The fishermen who had come down from New England, crossing Long
Island Sound more than a hundred years back in their search for new places to settle, had called the tiny hamlet Land’s End. Perhaps some fifty families settled there eventually. Now, more than a hundred years later, the village had changed comparatively little.
Land’s End was about an hour’s drive from Smithtown, and the little collection of white Cape Cod houses lay about a mile inland and two miles east of the hideaway. It was here that Dent had rendezvoused with Fats Mom, and it was here that Pearl came to do her desultory shopping. The village consisted of a supermarket, a stationery and novelty store, a drugstore, a bar, and three or four other rather faded, old-fashioned commercial establishments. There was a post office and a town hall, in the basement of which was the local township police station.
And if the hamlet itself had changed little in a hundred years, the character of the people themselves had also undergone but slight alteration with the advent of the industrial age. They were still strictly New England; shrewd, thrifty, conventional, and tight-lipped. They didn’t cotton much to strangers.
It wasn’t, of course, that they weren’t used to strangers. Generation after generation of New Yorkers had trekked out to that part of Long Island for their week ends and their vacations. The villagers were used to them. In fact, the better part of their livelihood depended on them. But they carried on in the old New England tradition, and though they showed no unwillingness to take the strangers’ money, they didn’t really like them and they rarely made friends with them. The merchants, of course, were polite, but that was about all.
Trains from New York stopped at the village, but Cal Dent had Pearl drive him into Smithtown. It was possible to avoid Land’s End and hit the Montauk—New York highway west of the village. Dent felt it would be a mistake to be seen at Land’s End, and he was sorry now that he hadn’t met Fats in Smithtown the previous night. But he had wanted to have Fats see the tavern. The Land’s End Tavern would figure big in his plans before he had completed the job.
On the drive into Smithtown, Cal fiddled with the car radio until he found a news broadcast. The Wilton case was mentioned only briefly; there had been an erroneous report that the youngster and her nurse had been seen boarding a plane at an Albany airport. The announcer said that it was rumored the police had made an arrest. Cal laughed shortly as he
cut the station off at the end of the broadcast.
“They probably have,” he said. “They usually do arrest the wrong guys.”
Pearl kept her eyes on the road and drove carefully, wheeling the large Packard sedan along at a cautious forty miles an hour.
“You’re phoning Wilton this afternoon?” she asked.
“That’s the idea.”
“What are you going to—”
“Leave it to me,” Dent said shortly. “After you dump me, get your groceries and get back to the house as soon as you can. Don’t hang around the town and don’t stop at the tavern. You want something to drink, get some beer in the grocery. But don’t waste any time. I feel better with you in the house.”
“I’ll feel better myself,” Pearl said, thinking of the girl, Terry, and the way Red had of looking at her.
It was an odd thing about Pearl; after two years of living with Red, she had completely ceased to want him. Sexually he left her cold. But Pearl was a woman who, voluptuous and desirable herself and constantly pursued by men, still found it impossible to let any man leave her of his own volition.
Pearl couldn’t quite understand it, but she found in Dent an attraction she had never seen in Red. Dent, with his slight body, his graying hair, his cold, aloof manner. For some reason he interested her—physically.
Red, too, had interested her at one time. But after that first night she had been bored. Pearl was satisfied only with men whom she found it necessary to pursue.
“I want you to meet the twelve-thirty train tonight at the Land’s End station,” Dent said. “The place will be deserted at that hour, so there’s no reason to drive all the way into Smithtown. Be there without fail. I don’t want to be hanging around and I don’t want to walk it.”
Pearl nodded.
Dent was ten minutes early for his train, into town, but Pearl left at once. She drove directly back to Land’s End and parked across the street from the town hall and in front of the supermarket. She didn’t bother to take the key from the ignition switch as she shut off the motor.
The grocer said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Mason.”
All the summer people had returned to the city by now and he made a little extra effort to be polite. A dollar was a dollar, but it wasn’t only that. Pearl was the kind of woman of whom the grocer thoroughly disapproved. She was also the kind that in his secret dreams he hoped to meet and seduce. Pearl affected most people that way,
Pearl gave him her number-two smile. She ordered a couple of bottles of milk, assorted canned vegetables, and other basic necessities. Realizing that her order was a little heavy, she idly commented:
“We’re expecting some folks out toward the end of the week. Guess I better get a little extra in.”
The grocer smiled.
Pearl also ordered a case of beer.
Returning to the Packard as the grocer piled the cartons in the rear end, Pearl reflected that the last of the gin was gone. She knew that she would have to drive into Smithtown to find a liquor store, and momentarily she cursed herself for not having thought of it while she had been there.
