by Graham Marks
Speeding up, Dewey got to the boy at pretty much the same time as Joe brought the Chrysler to a halt. Grabbing the kid, Dewey wrenched open the rear door and flung the boy in, then leaped in himself and slammed the door shut.
“I got it, Joe!” he shouted. “I got the camera!”
10 POINT OF VIEW
Trey always kept a pair of binoculars on the window ledge in the lounge – this high up the world looked surprisingly different, and he was astonished at how much time he could waste confirming that fact. Today, though, he was waiting to locate Alex walking off home. He was also trying to make sense of the evidence he’d discovered upstairs in the darkroom: not only had he seen Alex’s dad (who, it had to be said, did not look one bit like a hoodlum) with Bad Frank and the Tall Suit (who very much did), he also turned out to be pals with a similar-looking type of guy called Mario. Uncle Mario, no less.
Then Trey saw Alex, ten floors below, striding up the street. He adjusted the focus, wondering if Alex would look up and wave; they had, he had to admit, become fast friends over the afternoon. Trey was just thinking that, while there was no doubt that Alex was a swot, he was a swot with one terrific sense of humour, when he saw someone appear out of nowhere and rush up behind his new pal. Trey’s jaw dropped like a flag with no wind as he stood and watched Alex being thrown into the back of a brown saloon car that had pulled up at the kerb.
For a second Trey froze, the binoculars glued to his face. Had he just seen a kidnapping, in broad daylight?
The car began to move and Trey leaned forward, banging his binoculars on the window. Madly grabbing for the fastener, he pulled the window open and leaned out to see the car almost cause an accident as it made a screeching right onto the cross street and accelerated away. Leaning even further out, the tips of his toe-capped shoes barely touching the parquet floor, Trey just managed to focus on the blue licence plate of the car, which looked like a fairly recent Chrysler.
Muttering “27–636…27–636…27–636…” to himself, Trey hauled himself back in and ran over to his mother’s writing desk, grabbed a pencil and scribbled the numbers down on the pad she always kept there, by the phone. Then he stood quite still, breathing hard, the binoculars gripped in his left hand, the pencil in his right. What on earth was he going to do now?
“What in tarnation are you doing, Dewey?” Joe peered over into the rear of the car to see a tangle of arms and legs. “And who the heck is that?”
“Step on the gas, Joe, we gotta get outta here – ow!” Dewey winced as an elbow jabbed him in the face.
“YOU LET ME OUT OF HERE – YOU, YOU…!”
“Dang it, Dewey, what the heck you done now?”
“It’s the kid with the camera, Joe, from the building!”
“You can’t just…” The sound of crunching gears was followed by some of what Dewey’s mom would’ve called “colourful language” and the shriek of tyres as Joe sped away from what he was well aware was now the scene of a crime: abduction. He made a hasty and almost catastrophic right turn at the first junction he came to.
A few minutes later (some of the longest minutes in history, from Dewey’s point of view, as he spent them wrestling with this kid who seemed to have turned into a crazed mutt, and certainly had a mouth on him) Joe skidded to a halt in a dingy and deserted back alley, yanked up the hand brake and exited the car.
“Dewey,” Joe opened the rear door, “you get out the car with that kid NOW!”
“Okay, but he’ll lamp me again if—”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, sunshine.” Joe grabbed a hold of Dewey’s arm and pulled. “Let go of the kid, Dewey.”
Hastily untangling himself, Dewey scuttled out into the alley, pulling down his crumpled jacket and smoothing back his mussed-up hair. “Sheesh, Joe, didya see what he did to me?”
“Who is he, Dewey?” Joe peered into the car. “Who the heck are you, kid?”
“You grab me off of the street, mister, and you don’t even know who I am?”
