Cop Out

by Ellery Queen

  Malone crossed the hall in a tiptoe stride and pulled up at the other side, holding his breath. He listened some more. Very carefully he looked in, he could see well enough by now. But the room was empty.

  One of the cots was gone.

  They’re sleeping downstairs.

  He catfooted to the landing and risked a look over the railing. He could see down into the parlor and he could see through the archway into the entrance hall. The sofa was gone from its place, they had dragged it into the hall and set it up against the front door. A small figure lay curled like a cat on the sofa, covered by Ellen’s afghan.

  The sight of Furia defenseless tightened Malone’s hand and the railing squealed. Furia woke up like a cat, too. The Colt Trooper looked enormous in his hand. Malone dodged back to the protection of the wall, holding his breath.

  After a while he heard Furia settle back to sleep.

  Hinch must be bedded down in the kitchen on the cot from the spare room, blocking the back door as Furia was blocking the front. Malone strained and heard snores. He’s there, all right. Maybe he drank so much that I could… But there was Furia, who slept like a cat and woke up like one.

  Malone made his way back to Ellen and Barbara. In the bedroom he made a slight noise and Ellen shot up in bed.

  “Loney?”

  The terror in her voice touched him like a live wire. He went over to the bed and stroked her tumbled hair and whispered, “It’s all right, honey. Go back to sleep now,” and she sighed and did.

  Later, at the window, he even considered Ellen’s suggestion about a rope of bedclothes. But Ellen and Bibby couldn’t climb out without lots of noise and then there’d be hell to pay.

  I’ll have to play it like it is.

  Malone settled down, going over desperately what he had muddled through during the night. Does it stand up? Or is this another pipe dream?

  Goldie wouldn’t have hidden the payroll where there’s any chance Furia might find it. So the cabin is out. Ditto the Chrysler. And she couldn’t hide all those bills on her body.

  Then where?

  Had she set up a place in advance, the way they set up their hideout at Balsam Lake? But she couldn’t have known they were going to be hung up in New Bradford because of Pickney finding Tom Howland’s body so soon and the roadblocks being set up so fast. Or even if she figured on that, the thing just didn’t smell of a planned doublecross before the murder and robbery. The stocking on her head, the men’s overshoes and gloves, she must have bought them in town yesterday afternoon when she and Hinch came in, at some store where she could be sure she wasn’t known, maybe the Army-Navy Store on Freight Street, Joe Barron was only in New Bradford two years, it all smacked of spur-of-the-moment.

  If that was true, then her hiding place for the money must have been picked on the spur of the moment, too.

  All right. She’s got this loot. And she’s smart. She has to choose a hiding place where Furia can’t possibly put his hands on it even by accident. Even if he suspects her and tries to muscle it out of her. Even if he makes her tell him. That would be Goldie’s style.

  All right.

  The way it worked out, nobody in town knows the Aztec job was pulled by a gang including a woman. Nobody but Ellen and Bibby and me, and we don’t count. That’s the way she’d figure. So she can come and go in town like she did yesterday, with just the small risk that she might run into somebody who’d recognize her from the old days. And even if they did, so what? She’s back to visit her family. Nothing to tie her in to the crime.

  Yes, one likely place. Just the hiding place a smart cookie like Goldie would hit on. I’ve got to check it out.

  But the way things are, where do I go from there?

  At this point Malone shut his mind down.

  One thing at a time.

  * * *

  He waited with his ear against the door and heard the woman go downstairs and the whistle of the kettle in the kitchen and the spin of Furia’s voice.

  Ellen was explaining things to Barbara.

  “I knew those people were bad,” Barbara said in her grownup voice, the one she used when she disapproved of something. “Did Daddy get me back?”

  “Yes, darling. How’s your head?”

  “It feels icky. You know what they did, Mommy? That lady made me drink some liquor. She said it would make me sleep. I didn’t want to, it tasted awful, but she forced me.”

  “I know, baby. Don’t think about it.”

