by Ellery Queen
The revolver hesitated. “Then where?”
“She’d hide it where she could get to it fast. It’s got to be somewhere in this house.”
Furia glanced over at the sofa. Barbara’s coat and hat lay there, and two open suitcases. Evidently he had had the woman pack in the early hours for a quick getaway after he began to suspect Hinch’s runout. He waved the revolver. “Her bag. The tan one. Go look.”
Malone rummaged through the tan one. He was sure the key was not there and he was right. He went through the other bag for luck. It was not there, either.
When he straightened up Goldie was putting her clothes on and Furia was studying her.
“You know something?” Malone said. “She could have been just smart enough to hide it in Barbara’s coat or hat.”
“She could,” Furia said, “if she ever had it. I’m playing along with you so far, fuzz, but don’t take advantage of my good nature. You better start getting results.” He gestured with the Colt. “Okay, try your kid’s things.”
Malone handled Bibby’s coat and hat as if they were nothing in particular, as if the warm blue wool and her chubby little body had never met.
“No.” He deliberately flung the coat and hat aside. He stood studying Goldie, who was zipping up her slacks. He tried to see into her head. “I know,” Malone said. “She hid it on you.”
“On me?” Furia said.
“Do you carry a wallet?”
“What the hell do I need a wallet for, Diners Club? You’re way out, man.” Furia looked angry. “Unless you think I’m dumb. Is that what you think?”
“No, no,” Malone said. “It has nothing to do with you, only with her. Why not take a look, Furia? What have you got to lose?”
“Plenty,” Furia said. “Rolling over to fuzz for one.” But then he said, “Hook your fingers at the back of your neck.” Malone hooked his fingers at the back of his neck. “One move and you’ve had it.”
“I’m not going to try anything,” Malone said.
“Give me that other gun, Fure,” Goldie said. Some spit came out. “Let me be the one.”
“Why, Goldie. Ain’t you the bloodthirsty one.”
“I’ll cover him, I mean. While you search yourself.”
“You’ll do what I tell you.” Furia began to paw himself with his left hand. When he was finished with his left side he transferred the Colt to his left hand and felt all over his right side. He even got down in a crouch and ran a finger around the insides of his trouser cuffs. “Okay, Malone, nobody makes a monkey out of me.”
“I know,” Malone said. “I know now.”
“You know what now?”
“I thought she was too smart to hide it on herself. I didn’t know how smart she is. She figured nobody would think her stupid enough to do that. Neck. Look at the back of her head. Under her hair.”
“Fure, let me kill him!” Goldie screamed.
Furia stood very still.
“Yeah,” he said.
He stalked over to her.
She backed off, all the way to the fireplace. She got so close to the fire that Malone was afraid for her hair.
“Fure, I swear to you.”
He grabbed her hair and yanked. She yelped and fell against him. He yanked again, downward, and she dropped to her knees.
“I swear, I swear… “
Furia took a fistful of the long golden hair at the back of her head and pulled it straight up.
Something was plastered to the back of her skull with adhesive tape.
He ripped it away.
Stuck to the adhesive side, along with some gold and brown hairs, were two flat keys.
“Jesus H. Christ. My own broad.” Furia glanced from the safe deposit keys in his left hand to the Colt in his right as if he did not know quite what to do. “You know what I got to do now, Goldie. Don’t you?”
Goldie was very fast. “Wait, Fure, wait.” Her upturned face schemed with her fear, she was trying to stop him by sheer eye-power. “You kill me and who’s going to stay with the kid while you’re getting the money back out of the bank? You need me, Fure. You still need me.”
“She’s right,” Malone said. For some reason he was not feeling strong any longer. It was like the tiredness of a week ago, as if none of this had happened.
I’ll wake up and Ellen will laugh Loney you’re dreaming.
Time came back. “Yeah,” Furia said heavily. “What I ought to done, I ought to listened to that yellowbelly Hinch. He always said you were my bag… Get up, you twotimer bitch. But you ain’t my broad no more.”
