Hostage For A Hood (16 page)

* * * *

Flick's escape from the white house in Cameron Corners may have brought a certain sense of relief to Joyce Sherwood, but it created a definite moral problem for a middle-aged poultry farmer by the name of Corwell Harding.

Harding was a retired mail carrier who a few years back had bought a farm at the edge of the village and he lived mainly on the proceeds of a small pension. He also raised fryers for the market and sold eggs. He was a childless widower and he didn't really need a lot. The eggs and the fryers which he sold to the new supermarket gave him a little extra money and made his life a bit more comfortable.

Things would have been fine for him, if it were not for the weasel. The weasel had started coming around nights, a couple of weeks ago, and within a short time had managed to kill off almost half of his flock of white leg-horns, including some of his best layers. It was on Wednesday morning, while he was out checking up on the night marauder's most recent slaughter, that he first saw Flick.

Without hesitancy the dog came when he called him. Harding rubbed the poodle behind the ears and was pleased when the dog put his paws up and looked pleadingly into his eyes. He took the dog inside and fed him, noticing the leash attached to his collar. Harding didn't know a great deal about dogs, but he realized that this was probably a valuable animal. He guessed it had escaped from a passing car. He knew he hadn't seen it around the village before.

Then it occurred to him that a dog around the place might be very good protection. He could leave him loose on a long rope at night near the coops; it might solve the weasel problem.

There was only one trouble. The dog had a rather expensive collar around his neck and he must belong to someone. Harding reached down and examined the collar. He noticed at once the license tag attached to it.

If it wasn't for that license, with its identifying number, he'd be perfectly safe in keeping the animal. Should the owner show up, he could tell the truth and say the dog had just drifted in and he'd given it a home. But the collar was there, with the license tag on it.

Almost subconsciously he undid the buckle, stood up, and walked over to the kitchen cabinet over the stove.

Once more he looked at the tag and then slowly he opened the cabinet and placed the collar on the shelf.

It was something he was going to have to think about. Harding was essentially an honest man, but after all, the dog had just drifted in; he hadn't stolen him.

He opened the icebox, looking for some more meat scraps. He'd have to think this over, but in the meantime, the animal appeared to be famished.

* * * *

At eight o'clock on Wednesday evening a multicolored hound of mixed ancestry, making his usual nightly rounds of garbage cans in the neighborhood, stopped at the same post in back of the carriage house which Flick had found to be so much to his liking some fourteen hours earlier. The hound immediately performed the same act which Flick had been performing when he'd been disconcerted by the sight of the rabbit. Then the hound leaned down and sniffed and his nose came into contact with the knotted rag which Flick had dropped.

The dog promptly took the rag in his teeth and walked proudly off, passing through the woods in back of the house.

By the time he reached the street running parallel and behind the street on which the Bleeks mansion was situated, he had already grown tired of his new toy and he dropped it and cantered off, looking for new worlds to conquer.

The following morning, a ten-year-old named Charles Wells was bicycling down the street, delivering morning papers, when he spotted the twisted piece of cloth. He stopped and putting up the stand on his vehicle, reached down and picked it up. It took him several minutes to untie the knots and then he spread out the square of blue and yellow silk. It was very pretty. The only trouble was that sharp teeth had torn it so that it was beyond repair.

Young Wells said a naughty word and reconsigned his find to the gutter.

Patrolman Coogins walked into the squad room and squinted his eyes, trying to see through the fog of smoke. Coogins had been needing glasses for years but refused to get them, having the fantastic idea that glasses made a cop look like a sissy.

He finally spotted Sims and went across the room and tapped him on the shoulder. "The boss wants you," he said, when Sims looked up. "Says to meet him in the diner across the street."

The detective nodded and reached into his pocket and held out a handful of cigars.

Coogins examined the bands carefully before putting them into his pocket. "Thank you, Horace, thank you," he said. "These look very nice indeed."

"They should," Sims said. "Old Rumplemyer himself gave them to me."

Coogins nodded sagely.

"That's more than he gave the commissioner," he said. "He's up there with him now, and from the noise he must be raising several new kinds of hell."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Sims said.

He left the room and walked along the corridor to the main door. When he entered the diner he knew just where to look. Detective Lieutenant Martin Parks was seated alone in the last booth.

Sims ordered a ham on rye and a glass of milk from the counter as he passed on his way back. The lieutenant had a cup of black coffee on the table next to a three-decker sandwich which he hadn't touched.

"Sit down, Horace," he said, and when the other man squeezed his big bulk into the booth opposite him, he heaved a long sigh and slowly shook his head. "I just left 'em."

"Things pretty hot?"

"That's too mild a term," Parks said. He picked up the coffee and sipped it for a moment or so and then spoke again.. "You know," he said, "my old man was really smart."

Sims looked at him questioningly.

