by Ellery Queen
“It’s a blank wall,” Fletcher said the next afternoon.
“Then Kathy Franklin is our only contact. Let’s hope she comes through.”
“You got the tickets for her?”
“Leopold nodded. “Connie has them. But she doesn’t turn them over until we have Razenwood.”
“So we just wait for the call?”
“There’s nothing else we can do. I think the case has been publicized enough to have every parent on guard. We’re watching the bus and the train stations, and the airport. Of course, if he wants to get in his car and drive down to New York there’s no real way we can stop him. That murder might have scared him, though. I don’t think he’ll try another kidnaping.”
All through the early evening Connie Trent waited for Kathy’s call. When it finally came, just before seven, the voice on the other end was breathless. “Look, Tommy’s got a gun. He’s planning to leave town tonight, but he’s coming here first to pick up Pete’s car.”
“He’ll be at your apartment?”
“Downstairs, in the street. The car is a blue ‘69 Ford, license number 8M-258. I’ll walk out with him to the car, then you can grab him. Be careful, though. He’ll use the gun if he has to.”
“We’ll be careful,” Connie said. “You just get out of the way when the police move in. He has a habit of taking hostages, and we don’t want you to be one of them.”
When she’d hung up, Leopold buzzed for Fletcher. “I want cars blocking both ends of the street, and I want men on foot nearby. It’s a bad place for a stakeout, because there are no other buildings.”
“I’ll handle it. Captain, but we can’t move in too early. If he sees too much activity he’ll get suspicious and stay away.”
“Use unmarked cars, and plainclothes-men. Keep the uniforms out of sight. I’ll go in your car.”
“What about me?” Connie asked.
“If he starts shooting it might be a dangerous place for a woman.”
“I was the one who gave you the lead. Captain—remember?”
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “You can ride with us, but you stay in the car.” He supposed he had to start treating her like a man sometime.
The summer night was hot and humid, with a forecast of possible thunderstorms in the area. It was the sort of night that would have brought the people of Kathy Franklin’s neighborhood into the streets for a breath of air, if there were still any people there. As it was, only one old woman sat on the steps in front of the apartment house, staring up the street at the piles of rubble and the sickly trees. Perhaps, thought Leopold, she was remembering the way it had looked before urban renewal. Or imagining how it might look in the future, after she was gone.
“What do you think?” Fletcher asked as they drove by the building. “Want me to get her out of there?”
“No. He could be watching.”
“From where?” Connie asked. “There’s not another building within three blocks.”
“Let’s wait. It’s getting dark. Maybe the old woman will go inside.”
Because there was no place for cover, the unmarked cars had to remain some blocks away with their motors running, ready to move in. Fletcher’s car drove through the area twice, and then they transferred to another vehicle that wouldn’t look familiar. This time the old woman was gone from the steps, and the street was quiet.
“It’s after nine,” Fletcher said. “Still think he’ll come?”
Leopold watched the street lights going on, casting their harsh white glow over the shadowed jagged foundations. Before he could answer, a blue Ford turned into the street and parked in front of Kathy’s building.
“That’s the car!” Connie said.
“Right.” Leopold dropped a hand to the pistol on his belt, then took it away. “But it’s Kathy driving. And it looks as if she’s alone.”
“Think he’s already inside?” Fletcher asked.
“I don’t know. Let’s wait and see what happens. She said he’d be leaving in that car. Maybe he’s not here yet.”
They had fifteen minutes to wait before Kathy reappeared on the steps with a man. He stood in the shadows, glancing both ways on the street, before finally hurrying down to the car. She went with him to the car door and closed it after he slid behind the wheel. Then she moved back a few steps, waving goodbye to him.
“Let’s move!” Leopold shouted into the police radio. “All cars!”
The Ford started from the curb, moving slowly at first. It seemed to hesitate and almost stop, then Fletcher rounded the corner and the Ford took off. Two blocks away the police cars screeched into position, cutting off his escape.
