by Lionel White
“All right, all right, you didn’t have any serious argument. We have to find these things out, you know. Does your wife have any family, or very close friends whom she might suddenly decided to visit? Maybe someone without a phone?”
“No family. Her folks are dead and she was an only child. I’ve called all her friends. But she simply wouldn’t … “
Lieutenant Parks stood up, fighting the temptation to yawn. He wasn’t bored or indifferent; he was just very tired.
“There were no signs around the house of a struggle or anything?”
Sherwood’s head jerked up and stared at the other man. “Why no. But what do you think … “
“I don’t think anything—yet,” the lieutenant said. “Anyway, you’ve made a formal report downstairs, is that right?”
“That’s right. But … “
“Okay, I’m going to have a man go out and look your place over. We can handle the routine end from here. You’ve given us the license number and make of the car, a description and so forth?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’ll have one of our men run out home with you. He may turn up something. And in the meantime, try not to worry. We’ll find her, all right. Probably nothing at all. Maybe she just …. “
Sherwood turned away, a defeated, baffled expression in his eyes.
“I’d go out with you myself,” the lieutenant said, “but we’re pretty busy here just now. As you may have heard, an armored car was stuck up in town this morning and the thugs got away with close to a quarter of a million dollars. A guard was shot. He died up in County Hospital about an hour ago.”
He pushed a button on his desk and a moment later the door opened and Coogins put his head in.
“Get Detective Sims,” Parks said.
As they waited for the detective to arrive, the lieutenant took a cigarette from a crumpled pack and then offered the pack to Sherwood, who shook his head.
“By the way, do you know if your wife was carrying any particularly large amount of money with her? Or wearing any valuable jewelry or anything?”
For a moment, Sherwood almost smiled.
“Junk jewelry, if she was wearing anything. I doubt even that. Joyce doesn’t care for jewelry. As far as money goes, she probably didn’t have more than four or five dollars in her bag. She never carries anything much. When she shops she usually pays with a check. Makes it easier for her to keep track of things.”
“And nothing was missing from the house? Nothing of value?”
“Nothing.” For a second Sherwood looked thoughtful and then quickly he looked up. “Flick,” he said.
“What?”
“Flick—our poodle. He’s gone too. He was with Joyce in the car this morning when she took me to the station. And now he’s gone too. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.”
“That’s odd,” Lieutenant Parks said, rather aimlessly. It occurred to him that maybe this wasn’t just a routine case after all. It was true that plenty of young women left their husbands for one reason or another. But they usually didn’t bother to do so without packing a few clothes. And they didn’t usually take off with a poodle.
The door opened and a heavy-shouldered, middle-aged man wearing a gray fedora slanted over one eye entered the room.
“Want you to meet Mr. Sherwood,” Lieutenant Parks said. “Mr. Sherwood’s wife is missing.”
2.
Cribbins had taken no chances about the car. When Mitty left the rooming house at six o’clock that Monday morning he walked to the door with him, gave him a pat on the back as the thick-set, short-armed man squeezed through the opening and started down the steps.
“Just don’t rush it,” he said. “There’s plenty of time. But keep an eye on your watch and be sure to be back here no later than eight-fifteen.”
Mitty was gone now and Cribbins had returned to the large room they shared and poured himself a second cup of coffee from the electric percolator which he kept in violation of the local health ordinance.
Yes, he’d been smart about the car and he wasn’t trusting to luck. Not that there was anything tricky about picking up a hot car—anyone could have figured that part out. But he’d gone a step further.
Just any old car wouldn’t do, even with the switched plates. It had to be a very particular type of car. An unobtrusive car, but a new, fast job. And it had to be safe. Safe for at least the few short hours they would be needing it. He wouldn’t take any chance on their being picked up before they had completed the operation. That’s why he’d cased the doctor’s house for weeks on end, making sure that the doctor returned from the hospital around three o’clock in the morning, every Monday, week in and week out. That once home, he left the car on the street in front of his house and went in and went to bed and didn’t get up until afternoon. That no one got up and no one used the car.
Taking it, of course, would be routine—just a simple matter of switching the wires, and at that Mitty was adept. Once away from the apartment house, the business of changing the plates for the phony ones—for which he had the forged license papers—would take only a minute. And then they’d be perfectly safe.
It was just one extra little precaution, but it was typical of the way he planned the job. All those extra little precautions. They were the difference which would make a highly speculative venture turn into a highly successful one. It was all a simple matter of detail and timing.
Cribbins looked down at the stainless steel watch on his wrist, knowing without thinking about it that it would show the correct time. Harry Cribbins was an extremely meticulous and precise man. Well, for this sort of thing you had to be precise. Split-second timing was absolutely essential. Every little piece had to fall into place at exactly the right moment. For a quarter of a million dollars you could afford to be precise. In fact, if you wanted to stay out of prison, and possibly out of the electric chair, you couldn’t afford to be anything else. It was what he’d been incessantly drilling into those others who were in on the thing with him, from the very beginning when he’d first begun planning the job.
