Hostage For A Hood (5 page)

"Start your motor, lady," he said. "See if your heap is okay."

The moment the two cars separated he saw what had happened. It was one of those freak things that wouldn't take place one time in a hundred. The bracket holding the license plate on the old sedan had twisted at the moment of impact and had pierced through the grillwork of the other car and slashed into the radiator. With the exception of this, neither automobile was more than scratched.

Joyce still sat behind the wheel of her car as Mitty stepped to the street again and the two men spoke together for a moment. They turned and started toward her.

Flick barked and Joyce quickly shushed him. It was then she noticed for the first time that both men were wearing gloves. Gloves, in June! She noticed it because she was watching Cribbins and as he approached, he lifted his left hand and pushed back his blue serge sleeve to once more look at his watch.

At this particular point a lesser man than Cribbins would undoubtedly have given up and called the whole thing off. This completely pointless and unexpected accident was the one possible event which he had been unable to foresee and unable to prepare for. It threw his entire timetable out of kilter; caught him at a point where it was impossible to postpone or revise his master plan and at the same time created a situation making it difficult if not totally impossible to proceed. Not only had the accident ruined his means of getting away once the job was accomplished; it was now unlikely they would arrive at the scene of the impending drama in time to participate.

And there was no way of letting Santino and Luder know. They would be there, ready to go into action the moment the armored car arrived on the scene. And where would he and Mitty be? They'd be several miles away discussing a petty traffic accident with a girl and her dog.

That one look at his watch told Cribbins everything. There was no time now to find another car; no time to do anything but head directly to the spot where he had his rendezvous. The only car available was this other one; the car belonging to the girl who had run into them. They could take the car all right, although it wasn't much of a car at best, but what about the girl? Certainly they couldn't leave her to spread the alarm. There was only one thing to do—take her with them and hope for the best. He would have to play it by ear from here on in.

Cribbins spoke to Mitty, who quickly went back to the Caddie. He himself moved to the side of the old sedan. Without a word he opened the back door and climbed in. He took the revolver from its holster as Joyce craned her neck to turn and look at him with wide, alarmed eyes.

"Move over in the seat," he said. "And keep your mouth shut. Do just as I tell you and maybe you won't get hurt. And shut that damned dog up:"

For a moment then she was too startled to do anything but sit and stare at him. She was too startled to be frightened.

"I said move over!"

Joyce slowly closed her mouth and then, without consciously thinking about it, slid from under the wheel. Mitty had returned from the Caddie and he tossed a leather bag into the back of the car. He opened the door on the driver's side.

"See here," Joyce suddenly said, her voice inordinately high. "See here! You don't need to point that gun at me. I'm not a criminal, you know."

She fought to avoid the hysteria she felt coming over her.

"You're not," Cribbins said. "But I am. So shut up and do just what I tell you to do." His eyes went to Mitty. "Get started," he ordered. "We can make it if you hurry. But be careful—we don't want to be stopped. Not now."

Mitty rammed the car into gear and Flick began barking wildly.

For a second Mitty hesitated and then he spoke over his shoulder. "Shouldn't we at least get rid of the mutt?" he asked.

Cribbins shook his head. "No," he said. "The dog is likely to come in handy. Very handy."

Wordlessly, Mitty swung the car around and headed for the Post Road. After a moment or two, he slowly shook his head and muttered under his breath.

"My Gawd," he said. "I never thought I'd start out on a caper with a girl and a French poodle!"

* * * *

Old Paul Rumplemyer had a reputation for being a character. Among the many people who knew him, some said that he was a typically smart Dutchman, others called him an eccentric, and a few considered him nothing more or less than a throwback to a dying age. Almost no one disliked him and a great many, especially tavern keepers whom he had helped through the lean years, considered him a philanthropist.

Paul's father, Otto Rumplemyer, had immigrated to America from Bavaria around the turn of the century and within a year or two of arriving had started Rumplemyer's Brewery. He wasn't an overambitious man and had been satisfied to run a small, tightly knit operation, being content to brew the very best beer he knew how to brew and confine his business to a select number of German and Irish saloons.

Paul grew up in the business and along about the time the old man was ready to retire and go back to Germany, shortly before World War I, Paul took over.

He was in his twenties at the time, but knew all he needed to know to run the business successfully. Being of German descent, he found the war a little difficult, but he managed to keep the business going. When prohibition came along, he continued to do business, as usual. He changed to near-beer, of course, but he found means of supplying his buyers with the necessary ingredients to spike his product, and thus continued to prosper.

His was one of the few firms which did continue to brew beer and at the same time avoid being taken over by the new crop of gangsters who had been sired by the dry vote.

Prohibition ended and another war came and went, but Paul Rumplemyer went on much as usual. The city had grown vastly and Rumplemyer's Brewery grew right along with it. But it remained essentially a local operation. The only change Paul made was to move the plant into Westchester, north of the city, where land and taxes were cheaper.

Times and methods changed with the years, but neither Paul Rumplemyer nor his brewery changed with them.

He continued to brew the same high-quality product in the same way his father had brewed it before him. He continued to handle his employees in the same paternalistic fashion and conduct his business along the lines which had been satisfactory for more than half a century.

