The Snatchers

by Lionel White

  Pearl, holding Janie tightly by the arm, stood at the door with Terry as Dent turned off the light.

  He edged the door open and, lifting the rifle, took careful aim. One headlight on the nearest car went out as the gun spoke. He shot twice more in quick succession.

  “Hold your fire,” he snapped at Gino as he saw the cars quickly go dark. “They got the idea.”

  “Come on,” Red said, “let’s go.”

  Pearl and Janie and Terry were the first out of the door. Dent followed the other three men as they approached the car.

  “Fats and Gino in the front with me,” he whispered hoarsely as he opened the car door. “The rest in the back.”

  He reached for the starter button and the sound of the motor shattered the dead stillness of the night. Dent put the car in gear.

  It was just as they began to move that the powerful spotlight flashed on and caught them full in its shimmering beam.

  “Get it!” Dent yelled.

  But a split second before Gino had lifted the Tommy gun, two shots cracked out in swift succession. Dent felt the thud and then heard the third explosion under the car as the front right tire went.

  Gino pressed the trigger and the spotlight went off.

  Dent cursed. “Got the tire,” he said. “We’ll never make it now. Get back to the house quick before they turn on another light.”

  He swung open the door of the car and then reached in back and took Janie Wilton from Pearl’s arms.

  “Run for it,” he yelled.

  He heard Red stumble and curse in back of him as he reached the porch.

  There were no further shots and Dent realized that the police were taking no unnecessary chances of shooting the child.

  Fats was the last one to make it back to the hideout. He had to move slowly, as he carried the two suitcases with the money. He tossed them on the couch when he entered and one of them flew open.

  Dent turned on the shaded light in time to see package after package of tightly packed bills roll off the couch to the floor.

  Red staggered across the room and half fell on top of the loose money lying on the couch. The effort had been too much for him in his weakened condition and he dropped back into semi-consciousness.

  Pearl looked over at him and began to laugh hysterically. “Look at him,” she said, her voice high and thin. “Look at him. Lying on half a million bucks and he can’t buy a short beer.”

  The spotlight from the police car had picked out the child in the getaway car at exactly twenty-three minutes after two on Saturday morning.

  By two-thirty every police department on Long Island had been alerted. By two-forty FBI agents, as well as New York and Connecticut detectives, were racing toward Land’s End. The radio announcer on an all-night disk-jockey show got the news at two-forty-five. Extra editions of the morning newspapers hit the streets less than an hour later.

  By four o’clock on Saturday morning, there was hardly a person in the continental United States—at least a person who was awake and who could read or hear—who wasn’t aware of what had happened.

  An internationally known Broadway columnist who had picked up the first flash on his special police radio in the back of his Cadillac ordered his chauffeur to desert the night spots and head east on Long Island. His car crashed into a taxi on the Queensborough Bridge and he was virtually decapitated. Normally this news would have rated an eight-column banner, even in the opposition newspapers. It was relegated to the second page.

  Janie’s mother pacing the floor of her Riverside, Connecticut, home, and almost as worried about her husband as she was about her missing child, collapsed when they gave her the news.

  Gregory Wilton himself was in a hospital in Smithtown and had regained consciousness. One of Fats’ bullets had creased the side of his head during the battle at the tavern. He had barely finished identifying himself to the incredulous state troopers when news reached him that his daughter was barricaded in the hideout with the kidnapers.

  For those first few hours, no one was quite sure who was really in charge. The shock of the sudden disclosures had been too great for any real organization. State police had been the first to reach the scene. It was, in fact, a trooper’s car from the local barracks that Dent had first sighted bearing down on the cabin. The car had been attracted from the warehouse fire by the gunfire in town. Later, the sergeant at the wheel had talked to Patrolman Fanwell. Fanwell had tipped him off about the beach cottage.

  Land’s End Tavern had been left a shambles. Ed, the bartender, had been struck twice in the chest, as well as in the head. He’d gone down firing blindly. Later; when additional police arrived on the scene, they had traced a trail of blood from the spot where Red had been shot and knew that at least one of the bandits had been hit.

  Reporters from news services and New York papers were on the scene well before dawn. By this time a public-address system was on its way and floodlights were being temporarily set up some three hundred yards from the cottage.

  No attempts to fire on the hideaway or close in on it had been made. Strict orders had been received from both the FBI and the head of the state police to that effect, with the discovery that the Wilton child was trapped in the cabin. It wasn’t until well after dawn, on Saturday morning, that it was learned that the Ballin girl was still alive and also in the custody of the mob.

  The police had arrested Dunleavy after Wilton had told about his trip out to the Island. The announcement of this arrest came at four-thirty to the minute, at the exact time he was supposed to be landing on the beach in front of the hideout. Dunleavy himself had by that time already heard of the siege at the cabin; he was driving to Smithtown to take a train and get out of the neighborhood when they got him.

  By this time there was a New York City police boat cruising a half mile offshore, two police helicopters circled far overhead, and an army of detectives and government men had converged on Land’s End. Every highway from the city leading out toward Montauk was blocked by the curious. Police had thrown up a half-dozen roadblocks in an attempt to keep the morbid away, but they were ineffectual. The greatest crime story of modern times had burst wide open.