It had taken some drilling too. God knows he didn’t have much to work with. But beggars—or thieves, to be more exact—couldn’t be choosers.
Cribbins smiled wryly, but his pale gray eyes remained cold and calculative.
Take Mitty. Mitty certainly wasn’t much and he doubted if any other mob in the country would have trusted that rather dim-witted, punchy man whose face bore the scars of a hundred lost battles. But Mitty was loyal and would do exactly as he was told to do. He didn’t ask questions and there was no doubt but what the ex-pug’s amazing physical strength would be of value, if properly used. The trick with Mitty was to give him no problem which would strain the delicate balance of his mentality.
Harry Cribbins remembered back to the time he’d first met Karl Mitty. It was Goldman who had brought them together and he recalled his surprise that Goldman would have a dimwit hanging around. He’d asked Goldman about it, later, when the two of them were alone.
“Sure,” the lawyer had told him, “he’s a little punchy. Some of his marbles are gone, but he has his points. He’s big and he’s tough, and the few things he knows he knows well. There isn’t a better hot-car artist around. The only thing is, he’s just too stupid to know what to do with a car when he gets one. He takes ‘em for pleasure, for God’s sake.”
Goldman had met Mitty while the big boy was still able to get a fight in one of the smaller clubs. He began to use him as a sort of errand boy and hanger-on, but after a while when Mitty would get in minor jams, Goldman tried to get rid of him. It was Goldman who’d worked an angle and got Mitty the job as a beer truck driver for Rumplemyer’s. Of course the job hadn’t lasted very long. None of Mitty’s jobs lasted.
“Maybe you can use him,” Goldman had told Cribbins. “God knows what for, though,” he’d added cryptically. “He’s strong as an ox, and fearless. Willing to do anything, just so you tell him what to do.”
Yeah, Mitty was all right. You just had to know how to handle him, what to do with him. Mitty was like a piece of machinery, like the big car that right now he was stealing, or like a submachine gun—dangerous, powerful, and with no vestige of intelligence. It was necessary only to make sure he had the proper direction. Like a gun, Mitty was as safe or as dangerous as the person who used him.
Santino was something else again. Santino was always dangerous.
Harry Cribbins lifted the coffee cup to his lips and at the same time his eyes went to the cot against the wall, where the slight figure lay under the shabby blanket. Santino hadn’t awakened when he and Mitty had gotten up and put on their clothes.
Santino slept like a dead man, or rather a dead man with St. Vitus dance. He twitched and jerked and his half-open mouth emitted tiny sounds, but he never awakened, never opened his eyes. Nothing bothered him, once he’d had his shots and climbed between the covers. He dreamed and slept on and his dreams must have been wild and violent and filled with strange and terrible things, because he moaned and talked all night long. But he didn’t wake up.
His dreams were like his daylight hours, which also were filled with violence and terrible things.
Once more Cribbins’s eyes went to the watch and he figured that he could let Santino sleep a while longer. There was time enough then, plenty of time. It would take only a few minutes for him to do what he had to do.
Santino was a junkie and he had a sharp, evil mind and an uncontrollable temper. But he also had maniacal courage and a particular way with guns. A man like Santino was essential for the thing they had planned. Someone had to handle the Tommy gun and it had to be someone who would use it with unerring skill if the necessity arose. Cribbins hoped that the necessity wouldn’t arise, but he had to be prepared. There was one thing, however; he’d get rid of the little man the very second they made the split. Where he, Cribbins, would go, once he had his share, none of them would know and none would ever find out.
In a sense it was too bad he couldn’t take Luder along with him. Luder was the only one of the whole bunch for whom he had any real affection. They had been friends for a long time, since the days when they had been doing a stretch in the big house together. He liked and trusted Luder. But Luder, like the others, had a flaw in his make-up, and it was a dangerous flaw—controllable ternporarily, but dangerous in the long run. Luder was a drunk. True, only a periodic drunk, but a drunk nevertheless.
He knew that he could trust Luder to stay sober while they were pulling the job. He knew the old man wouldn’t dream of taking a drink then. But later on, when everything was over and done with, and when they had the money and everything would seem safe, that’s when he’d crack. That’s when he’d let down the bars and take a drink. And one drink would lead to another and another and then another, and Luder would no longer be safe.
No, much as he liked Luder, he’d have to desert him, along with the others, once the thing was over and done with. Thinking about it, his mind went from Luder to the girl. To Paula. Paula, probably asleep this very moment in the house up in the little town at the other end of the county. Paula, who was holding down the place they’d picked for the temporary hideout while the heat cooled off. Paula, who was supposed to be Santino’s girl and who had been shacking up with the little gunman when Cribbins had first found him.
For several moments then, as he lighted a fresh cigarette and drew long draughts on it, he thought of Paula and of Santino. He still couldn’t understand it. They had been living together, but Cribbins knew Santino merely paid the girl’s rent and kept a room himself in a cheap downtown hotel. Paula was supposed to have been on the habit but had kicked it, and Cribbins couldn’t for the world see what kept them seeing each other. He knew she hated and feared the little junkie. And Santino himself paid almost no attention to her, with the exception of an occasional curse when he didn’t like the food she cooked for him or when she was slow in handing him something he wanted.
