You read it,” Kelp said. “Dortmunder’s reading it, too. And have your Mom read it. Then when everybody’s had a chance to go through the book, we’ll have a meeting.”
“Dortmunder’s in on this?”
“Sure,” Kelp said, casual and convincing. Murch}I opened the book, feeling the stirrings of curiosity.
CHAPTER ONE::
When the guard came to open the cell door, Parker said to the big man named Krauss, “Come see me next week when you get out. I think I’ll have something on.”
3
KELP was very excited and very happy. He couldn’t sit in one place, and the result was he got to Dortmunder and May’s place half an hour early for the meeting. He didn’t want to risk annoying Dortmunder again, so he spent the half hour walking around the block.
He was so sure of this idea that he didn’t see any possible way for Dortmunder to turn it down. With Dortmunder and May in, plus Murch to do the driving and Murch’s Mom to handle the kid, it was all going to work just beautifully. Just like the book.
The way Kelp had come across that book, he’d been in jail at the time: a fact he didn’t intend to mention to anybody. It had been upstate in Rockland County, a small town where he’d run into a little trouble when some cops stopping cars to look for drugs had found a whole lot of burglar tools in his trunk. It had taken five days to get the whole thing squashed because of the element of illegal search, but during those five days Kelp had been kept locked up in the local pokey. And a very poky pokey it had been, too—nothing to do but roll Bugler cigarettes and read paperback books donated by some local ladies’ club.
Several of the hooks had been by this writer Richard Stark, always about the same crook, named Parker. Robbery stories, big capers, armored cars, banks, all that sort of thing. And what Kelp really liked about the books was that Parker always got away with it. Robbery stories where the crooks didn’t get caught at the end—fantastic. For Kelp, it was like being an American Indian and going to a western movie where the cowboys lose. Wagon train wiped out, cavalry lost in the desert, settlement abandoned, ranchers and farmers driven back across the Mississippi. Grand.
Child Heist was the third of the Parker novels he’d read, and even while he was reading it he’d known it meant something special to him, even more than the others. And as he was finishing the book the revelation had come on him like a sudden flood of heavenly light, like his little gray cell had just been illumined by a thousand suns. That’s the way it had been. And when, the next day, the Public Defender had finally gotten him sprung, he’d walked out of there with Child Heist concealed inside his shirt, and as soon as he’d made it back to the city he’d gone to a bookstore and picked up half a dozen more copies.
Would the others see it the way he had? May probably would, she was smart, and in any case she’d go along with it if Dortmunder did. Murch probably not, he tended not to understand anything that didn’t have wheels, but that wouldn’t really. matter, not if Dortmunder went for it. Murch would follow Dortmunder’s lead, and Murch’s Mom would follow Murch.
So it all came down to Dortmunder, and how could Dortmunder say no? It was a natural, it had struck Kelp in that jail cell as a natural, and it was going to strike Dortmunder as a natural. Going to. Have to. No question.
Kelp, growing more and more terrified that Dortmunder wasn’t going to think it was a natural, walked around and around the block for half an hour until a voice called to him from amid the traffic, “Hey, Kelp!”
He looked up and saw a cab going by, with Murch in the back seat, waving at him out the window. Kelp waved back and the cab continued on, toward the building in the middle of the block where Dortmunder and May lived. Kelp turned around and walked briskly after it, and saw the cab pull in next to a fire hydrant down there. Murch got out, waving at Kelp again, and then the driver got out and walked around the front of the cab to the sidewalk. The driver was short and stocky, wearing gray pants and a black leather jacket and a cloth cap.
“Hi,” Kelp shouted, and waved.
Murch stood waiting, and when Kelp got there he said, “Hey, Kelp. How come you were going the wrong way?”
Kelp frowned at him. “The wrong way?”
“You were going that way. You miss the address?”
“Oh, right!” Kelp said. He didn’t want to display nervousness or indecision, so he shouldn’t mention about walking around the block for half an hour. “Ha ha,” he said. “How do you like that, I walked right on by it. I guess I must have been thinking, huh?”
The cabdriver said, “We going in or what are we gonna do? I could be out making a buck.” She pulled the cloth cap off, and it was Murch’s Mom.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Murch,” Kelp said. “I didn’t recognize you. Sure, let’s go in.” -