“Help yourself,” Dortmunder said. It was brusque, but not really unfriendly.
“Thanks.”
While Kelp poured, Murch said, “Of course, going back, what I might try is go down the west side, take the Battery Tunnel, then Atlantic Avenue over to Flatbush, down to Grand Army Plaza, then Eastern Parkway and Rockaway Parkway and I’m home.”
“,
Is that right, Kelp said.
Dortmunder pulled a paperback book out of his hip pocket and slapped it down on the table. “I read this thing again,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” Kelp sipped at his bourbon.
Dortmunder spread his hands. He shrugged. He seemed to be considering his words very carefully, and finally he said, “It could maybe be used a little.”
Kelp found himself grinning, even though he was trying to remain low key. “You really think so?” he said.
“It could maybe be adapted,” Dortmunder said. He glanced at Kelp, then looked at the book on the table and gave it a brushing little slap with his fingertips. “We could maybe take some of the ideas,” he said, “and work up a plan of our own.”
“Well, sure,” Kelp said. “That’s what I figured.” He had his own copy of the book in his jacket pocket. Pulling it out, he said, “The way I saw it—”
“The point is,” Dortmunder said, and now he looked directly at Kelp, and even shook a finger, “the point is,” he said, “what you got with this book is a springboard. That’s all, just a springboard.”
“Oh, sure,” Kelp said.
“It still needs a plan,” Dortmunder said.
“Absolutely,” Kelp said. “That’s why the first thing I thought of, I thought to bring it to you.”
Murch said, “What, are we back with that book? I thought we weren’t gonna do that.”
Dortmunder was being very dignified, very judicious, and Kelp was hanging back and letting him have his head. Turning to Murch now, Dortmunder said, “I give the book another reading. I wanted to be fair, and we don’t have that much on the fire that we ought to turn something down without giving it a chance.”
“Oh,” Murch said. He pulled out a copy of the book and said, “I brought this along to give back to Kelp.”
“Well, hold onto it,” Kelp told him.
He was immediately sorry, because Dortmunder apparently hadn’t liked that. “Hold onto the book if you want,” he said, “but what we’ll do is, we’ll work out our own plan from it. We do what we do, not what the book does.”
“Sure thing,” Kelp said, and tried to flash Murch a high sign that he should go along with it.
Whether Murch saw the sign or not, all he did next was shake his head, look baffled, and say, “Fine with me. You want my Mom in on it?”
“Right. She and May can take care of the kid.”
“Okay,” Murch said. “Only, where’s the kid?”
“Up till now,” Dortmunder said, “we’re going along with the idea this book can tell us how we get one.”
“That’s right,” Kelp said. “How to find just the kid we want, it’s all in the book here.”
Picking up his copy, Dortmunder said, “Well, I got an open mind. I’m always ready to have a book writer tell me my business. Let’s take a look at that part.”
Kelp, riffling hurriedly through his own dog-eared copy, said, “It’s chapter four. Page twenty-nine.”
Dortmunder said, “Thanks,” and turned to the right page. He read slowly and patiently, his lips not quite moving, his blunt fingertip following the words from line to line.
Kelp watched him for a few seconds, then began to read the same chapter in his own copy of the book.
Murch sat there by himself. He looked at Dortmunder, and then at Kelp. It took him quite a while to figure out what they were doing; until, in fact, both of them had turned a page. Then he shrugged, picked up his own copy of the book, shook a little salt into his beer to get the head back, drank a bit, and settled down to read.
7
CHAPTER FOUR::
When Parker walked into the apartment, Krauss was at the window with the binoculars. He was sitting on a metal folding chair, and his notebook and pen were on another chair next to him. There was no other furniture in the room, which had gray plaster walls from which patterned wallpaper had recently been stripped. Curls of wallpaper lay against the molding in all the corners. On the floor beside Krauss’s chair lay three apple cores.
Krauss turned when Parker shut the door. His eyes looked pale, the skin around them wrinkled, as though he’d spent too long in a swimming pool. He said, “Nothing.”
Parker crossed the room and looked out the window. A clear blue cloudless day. Three stories down and one block to the north was the Manhattan exit of the Midtown Tunnel. Two lanes of cars and trucks streamed out of the tunnel, fanning apart into half a dozen lanes of traffic, curving away to the left or the right. Parker watched for a few seconds, then picked up the notebook and studied the entries. The numbers were license plates and dates and times of day. Parker said, “The Pontiac came through today, huh?”
“So did the Mercedes,” Krauss said. “But there isn’t any phone in either of them.”
“We may have to change things around.” Parker dropped the notebook on the chair and said, “We’ll try the Lincoln today, if it comes through.”
Krauss looked at his watch. “Ten, fifteen minutes,” he said.
“If it isn’t any good,” Parker said, “Henley will come take over here at four. If he doesn’t show up, that means we’re on the Lincoln, so just pack in everything here.”
“Right,” Krauss said.
Parker glanced out the window again. “See you later,” he said, and left the apartment. He went down the warped wooden stairs and out to the street, then crossed Second Avenue and got into a blue Plymouth just around the corner on Thirty-seventh Street.
Henley, at the wheel, said, “Anything new?”
“The Lincoln’s still the best bet.”
Henley looked in the rearview mirror. “That’s due pretty soon, isn’t it?”
“Maybe ten minutes.”
Henley rolled down his side window and lit one of his narrow cigars. They waited in the car, neither of them saying anything, until Henley, looking in the mirror again, said, “Maybe.”
Parker twisted around and looked out the back window. Among the cars crossing Second Avenue, coming this way, was a black Lincoln Continental. Squinting, Parker could make out the uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. “Right,” he said.
Henley turned the key in the ignition. When the Lincoln went by, an eight-year-old boy could be seen alone, reading a comic book in the backseat. Henley shifted into drive and eased the Plymouth into line two vehicles back from the Lincoln.
The black car led them across to Park Avenue, then north to Seventy-second Street, then through the park and north again on Central Park West. At Eighty-first Street the Lincoln made a U-turn and stopped in front of the canopied entrance to a large apartment house. Henley eased into a bus-stop zone across the street, and Parker watched as a livened doorman opened the Lincoln’s door, and the boy stepped out, not carrying his comic book. The doorman shut the Lincoln’s door and the boy went into the building. The Lincoln moved forward along the curb and stopped in a no-parking zone just beyond the canopy. The chauffeur took his cap off, picked up a tabloid newspaper from the seat beside him, and settled down to read.
Parker said, “I’ll be right back.” He got out of the car, crossed the Street, and walked slowly down the block past the Lincoln. Looking in on the way by, he saw the telephone built into the back of the front seat. Good. He went on down to the corner, crossed to the park side of the street again, went back to the Plymouth, and slid in next to Henley. “It’s got one,” he said.
Henley smiled, drawing his lips back to show his teeth clenched on the cigar. “That’s nice,” he said.
“Now we wait for the kid to come out again,” Parker said. “Then we’ll take a look at his route home.”