King’s Ransom (87th Precinct), page 7
“Okay, kid, knock it off,” Sy said. “Slow down a little.” He frowned momentarily and then said, “How about tuning in the monster, Eddie?”
Eddie looked at Kathy helplessly, as if begging her with his eyes to understand. But she would not understand, and he read that on her face, and despondently he said, “Sure, Sy,” and walked to the far wall of the parlor and immediately pulled a tarpaulin covering from a mass of radio equipment that was stacked against the wall.
“Kid,” Sy said to Jeff, “this is Dr. Frankenstein. Watch him bring that monster to life.”
The equipment did not, in truth, resemble a monster. There was, however, some validity to Sy’s illusion, in that the dials and switches, the needles and knobs would not have seemed inappropriate in a scientist’s laboratory. Eddie walked to the setup and threw a switch.
“Go ahead, show off for the kid,” Sy said. “Tell him what frequency the police calls are on.”
Absorbed with tuning the receiver, Eddie replied, “Thirtyseven point fourteen megacycles.”
“Oh, the brain on that doctor,” Sy said. “Kathy, you hooked yourself a prize, a real prize.”
“Why’d you drag my husband into this?” Kathy said tightly. “Why didn’t you leave him alone?”
“Drag? Who, me? He come in willingly, sweetheart.” A high piercing shriek erupted from the receiver. “There she goes, kid,” Sy said. “The monster’s beginnin’ to speak.”
“Hey, that’s really something,” Jeff said. “Where’d you get it?”
“I built it,” Eddie answered.
“No kidding? Boy, that musta been hard.”
“Well, it…” Struggling with his pleasure, reluctant to sound too proud, Eddie said, “It wasn’t too hard.”
“Nothing’s hard for a mastermind, huh, Kathy?” Sy said. “You’re a real electronic wizard, ain’t you, Eddie? That’s why the little woman loves you. Learned it all in reform school, too, didn’t you?”
“Cut it out,” Kathy said.
“What’s the matter? I’m complimenting your husband. Someday, kid, Eddie’s gonna go to a real school, be a regular schoolboy and learn radio inside out and backward. Ain’t that right, Eddie. Tell the kid here.”
Embarrassed, Eddie said, “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Thomas Alva Frankenstein, that’s who he is, sonny. You want to learn how to build a set like that and have all the dames fall for you, kid?”
“I’ll say I do!” Jeff said.
“Okay, then here’s how. When you’re fifteen years old, hold up a grocery store.”
“Sy, what are you telling him?” Kathy snapped.
“What’s the matter?” Sy asked innocently. “You don’t even need a gun, kid. Just stick your hand in your pocket like Eddie did. When they catch you, they’ll send you over to Youth House, and then to Children’s Court, and then to reform school. Am I right, Eddie?”
More embarrassed now, twisting the radio dial intently, Eddie said, “Yeah, that’s right. Sure.”
“In reform school,” Sy concluded, “they’ll teach you how to make radios. Am I right, Eddie?”
“Only how to fix them.”
“I don’t see anything funny about this, Sy,” Kathy said.
“Who’s being funny? I’m teaching the kid a trade. Shall I tell him all the other things you learned in reform school, Eddie? The other trades?”
“Aw, tell him whatever the hell you want to.”
“Now, now, watch your language in front of the boy,” Sy said. He grinned and tousled Jeff’s hair. “Me, kid, all I ever learned was how to work in the jute mill. You ever work with jute? Don’t. It makes you sneeze. It crawls into your lungs. It even crawls up your asshole.” Sy began laughing. “How’s it coming, Doctor?”
“I’m getting it,” Eddie said, and the radio suddenly erupted into intelligible sound.
“…thirteen. Accident at Morrison and North Ninety-eighth. Car three-oh-three, signal thirteen. Accident at Morrison and North Ninety-eighth.”
“This is three-oh-three. Okay.”
“A snatch right under their noses,” Sy said, “and they’re worried about a traffic jam.”
“Hey, you going to take me back now?” Jeff asked.
“I’m busy, kid.”
Jeff turned to Kathy. “How about you?” He studied her for a moment, frankly, candidly. Then having formed his opinion, he said, “Aw, you’re a girl. What can girls do?”