  “Why did I sleep in your bed last night?”

  “They’re here in the house, Bibby,” Malone said. “I want you and your mother to stay in this room. Be very quiet and do what Mommy says.”

  “Where you going, Daddy?”

  “I may have to go out for a while.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “Now none of that,” Malone said. He turned away.

  “I’m famished.” It was her latest favorite word.

  “I’ll get you some breakfast later,” Ellen said.

  “Ellen, I’m going down,” Malone said.

  “Loney, for God’s sake.”

  “Don’t worry. Just stay up here unless they call you. Do exactly what they say. Don’t cross them.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Try to get Furia to let me go into town.”

  “Do you think he will?”

  “He’s got you and Bibby.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Malone opened the door. He could hear Hinch grousing and Goldie’s sarcastic laugh. He went over and kissed Barbara and then Ellen and left in a hurry so that he would not have to see their faces any more.

  They were in the kitchen slupping coffee. The kitchen looked like a battlefield on the morning after. They had yanked out every drawer and emptied every cupboard. Dishes and cutlery and pots and bottles and boxes of cereal lay strewn about like the unburied dead. The door to the freezer compartment was open and Malone saw that half Ellen’s supply of meat was gone.

  “Well look who’s here,” Goldie said. It seemed to him her brightness was forced. She’s walking on eggs, too.

  “Who told you to come down, fuzz?” Hinch growled. He had a growth of red pig bristles and his eyes were shot with pig pink.

  “Shut up, Hinch.” Furia looked at Malone over his cup. “Going somewheres?” Malone had changed into his good civvy suit. He was wearing a tie.

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Now that’s being a smart fuzz.”

  “I mean about-”

  “I thought you’re ready to talk.”

  “Sure,” Malone said. “I’ll tell you everything I can, Mr. Furia. But what I mean-”

  “For openers, how about where you stashed my loot?”

  “I told you, I didn’t take it. For one thing I had no time.”

  He tried to keep his eyes ofl: the revolver on the table beside Furia’s cup. Hinch had the rifle and the automatic.

  “Okay, you had no time. But your missus did. Where did she hide it?”

  “She didn’t take it either. I don’t know what I can do, Mr. Furia, but keep telling you that. Ellen’s not out of her mind, you had our daughter. Look, I know this town inside out. If some local Lightfinger Louie snatched that bag yesterday, which is what I think happened, I could maybe get a line on him. If you’ll let me nose around. I want you to get the money and get out of here as bad as you do, Mr. Furia.”

  “It’s a trick,” Hinch complained. “Don’t listen to him, Fure. I don’t know why you won’t let me bang it out of him.”

  “Because he just ain’t the bang-out type,” Furia said. “Drink your coffee, Hinch. You think it’s a trick, too, Goldie?”

  Goldie shrugged in a swirl of hair. She had not bothered to brush it and she looked like a witch. “I still say they took it. He’s stalling for time.”

  “I don’t know.” Furia pulled on his longish nose. Then he d
rummed on the table. He had scrubbed the soot off his hands and they were clean and neat again. “Suppose they see you?”

  “Who?” Malone said.

  “The fuzz. Your buddies. I was going to tell you to call in sick.”

  “That isn’t necessary,” Malone said quickly. “The flu hit the department and I did double tricks for four days running. The Chief gave me a couple days off to rest up. So nobody ‘11 think anything of it if I’m seen in town in civvies.”

  “He’s telling the truth about that, anyways,” Furia said. “I read in this New Bradford paper yesterday about how the flu hit the cops.”

  Goldie said, “I still don’t like it.”

  “Who asked you?”

  “You did.”

  “Well, I’m letting him go in. He ain’t going to be a hero, not with his wife and kid with us. Wait a second, fuzz.” Furia picked up the revolver. “Go upstairs, Goldie, and make sure those two are okay.”

  Goldie pushed away from the table and brushed past Malone without a glance. She’s walking on eggs is right. He stood where he was respectfully.