Well, it was too far to go back now. But there would be no harm in dropping by the Land’s End Tavern and lifting a quick one.
Ed, the owner and bartender at the tavern, was old-fashioned. He didn’t like to see women, particularly unaccompanied women, come into his place in the afternoon. When Pearl entered, he was alone behind the bar, but he still didn’t like it. Pearl stood at the bar for a moment or two before he turned to her.
“Waitin’ for someone, miss?” he asked.
“Waiting for a drink. Gin and Coke.”
Ed didn’t look happy.
“Rather serve you in a booth, miss,” he said.
It made Pearl sore, but she smiled anyway. She was conscious of the muted radio as she turned and found her way to one of the five booths lining the wall opposite the bar. There was a jukebox in one corner of the room, and she was searching in the bottom of her large suede bag for a coin when her hand suddenly froze.
What stopped her was the sound of the voice coming from the radio.
An announcer had interrupted the popular music program to say that he had a special news bulletin on the Wilton kidnaping case.
“It had been learned,” the voice of the announcer went on, “that a man named Stanislaus Lazarus, chef in a midtown restaurant, was arrested at noon today in connection with the Wilton kidnaping. Police traced a telephone call from Lazarus’ apartment in the east Bronx to Gregory Wilton’s office in lower Manhattan. Lazarus is being questioned. This station will interrupt future broadcasts, in case of any further developments, to give you the latest bulletins on the Wilton case.”
Ed, the bartender, carried the drink to the table, the gin in a two-ounce shot glass, an uncapped Coke, and a tall glass beside it.
“Terrible thing,” he said, “that poor little child being kidnaped. By God, if the police would spend a little more time catching criminals instead of bothering horse players, things like this would never be allowed to happen. Trouble is, all those cops—”
“All those cops what?”
Neither the bartender nor Pearl had heard the door open. Both swung around as the voice cut in. With the light behind him, Pearl could only see a tall, thin man silhouetted against the doorframe. He seemed to be wearing a uniform.
“Hi, Jack,” Ed said. “I was about to explain to this lady here that all cops are crooks.” He laughed as he said it.
As the man walked over to the bar, Pearl suddenly caught her breath and her normally pale face went dead white.
It was the fisherman, only this time he was a policeman.
Ed asked her if she wanted him to mix it, and she nodded, her eyes glued to the other man, who was now leaning with his back to the bar and idly watching her. There was an amused smile on his rather too thin, angular face.
“Sure we’re all crooks,” he said in a slow drawl. “And how is your husband, Mrs. Mason?” He looked directly at Pearl.
Quickly Pearl collected herself. What, she wondered, was she getting so jittery about? After all, this Jack Fanwell had to do something. So why not be a policeman? And why should she worry about this small-town clown?
She looked him square in the face and gave him her number-one smile. It would, after all, be best to be friendly. Also, he was an attractive man, even if he was a cop.
“He’s better,” she said.
Fanwell nodded. He turned back to the bar as Ed put a beer down in front of him. For the next few minutes the two of them kidded back and forth. Pearl finished her drink and stood up. She fumbled in her purse and finally found a single dollar bill. She walked over and laid it on the damp mahogany.
“I’d better be getting back,” she said in a low, husky voice. “Don’t like to leave Mr. Mason too long alone.”
Fanwell turned to face her.
“Isn’t your brother still with you?” he asked.
Pearl realized she had made a slip. Quickly she picked it up, again giving the tall, good-looking policeman her best smile.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he’s still with us. But after all, he’s a man, and men are never much good with sick people, are they?” She looked up coyly.
As she turned and left the place, she wondered how Fanwell happened to know so much about them. It was true, of course, that when they had first taken the cottage, she had mentioned to the real-estate broker that her brother would be out now and then to visit. But Gino had arrived late at night by car and she felt sure no one had seen him around the place.
Well, she reflected as her foot found the clutch of the Packard and she pulled away from the curb, that was the way it was supposed to be in small towns. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.
She hoped that they’d be able to get away soon. Pearl was becoming a little nervous. She had been away from the cottage exactly three hours.
Pearl and Dent had been gone for less than an hour when Red began to feel lonely. Several times he had tried to open conversations with Gino, whom he didn’t like, but who was, after all, the only person present with the exception of Terry and the child. Occasionally he could hear the two of them moving about in the back room.
Gino had cut each opening short. He was still working on his scratch sheet and he didn’t want to be bothered. Red picked up a comic book and looked at it for a few minutes, but he was unable to read, and he had already gone over the pictures a dozen times within the last few days.