He sounded sad.
“You ain’t nothing.”
* * *
Malone stepped out through the front door. The lawn was empty. They had removed Hinch’s body.
Behind him Furia spat, “They took the garbage away.”
“Don’t shoot,” Malone called. “It’s me.” He was wearing the Baby Bear mask. Furia had ordered him to put it on before he delivered his speech. When Malone had balked the little hood said, “It’s like you’re my boy now, right? Right, Malone?”
“Right,” Malone had said.
The sun was well up now. It was going to be a sparkler.
“John?” Malone said. “You can come out from behind the tree. He won’t shoot you. No, not the others. Just you.”
Chief Secco stepped out from behind his tree.
“You went over,” he said. “You really went over.”
“There’s no time for a sermon, John. I want you to take your men, the whole lot, and clear out of here.”
Secco turned away.
“Wait, I’m not through.”
Secco turned around.
“We’re coming into town-Furia, the woman, Bibby, me-at twelve noon on the dot. There’s to be nobody in the bank, John. Nobody, and I mean that. Have Wally Bagshott leave the bank’s master key to the boxes on the table outside the vault along with the key to the vault.”
“How are you going to open the box without the box-holder’s key?” Secco asked almost absently. “You bringing dynamite?”
“I found Goldie’s key.”
Secco blinked.
“You’re to clear the Green, John, the whole area. I don’t want anybody or anything on the Green or the side streets, no cars, no trucks, no pedestrians, no shoppers. The stores along Main and along Grange down to Freight Street are to be locked and the salespeople sent home. The offices upstairs in the bank building are to be closed and vacated. You got that?”
“Yes,” Secco said.
“Wait, I’m still not through. To make sure there’s no interference I want your men and the troopers to line up around the bank, including the parking lot. But without weapons, John. Repeat: unarmed. They’re to let us go in, get the money out of the vault, and get out and away. What you choose to do after that is on your own conscience. And John?”
“Yes?”
“You can conceal weapons, you can try throwing tear gas into the bank, there are any number of ways you can stop us. But if that’s in your mind I want you to remember: If you don’t do just what I said, Barbara and I die first. Furia won’t let me carry a weapon, he doesn’t trust me. So I’ll be helpless. The Vorshek woman will be outside with Barbara waiting and believe me, John, at the first sign of anything wrong she’ll kill her, she’s worked up a real hate for me because I found the key on her and proved to Furia she was the one stole the payroll from him. They may shoot us anyway after we get clear, like you said. That would be on my head, John. But if you try to queer this, or let the troopers, you’ll be as guilty of our deaths as if you pulled the trigger yourself.
“Okay, John, that’s it.”
Whatever John Secco was thinking-of his responsibilities, of his affections, of victory or defeat as a man and a law officer-the sun on his face did not reflect it.
He raised his arm to the trees.
“You men. We’re leaving.”
Tuesday
The Payoff
“He’s g
one off his trolley,” Russ Fairhouse said. “There ain’t, isn’t any precedent for a fool stunt like this, Mrs. Malone. Can’t you do something to stop him?”
“What would you suggest?” Ellen said.
They were in the First Selectman’s office at a front window diagonally across the Green from the bank. Town hall employees were crowded in other windows peering through the vanes of the Venetian blinds. It’s like the last scene in that ghastly movie On the Beach where there’s nothing left on the main street but blowing papers. Ellen had never seen the Green so depopulated, even early Sunday mornings or Saturday nights a half hour after the movies let out. Not a soul but that cordon of state troopers around the bank and they were statues not a muscle moving they didn’t look alive. He’s got to keep his word, John you’ve got to.
“How would I know?” Selectman Fairhouse said. He was a big man running to lard with beautiful hands, he got a manicure once a week at Dotty’s Beauty Salon after hours by special appointment. “All I know is this is not right, Mrs. Malone. It ain’t legal or… hell, it ain’t moral!”
