Hostage For A Hood

by Lionel White

  The dog promptly took the rag in his teeth and walked proudly off, passing through the woods in back of the house.

  By the time he reached the street running parallel and behind the street on which the Bleeks mansion was situated, he had already grown tired of his new toy and he dropped it and cantered off, looking for new worlds to conquer.

  The following morning, a ten-year-old named Charles Wells was bicycling down the street, delivering morning papers, when he spotted the twisted piece of cloth. He stopped and putting up the stand on his vehicle, reached down and picked it up. It took him several minutes to untie the knots and then he spread out the square of blue and yellow silk. It was very pretty. The only trouble was that sharp teeth had torn it so that it was beyond repair.

  Young Wells said a naughty word and reconsigned his find to the gutter.

  9.

  Patrolman Coogins walked into the squad room and squinted his eyes, trying to see through the fog of smoke. Coogins had been needing glasses for years but refused to get them, having the fantastic idea that glasses made a cop look like a sissy.

  He finally spotted Sims and went across the room and tapped him on the shoulder. “The boss wants you,” he said, when Sims looked up. “Says to meet him in the diner across the street.”

  The detective nodded and reached into his pocket and held out a handful of cigars.

  Coogins examined the bands carefully before putting them into his pocket. “Thank you, Horace, thank you,” he said. “These look very nice indeed.”

  “They should,” Sims said. “Old Rumplemyer himself gave them to me.”

  Coogins nodded sagely.

  “That’s more than he gave the commissioner,” he said. “He’s up there with him now, and from the noise he must be raising several new kinds of hell.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Sims said.

  He left the room and walked along the corridor to the main door. When he entered the diner he knew just where to look. Detective Lieutenant Martin Parks was seated alone in the last booth.

  Sims ordered a ham on rye and a glass of milk from the counter as he passed on his way back. The lieutenant had a cup of black coffee on the table next to a three-decker sandwich which he hadn’t touched.

  “Sit down, Horace,” he said, and when the other man squeezed his big bulk into the booth opposite him, he heaved a long sigh and slowly shook his head. “I just left ‘em.”

  “Things pretty hot?”

  “That’s too mild a term,” Parks said. He picked up the coffee and sipped it for a moment or so and then spoke again.. “You know,” he said, “my old man was really smart.”

  Sims looked at him questioningly.

  “Yep,” Parks said. “My old man was smart. He was a fireman over in White Plains for forty-two years. A plain, ordinary, everyday fireman; not a lieutenant or a captain or a chief, but just a fireman. When he retired he owned his own home, had sent three boys, including me, through college and he didn’t owe a dime in this world. He went down to St. Petersburg and bought a small place. My mother died there and so Dad stayed on, playing shuffleboard and fishing. He died last year—he was eighty-seven. Never sick a day in his life, never had an ulcer, never had a worry. He was a smart man. Wanted me to become a fireman just like himself and he told me I was nuts when I said I wanted to join the cops. He was absolutely right.”

  Detective Sims nodded sagely. “Your old man was smart,” he said. He looked up at the other man and smiled. “Jesus, Marty,” he said, “you got it bad today. What’s the matter? The commissioner eat you out?”

  Parks smiled wryly. “The commissioner, the mayor, the chief, as well as old man Rumplemyer, whom I don’t have to remind you is more important than any of them in this town. Also the guy from the insurance company, who by some stroke of foul luck happens to be a cousin of the mayor’s. Also a few casual gents from the press, and just about everyone else you can think of.”

  He picked up the sandwich and then put it back on the plate, looking at it with distaste. “It’s a funny thing,” he said, “but you take a town like New York. Maybe they have six or eight jobs like this Rumplemyer thing every year. In the good years they may solve three or four of them and so they got a fifty-percent average and every one thinks they’re doing great. The fact is, of course, that they are. But we get a thing like this maybe once in twenty years. If we solve it, fine; we’re only earning our salaries. But if we don’t, why then we average off batting zero and, brother, we stink.”

