Jimmy the Kid

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." -

"This is my shift," Murch's Mom said. "I'm supposed to be working now."

"It'll be a short meeting, Mom," Murch said. "Then maybe you'll get somebody that wants to go to the airport."

The three of them had entered the tiny vestibule of the building, and Kelp was pressing the button for Dortmunder and May's apartment. Murch's Mom said, "You know the kind of fare I'll get? You know the way it's been lately? Park Slope, that's what I'll get, into darkest Brooklyn for a two-bit tip and no customers and drive back to Manhattan empty. That's what I get."

The door buzzed and Kelp pushed it open. He said, "Mrs. Murch, your days of driving a taxicab are over."

"I've had traffic cops say the same thing." She really wasn't in a wonderful mood at all.

The staircase was narrow; they had to go up one at a time. Kelp let Murch's Mom go first, and naturally her son had to follow, so Kelp went up last. He called past Murch, "Did you read the book, Mrs. Murch?"

"I read it." She was stumping up the stairs as though stair-climbing was the punishment for a crime she hadn't committed.

"Wha'd you think?"

She shrugged. Grudging it, she said, "Make a nice movie."

"Make a nice bundle," Kelp told her.

Murch said, "The part where they put the car in the truck. That was okay."

Kelp was feeling the awkwardness of a guy bringing his new girl friend around to meet the fellas at the bowling alley. He called up the stairs to Murch's Mom's back, "I thought it had a like a kind of realism to it."

She didn't say anything. Murch said, "And they got away with it at the end. That was okay."

"Right," Kelp said. All of a sudden he was convinced Dortmunder wasn't going to see it. Murch hadn't seen it, Murch's Mom hadn't seen it, and Dortmunder wasn't going to see it. And Dortmunder had this prejudice anyway about ideas brought to him by Kelp, even though none of the disasters of the past had been truly Kelp's fault.

They were at the third-floor landing, and May was standing in the open doorway of the apartment. There was a cigarette dangling in the corner of her mouth, and she was wearing a dark blue dress and a green cardigan sweater with the buttons open and with a pocket down by the waist that was bulged out of shape by a pack of cigarettes and two packs of matches. She looked very flat. footed, because she had on the white orthopedic shoes she wore in her job as a cashier at a Bohack's supermarket. She was a tall thin woman with slightly graying black hair, and she was usually squinting because of cigarette smoke in her eyes, since at all times she kept a cigarette burning away in the corner of her mouth.

Now, she said hello to everybody and invited them in, and Kelp paused just inside the door to say, "Did you read it?"

Murch and his Mom had gone through the foyer into the living room. Voices could be heard in there, as they greeted Dortmunder. May, closing the front door, nodded and said, "I liked it."

"Good," Kelp said. He and May went into the living room, and Kelp watched Dortmunder just leaving the room by the opposite door. "Uh," Kelp said.

May said, "You want a beer?" She called after Dortmunder, "John, and a beer for Kelp."

"Oh," Kelp said. "He's getting beer."

Murch and his Mom were settling on the sofa. The two full ashtrays on the drum table suggested that May was probably claiming the blue armchair, and that left only the gray armchair. Dortmunder would be sitting in that.

"Have a seat," May said.

"No, thanks," Kelp said. "I'd rather stand. I'm sort of up and excited, you know?" -