Cop Out

by Ellery Queen

  He made his approach with the old stealth knowing it was unnecessary and hoping it was necessary but they were gone except for a garbage can full of empty food tins and liquor bottles and some filthy dishes in the sink.

  Malone searched the cabin for a clue, anything that might tell him where they had gone. There was nothing and for a time he went out of his mind, he did everything in a trance of fury, blundering through underbrush and kicking cabin doors in and racing up and down dirt roads along the Lake looking for a sign of life, a smudge against the sky, a car in the bushes, anything.

  Afterward, in the dusk, he drove the Saab slowly back to town.

  First I had the money but lost Bibby.

  Then I got Bibby back but lost the money.

  Now I’ve lost both.

  Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday

  The Weakness

  The house was cold. Malone turned up the thermostat but nothing happened. He went down into the cellar and pressed the emergency button on the stack and the furnace boomed. Afterward he could not remember anything about the heat, the cellar, or the furnace.

  It had been a night to forget. Ellen had spent the day cleaning up the mess and getting things put back, and after Malone got home she cooked a dinner from something the visitors had left in the fridge and Malone could not remember what he had put in his mouth. He had not wanted to go to bed, saying “Suppose… “ but Ellen rapped his lips with her finger and stripped his shirt and pants off and his underwear and socks and got him into his pajamas as if he were a child. As if he were Bibby. She tucked him in and crept in beside him and for the first time Malone cried. He kept jerking as if under a whip and Ellen tightened her arms and legs about him and murmured mothering sounds until, like a child, he fell asleep.

  When he fell asleep Ellen got out of bed and shuffled to Barbara’s room. She spent the rest of the night sitting in Barbara’s little rocker with Miss Twitchit in her lap. Once she sang the soft song she had made up before Bibby could even crawl, not the tune really, it was let’s face it the Brahms Lullaby, I couldn’t make up a tune Ellen used to say with a laugh I’m practically tone-deaf. But the words were her own, hush and baby and love, words that came from her womb.

  She woke up in a nasty dawn and found that she was crying. When she was over it she put Miss Twitchit back in her doll cradle that Loney had made from a broken-down rocker of his mother’s and only then did she go back to the big bedroom and stretch out beside her husband. She lay on the edge of the bed so as not to disturb him. When she heard him grunt and sit up she made sure to have her eyes shut.

  Thank God she’s getting a decent sleep.

  * * *

  At first Goldie was all for lighting out, even before they came back for the kid.

  “It’s getting more and more risky, Fure. I don’t like this hanging around New Bradford.”

  “The payroll,” Furia said.

  “I know, but what’s the sense being mules about it when we’re hot for a murder rap? There are plenty other payrolls around. So we take our lumps on this one. I say let’s scramble and lose ourselves in the scenery. We ought to get out of the state. Maybe hit for Kansas or Indiana, those farmers out there are sitting ducks.”

  “I ain’t leaving here without the bread,” Furia said, and from the way he said it Goldie knew that she had better clam up, her skin was starting to itch again.

  She picked the emergency holeup after they got the kid back. The shack they had rented at Balsam Lake was out of the question, they agreed on that, but Furia wanted to bust into one of the other cabins, maybe at the other end of the Lake, he was in a rotten mood and it took special methods to work him out of it. Goldie worked him out of it on the bed in the shack they were abandoning after she did what he liked best, which Hinch had watched through a good crack in the door, it was his favorite. Hinch was supposed to be guarding the kid, Furia had told him to, but he enjoyed their wrestling holds when he could do a Peeping Tom without getting caught. Anyways the kid was too scared to try anything, she was right there with him in the kitchen shivering on a chair, he could hear her teeth going clackety-clack without turning around.

  “The Lake is the first place he’ll look, Fure, believe me,” Goldie said, “as soon as he gets the message we grabbed the kid again. He’ll tear up these woods. So it figures like we get out of here fast and settle in where he can look all year long and he won’t find us. We oughtn’t to have come back to this shack at all. What’s the sense having to cool him before you get the money back?”

