HERO WITH A HEADACHE
Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, December 1976.
When I began to come out of it, the first things I noticed were a whirling sensation in my head with an undercurrent of thumping pain, and a very sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I knew I ought to open my eyes but it didn’t seem worth the trouble. So I kept them shut and went on feeling dizzy and nauseated until, vaguely, I realized that my whirling, aching head and the nausea were familiar symptoms…something I’d gone through before, or thought I had. A kind of deja vu feeling, as Liz, on the library’s check-out desk, would express it. She always used egghead terms like that. Or was it Kathy on the main desk?
Anyway, I knew damn well I’d felt this way before. Then I pinned it down—or thought I did.
I’d been sapped. Just as I was, once long ago, when I was working under Lieutenant Randall at the Police Department. Sapped by an expert. I’d felt exactly this way then.
My head went on aching, but my stomach began to settle back out of my throat. I forced myself to open my eyes, which wasn’t so tough to do after all. They came open with no more than an extra stab of pain as the light hit them…
And there was Mrs. Stout, across the room from me, tied to a chair with a twisted pink sheet.
Then I knew I’d been sapped. Seeing Mrs. Stout brought it back to me almost whole. She was watching me, big-eyed and weeping, silently pleading with me to do something.
But what did she want me to do? I wasn’t in too good shape to do it, whatever it was, because I was tied to a chair, too. My hands were fastened behind the chair back so tightly that my shoulder sockets screamed at the strain. Not with a sheet, though. This felt like clothesline. It went several times around my thighs, waist and chest and fastened me to the chair tight as a politician’s schedule.
We were in a den or study or office. It was a medium-large room with a desk and telephone, two deep leather chairs, the two straight chairs that held Mrs. Stout and me, wall-to-wall aqua carpeting, drapes of the same color and a whole wall of books. In a home like Mrs. Stout’s, I guess you’d call it a library. Mrs. Stout was tied to the desk chair. My chair was across the room from hers in a corner near the bookshelves.
I licked my lips and was considerably pleased that I could, for that meant my mouth wasn’t pasted shut with a strip of adhesive tape like Mrs. Stout’s. I figured fuzzily that therefore I ought to be able to talk, so I tried it. My words came out, “Wheewhis Whow,” thick and hoarse, instead of “Mrs. Stout” as I intended.
By this time my head had slowed its spinning enough so that I could think a little more clearly. All that got me was a feeling of guilt and embarrassment at how stupid I’d been to get into this mess in the first place. I’d made a fool of myself, and of poor Mrs. Stout, too, for that matter. And nobody to blame but myself. Old Hal Johnson, a trained police officer, acting like any callow Sir Galahad, for God’s sake.
Not that I was actually a cop any more, but I’d been one. Come to think of it, maybe that accounted for my sticking my nose into Mrs. Stout’s business instead of minding my own. My own business nowadays, let me explain, was simply chasing down overdue and stolen books for the public library. I was still fuzz in a way, I suppose, but sissy fuzz. Library fuzz, for Pete’s sake.
The first name on my list of overdue library book-borrowers that morning had been Mrs. J. W. Stout, 1525 Washburn Drive, on the West Side. I like to start my day out with a little class as much as anyone, so I was glad the address was in a good neighborhood. The houses were mostly split-levels and spacious, set well back from the street with a lot of manicured lawn around them.
There are a lot of reasons—and I’ve heard them all, believe me—why people who borrow books from the public library fail to return them on time, and then ignore as well the overdue notices the library sends out to them as reminders. One reason is that the book borrower is just too lazy to bother bringing the books back and too rich to give a damn about the fines he’ll have to pay as a result. One-five-two-five Washburn looked like one of that kind to me. Lazy and rich.
It was ten minutes to nine when I pulled up there, parked behind a dark green van that said Heritage Cleaners on the sides in sloppy lettering and walked up the-long flagstone path to the front door. On the way, I admired the Indiana limestone facing of the house and the gleaming Thunderbird standing on the left side of i:he open two-car garage.