  Chapter Twenty

  Of all those in the hideout, Cal Dent had the only clear conception of the magnitude of the event.

  Long before dawn, he realized that no effort would be made to bother them so long as it was dark. He knew full well that only the safety of the child prevented the police from making a full-scale raid with tear gas and machine guns. It was Janie Wilton’s life that stood between them and sudden attack.

  He ordered Fats to take his position at a window in the front of the house, facing the driveway to the east. He sent Gino into Terry and Janie’s room, where he would be able to watch the south and west. The north wall was blank and would have to take care of itself.

  Terry had bandaged her head where Gino had used the barrel of his gun. She sat in the center of the living room, Janie on her lap. The child had finally fallen asleep in her arms.

  Dent turned the lights on and drew the shades. He began to take inventory.

  One submachine gun had been left at the tavern, but they had almost a thousand rounds of ammunition for the other one. Gino had the rifle with the telescopic sight. There were two sawed-off shotguns, but few shells for them. And all four men carried either revolvers or automatics and all had plenty of ammunition.

  Dent had less than a half bottle of whisky left. He had given them each a drink and then he had used a little extra in bringing Red around. Food was short. There was enough for about one full meal.

  Money? Spilling out of two opened suitcases on the table in front of the fireplace was half a million dollars. Dent’s lips twisted in a wry grin as he looked over at the money. Several bills had fallen to the floor and lay there neglected.

  Red was sprawled out on the couch. He had lost a lot of blood, but the main load from the shotgun had missed him. He felt a lot better.

  Twice Red had su
ggested making another break for it while it was still dark. Each time Dent had carefully explained to him that they wouldn’t have a chance.

  “You gotta see it, Red,” Dent said. “There’s no way out now. You could never shoot yourself past the roadblocks. And even if you did, how far do you think you’d get?”

  “But it’s still dark,” Red said.

  Dent had reasoned with him much as he would have reasoned with a child. Finally he said, “Look, Red. Leave it to me. We can still beat the game, but from now on, it’s going to take brains, not muscle.”

  Red shrugged his heavy shoulders and lay back.

  “Your brainwork hasn’t been so good so far,” Fats said. “We should have blown when we had the chance.”

  “We’d never have made it,” Dent said. “We got a bad break, that’s all. Who the hell could have figured on that cop busting in on the party?”

  Pearl sat next to Red on the couch and said nothing. There was a peculiarly dazed look about her eyes and she seemed to be suffering a sort of aftereffect of shock. It wasn’t quite clear in her mind exactly what had happened.

  Gradually one idea was beginning to emerge, crystal clear, in Pearl’s mind. The idea of getting away. Pearl was no longer interested in the kidnaping, or the possible ransom money. The gunplay and violence of the last few hours had utterly destroyed her morale. She wanted nothing more than to leave the hideout. Even the thought of arrest and prosecution came to her as a relief.

  Her desire for Cal Dent, her old longing for freedom and money and luxuries—everything was submerged in this one intense longing to escape the terror and bloodshed that she had now convinced herself would be the ultimate and inevitable end of the siege. From the very moment that their plans had gone wrong, when Fanwell interrupted the stickup at Land’s End Tavern, Pearl had been convinced that every hope was over. Lack of sleep, a bad hangover, and a terrible, paralyzing fear had combined to shatter her.

  Dent was quick to sense her condition and shortly before dawn he told Fats to take her upstairs and try to make her sleep. Fats shrugged but obeyed. He had to carry her. Red limped up after them.

  Once they had put Pearl on top of the bed and she had turned her face to the wall, quietly sobbing, Red went into the other room and threw himself down on Dent’s cot. He stretched out with one arm under his head. He yawned and dozed off, his mouth wide open and his expression placid.

  Pure physical and emotional exhaustion should have brought Pearl sleep, but the sound of Red’s snoring served to irritate her enough to make sleep impossible. As she lay with her face to the wall, muscles tense and quivering, a plan gradually began to form in her mind; a plan to solve the one essential problem that had become the climax of all her problems, the problem of getting away from the hideout.

  Back downstairs, Fats sat peering out between a crack made where the curtain failed to close the space at the side of the window. His tiny eyes were puckered and alert; he watched for any possible movement. But his mind was busy with other problems.

  Gino, kept an alert eye on the dark shadows beyond the window and his mind was a caldron of bitterness and hatred as he waited for the dawn. He wished that Dent had let him have the submachine gun instead of the rifle. With the Tommy gun he would have been able to make a clean sweep of it.

  Cal Dent had first arranged his defenses and then, noticing Terry and the child, told the girl to lie down on the couch in the living room. Terry placed Janie between herself and the wall.

  “I want you both in this room,” he said, “in case I need you in a hurry.”

  Terry stared at him, wide-eyed, but followed his orders without a word. Janie had awakened as she was being moved, and then returned to sleep almost at once. Terry held the child tightly in her arms, trying not to think.

