The Hot Rock

6

They were on the straightaway now. "All right, baby," Stan Murch muttered through clenched teeth. "This is it."

He was hunched over the wheel, his fingers in their kid gloves clutching the wheel, his foot tense on the accelerator, his eyes flicking down to the instrument panel, reading the dials there, checking it all out: speedometer, odometer, tachometer, fuel gauge, temperature, oil pressure, clock. He strained against the chest harness holding him against the seat, willing his car forward, seeing the long sleek nose come closer and closer to the guy in front of him. He was going to pass on the inside, by the rail, and once past this one it would be clear sailing.

But now the other guy was aware of him closing the gap, and Murch sensed the other car pulling away, keeping ahead of the danger.

No. It wasn't going to happen. Murch checked the rearview mirror, and everything was all right back there. He tromped down on the accelerator, the Mustang went into overdrive, he shot on by the green Pontiac, he angled across two lanes and let his foot ease on the accelerator. The Pontiac roared by on his left, but Murch didn't mind. He'd established who was who, and this was his exit coming up. "Canarsie," the sign said. Murch steered his car off the Belt Parkway, around the circle, and out onto Rockaway Parkway, a long, broad, flat bumpy street lined with projects, supermarkets, and row houses.

Murch lived with his mother on East 99th Street, just a little ways off Rockaway Parkway. He made his right turn, made his left turn, slowed when he came to the middle of the block, saw his mother's cab was in the driveway, and rolled on by to a parking space down near the far corner. He got his new record album - Sounds of Indianapolis in Stereo and Hi-Fi - out of the back seat and walked down the block to the house. It was a two-family row house, in which he and his mother lived in the three-and-a-half on the first floor and various tenants lived in the four-and-a-half on the second floor. The first floor was only a three-and-a-half because where the fourth room would have been was a garage instead.

The current tenant, a fish handler named Friedkin, was sitting in the air at the head of the outside steps to the second floor. Friedkin's wife made Friedkin sit out in the air any time there wasn't actually a blizzard or an atomic explosion going on out there. Friedkin waved, an aroma of the sea wafting from him, and called, "How you doing, boychick?"

"Yuh," said Murch. He wasn't too good at talking to people. Most of his conversations were held with cars.

He went on into the house and called, "Mom?" He stood there in the kitchen.

She'd been downstairs, in the extra room. Besides the three-and-a-half they had a semi-finished basement, what most of their neighbors considered a family room, down in the semi-dank downstairs. Murch and his mother had turned this underbelly into Murch's bedroom.

Murch's mom came upstairs now and said, "You're home."

"Look what I got," Murch said and showed her the record.

"So play it," she said.

"Okay," he said.

They went into the living room together and while Murch put the record on the turntable he said, "How come you're home so early?"

"Aahhh," she said in disgust. "Some wise-ass cop out at the airport."

"You were taking more than one passenger again," Murch said.

She flared up. "Well, why not?" she wanted to know. "This city's got a shortage of cabs, don't it? You oughta see all those people out there to the airport, they got to wait half an hour, an hour, they could fly to Europe before they could get a cab and go to Manhattan. So I try to help the situation a little. They don't care, the customers don't care, they'd have to pay the same meter anyway. And it helps me, I get two, three times the meter. And it helps the city, it improves their goddamn public image. But try to tell a cop that. Play the record."

"How long you suspended for?"

"Two days," she said. "Play the record."

"Mom," he said, holding the tone arm above the turning record, "I wish you wouldn't take those chances. We don't have all that much dough."

"You got enough to throw it away on records," she said. "Play the record."

"If I'd known you were gonna get yourself suspended for two days-"

"You could always get yourself a job," she said. "Play the record."

Stung, Murch put the tone arm back on its rest and his hands on his hips. "Is that what you want?" he said. "You want me to get a job at the post office?"

"No, never mind me," his mother said, suddenly contrite. She went over and patted his cheek. "I know something'll come through for you pretty soon. And when you do have it, Stan, nobody on God's green earth spends it as free or as open as you do."

"Damn right," Murch said, appeased but still a little grumpy.

"Put the record on," his mother said. "Let's hear it."

"Sure."

Murch put the tone arm on the opening grooves of the record. The room filled with the shrieking of tires, the revving of engines, the grinding of gears.

They listened to side one in silence, and when it was done Murch said, "Now, that's a good record."

"I think that's one of the best, Stan," his mother said. "I really do. Let's hear the other side."

"Right."

Murch went over to the phonograph and picked up the record, and the phone rang. "Hell," he said.

"Forget it," his mother said. "Play the other side."

"Okay."

Murch put the other side on, and the ringing of the phone was buried in the sudden roar of twenty automobile engines turning over at once.

But whoever was calling wouldn't give up. In the lulls in the record the ringing cold still be heard, a disturbing presence. A racing driver going into the far turn at one hundred twenty miles an hour shouldn't have to answer the telephone.

Murch finally shook his head in disgust, shrugged at his mother, and picked up the phone. "Who is it?" he said, yelling over the sounds of the record.

A distant voice said, "Stan Murch?"

"Speaking!"

The distant voice said something else.

"What?"

The distant voice shouted, "This is Dortmunder!"

"Oh, yeah! How you doing?"

"Fine! Where do you live, in the middle of the Grand Concourse?"

"Hold on a second!" Murch shouted and put the phone down and went over to turn off the record. "I'll play it in a minute," he told his mother. "This is a guy I know, it might be a job."

"I knew something would turn up," his mother said. "Every cloud has a silver lining."

Murch went back to the phone. "Hello, Dortmunder?"

"That's a lot better," Dortmunder said. "What did you do, shut the window?"

"No, it was a record. I turned it off."

There was a long silence.

Murch said, "Dortmunder?"

"I'm here," Dortmunder said, but he sounded a little fainter than before. Then, stronger again, he said, "I wondered if you were available for a driving job."

"I sure am."

"Meet me tonight at the O. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue," Dortmunder said.

"Fine. What time?"

"Ten o'clock."

"I'll be there. See you, Dortmunder."

Murch hung up the phone and said to his mother, "Well, looks like we'll have some money pretty soon."

"That's good," said his mother. "Play the record."

"Right."

Murch went over and started side two from the beginning again.