Sy burst out laughing. “Kid,” he said, “you’d be surprised.”
“Car two-oh-seven, Car two-oh-seven,” the police dispatcher said. “Signal thirteen, join and assist Car two-oh-four at Douglas King estate, Smoke Rise, adjacent River Highway on Smoke Rise Road. Signal thirteen, join and assist…”
“Hey, did you hear that?” Jeff said, excited by his discovery. “He said Douglas King!”
“…Smoke Rise, adjacent River Highway on Smoke Rise Road.”
“This is two-oh-seven. Right.”
“The long arm of the law is beginning to reach,” Sy said. “What’d I tell you? Ask those crumbs not to call the cops, and it’s the first thing they do.” He shook his head sadly. “You can’t trust nobody nowadays.”
“Do you really expect to get away with this, Sy?” Kathy asked.
“Why, certainly. And all because Dr. Frankenstein has ideas. Me, I got a worthless hobby. Swing music. Can swing music help us on a thing like this? Can Harry James blow his way out of this one? Ahhh, but Eddie’s hobby, a dream, a dream. Radios.” He closed his thumb against his fingers and then kissed the collective bunch. “I love them. I love radios. I love Eddie.” He paused. “I even love you, Kathy. Outline it for her, Doctor.”
“She doesn’t want to hear it,” Eddie said.
“She don’t?” Sy said, surprised. “What’s the matter, baby, you coldhearted or something? This gig’s gonna go down in history, believe me. And all because Eddie knows radio. Right now, we’re listening to the bulls on his monster there. But later…Man, when I think of this scheme, it gives me goose bumps.”
“Sy, she’s not interested,” Eddie said.
“I’m interested in anything you do,” Kathy said softly.
“Why, sure, she is. The little woman. Okay,” Sy said, “we called King on the way here. Told him we wanted five hundred grand, told him to get it ready by—”
Jeff blinked. “Did you say you called…?”
“Shut up, kid. Told him to get it ready by tomorrow morning, and we’d call him then to let him know where and when the drop’s gonna be. Now here’s the beauty part, honey. You listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“Okay. Tomorrow morning, we buzz King again. We tell him—”
“Are you talking about—” Jeff started, and Sy shouted, “I said shut up, kid, now take a goddamn hint!” He glared at Jeff heatedly.
Jeff put his hands on his hips, swaggered over to Sy, and, entering into the game, using his best tough-guy voice, said, “Who do you think you are, Mac?”
“Blow, kid, before you get hurt.”
Still playing, Jeff said, “You want to get tough with me, mister?”
“I said blow!” Sy shoved the boy aside angrily. Jeff, startled, stared at him and then frowned. The room was silent. And then, piercing the silence, the radio came to life again.
“Attention all cars, attention all cars. Here’s the story on that Smoke Rise kidnapping.”
“Hey, listen,” Eddie said.
“Be on the lookout for a blond, eight-year-old boy wearing bright-red sweater, blue dungaree trousers, white socks and sneakers, no hat, no gloves, may be carrying a toy rifle.”
“You’re famous, kid,” Sy said, grinning.
“The boy’s name is Jeffry Reynolds, answers to the name Jeff…”
“What?” Eddie said.
“That man said my name,” Jeff said, startled.
“Shut up!” Sy snapped.
“…is the son of Charles Reynolds, chauffeur on the King estate. There’s been some kind of a foul-up here, boys, and your guess is as good as mine. There’s been a five-hundred-thousand-dollar ransom demand, so chances are the kidnappers don’t know who they’ve got yet. Beats me. Anyway, that’s the story, and that’s all.”
“What’s he talking about, Sy?” Eddie said. Panic had covered his face like a coat of white paint. He stared at Sy, his eyes demanding an answer, his entire body demanding an answer.
“That man said my name,” Jeff said, astonished.
“They’re lying,” Sy said quickly. “They’re trying to put one over on us.”
“On police radio, Sy? They don’t even know we’re listening!”
“No, all they know is they want to get us, so they’re pulling a cheap trick. And don’t think King ain’t in on this. That crooked bastard!”
“How could we have grabbed the wrong kid?” Eddie wailed.