  “Okay, okay,” Furia said dreamily, “I buy it.”

  Hinch was making faces at the kid for kicks when they came out of the bedroom.

  They spotted the Saab with Malone at the wheel hellbent for the Lake, he was hunched over blind, he passed the Chrysler without a look.

  “What did I tell you?” Goldie said with a laugh. “Drive on, Stinkfoot.”

  The house she had picked was at the other side of town, near the town line of Tonekeneke Falls but well away from both centers, standing by itself on a back road a good hundred yards in and hidden by shade trees taller than the house. You could pass it a thousand times and never know it was here, Goldie said. Which is a fact, Furia said with satisfaction.

  There was even a flagstoned patio out back and an outdoor pool with a heater attachment, but the pool was drained for the winter, too bad, Furia said, we could have had ourselves a dunk like the richbitches.

  The place was owned by a New York family who used it for summers and long holiday weekends the rest of the year. Goldie knew about it because her sister Nanette had mentioned the Thatchers in her letters, she was their regular summer baby-sitter, they went out a lot. They had three impossible children but Nanette said they paid her twice the going rate so who’s kicking. There was no chance of the Thatchers showing up all of a sudden because they had traipsed off to Europe till after the Christmas holidays, that’s how the other half lives.

  Furia approved. Aside from the money he was feeling great after Goldie’s special treatment and when Hinch broke through the back door and Goldie locked Barbara in the downstairs maid’s room he didn’t even get mad at the furnace, it wouldn’t go on, the tanks must need oil. Maybe they don’t pay their bills, he cracked.

  He went around admiring. The country furniture was king-size and handfinished, white pine treated with just linseed oil, all dowels, not a nail in them. The fieldstone fireplace in the living room was almost tall enough for Hinch to walk into and there were genuine oil paintings on the walls. Though Furia took a dim view of the paintings. They look like cripples did them a skillion years ago, he said, and look how they’re all browned up and full of cracks. There was even a big-screen color TV set in a special white pine cabinet which right away Goldie turned on, but Furia said, “The hell with that, we got to listen to what’s going on around here,” and he turned off the TV and turned on the radio, a kingsize transistor, standing on the mantelpiece. He tuned in the station at Tonekeneke Falls, there was a rock combo on, and he left it on while he went exploring.

  The country kitchen made him do a little dance like Hitler. It was all of pine and brick with a regular Rockette lineup of gleamy copper pots and skillets on wrought iron racks hanging from the beams, like a color spread in House Beautiful or something. “Would this ‘a’ bugged my old lady’s eyes out! What she had to cook in shouldn’t happen to a dog. When she had something to cook.” The refrigerator was empty, but there was a twenty-cubic-foot freezer loaded with steaks and roasts and other great stuff and a for-real cooking fireplace with a black iron door at the back that opened into something Goldie said they called a Dutch oven big enough to do a whole lamb in and a black iron pot hanging on a black iron dohinky that swung out in the damnedest way. “Man, that pot’s bigger than my old lady’s washtub,” Furia said, practically smiling, “you sure can pick ‘em, Goldie.”

  He felt so good that when Hinch found a room lousy with books from floor to ceiling and a white pine bar full of bottl
es of the best stuff and poured himself a waterglass of Black Label, Furia let him. “Live it up, Hinch, have yourself a grin.” But then he had to show what a big man he was, he said, “What the hell is the kid bawling for? I’ll give her something to bawl,” and he unlocked the door to the maid’s room and slapped the little girl around some, not much, he pulled his punches, he had nothing against kids, but it only made her bawl louder. “What’s with this little punk?” Furia said disgustedly. “You’d think being her old man is fuzz she’d be used to getting banged around, give her some booze, Goldie, and shut her up.” So Goldie got a couple slugs of Jack Daniels into Barbara and after a while she stopped crying and fell asleep on the bed with her mouth open, snoring like a little lush. Furia got a charge out of that and when he locked her back in he was smiling again.