“I toldya, Joe, I saw him coming out the building and he had the camera, and then I saw you and I thought…”
“You thought what?” Joe turned to look despairingly at his wife’s sister’s boy. “I never asked you to think… This ain’t the MacIntyre boy, you got the wrong kid! So that would make it a camera, and not the camera. And anyway, it’s the dadblamed film we’re after, you numskull…”
“Who are you guys?” said a voice from inside the car. “Dingus and Duckweed?”
“Watch it, kid.” Joe pushed Dewey behind him and jerked a thumb down the alley. “There’s been a mistake, so you get yourself out the car and on your way and let that be the end of it, ’kay?”
“The end of it?” Alex sat up and straightened his glasses. “You guys just kidnapped me!”
“And now we’re un-kidnapping you. We’ve had second thoughts. Go…” Joe made impatient get-outta-here motions with his hand.
Alex got up off the floor, clutched the camera to him and stepped out of the car, backing away from Joe and Dewey. “You can’t un-kidnap someone.”
“We just did, kid, now scram before I change my mind!” Joe reached into his jacket and took out his pistol. “Git!”
Not needing to be told again, Alex continued backing down the alley towards the street. “You won’t get away with this!” he yelled as he got there.
“Amscray, idkay,” Joe muttered, tucking his pistol back into his shoulder holster, “and good riddance.” Turning round he landed a couple of swift flat-handed slaps on Dewey, much to the boy’s surprise, and got back in the driving seat.
“Wha…?” Dewey rubbed his stinging cheeks. “Heck, Joe!”
“Get in the car. Get in the darn car before I run you over…”
Trey stood staring at the phone. One voice in his head was yelling at him to pick up the handset and call the cops, which seemed like an entirely logical thing to do when you’d just seen someone grabbed and thrown in the back of a car. But he couldn’t ignore the other voice. The one that was telling him to hold on a minute, and remember who this person who’d been hijacked happened to be: he was, after all, the son of a man who had undoubted mob connections.
Question: would the police know about those connections, too? And if they did, because of who his father knew, would they even care if Alex had been kidnapped? Answer: who knew? But in a Black Ace story he’d read recently, a guy who worked for a mobster, and didn’t know he was a mobster, got blamed for stuff he didn’t do. It was called Guilty by Association and hadn’t had a happy ending. Then a worse thought occurred to him: what if Alex’s dad was a real mobster? Which set Trey to wondering if the cops actually had to bother when bad guys did things to other bad guys.
And then again, were the police going to believe a word he said when he told them what he’d seen? Because he had no proof; he’d been looking through a pair of binoculars, and not the viewfinder of a camera, at the time. And he was only a kid.
What he needed was some grown-up type to do the talking for him. But his mother was out and even if his pop had been around, and not off on another of his business trips, Trey didn’t think he could convince him that they should go to the cops. Gramps, maybe, but he was still down in Topeka on the ranch. Except, come to think of it, Gramps had completely ignored what Trey had told him about meeting Tall Suit and Bad Frank – and the man he now knew was Alex’s dad – on the road to the T-Bone ranch.
And then it dawned on him what he really needed!
A detective. A sleuth, a PI, a gumshoe, a whatever-the-heck-you-wanted-to-call-them: someone who knew about hoodlums and the way they worked, and also knew how to deal with the police, because they were used to being stuck in a small room, with a light shining in their face, being grilled for hour upon hour. He needed someone like Trent Gripp.
But where did you find a real detective at – Trey looked at his watch – a quarter to six on a Friday afternoon? He snapped his fingers and ran down the hall like he had the Devil himself biting at his heel
s. His only chance, and he realized it was a slim one, was going to be found in the yellow pages business directory he knew his pop kept on a shelf in his study. Somewhere in Chicago there had to be somebody who could help him…
11 THE REAL WORLD
It was now five minutes to six and Trey was beginning to realize that in the real world, as opposed to what occurred in the novelettes he read, things were different; come six o’clock on a Friday evening, it seemed even private investigators might well be hanging up their hats and looking forward to a weekend off. He had been connected to seven numbers so far and only two had had someone in the office to pick up the phone – worse, both of the people who’d answered had accused him of making a prank call and one had tersely reminded him that it wasn’t Hallowe’en for another month or so, bud.