“He ain’t the wrong kid!”
“But suppose he is?” Kathy said calmly. “It means you’ve done all this for nothing. We’re in trouble for nothing.”
Eddie looked at his wife, and then at Sy. “You…you gonna believe what the cops tell you?” he said. “Kathy, you can’t believe them!”
“Who can you believe? Sy?”
“Why not?” Sy said. “I say this kid is Bobby King. Now how about that?”
“Me?” Jeff said, puzzled. “I’m not Bobby.”
“One more peep out of you—”
“Let him talk,” Kathy said. “What’s your name, sonny?”
“Jeff.”
“He’s lying!” Sy shouted.
“I am not!” Jeff shouted back. He glared at Sy and then said, “I don’t like you, you know that? I’m going home.”
He started for the door. Sy caught his arm and yanked him back, almost pulling him off his feet. He stood very close to the boy, and there was no humor on his face now, no laughter in his eyes. In a flat, emotionless voice he said, “What’s your name? Your real name.”
The driveway to the King estate was flanked by two stone pillars, each of which carried an ornate glass-and-wrought-iron lantern. The pillars were set back some three feet from the private Smoke Rise Road that ran past the estate, the communications link between Smoke Rise and the outside world. Between the pillars and the gravel road was a shelf of grass. Grass, in fact, lined both sides of the road, framing the gray ribbon with an Octoberbitten off green.
The road was generally barren, especially on nights like this one when October was trying its best to serve as a harbinger of dead winter. A cold wind had come up, blowing off the River Harb, sending everyone but mad dogs, Englishmen, and policemen indoors. There was, perhaps, a slight difference in the motivation of the triumvirate. For whereas mad dogs stayed outside because of the vagaries of insanity, and Englishmen because of their internationally renowned sang-froid, the policemen were there under duress. There was not a policeman on that road that night who would not have preferred being at home with a good book, or a good woman, or a good bottle of brandy. There was not a policeman present that night who would not have preferred even a bad book or a bad bottle of brandy or, to be frankly unpatriotic, a bad woman.
There were no women, good or bad, on that road that night.
There were only men, and men engrossed in their work can be dull company to each other even when the weather is mild.
“I never seen it so cold in October in my whole life,” Detective Andy Parker said. “I been living in this city my whole life, and I never seen it so cold like this. Tonight, they better bring in the brass monkeys, I am telling you. Tonight, everything freezes.”
Detective Cotton Hawes nodded. His fingers around the flashlight, even through the leather, fur-lined gloves he wore, felt frozen to the bone. He kept the circle of light on the patch of grass across the road from the driveway pillars. The lab technician at his feet, a man named Peter Kronig, was a person with whom Hawes had had a slight brush not too long ago. Hawes could not say whether or not he disliked holding the light for Kronig while Kronig searched the grass on his hands and knees. He knew that he’d ridden Kronig’s tail pretty shamefully on their one previous encounter, and he was rather embarrassed by their proximity now. Of course, Hawes had been working at the 87th Precinct for only a short time when he had first run across Kronig. Like any new kid on the block, he was anxious to prove himself to the other kids. In the presence of Steve Carella, whom he immediately considered the best cop on the squad, Hawes had begun riding Kronig at the police lab. Carella had chewed him out later, in a kindly fashion to be sure, and Hawes had learned a valuable lesson: Don’t make enemies of the lab technicians. He had learned his lesson well. Its meaning assumed renewed importance now that he was once more working with Kronig.
“Move the light,” Kronig said. “Over to the left.”
Hawes moved the light.
“It’s only sixteen degrees,” Parker said. “Can you feature that? It feels like twenty below, don’t it? But it’s only sixteen. I heard it over the radio. Man, it’s cold. Ain’t it cold, Hawes?”
“Yes,” Hawes answered.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
“I talk,” Hawes said. He did not particularly feel like justifying himself to Andy Parker. He didn’t know the man too well, this being the first time they’d been on a squeal together, but from what he’d seen of him around the squadroom, Parker was a man it paid to stay away from. At the same time, Hawes did not want to make the same mistake he’d made with Kronig. He did not want to make an enemy where he could make a friend. “It’s just that my teeth are frozen together,” he added, hoping this would mollify Parker.
