I could describe the events leading up to what happened just outside the Bronx Zoo, but it would basically be a rehash of the previous night’s activities. One difference was that when the five of us, with Panzer at the wheel of a rented Model A Ford, drove out to the Williamson rendezvous on Long Island, nobody had much to say, unlike our trip twenty-four hours earlier when we all laughed and joked about Nero Wolfe’s eccentricities, including his lack of geographical knowledge. Tonight, nobody seemed to be in a joking mood.
A second difference was that on this second trip into the Bronx, I lay on the floor of another of Burke Williamson’s autos, his slick red Pierce-Arrow phaeton. “Just like Wolfe’s men, I’m changing cars tonight,” Williamson said tightly. He was on edge, of course, but then so were the rest of us.
“Okay, Goodwin, I’m turning onto Southern Boulevard now, less than a mile from the zoo. Isn’t this something, though? Almost exactly a year ago, Lillian and I took Tommie here for his seventh birthday, and now ... Williamson could not finish the sentence, which made me begin to worry that he would not hold up under the strain for much longer.
“Wait a minute,” he snapped. “There’s construction here, dammit!”
I popped up from the floor and saw the barricade and the ROAD CLOSED sign. “The sawhorse doesn’t go all the way across the street,” I said to him. “Just swing on around it.”
“It’s like a washboard,” Williamson complained as we bounced north along the rough pavement at about ten miles an hour, passing cement mixers and trucks that awaited the arrival of paving crews in the morning. We also passed Panzer’s darkened Model A, which was parked at the curb and was pointed north.
“Could be that’s why they picked this stretch,” I said. “It’s one way to ensure privacy, assuming you don’t attract the cops’ attention by ignoring the sign.”
We had gone about a block, with the darkened zoo and its trees looming on our right behind an iron fence. “There’s the phone booth,” he whispered, “and it’s now 8:57. Here goes.”
He climbed out of the car, taking the suitcase with him, and slipped into the phone booth, closing its door. I watched from the lower edge of the backseat window, my hand gripping the Webley and my mouth as dry as a saltine cracker. I could hear the faint ring and watched Williamson pick up the receiver and speak a word or two, nodding grimly as if the voice on the other end could see him agreeing.
“Okay,” he said, getting back into the car. “I’m to kill the headlights and keep driving until I see another auto parked up ahead, next to another phone booth. He—the voice—said this would be about two blocks farther along, just around a slight curve. When I get there, I’m to get out with the suitcase and walk toward the booth. My God, I hope that I never see another phone booth for the rest of my life.”
“Before you start moving, hit your brake pedal three times fast, three times slowly, then three times fast again,” I told him.
“What! Why?”
“Your brake lights will flash the Morse code for S.O.S., which will bring our other auto up closer.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
“Standard procedure,” I said without telling him that I got the idea from a story I read in one of the dime detective magazines.
“But I thought the plan was for them to stay in the background,” Williamson said. “We don’t want trouble, remember?”
“You don’t have to worry; Panzer will turn off his headlights, too. You won’t even know he’ll be easing along behind us, at a distance. It’s just a good idea to have a backup, in case something unexpected happens.”
“I don’t like it one bit,” Williamson huffed, but he pumped the brakes as I had instructed, then shut off his headlights and eased forward along the bumpy road, which seemed nothing like a boulevard in its current state.
“There’s the other car, Goodwin!” he rasped. Ahead of us, parked next to the phone booth where the call surely had come from, was a nondescript coupe that looked like a Chevrolet. It was difficult to tell if anyone was inside the car because of the dim glow thrown off by the streetlights.
Williamson exhaled loudly. “Well, here goes,” he said, climbing out of the car with his suitcase. Slipping the Webley from my pocket and making sure the safety was off, I poised to jump out of the Pierce-Arrow.
Williamson walked stiffly toward the booth and as he did, a yell of “Daddy, Daddy!” came from behind the bushes along the cast-iron fence that separated the zoo from the sidewalk and boulevard.
“Tommie!” his father screamed, moving in the direction of the voice. But he was intercepted by a tall man coming from the direction of the Chevrolet. He wore a fedora, and some sort of mask covered his face, maybe a woman’s silk stocking. “Stop right there, Mr. Williamson. You will see your son soon enough,” he said, gesturing with a nickel-plated automatic that glistened even in the faint light. “Now the satchel, please. Give it to me.”
The millionaire held out the suitcase and the tall man grabbed it, backing toward the Chevrolet and keeping his gun leveled. He then stopped and knelt down, snapped the latches on the suitcase, and opened it, peering inside. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he shut the case and rose, backing toward the car with his gun still drawn.
“Daddy!” the anguished cry came again, and Williamson moved in the direction of the panicked little voice. I slipped out of the auto, and as I did a gunshot cracked. The man with the suitcase staggered once, recovered his balance, and fired, apparently at his attacker. I went into a prone position on the pavement and saw Orrie Cather fire and shout, “You child-snatching bastard, let’s see how you like this!”
Cather and the tall man exchanged more shots, at least two or three each, and I heard a groan from somewhere behind me. It sounded like Fred Durkin’s voice. The tall man clutched his side and climbed into the front passenger seat of the Chevy as the car squealed off, bouncing along the rough pavement. I fired twice from a crouch, trying for one of its tires, but all I hit was the car’s trunk.
“Durkin’s down!” Del Bascom yelled as he and Saul Panzer came running up to join Cather, who stood in the roadway cursing and watching the kidnappers’ car disappear onto the night. “Geez, Orrie, you know you weren’t supposed to start shooting,” Panzer growled as he knelt next to Fred.
“I’m okay, Saul,” the big man said, struggling to get to his feet. “Just nicked me in the shoulder and spun me around. My pride got hurt the most.”
“We’re over here,” Williamson cried. “Give us a hand.”
We all went to a spot along the cast-iron zoo fence where Tommie Williamson was sobbing, and with good reason. The boy was handcuffed to the fence, although apparently otherwise unharmed. “Any way we can get these things off him?” his father pleaded as he knelt in the grass next to his son.
“You got a tool kit in your trunk?” Panzer asked him.
“Not with anything that would work here,” Williamson said as we began to hear the damnedest collection of noises from the darkness of the zoo—roaring and bleating and howling and cawing and other strange sounds coming from strange creatures. We had awakened the populace.
We also had drawn the attention of some of a particular two-legged species. A patrol car, siren wailing, had drawn up and played a spotlight on us. “What’s all this and what about the gunfire?” a beefy patrolman demanded as he climbed out, revolver drawn and playing his flashlight on the strange tableau of a crying boy handcuffed to a fence and six men gathered around him.
“It’s a long story,” I told him when no one else chose to respond.
“I’ll just bet it is, son,” he said, “but my partner and me, we got us all kinds of time to listen.”