Red couldn’t stand being alone, and being with Gino was, to all intents and purposes, the same as being alone. Finally, after his third try at a conversation with Gino, who told him to shut up and leave him alone, Red stood up and walked over to the door leading into the rear bedroom. He lifted the latch and entered.
Little Janie Wilton lay on one of the cots, her face to the wall. She was covered by a blanket and Terry had taken off the child’s clothes and hung them over the back of a chair. The youngster, both emotionally and physically exhausted after the events of the past thirty hours, had finally fallen asleep.
Terry, a strand of auburn hair across her cheek, long slender legs spread wide and her elbows on her knees, looked up, fright suddenly in her face, as Red entered the room. Instinctively she put one finger to her lips and pointed to the child.
Red’s primitive emotions were always close to the surface. Had Terry been alone in the room and had he come on her looking as she did at that moment, his physical reaction would have been swift and instinctive. He would have taken the girl with the same indifference with which he might have reached for a drink.
As it was, his eyes followed her finger and rested on the child. His broken, good-natured fighter’s face at once assumed a ludicrous air of caution and conspiratorial secrecy. A child was sleeping; he had been as much as told to be quiet. He seemed to rise to his toes as he took a second step into the room. His voice was a parody of a whisper and it sounded like a broken foghorn.
“Sleepin’?”
“Yes.”
Terry brushed the hair away from her face and got to her feet as she spoke.
“I wanted to wash out her clothes while she slept, the poor dear,” she said in a very soft whisper. “But I haven’t any water.”
Red looked perplexed and then, a second later, he smiled widely.
“Bring her clothes into the other room,” he said. “You can wash ‘em in the sink.”
Gino looked up dourly a moment later as Red re-entered the living room, followed by the girl, a bundle of soiled clothes over her arm.
“What’s she doin’ out here?” he snapped.
“She’s gonna wash the kid’s clothes. I tol’ her she could.” Red looked stubborn.
“You told her? Who the hell are you tellin’ people what to do and what not to do? Dent said she was to stay in the other room.” Gino was on his feet, his face mean and taut.
“Look,” Red said, his own heavy cheeks suddenly flushed with anger. “The kid needs clean clothes. So I tol’ her she can wash her some clean clothes. It ain’t hurtin’ nothin’ for the kid to be clean. So whatta ya wanna do—make somethin’ outa that?”
Gino sneered and sat back on the couch. “All right,” he said. “Let her wash. But we’ll see what Dent says when he gets back.”
“I ain’t afraid of Dent,” Red said darkly. He turned to Terry. “Go on an’ wash.”
Red slumped into a chair, his back to Gino and facing the sink. His eyes followed every movement of the girl as she rolled up her sleeves and started the water running in the sink.
Terry herself tried not to think at all. She knew that if she only kept busy, kept doing something, it would be better. She found a bar of soap and began rubbing the clothes. The ice-cold water made hard work of it. Red sat staring at her, a strange, almost childlike look on his face.
Damn it, he thought, this is the kind of dame I should have. Imagine
Pearl ever washing out anything! Yeah, he should have tied up with a dame like this. A good, honest girl. A working girl. A girl who loved kids. Not only that, but this dame had everything Pearl had and then some.
For the next few minutes he was completely unaware of anything except Terry Ballin and what she was doing. He sprawled in his chair in a self-induced coma, daydreaming in a simple childish fashion of what might have been.
Neither Terry nor Red was aware of it when Gino quietly got to his feet. In complete silence, he crossed the room to the door leading into the back room. They didn’t hear him or see him as he carefully opened the door and entered the room and then softly closed it behind himself.
For several minutes Gino stood stock-still, his back to the closed door, staring at the cot on which Janie Wilton lay.
The child had turned in her sleep and faced the door. She had been restless and the blanket had half fallen from the cot. Her corn-silk hair half covered the delicate little-girl face, and her small, perfectly shaped mouth was half opened, exposing the under row of small white teeth. The way the blanket fell from her cot, one arm and half of her upper body lay bare. Her breath came regularly and she seemed to smile slightly as she slept.
Gino’s jet eyes were colder than two black agates as he stared at the child. A rush of blood flooded the veins of his normally dead-white face, and his large, bulbous nose was tinted a delicate purple.
His hands hung straight by his sides, but the short heavy fingers, so contradictory to the rest of his emaciated body, twitched uncontrollably. There was a thin coating of saliva over his usually dry lips and tiny sweat buds had broken out on his pale forehead.
After several minutes during which he stood like a statue, he slowly crept across the room.