There was no doubt about it, Paula held a certain fascination for him. She’s like an animal, he thought. Like a beautiful, well-groomed animal. She’d come to him if he wanted her. All she needed was someone who would be kind to her and would give her love. For a long time, when he’d first met her, he’d wondered what went on behind those great dark eyes of hers, what odd and strange thoughts were concealed by the low, smooth forehead under the blue-black hair. But after a while he learned that there were no thoughts, there was nothing at all. Paula merely lived and breathed and felt.
She was in her early twenties, a slender, rather small girl with a beautiful, rounded figure, thin-waisted and trim, but with a ripe and fully matured body. She was a woman who had been made for one purpose, and on Santino that purpose was utterly wasted.
Cribbins knew that he’d picked her up some place out in Pennsylvania, where she’d been working as a waitress. He’d brought her to New York and put her on the junk. She was good-looking and young and Santino had no difficulty in getting her work in a nightclub. He probably had other plans, too, but whatever they were, nothing had happened. Even Santino had realized that Paula wasn’t to be trusted. She’d talk, sooner or later; she was bound to. Not because she would rebel or fight what he wanted her to do; it was just that she was simple and that some time or other she’d run into someone who would be kind to her and then she’d start talking.
Cribbins himself had been kind to her and she’d reacted as he knew she would. But Cribbins had been very careful. He could have taken her, but he didn’t because he didn’t want to lose Santino. He needed Santino; he couldn’t risk any trouble, not before they did what they had to do.
For a fleeting moment, Cribbins entertained the idea of taking Paula along when the gang split. But almost at once he discarded it. Paula was known to be Santino’s girl and there was every chance that sooner or later Santino would be picked up. Cribbins couldn’t take a chance on being saddled with anyone who might tie him in with Santino once he was free and clear.
For a moment he thought of reaching for the telephone and giving her a ring, just to see if everything was all right at the other end. But then he quickly discarded the idea. Everything would be all right; there was no point in taking any chances. A telephone call could always be traced.
Once more he looked down at his watch. It was time Luder was getting in touch. Almost simultaneously the telephone rang and he quickly reached for the receiver. Luder was calling exactly on the dot.
“I’ve got the van, and I’m about to leave.”
Cribbins merely said “Good,” and then hung up. He walked across the room to the cot on which Santino slept.
Charlie Luder considered himself a family man. It was a rather odd conceit in view of the fact that Luder hadn’t seen his wife or his three children in more than twenty years. Most of those years had been spent behind bars and when they’d finally let him out, Luder knew too much time had passed and that the boys were now grown up and his wife was an old woman. He made it a point not to look them up, not to let them know his address.
But he was a man who’d always hated to be alone and so he had taken a small apartment in the upper Bronx and set up bachelor quarters. He was an old man now and it never occurred to him to seek a new woman. Instead, he adopted a cat from a neighboring butcher and then a week or so later, bought a dog of dubious ancestry from a pet shop. He worked for a while at odd jobs, making very little money and needing very little. And then Cribbins had looked him up and he’d decided to go in with him on the plan.
That weekend he’d taken care of the things he had to take care of. First there was the truck. He boug
ht it legitimately from a second-hand dealer, using an assumed name and giving a false address. It wasn’t much of a truck, being actually a beaten-up old moving van of ancient vintage, but it would serve the purpose.
He didn’t mind giving up the apartment and he didn’t bother to remove the few sticks of furniture. His personal possessions could be packed into a briefcase. It was harder saying good-by to the dog and the cat, for he was inordinately fond of both of them. That was one thing about Luder—he loved animals. Even when he went on his periodical benders he’d always remember to feed and water them.
And so on that last Saturday when he got all through checking the place for any possible thing which left behind might point to him, he’d taken the two animals down to the Bide-A-Wee home and left them.
He left the apartment for the last time shortly after seven on Monday morning and walked over to the parking lot where he’d left the moving truck. He wore a windbreaker and a peaked cap, and although it was a warm day his hands were protected by leather gloves.
The truck was slow to start for a moment or so, as the motor slowly turned over, he had a quick sense of alarm. But then at last it caught and he wheeled the old five-ton van out into the street and headed for Route 1.
He stopped at a diner in Rye and put in his phone call. Then he went back to the counter and ordered a large breakfast. He had plenty of time. Brookside was not more than a few miles up the line and he didn’t want to get there too early. He was thinking how much he’d hated to part with the dog as he sipped his coffee and waited for the little dark-eyed waitress to bring the ham and scrambled eggs.
While Luder was waiting for his breakfast in the roadside diner in Rye, Santino slowly came out of his deep sleep. He pulled himself off the bed, his thin, pinched face hollow-eyed and deeply lined and he stretched his wasted arms and yawned. Wordlessly he stared for a moment or two at Cribbins, then stood up and went to the sink in the corner of the room. He washed sketchily and dried his face and hands on a soiled turkish towel.
