by Ellery Queen
“I don’t get it,” Malone said, trying to. “Who could it have been? Did you get a look at him, Ellen?”
“Barely, as I was falling. And then it was all in a blur, sort of. It’s a wonder I saw anything at all. I don’t even remember landing on the floor. I must have been out fifteen minutes.”
“Can you give me a description? Did you see his face?”
“Not hardly. He was wearing something over his head.”
He was startled. “One of those Three Bears masks?”
“No, it was a woman’s stocking. You know, like they use in movie holdups. That they can see through, but you can’t make out anything clear.”
“Did you see what he hit you with?”
“No, but I found the pieces afterward,” Ellen said grimly. “It was my St. Francis.” Ellen’s St. Francis had been given to her by her father’s sister Sue, whose name became Sister Mary Innocent. It was a cheap ceramic, but Ellen prized it. “I tried to paste the pieces together with Epoxy glue, but there were too many little ones.”
He knew what losing her St. Francis meant to her. Her aunt had died in a Bolivian mission, throat cut by a crazy bush Indian convert.
Crazy. This whole thing is crazy.
“Did you see anything else, Ellen? What about his clothes?”
“A jacket, pants.”
“Anything else?”
She shook her head and he saw her wince. He clutched her tighter.
“How big was he?”
“I don’t know. Not very big. I’m not sure of anything, Loney. It’s like I saw it all in a dream.”
“Did he say anything? Did you hear his voice?”
“No.”
“It’s one of those three.”
It was Ellen’s turn to be startled. She twisted in his arms.
“One of them doublecrossed the other two. It’s got to be, Ellen, nothing else makes sense. I fell asleep in the bushes out there while I was spying on the cabin. I was so exhausted I slept the whole day. Any one of them could have gone into town and I wouldn’t have seen. They could even have taken turns. It figures. Nobody else knew the money was here. And if he wasn’t big, like you say, it couldn’t have been that Hinch. So it looks like it was the gun-happy one, Furia. You didn’t see or hear a car?”
“I told you, I was in the bathroom not paying attention. And afterward, by the time I came to, whoever it was was gone. I ran outside and there wasn’t a soul on the street, no car, anything.”
Malone was glaring at the carpet.
“What is it, Loney?”
“Listen, baby, I’ve got to tell you. We’re in a worse spot than before.”
“But we’ve got Bibby back,” Ellen said, as if that wiped out everything. She pulled away and jumped up. “I think I’ll go back up and see if she’s all right.”
He reached for her. “You don’t understand-”
“I don’t want to!” And that made a lot of sense, that did.
“You’ve got to. Will you please listen, honey? They’ll be back for their blood money. They’ll be mad as mad dogs because I got Bibby away from them, and when they find out the money’s gone, too, our name is mud.”
“But one of them took it! You said so yourself.”
“You don’t think he’s going to admit it to the other two, do you? Ellen, you and Bibby are in terrible danger. I’ve got to get you both out of here fast. I’ll phone John right now. You go on up and get Bibby awake and dressed-”
“You do and you’re dead,” said the spinning voice.
They filled the archway.
* * *
He had not heard them come in, they must move like cats after a nest, it was ridiculous, they didn’t look dangerous, they looked like a corny act on TV, the little one in the neat suit, the bruiser in the leather jacket and sneakers, the blonde in slacks and pea jacket with a scarf of psychedelic colors hanging down her front, as freaky as some farout hippie combo and as unconvincing. Ridiculous.
But my revolver in Furia’s mitt, that’s not ridiculous, and the Walther automatic in Hinch’s (so Gunslinger didn’t throw it in the Tonekeneke after all, he couldn’t bear to part with it), and the look behind the eyeslits in the girl’s mask that’s somehow worse than the guns-not ridiculous, no.
They were back in their masks again (why? was it for making horrible faces like the kids make when they’re feeling nasty, to get the upper hand through looking horrible, half in play, half serious?), but there was nothing playful about these three, Tom Howland found that out, so did Ed Taylor, and what game is little doublecrossing Furia going to play now?
I wish I could see his face.