Rumplemyer's drivers, even in the old days when deliveries were made in great beer wagons drawn by four-in-hand teams of lumbering Percherons, had always made their own sales and deliveries and collections. They'd leave each morning loaded down with kegs, and when they'd return in the evening their first stop was in the main office where they'd turn over the day's receipts to the cashier. More often than not, Paul himself would be standing by to check the figures. At night the money was locked up in an ancient safe. With the passing of years and the advent of fast, efficient trucks, the uneconomical and impractical wagons were discarded and a fleet of motor vans took their place. But the ancient practices continued.

On the first Monday of each month an armored car would arrive at the gates of the brewery and be admitted. The money would then be transferred to the local branch of a Manhattan bank. Bank officials, friends and even his insurance company had often discussed this situation with Paul Rumplemyer and had warned the old man that keeping so large an amount of money in the old office safe was dangerous business. They said it was an open invitation to anyone who wanted to stick up the place.

But the old man would merely laugh and shrug his shoulders. Hell, he had a night watchman, didn't he? A man who never left the office which held the safe and stayed there with a double-barreled, shotgun across his lap. Another thing, there never had been any trouble, never any attempt made to break in to the place. The system had always worked satisfactorily and he wasn't going to change. Somehow or other he liked the idea of that money piling up there, day after day, for a whole month. When he did make a deposit, it was a respectable one.

Old Paul wasn't going to change his habits for anyone. He'd gone through prohibition, when the toughest in mobsters of all time had been around, trying to move in on him. They hadn't, though, and he certainly wasn't going to start worrying about stickups this late in the game. As a matter of fact, he was partly right. The Rumplemyer Brewery would have been a very tough nut for anyone to crack. That safe was a lot stouter than it looked. It would take dynamite to blast it and the way the plant was located, right in the heart of the industrial section, no one would ever have a chance to blow it up and still find time to make a getaway before the cops were on them.

There was only one trouble with the old man's system. It gave ulcers to the driver of the armored car who had to make the monthly pickups. Not only did he have to start work an hour earlier than usual in order to be at the brewery in time to get loaded and away by nine o'clock—which Rumplemyer insisted upon—but he knew that he was carrying somewhere around a quarter of a million dollars and this upset him.

The armored car system which Rumplemyer's used was a small local outfit and they specialized in payrolls, which never amounted to more than twenty or thirty thousand. They weren't really equipped for big jobs, and the drivers were aware of just how vulnerable they were. After all, those half-ton trucks which they drove were called armored cars more by courtesy than anything else. They were slow, cumbersome vehicles, usually a dozen or more years old, and carried neither modern equipment nor burglarproof armor.

There was only the driver, who wore a revolver at his side, and a second man who sat back in the truck part of the vehicle. He too wore a gun and he also had a shotgun strapped to hooks next to him. A solid blow with a hammer would be sufficient to break the lock on the double back doors of the truck.

Red Kenny, who'd been driving the car which had been making the money pickups from the brewery for the last couple of years, knew that the ancient hack he drove could be outdistanced by a boy on a fast English bike. He, for one, figured Paul Rumplemyer was not only eccentric; he thought he was downright crazy. One other thing frequently bothered Red. He was a big beer drinker and particularly liked Rumplemyer's beer. It made him furious to arrive there and hang around while the money was placed in the truck and not even be offered as much as a single cool glass of the beverage. He was thinking just that as, thirty-one minutes after nine, he turned into the Old Post Road and started to drive south along the all but deserted street.

The new Post Road was a couple of blocks to the left, paralleling the old road, and almost all of the through traffic used it. Red would have liked to use it himself, but he drove the route which the old man had prescribed years ago and which he would never allow to be changed.

Carl Slagher put his head into the small opening between the rear and the driver's compartment and spoke in a hoarse voice, yelling to make himself heard above the clamor of the truck. "Hurry it up a little, boy," Carl said, "and we can dump this in time to pick up a beer before getting back to the office."

Carl liked his beer too. In fact, it was largely because of this fatal weakness that he'd been let go by the police force a few years back and had to take the job as guard on the truck. The truck company, being a small outfit and not too prosperous, was unable to be choosy about whom it hired. Honesty and a willingness to work for low pay were the only two requisites.

Red half turned to shout an answer to the other man, but as he did, he saw the pushcart standing a little away from the curb several hundred feet down the street. Quickly he turned back and swung out to give it plenty of room.

The pushcart was on the right-hand side of the street, just before an intersection. As Red pulled the truck toward the middle of the road, a big moving van swung in from the intersection at his left. It was moving fast, considering it was turning into a cross street, and it made a wide curve.

For a brief second Red almost shouted, knowing that if the driver didn't cut his turn short, he'd be bound to crash into his own vehicle. Red was going only about twenty-five miles an hour and instinctively he jammed his feet on the brake pedal and the clutch, cutting back a little, but not too much, as he didn't want to smash into the pushcart.

A second later he did yell, but by then it was too late. The driver of the moving van failed to straighten his lumbering machine and it smashed into the side of the armored car.