Jimmy the Kid (8 page)

“The boy's all
alone
out in the estate?” May was truly shocked.

“There's four servants that live in,” Kelp said. “The chauffeur, and the—”

The door opened and Murch's Mom came in, followed by Murch. They were both carrying beers, and Murch was also carrying a saltshaker. May looked up and said, “So
there
you are.”

“It's real nice out there,” Murch's Mom said. She sat down at the table, placing the beer in front of her. “Especially at this time of year, with the leaves all turning.”

“We thought you got lost,” May said.

“Naw,” Murch said. “It's simple. You go out 80, you get off at the Hope interchange, you take county road 519. Our big problem was, we had a hell of a time finding an abandoned farmhouse.”

“I knew it,” Dortmunder said. He gave a triumphant glare toward the book lying on the table in front of Kelp.

Kelp said, “But you did find one, huh?”

“Yeah, finally.” Murch shook his head. “All the abandoned farmhouses out there, people from the city already went out and found them and bought them and filled them up with fancy barn siding and cloth wallpaper and made country houses out of them.”

“They've all got Great Danes,” Murch's Mom said. “We went out some of those driveways pretty fast.”

“But the point is,” Kelp said, “you did find an abandoned farmhouse.”

“It's a mess,” Murch said. “There isn't any electricity, and there isn't any plumbing. There's a well out back, with a handle thing that you pump.”

Murch's Mom nodded. “It's not like anything in the twentieth century,” she said.

“But it's isolated,” Kelp suggested. “Is it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Murch said. “It's isolated, all right. Way to hell and gone isolated.”

“Well, that's the important part,” Kelp said. Primarily speaking to Dortmunder, he said, “We'll only be there for a couple days, and the more abandoned and isolated it is the better.”

Dortmunder said to Murch, “How far is this from where we grab the kid?”

“Maybe twenty miles.”

“And how far from the kid's house?”

“Maybe forty.”

Dortmunder nodded thoughtfully. “It's kind of close,” he said.

Kelp said, “That's got a big advantage, when you think about it. The cops won't be looking in that close.”

“The cops,” Dortmunder told him, “will be looking
everywhere.
A rich man's son is gone, they'll look for him.”

“If they find that abandoned farmhouse,” Murch said, “I'll be surprised.”

“We'll all be surprised,” Dortmunder said. “Unpleasantly.”

“I'll tell you something else,” Murch said. “Last night I started reading again the chapter where they do the kidnapping. You know, where they go and grab the kid.”

“Chapter eight,” Kelp said. “Page seventy-three.”

Dortmunder gave him a look. “You memorized it?”

“I'm just careful, that's all,” Kelp said.

“Anyway,” Murch said, “we got a hell of a lot of stuff we're supposed to put together for that job. Not just the abandoned farmhouse and the side road and all that, but a lot of
stuff
, you know.”

“Not that much,” Kelp said. “Just a couple things.”

“Not that much?” Murch started counting them off on his fingers. “A big tractor-trailer rig. A school bus. A car. Guns. Mickey Mouse masks. A detour sign.”

“None of that is tough,” Kelp said. “I can get the car myself, I'll borrow one from a doctor.”

“The tractor-trailer? The school bus?”

“We'll pick them up,” Kelp said. “Don't worry about it, Stan, we can do it. The detour sign I'll paint myself and bring it along.”

“It's a lot of stuff,” Murch said.

“Just don't worry about it,” Kelp told him.

May said, “Let's get back to the boy. How old is he?”

“Twelve,” Kelp told her. “That's the adventurous age, May. The kid'll have a ball, it'll be like living out one of his favorite television shows.”

“I'm beginning to feel sorry for him anyway,” May said, “even if we
don't
take him. Living all alone with nobody around but servants, hasn't seen his mother since he was six years old. That's no life for a little boy.”

Kelp said, “So this'll make a nice change.”

May stared at him. “To kidnap him? A nice change?”

“Why not?” Kelp seemed perfectly sincere about it. “A break in the routine, everybody likes that.”

