Hostage For A Hood (3 page)

"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."

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."

It was funny how Mitty had taken to Cribbins right from the first. Mitty figured Cribbins was a smart cookie who might put him in line for something. Harry Cribbins had to laugh when he thought about how it had actually turned out. It really was ironic that it worked exactly the other way around; that it was Mitty who'd put him, Harry Cribbins, onto the possibilities of the Rumplemyer job.

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 sub-machine 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."