  “Okay,” Goldie called down.

  “Okay,” Furia said. “Your story is this was an outside heist, Malone, you prove it. You got till one o’clock. You either bring me that bread or proof where it is or who’s got it. If you know what’s good for the missus and kid upstairs. Oh, and one more thing.”

  “Yes?” Malone said.

  “When you come back here you better not have nobody with you. And don’t try any hairy stunts like coming back heeled. Put it out of your clyde. Because you do that and Hinch and me we’re going to have to decorate your floor with your wife and kid’s brains. Kapeesh?”

  “I kapeesh.”

  * * *

  The Vorsheks lived in the Hollow near a narrow bend in the Tonekeneke. It was a settlement of poor men’s houses huddled in the companionship of misery, but with an impersonal beauty unknown to city slums. The usual dirty children played on the tincan landscape or on the lunar stones of the riverbed during droughts and there were always flapping lines of wash, but backyards in the spring showed unbuyable stands of very old magnolias in impossible bloom, and everywhere in the summer vegetable plots as green and true as Japanese gardens.

  Peter Vorshek worked in the incubator rooms at Hurley’s chicken farm. Mrs. Vorshek did handironing for the ladies of New Bradford to boost the family budget, her free time given passionately to her church. Their daughter Nanette ran a loom at the New Bradford Knitting Mill and baby-sat nights for a few favored clients. The Vorsheks were of Slovak or Czech stock, Malone had never known which. The old man, who carried around with him the smell of chickenshit, still spoke with an accent. He had the European peasant’s awe of authority. He always called Malone “Mr. Poleetsman.”

  Malone pulled the Saab up at the front gate and got out. Nanette was perched in a rocker on the porch reading a movie magazine. She was wearing skintight slacks and a turtleneck.

  They look a lot alike all right.

  “Mr. Malone.” Nanette jumped up. “Something wrong with Bibby? I had to leave early Wednesday night because my mother was sick-she still is, that’s why I’m staying home from work-”

  “I know, my wife told me,” Malone said.

  “Oh! What happened to your head and face?”

  “A little accident. Mind if I sit down a minute, Nanette?”

  “Mind? I should say not.”

  She sat down looking flattered. He took the other chair and made his onceover casual. She was a large girl, larger than Goldie in every department, with the heavy Vorshek features but plainer than Goldie’s, the pug nose, the high bones, the straight brown hair her sister camouflaged. He had seen Nanette at least once a week since her high school days, but he had never absorbed more than an impression of a sort of homely niceness, Bibby worshiped her and she was reliable, which was all he cared about. From what he had heard she rarely went out on a date. The talk among the studs was that she couldn’t be made, her old man and old lady kept her on too short a leash, the YPF type, they said, a hardnose churchgoer, as tough to crack as a nun. But Malone thought he saw a certain something in her hazel eyes.

  She’s wondering why I’m here. No sign of being scared or worried like she’d surely show if she was in on this with Goldie and the two hoods. My hunch was right, she probably doesn’t even know her sister is in town.

  “My father’s working and my mother’s in bed,” Nanette said with a downward look. For some reason her face was red. “You want to see mom, Mr. Malone?”

  “I’m here to see you,” Malone said. “I took a chance you’d be home, knowing Mrs. Vorshek is down sick.” He managed a smile.

  “Mrs. Malone know you’re here?” He could barely hear her.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  By God, she’s got a thing for me. All these years and I never knew. He had been racking his brains trying to work out an approach, and he had come up the walk still trying. This could be the break.

  “Nanette.”

  She looked up.

  “How long have you known me?”

  She giggled. “That’s a funny question, Mr. Malone. You know how long. Years.”

  “Have I ever made a pass at you?”

  “You? Oh, no!”

  “Ever catch me in a lie, or trying to take advantage of you?”

  “I should say not.”

  “Do you trust me, Nanette?”

  “I guess I do. I mean sure.”

