The Snatchers

by Lionel White

“Cut it,” Dent said. “Leave her alone, Red. Pearl knows what she’s doing.” He went to the table and sat down, reaching for a half-finished cup of cold coffee.

  Pearl slammed the door behind her as she went out.

  “I’m going in town this afternoon,” Dent said. “When that goon gets off the beach, Pearl can drive me in and pick up the papers and the groceries. Red, you gotta stay here in case anyone else shows up by accident. And Gino, he stays, too. But I want Gino to keep out of sight. Now, for God’s sake, let’s not have any trouble while I’m gone.”

  “Trouble,” Red said. “What kinda trouble we gonna have?”

  “None, I hope,” Dent said quietly. “Only one thing: Don’t you and Pearl fight. And stay the hell away from that girl in there. You monkey around her and you know damn well Pearl’ll blow her top.”

  “What, me?” Red said, innocence wide on his face.

  “Yeah, you,” Dent said shortly.

  Red blushed. “I wouldn’t hurt her,” he said. “You better tell Gino—”

  “I wouldn’t go near the dame,” Gino cut in.

  Dent started to answer when again they heard the sound of the jeep’s motor starting. As he went to the window, Pearl returned to the house.

  Red was laughing.

  “He took one look at that get-up, babe,” he said, “and it frightened him clean off the beach.”

  “What happened?” Dent asked sharply.

  “Why, nothing happened,” Pearl said, and shrugged. “I only told him that my husband—this bum here,” and she turned and nodded at Red—’’that my husband was down with measles and I thought it might be catching.”

  Chapter Four

  The fishermen who had come down from New England, crossing Long

  Island Sound more than a hundred years back in their search for new places to settle, had called the tiny hamlet Land’s End. Perhaps some fifty families settled there eventually. Now, more than a hundred years later, the village had changed comparatively little.

  Land’s End was about an hour’s drive from Smithtown, and the little collection of white Cape Cod houses lay about a mile inland and two miles east of the hideaway. It was here that Dent had rendezvoused with Fats Mom, and it was here that Pearl came to do her desultory shopping. The village consisted of a supermarket, a stationery and novelty store, a drugstore, a bar, and three or four other rather faded, old-fashioned commercial establishments. There was a post office and a town hall, in the basement of which was the local township police station.

  And if the hamlet itself had changed little in a hundred years, the character of the people themselves had also undergone but slight alteration with the advent of the industrial age. They were still strictly New England; shrewd, thrifty, conventional, and tight-lipped. They didn’t cotton much to strangers.

  It wasn’t, of course, that they weren’t used to strangers. Generation after generation of New Yorkers had trekked out to that part of Long Island for their week ends and their vacations. The villagers were used to them. In fact, the better part of their livelihood depended on them. But they carried on in the old New England tradition, and though they showed no unwillingness to take the strangers’ money, they didn’t really like them and they rarely made friends with them. The merchants, of course, were polite, but that was about all.

  Trains from New York stopped at the village, but Cal Dent had Pearl drive him into Smithtown. It was possible to avoid Land’s End and hit the Montauk—New York highway west of the village. Dent felt it would be a mistake to be seen at Land’s End, and he was sorry now that he hadn’t met Fats in Smithtown the previous night. But he had wanted to have Fats see the tavern. The Land’s End Tavern would figure big in his plans before he had completed the job.

  On the drive into Smithtown, Cal fiddled with the car radio until he found a news broadcast. The Wilton case was mentioned only briefly; there had been an erroneous report that the youngster and her nurse had been seen boarding a plane at an Albany airport. The announcer said that it was rumored the police had made an arrest. Cal laughed shortly as he

  cut the station off at the end of the broadcast.

  “They probably have,” he said. “They usually do arrest the wrong guys.”

  Pearl kept her eyes on the road and drove carefully, wheeling the large Packard sedan along at a cautious forty miles an hour.

