by Ellery Queen
“That goes for both of you,” Furia said. “If the phone rings you don’t answer without me or Goldie listening in. And about the door, front or back. Anybody comes you don’t open till I give you the nod. Got all that?”
Malone said they did. Ellen said nothing.
“Okay. Soon as we tear your bedroom apart I’ll let the two of you go up there, I’m sick of looking at you. But you stay there and no tricks. Remember about that phone.”
“There’s no phone in their bedroom,” Goldie said.
“Anywhere.”
“My child,” Ellen said. “Is it all right if we take my child in with us?” She added quickly, “In case she wakes up, Mr. Furia. I don’t want her to be any trouble to you.”
“After we search your room, okay.” Her humility seemed to gentle him. Or maybe he’s turned on. Can he be high on junk or LSD? No, not him. He’s got to have control.
“She can remind you the spot you’re in, missus.”
Malone saw suddenly that Furia’s bag was fear.
“Thank you,” Ellen said humbly.
* * *
Furia had done a job on their room all right. While Hinch held the Walther on them downstairs. Every once in a while making a face at Ellen. He seemed to enjoy watching her shrivel and blanch. Malone could see Hinch’s lips, red and wet as fresh blood, and occasionally the gray tip of his tongue. Those lips on Ellen. The picture made him pull his legs up as if he had been kicked in the groin.
Everything in their bureau drawers had been tossed every which way. The clothes in their closet had been ripped apart garment by garment. The bedroom rug, a handhooked American Colonial that Ellen had wheedled out of her mother, had been slashed in three places-how could it have hidden anything?-and kicked aside. A loose board of the old chestnut floor Ellen kept in a perpetual gleam had been hacked with Malone’s handax from the cellar and pried up; they could see in the cavity before Malone replaced it a fossilized rat’s nest that had probably been there for generations. Their imitation maple double bed had been taken apart and two of the slats broken, sleep-on-that-damn-you they seemed to say in Furia’s alto, Malone had had to put the bed together again before they could transfer Bibby from her room. The child’s head was lying on his hunting jacket. Furia’s switchblade had disemboweled their two pillows, goose feathers lay all over the room.
They sat on the floor at the foot of the bed in the wreckage listening to Barbara’s heavy breathing. She had waked from her alcoholic sleep when Malone picked her up and begun to cry, complaining that her head hurt, and Ellen had had to get the boss man’s permission to go for an aspirin in the upstairs bathroom. She finally got Bibby back to sleep. Malone was holding an icebag to his swollen jaw, and with the bandage on his bloody head that Ellen had applied he looked like a refugee from a defeated army.
Ellen said with a shiver, “Hold me, Loney.”
He held her.
“I’m scared.”
“We’re still alive,” Malone said.
The Irish in her stirred, and she showed the faintest dimple. “You call this living?”
He lowered the icebag to kiss her. “That’s my girl.”
“Loney, are we going to get out of this?”
“I think we’re all right for the time being.”
“And how long is that?”
He was silent.
“Couldn’t you make a rope out of the bedclothes and climb out the window while they’re tearing up the house?” She’s back at the movies again. “You could make a call to Chief Secco from the Cunninghams’ or the Rochelles’… “
“How long do you think you and Bibby would last if they found me gone? You’ve got to face it, Ellen. We’re in this alone.”
She was silent.
I’m in this alone.
A glass crashed downstairs and they heard Hinch laughing. He’s found the bottle of scotch Don James gave me for finally catching that white kid who kept heaving trashcans through their front windows. He tried not to think of Hinch drunk and tightened his grip on Ellen.
After a while Malone said, “Our best chance is if we can get the money back or at least figure out who took it. I could maybe make a deal with Furia, the money for him letting us go.”
“I thought you thought Furia stole it.”
“I thought he did. Now I’m not sure. A punk like him could put on an act, I suppose, but I think I’d see through it, I can usually tell when they’re lying. He sounded pretty convincing to me.”
“But if it wasn’t Furia who could it have been? Maybe it was Hinch after all, Loney. He could have been like in a crouch-”
“Can’t you remember anything else about the man who hit you?”
She set her head back against the patchwork quilt. “I told you all I saw.”
“Sometimes things can come back. We’ve got to try, baby. Ellen?”
“Yes?”
“I know you’re fagged out, but don’t go to sleep on me now. Think! His suit. What color was it?”
Ellen’s head rolled a negative.
“Was it a suit? Or could it have been a sports outfit? Did the pants and jacket match?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”
“Or maybe a leather jacket?”
She shook her head again.
“Could he have been wearing a topcoat?”
“I just didn’t see, Loney.”
“A hat?”
“No,” Ellen said this time. “No hat, or I’d remember. The stocking was drawn over his whole head.”
“You can see something of the face through one of those sheer stockings. Do you remember anything about his face?”
“Just a mashed nose.”