“He’s stopping!” Connie said. “We’ve got him bottled up!”
“Stay here and keep down. Come on, Fletcher.”
Then they were out of the car and running, their guns drawn. The Ford hesitated between them and the police at the end of the street, and Leopold shouted, “Police, Razenwood! You’re surrounded!”
Suddenly he gunned the engine and veered to the left, over the curb, smashing through a board sign and across the rubble of a vacant lot.
“He’s getting away. Captain!”
Leopold fired two quick shots and started to run. On the next block they were firing, too, and he saw the Ford’s rear window shatter. The car hobbled across the brick-strewn lot and suddenly burst into flames as more bullets found their mark.
“He’s trying to get out,” Leopold shouted, racing forward. But the flames were too hot. The entire car was enveloped in fire, and there was no chance for anyone to get out alive.
Fletcher ran up then, and Connie, and presently Kathy came across the lot to where they stood. “Oh, my God,” Kathy cried, “did you have to do it like that?”
“One way’s as bad as another,” Leopold said grimly.
They went back to Captain Leopold’s office for coffee, and he sat glumly staring at Tommy Razenwood’s file on the desk before him. “I don’t like it to end this way, either, damn it! But the man was a kidnaper of children and a murderer! Maybe he didn’t deserve any better.”
“I didn’t say a word,” Fletcher mumbled. “How do you like your coffee, Connie?”
“Black, thanks.”
Fletcher came back in a moment with her coffee. Then he reached across the desk to pick up the files on Razenwood and Selby. But Leopold reached out to clutch them a moment longer. “What about it? What do you two think?”
“You fired first. Captain. If you hadn’t, maybe the others might have held their fire. But, hell, I’d have done the same thing. You can’t fool around with killers.”
Leopold barely heard the words. He was staring at the file on Pete Selby, seeing the notation under Known Habits:
Nonsmoker, nondrinker, addicted to heroin, frequents race tracks.
He read the words again. They seemed to have some meaning he couldn’t quite comprehend. “You can’t blame yourself,” Connie was saying.
Nonsmoker, nondrinker, addicted to heroin.
“Maybe I could have handled it differently,” he replied, wondering why the words of the report fascinated him so. It wasn’t even Razenwood’s file, but Selby’s. The file belonged to the wrong man.
Wrong man.
Connie?” Go slow now. Take it easy. What is it. Captain?” You told me about your visit to Kathy Franklin that first time, when you suspected she was seeing Selby. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“You knew he’d just left because Kathy was tensed up and there were cigar butts in the ashtray and they’d been drinking. But Pete Selby doesn’t smoke or drink, not according to his file.”
“Maybe he just started,” she said with a shrug, but Fletcher was leaning forward, studying the file.
“And you mentioned the shopping bag, too. If a man has just robbed a supermarket and carried the money away in a shopping bag, would he bring the bag home and give it to his roommate?”
“He’d get rid of it as soon as he was finished with it,” F
letcher said.
“Exactly! And if the bag was at Kathy’s apartment it means the money was probably brought there, too.”
“But we know it was Tommy Razenwood who stole the money. The manager identified him, and so did everyone else. You mean he gave the money to Selby to take to Kathy’s apartment?”
Leopold shook his head. “Remember the cigar butts? There’s a much more likely explanation. Razenwood took it there himself. He was probably hiding in the closet when you arrived, Connie. Kathy was willing to admit that Selby had just left because it wasn’t true.”
Fletcher almost spilled his coffee. “Damn it, Captain, if the Franklin girl was in on the robbery with Razenwood, why should she finger him for the police and fly off to Mexico with Selby?”
“Why, indeed?” Leopold asked. He was already on his feet. “If we hurry, we can just about catch that midnight plane before it takes off.”
Kathy Franklin was at the gate, just handing in her tickets, when Leopold reached her. “I came to say goodbye, Kathy,”
She whirled, pale as death. “What—?”