  “You’re phoning Wilton this afternoon?” she asked.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “What are you going to—”

  “Leave it to me,” Dent said shortly. “After you dump me, get your groceries and get back to the house as soon as you can. Don’t hang around the town and don’t stop at the tavern. You want something to drink, get some beer in the grocery. But don’t waste any time. I feel better with you in the house.”

  “I’ll feel better myself,” Pearl said, thinking of the girl, Terry, and the way Red had of looking at her.

  It was an odd thing about Pearl; after two years of living with Red, she had completely ceased to want him. Sexually he left her cold. But Pearl was a woman who, voluptuous and desirable herself and constantly pursued by men, still found it impossible to let any man leave her of his own volition.

  Pearl couldn’t quite understand it, but she found in Dent an attraction she had never seen in Red. Dent, with his slight body, his graying hair, his cold, aloof manner. For some reason he interested her—physically.

  Red, too, had interested her at one time. But after that first night she had been bored. Pearl was satisfied only with men whom she found it necessary to pursue.

  “I want you to meet the twelve-thirty train tonight at the Land’s End station,” Dent said. “The place will be deserted at that hour, so there’s no reason to drive all the way into Smithtown. Be there without fail. I don’t want to be hanging around and I don’t want to walk it.”

  Pearl nodded.

  Dent was ten minutes early for his train, into town, but Pearl left at once. She drove directly back to Land’s End and parked across the street from the town hall and in front of the supermarket. She didn’t bother to take the key from the ignition switch as she shut off the motor.

  The grocer said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Mason.”

  All the summer people had returned to the city by now and he made a little extra effort to be polite. A dollar was a dollar, but it wasn’t only that. Pearl was the kind of woman of whom the grocer thoroughly disapproved. She was also the kind that in his secret dreams he hoped to meet and seduce. Pearl affected most people that way,

  Pearl gave him her number-two smile. She ordered a couple of bottles of milk, assorted canned vegetables, and other basic necessities. Realizing that her order was a little heavy, she idly commented:

  “We’re expecting some folks out toward the end of the week. Guess I better get a little extra in.”

  The grocer smiled.

  Pearl also ordered a case of beer.

  Returning to the Packard as the grocer piled the cartons in the rear end, Pearl reflected that the last of the gin was gone. She knew that she would have to drive into Smithtown to find a liquor store, and momentarily she cursed herself for not having thought of it while she had been there.

  Well, it was too far to go back now. But there would be no harm in dropping by the Land’s End Tavern and lifting a quick one.

  Ed, the owner and bartender at the tavern, was old-fashioned. He didn’t like to see women, particularly unaccompanied women, come into his place in the afternoon. When Pearl entered, he was alone behind the bar, but he still didn’t like it. Pearl stood at the bar for a moment or two before he turned to her.

  “Waitin’ for someone, miss?” he asked.

  “Waiting for a drink. Gin and Coke.”

  Ed didn’t look happy.

  “Rather serve you in a booth, miss,” he said.

  It made Pearl sore, but she smiled anyway. She was conscious of the muted radio as she turned and found her way to one of the five booths lining the wall opposite the bar. The
re was a jukebox in one corner of the room, and she was searching in the bottom of her large suede bag for a coin when her hand suddenly froze.

  What stopped her was the sound of the voice coming from the radio.

  An announcer had interrupted the popular music program to say that he had a special news bulletin on the Wilton kidnaping case.

  “It had been learned,” the voice of the announcer went on, “that a man named Stanislaus Lazarus, chef in a midtown restaurant, was arrested at noon today in connection with the Wilton kidnaping. Police traced a telephone call from Lazarus’ apartment in the east Bronx to Gregory Wilton’s office in lower Manhattan. Lazarus is being questioned. This station will interrupt future broadcasts, in case of any further developments, to give you the latest bulletins on the Wilton case.”

  Ed, the bartender, carried the drink to the table, the gin in a two-ounce shot glass, an uncapped Coke, and a tall glass beside it.

