Donald Westlake - Jimmy The Kid

“Oh, yeah?” Trooper Duckbundy knew about this stuff, too. “And I guess that’s a Senator or something in the backseat, is it? Well, let me tell you, we don’t like you people thumbing your noses at New Jersey.”

“No, you’ve got it wrong. This—”

“No, I don’t have it wrong,” Trooper Duckbundy said. “We get a lot of this over on the Turnpike—diplomats, political big shots, going from the UN down to Washing. ton, do eighty, ninety, a hundred miles an hour down through the chemical plants.”

“It isn’t—”

“You think you got immunity,” Trooper Duckbundy said. “Just say a tire blows at ninety miles an hour, what kind of immunity you got then? And how many innocent people are you endangering, you ever think of that?”

Another police car, this one very well marked indeed, pulled to a stop behind the Cadillac, and the trooper got out to join the action. Harrington said to Kirby, urgently, “They’re not supposed to be here!” He’d read the note from the tomato juice bottle by now. “This is where we leave the money!”

“Oh, hell,” Kirby said.

The second trooper arrived. “We got a problem here?”

“What we have here,” Trooper Duckbundy said, “is some sort of politico, a big shot. Thinks he’s immune to blowouts.”

“Is that right?”

“Now look,” Kirby said.

The second trooper said to Kirby, “Just a minute there. I’m speaking with the other officer.”

Coming like hell, Murch roared toward the intersection of the county road and Interstate 80. As they neared the overpass Dortmunder said, “Isn’t that police cars?”

But he’d only had a quick glimpse before the angle was wrong. Murch said, as he braked to a stop under the over. pass, “I don’t think so. What would they have police cars for?”

“Some sort of trap.”

“Be a dumb kind of trap,” Murch said, “with police cars.” Stopped, he shifted into park but left the engine running. “Better go see if it’s there already.”

“Right.”

Dortmunder got out of the car and went walking over to the other verge of the county road, where the suitcase would land. There wasn’t anything there. He walked farther from the overpass, looked up, and saw the Cadillac sandwiched between police cars. The one in back looked like a police car. The one in front was unmarked, but it had a flashing red light revolving behind the windshield.

“Uh huh,” Dortmunder said, and walked back to the Mustang and got in next to Murch. “Two police cars,” he said. “Also the Cadillac.”

Murch shifted into drive.

“No,” Dortmunder said. “We can’t leave.”

“Why not?”

“If it’s a trap, they’ll spring it when we try to get away. If we stay here after we’ve seen them, it could be a coincidence, we could be just two guys that stopped to look at a road map. We got a road map?”

Murch shifted into park. “I don’t know,” he said.

Dortmunder looked in the glove compartment and found a road map. He looked at it. “Illinois?”

“Don’t ask me,” Murch said. “I just took this car out of a parking lot. The plates I took off it were Jersey, same as the plates I put on.”

“A road map is a road map,” Dortmunder said. He opened it up, and he and Murch spent some time studying the highways of Illinois.

Up above, Kirby had managed finally to get the word kidnap spoken and heard. The second trooper had gone off to radio the barracks for confirmation. Trooper Duckbundy stood frowning at Kirby in a welter of uncertainty. Kirby was angry for more reasons than he could name. And Harrington was hopping up and down on the back seat, saying, “Get them away from here! Get them away!”

“As soon as I can,” Kirby said, through gritted teeth. “As soon as I can.”

The second trooper came back. “It’s okay,” he said. He nodded and gave Kirby a Clint Eastwood smile; tough, manly, distanced. “Sorry to horn in,” he said.

“Just get the hell away from here,” Kirby said.

Both troopers were offended. They went off to their respective cars, both checking their hats, belts, trousers, and ties. They got into their respective cars, switched off their respective flashing lights, and finaly drove the hell away from there.

“At last,” Kirby said. “Okay, Mr. Harrington.”

“I haven’t tried to throw my weight around,” Harrington said. “I’ve done what you people asked, because you’re the professionals. But I’m telling you right now that I do have influential friends in Washington, and I expect to be chatting with them very soon.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kirby.

Down below, Dortmunder opened the door of the Mustang and said, “I’ll go check it out again. See are they still there.”

“Sure,” Murch said.

Harrington got out of the Cadillac, carrying the money, and approached the railing. Behind him, Kirby called from the car, “Mr. Harrington!”

He turned around, exasperated beyond endurance. “What now?”

“That’s the wrong case,” Kirby said.

Harrington looked at the case in his hand, and it was the wrong case. It was his attaché case. “My God,” he said. “Good thing I didn’t throw that over, it has some rather important documents in it.” He hurriedly made the switch in the back seat of the car, getting the suitcase and leaving the attaché case. Then he went back to the railing.

The woman on the phone had emphasized that they shouldn’t hang, around, they shouldn’t be nosy, they should just toss the suitcase over the side and be off. So Harrington just tossed the suitcase over the side and was off. He turned at once, not even looking to see where it landed, and got back into the Cadillac.

As Dortmunder came out from under the overpass, the suitcase hit him on the head and knocked him cold.

“Ouch,” said Murch, when he saw that through the windshield. Dortmunder and the suitcase lay side by side next to the blacktop road. Neither of them moved.

Murch shifted into drive, steered the car over there, and shifted back into park. He loaded Dortmunder into the car, tossed the ransom on the back seat, and drove away to the hideout.

“I R E A L L Y am sorry,” Jimmy said. “I’m sure my father didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dortmunder said. “Just forget it, okay? Ouch!”

“Well, hold still,” May told him. “Let me wash the blood off.”

They were back at the farmhouse. There was a fire again in the fireplace; that, and the three kerosene lamps, gave the room its illumination. Dortmunder sat in a folding chair while May patted his cut head with a damp cloth, preparatory to putting on it the bandage Murch would soon be bringing back from the drugstore. At the card table, Kelp and Murch’s Mom were counting the stacks of bills in the suitcase; Kelp was chortling.

Jimmy said, “My father is really very nonphysical. Really.”

“I said forget it.”

“It’s all right, Jimmy,” May said. “Nobody blames your father. It was an accident.”

“By golly,” Kelp said, “it’s all here!”

“It ought to be,” Murch’s Mom said, “after all we went through.”

Murch came in then, revealing a quick view of late afternoon daylight on a rural autumn scene. He closed the door on all that, returning the room to fire lit night, and brought a package to May, saying, “No trouble. They’re getting to know me in town.” He seemed pleased by that.

Kelp said, “Stan, it’s all here, every penny.”

Murch nodded. “Good,” he said, but he didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic. Neither success nor failure surprised him; he had the born driver’s belief in the task being its own reward. Getting there is half the fun. It isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.