Furia marched in and asserted himself from just outside Malone’s reach. The Colt Trooper was doing a dance. Malone watched it, fascinated. The bobcat’s tail had done that just before he shot it. I wish I had it now. Put a slug right between Papa Bear’s eyes. And a lightning second shot at Mama Bear. He fought with his fantasy.
“There’s one thing puts me uptight it’s a wise-guy cop,” Furia was saying. There was a thickness, a curdle, in his tight voice; Malone could almost taste the sludge. “You made a first-class monkey out of me, fuzz. Didn’t you?”
“She’s my kid,” Malone said. “What would you do if it was your kid and she’s in a spot like that?”
But Furia wasn’t listening. “Look at my hands!”
The trim little hands were stippled with soot. The spidery black hairs on their narrow backs had been singed off by the brush fire.
“I’m sorry about that,” Malone said. In that TV drama he had seen recently, where the escaped convicts took over a suburban household led by a kill-crazy nut, the father had defied the criminals and talked tough to them through the whole thing. He had thought the father nuttier than the convicts. You don’t get tough with a desperate criminal holding a gun on you, not if you want you and yours to keep on living. “My wife has some ointment if you got a burn.”
“Shove it! Where’s the kid?”
Malone half rose. Ellen was standing there like a deer.
He saw her throat move as she swallowed. “What are you going to do to her?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out, missus! Give me the bag.”
Malone got all the way up, taking it slow, as he had done approaching the bobcat. He had no idea what he was about. I’ll have to do something, I can’t just let him shoot us down without lifting a finger. My bare hands against two guns… Ellen… Bibby… Maybe if I talk. The way I say it.
“Look, Mr. Furia,” Malone said.
“The bag!”
“I’m trying to tell you. I got home with my daughter tonight to find my wife practically in hysterics. This afternoon, while she had to go to the bathroom, somebody got into the house and ran off with the money. No, I swear to God! We knew how sore you’d be, and we’ve been sitting here trying to figure out-”
An ammunition dump exploded. When the peace fell Malone found himself sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa seat holding his shattered head, Ellen moaning and batting his hand away and dabbing at the wound with a bloody handkerchief, Furia an arm’s length away, the Colt in his fist shaking. Malone had not even seen the barrel coming.
He shook his head cautiously, trying to clear it.
“He’s lying,” the blonde woman said. “Don’t you believe him, Fure.”
“Heisting us,” Hinch snarled. “Let me at the sonofabitch, Fure. I’ll open him up.”
“I’m handling this!” Furia shouted. He poised the pistol over Malone’s head. “You want another clout, smart cop? Or I should put a bullet in your old lady’s ear? Now you tell me and you tell it like it is. Where’s that bag?”
Malone raised his arm defensively. There was a rising howl in his head that overrode argument and any sort of rational plan. All he could think of was I’m going to get my brains splashed over my own rug by my own gun in front of my own wife without a lousy prayer to help her or Bibby or myself and then they’ll get it,
too.
“He’s telling you the truth, Mr. Furia,” Ellen screeched. “It was stolen from me by some man with a stocking over his head. I came out of the bathroom and he hit me over the head with my St. Francis, the pieces are in the garbage pail if you don’t believe me. Look at the lump on my head if you don’t believe me.”
Furia seized her by the hair and yanked her backward. Malone to his own surprise made a feeble attempt to get at him. Furia kicked him in the jaw. Everything stopped.
When it started again Furia was saying in a worried way, “I don’t get it.”
“So she’s got a lump,” the woman Goldie said. “How do we know she got it like she says?”
“Yeah,” Hinch said. “She could of fell down or something.”
“But you saw the pieces of that statue in the pail,” Furia said.
“So what?” Goldie said. “She broke it herself to make it look good, Fure. That’s the way I see it.”
“The gall,” Hinch said. “To heist us out of our own heist!”
“They’re lying all right, Fure.”
“You’re lying!” Furia yelped.
“You know we’re not,” Malone heard Ellen cry. He wanted to stop whatever she was going to say, push Ellen to the wall and thinking is out. But he had no strength to do anything. I wonder if he broke my jaw. “You’re putting on a great big act for your two friends!” Ellen cried. “You came here today and stole that bag so you could keep all the money for yourself.”