  “Sure,” Sims said. “That’s the way these smaller places are. The Rumplemyer thing is a big deal here.”

  “It’s a big deal anywhere,” Parks said. “The trouble is, it’s the only deal in a town this size.”

  “Well, being a cop in a place like New York is different,” Sims said. “Hell, take the Mad Bomber business. The guy operates for about twenty years, the papers raise hell and so does everybody else. But for twenty years the cops work on it before they finally crack it. No trouble, no squawking, nothing. They’re left alone. It’s just another thing and sooner or later they break it. But that’s New York.”

  “That’s just the point,” Parks said. “Something like that happens up here in Brookside, and if we take twenty years to crack it I’d be walking a beat for the last nineteen of those years. It’s what I’m saying—up here, excuses don’t go. They expect miracles.”

  The girl stopped at the side of the table and put down the food which Sims had ordered and he waited until she left before he spoke.

  “It looks as if it’s going to take a miracle to crack this Rumplemyer thing,” he said. “What was the upshot of the meeting?”

  “The upshot was that the commissioner announced that unless we’ve done something by the end of the week, he will supersede me and personally take charge. That’s what he promised Rumplemyer, and that’s what he all but announced to the press.”

  “That will be great,” Sims said. “It’s the only break the gang needs to insure a successful getaway.”

  “Don’t be disrespectful,” Parks said.

  They both laughed.

  Parks picked up the sandwich and this time bit into it. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s quit horsing around. Let’s see exactly where we are and what we’ve got.”

  “We’ve got precious little,” Sims said.

  “Right. But let’s just review what we do have. To begin with, those lab boys that came up from New York have gone over the armored car, the pushcart and the moving van with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing—absolutely nothing. Of course tracing the moving van was simple. Oddly enough, it wasn’t hot. It was bought a few days ago from a dealer in New York. The buyer used a phony name and address. We have a description and the dealer has looked over mug shots until he’s damned near blind.

  “Slagher, the guard in the back of the armored car, was knocked cold when the van crashed into them. He doesn’t remember how long he was out, but it doesn’t matter. That gas bomb they used took care of the rest of his morning. It damn near took care of him for good.

  “There was the milkman who was a couple of blocks away and heard first the crash and then the gunfire. He would have to be half blind. The only thing he knows is that there was another car there and that it sped away as he started running toward the accident. Well, I don’t need a blind milkman to tell me that. But what kind of car it was, or how many men were in it, he has no idea. And that brings us up to date—except for this mug Mitty.”

  Sims nodded in agreement. “You think it was the best thing, letting him out,” he said. “After all … “

  Parks spread his hands and shrugged. “We were getting nowhere with him while we held him,” he said. “You know how those punch-drunk bums are as well as I do. Sometimes the more stupid they are the more stubborn they are. Holding him was getting us no place. Not, of course, to mention the fact that we would have had to charge him on the robbery if we’d have wanted to keep him and I doubt if we could have made an indictment stick. But the point is, h
e was no good to us in jail. Now that he’s out, we may get someplace—that is, assuming he was mixed up in it.”

  “He almost has to be—working for Rumplemyer and everything.”

  “Look, Horace,” the lieutenant said. “You’ve been with it long enough to know nothing is for sure. If he was in on the thing, how do you account for him trying to steal a car within minutes of the stickup? If he was the finger man on the job, he would have been miles away at the time, getting himself an alibi. If he was in on the actual stickup, he’d have left with the rest of the gang. They wouldn’t have taken off without him. Hell, it would have been the only sensible thing to do. As you say, he’s about all we’ve got, but he’s only good if he’s free. That’s why I made it easy for him to get bail on the hot-car charge. We tailed him from the minute he left the jail. Well, he did just about what you would expect him to do. Drove off with the shyster who bailed him out. They went directly to New York and split out.