Again, standing over the child, he once more froze into immobility. Only his lips moved as his breath came in short, quick gasps.
And then he reached forward with one hand and slowly stroked the child’s hair, barely touching it. He was very alert to her slightest movement, and when she slept on, his hand, with all the lithe, subtle movement of a snake, passed down her hair to her bare shoulder.
He began making strange, almost animal noises and his breath came fast and short.
Janie moved once in her sleep and a whispered groan escaped her lips.
Gino’s hand stopped in mid-air as though paralyzed. And then, a moment later, when he realized that she hadn’t awakened, he again began stroking her shoulder gently.
Suddenly his heavy thumb and forefinger tightened on the child’s tender flesh and he pinched her as hard as he could. And then he fell to his knees at the side of the cot. His other hand came up to cover the child’s mouth.
It was the quick, sharp pain caused by that first cruel pinch that brought Janie Wilton suddenly fully awake. For a brief second she stared with wide eyes at the little man kneeling at the side of her bed. In that first moment she failed to associate the pain that had awakened her with his presence.
It was more in curiosity than fright that she spoke.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
But Gino was beyond understanding. He began half to moan and half to cry. The tears welled in his odd, almost blind eyes and his hands were suddenly a frenzy of activity.
The child’s curiosity and the faint indignation were swiftly replaced by a nameless fear, and she cried out in alarm and pain.
It was her shattering scream which snapped Red out of his pleasant trance. It also brought Terry whirling from the sink.
Red was the first to reach the door and jerk it open.
By the time the huge ex-prize fighter entered the room, Gino was no longer conscious of anything.
Red’s heavy boot caught the little man in the side of his chest and the force of the kick half lifted him to his feet and carried him part way across the room. It broke three of his ribs.
Janie had jumped from the bed and was cowering in one corner of the room, holding a corner of a blanket in front of herself. Her eyes were wide and frightened.
“He hurt me,” she said in her high, childish voice. “He hurt me. Kick him hard. Hit him.”
Terry didn’t see what happened next. She rushed to the child and took her in her arms. The little girl buried her face in her shoulder and began to cry softly. For the first time in her life she had experienced complete and total fear.
Red kicked Gino twice more, although by this time the little mobster was unconscious. And then he reached down and lifted him with one huge hand and dragged him from the room. Kicking the door shut behind him with his heels, he lifted Gino so that he was standing out almost straight in front of him.
Red hit him once full in the face, the blow breaking the cartilage of the large nose and cracking off two front teeth at the roots. He dropped him to the floor and a pool of blood rapidly spread around Gino’s head.
Red was still staring at the quiet form, his own legs spread wide and < his breath coming deeply, when Pearl opened the door.
The conductor helped the drunk off the train at Smithtown. That left only the lean, tubercular case sleeping stretched out on the seat up at the front of the car, his mouth wide and his tortured breath coming in long, broken gasps, and the boy and girl who looked like a couple of highschool kids who’d been in town for dinner and a show.
They’d settled down opposite the thin consumptive, the boy with his arm around the girl’s shoulder as he talked to her in a low voice and the girl leaning back and looking young and lovely and tired. Dent guessed that they’d be going all the way to the end of the line.
From where he and Fats sat side by side, in the last seat of the day coach, he knew that no one could hear their voices. They hadn’t talked on the way out, as the drunk had been in the seat in front of them, singing at the top of his lungs during most of the trip. Fats had suggested moving, but Dent didn’t want to take any chance of calling attention to themselves.
After the drunk left the train at Smithtown, Fats started talking.
“Goddamn it, Cal,” he said, leaning close to Dent so that his companion instinctively pulled his head away to avoid the man’s sickening breath, “I had to make the phone call from someplace.”
“I know you did,” Dent said, irritation heavy in his voice. “But you told me you had a safe stop—not to worry about it.”
“Lazarus’ place was safe,” Fats said. “I already told you that I had a key to the joint that he didn’t know about. I told you that no one saw me enter and no one saw me leave.”
“How long were you there?”
“Five, ten minutes at the most. It’s a ground-floor rear and the front door was open. No one saw me. I just went in, got Wilton on the phone, and let him hear the tape recording with the kid’s voice.”
“What’d he say?”
“What did he say? How the hell do I know what he said. The second the recording was through, I hung up. I knew the call would be traced. I was outa there in nothing flat.”
“Well,” Dent said, “it was a tough break. I suppose we should have expected it, but I was hoping Lazarus wouldn’t be picked up so soon. Our first idea, breaking into a strange apartment to use a phone, was
probably better.”