“Mashed? Like Hinch’s?”
“A stocking would mash… anybody’s… nose… “
“Ellen, you’re falling asleep again.” He shook her, and she opened her eyes.
“I’sorry.”
“Hair? Ears? Tie? Hands? Feet?”
She kept shaking her head. But then her eyes got big and she pushed away from the bed. “His feet, Loney! He was wearing galoshes. Or overshoes.”
“Overshoes.” Malone stared at her. “Today? It’s been dry all day, not a cloud in the sky. You sure, Ellen?”
She nodded.
“That’s a hot one. Overshoes… What’s the matter?”
“I just remembered something else.”
“What?”
“His hands. He was wearing gloves. I saw the hand coming down after I was hit. I didn’t see flesh. It was a man’s glove. Black leather.”
“Gloves,” Malone muttered. “That could figure. If he kept his face covered he might also be careful not to leave his fingerprints around… if he was, say, a housebreaker.”
“In New Bradford?” Ellen actually smiled. “You’re making like a detective again, Officer. Why would a sneakthief in this town worry about fingerprints?”
“I admit it’s a lot likelier one of them, the way we’ve been figuring. But why gloves? All three of them came here tonight barehanded… “
Malone looked surprised at the destination of his train of thought. He set the icebag on the floor carefully and slipped off his shoes and put his fingers to his lips and got up, not like an exhausted man now. He went to the door and listened. When he came back he got down on one knee and said in a whisper, “Ellen, you’ve kept telling me it was a man hit you. Why a man?”
“Huh?”
“Why’ve you been saying the one who hit you was a man?”
Ellen frowned. “I don’t know. His jacket, the pants-”
“That doesn’t make a man. Not these days. These days you can hardly tell some women and men apart. A woman can put on a pair of slacks and a man-style jacket and with her hair squashed down by that tight stocking you wouldn’t be able to tell, not from the front and while you were falling from a hit on the head. But there’s two things about a woman would be a dead giveaway if they weren’t disguised some way and that’s her hands and feet!
“She’s the one knocked you out. She lifted that bag, and it’s a cinch she hid it somewhere before she went back to the cabin. It adds up, because she’s been trying like mad to sell Furia that we stole it. Yes, sir. That’s it!”
Malone was feeling the small triumph. He craved Ellen’s adoration. He wanted her to say, You’ve redeemed yourself in my eyes, my darling, you’re my very own hero, you sure can overcome, I feel safe again.
But all Ellen said was, “All right, Loney, she’s got it. How does that help us?”
And of course she’s right.
Malone got back up and began to pad about. “That’s the problem. What else have we got to work on? Nothing. So we’ve got to make use of it some way. How?”
“That is the question,” Ellen said. She did not sound anything but beat. Her head sank back against the end of the bed.
But Malone’s second wind continued to blow. It was something. It was a light where everything before had been black as the inside of the old gravity well out back that hadn’t been used in fifty years and was full of green slime, like Furia must be.
“Maybe if we accuse her of it in front of the other two,” Ellen murmured.
“No, that wouldn’t work. She’s smart, she’s got Furia around her little finger, he’ll believe anything she says. She mustn’t even suspect we suspect her, Ellen, or she might get Furia to knock us off. I wouldn’t put it past her. Deep down she’s worse than he is.”
“Could we make a deal with her…?”
“What have we got to offer? That we’ll tell Furia? Even if it put a doubt in his mind we can’t prove it to him, and she’d talk him out of it. Up to now, Ellen, she’s held him back. She wouldn’t hold him back any more.” Malone looked down at her. “The way it shapes up, we’ll have to somehow find out or figure out where she’s hiding it.”
“You do that.”
“Ellen, we can’t give up.”
“Who’s giving up?”
“You are!”
“What do you want me to do, Loney? I can’t fight them with my bare hands.” That was it. That was it. “All I know is, I’ve got my child’s life to protect-”
“We’ve got!”
“Do you want them to hear us fighting?”
Malone cracked his knuckles and began padding again.
Ellen’s eyelids came down.
“I’m not sleeping,” she said. “The light hurts my eyes.”
He flipped the switch savagely. But then he collapsed against the wall. This is no good. We’re at each other’s throats. What did I expect from her? Up against the first real spot in my life and I try to lean on her like I never leaned on even my own mother. She wants to lean on me. She’s got a right, I’m her husband. It’s one man one vote time. You go into the booth and you’re all by yourself. The American way.
He buckled down to it like Robinson Crusoe.
* * *
“Ellen.” Malone shook her gently.
It was much later.
“Loney?” She had fallen asleep. She sat up and groped for his hand. “Is something-did they-?”
“No, they’re quiet, they’ve given up for the night.” Malone squatted beside her in the dark. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Oh.”
“No, this is different. I’ve been going over the whole thing in my head. I think I’m onto something.”