  “The New York Police cooperated with us and they’ve been using their boys ever since. Both Mitty and the shyster were tailed. The shyster is connected with a mouthpiece named Goldman, a big shot. Real estate operator, sports promoter and a little bit of everything. Shady, but not shady enough to lose his professional standing or ever get into trouble. Goldman represented Mitty once or twice before when he was in trouble, as it was logical that he call him in this time. There’s nothing to do as far as Goldman or his assistant is concerned. They acted like lawyers, and that they had a right to do.

  “Mitty himself has just been hanging around town. He’s made no attempt to get in touch with his lawyers, hasn’t seen anyone in particular. He’s checked into a flea bag on West Forty-Seventh Street near Broadway. The New York boys are staying with him. And that’s just about it.”

  “It seems that is it,” Sims said.

  Parks made a wry face. “Right,” he said. “Well, let’s get back to the sweat shop. You know,” he added, “I wish this was the way it was in those new, realistic detective books where the cops solve the crime with nothing but plain, dull, routine police work. You know, just the boring, steady, consistent monotony of everyday procedure. Police procedure, hell! What we need is a miracle.”

  They stopped at the counter and without discussing it, took coins from their pockets and matched each other. Parks lost and paid up.

  They were crossing the street to enter the police station when Sims saw the man entering the building ahead of them. “You’ve got another headache waiting, Lieutenant,” he said. “He just walked into the building. That Sherwood guy. Remember, we talked with him last night. The guy who’s wife is missing.”

  Parks groaned. “I knew it was going to be one of these days. This is what my old man meant, I guess. Maybe she’s come home. I can hope, anyway.”

  “Don’t hope, Marty,” Sims said. “You know they never bother to let us know if it’s good news.”

  It was the sense of complete helplessness which bothered him most. He’d been in tough spots before—any guy who’d seen active duty had been in tough spots. But this was different. This time he wasn’t given the option of doing anything about it.

  Bart Sherwood turned over on the bed and looked at the small, square alarm clock on the side table. It was seven o’clock and he pulled himself up, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was beginning to wonder how long a man could go without sleep.

  Seven o’clock, Thursday morning. Joyce had been missing for almost three whole days.

  It was funny how a house could change. The very sight of their apartment depressed him. The place, without Joyce, was nothing. He would have left and stayed in town except for that chance that she might call. He had to be available. But within the last three days he’d grown to hate the place. The apartment had never been much, but they had been happy in it. Wildly, ecstatically happy, it seemed to him now.

  This morning he determined to go through the old routine. He knew that he didn’t dare let down the bars, couldn’t permit himself to crack up.

  When he entered the shower, he turned on the cold water. Afterward he toweled himself and dressed. He took out his best suit and was careful in the selection of a shirt and tie. He was determined to keep up his morale. He started for the garage to let Flick out for his morning run and it wasn’t until he was halfway there that he remembered that Flick too was missing. The sudden remembrance brought a lump to his throat.

  It was while he was having ham and eggs and coffee in a small restaurant over in town, to which he had walked with the thought that the exercise would be good for him, that he made the decision about the private detective. He’d suggested the idea to the police the night before, but they hadn’t been enthusiastic.

  “We’re doing everything that can be done,” they’d told him.

  Well, maybe they were, but Bart wasn’t going to miss any possible bets.

  From the restaurant he walked to the railway station and caught the commuting train he usually took into New York. He got off of the train at Grand Central, but instead of walking up Madison Avenue to his office, he turned south when he left the station and went down to the Advertising Club. He didn’t want to face the curious glances of the people in his office.

  Entering the club, he found a telephone booth and called Bill Henricks. Henricks was a man he’d known for several years and was connected with the editorial side of an afternoon paper.

  It was difficult finding out what he wanted to know without taking the man into his confidence, which his natural sense of reticence prohibited him from doing, but he finally managed to get the idea across.

