A Grave Undertaking, page 13
CHAPTER NINE
1.
Jake Epstein dropped the receiver back on the hook and reached for his handkerchief to wipe his face.
“And that,” he said, “is the last of them.”
“The cemeteries you have in this town,” Dr. Jordan said. “People must die off like flies. There must have been a hundred of them. I can’t see how Gallucci managed to be in the financial trouble you say he was in.”
Jake shook his head and looked at the clock.
“Three-thirty,” he said, “and we’re right back where we started. We’ve covered the cemeteries and we’ve covered the crematories. No Mercer and no Gallucci at any of them.”
“But they must have gone somewhere,” Dr. Jordan said. “They couldn’t have just disappeared.”
“They went someplace all right. That’s what the police are wondering about too. You’ve been listening to the radio bulletins. I guess we’ve been wasting our time. The police, without doubt, thought about the cemeteries as well as us.”
Dr. Jordan got up and crossed the room to find the cigarette package he had left on the hotel room’s writing table.
“It’s time we saw the police,” he said. “Past time. They should know about Jane.”
“We tried to tell them,” Jake reminded him. “You saw how far we got.”
“I know. But they didn’t understand. I think���”
“Listen,” Jake said. “You’ve been hearing those broadcasts. Don’t you realize that the police are looking for us also? Don’t you realize they want us for questioning? That they also want us for breaking and entering?”
“We can explain���”
“We wouldn’t have a chance to explain anything,” Jake said. “I’m a newspaperman and I know how the police work. There’s been a quarter-of-a-million-dollar robbery. We were at the scene. Right where the gang, who pulled the job, started and finished from. Sure, I know that in the long run we can clear ourselves. That is, clear ourselves of any connection with the robbery. But they still have that breaking and entering charge.
“Another thing. I know how the police work. Do you think they would be gentle or that some studious young assistant district attorney would question us? Not in a million years. It would take place in the back of a precinct house and what would happen wouldn’t be pretty.”
Dr. Jordan shook his head.
“What happens to us isn’t the point. I am only thinking about Jane. If the police realized that she might have been kidnaped by the bank robbers���”
“We have no proof of that. And, besides they are doing everything humanly possible to catch up with them.”
“But if it’s a kidnaping, the federal people would come in on it. The FBI.”
“The FBI is already in on it, Doctor,” Jake said. “The bank carried federal insurance on its accounts. That brings them in automatically.”
“All right, say I agree with you. We have nothing to gain by going to the police. Where does that leave us?”
“What we have to do,” Jake said, “is to outthink them. We have to figure���”
Dr. Jordan tossed his cigarette in the ash tray and slumped in a chair.
“Epstein,” he said, “you are suffering from delusions of grandeur.”
“Maybe yes and maybe no. But let’s try and figure a couple of things out. We have nothing to lose. To begin, we can assume that the gang did work out of the funeral parlor, as the police believe. We then assume that they made their getaway in that hearse and those other cars in the procession. Now the police know that and so the gang themselves will know that the police are trying desperately to find out what happened to the hearse and the other two cars.
“They would get rid of them as soon as possible. Probably within an hour or two of the time the job was pulled. It isn’t easy to get rid of a hearse and a couple of long black limousines. That means, during the two hours or so of time they had, it was necessary to reach a hideout. It means the hideout must be somewhere within approximately a hundred-mile radius of New York.”
“Sure,” Dr. Jordan said. “But where is it getting us? You can hide a whole damned city within a hundred miles of New York.”
Jake went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water.
“You know,” he said, when he returned, “something keeps sticking in my mind and I can’t think exactly what it is. Something about that funeral parlor.”
“Something you saw there maybe?”
“Not that I saw. Something���”
He stopped in his tracks and his eyes widened.
“By gosh!” he said. “By gosh-now I remember!”
He ran to the chair where he’d thrown his coat and quickly reached into the inside breast pocket. When his hand came out he was holding the rolled-up surveyor’s map.
“What���”
“From a locked drawer in Gallucci’s desk,” Jake said excitedly. “I just remembered it.”
“What is it? Don’t keep it a mystery,” Dr. Jordan said. He refused to be excited.
“It’s a map of a farm Gallucci owned up in the Catskills, if I’m not mistaken. Gallucci was trying to sell the place, according to letters I found in his desk.”
Dr. Jordan leaned forward.
“You think��� you think they could have gone there?”
“It’s the right distance,” Jake said. “And I know the general area. My folks used to go up there every summer. It’s a particularly lonely neighborhood and almost nobody would be around this time of year. They could have gotten there without being observed by taking back roads once they had crossed the Hudson River. They probably went to the farm, divided the loot and then���”
“And then���”
“Well-disappeared. Dumped the funeral cars and just broke up.”
“And if they had Jane with them?” Jake shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We can only hope.”