“Oh?”
“Ellen, wake up, this could be important. Then you can climb into bed with Bibby. Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“Something struck me funny. How come these creeps picked our house Wednesday night?”
She moved and the floor creaked. “They were running away. Maybe they saw our light on. I don’t think anybody else on the block had their lights on when I got back from the movies.”
“But why pick Old Bradford Road in the first place? There’s a Dead End sign at the entrance off Lovers Hill. A blind man can see it. Robbers running away aren’t going to box themselves in on a dead-end street. And another thing. Before I got home from the station Wednesday night, did you tell them I was a cop?”
“Of course not. I was afraid if they knew they might shoot you down as you came in the door.”
“Right. But just the same they knew, didn’t they? Furia called me a cop straight out. How did he know? I wasn’t in uniform. How did he know, Ellen?”
“That is funny.”
“I’ll tell you how. They had advance information!”
“You mean they saw you on duty in town during the day?”
“Then why did Furia say, ‘Freeze, cop,’ as soon as I stepped into the house? He couldn’t even see my face, they had all the lights out except on the porch, and my back was to that. No, Ellen, they knew without ever having seen me before.”
“But how could they?”
“Nanette.”
Ellen said, “My God. The girl I’ve trusted Bibby to all these years! Nanette’s in on this, Loney?”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t have to be. Remember how many times Nanette’s mentioned her older sister, how their parents practically disowned her because she went bad? Ellen, this Goldie is Nanette’s sister.”
“That’s just a guess.”
“It’s a fact. I knew right away I’d seen her before, years ago, I was sure she came from New Bradford, but I didn’t place her till I started asking myself all these questions and then it came to me just like that. Nanette said herself they’ve kept up a correspondence on the sly since Goldie left home. My guess is Nanette mentioned her regular baby-sitting job for us, and Goldie remembered it when they were in a jam Wednesday night and talked Furia into coming here and taking Bibby as security for the money. So I’ve got to get to Nanette first thing in the morning-”
“They won’t let you go.”
“I’ve got an idea about that, too. Ellen, it’s our only lead. I can’t pass it up.”
“Lead to what? How can it possibly help us?”
Malone got to his feet. “Maybe it can’t. But it’s better than sitting here like three chickens waiting to get our necks chopped off.”
“Oh, Loney, if you only could!”
And that was better, lots better.
He stooped to kiss her. “Now you’re getting into that bed, young lady.”
“Not unless you do.”
“I’ll come to bed in a while.”
He waited until Ellen’s breathing told him she was asleep.
Then he felt around in the dark until he located the loose board. He split a fingernail prying it up and he stretched out on the floor in front of the door with the board in his arms.
I’ll have to pull it off in the morning.
Some way.
Friday
The Bottom
His eyes opened to cloudy darkness. The sun rose at a little past six thirty this time of year and so it must be after six. Yes, there goes old man Tyrell’s rooster. The cock was past his prime in everything but his doodledooing, he was worse than an alarm clock. The Tyrells were down to one ancient biddy still trying for fertile eggs. Somebody ought to tell the poor old slobs, all four of them, the facts of life. Eggs.
How do you walk on them?
Malone sat up swallowing a groan and shivering, the house was cold and he had slept without a cover. He stretched and a minefield of muscles went off. When was the last time I sacked out on a bed?
On eggs. How do you walk on them?
He listened. Ellen and Barbara were breathing as if it were an ordinary day. There was a great quiet in the house. So the Three Bears were asleep, too.
He wondered where.
Malone went through his isometric exercises to get the c
irculation going and when he was satisfied he got to his feet with no noise, which was his objective for more reasons than Ellen and Barbara.
He felt around with his big toe and located the hole and slipped the floorboard back over the rat’s nest, thanking the Lord he hadn’t had to use it. Hinch must be sleeping off the one he tied on with Don’s scotch.
I could get away from them now, maybe all three of us could.
The thought came to Malone with the unexpectedness of all good things, in a rush of warmth.
All we have to do is slip out of the house and down the Hill to the station and we’re safe in John’s hands and that’s the end of the nightmare!
It could be that easy.
Or could it?
He took two minutes to open the bedroom door.
His eyes were used to the half dark now and in his stockinged feet he made his way inches at a time along the hall, hugging the wall so the floor would not creak.
When he came to Barbara’s room he found the door shut. With care Malone grasped and turned the porcelain knob and with more care pushed. The door refused to give. It can’t be Furia or Hinch, it must be the woman. But why should she lock the door? If she’d jumped into the hay with Furia I’d have heard them through the wall. It must be Hinch, she doesn’t trust Hinch.
He tucked that thought away with the others he was accumulating.
The door to the spare bedroom across the hall was half open. Were the two hoods bedded down there? Malone was puzzled. With his broken nose and a bellyful of scotch, Hinch ought to be sounding off like a freight train.