“Neither is a gangster taking a little girl and threatening to kill her.”
“But there are other ways-”
“What ways?”
“Then you approve of your husband’s action?” Fairhouse asked huffily. “I remind you, Mrs. Malone, he’s a paid employee of this town, supposed to be an officer of the law to boot. It makes the whole town look bad!”
“Approve?” Ellen said. “I’ll approve of anything that gets my baby back. Thank God for my husband is what I say. And you can take your town and you know what you can do with it.”
“He’ll go to jail for this!” the selectman said. “If he doesn’t get killed by that hood first.”
She could almost hear him add and I hope he does.
“Would you please let me alone?”
Fairhouse started to say something, changed his mind, stalked back to his desk, sat down, and viciously ripped the end off a cigar. Who wants this headache anyway. Next election they can wish it on somebody else. A lousy town cop to pull a stunt like this. It will whammy the whole administration. It’s all John Secco’s fault. The roof falls in about this and over the hill with you my friend.
Ellen was grateful for his retirement. Her brain was as busy as the Green was empty. You can’t believe your own eyes sometimes, a person finds that out. Those buildings across the Green looked like falsefronts, the whole thing was taking place on a Hollywood back lot. All it needs are a camera and a director and there they come to the background music of the noon whistle from the firehouse.
The black Chrysler sedan went past the town hall at fifteen slow-motion miles an hour.
Ellen got up on her toes and strained.
The blonde woman sat in the rear wearing the Goldilocks mask. There was just the tip of Barbara’s blue hat showing she must have my baby down on the seat oh Bibby Mama’s here. The little monster was in the front seat at the right he had a gun to the head of the driver so the driver must be Loney yes it was she could never mistake the set of his shoulders. Loney was wearing the Baby Bear mask and Furia was wearing the Papa Bear mask. What are they all wearing masks for? It must be that monster’s idea of a rib, a thumb-nose at the fuzz.
I don’t care.
Just let them be safe afterward.
The Chrysler turned left at the corner.
* * *
The Chrysler turned left and rolled to a stop on Grange just past the corner of Main, headed the wrong way on the oneway street. Papa Bear got out on the curb side and waved the Colt Trooper, he had the Walther automatic in his left hand and the hunting rifle under his left arm. He was wearing his gloves. The pockets of his Brooks Brothers suit bulged with boxes of ammunition and Malone’s belt with its picket fence of cartridges was strapped about his waist over the jacket.
A sigh like an afternoon breeze off the river went through the troopers. Papa Bear glanced at them and raised the Colt to point into the car. Driver’s seat. The breeze died.
“Okay, Malone.”
Baby Bear opened the driver’s door and slid dutifully out from behind the wheel. He came round the hood of the Chrysler and stopped a yard away from Papa Bear, glancing into the car and saying something reassuring to the child.
Papa Bear waved the Colt again and Goldilocks got out on the sidewalk, she pushed the child ahead of her without letting go, then she shut the car door and backed against it. Immediately she went into a half squat with her left arm about the little girl. In this way she was protected by the body of the car from a rear attack and by the body of the child from a frontal attack. She gripped Furia’s switchblade with the point just touching the child’s throat, it made the slightest dent in the white flesh. Not for the perfidious Lady Goldie this time the gun from the royal arsenal. But the knife would serve nicely as a substitute, every trooper eye said.
The child was in shock or they had fed her a sedative. Her lids kept drooping as she tried to keep her father in focus. The mask he was wearing seemed to confuse her.
Papa Bear looked around. He was in no hurry. His camera eye swiveled the full 360° of emptiness like a panoramic shot. It paused briefly one after another at the empty holsters of the troopers.
When he was through with the inspection he said, “Turn around.” The angle of his masked head jeered at everything.
Baby Bear turned. Papa Bear stepped up to him and touched the muzzle of the revolver to his spine at the third vertebra.
