“Kidnapping,” Jimmy said, “is a Federal offense. Conviction carries a mandatory life sentence.”

“Just be quiet,” May said. “I’m here to soothe you, and you’re making me upset.”

In the front seat, Kelp had entered and was holding a gun pointed at the chauffeur. Every time he inhaled, the rubber mask pressed itself to his face. He was getting enough air, but nevertheless he felt as though he was suffocating. His voice garbled by the mask, he said, “Let’s not scare the kid. Nobody’s gonna get hurt.”

Van Golden said, “What? I don’t know what you’re saying.”

Holding the mask out from his mouth with his free hand, Kelp said, “Let’s not scare the kid. Nobody’s gonna get hurt.” It was a line word for word from Child Heist, which Kelp had been rehearsing for two weeks now.

According to the book, the chauffeur was now supposed to ask Kelp what he wanted. Instead of which, Ven Golden pointed at the pistol and said, “Scare the kid?” Then he gestured a thumb over his shoulder and said, “Scare that kid? Hah!”

Kelp’s memorized response didn’t suit any of that, so he stayed silent.

Dortmunder, meantime, had gone around to the rear doors of the tractor-trailer. He rapped on them, and the doors swung open, pushed out by Murch, also in a Mickey Mouse mask. He looked critically out and down at the Cadillac and said, “You’ll have to back it up. Just like in the book.”

“I know,” Dortmunder said. Just like in the book. Dortmunder turned and walked back past the Cadillac toward the Caprice. Inside the Cadillac, Kelp’s Mickey Mouse face was staring at the chauffeur and May’s Mickey Mouse face was staring at the boy. She was supposed to be chattering at him, keeping him calm with a soothing flow of words, but she was just staring at him. They seemed to have some sort of Mexican standoff in there.

Dortmunder backed up the Caprice, then walked to the Cadillac again, opened the chauffeur’s door and said, “Move over.”

Kelp made room, and Van Golden slid over into the middle of the seat. He said, “I hope you birds are bright enough to surrender if some state trooper happens by. I don’t want to be a hostage or a victim or anything like that.”

Kelp, given an opportunity to produce another of his lines from the book, said, “Keep it down. I told you, we don’t scare the kid.”

But he’d said it without lifting his mask away from his mouth. Van Golden looked at him and said, “What?”

“Forget it,” Kelp said.

“What?”

Kelp took the mask away from his mouth. “Forget it!”

“You don’t have to shout, fella,” Van Golden said. “I’m right next to you.”

Dortmunder started the Cadillac and backed it away from the truck. Then Murch pulled out the two wooden planks they were going to use instead of a metal ramp. May was the one who had pointed out that if they used a ramp they wouldn’t be able to put it back in after the car was inside the truck, since the car’s wheels would be in the way. Dortmunder had said, “And that’s the book we’re supposed to follow,” but Murch had immediately suggested a pair of planks, which could be stored under the Cadillac once it was inside.

But it took a while to place them. Dortmunder sat with both hands on the wheel, and Murch kept running back and forth between the truck and the car, making minor shifts in the two planks, lining them up with the front wheels and trying to keep them nice and parallel. Finally, content, he climbed up into the truck and gestured for Dortmunder to drive forward.

Slowly they went up the ramp. They could feel the planks bending beneath the weight, but Murch had positioned them properly and the tires were nicely in the middle of each plank. The front tires; the rear tires were still on the ground when the bumper scraped against the rear of the truck.

“Now what?” Dortmunder said.

Murch, frowning, went to look at the left front fender of the Cadillac, and then at the right front fender. He shook his head, frowned more deeply, put his hands on his hips, and went back to consider the left front fender again. Then, leaning on that fender, he called to Dortmunder, “It’s too wide!”

Dortmunder stuck his head out the side window. “What do you mean it’s too wide?”

“It won’t fit.”

Murch backed up from the Cadillac, standing inside the truck and studying the two vehicles. He held his hands up, palms facing one another, and peered through them. He shook his head.

Murch’s Mom, sitting at the wheel of the school bus and not knowing what the hell was going on, considered honking the horn to try to attract somebody’s attention. But probably this wasn’t a good time to distract them all from whatever they were doing over there. On the other hand, it did seem to be taking them a long time to get that Cadillac into that truck.

Inside the Cadillac, Kelp said, “I never heard of such a thing. Cars always fit inside trucks.”

Van Golden said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Kelp said.

“I should have known,” Dortmunder said.

Jimmy, in the back seat, found himself considering the situation as though it were a problem to be solved. Like the problems in Scientific American, to which he was a subscriber. But that wasn’t the right thing to do; he wasn’t on their side, he was on the other side. So he tabled the problem, to be considered at some later time.

May, leaning forward, said, “Maybe we could—” and the phone rang.

Everybody jumped. The Cadillac sagged on the boards. May stared at the phone in horror and said, “What do I do?”

Dortmunder twisted around. It was hard, with three men crammed in together in the front seat, but he turned sufficiently to be able to look through the eyeholes in his Mickey Mouse mask at both May and the boy. He said, “The kid has to answer it.”

The phone rang again.

Dortmunder said to the boy, “You play it like everything’s okay. You got the idea?”

“I won’t cause any trouble,” Jimmy said. He wasn’t exactly frightened of these people, but he was well aware that a tense situation could sometimes make a person react more violently than they would normally. He didn’t want any of this gang going into a panic.

“You just answer the phone,” Dortmunder said. “You act normal, and you make it as short as you can.”

“All right,” Jimmy said. He reached out to pick up the phone as it rang for the third time.

Dortmunder said, “Hold it away from your ear, so we can all hear what they’re saying.”

Jimmy nodded. His mouth and throat were dry. Picking up the phone, he held it so the back part was out and away from his ear. “Hello?”

“Hel-lo, there, is this James Harrington?” The cheerful male voice came tinnily from the phone.

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, this is Bob Dodge of radio WRTZ, the voice of Sussex County, calling you from Hotline For Facts. Your postcard has been selected at random, and you have the opportunity to win prizes totaling over five hundred dollars! And now, here’s Lou Sweet to tell you what prizes are in this week’s Hotline Jackpot!”

Another voice began to ripple from the phone, describing prizes, in each case giving the name of the merchant who had contributed the prize. A camera from a drugstore. Dog food from a supermarket. A dictionary and a table radio from a department store. Dinner for two at a local restaurant.

“I don’t believe this,” Dortmunder said, and May shushed him again.

Bob Dodge came back on the phone. “Are you familiar with the rules of our game?” he asked, but before Jimmy could answer he gave them anyway, talking at top speed. There seemed to be something about levels, options of subject matter, various other sophistications, but the main idea was that they would ask him questions and he would try to answer them. “Are you ready, James?”

“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said. He sometimes listened to this program in the car on the way home from Dr. Schraubenzieher, and it always seemed as though he knew the right answers whenever the contestants got them wrong. About six months ago he’d sent in a postcard, giving both his home phone and the mobile telephone unit in the car, but he’d never expected them to call him. Particularly not the mobile telephone number.