I rang the doorbell, only it wasn’t a bell, it was chimes. I could hear them sending musical notes through the house to announce my arrival. Nothing happened, so after a minute or so, I gave the chimes another thumbing and waited some more. This time, sounds of movement inside the door told me that somebody was at home after all. I could hear a chain rattling, then a bolt being turned, and then the door was drawn open and a handsome middle-aged woman with gray hair and dimples was looking at me inquiringly.
“Mrs. Stout?” I asked.
She nodded, but didn’t say anything, although I could see her swallow as if she was getting ready to. I went into my usual spiel. “I’m from the public library,” I said, showing her my identification card, “and I’ve come about all those overdue books you have.”
She looked at my identification card suspiciously. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Oh—oh, yes. Those would be the books I took out of the library to amuse my grandson when he was visiting us last month.” She cleared her throat again. “I—I’ll return them as soon as—as I can, Mr. Johnson.”
I said, “I’ll take them off your hands right now and save you the trip.”
“Oh…well, thank you,” she said ungraciously. “Wait there a minute, then.” She pushed the door to and went away. She didn’t ask me in. Lazy and rich, all right, I thought, and not very polite, either.
I cooled my heels for a couple of minutes before she came back with an armload of children’s picture books. “Here,” she said in a harassed voice and thrust them at me. She was angry and distraught and I got the feeling that she thought I ought to apologize to her for bothering her so early in the morning. She was obviously anxious to get rid of me and no two ways about it.
As she was about to close the door in my face, therefore, I took a little malicious pleasure in saying, “Wait, Mrs. Stout. You owe a fine on these books.
They’re way overdue, you know.”
She gave me a strange look. “A—a fine? Oh, dear! How much?”
I told her the fine came to six dollars and thirty cents.
“Well—all right. W-wait till I get my purse,” she stammered in what suddenly seemed like distress. She went away again.
When she returned, she handed me the exact amount of the fine and I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Stout, you know you can renew library books and avoid the fine,” and I turned to leave. Then, to my great surprise, she suddenly reached out a hand and touched my arm lightly. I turned back to her.
She pointed to the top book of the pile I was carrying. “My grandson thought this one was particularly good,” she said in a hushed murmur, and tapped her forefinger twice on the title. The Robber of Featherbed Lane. Both taps landed lightly on the word Robber. Her hand was shaking.
I went out to the street, deposited her books in the back seat of my car, and climbed under the wheel, vaguely troubled about Mrs. Stout. Old police habits of thought don’t die easily. I couldn’t help thinking that, if I were still a real cop, I’d be curious about the answers to several questions that occurred to me in connection with my visit to Mrs. Stout.
Question one—why was Mrs. Stout, normally a pleasant and light-hearted woman if her dimples and smile lines meant anything, so disagreeable, impolite and, yes, agitated, over my simple demand for a batch of overdue library books?
Question two—how come Mrs. Stout stammered noticeably sometimes and didn’t stammer other times?
Question three—where was the driver of the Heritage Cleaners van that was still parked ahead of my car.
Question four�
�why did Mrs. Stout delay my departure at the last minute with a trite remark about her grandson when, up to them, she’d been trying like crazy to get rid of me?
Finally question five—how about that trembling finger tapping the word Robber so pointedly?
To tell you the truth, I didn’t have the guts to drive away from Mrs. Stout’s house leaving these questions unanswered behind me. I knew I’d feel like an all-American heel later on if I did. I’ve always been a sucker for women in distress, anyway. That’s one reason why I’m not with the Police Department any longer.
So, I thought, let’s see if Mrs. Stout is really caught in a pickle.
I looked up Heritage Cleaners in the telephone book and the City Directory—both of which I carry in my car to check addresses when I’m on the job—and you know what? There was no firm called Heritage Cleaners listed in either one. Yet not more than four feet ahead of my car’s front bumper sat a dark green van with Heritage Cleaners lettered on the sides, big as life.
