King's Ransom

by Ed McBain

  Benjamin walked after him to the steps. His narrow face was flushed with color now. “You don’t want me to be president of Granger, is that it?” he shouted.

  “That’s it exactly,” King said.

  “Who the hell do you think should be president?”

  “You just figure it out,” King said, and he went up the steps and out of sight. A deadly silence followed his departure. Benjamin stared up the steps after him, contained anger rising in his face and his eyes. Blake angrily squashed his cigar in an ash tray and then stomped to the hall closet for his coat. Stone began packing the shoes into a sample case, picking up the red shoe scraps gingerly, almost lovingly, shaking his head over the destruction. Finally, Benjamin turned from the stairwell and walked to where Pete Cameron was standing near the bar.

  “What’s he got up his sleeve, Pete?” he asked.

  “His arm, I suppose.”

  “Goddamnit, don’t make jokes! You’re his assistant. If anybody knows what he’s up to, you do. Now, what is it? I want to know.”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” Cameron said. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “Then find out.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “Don’t play it wide-eyed, Pete,” Benjamin said. “We just offered a plan to Doug. He turned it down cold, in effect told us to go to hell. You don’t tell twenty-one per cent of the voting stock to go to hell unless you’re feeling mighty strong. Okay, what’s he feeling strong about?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Cameron said.

  “Don’t get glib, boy, it’s not becoming. What are you making now? Twenty, twenty-five grand? You can make more, Pete.”

  “Can I?”

  Stone took his coat from the hall closet and walked over to the two men. Pointing back at the staircase, he said, “If that bastard thinks he’s going to get away with this…”

  “I doan like bein’ kicked outa somebody’s home,” Blake said angrily. “I doan like it one damn bit! When’s the next Board meetin’, George? We’re gonna vote Mr. High-an’-Mighty King right back into the stockroom!”

  “He knows that,” Benjamin said softly. “He knows that, and he doesn’t care—and that means he’s hooked onto something big. What is it, Pete? A deal with the Old Man?”

  Cameron shrugged.

  “Whatever it is,” Benjamin said, “I want it smashed. And whoever helps to smash it may find himself in Douglas King’s vacant chair. You know what that chair is worth, Pete?”

  “I have some idea.”

  “And I’ve got an idea you know just where you want to go in this company. Think it over, Pete.” Stone handed him his coat and hat. Benjamin put on the coat quickly and then, holding the Homburg in his hands, said, “Do you know my home number?”

  “No.”

  “Westley Hills,” Benjamin said. “That’s WE 4-7981. Will you remember it?”

  “I’ve been Doug’s assistant for a long time now,” Cameron answered.

  “Then it’s time you branched out. Give me a call.”

  “You’re tempting me,” Cameron said, a slight smile on his lips. “It’s a good thing I’m an honorable man.”

  The men locked eyes.

  “Yes, it’s a good thing,” Benjamin said dryly. “That’s Westley Hills 4-7981.”

  Stone reached down for his sample case, put on his hat and said, “If that bastard King thinks he can—” and then stopped talking abruptly.

  Diane King had come down the steps silently and she stood looking into the room now. The men stared at her speechlessly. Stone was the first to move. He tipped his hat, politely said, “Mrs. King,” and opened the front door.

  Benjamin put on his hat. “Mrs. King,” he said politely, and followed Stone out.

  Blake dropped his hat, fumbled for it, picked it up, placed it on his balding head, politely said, “Mrs. King,” and hastily left the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Immediately Diane said, “What did they do to Doug?”

  * * * *

  2

  The King estate—for such it was—lay within the confines of the 87th Precinct. It was, as a matter of fact, at the farthermost reaches of the precinct territory, since nothing lay beyond it but the River Harb. The fallow land of the estate was one section of a parcel which stretched from the river’s bend to the arbitrary dividing line of the Hamilton Bridge. Within this parcel, there were perhaps two or three dozen homes which seemed to have been dropped there from another era. Incongruously, they provided the ultraurban face of the city with an atmosphere at once countrified and otherworldly.

  This section of the city was called The Club by everyone in the city except the people who lived there. The residents, of whom there were less than a hundred or so, called it Smoke Rise. They used the title casually, but they knew it represented wealth and exclusiveness; they knew that Smoke Rise was almost a city within a city. Even its geographical location seemed to verify the concept. It was bounded on the north by the River Harb. On its south, the poplars lining the River Highway created a barrier which made Smoke Rise impenetrable from invasion by the rest of the city, the rest of the world.

