Jimmy the Kid

Kelp looked down that way. Crazy? With all those screwdrivers and things, they could get kind of dangerous.

Rollo murmured, "It comes from Spic-and-Span."

A confused vision of people eating a detergent and going crazy entered Kelp's head. Like sniffing airplane glue He said, "Yeah?"

"On account of the cleaning women," Rollo said.

"Oh," Kelp said. Cleaning women had started it apparently, drinking the stuff. Maybe it was a kind of high. "I'll stick to bourbon," he said, and picked up the empty glass.

"Sure," Rollo said, but as Kelp turned away Rollo began to look confused.

Kelp walked on down past the end of the bar and past the two doors marked with silhouettes of dogs and the words POINTE and SETTERS, and then on past the phone booth and through the green door at the back and into a small square room with a concrete floor. All the walls of the room were lined floor to ceiling with beer and liquor cases, leaving only enough space in the middle for a battered old table with a green felt top, half a dozen chairs, and a dirty bare bulb with a round green tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire.

Dortmunder and Murch were seated together at the table. A glass was in front of Dortmunder, next to a bottle whose label said AMSTERDAM LIQUOR STORE BOURBON- "OUR OWN BRAND." In front of Murch were a full glass of beer with a fine head on it, and a clear glass saltshaker. Murch was saying to Dortmunder, ". -. through the Midtown Tunnel, and-oh, hi, Kelp."

"Hi. How you doing, Dortmunder?"

Fine," Dortmunder said. He nodded briefly at Kelp, but then looked away to pick up his glass. Kelp could sense that Dortmunder was still feeling very prickly about this, still wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be friends or go along with this kidnapping idea or anything. May had told Kelp to go slow and easy, not push Dortmunder too hard, and Kelp could see that May had been right.

Murch said, "I was just telling Dortmunder, as long as they've got that construction on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I give up on the Midtown Tunnel at all. At night like this, I can come right up Flatbush, take the Manhattan Bridge, FDR Drive, come through the park at Seventy-ninth Street, and here I am."

"Right," Kelp said. He sat down not too near Dortmunder, and put his glass on the table. "Could I, uh…" He gestured at the bottle.

"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?"