"Yep," Parks said. "My old man was smart. He was a fireman over in White Plains for forty-two years. A plain, ordinary, everyday fireman; not a lieutenant or a captain or a chief, but just a fireman. When he retired he owned his own home, had sent three boys, including me, through college and he didn't owe a dime in this world. He went down to St. Petersburg and bought a small place. My mother died there and so Dad stayed on, playing shuffleboard and fishing. He died last year—he was eighty-seven. Never sick a day in his life, never had an ulcer, never had a worry. He was a smart man. Wanted me to become a fireman just like himself and he told me I was nuts when I said I wanted to join the cops. He was absolutely right."

Detective Sims nodded sagely. "Your old man was smart," he said. He looked up at the other man and smiled. "Jesus, Marty," he said, "you got it bad today. What's the matter? The commissioner eat you out?"

Parks smiled wryly. "The commissioner, the mayor, the chief, as well as old man Rumplemyer, whom I don't have to remind you is more important than any of them in this town. Also the guy from the insurance company, who by some stroke of foul luck happens to be a cousin of the mayor's. Also a few casual gents from the press, and just about everyone else you can think of."

He picked up the sandwich and then put it back on the plate, looking at it with distaste. "It's a funny thing," he said, "but you take a town like New York. Maybe they have six or eight jobs like this Rumplemyer thing every year. In the good years they may solve three or four of them and so they got a fifty-percent average and every one thinks they're doing great. The fact is, of course, that they are. But we get a thing like this maybe once in twenty years. If we solve it, fine; we're only earning our salaries. But if we don't, why then we average off batting zero and, brother, we stink."

"Sure," Sims said. "That's the way these smaller places are. The Rumplemyer thing is a big deal here."

"It's a big deal anywhere," Parks said. "The trouble is, it's the only deal in a town this size."

"Well, being a cop in a place like New York is different," Sims said. "Hell, take the Mad Bomber business. The guy operates for about twenty years, the papers raise hell and so does everybody else. But for twenty years the cops work on it before they finally crack it. No trouble, no squawking, nothing. They're left alone. It's just another thing and sooner or later they break it. But that's New York."

"That's just the point," Parks said. "Something like that happens up here in Brookside, and if we take twenty years to crack it I'd be walking a beat for the last nineteen of those years. It's what I'm saying—up here, excuses don't go. They expect miracles."

The girl stopped at the side of the table and put down the food which Sims had ordered and he waited until she left before he spoke.

"It looks as if it's going to take a miracle to crack this Rumplemyer thing," he said. "What was the upshot of the meeting?"

"The upshot was that the commissioner announced that unless we've done something by the end of the week, he will supersede me and personally take charge. That's what he promised Rumplemyer, and that's what he all but announced to the press."

"That will be great," Sims said. "It's the only break the gang needs to insure a successful getaway."

"Don't be disrespectful," Parks said.

They both laughed.

Parks picked up the sandwich and this time bit into it. "Okay," he said. "Let's quit horsing around. Let's see exactly where we are and what we've got."

"We've got precious little," Sims said.

"Right. But let's just review what we do have. To begin with, those lab boys that came up from New York have gone over the armored car, the pushcart and the moving van with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing—absolutely nothing. Of course tracing the moving van was simple. Oddly enough, it wasn't hot. It was bought a few days ago from a dealer in New York. The buyer used a phony name and address. We have a description and the dealer has looked over mug shots until he's damned near blind.

"Slagher, the guard in the back of the armored car, was knocked cold when the van crashed into them. He doesn't remember how long he was out, but it doesn't matter. That gas bomb they used took care of the rest of his morning. It damn near took care of him for good.

"There was the milkman who was a couple of blocks away and heard first the crash and then the gunfire. He
would
have to be half blind. The only thing he knows is that there was another car there and that it sped away as he started running toward the accident. Well, I don't need a blind milkman to tell me that. But what kind of car it was, or how many men were in it, he has no idea. And that brings us up to date—except for this mug Mitty."

Sims nodded in agreement. "You think it was the best thing, letting him out," he said. "After all ... "

Parks spread his hands and shrugged. "We were getting nowhere with him while we held him," he said. "You know how those punch-drunk bums are as well as I do. Sometimes the more stupid they are the more stubborn they are. Holding him was getting us no place. Not, of course, to mention the fact that we would have had to charge him on the robbery if we'd have wanted to keep him and I doubt if we could have made an indictment stick. But the point is, he was no good to us in jail. Now that he's out, we may get someplace—that is, assuming he was mixed up in it."

"He almost has to be—working for Rumplemyer and everything."

"Look, Horace," the lieutenant said. "You've been with it long enough to know nothing is for sure. If he was in on the thing, how do you account for him trying to steal a
car within minutes of the stickup? If he was the finger man on the job, he would have been miles away at the time, getting himself an alibi. If he was in on the actual stickup, he'd have left with the rest of the gang. They wouldn't have taken off without him. Hell, it would have been the only sensible thing to do. As you say, he's about all we've got, but he's only good if he's free. That's why I made it easy for him to get bail on the hot-car charge. We tailed him from the minute he left the jail. Well, he did just about what you would expect him to do. Drove off with the shyster who bailed him out. They went directly to New York and split out.