“It was like hell,” Fats said annoyed. “I coulda been seen breaking in. And don’t forget I had the tape recorder and the tape with me. Lazarus’ place was safe. I haven’t seen him in over a year and he never knew I had a key to his joint. I was only there once before in my life.”
Dent grunted. “You wipe up your prints?”
Fats looked at his companion scornfully and didn’t answer.
Dent glanced down at his wrist watch and saw that it was ten minutes after midnight.
“I hope to God everything is O.K. at the shack,” he said. “The gang’s going to be surprised when we both show up.”
“I should have stayed in town,” Fats said.
“No. Not after they picked up Lazarus. There’s no use taking the slightest chance. They’ll sweat him till his teeth fall out. They’ll ask him about every guy he’s ever known. And even if you haven’t seen him in over a year, sooner or later it’s going to come out that you did time together. They’ll be covering all angles.”
“Hell, he did time with a lota guys. Hundreds of ‘em.”
“Yeah, and the cops will look them all up, too. We can’t take any chances on your being picked up. Not from now on in. So far this caper is going like a dream. It’s perfect. After hearing his kid’s voice on that tape, Wilton will be knocking his brains out to get the dough. And he can get it, all right. All we got to do now is take it easy for another day, and then we start making the final arrangements.”
Fats Morn nodded and leaned his head back against the seat. There was a strong body odor about the short, thickset man, and Dent edged to his own side. Physical uncleanliness always bothered Dent, and he frowned as his eyes briefly noted the spilled food on his companion’s shiny blue serge coat, the frayed, dirty collar, and the stubble on his chin.
Morn was far from being the sort of person Dent would normally have chosen for company. But then again, he reflected, thieves were like beggars—they couldn’t be choosers. And Fats Morn, in spite of his personal filthiness, was a valuable man on a job like this. He had plenty of guts and a sharp intelligence. He’d need them both in the next few days, once they made contact.
The train’s whistle, far ahead, broke the night air sharply as the engineer gave a lonely warning for a blind highway crossing. The sound brought Fats Morn’s face close to Dent’s as he spoke.
“God, I’m hungry,” he said. “Hope that dame’s got something to eat around the place.”
“She’s meeting us at the station,” Dent said. “There’ll be something to
eat.”
Fats nodded and again fell to dozing.
Fifteen minutes later the engineer began putting on his brakes to cut speed and the conductor opened the door at the other end of the car and put his head in.
“Land’s End,” he called. “Land’s End coming up.”
Dent began to pull himself together.
“Let’s go,” he said.
A moment later the train pulled to a noisy stop at the deserted station. A single electric bulb lit the freight platform as Morn and Dent dropped off the steps of the last car.
The town itself was dark but for the reflection of a few scattered lights some two blocks away in the center of the business district. The railway station was completely deserted.
As the train slowly began pulling out a moment later, Dent took his companion by the arm and walked toward the adjacent parking lot. Almost at once he noticed that it was vacant of cars.
“Damnit,” he muttered, “Pearl’s late.” He stopped, threw his half-smoked cigarette on the ground, and stamped on it.
“So what do we do now?” Fats asked.
“We wait. She’ll be along any second.”
Dent was still swearing softly under his breath five minutes later when the twin headlights swung around the corner and cut a pattern across the station platform.
Instinctively both men rose to their feet, and as they did so they were silhouetted for a moment in the full glare of the powerful beams.
“That’ll be Pearl now,” Dent said; starting forward. Fats moved sluggishly after him.
The car turned and Dent could hear the brake linings grind as the driver put his foot on the pedal. And then, as the automobile slowed to a stop a few yards off, he saw his mistake.
Fats Morn saw it at the same time. The combination siren and spotlight on top of the sedan instantly identified it as a police patrol car. Fats’ right hand sneaked for his shoulder holster and Dent barely had time to step in front of the other man and mutter a quick warning when the voice reached them.
“You men waiting for someone?”
Quickly Dent nudged his companion, at the same time walking over to the car.
“Just got in on the twelve-thirty,” he said, his voice casual but his throat tight. “Supposed to be picked up, but I guess our party’s a little late.”
Jack Fanwell leaned out of the car as he turned on the overhead light. Dent recognized him at once.
“It’s too late to get a cab tonight,” he said. “Maybe you better walk in town and phone.”
“Oh, they’ll be here, all right,” Dent said. “She’s always a little late.”
For several moments the policeman sat there, and then he smiled.
“Where you gentlemen headed for?” he asked. “Maybe I can drop you off.”