“I just wish I knew,” May said, “what kind of specialist he goes to when he comes to the city.”

“Maybe it's a speech therapist,” Kelp suggested, “like the kid in the book.”

Dortmunder plunked his glass down on the table. Exasperated, he said, “How many coincidences you want out of that book?”

“Well, what difference does it make anyway?” Kelp shrugged. “The point is, he comes to the city on a regular schedule.”

May said, “I was just thinking about special medicines or treatments or something that we might have to have.”

“He looks healthy, May,” Kelp said. “Besides, we'll only have him a day or two. He probably won't even miss a session.”

“I'd still like to know who he sees,” May said. “Just what kind of specialist. Just to know.”

10

J
IMMY
H
ARRINGTON, LYING
on the black naugahyde couch in Dr. Schraubenzieher's office, looking over at the pumpkin-colored drapes half-closed over the air-shaft window, said, “You know, for the last few weeks, every time I come into the city I keep having this feeling,
someone is watching me
.”

“Mmhm?”

“A very specific kind of watching,” Jimmy said, “I have this feeling,
I'm somebody's target.
Like a sniper's target. Like the man in the tower in Austin, Texas.”

“Mm hm?”

“That's obviously paranoid, of course,” Jimmy said. “And yet it doesn't truly have a paranoid
feel
about it. I think I understand paranoid manifestations, and this seems somehow to be something else. Do you have any ideas, Doctor?”

“Well,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said, “why don't we study the implications? You feel that you are being watched, that you are somehow a target. Is that right?”

“That's right. A very specific sensation of eyes, of being observed for some
purpose.
It's like that well-known phenomenon of being on a plane and feeling that one is under observation, and then looking around to see that some other passenger actually is looking at you.”

“And in the current situation? Is anyone actually looking at you?”

Jimmy frowned at the drapes. They moved slightly, stirred by the quiet air-conditioner in the wall below. “I don't know,” he said. “So far I haven't caught anyone at it.”

“
Caught
anyone? A very suggestive phrase, that.”

“But that's the way it feels.” Jimmy concentrated, trying to get in touch with his feelings. He'd been
in
analysis for nearly four years, and was very professional about it by now. “There's an element of … sport in it,” he said. “As though it's a game, and I win if I catch them looking at me. I know that sounds childish, but that is the sensation.”

“As I am forced to remind you frequently, Jimmy,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said mildly, “you
are
a child. A childlike response, even from you, is not necessarily a negative event.”

“I know,” Jimmy said. One of his unresolved and so-far unstated disagreements with the doctor concerned this aspect of childlike behavior; Jimmy felt that his own disapproval of such behavior in himself was so instinctive and so strong that it simply had to be trusted. He was not, however, prepared as yet to debate the issue with Dr. Schraubenzieher, so he altered the subject slightly, saying, “Why did you say that ‘caught anyone' was a suggestive phrase?”

“You know very well why,” the doctor said; he himself knew very well why Jimmy was veering away from the topic of childishness, but he wouldn't push the matter. In the course of the analysis the debate must eventually arise, and it would be better to wait for Jimmy to feel strong enough to raise the subject himself.

At the moment, Jimmy had hared off after this semantic scent. “I don't see that ‘caught anyone' is a particularly pertinent phrase,” he said. “It's merely the standard idiom in that circumstance, normal American usage: ‘I caught him looking at me' is simply the way that's
said.
I suppose it's the mind's instinctive aversion to the duplication of idea implicit in ‘I
saw
him
looking.'
On the other hand, I could merely be evading the issue, analysing it away.”

“One of the great problems in analysis,” the doctor said, “is that the patient may merely become cleverer at avoiding self-comprehension. To evade my suggestion by offering the titillation of a friendly discussion on idiomatic usage is wily enough, but then to suggest
yourself
that you are trying an evasion technique is almost too clever. The idea being, of course, that we will now go off on the tangent of your evasion mechanisms, and therefore safely avoid discussion of either your dislike of childhood mannerisms or your fear of competition.”