“Me?” Furia screamed.
Malone thought Furia was going to throw a fit on the carpet. The prospect turned him on. The howling cut off, the dark began to turn gray. He pulled himself back to a sitting position. He could feel the restorative adrenaline shooting. He’ll turn on Ellen now. Malone bunched himself.
But it was a funny thing how Furia calmed down. He did not throw a fit. He did not turn on Ellen. He made no further move toward Malone. Instead he backed off with the Colt half raised, and when he spoke it was to Hinch and the blonde, in a wary tone. Malone saw his trigger finger tighten the least bit.
“You fall for that, Hinch?”
Hinch was staring at him. “You could of, Fure,” he said. “While me and Goldie was in town.”
“I never left the shack!”
“Fure wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Goldie said to Hinch. “Not Fure. Aren’t you the clever one?” she said to Ellen. “Trying to split us up.”
“She’s trying to split us up,” Furia said. “Yeah. She figures she can get us in a three-way fight they might find a chance to cut out. You see that, Hinch?”
Hinch hesitated. “I guess,” he said.
“You better believe it.” He turned to the Malones, gesturing with the revolver. “Sit down!”
Malone pulled himself up to the sofa. Ellen fell down beside him.
“Now,” Furia said. “Payup time, folks. Where’s that twenty-four grand?”
“Do you think I’d pull a stunt like this and put my family in danger of getting shot?” Malone said. He sensed a hairline advantage, a sliver of crack in the doom. He tried to keep the thump and throb of his head and jaw out of his voice, you don’t show weakness to an animal. “Just to get somebody’s payroll back because I’m a cop? Or even to keep it for myself? You can beat up on us, torture us, kill us, we can’t tell you what we don’t know. We’re telling the truth. Somebody sneaked in here today and half brained my wife and took the bag. She didn’t even get a good look at him.”
Furia pounced. “Then why’d she say it was me? Huh? Huh?”
“Because nobody knew the money was here except us and you three. We didn’t take it, so we figured it had to be one of you. As my wife was falling she saw he wasn’t a big man. If he wasn’t a big man we didn’t see how it could be anybody but you. Anyway, that’s what we figured. Maybe we were wrong, Mr. Furia. Maybe it was some housebreaker who just happened to pick our place today to see what he could steal and hit the jackpot. But that’s the way it happened. That’s all we know.”
The eyes in the mask blinked uncertainly.
“He’s a real con, this cop,” Goldie said. “A regular mouthpiece. You going to swallow this, Fure?”
“See?” Hinch said. “He says it couldn’t of been me.”
“No,” Furia said. “No, I ain’t, Goldie! It’s a stall, all right. You and Hinch turn this dump upside down. After we find our dough I’ll learn this smartmouth who he’s dealing with.”
The first search was slapdash. Malone saw half a dozen places in the parlor where the money could have been hidden that Hinch missed. And from the sounds of Goldie’s hunt upstairs, the rapidity with which she went through the bedrooms told the same story. The Malones sat with clasped hands under Furia’s gun, straining for the first whimper of Barbara overhead, but she slept through the noise.
At one point in the dream Ellen asked if she could go get ice for her husband’s jaw and something for his head, but Furia sneered, “You’re breaking my heart,” and Malone had to lick the blood off his lips. It was still trickling down from his hair.
Hinch was crashing around in the cellar when Goldie came downstairs lugging Malone’s rifle and the boxes of ammunition.
“Look what I found, Fure.”
She offered it to him like a mother with candy. He grabbed it with a snarl of pleasure. But he had regressed, it was not the sweet thing he wanted, and he flung it back at her.
“A lousy.22! No dough?”
“I couldn’t find it.”
Furia ran over to the landing under the stairs and yelled down, “Any sign of it, Hinch?” and when Hinch came clumping up shaking his head Furia ran back and jabbed Malone’s throat with the Colt and squealed, “Where is it, you mother lover?” while Ellen, eyes starting from her head, tried to cover him with her body and to Malone’s surprise the woman Goldie took hold of Furia’s arm with her free hand and pulled him off.