Parker nodded. He was a big man, almost as tall as Hawes, who stood six feet two inches high in his bare soles. But whereas Hawes’s eyes were blue and his hair was red (except for a white streak over the left temple), Parker gave an impression of darkness, black hair, brown eyes, five o’clock shadow. And, in all honesty, the two men could not have been more dissimilar than their appearances indicated. Hawes was a cop who was still learning. Parker was a cop who knew it all.
“Hey, Kronig,” he said, “what the hell are you searching for? Buried treasure? We got nothing better to do than crawl around on our hands and knees?”
“Shut up, Parker,” Kronig answered. “I’m the one who’s doing the crawling. All you’re doing is bitching about the weather.”
“What, you ain’t cold?” Parker said. “You got Eskimo blood?” He paused. “Eskimos lend out their wives, you know that?”
“I know,” Kronig said. “Let’s try over here, Hawes. Come on.”
They moved several feet up the road, the flashlight playing on the grassy shoulder lining the gravel.
“It’s the truth,” Parker said, “whether you know it or not. An Eskimo goes to visit another Eskimo, he lets you borrow his wife for the night. So you shouldn’t get cold.” Parker shook his head. “And they call us civilized. Would you lend me your wife for the night, Kronig?”
“I wouldn’t lend you a nickel for a cup of coffee,” Kronig answered. “Over here, Hawes. This looks like something.” He stooped suddenly.
“I didn’t ask for a nickel, I asked for your wife,” Parker said, and he grinned in the darkness. “You should see this guy’s wife, Hawes. Like a movie star. Am I right, Kronig?”
“Go blow it out,” Kronig answered. “It’s nothing, Hawes. Let’s move up a little.”
“What are you looking for?” Hawes asked, as gently as he knew how.
Kronig stared at him for a moment, his breath pluming from his mouth. “Footprints, tire tracks, traces of clothing, matches, any damn thing that might give us a lead.”
“Well,” Hawes said gently, “I don’t want to stick my two cents in. You know your job, and I have no right to offer any suggestions.”
“Yeah?” Kronig said. He looked at him suspiciously. “Seems to me the last time we met, you had a lot of suggestions, and a lot of answers. You knew all about ballistics, didn’t you? The Annie Boone case, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Hawes said.
“Yeah, so now you’re shy, huh? The shy flower of the 87th Squad.”
“I’ve got no quarrel with you,” Hawes said. “I behaved like a jerk that time.”
“Yeah?” Kronig said, surprised. He kept staring at Hawes. Then he said, “What’s your suggestion? I’m not God.”
“Neither am I. But would the kidnapper be likely to park the car here, or to stand here, or do anything here where he could be seen? I mean, right on the road?”
“Possibly not. Where do you think he parked?”
“There’s a turnabout up there. About five hundred yards from the pillars. Just a little dirt cutoff. It’s pretty well screened with bushes. It’s worth a chance.”
“Then let’s try it,” Kronig said.
“Like a movie star,” Parker said. “This guy’s wife. She’s got knockers out to here. You never seen knockers like on this guy’s wife except on the silver screen. Man, I’m telling you!”
“Shut up, Parker,” Kronig said.
“I’m complimenting your wife. It ain’t everybody got breastworks like this woman got. Man, you could lose yourself up there. You could bury your nose, and your mouth, and your whole goddamn head if you—”
“Shut up, Parker!” Kronig said. “I don’t feel like discussing my wife’s attributes with you, if you don’t mind.”
“What are you?” Parker asked. “The nervous type?”
“Yeah, I’m the nervous type.”
“And they call the Eskimos primitive,” Parker said. “Man!”
The men trudged up the gravel road silently. The night was a piece of crystal, sharp, clear, brittle. Like workhorses stamping under a heavy load, they walked to the turnabout, the vaporized moisture of their breath trailing behind them.
“This it?” Kronig asked.
“Yes,” Hawes said. “I noticed it when we drove up.”
“Not a very big turnabout, if that’s what it is.” He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a turnabout at all. Or at least I don’t think it was planned as one. I think it just became one through use. There. See where some of those shrubs were knocked over?”
