King's Ransom

by Ed McBain

  “What’s he talking about, Sy?” Eddie said. Panic had covered his face like a coat of white paint. He stared at Sy, his eyes demanding an answer, his entire body demanding an answer.

  “That man said my name,” Jeff said, astonished.

  “They’re lying,” Sy said quickly. “They’re trying to put one over on us.”

  “On police radio, Sy? They don’t even know we’re listening!”

  “No, all they know is they want to get us, so they’re pulling a cheap trick. And don’t think King ain’t in on this. That crooked bastard!”

  “How could we have grabbed the wrong kid?” Eddie wailed.

  “He ain’t the wrong kid!”

  “But suppose he is?” Kathy said calmly. “It means you’ve done all this for nothing. We’re in trouble for nothing.”

  Eddie looked at his wife, and then at Sy. “You… you gonna believe what the cops tell you?” he said. “Kathy, you can’t believe them!”

  “Who can you believe? Sy?”

  “Why not?” Sy said. “I say this kid is Bobby King. Now how about that?”

  “Me?” Jeff said, puzzled. “I’m not Bobby.”

  “One more peep out of you—”

  “Let him talk,” Kathy said. “What’s your name, sonny?”

  “Jeff.”

  “He’s lying!” Sy shouted.

  “I am not!” Jeff shouted back. He glared at Sy and then said, “I don’t like you, you know that? I’m going home.”

  He started for the door. Sy caught his arm and yanked him back, almost pulling him off his feet. He stood very close to the boy, and there was no humor on his face now, no laughter in his eyes. In a flat, emotionless voice he said, “What’s your name? Your real name.”

  * * * *

  6

  The driveway to the King estate was flanked by two stone pillars, each of which carried an ornate glass-and-wrought-iron lantern. The pillars were set back some three feet from the private Smoke Rise Road which ran past the estate, the communications link between Smoke Rise and the outside world. Between the pillars and the gravel road was a shelf of grass. Grass, in fact, lined both sides of the road, framing the gray ribbon with an October-bitten off green.

  The road was generally barren, especially on nights like this one when October was trying its best to serve as a harbinger of dead winter. A cold wind had come up, blowing off the River Harb, sending everyone but mad dogs, Englishmen and policemen indoors. There was, perhaps, a slight difference in the motivation of the triumvirate. For whereas mad dogs stayed outside because of the vagaries of insanity, and Englishmen because of their internationally renowned sang-froid, the policemen were there under duress. There was not a policeman on that road that night who would not have preferred being at home with a good book, or a good woman, or a good bottle of brandy. There was not a policeman present that night who would not have preferred even a bad book or a bad bottle of brandy or, to be frankly unpatriotic, a bad woman.

  There were no women, good or bad, on that road that night.

  There were only men, and men engrossed in their work can be dull company to each other even when the weather is mild.

  “I never seen it so cold in October in my whole life,” Detective Andy Parker said. “I been living in this city my whole life, and I never seen it so cold like this. Tonight, they better bring in the brass monkeys, I am telling you. Tonight, everything freezes.”

  Detective Cotton Hawes nodded. His fingers around the flashlight, even through the leather, fur-lined gloves he wore, felt frozen to the bone. He kept the circle of light on the patch of grass across the road from the driveway pillars. The lab technician at his feet, a man named Peter Kronig, was a person with whom Hawes had had a slight brush not too long ago. Hawes could not say whether or not he disliked holding the light for Kronig while Kronig searched the grass on his hands and knees. He knew that he’d ridden Kronig’s tail pretty shamefully on their one previous encounter, and he was rather embarrassed by their proximity now. Of course, Hawes had been working at the 87th Precinct for only a short time when he had first run across Kronig. Like any new kid on the block, he was anxious to prove himself to the other kids. In the presence of Steve Carella, whom he immediately considered the best cop on the squad, Hawes had begun riding Kronig at the police lab. Carella had chewed him out later, in a kindly fashion to be sure, and Hawes had learned a valuable lesson: Don’t make enemies of the lab technicians. He had learned his lesson well. Its meaning assumed renewed importance now that he was once more working with Kronig.

  “Move the light,” Kronig said. “Over to the left.”

  Hawes moved the light.

  “It’s only sixteen degrees,” Parker said. “Can you feature that? It feels like twenty below, don’t it? But it’s only sixteen. I heard it over the radio. Man, it’s cold. Ain’t it cold, Hawes?”

  “Yes,” Hawes answered.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?”

  “I talk,” Hawes said. He did not particularly feel like justifying himself to Andy Parker. He didn’t know the man too well, this being the first time they’d been on a squeal together, but from what he’d seen of him around the squadroom, Parker was a man it paid to stay away from. At the same time, Hawes did not want to make the same mistake he’d made with Kronig. He did not want to make an enemy where he could make a friend. “It’s just that my teeth are frozen together,” he added, hoping this would mollify Parker.