“Where’s your traveling companion?” Then he saw Tommy Razenwood, standing to one side with a magazine partly obscuring his face. Tommy saw Leopold at the same moment and seized Kathy. In an instant he had his arm at her throat, with a knife in his free hand.
“Tommy!” she screamed. “Out of the way, cops! Try to take me and she dies!”
Leopold stood his ground. “Kathy’s not some nine-year-old child, Tommy. Kill her if you want, but we’re taking you.”
He moved then, as Fletcher came in from the other side. Razenwood shoved Kathy into Leopold and tried to run, but Fletcher brought him down with a waist-high tackle that sent the knife flying from Razenwood’s grip.
Then they had the handcuffs on him, as Connie grabbed Kathy.
“No Mexico trip after all,” Leopold told her. “You made me kill the wrong man.”
“He would have knifed me!” She turned to spit at Razenwood, who had ceased to struggle in Fletcher’s grip.
“So it was Pete Selby who died in the burning car,” Connie said.
Leopold nodded. “A dark street, a closed car, a man fleeing after she’d fingered him as Razenwood—that’s all it took to start us shooting. She’d already made sure of that by warning us he had a gun and would use it. Of course Pete Selby was fleeing because he was carrying heroin, not because he was a murderer. Razenwood had taken Selby’s place in Kathy’s bed, so they figured it was only right for Selby to take his place in the morgue.”
Two uniformed police officers appeared then, to help them get their prisoners out of the terminal. The scattering of midnight travelers turned to stare at the proceedings. “How’d they know the car would burst into flames like that and prevent easy identification of the body?” Fletcher asked.
“I imagine it was soaked in gasoline, with a few extra cans in the trunk. Selby hesitated as he started the car, remember. He may have smelled the gasoline.”
It was in the police car going downtown, with Razenwood seated between Leopold and Fletcher, that Leopold asked him a question. “What if our bullets had missed. Tommy? What if Selby had stopped the car and tried to surrender before it caught fire?”
He lifted his eyes and stared straight ahead. “That wouldn’t have happened, cop. I was on the roof of the building with a rifle, just to make sure he didn’t. I don’t know if it was you or me who drilled the trunk and set off that gasoline. But I guess it didn’t make any difference to Selby.”
“No,” Leopold agreed, “I guess it didn’t.”
“Q”
Edward D. Hoch
The Theft of Nick Velvet
Nick Velvet’s 19th caper—and in at least two respects you will find the exploit different from the 18 previous adventures. But as before, Nick is still accepting assignments to steal only the valueless—that is, things valueless to most people and certainly not worth Nick’s fee of $30000, and Nick is still forced to detect before he can collect…
Criminal-Detective: NICK VELVET
“It’s for you, Nicky,” Gloria yelled from the telephone, and Nick Velvet put down the beer he’d been savoring. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in late winter, when the snow had retreated to little lumps beneath the shady bushes and a certain freshness was already apparent in the air. It was a time of year that Nick especially liked, and he was sorry to have his reverie broken.
“Yes?” he spoke into the phone, after taking it from Gloria’s hand.
“Nick Velvet?” The voice was deep and a bit harsh, but that didn’t surprise him. He’d been hearing that sort of voice on telephones for years.
“Speaking.”
“You do jobs. You steal things.” A statement, not a question.
“I never discuss my business on the telephone. I could meet you somewhere tomorrow.”
“It has to be tonight.”
“Very well, tonight.”
“I’ll be in the parking lot at the Cross-County Mall. Eight o’clock.”
“How will I know your car?”
“The place is empty on a Sunday night. We’ll find each other.”
“Could I have your name?”
The voice hesitated, then replied. “Solar. Max Solar. Didn’t you receive my letter?”
“No,” Nick answered. “Your letter about what?”
“I’ll see you at eight.”
The line went dead and Nick hung up the phone. He’d heard the name Max Solar before, or seen it in the newspapers, but he couldn’t remember in what context.
