Jimmy the Kid by Donald E. Westlake

then through the park and north again on Central Park West. At Eighty-first Street the Lincoln made a U-turn and stopped in front of the canopied entrance to a large apartment house. Henley eased into a bus-stop zone across the street, and Parker watched as a liveried doorman opened the Lincoln’s door, and the boy stepped out, not carrying his comic book. The doorman shut the Lincoln’s door and the boy went into the building. The Lincoln moved forward along the kerb and stopped in a no-parking zone just beyond the canopy. The chauffeur took his cap off, picked up a tabloid newspaper from the seat beside him, and settled down to read.
    Parker said, “I’ll be right back.” He got out of the car, crossed the street, and walked slowly down the block past the Lincoln. Looking in on the way by, he saw the telephone built into the back of the front seat. Good. He went on down to the corner, crossed to the park side of the street again, went back to the Plymouth, and slid in next to Henley. “It’s got one,” he said.
    Henley smiled, drawing his lips back to show his teeth clenched on the cigar. “That’s nice,” he said.
    â€œNow we wait for the kid to come out again,” Parker said. “Then we’ll take a look at his route home.”

8
    W HEN D ORTMUNDER WALKED into the apartment, Kelp was asleep at the window with the binoculars in his lap. “For Christ’s sake,” Dortmunder said.
    â€œHuh?” Startled, Kelp sat up, scrabbled for the binoculars, dropped them on the floor, picked them up, slapped them to his face, and stared out at the Lincoln Tunnel exit.
    They hadn’t been able to find an apartment overlooking the Midtown Tunnel. This one, in a condemned tenement on West Thirty-ninth Street, had an excellent view of the Manhattan exit of the Lincoln Tunnel, bringing cars in from New Jersey. It also, since it faced south, got a terrific amount of sun; even though it was now October, they were all getting sunburns, with white circles around their eyes where they would hold the binoculars.
    Kelp was sitting in a maroon armchair with broken springs; this was a furnished apartment, three rooms full of the most awful furniture imaginable. The floor lamps alone were cause for weeping. Kelp’s notebook and pen were on a drum table next to him, the drum table having been painted with green enamel and its top having been covered with Contac paper in a floral design. The walls were covered with a patterned wallpaper showing cabbage roses against an endless trellis. Some of this wallpaper had peeled itself off, and curls of it lay against the moulding in all the corners. On the floor beside Kelp’s chair stood three empty beer cans and three full beer cans.
    Dortmunder slammed the door. “You were asleep,” he said.
    Kelp put the binoculars down and turned an innocent face. “Huh? I was just resting my eyes a minute.”
    Dortmunder crossed the room and picked up the notebook to study the entries. “You been resting your eyes since one-thirty,” he said.
    â€œThere wasn’t anything useful since one-thirty,” Kelp said. “You think chauffeured limousines with a kid alone in the back seat come through every minute?”
    â€œIt’s all that beer you drink,” Dortmunder told him. “You drink that stuff and then you sit in the sun here, and you go to sleep.”
    â€œFor maybe two minutes,” Kelp said. “Maybe at the most five. But not what you could call a deep sleep.”
    Dortmunder shrugged and dropped the notebook back on the drum table. “Anyway,” he said, “we’ve got that Caddy to follow.”
    â€œSure,” Kelp said. “It’s a natural. And I bet it’s got a phone in it. Why else would it have that big antenna thing?”
    â€œBecause it’s probably the police commissioner of Trenton, New Jersey,” Dortmunder said, “and they’ll see