  Parker nodded. He was a big man, almost as tall as Hawes, who stood six feet two inches high in his bare soles. But whereas Hawes’s eyes were blue and his hair was red (except for a white streak over the left temple), Parker gave an impression of darkness, black hair, brown eyes, five o’clock shadow. And, in all honesty, the two men could not have been more dissimilar than their appearances indicated. Hawes was a cop who was still learning. Parker was a cop who knew it all.

  “Hey, Kronig,” he said, “what the hell are you searching for? Buried treasure? We got nothing better to do than crawl around on our hands and knees?”

  “Shut up, Parker,” Kronig answered. “I’m the one who’s doing the crawling. All you’re doing is bitching about the weather.”

  “What, you ain’t cold?” Parker said. “You got Eskimo blood?” He paused. “Eskimos lend out their wives, you know that?”

  “I know,” Kronig said. “Let’s try over here, Hawes. Come on.”

  They moved several feet up the road, the flashlight playing on the grassy shoulder lining the gravel.

  “It’s the truth,” Parker said, “whether you know it or not. An Eskimo goes to visit another Eskimo, he lets you borrow his wife for the night. So you shouldn’t get cold.” Parker shook his head. “And they call us civilized. Would you lend me your wife for the night, Kronig?”

  “I wouldn’t lend you a nickel for a cup of coffee,” Kronig answered. “Over here, Hawes. This looks like something.” He stooped suddenly.

  “I didn’t ask for a nickel, I asked for your wife,” Parker said, and he grinned in the darkness. “You should see this guy’s wife, Hawes. Like a movie star. Am I right, Kronig?”

  “Go blow it out,” Kronig answered. “It’s nothing, Hawes. Let’s move up a little.”

  “What are you looking for?” Hawes asked, as gently as he knew how.

  Kronig stared at him for a moment, his breath pluming from his mouth. “Footprints, tire tracks, traces of clothing, matches, any damn thing that might give us a lead.”

  “Well,” Hawes said gently, “I don’t want to stick my two cents in. You know your job, and I have no right to offer any suggestions.”

  “Yeah?” Kronig said. He looked at him suspiciously. “Seems to me the last time we met, you had a lot of suggestions, and a lot of answers. You knew all about ballistics, didn’t you? The Annie Boone case, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Hawes said.

  “Yeah, so now you’re shy, huh? The shy flower of the Eighty-seventh Squad.”

  “I’ve got no q
uarrel with you,” Hawes said. “I behaved like a jerk that time.”

  “Yeah?” Kronig said, surprised. He kept staring at Hawes. Then he said, “What’s your suggestion? I’m not God.”

  “Neither am I. But would the kidnaper be likely to park the car here, or to stand here, or do anything here where he could be seen? I mean, right on the road?”

  “Possibly not. Where do you think he parked?”

  “There’s a turnabout up there. About five hundred yards from the pillars. Just a little dirt cutoff. It’s pretty well screened with bushes. It’s worth a chance.”

  “Then let’s try it,” Kronig said.

  “Like a movie star,” Parker said. “This guy’s wife. She’s got knockers out to here. You never seen knockers like on this guy’s wife except on the silver screen. Man, I’m telling you!”

  “Shut up, Parker,” Kronig said.

  “I’m complimenting your wife. It ain’t everybody got breastworks like this woman got. Man, you could lose yourself up there. You could bury your nose, and your mouth, and your whole goddamn head if you—”

  “Shut up, Parker!” Kronig said. “I don’t feel like discussing my wife’s attributes with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “What are you?” Parker asked. “The nervous type?”

  “Yeah, I’m the nervous type.”

  “And they call the Eskimos primitive,” Parker said. “Man!”

  The men trudged up the gravel road silently. The night was a piece of crystal, sharp, clear, brittle. Like work horses stamping under a heavy load, they walked to the turnabout, the vaporized moisture of their breath trailing behind them.

  “This it?” Kronig asked.

  “Yes,” Hawes said. “I noticed it when we drove up.”

  “Not a very big turnabout, if that’s what it is.” He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a turnabout at all. Or at least I don’t think it was planned as one. I think it just became one through use. There. See where some of those shrubs were knocked over?”

  “Yeah,” Hawes said. “But a car could have waited here, don’t you think?”

  “Sure, it could have. Let’s have some light on the subject.”

  Hawes turned on the flash. The beam covered the ground.

  “Frozen mud,” Parker said disgustedly. “Like Italy during the war. More than fifteen years go by, and I’m still up to my ass in frozen mud.”

  “Any tracks?” Hawes asked.

  “Anything I hated,” Parker said, “it was trudging through the mud. You walk around in that slime all day long, and then you sleep in it all night long and next day you get up and walk around in it some more. And cold? You touched the barrel of your BAR and your hand stuck to it, that’s how cold it was.”

  “You should have joined the Navy,” Kronig said drily. “I think we’ve got something here, Hawes.”

  “What is it?”

  “A skid mark. Somebody pulled out of here in a hell of a hurry.”

  “That figures.” Hawes knelt beside Kronig. “Does it look any good?”