  “Terrible thing,” he said, “that poor little child being kidnaped. By God, if the police would spend a little more time catching criminals instead of bothering horse players, things like this would never be allowed to happen. Trouble is, all those cops—”

  “All those cops what?”

  Neither the bartender nor Pearl had heard the door open. Both swung around as the voice cut in. With the light behind him, Pearl could only see a tall, thin man silhouetted against the doorframe. He seemed to be wearing a uniform.

  “Hi, Jack,” Ed said. “I was about to explain to this lady here that all cops are crooks.” He laughed as he said it.

  As the man walked over to the bar, Pearl suddenly caught her breath and her normally pale face went dead white.

  It was the fisherman, only this time he was a policeman.

  Ed asked her if she wanted him to mix it, and she nodded, her eyes glued to the other man, who was now leaning with his back to the bar and idly watching her. There was an amused smile on his rather too thin, angular face.

  “Sure we’re all crooks,” he said in a slow drawl. “And how is your husband, Mrs. Mason?” He looked directly at Pearl.

  Quickly Pearl collected herself. What, she wondered, was she getting so jittery about? After all, this Jack Fanwell had to do something. So why not be a policeman? And why should she worry about this small-town clown?

  She looked him square in the face and gave him her number-one smile. It would, after all, be best to be friendly. Also, he was an attractive man, even if he was a cop.

  “He’s better,” she said.

  Fanwell nodded. He turned back to the bar as Ed put a beer down in front of him. For the next few minutes the two of them kidded back and forth. Pearl finished her drink and stood up. She fumbled in her purse and finally found a single dollar bill. She walked over and laid it on the damp mahogany.

  “I’d better be getting back,” she said in a low, husky voice. “Don’t like to leave Mr. Mason too long alone.”

  Fanwell turned to face her.

  “Isn’t your brother still with you?” he asked.

  Pearl realized she had made a slip. Quickly she picked it up, again giving the tall, good-looking policeman her best smile.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, he’s still with us. But after all, he’s a man, and men are never much good with sick people, are they?” She looked up coyly.

  As she turned and left the place, she wondered how Fanwell happened to know so much about them. It was true, of course, that when they had first taken the cottage, she had mentioned to the real-estate broker that her brother would be out now and then to visit. But Gino had arrived late at night by car and she felt sure no one had seen him around the place.

  Well, she reflected as her foot found the clutch of the Packard and she pulled away from the curb, that was the way it was supposed to be in small towns. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.

  She hoped that they’d be able to get away soon. Pearl was becoming a little nervous. She had been away from the cottage exactly three hours.

  Chapter Five

  Pearl and Dent had been gone for less than an hour when Red began to feel lonely. Several times he had tried to open conversations with Gino, whom he didn’t like, but who was, after all, the only person present with the exception of Terry and the child. Occasionally he could hear the two of them moving about in the back room.

  Gino had cut each opening short. He was still working on his scratch sheet and he didn’t want to be bothered. Red picked up a comic book and looked at it for a few minutes, but he was unable to read, and he had already gone over the pictures a dozen times within the last few days.

  Red couldn’t stand being alone, and being with Gino was, to all intents and purposes, the same as being alone. Finally, after his third try at a conversation with Gino, who told him to shut up and leave him alone, Red stood up and walked over to the door leading into the rear bedroom. He lifted the latch and entered.

  Little Janie Wilton lay on one of the cots, her face to the wall. She was covered by a blanket and Terry had taken off the child’s clothes and hung them over the back of a chair. The youngster, both emotionally and physically exhausted after the events of the past thirty hours, had finally fallen asleep.

  Terry, a strand of auburn hair across her cheek, long slender legs spread wide and her elbows on her knees, looked up, fright suddenly in her face, as Red entered the room. Instinctively she put one finger to her lips and pointed to the child.

  Red’s primitive emotions were always close to the surface. Had Terry been alone in the room and had he come on her looking as she did at that moment, his physical reaction would have been swift and instinctive. He would have taken the girl with the same indifference with which he might have reached for a drink.