  Later Dent stood next to the radio. Bulletins were being released on an average of every ten minutes. Most of the news was erroneous in detail, but right in its broad over-all coverage: Dent kept the set turned very low and after a while he only half listened. He was busy reviewing the entire situation in his own mind; busy evaluating every factor, figuring every possibility.

  He realized that his main problem lay outside of the cottage, but that that problem was something over which he had only limited control. He was smart enough to understand that the people within the cottage constituted a problem almost as involved as the one without. Pearl, he knew at once, could be discounted as far as assistance was concerned. Her only value, from this point on, lay in the fact that she was a neutral quality. But while he would not be able to count on her for help, she wouldn’t be in the way. She would be on no one’s side.

  Of the others he was happiest about Red. Red would do what he was told to do. Red would obey. Red would follow him with a blind, unreasoning loyalty. Dent knew full well that his sole hope for turning the situation into a success lay only in his ability to protect Janie Wilton and keep her alive. He reasoned from the standpoint of logic, not desperation and defeat.

  Gino was the most dangerous. The moment things began to look re-

  ally bad—the very second when Gino decided that their chances were hopeless—that’s when he’d blow his top. And Gino would try to take as many with him as he could. From the very beginning he had hated the child and the girl. He blamed the child in particular for his fight with Red. Gino could, at any moment, go berserk.

  That was one reason that Dent had given him the rifle. A man with a rifle, at close quarters, isn’t too difficult to take.

  Gino presented a second potential danger. Dent had the fullest intentions of negotiating with the police. They would probably be at close range. If Gino blew up and started shooting, it could wreck everything. Cal knew that he would have to watch the little mobster constantly. Fats Morn was, in a sense, a fairly safe bet. Fats would play along, at least for the time being. Fats was a gambler and he knew what he had to win and what he had to lose. He’d try everything before he gave up. But Fats, like Gino, was trigger-happy. Fats had courage. From now on, Dent realized, physical courage would be a drug on the market. What was needed now was moral courage. If they were forced into a waiting game, and it was inevitable that it would come to that, they would need more than sheer guts. They’d have to be smart.

  Dent began to formulate plans for his ultimate breakout. True, they had an ace in the hole in the youngster. But they would still, sooner or later, have to figure a plan for their final escape. He didn’t doubt for a moment that police would hold off as long as it was a matter of protecting the child. And he believed firmly that a deal could be worked out so that they would be given some sort of head start, probably with the ransom money. The trick wasn’t so much in making the first step toward freedom; the trick was in ensuring that they made a clean getaway.

  For a moment Dent entertained the idea of bargaining to take the child and the money both on their first leg. But his intelligence told him that the police, and probably the youngster’s family as well, would never take that sort of gamble. From Wilton’s point of view, they had double-crossed him at the time of the first contact, when they had stuck up the Land’s End Tavern. Wilton would never believe that it had been Dent’s intention to free the child once he had his hands on the dough.

  No, it was going to be a tricky deal, negotiating with them from now on.

  The shooting at the tavern had had one other disastrous effect, Dent realized. It wasn’t only that they were backed into a dead end. For the first time the entire nation was in on the act. From now on there was public opinion to contend with. Every man and woman in the country had automatically become a man-hunter. Things were completely in the open.

  It would no longer be a case of dickering with a grief-stricken and worried family, whose one single thought was the safe return of their child. It was, Cal Dent suddenly realized, himself against the whole country.

  Well, Dent reflected, he was a criminal, wasn’t he? It had always been him against society. The only difference was that now the other side rea
lized the identity and the location of its enemy.

  Dent’s mouth was a hard straight line as he thought about it. He was more determined than ever to win.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  At five-thirty Saturday morning, the first direct appeal over the radio was made to the kidnap gang.

  Colonel W. F. Newbold, in charge of the Connecticut State Police, in whose jurisdiction the kidnaping had taken place, acted as the spokesman. For fifteen minutes before he came on the air, radio announcers on all major metropolitan stations had requested that the kidnapers stand by, in case they were listening in.

  When Colonel Newbold himself went on the air, he first asked that the kidnapers signal by flashing the house lights on and off if they were listening.

  Fats had been against making any sort of answer; figuring a possible trap, but Dent had ignored him and at once turned the light switch.

  It must have taken several minutes for the Colonel to be reached by those watching the house.

  When he went back on the air he said:

  “I understand you are listening in to this broadcast. We want you to know that your hideout is completely surrounded and that any hope of escape is impossible. No one will be able to get six feet from the house and still live. Every road for miles around Land’s End has been blockaded. Your cause is hopeless.

  “Release the Wilton child and the Ballin girl and I will personally guarantee you safe custody and a fair and impartial trial. You will be given every possible consideration.

  “This is your only chance. You are being given until eight o’clock this morning to reach a decision. At that time, open the front door and come out of the house in single file. Keep your hands above your heads. No shots will be fired and you will be taken into safe custody and at once transferred to a place where you will be given the opportunity of con-suiting attorneys.