Fats began to say something, but again Dent quickly nudged him. There was no time for thinking; he had to make a quick decision. They couldn’t stand here talking all night. Goddamn Pearl, why hadn’t she shown? Instinctively Dent realized something must have gone wrong. But he had to say something. The cop was alone, he saw, and so he decided to take the gamble.
“We’re going out to the beach to visit the Masons,” he said. “Mrs. Mason was to pick us up, but I guess perhaps she thought we might take a cab, and got things mixed up. Her husband’s been ill and...”
Fanwell scratched his head.
“Well,” he said, “that’s right. I understand Mr. Mason has been sick. I know the place, so why don’t you climb in? I’ll be glad to run you out. It’s only a couple of miles and I’ll spot her car if we pass her on the way.”
Dent’s mind was busy as he and Fats climbed into the back of the patrol car.
This could be a trap. On the other hand, how could anything have gone wrong? No, it was much more likely that Red and Pearl had got drunk and passed out and Gino was afraid to leave the house alone while he drove in for them.
Damn Pearl and damn Red and damn the whole lousy bunch of them. Things like this could smash up the entire plan.
Fanwell kept up a steady stream of small talk as he drove. If this was a plant, he was certainly a great actor. But Dent couldn’t believe it was a plant. There would have been a hundred cops around them by this time if anything had gone sour.
The moon had come up, and as the patrol car left the Montauk Highway and headed across the dunes, Dent was relieved to see the house in the distance. There were no strange cars around it.
There was a single bulb burning in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and the ground-floor windows showed slender ribbons of light at the sides of the heavy curtains.
Fanwell pulled up in front of the house and stopped.
“Saw you in town in the Masons’ car last night,” he said, turning to
Dent. “Figured when I spotted you at the station that you must be staying out here.” He smiled and nodded as Morn and Dent stepped to the ground.
“It was nice of you to give us the lift,” Dent said. “Thanks.”
Fanwell nodded again and put his car into gear.
Dent sighed with relief as the cop drove off. He had been afraid that Fanwell would wait until they had knocked at the door. And Dent was worried sick about what he might find once that door opened. Quickly he walked to the small front porch and reached for the knob. Mom was directly behind him, breathing heavily, his hand back on the butt of the gun in his shoulder holster.
Dent knocked lightly.
A second later the doorway was a square of light. Red stood in the center of it, weaving slightly.
Wordlessly Dent pushed his way in, followed by his companion. Still without speaking, he turned and carefully closed the door. One smell of the stale, gin-laden air and one look at Red told him the man was more than half drunk.
“You fool,” he said, the words tight between his bared teeth. “You’re drunk. Where’s Pearl? Where’s Gino?” He reached out and grabbed the big man by his shirt. Morn carefully stepped in back of Red, his gun out now and grasped by the barrel.
“It’s all right,” Red said. “It’s all right. Don’t get all up in the air. Pearl’s upstairs, passed out. She got drunk.”
Red smiled with the inane self-confidence of a man who knows he’s been drinking but is sure that he still has himself under control. “I was afraid to leave and come in while Pearl’s passed out.”
“And Gino? Where’s Gino? And the girl and the kid—are they all right?”
Dent spat out the questions, his voice tight with a controlled fury.
“The girl and the kid are O.K.” Red said. “They’re sleepin’. Gino’s upstairs in your room. He ain’t well.”
“What do you mean, he ain’t well?”
“I hit him,” Red said, and again there was an idiotic smile on his face. “I kicked a couple of his ribs in an’ messed him up.”
Dent’s face went white. “You kicked his ribs in? Goddamn it, Red, what’s the matter with you? What the hell you and Gino been fighting about?”
“Well,” Red said, and his normally good-natured face was ugly as he thought back, “he picked on the kid. The dirty little crumb, he jumped the kid. It’s all right to do things to a grownup, but he ain’t got no right
doing something to a little girl like that.”
Dent took his hand away from Red’s shirt and stood back. He nodded to Morn, over the big man’s shoulder, and Fats put his gun back in the shoulder holster and walked over to a chair and sat down.
“Listen, Red,” Dent said. “Take it easy. Just tell me what happened. What did Gino do with the kid?”
“Well, I don’t know what he was tryin’ to do,” Red said. “But the girl was in here washin’ clothes and Gino sneaked in with the little girl. Next thing I knew she was screamin’ and he was hurtin’ her. I ain’t gonna stand for nothin’ like that. So I straightened him.”
“O.K.,” Dent said. “O.K. Where’s Gino now?”
“Upstairs, like I said. Pearl’s up there too, passed out. She came back after it happened and she got sore. She had a jug with her and she started drinking. She went up an’ passed out about an hour ago.”