  He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the pine-and-cowhide sofa in the living room like the little king. “Think I’ll have me a couple filly minyons for supper tonight, Goldie,” Furia said. “Can you make ‘em like the fat cats do, in that kitchen fireplace?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Goldie said, “though I can’t barbecue them, I don’t see any charcoal.”

  “What the hell difference? Medium well, Goldie, can you do medium well in a fireplace?”

  “Coming up,” Goldie said, she was certainly anxious to please these days, “if Stinkfoot ‘11 get me a load of kindling and firewood. I saw a woodshed out back that’s stacked.”

  But by this time Hinch had finished the fifth and thrown it through the mirror behind the bar.

  “He shouldn’t ought to done that,” Furia said, “not a high-class dump like this. Hinch?”

  “I heard her,” Hinch said, coming in from the den. His face was white and his nose red, his eyes bugging. He looked steamy. “I ain’t lugging no wood for her, I ain’t her nigger.”

  “That shows how ignorant you are,” Goldie said. “You have to say Negro or black.”

  “Nigger nigger nigger,” Hinch said. “I ain’t hauling no wood for nobody, special not for her.”

  “How about for me?” Furia asked.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Hinch said, and sat down on the floor suddenly.

  “You ain’t used to fat cat booze is why,” Furia said indulgently. “It’s my fault for letting you. What the hell, Goldie, I’ll get the wood,” and to her surprise he sprang off the sofa and trotted out on his stockinged feet. She almost called after him it’s a dirt floor out there but didn’t, you never knew with Fure and things were going too good. She heard the back door open and stay open.

  Goldie went into the downstairs bathroom which was all tiled in black and white real tiles and used the black porcelain john, it made her feel like a movie queen squatting there. Christ I’m going to live this way and no fooling, it’s the only life. Soon as I shake Fure and that smelly Hinch.

  She was primping her hair in the bathroom mirror which had the cutest little frosted bulbs set all around the frame a la Hollywood stars’ dressing rooms when she jumped a foot. She had never heard such a scream except in the movies. It was like a police siren going off in her ear or a pig getting stuck, she remembered that from when she was a little girl and sneaked off to Hurley’s chicken farm after her old man against orders just to watch what they did to the pigs. When the sound turned all bubbly she could practically see it choking on its blood.

  She made it to the woodshed before Hinch, who had trouble getting off the floor.

  Furia was backed off in a corner of the shed chucking firewood in every direction while his mouth opened and closed and nothing came out. The shed was full of furry things jumping and dodging. His eyes were dropping out of his head, the corners of his nose were blue. There was drool coming out of his mouth.

  “Rats… “

  Goldie couldn’t believe her ears. She walked over to him and shook his arm hard.

  “What are you talking about, Fure?” she said. “They’re field mice.”

  “Rats,” he panted. His tough little body felt like Jello under her hand.

  “Fure, for Chrissake. I ought to know a field mouse when I see one. They used to run all over our kitchen in the Hollow. They won’t hurt you.”

  “They went for me… “

  “They couldn’t do that. They’re harmless.”

  “They bite… “

  “Not people. They’re grain eaters. Not like rats. See, they’re all gone now.” There was a hundred-pound sack stamped golden bulky in the shed. The mice had gnawed holes in it, the dirt floor was honey brown where they had burrowed. “The Thatchers must keep a horse here summers. This is horse feed, Fure, that’s what they were after, not you.”

  He didn’t believe her. He kept shivering and hugging himself.

  Hinch was spreadlegged in the entrance with a puzzle written on his face. He was looking from Furia to the dirt floor of the shed and back again. Furia’s wild heaves had struck two mice. One was lying with its head flattened out in an omelet of blood and brains. The other was still alive, scrabbling with its forelegs as if its back were broken.

  “You scared of these bitty things?” Hinch asked in a wondering voice.

  Furia swallowed convulsively.

  Hinch walked over to the wounded mouse with a grin and kicked. It flew up and against the back wall of the shed and fell like a shot. He picked it up by the tail and went back and picked up the other one by the tail and went back again and dangled the two dead mice inches from Furia’s nose. Furia screeched and tried to climb the wall. Then he was sick all over the dirt. Goldie had to jump back.

