Jimmy the Kid Read Free Page A

lowered?
    Murch moved closer, studying the tailgate’s operation. Opening those two hooks should release the thing, then one should pay out his chain through that ratchet, and.…
    Might as well try it. He released the hooks, he grasped the chain, he began to feed it slowly through the ratchet. The tailgate lowered itself. Murch fed the chain faster, and the tailgate lowered faster. Tonk , the tailgate went against the blacktop. It was now a ramp.
    Fine. Leaving the car carrier, Murch walked briskly but not too hurriedly across the lot to the Continental. He had his bunch of keys in his hand when he got there, but the Continental’s door was unlocked. He slid behind the wheel, tried three keys, and started the engine with the fourth. There was a strong smell of bourbon inside the car.
    Murch put it in reverse, backed the Continental around in a loop, switched to drive, and steered across the parking lot and up the ramp and into the car carrier. He switched off the engine, set the hand brake, and got out of the car. He climbed through the metal struts of the side, attained the blacktop, and quickly raised the tailgate again. There wasn’t any way to chain the Continental in place, the way the Buicks were chained, but he’d be taking it easy. He also didn’t have that far to go.
    Key number two started the car carrier engine. Murch turned the big flat wheel, the car carrier lumbered forward, and slowly he made his getaway out onto Jericho Turnpike.
    It took twenty-five minutes to drive to Maximilian’s Used Cars. When he got there, Murch took the side street next to the car lot, then turned in at the anonymous driveway behind it. He stopped amid tall weeds and the white clapboard backs of garages, climbed down out of the cab, and went through an unlocked gate in a chain-link fence. A path through weeds and shrubbery led him to the rear of Maximilian’s office structure, a California-looking thing in pink stucco. He opened a door, went through into a grey-panelled office, and heard Max in the next room saying, “What you got to read in the guarantee is every word.”
    A very angry male voice said, loudly, “If you read every word of that guarantee, you don’t guarantee anything !”
    â€œThat’s how you say,” Max said.
    Murch opened the connecting door, and stuck his head in. The customer was big and muscular, but intellectually out of his depth. He had the bewildered look of a swimmer who hadn’t known there were whirlpools anywhere around here. Murch, ignoring him, said to Max, “Max, could I interrupt?”
    â€œI hope so,” Max said. A big old man with heavy jowls and thin white hair, he always wore a dark vest, wide open, and no tie. His white shirt was usually smudged from leaning against used cars. Now, getting to his feet from behind his desk, he said to the customer, “Read a little. Read the words. I’ll be back.”
    â€œYou better be,” the customer said, but there wasn’t any real threat in it. He was buffaloed, and he was himself beginning to understand it.
    Max and Murch crossed the empty office and went out the rear door. Murch said, “That the same customer as when I called?”
    â€œSome of them just won’t go away,” Max said. “Don’t they have homes? Some friend of yours called. On the telephone. You shouldn’t go away without him coming here.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œA little name,” Max said, as they followed the path toward the chain-link fence. “Chip? Shep?”
    â€œKelp?”
    â€œIf you say so,” Max said, and they stepped out onto the driveway, now filled with the bulk of the car carrier. Max looked at it. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said. “You stealing now in bunches? They ain’t grapes !”
    â€œIt was there,” Murch said. “I put the Continental on the back.”
    Max went down along the side of the car carrier, looking