“Shooting them now won’t get us our money, Fure. Fure, you listening to me? What good are they dead?” which sounded true to Malone and left him feeling gratitude, that was the New England tradition talking, her good old Yankee horse sense. Bless you, Goldie Whoever-you-are.
Furia tore the mask from his face and for the first time Malone and his wife saw him in the flesh, a corpse-face with the shine of corruption and ears like the White Rabbit’s in Barbara’s tattered Alice and the sad dead expression of a younger version of the little comic on the Smothers Brothers show, Pat Paulsen, but without the humanity or discipline, one of life’s rejects, as frightening as an incurable disease.
He seemed to need air.
“You okay, Fure?” Goldie asked. She sounded concerned.
Furia batted her hand away and dropped into the rocker breathing like a fish. He kept hugging the revolver. Hinch and the automatic were holding up the arch looking at Furia with anxiety and a little something extra. A doubt?
Malone shut his eyes.
When he opened them Goldie was saying, “Why not, Fure? We can hole in here for a day or even two and like really take the place apart. That money’s here, it’s got to be. Right?”
She had taken her mask off, too. Her hair was just-polished brass. The mask had smeared her makeup, it gave her features a blurred look like the TV sometimes when it pulsed. Malone squinted, trying again to place her, but she kept just out of reach. She was younger and must have been fresher then, not runny around the edges, maybe that’s why I can’t put my finger on it.
He stopped trying because Ellen was leaning her head on his shoulder and her face was turned up, her eyes were faraway glass. Even if we get out of this she’ll never be the same, she’ll have nightmares the rest of her life, she’ll make a nervous wreck out of Bibby, she won’t let the kid out of her sight… and never, never forgive me. Not because all this is my fault but because I somehow didn’t rise to it like one of her heroes, Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole, Michael Caine, or her special favorite Spencer Tracy on the Late Late Show the two or three nights a month when the cramps k
eep her from sleeping. I’m the dropout of her dreams, a smalltown hick who can’t make it even medium-sized. And the cop tag a big gas.
Malone hauled himself back to what was going on. Furia had recovered, he was the boss man again. “Didn’t you hear what I said, fuzz? You pay attention when I speak!”
“I’m sorry,” Malone said. “What did you say? My head aches.”
“I said we’re moving in on you till we find that bread. You got nosy neighbors?”
“No,” Malone said.
“How about delivery men?”
“Just milk. He leaves it on the porch around eight a.m.”
“The rube who delivers the mail.”
“He drops it in our mailbox near the gate.”
“That’s all?”
Malone nodded with caution. His head felt like a bongo drum.
“Well, just in case. Anybody comes to the door and asks, we’re relatives from out of town. How’d you like me for a relative, missus?”
Ellen almost said something.
“Not good enough for you, ha?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ellen said.
Furia laughed. “You got it, fuzz?”
“Yes,” Malone said.
“You, too, missus?”
Ellen gulped something and finally nodded.
“And don’t let me catch you trying to use the phone, I’ll break your dainty ladyfingers one at a time or, hell, why not? I’ll sick Hinch onto you. You like that, Hinch?”
“Mama mia,” Hinch said. “What I could do with her.”
Malone was hit by ice water. I never thought of that. I never thought of that danger to Ellen.
“Now Hinch,” Furia said. “This is a nice lady. Don’t go thinking none of your dirty thoughts about Mrs. Fuzz.” Goodhumored now, the thing was settled for him by Goldie and he can act the big brass with the reverse of responsibility-ordering the tactics after the chain-of-command below works out the strategy, a hell of a way to run a war. But it was a cockeyed war. Malone kept his eyes on Hinch.
Hinch took off his bear mask, too. No doubt to give Ellen the benefit of his manly beauty. He was looking pleased. Malone’s glimpse of that Neanderthal face in the clearing had hardly prepared him for the reality of the closeup. He could imagine how Ellen was feeling at her first look, especially with thoughts of rape trembling in her head. He felt her shudder and he wanted to tell her that gorillas were peaceable animals, it was the sort of thing he would have said to Barbara to hush a fear. But Ellen shuddered again and burrowed closer, a big smart girl who knew the difference between a fairy tale and seeing it like it is, baby. Malone found himself fumbling around with a prayer.