What would you think? What would anybody think? The same thing I thought, I’m sure. Except that what you’d do about it would probably be much more sensible than what I did about it. You’d call the cops. But I used to be a cop, so I thought I could handle Mrs. Stout’s trouble by myself.
I crawled out of my car and went up the flagstone walk to Mrs. Stout’s front door again. I rang the chimes again. In due course, the door was opened again. This time, though, it wasn’t Mrs. Stout who faced me. It was a smooth-faced man of indeterminate age with a black mustache, long sideburns and hair cut as short as my own.
I said, “Mrs. Stout, you didn’t give me back—oh, you’re not Mrs. Stout, are you?”
“No,” he said, “I’m Mr. Stout. Can I help you?”
“Well, I’m from the public library, Mr. Stout, and a few minutes ago, when I collected some overdue library books from your wife, she must have missed one. She paid the fines on all of them, but I checked the titles and she still has one book.”
“Which book is that?” He raised an eyebrow.
I said the first thing that came into my mind. “A picture book called Cato the Kiwi Bird.”
He nodded. “It’s possible my wife still has it. But she’s very busy right now. So come back some other time, okay?” He began to shut the door.
I lowered my right shoulder and charged the door with it like a defensive tackle on the blitz. I thought I could use the door as a battering ram to throw him off balance enough, even if he had a gun as seemed likely, to give me time in the confusion to get inside the house where I could handle him.
But no. A split second before my shoulder hit the closing door, he suddenly reversed his field and pulled the door wide open instead of slamming it shut. The result was that, failing to encounter the expected resistance to my lunge, I catapulted through the opening, tripped on the doorsill and went down full length on my face inside the entrance hall.
Then Mr. Stout closed the door. I heard it slam. I twisted my head around and caught a brief glimpse of a snub-nosed automatic in Mr. Stout’s left hand. He stooped over me and ground the barrel of the gun painfully into my back at about the place where I imagine my right kidney is.
“What was that book again, friend?” he asked in an expressionless voice.
“Cato the Kiwi Bird,” I repeated, feeling like a fool but also knowing that one little move now without his permission could get me killed.
“It sounds fascinating,” he said. “I’ll have to read it sometime.”
I heard a swishing sound. Then my head exploded in a big burst of orange fireworks.
* * * *
The fireworks were still flashing faintly now as I looked across the library at poor Mrs. Stout, gagged with adhesive tape and tied in her chair with a pink sheet. I tried my voice again, and this time it came out much better.
“Mrs. Stout…
She widened her eyes. There was still terror in them.
“He wasn’t your husband, was he?” I said next. A dumb question.
She shook her head vigorously.
“I’m sorry,” I said, struggling against the clothesline on my wrists. “He was too cute for me. Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head again. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“Good,” I said. “Have I been out long?” My headache was making my thoughts hazy and muddled.
This time Mrs. Stout accompanied her headshake with a frantic cross-eyed look down her nose toward the mouth-sealing tape below it. Only then did it occur to me that the conversation was going to remain pretty one-sided unless I could somehow arrange for Mrs. Stout to join in.
I gave up on my wrists and tried wriggling my feet. They were tied together with more clothesline. Not crossed, and not tied to the chair—but tied together so tightly that I hardly knew they were mine. I was relieved, all the same. Maybe the guy who sapped me wasn’t such an expert after all. No tape on my mouth, ankles not crossed, and not even fastened back under the chair seat to keep my feet off the ground. Amateur stuff.
I leaned forward, my weight tipping my chair onto its front legs, my bound feet the third leg of a tripod that made it easy for me to stay balanced that way. Then I straightened my legs, put my full weight on my feet, and began to hop very carefully, a few inches per hop, toward Mrs. Sout. I was hunched over like an arthritic dwarf, I had an antique ladder-back chair strapped to my back and legs, but my feet were on the floor and I was capable of locomotion of a sort. That was the important thing.
Reaching Mrs. Stout’s chair, I paused and bent toward her face as though I was going to kiss her on the cheek. Instead, I nipped a corner of her adhesive tape between my teeth and ripped off her gag—far enough, anyway, so her mouth was uncovered. She winced and moaned as the tape came unstuck—all the same, she pulled her head back hard to help me dislodge the tape more easily.