“Who was that, Nicky?” Gloria appeared in the doorway, holding a beer.
“A land developer. He wants to see me tonight.”
“On Sunday?”
Nick nodded. “He needs my opinion on some land he’s buying near here. I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour.” The excuses and evasions came easily to Nick’s lips, and sometimes he half suspected that Gloria knew them for what they were. Certainly she rarely questioned his sudden absences, even for days at a time.
He left the house a little after 7:30 and drove the five miles to the Cross-County Mall in less than fifteen minutes. There was little traffic and when he reached the Mall ahead of schedule he was surprised to see a single car already parked there, near the drive-in bank. He drove up beside it and parked. A man in the front seat nodded and motioned to him.
Nick left his car and opened the door of the other vehicle. “You’re early,” the man said.
“Better than late. Are you Max Solar?”
“Yes. Get in.”
Nick slid into the front seat and closed the door. The man next to him was bulky in a tweed topcoat and he seemed nervous.
“What do you want stolen?” Nick asked. “I don’t touch money or jewelry or anything of value, and my fee is—”
He never finished. There was a movement behind him, in the back seat, and something hit him across the side of the head. That was the last Nick knew for some time.
When he opened his eyes he realized he was lying on a bed somewhere. The ceiling was crisscrossed with cracks and there was a cobweb visible in one corner. He thought about that, knowing Gloria’s trim housekeeping would never allow such a thing, and realized he was not at home. His head ached and his body was uncomfortably stretched. He tried to turn over and discovered that his left wrist was handcuffed to a brass bedstead.
Not the police.
But who, then? And why?
He tried to focus his mind. It seemed to be morning, with light seeping through the blind at the window. But which day? Monday?
A door opened somewhere and he heard footsteps crossing the floor. A face appeared over him, a familiar face. The man in the car.
“Where am I?” Nick mumbled through a furry mouth. “What am I doing here?”
The man leaned closer to the bed. “You are here because I have stolen you.” The idea seemed to amuse him and he chuckled.
“Why?” The room was beginning to swim before Nick�
��s eyes.
“Don’t try to talk. We have no intention of harming you. Just lie still and relax.”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“A mild sedative. Just something to keep you under control.”
Nick tried to speak again, but the words would not come. He closed his eyes and slept…
When he awakened it was night again, or nearly so. A shaded lamp glowed dimly in one corner of the room. “Are you awake?” a girl’s voice asked, in response to his movement.
Nick lifted his head and saw a young brunette dressed in a dark turtleneck sweater and jeans. He ran his tongue over dry lips and finally found his voice. “I guess so. Who are you?”
“You can call me Terry. I’m supposed to be watching you, but it’s more fun if you’re awake. I didn’t give you the last injection of sedative because I want someone to talk to.”
“Thanks a lot,” Nick said, trying to work the cobwebs from his throat. “What day is it?”
“Only Monday. You haven’t even been here twenty-four hours yet.” She came over and sat by the bed. “Hungry?”
He realized suddenly that he was. “Starving. I guess you haven’t fed me.”
“I’ll get you some juice and a doughnut.”
“Where’s the other one—the man?”
“Away somewhere,” she answered vaguely. She left the room and reappeared soon carrying a glass of orange juice and a bag of doughnuts. “Afraid that’s the best I can do.”
“How about unlocking me?”
“No. I don’t have the key. You can eat with your other hand.”
The juice tasted good going down, and even the soggy doughnuts were welcome. “Why did you kidnap me?” he asked Terry. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Don’t know.” She retreated from the room, perhaps deciding she’d talked too much already.
Nick finished three doughnuts and then lay back on the bed. He’d been lured to that parking lot and kidnaped for some reason, and he couldn’t believe the motive was anything as simple as ransom. The man on the telephone had identified himself as Max Solar, and asked if Nick had received his letter. Since kidnapers rarely gave their right names to victims, it was likely the man was not Max Solar.