“We can go up and find out,” Dr. Jordan said. “How long would it take���”
“I’d say an hour to two hours. I can get my father’s car-he keeps it in a garage off Riverside Drive in the Nineties-and we could drive up���”
“This,” Dr. Jordan said, “is where we bring the police in.” His hand reached for the telephone.
Jake leaped across the room and grabbed him.
“Listen to me, Doc,” he said. “Please-listen. Don’t call the police. If you want to see Miss Mercer alive again, don’t call them. You have to understand what could happen. In the first place, if they have her, the first thing they would do, in case of a raid on the hideout, would be to kill her. If they didn’t, the chances are a cop’s bullet would get her. Don’t you understand?
“The police come in shooting. She’d be right in the middle. Either that or the gang would use her as a cover or a hostage. In either case, you would be putting her in terrible jeopardy.”
“Well, what do you suggest? Do you think you and I, unarmed, can go up there and���”
“So far,” Jake said, “if we are right, we have outthought the police and outthought the mob. No, we don’t storm the place or anything like that. We try and use our heads. The first step is to go up to the Catskills and find the farm. Find out if they are there. From that point on, we have to play it by ear. If we can find out that they are there, and there doesn’t seem any way we can secure Miss Mercer’s release, then we can always go to the police. We have nothing to lose playing it my way and everything to lose if we try anything else.”
Jordan thought for several minutes and then again reached for the telephone.
“No, Jake,” he said. “No, not again. I would have to be insane to listen to you. This is a matter that calls for professional handling. I won’t risk Jane’s���”
“You’re tossing her life away,” Jake yelled, grabbing the telephone. “Can’t you see it? Remember how that police captain acted when you tried to tell him about her? Remember? He wouldn’t even listen to you. Sure, I admit, in time you might get through to them. But it would be after about twelve hours of sweating. Before they would even believe there was a Miss Mercer, they would check back in Sandusky. They would check the morgue. They would check up on the coat at the funeral home. It would take all night and then half of tomorrow. By that time your girl could be dead a dozen times over.”
“I am a reputable doctor���”
“You are, in Sandusky,” Jake said. “Here you are just another guy wanted for breaking and entering. Wanted in connection with a bank robbery. They would figure you would have some cock-and-bull story and wouldn’t even listen to you. Not until it was too late.”
For a long time Marty Jordan was silent, staring at the floor. Finally he looked up, his face wracked with indecision.
“I may be making a mistake I’ll regret the rest of my life,” he said. “But what you say makes sense in a way. Either that or I have completely lost my mind. Come on. Let’s get that car that belongs to your old man.”
2.
At four-fifteen on Monday afternoon the information desk down at Central Headquarters reached Captain Cooney on the telephone.
“Captain Cooney?”
“This is Cooney.”
“This is Lieutenant Means, downtown. You still in charge on that Citizen’s National stickup?”
“I am,” Cooney said, defensively.
“Well, I got a man on the wire says he may have some information for you. A Constable Bilins from up in Sullivan County. You want me to transfer it?”
“Yes.”
Cooney drummed his fingers on the desk in irritation. It made about the hundredth call he had taken in the last couple of hours. Seemed like every crackpot in the country was getting in on the act. But he couldn’t afford to miss any bets. Not any longer, he couldn’t.
“Hello?”
“Captain Cooney speaking,” Cooney said.
“You the one wants information on that bank robbery thing you been broadcasting about?”
“That’s right. Who am I talking with?”
“Constable Bilins. And I think I have something for you. Old Mrs. Hawkins���”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Hawkins. That’s Ed Hawkins’ widow. Well, she found a body.”
“She found what? This connection seems bad,” the captain said.
“Found a body. Went out to the barn-it’s about a quarter of a mile from the house, separated by woods-and she went out there around two or three o’clock this afternoon to pick up some eggs-she keeps some layers out there-and when she went into the barn, there was this dead man.”
“Well, what about him, Constable?”
“He had a shirt and tie and coat on. No pants. No shoes, no underwear.”
“I don’t think I quite understand, Constable. Did you say���”
“I did. A dead man, no pants, no shoes, no underwear. Laying on the ground.”
“Well, what���”
“Next to him was an open casket.”
Captain Cooney reached for his handkerchief to wipe his forehead.
“Listen,” he said, “I can’t seem to quite understand.”
“Ed Hawkins’ widow found a dead man, half undressed, and a casket in her barn when she went to get eggs.”
“How does that tie in with���”
“There was a hearse in the barn next to the casket and the dead man.”
Captain Cooney clutched the phone and said, “Say that again.”
“A hearse. New York plates. I heard you people down there were looking for a hearse so I just thought so long as we found one up here I should call���”
“Have you got the license number?”
“Yep, just you hold the wire a minute now.”
When the Captain hung up a few minutes later he had verified the license number and knew that Gallucci’s hearse had been found abandoned upstate. As near as he could make it, from the slender information he had obtained from Constable Bilins, the vehicle had been abandoned sometime between ten o’clock in the morning and three in the afternoon. No one had the vaguest idea of how it had landed up in Mrs. Hawkins’ barn.