“Fear of competition?” Once again Jimmy avoided the childish-behavior problem, this time realizing just a second too late that in dodging away from that he had landed himself squarely in the topic the doctor
really
wanted to discuss. Before seeing the trap, though, he had already blundered ahead by asking, “Where does that come in? We weren't discussing my fear of competition.”

“Oh, but we were,” the doctor said, and Jimmy could hear the smugness of victory in the man's voice. “You spoke of being someone's target. You said it was like a sport or a game. You said you hadn't caught anyone yet, but that you felt if you did catch someone you would win.”

“I think you're just playing semantics with me.”

“You mean you'd rather I would play semantics with you. But I won't. I will instead point out that in being in the top two percentile of IQ, you naturally know that you stand out from your peers, even among the boys of Bradley School. Being wealthy also sets you apart. You are inevitably and naturally the target of many eyes. You have been taught that much is expected of you, and you are aware of the level of performance that you
should
be capable of maintaining. Your competition is with your own excellence, it is played out very much in public, and you fear your inadequacy to maintain your own standard. Thus your desire to make motion pictures, to be the director and have the opportunity to safely be in charge; first to define the action and then to capture it permanently on film, where it can't get out of your control.”

“I thought we'd agreed,” Jimmy said coldly, “not to mention that ambition of mine.”

“You're right,” the doctor said. “I do apologize.”

The fact was, the only time Jimmy had ever demonstrated real anger toward Dr. Schraubenzieher had been on this subject of movies. He knew that he wanted to make movies because he was an artist; the doctor, assuming him to be a child, assumed the desire to be childish. He had asked for movie equipment, and the Christmas before last he had been given a Super 8 silent camera and projector. Super 8! Would they have given Mozart a toy piano? Wasn't Mozart a child?

Well, he'd been through those arguments, to no effect. Except that this last Christmas he'd been given some basic 16-mm equipment, with a potential capacity for sound. Still, it wasn't home movies he was interested in, it was film art.

But they weren't going to talk about that; it had been agreed, after his one outburst, to let the subject lie. The doctor had made a mistake in bringing it up, but had immediately apologized, and that at least was something. Jimmy, who had gone rigid, relaxed again and said, “I'm sorry. Where were we? Competition with myself, wasn't it?”

“Exactly. Competition with your own high standard. Thus your fear of being childlike, as though to act your age would be somehow to fail to live up to your potential. You have a brilliant mind—for your age. You are extremely imaginative and resourceful—for your age.”

“But isn't there a fallacy,” Jimmy asked, “in the concept of competition with one's own capabilities? There can't be failure, because an apparent failure would merely indicate a faulty original estimate of the capabilities. The estimate should then be geared down to the actual accomplishment, thus obliterating the apparent failure. And if failure is impossible, ipso facto victory is also impossible. Without the potential for either victory or failure, how can there be competition?”

Dr. Schraubenzieher smiled at the back of the boy's head. Very well, he would give the child a rest; particularly since Jimmy had behaved so decently about the motion picture slip. For the remainder of the session they played word games.

At the end, when Jimmy was leaving the consulting room, he paused in the doorway, looked at the doctor with a troubled frown, and said, “Do you suppose by any chance somebody
is
watching me?”

The doctor smiled indulgently.
He's projecting the motion picture director theme
, he thought, but of course didn't say that. “Certainly not,” he said. “We both know better, don't we?”

“I suppose so. See you Friday.”

11

K
ELP, SITTING IN
the back seat with the Mickey Mouse masks, said, “Here he comes.”

“I see him,” Dortmunder said. Dortmunder was driving, and May was sitting next to him. Kelp was the one who had gotten this car, a blue Caprice with MD plates, and it had been his intention to drive it, but Dortmunder had said, “I'll drive.” No explanation, just a sort of heavy determination that Kelp had found it impossible to argue with. So Kelp was now in the back seat, leaning forward between Dortmunder and May, watching through the windshield as the kid—somewhat tall for his age, but very skinny—came out of the apartment building and was escorted into the grey Cadillac by the doorman.