The first sound that came out of her was a sob. The second was a name. “Jamie!”
“Who’s Jamie?” I said.
Still crying, she worked her mouth painfully. “My husband!” she moaned then. “They took him away!” Her sobs came faster.
“They?” I said.
“Three of them. They had guns! Oh, Jamie… She could hardly get the words out.
“I saw one of the guns,” I remembered. “You said three men?”
She wailed, “And it’s my fault they hurt you, too! That—that man untied me and made me answer the door when you rang. He told me to get rid of you if I didn’t want to get shot. He—he pointed his gun at me all the time I was giving you those library books!”
“Forget it,” I said. “You were brave to warn me the way you did. I was the dumb one.” I tried to make my headache go away by shaking my head. That made it worse. I said, “Two men took your husband and left one man here with you, the one who slugged me? Is that it?”
She nodded. “The one who hit you left ten minutes ago.” Her eyes went to an electric clock on the desk to confirm that. “The telephone rang while he was tying you up, and he answered it, and then he left right away.”
That explained my amateur tying job—he hadn’t waited to finish. “What did he say on the telephone—could you hear?”
“He said ‘Okay’, that’s all.”
I began to see the pattern. “What time was it when they took your husband away?”
“We were still at breakfast—about ten minutes after eight, I guess.” She closed her eyes and shivered uncontrollably.
“In your husband’s car?” I asked, remembering the empty spot in the garage beside the Thunderbird.
She didn’t seem to hear me. She started to squirm around frantically in her chair, trying to shed the twisted sheet that bound her and moaning like a wounded animal.
I tried again. “Mrs. Stout, where does your husband work?”
She sobbed convulsively, her mouth making ugly moues in her tear-streaked face. Her dimples made her look worse, somehow. The strip of adhesive tape was still dangling from one cheek and her eyes w
ere wild. Hysteria was catching up with her.
I shouted to get through to her. “Mrs. Stout! Listen to me! Where does your husband work? Work! Tell me! Don’t you want to save your husband Jamie?”
She stopped squirming as suddenly as though turned to stone. The wildness went out of her eyes. “He’s the cashier of the Second Fidelity Bank,” she said in a dead voice.
“Thanks,” I said. I hopped three hops to the other side of the desk, where the telephone was, and set my chair down again on all four legs. Then I stretched forward as far as I could and flipped the telephone receiver off its stand by coming down hard on one end of it with my chin. It was a touch-type phone. The receiver fell face up on the desk, with the dialing buttons right there under my nose.
I took this as a good omen and dialed the police emergency number with it—my nose, I mean. I had to stop and wait, after each jab at a button, to give the receiver time to stop rocking on its spine, but I finally got the number dialed. Then I got my left ear as close to the receiver as I could, and waited for the police to answer.
When they did, I raised my voice in an official bellow and yelled “Emergency! Get me Lieutenant Randall!” The cop on the board must have thought I was a captain, at the least, because Randall was on the wire in almost exactly nothing flat.
“Lieutenant,” I said, “this is Hal Johnson. Don’t say anything, just listen for a minute, okay? I’m pretty sure the Second Fidelity Bank was robbed about half an hour ago by two men with the unwilling help of the bank’s cashier, Mr. J. W. Stout. He was probably forced to open the vault after the time lock was off but before the bank opened for business at nine. The cashier’s wife and I were held prisoner in Stout’s home, one-five-two-five Washburn, by a third man during the heist. We’re still prisoners.
“But get this—our guard left us fifteen minutes ago, immediately after getting a phone call here. He was probably going to pick up his pals and the loot somewhere near the bank downtown. He’s driving a dark green Chevrolet van labeled Heritage Cleaners and should be about halfway to town by now on either Murchison or Cambria Avenue. There’s still time to get the van—but don’t stop it until it makes the pick-up. You got all that, Lieutenant?” I drew a deep breath.
The Library Fuzz Page 8