The captain relayed his information downtown, talking directly to the police commissioner.
“They switched cars without a doubt,” he said. “But neither of the limousines has showed up yet. We still have a good chance���”
“They wouldn’t necessarily have dumped them,” the Commissioner said. “Once they lost the hearse, and the two limousines took separate routes, they would merely be a couple of black Caddies. Wouldn’t even be noticed.”
“Well, we have the license numbers���”
“Contact the federal people about the hearse,” the Commissioner said. “Keep in touch if there are any fresh breaks.”
The captain hung up and breathed deeply. The old man had sounded a little gruffer. It was a good sign. Maybe, if things broke right, he might reconsider about that Staten Island thing.
3.
Three miles beyond the Thru way cutoff, Mario began to slow down and pull over to the side of the road. There were no cars or houses in sight. The two limousines stopped behind him and Earl opened the door and got out. He walked back to where Joey sat behind the wheel of the Cadillac. Joey lowered the window.
“Mario says we take the next turn on the right,” he said. “The barn is only a mile beyond. You go on ahead. You remember how to get to the place all right, don’t you?”
“I brought the cars up last week, didn’t I?”
“All right, Joey. I’m going to have Georgie follow us in.”
“Maybe it might be a good idea to take her with you,” Joey said, twisting his neck to indicate the back seat of the car.
“She goes to the farmhouse with you,” Earl said shortly. “I’m running this show.”
“Sure.” Karl spoke up from the back seat. “She stays with us. As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to get real fond���”
“Lay off, Karl,” Earl said. “Leave her alone.”
“Aw, hell, what do you care?” Karl said. “If I want a little fun before we���”
“I said shut up, Karl. You’re going to do just what I tell you to do and when I’m not around, Herman here speaks for me. Is everything under control, Herman?”
The old man nodded, saying nothing.
“Listen, Earl,” Karl said, “I do what I want to do. See. Now if I want���”
Earl stared at him and he stopped talking, his mouth mean and nasty.
“You do what Herman tells you to do,” Earl said. “Understand? What Herman tells you or, if I’m around, what I tell you. Until after we split up the money. Then you’re on your own. But keep it in mind. The dough is with us. You get out of line and you might run into a little trouble, brother.”
He turned to Herman.
“Take care, Herman,” he said. “We’ll be along about ten minutes after you get there.”
“Right, Earl.”
Earl walked back to the other car.
“Joey’s going ahead,” he said. “You follow us. We’re turning into the next lane and going in about a mile. Then we take a right into the barn. You wait after we turn and Mario and I will get rid of the hearse and be back within five minutes.”
Georgie nodded, saying nothing.
“Everything O.K., Earl?” Billy asked.
Earl winked and held up his thumb and forefinger in a circle.
Several minutes later, as Mario turned off into the path leading to the barn, Earl said, “You sure no one can see from the house?”
“That’s right. There’s just the old woman and she’s deaf as a doornail.”
“How long do you suppose before someone finds���”
“Who knows?” Gallucci said. “It doesn’t matter. All we really need is time to get out of here. Once we’re at the farm we’ll be safe. For several hours anyway. Long enough to divide it and split out.”
“Don’t be surprised if we have a little trouble,” Earl said. “Karl is beginning to get ideas���”
“He’s your problem,” Mario said. “You brought him in on this, you know.”
“He’s my problem, but the girl is the problem of both of us-that is if you are still interested in keeping her alive,” Earl said.
“I’m still interested.”
“How far after we leave here?” Earl asked.
“Around twelve miles. All back roads. If anyone notices us, it would be a miracle. Not even the mail carrier hits the back roads we’ll be using.”
“Well, I’ll be glad to get out of this hearse,” Earl said. “You may be used to riding around with a stiff, but I’m not.”
“I guess that’s why I don’t like murder,” Mario said. “I get to see too many dead people anyway.”
When Mario and Earl walked back to where the limousine was waiting at the turnoff, a few minutes later, Mario was carrying two heavy sacks containing the money. Earl had the guns, wrapped in a lap robe. Mario got in the front and Earl got in next to Billy.
Georgie turned the ignition key and then backed around.
“Better let me have the forty-five,” he said.
“Wait until we get to the farm,” Earl said. “The guns are all wrapped up.”
Georgie shook his head.
“I feel better with a gun,” he said. “We can always get stopped.”
“O.K., Georgie,” Earl said. He unrolled the lap robe and took out a forty-five automatic. “This is yours?”
He handed it across the seat. George pushed it into his belt, between his shirt and his trousers. Billy looked at Earl, but said nothing.
4.
Dr. Jordan left the phone booth and returned to the car. He said nothing until he was seated next to Jake.
“Well, that ties it. No Kastlebaum, at least not in Kingston, New York,” he said.
“No Kastlebaum. Why, that’s impossible.”
“I’m telling you-no Kastlebaum. Neither under surveyors or anywhere else in the phone book.”