  South of the highway was fancy Silvermine Road, a distantly wealthy (but not that wealthy) relative of Smoke Rise. Continuing southward from Silvermine Park and the apartment buildings facing it, the peripatetic stroller encountered first the gaudy commercialism, the blinking neons, the all-night restaurants, the candy stores, the shrieking traffic signals of The Stem, crossing the precinct territory like a dagger dripping blood. South of that was Ainsley Avenue, and the change from riches to rags was subtle here, the buildings still maintaining some of their old dignity, the dignity of a once stylish, now shabby Homburg; and then came Culver Avenue and the change was apparent now, striking one in the face with the sudden ferocity of naked poverty, nakedly dirty buildings stretching grime-covered facades to a cold wintry sky, bars crouched between the unemotional masks of tenements, churches huddled on street corners—Come pray to God—the wind sweeping through the gray canyon as bleakly as an icy tundra blast.

  Southward, southward, through the short stretch of Mason Avenue known to the Puerto Ricans as La Via de Putas, a flash of exotic color, a splash of eroticism on the ice floe, and then Grover Avenue and beyond that the happy hunting grounds for muggers, knifers, and rapists, Grover Park.

  The 87th Precinct building was on Grover Avenue, facing the park. The detective squadroom was on the second floor of the building.

  Detective 2nd/Grade Meyer Meyer sat at a desk before one of the windows overlooking Grover Avenue and the park beyond. The feeble October sunshine reflected from his bald pate, danced in his blue eyes. A pad of lined yellow paper rested on the desk before him. Meyer scribbled notes onto the pad as the man opposite him spoke.

  The man said his name was David Peck. He owned a radio supply store, he told Meyer.

  “You sell radio parts, is that right?” Meyer asked.

  “Well, not for commercial stuff. I mean, we sell a little of that, but mostly we sell stuff for hams, you know what I mean?” Peck tweaked his nose with his thumb and forefinger. It seemed to Meyer that Peck wanted to blow his nose, or perhaps pick it. He wondered if Peck had a handkerchief. He was going to offer him a Kleenex, but he decided the man might be offended by the gesture.

  “Hams?” Meyer said.

  “Yeah, hams. I don’t mean like you eat. Not them hams.” Peck smiled and tweaked his nose again. “Like, I mean, we don’t run a delicatessen or nothing. By hams, I mean amateur radio operators. Like that. We sell equipment to them mostly. You’d be surprised how many hams there are in this neighborhood. You wouldn’t think so, huh, would you?”

  “No, I guess I wouldn’t,” Meyer said.

  “Sure, lots of hams. My partner and me, we got a pretty good business here. We also sell some commercial stuff, like portables and hi-fi units and like that, but that’s only a service we run, you understand, what we are primarily interested i
n is selling stuff to hams.”

  “I understand, Mr. Peck,” Meyer said, wishing the man would blow his nose, “but what is the nature of your complaint?”

  “Well,” Peck said, and he tweaked his nose, “like somebody busted into our store.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last week.”

  “Why’d you wait until now to report it?”

  “We wasn’t going to report it because the guy who busted in, he didn’t steal very much, you know. This equipment is pretty heavy stuff, you know, so I guess you have to be strong to cart away a whole store. Anyway, he didn’t take very much, so my partner and me we figured we’d just forget about it.”

  “What makes you report it now?”

  “Well, he came back. The crook, I mean. The thief.”

  “He returned?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “Last night.”

  “And this time he stole a lot of equipment, is that right?”

  “No, no. This time he took even less than last time.”

  “Now, just a minute, Mr. Peck, let’s start from the beginning. Would you like a Kleenex, Mr. Peck?”

  “A Kleenex?” Peck said. “What do I need a Kleenex for?” And he tweaked his nose again.

  Meyer sighed patiently.

  Of all the detectives on the 87th Squad, Meyer Meyer was perhaps the most patient. The patience was not an inherited trait. If anything, Meyer’s parents had been capable of behaving somewhat impulsively on occasion. Their first impetuous act involved the conception and birth of Meyer Meyer himself. He was, you see, a change-of-life baby. Now whereas news of an impending birth will generally fill the prospective parents with unrestrained glee, such was not the case when old Max Meyer discovered he was to be presented with an offspring. Max did not take kindly to the news. Not at all. He mulled it over, he stewed about it, he sulked, and finally he decided impulsively upon a means of revenge against the new baby. He named the boy Meyer Meyer, a splendid practical joke, to be sure, a gasser. It almost killed the kid.

  Well, perhaps that’s exaggeration. After all, Meyer had grown to manhood, and he was a sound physical and mental specimen. But Meyer had done all his growing in a predominantly Gentile neighborhood, and the fact that he was an Orthodox Jew with a double-barreled name like Meyer Meyer did not help him in the winning of friends or the influencing of people. In a neighborhood where the mere fact of Jewishness was enough to provoke spontaneous hatred, Meyer Meyer had had his troubles. “Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire,” the kids would chant, and whereas they never translated the chant into an actual conflagration, they committed everything short of arson against the Jewboy with the crazy monicker.