Dent noticed the empty gin bottle on the table and he picked it up and shook it. He put it down again.
“Look, Red,” he said. “Put some coffee on and get out something to eat for Fats. He’s hungry. I’m going upstairs.”
As Dent started for the staircase, Red turned to Fats Morn.
“What the hell you doin’ out here, boy?” he asked.
The hands of the cheap alarm clock pointed to nine. Gino lay on the couch, his side wrapped in wide swathes of bandages. He wore only a pair of gray slacks and he stared at a spot over the mantlepiece, just above the clock. His mouth was partly concealed by strips of adhesive tape, which also covered most of his large nose.
Gino had lain there like a dead man for more than an hour. Only his eyes remained open and alive. He muttered now and then under his breath, but the others in the room ignored him.
Dent had sent Red out to the barn to work on the Packard. The car was in perfect condition, but Dent knew that the big man was restless and unhappy unless he was doing something with his hands, so he’d suggested that Red wash the car down. Red was glad to get away from the °use for a while. He had a bad hangover and he felt nervous in the same room with Gino.
Fats Morn sat at the card table in front of the fireplace, where a hand-
, °* srT)all logs threw off a feeble heat. Occasionally he stood up to twist e dial of the portable radio.
Dent was stripped to the waist in front of the kitchen sink, shaving. Pearl, sitting opposite Fats, watched Dent, and there was a willful, stubborn expression on her face.
“Look, Cal,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have got tight. But good God, I’m beginning to get a little crazy around this place. And then coming back and finding Red and Gino trying to kill each other— well, I...”
“Getting slopped is no answer” Dent said.
“I said I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“O.K.,” Dent said. “Forget it. But for God’s sake, remember we’re shooting for a half million bucks. We’re trying something no one else has ever tried before. If we’re going to pull it, we gotta be smart. I know Red is stupid, but I expect you to handle yourself.”
He hesitated and then said, “Red said you had a jug with you when you came back last night.”
“Red’s nuts,” Pearl said. “I had a case of beer. But Red had two quarts of gin stashed upstairs. He was all excited after battling Gino around and went up and got it.”
“Is there any more hidden away?”
“Not that I know of. But you know Red. If he’s got any more, he certainly isn’t telling me about it.”
Dent rinsed off his razor and carefully folded it. He washed his face in cold water and then dried himself on the towel next to the sink. Turning, he reached for the shirt hanging on the back of a kitchen chair and pulled it over his shoulders.
“Go in and get the morning papers,” he said, “but be careful. I don’t like the idea of that local cop being out here yesterday. And it was a tough break his picking Fats and me up last night. You better sort of let it be known around town that we’re friends of your husband. Drop something about our being out here on a business deal. But be careful.”
Pearl nodded and stood up. “You want Red should drive me in?” she asked.
“No. Red’s still supposed to be sick. After that measles crack of yours, he should stay around the place. You take the car and tell him to stay around the barn for a while. I want to talk to Fats.”
Pearl nodded and took her bag from the table as she left the room. She stopped at the door for a moment.
“You’re not sore any more, are you, Cal?” she asked hopefully.
“I’m not sore.”
Fats waited until the door closed behind her and then stood up. He walked over by the couch and looked down at Gino. “How you feeling,
DU/i
Gino looked at him for a moment blankly and then spoke between cracked lips..
“I’ll kill that crumb! I’m going to kill him.”
Dent swung around. “It’s all over now,” he said. “Forget it. The hell with Red. Listen, we’re in the middle of a five-hundred-thousand-dol-lar caper, and you and Red have to fight. Forget it.”
Gino turned, groaning, to the wall.
Fats shrugged his heavy shoulders and sat down. “Cal,” he said, “don’t you think five hundred thousand was too much? What makes you think—”
“Look,” Dent said. “Use your head. We’ve been all over that before. The Wiltons have millions. He inherited six million from his old man. You read about it in the papers. It’s his only kid. What the hell you think he’s going to do? Place a price on the kid? You think he’d pay three hundred thousand, but balk at five?”
“Yeah, but getting five, in cash...”
“A guy with six million can do it. He’s got friends. He can do it. Damn it, that’s what’s always been the trouble with punks who tried this racket before. They couldn’t think in big terms. Do you think Lindbergh wouldn’t have given a million as quick as he would seventy thousand to have got his kid back? Of course he would. This deal will either work or it won’t. So we might just as well make a killing if it does.”
Fats grunted and reached for a pack of cigarettes lying on the table in front of him.
“I hope you’re right,” he said.
Gino squirmed on the couch and turned toward the room.
“I’m freezing,” he said, his voice thin and weak.
