Jimmy the Kid Read Online Free Page B

okay.”
    â€œRight,” 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 orthopaedic shoes she wore in her job as a cashier at a Bohack’s supermarket. She was a tall thin woman with slightly greying 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.”
    â€œGood,” 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.”
    â€œOh,” 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 grey armchair. Dortmunder would be sitting in that.
    â€œHave a seat,” May said.
    â€œNo thanks,” Kelp said. “I’d rather stand. I’m sort of up and excited, you know?”
    Beer cans were being opened in the kitchen; kop, kop, kop. Murch’s Mom said, “May, I’m crazy about that lamp. Where’d you get it?”
    â€œFortunoff’s,” May said. “On sale, a discontinued model.”
    Murch said, “I know we’re a little late, but we ran into traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I couldn’t figure it out.”
    â€œI told you there was construction there,” his mother said. “But you don’t listen to your mother.”
    â€œAt eight o’clock at night? I figured four, five o’clock, they go home. Am I supposed to know they leave the machinery there, close the thing down to one lane all night ?”
    Kelp said, “To come to Manhattan you take the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway?”
    â€œUp to the Midtown Tunnel,” Murch said. “You see, coming from Canarsie—”
    Dortmunder, coming in then with his hands full of beer cans, said, “Everybody can drink out of the can, right?”
    They all agreed they could, and then Murch went on with his explanation to Kelp, “Coming up out of Canarsie,” he said, “you’ve got special problems, see. There’s different routes you can take that’s better at different times of day. So what we did this time, we took Pennsylvania Avenue, but then we didn’t take the Interborough. See what I mean? We took Bushwick Avenue instead, and crossed over to Broadway. Now, we could have taken the Williamsburg Bridge, but—”
    â€œWhich is exactly what we should have done,” Murch’s Mom said, and drank some beer.
    â€œNow, that’s what I’ll do next time,” Murch admitted. “Until they get all that machinery off the BQE. But usually the best way is the BQE up to the Midtown Tunnel, and then into Manhattan.” He was leaning