  “I’m glad. Because I’m going to have to trust you, too. In a very important thing. Something I can’t even tell you about. I need information.”

  “From me?”

  “From Goldie’s sister.”

  She went white. She whispered, “Wait a minute,” and jumped up and ran into the house. When she came back she said, “It’s okay, mom’s sleeping,” and pulled the rocker closer to Malone and sat down on the edge and clasped her big hands on her knees. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Malone said. “But I can’t tell you what trouble, Nanette, or anything about it. All I can do is ask you to help me.

  Her lips came together. “You want me to do something against my own sister.”

  “The kind of trouble Goldie’s in, Nanette, she can’t get out of. Whatever you do or don’t do, sooner or later she’s going to have to pay for it. Nothing can make it worse for her. But by cooperating you can maybe help Bibby and Mrs. Malone and me. We’re in trouble through no fault of our own. Bad trouble.”

  “Because of Goldie?”

  He was silent. Then he said, “Will you help us?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I wish I could tell you, Nanette, I really do. But there are reasons why I can’t. Will you help us?”

  She banged back in the rocker and began to rock in little fast rocks, like an angry old lady, lips’ fleshiness thinned, hairy brows drawn tight. Malone waited patiently.

  “It’ll hurt Goldie?”

  “I told you, it can’t hurt her more than she’s already hurt herself. You’ll just have to take my word for that, Nanette. You’ve got to make up your mind that your sister made the bed she’s lying in. But you can help out people who’ve always treated you right and never did anything against you.”

  “She’s in New Bradford, isn’t she?”

  “I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything, and I’m not going to. Nanette, look at me.”

  She looked at him.

  “I’m desperate. I mean it.”

  Whatever she saw in his eyes, it made her stop rocking. She looked out over the porch rail at the hills, seeing something he could not. “I guess I always knew Goldie would wind up bad. When I was a little girl I used to look up to her because she was so much prettier and smarter than me and the boys were all ape over her. And because she wasn’t scared of my parents. She’d sass papa back to his face something awful and he’d smack her hard and she’d never even cry, I thought she
was so brave… What do you want, Mr. Malone?”

  He let out his breath. “When is the last time you saw her?”

  “Years ago.”

  “You didn’t see her, say, this past summer?”

  “This year? No.”

  “Does she ever write to you?”

  “Once in a while. Not often, but regular, if you know what I mean. From all kinds of places. My father always goes to work before the mailman comes, but I get to the mailbox in the morning before my mother in case there’s a letter from Goldie. Mom would tear it up on the spot if she got there first. My parents are still very Old Country, they never changed. Since Goldie ran away they won’t even let me mention her name. Not that she uses it any more, the Vorshek, I mean. She calls herself Goldie Vanderbilt, I don’t know why.”

  Malone heard her out. When she stopped he said casually, “Ever save any of her letters?”

  Jesus let this be it.

  “Oh, all of them,” Nanette said. “I keep them hid in my old toy chest in the attic that mama hasn’t touched for years.”

  “Could I please see her last letter?”

  Nanette got up without a word and went into the house. Malone sat on the Vorshek porch looking out at the half-naked willows stooped over the river and the fading hump of hill beyond, seeing nothing but his predicament.

  Even if my hunch proves out I’m a long way from home.

  One step at a time is how you have to do it.

  Then you figure out where you go from there.

  Till one o’clock.

  At this point Malone’s mind got stuck again.

  * * *

  When Nanette came back she was in a hurry. Her red hands were clasped about an envelope, trying to hide it. Malone had never noticed before that her fingernails were bitten all the way down.

  “Mama’s getting restless,” she whispered. “You better go, Mr. Malone, before she wakes up. I don’t want to have to explain what you’re doing here.” She shoved the letter into his hand. “Put it away.”

  He put it into his pocket without looking at it.

  “It isn’t typewritten?”

  “Goldie don’t know how to type.”

  “Nanette, if I just knew how to thank you.”