  “It’s covered with a thin sheet of ice.” Kronig nodded reflectively, as if he were suddenly alone. “Well, let’s see what we can do with it, huh?”

  He opened his black bag and Hawes brought the flash up so that he could see into it.

  “Shellac,” Kronig said, “sprayer, talcum, plaster, water, rubber cap, spoon and spatula. I’m in business. There’s only one thing I’d like to know.”

  “What’s that?” Hawes said.

  “Do I spray my shellac over the ice, or do I try to get rid of the ice with the possibility of damaging the tire pattern?”

  “That’s a good question,” Hawes said.

  “One thing you sure as hell can’t do,” Parker said, “and that’s wait for the ice to melt. Winter’s here to stay.”

  “Andy Parker, boy optimist,” Kronig said. “Why don’t you take a walk or something?”

  “That’s just what I’m going to do,” Parker said. “Back to the house where I can get a cup of coffee from the cook. She’s got knockers almost as big as your wife’s.”

  * * * *

  The man from the telephone company drilled another hole in the woodwork, handed the drill to Reynolds, and then blew the sawdust out of the hole. Squatting close to the floor, he eyed the hole like a cat waiting for a mouse, and then stood up.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now for the wire.” He started across the room, passing Carella, who was busy on the telephone.

  “You got nothin’ to worry about, mister,” the telephone company man said to Reynolds. “Figure it out for yourself. When they find out they got your kid by mistake, they’ll just turn him loose, it figures, don’t it?”

  “It just seems we should have heard something by now,” Reynolds said.

  “Look, don’t get nervous,” the man said. “You start gettin’ nervous, you lost half the battle, it figures, don’t it?”

  On the phone, Carella said, “Well, what the hell’s the holdup there? Are you getting me a line to the Auto Squad, or aren’t you?” He paused. “Then would you please get the lead out of your behind? A kid’s been kidnaped here!”

  “Do you have any children, Mr. Cassidy?” Reynolds asked the telephone company man.

  “I got four,” Cassidy said. “Two of each. That’s a nice family, ain’t it?”

  “Very nice.”

  “I’m thinking of maybe another one, round it off, that figures, don’t it? Five’s a good round number, I told the wife.” He paused. “She said four is a round-enough number.” He picked up a spool of wire and began paying it out across the living-room floor. “That’s the trouble with women nowadays. You want to know something?”

  “What?”

  “In China, the women have their babies in the rice fields, it figures, don’t it? They drop their plows, and they deliver the kids themselves, and then they get right up off the ground and go back to plowing or whatever it is they do with rice. It figures, don’t it?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Reynolds said. “What’s the mortality rate?”

  “Gee, I don’t know what the mortality rate is,” Cassidy said. He paused thoughtfully. Then he said, “But I do know very few of them die.” He paused again. “It figures, don’t it?”

  “If they’d turned him loose,” Reynolds said, “wouldn’t someone have seen him already?”

  “Mister, I told you not to start worryin’, didn’t I? Okay, so stop. Now that kid’s all right, you hear me? For God’s sake, he’s the wrong kid. What can they do to him—kill him?”

  “Well, it’s about time,” Carella said into the phone. “What’s going on down there, a hot pinochle game?” He listened for a moment, and then said, “This is Steve Carella of the Eighty-seventh. I’m up in Smoke Rise on this kidnaping. We thought—What do you mean, what kidnaping? Are you in the Police Department or the Department of Sanitation? It’s only on every radio in the city.”

  “If they turn him loose in the street,” Reynolds said, “he won’t know where to go. He isn’t the kind of child who can find his way around easily.”

  “Mister, any kid can find his way around, it figures, don’t it?”

  “Anyway,” Carella said into the phone, “we thought we’d run a check on stolen cars just in case the car used in the snatch was—” He paused. “What? Listen, mister, what’s your name?… Okay, Detective Planier, I’ve already heard all the jokes about snatches, and I don’t think they’re very funny right now. What do you do when a guy turns up dead in a pine coffin, crack jokes about boxes? There’s an eight-year-old kid missing here, and we want a rundown on stolen cars, so get a list up here right away… What?… No, just covering the last week or ten days. Thank you, Detective Planier… What? Up your mother’s too,” Carella said. “The address is just Douglas King, Smoke Rise. Off Smoke Rise Road. Goodbye, Detective Planier.” He hung up and turned to Cassidy. “Wise guy,” he said. “I broke up a pinochle game.”

  “Did they have any news, Detective Carell
a?” Reynolds asked.

  “I was only talking to the Auto Squad.” Carella answered.

  “Oh.”

  “He’s all worried,” Cassidy said. “I keep tellin’ him there’s nothing to worry about. In fact, even puttin’ in this extra phone is a waste of time. The kid’ll be back before you can say Jack Robinson, it figures, don’t it?”

  “Do you think so?” Reynolds asked Carella.

  “Well…” Carella answered, and the doorbell rang. He rose from the phone table and went to answer it. Parker came into the room, slapping his arms against his sides.