  As it was, his eyes followed her finger and rested on the child. His broken, good-natured fighter’s face at once assumed a ludicrous air of caution and conspiratorial secrecy. A child was sleeping; he had been as much as told to be quiet. He seemed to rise to his toes as he took a second step into the room. His voice was a parody of a whisper and it sounded like a broken foghorn.

  “Sleepin’?”

  “Yes.”

  Terry brushed the hair away from her face and got to her feet as she spoke.

  “I wanted to wash out her clothes while she slept, the poor dear,” she said in a very soft whisper. “But I haven’t any water.”

  Red looked perplexed and then, a second later, he smiled widely.

  “Bring her clothes into the other room,” he said. “You can wash ‘em in the sink.”

  Gino looked up dourly a moment later as Red re-entered the living room, followed by the girl, a bundle of soiled clothes over her arm.

  “What’s she doin’ out here?” he snapped.

  “She’s gonna wash the kid’s clothes. I tol’ her she could.” Red looked stubborn.

  “You told her? Who the hell are you tellin’ people what to do and what not to do? Dent said she was to stay in the other room.” Gino was on his feet, his face mean and taut.

  “Look,” Red said, his own heavy cheeks suddenly flushed with anger. “The kid needs clean clothes. So I tol’ her she can wash her some clean clothes. It ain’t hurtin’ nothin’ for the kid to be clean. So whatta ya wanna do—make somethin’ outa that?”

  Gino sneered and sat back on the couch. “All right,” he said. “Let her wash. But we’ll see what Dent says when he gets back.”

  “I ain’t afraid of Dent,” Red said darkly. He turned to Terry. “Go on an’ wash.”

  Red slumped into a chair, his back to Gino and facing the sink. His eyes followed every movement of the girl as she rolled up her sleeves and started the water running in the sink.

  Terry herself tried not to think at all. She knew that if she only kept busy, kept doing something, it would be better. She found a bar of soap and began rubbing the clothes. The ice-cold water made hard work of it. Red sat staring at her, a strange, almost childlike look on his face.

  Damn it, he thought, this is the k
ind of dame I should have. Imagine

  Pearl ever washing out anything! Yeah, he should have tied up with a dame like this. A good, honest girl. A working girl. A girl who loved kids. Not only that, but this dame had everything Pearl had and then some.

  For the next few minutes he was completely unaware of anything except Terry Ballin and what she was doing. He sprawled in his chair in a self-induced coma, daydreaming in a simple childish fashion of what might have been.

  Neither Terry nor Red was aware of it when Gino quietly got to his feet. In complete silence, he crossed the room to the door leading into the back room. They didn’t hear him or see him as he carefully opened the door and entered the room and then softly closed it behind himself.

  For several minutes Gino stood stock-still, his back to the closed door, staring at the cot on which Janie Wilton lay.

  The child had turned in her sleep and faced the door. She had been restless and the blanket had half fallen from the cot. Her corn-silk hair half covered the delicate little-girl face, and her small, perfectly shaped mouth was half opened, exposing the under row of small white teeth. The way the blanket fell from her cot, one arm and half of her upper body lay bare. Her breath came regularly and she seemed to smile slightly as she slept.

  Gino’s jet eyes were colder than two black agates as he stared at the child. A rush of blood flooded the veins of his normally dead-white face, and his large, bulbous nose was tinted a delicate purple.

  His hands hung straight by his sides, but the short heavy fingers, so contradictory to the rest of his emaciated body, twitched uncontrollably. There was a thin coating of saliva over his usually dry lips and tiny sweat buds had broken out on his pale forehead.

  After several minutes during which he stood like a statue, he slowly crept across the room.

  Again, standing over the child, he once more froze into immobility. Only his lips moved as his breath came in short, quick gasps.

  And then he reached forward with one hand and slowly stroked the child’s hair, barely touching it. He was very alert to her slightest movement, and when she slept on, his hand, with all the lithe, subtle movement of a snake, passed down her hair to her bare shoulder.