Dent nodded his head at Fats, who left the room and a few minutes later returned with a blanket from one of the upstairs bedrooms. He tossed it carelessly over the injured man.
It was almost ten-thirty and Dent had turned the radio to WNEW when he heard the car return. Pearl left the Packard in front of the house. She entered, her arms full. A faint meouw came from a basket she held in her arms.
“What the hell is that?” Fats asked, looking up sharply.
“A cat.” Pearl smiled. “The grocer’s cat had kittens and he gave me one.”
“What do you want—”
“Look. He offered me a kitten. Said it would be a good mouser and that all these old houses had field mice when it got cold in the fall. So I
took it.”
I Dent nodded. “You did right,” he said. “Take it in and give it to the kid to play with. That’ll give her something to do. And give me those papers.”
Pearl tossed the newspapers to Dent and started for the back room. “Brother, wait till you see them,” she said. “This is a bigger story than
the hydrogen bomb.”
Quickly Dent spread the front sheet of the Times on the table and Fats moved across the room to read it over his shoulder.
The story was played up in heavy type, spread over the four right-hand columns at the top of the front page.
KIDNAPERS MAKE CONTACT
Dent skipped the subheads and began reading the newspaper’s account.
Kidnapers of seven-year-old Jane Wilton are known to have twice made contact with Gregory Wilton, wealthy Riverside, Connecticut, broker and father of the missing child, it was revealed early last evening by Col. W. F. Newbold, of the Connecticut State Police.
For the first time it has been definitely established that a kidnap note was left at the home of the child some few minutes before she was carried off, along with her nurse, Miss Terry Ballin. Early yesterday morning, some twenty-four hours after the child had been abducted, a phone call was made to Mr. Wilton at his lower Manhattan office, and a tape recording of the child’s voice was played over the telephone, thus assuring the family for the first time that the child was still alive.
Police have revealed that a second telephone call was made to the family home in Riverside last evening and that a demand was made for five hundred thousand dollars. FBI men and state police officials have refused to verify the actual conversation. It is believed that the second telephone call was made from a pay station in the Grand Central area.
Stanlislaus Lazarus, arrested yesterday for questioning in connection with the crime, is being held on a short affidavit and officials refuse to divulge what his possible connection with the case may be. However, it is believed that the first telephone communication was made from his apartment in midtown Manhattan.
Morris J. S. Gordon, senior member of the well-known law firm
of Gordon, Blassingame and Golden, representing the Wilton family, has made a special plea that police and government officials give the family complete freedom to negotiate with the kidnapers.
“A crime has been committed,” he said, “but at this point the safety of the Wilton child is infinitely more important than the apprehension of the criminals.”
Every effort, it is understood, is being made to leave a free way open for the kidnapers to satisfy their demands so that the youngster may be safely returned to her family.
It is believed...
Dent pushed the paper away.
“Nothing here that wasn’t on the air,” he said.
Fats, still looking at the newspaper, suddenly laughed.
“Hey,” he said, “this is hot. The Times says Buggsy Moretti, notorious leader of the underworld—yeah, that’s what they call Buggsy—they say he has assured police officials that the crime is done by a bunch of amateurs and that no professional criminals would touch kidnaping. He has also offered to help the cops.”
Dent smiled thinly. “That louse couldn’t help himself,” he said.
Fats continued, “Not only that, but everybody is getting into the act. Some professor up at Columbia—he’s supposed to be a crime expert— thinks that because of the half-million-dollar ransom demand, the whole thing is an international plot.”
“The more screwballs get mixed up in this,” Dent said, “the better all around. The main thing is the cops are being called off for the time being. Not that you can believe that, though. Only thing is, they’ll probably give Wilton a free hand for the next day or so.”
“What’s probably got ‘em baffled is telling Wilton to get the money any way he wants,” Fats said. “They must think we’re nuts.”
“No,” Dent said, “you can bet the FBI has got it figured out. They probably have a fair idea of how we’re going to work it. Only thing is, they won’t be able to do anything about it. The heat’s on, all right, but right now they’re worrying most about the kid. As long as they figure she’s still alive, we’re safe. By tomorrow this thing will really be getting hot.”
Fats nodded.
“I’m going up and catch some sleep,” he said. “If Red’s going to drive me in town tonight, he better get some too.”
“Red will be all right,” Dent said. “Go ahead and turn in. I’m going
to talk to the girl.”
* Dent walked to the rear of the room, and as he passed the front windows he pulled aside the curtain and looked across the sands toward the ocean.
Far down the beach he saw the outlines of a man standing knee deep in the surf and casting a line into the water.