  “All right, Bart,” Henricks said after the long and confused conversation. “I can give you a name. But I should warn you. There really is no such animal as a private detective, at least in the sense that the layman who reads paperbacks and mystery stories thinks of one. There are a number of men licensed as such, and the vast majority of them stick to divorce work. Either that or they are credit investigators, or labor spies, or operate in kindred fields. I still say that no private operator can hope to compete with the police if your trouble is a police matter.

  “However, if you insist on seeing one, I can give you a name. He’s no better or worse than the rest, but at least he’s honest. That’s the best I can say for him, and more than I can say for some of the others. He won’t give you any bum steers. He’ll take your money like all the rest of them, but he won’t cross you up.”

  Three-quarters of an hour later, Bart walked into the office of Arthur Gutzman. It was an unimpressive, two-room suite on the fourteenth floor of a rather outdated Forty-sixth Street office building, on the less expensive side of Fifth Avenue. Gutzman was expecting him.

  Gutzman, a short, fat man with hooded, sleepy eyes, sat behind an old-fashioned roll-top desk. He wore a baggy tweed suit and a slightly dirty shirt. He looked like a rather impoverished bookkeeper.

  He waved Bart to the chair beside the desk.

  “My friend Henricks tells me you got problems, Mr. Sherwood,” he said. “You want to tell me about them?”

  Bart hesitated a moment, not knowing just how to begin.

  Gutzman had had plenty of experience with hesitant clients. “You can tell me anything,” he said. “It never goes any further. Don’t be shy. Nothing surprises me.”

  “It’s about my wife,” Bart said. “She’s missing. Has been gone since Monday.”

  “You’ve reported it to the police?”

  “Certainly.”

  Bart told the man then, as quickly as possible, exactly what had happened. He started with Monday morning and brought the story up to date. Gutzman didn’t bother to take notes, but he was very careful to ask for names and addresses and definite times. When Bart finished, he asked a number of questions; how long they had been married, how long they had known each other and about their friends. Finally he took time to light a blackened pipe and then stood up and paced back and forth.

  “And why have you come to me, Mr. Sherwood?”

&
nbsp; Bart looked at him, puzzled. “Why, because I wanted a private detective to work on the case, and Henricks recommended you,” he said.

  Gutzman went back and sat at the desk again. He looked at Bart and shrugged his thick shoulders.

  “Mr. Sherwood,” he said, “doesn’t it occur to you that maybe your wife left of her own volition? That maybe she is staying away because she wants to stay away? She did take the money out of the bank, she took the dog and the car with her, she … “

  “It’s utterly impossible,” Bart said. “Of course I realize you don’t know Mrs. Sherwood and that you don’t know me. But you have to take my word for it. She would not have left of her own volition. I’ve considered it, thought a lot about it. She didn’t. I don’t think the police themselves believe for a moment that she did. Something has happened to her.”

  “The check has not been cashed?”

  “No. At least up until yesterday afternoon, it hadn’t hit the bank.”

  “And there has been absolutely no trace of Mrs. Sherwood? The police have found out nothing?”

  “Nothing. That’s why I’ve come to you. It seems impossible, but the only conclusion I can come to is that she’s suffering from amnesia. There is nothing in her medical history to suggest it, but the only other alternative would be that she had an accident of some sort. And if she had, certainly we would have learned about it by now. The car and the dog or something would have turned up.”

  “Amnesia.” Gutzman looked at Bart for a long moment under hooded eyes. “You know,” he said, “I want to tell you something about these so-called amnesia cases. I’ve been hearing about them all my life. I’ve even worked on half a dozen jobs where the missing person was supposed to have temporarily lost his memory. But do you know something? I’ve yet to encounter one, or even hear of one, that wasn’t a phony. Mind you, I don’t say it can’t happen and doesn’t. All I say is that from my experience they’re phony. It almost always turns out that the victim either took off on a drunk, got mixed up with a woman—if it happened to be a man—or absconded with money which didn’t belong to him and blew it. Almost always.”