  “Be goddam if he ain’t scared shitless,” Hinch said. He walked out and threw the mice all the way over into the empty pool. It was as if Hinch had just learned that babies didn’t come out of their mothers’ armpits.

  Furia couldn’t get down more than a couple of mouthfuls even though Goldie did the steaks exactly the way he liked them. She almost laughed in his face.

  She found it a gas too the way he kept hanging on to the fireplace poker, a five-footer with three prongs at the business end. His eyes had grown as quick as the mice, darting about the floor, especially in corners. He drank three cups of black coffee without letting go of the poker.

  Barbara woke up whimpering and Furia got ugly. “Shut that brat’s yap or so help me Jeese I’ll ram this thing down her goddam throat.”

  “All right, Fure, all right,” Goldie said, and found some powdered milk in the cupboard and stirred up a glass. She brought the child the milk and a piece of cold steak. Barbara sipped some of the milk but turned away from the meat, her eyes were rolling up, I guess I gave her too much of a slug, well, better drunk than dead. She finally dropped back to sleep.

  “She won’t bother you now,” Goldie said, coming out.

  “Cool it, big man,” Hinch said with a wink. “A couple of lousy mice.”

  That was when Furia swung the long fire tool and ripped Hinch’s cheek. If Hinch hadn’t been so quick the prongs would have gone through to his tonsils. He looked astounded. Goldie had to swab the wound with antiseptic she found in the medicine chest, she swabbed good and hard, and she slapped one of those three-inch Band-Aids over it.

  Hinch kept looking at Furia with his eyebrows humped up like questions.

  * * *

  Saturday morning passed in jerks like a film jumping its sprockets. Malone wandered about the house picking things up and setting them down as if to satisfy himself that they were still there. The next thing he was taking in the milk. The milk brought Bibby into focus and he shut the refrigerator door as reverently as if it were the lid of a coffin. When Ellen set breakfast before him he simply sat and looked at it. He did not even drink the coffee. She finally took the dishes away.

  Ellen had mourning under her eyes, bands of dark gray. Once she said, “Noon. What happens after noon, Loney?”

  He turned away. He resents my reminding him. As if he needs reminding. What a thing to say, now of all times. Why am I so good to him at night and so bitchy dayti
mes?

  But she’s my child.

  My lost, my frightened baby.

  They sat in the parlor, he on the sofa, she on the rocker, watching the little cathedral clock on the mantel. When noon came they both sat up straight, as if at a call. When the clock stopped striking it was like a death.

  Ellen began to cry again.

  Malone jumped up and ran out into Old Bradford Road leaving the front door open. It was a mean day and the meanness slid into the house. He stood in the middle of the empty street staring in the direction of Lovers Hill. The Cunninghams’ mongrel bitch came trotting up and licked his hand. Malone wiped his hand on his pants and went back into the house, shutting the door this time. Ellen was upstairs, he heard her moving about in one of the bedrooms.

  Bibby’s I’ll bet.

  He sank onto the sofa again and placed his hands uselessly on his knees, looking at the clock. When John Secco drove up it was twenty minutes of two and Malone was still sitting there.

  * * *

  Secco came in his own car, a three-year-old Ford wagon with no markings. He was in civvies.

  “No sense getting your neighbors wondering,” the chief said. He had more than midafternoon shadow and Malone doubted he had shaved. For some reason it made him angry. “Ellen, I know how this has hit me, I can imagine what you’re going through.” Ellen said nothing. “Been a call? Letter, message?”

  “Nothing,” Malone said.

  “Well, it’s early. Could be they’re putting some pressure on. Or giving you plenty of time to play ball.”

  “With what?” Ellen said. Secco was silent. “I knew that’s what you’d do, Loney.”

  “Do what?” Malone said.

  “Tell the whole thing to John. You promised you wouldn’t. I told you I’d walk out on you if you did.”

  “Wes did the only thing,” Secco said. “Do you suppose I’d put your little girl in danger, Ellen?”