Trey looked at the next number in the directory under the heading “Detective Agencies” and saw that it was for an outfit that went by the name of Pisbo Investigations, Inc. He dialled the number, nervously drumming his fingers on his pop’s desktop as he wondered exactly how many numbers he should call before he gave up and set about thinking of something…
“Hello?”
A bright, cheery female voice at the other end of the line interrupted Trey’s musings.
“Pisbo Investigations, discretion is the first word in our dictionary!”
It is? thought Trey, at a loss for words.
“Excuse me? Anyone there?”
“Hi, yes…”
“And what can we do for you?”
“I, um…I think my friend has been kidnapped…” Trey blurted out, then waited to be told he should stop wasting people’s time. But the rebuff never came.
“Kidnapped, why that’s terrible! You want us to help you get them back?”
“Well, yeah, sure…”
“Has a ransom demand been made, and have you been told not to contact the police, which is why you’re contacting us, sir?”
Sir? Trey liked the sound of that and was about to answer when he heard a man’s voice in the background call out the name “Velma”. Then Velma, if that was who he was talking to, must’ve put her hand over the receiver as he couldn’t make out what she said back. He was about to say something when Velma spoke first.
“I think you should come down to the office right away! What did you say your name was, sir?”
“I didn’t yet, but it’s T. Drummond MacIntyre. The third.”
“The third?”
“Yeah…”
“The third, okay…”
Trey thought he could hear the scratch of pencil on paper as a note was being made, and was relieved he’d at last found someone who took him and his situation seriously.
“What’s the ‘T’ stand for?”
“The ‘T’? Oh…” Trey was not over-fond of his given name, and tried to ignore its existence, but seeing as how this was official business he figured he should answer the question. “It’s Theodore, but people call me Trey.”
“Keen!”
Trey held the handset away and looked at it, perplexed, then put it back to his ear. “Look…”
“Are you gonna come to the office, or not?” the girl said. “Mr. Pisbo won’t be here all night.”
“Well…”
“Y’do want to get your friend back, dontcha?”
“Sure I do…so when will Mr. Pisbo be there till?” Trey looked at his watch and saw that it was now five past six, over forty minutes since Alex had been thrown in the back of some car.
“Oh I should say at least another hour or so.”
Trey glanced at the address given in the directory, which was downtown. He could make it, if he put his skates on. “I’ll be there!” he said and slammed the phone down.
It was now almost seven o’clock and the sun was setting as Trey stood on the sidewalk outside the building: five storeys of offices in the middle of a city block which had definitely seen better days. Considering what he’d had to do to finesse his way out of the apartment and find his way downtown, it was amazing he was there at all.
As his father had been called away on business, and would not be back until Saturday night, and his mother was out and not expected home until late, Cook (whose surname, weirdly enough, was Cooke) was in charge. It was a job she took excessively seriously, in Trey’s opinion. Eventually, after what he considered to have been one of his best performances, she had swallowed the story about him having been invited to dinner at his new friend’s house pretty much hook, line and sinker.
Trey then gathered together all the mazuma he could get his hands on, the total coming to $76 and 39 cents; he took all the notes and put them in an envelope. He hadn’t asked what Mr. Pisbo’s rates were (and the advertisement didn’t say) and all he could hope was that he had enough cash not to be shown the door immediately. Trent Gripp charged twenty-five dollars a day, plus expenses, but what an actual PI would cost Trey had no idea. Chucking his notebook and the prints he and Alex had made into his satchel, and nearly forgetting the scrap of notepaper with the registration number on it, he’d exited the apartment building as if on wheels. Which, standing on the sidewalk, watching the early evening traffic zip by, he’d wished he had; instead, he’d had to run to the nearest train station and take the elevated downtown.