  Meyer Meyer learned to be patient. You couldn’t win a fight against a dozen other boys by using your fists. You learned to use your head instead. Patiently, intelligently, Meyer Meyer handled his problem without the aid of a psychiatrist. Patience became an ingrown trait. Patience became a way of life. So perhaps old Max Meyer’s joke was harmless enough. Unless one cared to make note of the fact that Meyer Meyer was as bald as a cue ball. And even this fact assumed no real importance until it was connected with a second purely chronological fact:

  Meyer Meyer was only thirty-seven years old.

  Patiently now, he poised his pencil over the yellow pad and said, “Tell me, Mr. Peck, what did this thief steal the first time he broke into your store?”

  “An oscillator,” Peck said.

  Meyer made a note on his pad. “How much does the oscillator sell for?” he asked.

  “Well, this is a six-hundred-volt oscillator, number 2L-2314. We sell it for fifty-two dollars and thirty-nine cents. That’s including tax.”

  “And that’s all he took the first time?”

  “Yes, that’s all he took. We get a forty per cent markup on the item, so our loss wasn’t really that big. So we decided like to forget about it, you know?”

  “I see. But the thief broke into your store again last night, is that correct?”

  “That is correct,” Peck said, tweaking his nose.

  “And what did he steal this time?”

  “Little items. Like a relay which we sell for ten dollars and twenty-two cents, including tax. And some batteries. And a knife switch. Things like that. He couldn’t have swiped more than twenty-five bucks’ worth of equipment.”

  “But this time you’re reporting it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? I mean, if the loss this time was smaller than the loss…”

  “Because we’re afraid he might come back a third time. Suppose he comes back with a goddamn truck and cleans out the store? It’s possible, you know.”

  “I know it is. And we appreciate your reporting the crimes to us, Mr. Peck. We’ll keep a special watch on your store from now on. Would you give me the name of it, please?”

  “Pecker Parts,” Peck said.

  Meyer blinked. “Uh… where’d you get that name?” he asked.

  “Well, my last name is Peck, as you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “And my partner’s first name is Erwin. So we put the two names together and we got Pecker Parts.”

  “Wouldn’t you have done better by using some other portion of your partner’s name? His last name perhaps?”

  “His last name?” Peck said. “I really don’t see how we could have used that.”

  “What is his last name?”

  “Lipschitz.”

  “Well,” Meyer said, and he sighed. “And what is the address of the store, Mr. Peck?”

  “Eighteen twenty-seven Culver Ave-nue.

  Thank you,” Meyer said. “We’ll keep an eye on it.

  “Thank you,’ Peck said. He rose, tweaked his nose, and left the squadroom.

  The theft of equipment amounting to a loss of some seventy-five dollars was certainly not important in itself. Or, at least, not important as thefts go, unless you’re a stickler for the letter of the law, one of those people who insist that any silly little theft is really crime. In the 87th Precinct, however, seventy-five-dollar losses were commonplace, and if you knocked yourself out tracking down every bit of petty larceny, you’d have no time left for the really serious crimes being committed. No, on the face of it Mr. Peck’s paltry pilfering complaint was nothing to get all excited about—unless you happened to be a man named Meyer Meyer who kept abreast of what was happening around him in the squadroom and in the precinct and who was blessed with a fairly retentive memory.

  Meyer studied the notes on the pad before him and then walked over to a desk on the other side of the room. Steve Carella was sitting at that desk, busily typing up a report, the forefingers of both hands beating the typewriter into reluctant submission.

  “Steve,” Meyer said. “I just had a guy in here who—”

  “Shhh, shhh,” Carella said, as he continued banging away at the machine until he finished his paragraph. Then he looked up.

  “Okay?” Meyer said.

  “Shoot.”

  “I just had a guy in here who—”

  “Why don’t you sit down? You want some coffee? Let’s get Miscolo to make some coffee.”

  “No, I don’t want any coffee,” Meyer said patiently.

  “This isn’t a social visit?”

  “No. I just had a guy in here who owns a radio parts store on Culver Avenue.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. So the store was broken into twice in a row. The first time the thief stole an oscillator, whatever the hell that is, and the second time just a bunch of loose junk hanging around. Now it seems to me I remember…”

  “Yeah, how about that?” Carella said. He shoved the typing cart away from the desk and opened his bottom drawer. Dumping a sheaf of papers on the desk top, he began rifling through them hurriedly.

  “A whole bunch of radio store burglaries, weren’t they?” Meyer said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Carella answered. “Where the hell’s that list?” He continued scattering papers
over the desk top. “Look at this. More junk in this damn drawer. This guy was caught and is already serving his time at Castleview. Now where’s that… ? Jewelry stores… bicycles… Why doesn’t somebody add these to the stolen-bikes file?… Here it is. This the thing you were referring to?”

  Meyer looked at the typewritten sheet.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Pretty strange, don’t you think?”

  There was, in truth, nothing strange about the list. It simply enumerated the amount of equipment that had been stolen from several different radio parts stores over the past several months. Both men bent over the list and studied it more closely.