“We go in,” Papa Bear decreed. “Hup.”
They marched as if a sergeant were chanting cadence up the eight steps of the Taugus National, one behind the other, and went into the bank.
* * *
Ellen witnessed the performance through the slats of the town hall window. She saw the Chrysler pull up at the bank the wrong way, she saw Papa Bear get out, she saw her Baby Bear get out, she saw Goldilocks push Barbara onto the walk and grab her and squat with the knife against her throat. Dear Jesus even if she comes away from this alive she’ll need a psychiatrist or at least a good psychologist maybe years of therapy oh I don’t care just let her stay living.
Ellen saw Papa Bear and Baby Bear make their single-file march into the bank.
That was the beginning of the worst. Because the filming stopped. No, that was wrong, they had already shot the film, it was the projection that stopped, cold dead in the machine. The whole scene was the film including the invisible director and cameraman, they were invisibly part of it along with the visibles. The whole picture froze on the screen outside Fairhouse’s window.
Maybe I’m part of it too. And Selectman Fairhouse. And these other people. And the troopers. And the Bears. Maybe we’re all part of it, everyone and everything, the Green, the bank, the uneven rooflines of the two-story buildings north south east and west, even the sky and that sun hanging in it like a prop.
It was all frozen on the screen.
Do the images on the frozen screen know about time? Time had simply stopped along with everything else. When she heard the shots and things began moving again she glanced at her wristwatch for the sake of her sanity and saw that thirteen minutes had passed since the two Bears had marched into the bank.
Shots.
Shots?
They had been faint but sharp reports from across the Green, like a sound effect, a drumstick on the rim of a snare drum. Shot shot-shot.
Shots no.
Why would Furia be shooting oh he wouldn’t shoot Loney why should he shoot Loney Loney went over to him John Secco told me so…
“Loney.”
As the wail came from her throat Ellen saw the man in the Brooks Brothers suit and the Papa Bear mask burst out of the bank and race down the steps. He had the revolver in his gloved right hand and a bulging canvas bank bag in his left. He ran bent over, almost double.
It was funny how the troopers remained frozen on the film. Couldn’t they see him? He was in front of their noses.
Papa Bear flung the
canvas bag in the direction of Goldilocks. She threw up an arm in an instinctive grab but it sailed over her head into the rear seat of the Chrysler and she yanked the door open and scrambled in clutching for it.
Papa Bear scooped up the child as if he meant to break her back.
That was when Ellen Malone heard the casting call.
* * *
Wesley Malone in the Baby Bear Mask with Furia at his heels in the Papa Bear mask marched into the bank. The pressure on Malone’s spine increased while Furia looked the situation over. But the bank was a ghost town, he could see that at a glance, no vice-presidents behind the executive desks, no tellers at the windows, no office girls in the rear, everything put away neatly. Like for Sundays.
“Wide open like a broad,” Furia said. “They follow orders good. It’s a crime.” The muzzle prodded. “Don’t you want to know what’s a crime?”
“Whatever you say,” Malone said.
“A wide-open bank. All that bread laying around. Who needs safe deposit boxes with a sweet setup like this?”
“You won’t find any money here,” Malone said.
, “What are you, on the Board of Directors?”
“I know the big squeeze, Bagshott. And Chief Secco. They’re not about to let you walk off with the assets. The cash boxes have been emptied and all the cash is in the big vault, the one with the time-lock.”
“Stay right there.” Furia edged around and got into the tellers’ section. He opened one drawer after another. He banged the last one and came back.
“I can dream, can’t I?” Furia shrugged. “Not a plugged subway token. I’ll have to make out with that twenty-four grand. Okay, fuzz buddy, where’s the safe deposit vault?”
Their steps made lonesome sounds across the floor.
On the desk before the vault lay two keys, one to the steel-barred door, the other to the safe deposit boxes.
“You know something?” Furia said. “I’m going to let you open it.” He stepped back a few feet, Colt and Walther at waist level.