The address he’d made a note of said that he could find Pisbo Investigations, Inc. in Suite 419b, and, sure enough, the directory on the wall of the drab foyer confirmed that a company of that name was on the fourth floor. Trey called the elevator, but it took so long (and sounded, as Gramps would no doubt have said, like it’d originally been installed in the Ark as it came down) that in the end he figured it’d be quicker, and possibly safer, to walk.
And then there he was, slightly out of breath, standing in front of a brown door, with Pisbo Investigations, Inc. painted on it in faded gold letters, wondering what the heck he thought he was doing. He was just about to turn around and go right back to the Tavistock, because this was, he realized, a very stupid idea, when the door opened.
12 2 + 2 = 5
The moment he’d gotten out of the alley and was making a dash for home, Alex knew one thing: he was not going to tell anyone at home, least of all his mom, what had just occurred. If his father found out there’d been a kidnap attempt it would be bad enough, but his mom…it hardly bore thinking about. She would blow a whole fusebox full of fuses and he would be under armed guard even when he went to the john – at home!
His life would not be worth living.
He’d run a couple of hundred yards when he stopped, found a pencil stub and a scrap of paper in one of his pockets and scribbled down the registration plate of the car, as best as he could remember it; he’d sworn those two weren’t going to get away with what they’d done, and he’d meant it! Then, using a shop window, Alex had quickly brushed himself down as best he could, straightened his tie and combed his hair back. Once he was pretty sure he’d pass a cursory inspection he set off again, deciding as he went that he’d steer well clear of the front door and use the tradesmen’s entrance instead; that way he was much less likely to run into his mom until he’d made completely sure there were no telltale signs of the fracas for her to pick up on. Because he had to keep this all to himself.
Except…
He’d come to a halt again, a couple of people behind him on the sidewalk nearly bumping into him. What about Trey? From what he’d gathered from the conversation between the two guys involved (Joe, the older one, and the sap, called Dewey) the person they were really after was Trey. What was it the one called Joe had said? “It ain’t the MacIntyre boy!” – the words were still ringing in his ears. So, the person they’d wanted had to be Trey.
Alex had hotfooted it the rest of the way home.
Alex sat on his bed and, for the first time since he’d been bodily picked up off the street outside Trey’s apartment building and hurled into some car, allowed himself to relax. As the tension slowly drained out of him, like used engine oil from a sump, he began to s
hake and had to bite his lower lip, grab the white candlewick bedspread and make himself sit up straight: he wasn’t going to snivel…he was not!
Now he stood up. He couldn’t sit around, he must warn Trey that there were a couple of no-goods on the lookout for him and his camera! As he raced out of his room and made for the stairs he realized that, in actual fact, the guy called Joe had actually said it was some film they were after. Taking the stairs two and three at a time he thundered into the hallway, skidded sideways across the carpet and ran to the alcove where the phone stood, like a holy object, on an inlaid walnut table.
“Alex?” His mother’s voice came from the front lounge; for all that she was tiny, she could make a noise like a Hudson River foghorn when she wanted to be heard.
“Yes, Mom?”
“What have I told you about running in the house, sweety-pie?”
“Yes, Mom…”
“Don’t.”
“Yes – I mean no, Mom…” Alex picked up the receiver as quietly as he could, and got the piece of paper with Trey’s home number on it out of his pocket as he waited for the operator.
Could you close the door, sweety-pie? I’m sure there’s a draught…we have to live on the windiest block in this city, you know.”
Alex put the phone down, did as he’d been asked, and, when he picked it up again, found someone asking if there was anyone there. After giving the lady at the local switchboard Trey’s number, and while he waited to be put through, he checked his wristwatch. It was twenty to six.
“MacIntyre residence, how may I help you?”
“Can I speak to Trey, please?” Alex thought the person at the other end of the line sounded like the maid who’d let them into the house earlier in the day.
“I’m sorry, but young Mr. MacIntyre is not here at present.”
“Not there?” Alex frowned. “Where is he?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know that.”
“Okay, okay…when’s he coming back?”