King's Ransom

by Ed McBain

  “No, just… just a place on the beach—for me and Kathy—where… where I can set up… you know… with the ocean, and maybe a little boat, I don’t know.” Eddie turned to Kathy, and she saw something in his eyes she had never seen there before, a look bordering on tears. “But mine, Kathy. Mine. A place I could own.”

  “And a Caddy, man,” Sy said, “with them fins sticking up in the air like sharks! And fancy clothes, and a mink for the bride, how’s that? Blond mink! And a string of pearls a mile long!”

  “If only…”

  “Anything, Eddie! Anything you want, boy! The world on a string! A quarter of a million bucks!”

  “We got to go ahead with this, Kathy. We got to!”

  “Now you’re talking,” Sy said.

  “But… but he’s the wrong boy!” Kathy said.

  “No. No,” Eddie answered. “He… he ain’t the wrong boy.”

  “Eddie, you know he is. Why…”

  “When you stop to figure it,” Sy said softly, “what difference does it make?”

  The room went suddenly still.

  “What?” Eddie said.

  “Whether we got the wrong kid or not.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Simple. We tried for the King kid, didn’t we? Okay, E for effort. Maybe we goofed. What difference does it make? We want five hundred grand. Does a lousy chauffeur have that kind of dough?”

  “No, of course he—”

  “All right, who’s got the dough?” Sy waited for an answer and then gave it himself. “King, that’s who. Okay. We call King again. We tell him we don’t care whether this is his kid or his chauffeur’s kid or even his goddamn gardener’s kid. We want the money!”

  “We’ll ask King for it?”

  “Who we gonna ask? The chauffeur?”

  Eddie shook his head. “He won’t pay, Sy.”

  “He’ll pay, all right.”

  “No.” Eddie kept shaking his head. “He won’t. Maybe Kathy’s right. Maybe we ought to…”

  “Because if he don’t pay,” Sy said, “this little boy here is going to be in a goddamn big heap of trouble.” He paused and grinned at Jeff. “And I don’t think Mr. King would want blood on his hands.”

  * * * *

  7

  When Lieutenant Peter Byrnes left the squadroom of the 87th Precinct, the telephones were jangling as if the place were an illegal racing room taking bets before the Kentucky Derby. He walked down the corridor to the end of the hall and then down the steps leading to the muster room. He nodded at Sergeant Dave Murchison, who sat behind the high desk, and then went out into the street, where a squad car and a driver were waiting for him. It was damn cold outside. Byrnes wrapped his muffler about his throat and pulled his fedora down more tightly on his head, as if this would serve as a buffer against the cold blasts which drove across Grover Park to lash the grimy stone front of the precinct building. The patrolman got out of the car, ran to the sidewalk and opened the door for Byrnes. Byrnes nodded, slid onto the seat and thrust his hands into his coat pockets. He was a man built with all the compactness of a traveling iron, hard as steel, capable of giving off tremendous heat in the press of any situation, adaptable to the myriad currents that moved in the precinct under his command.

  “Where to, sir?” the patrolman asked, getting in behind the wheel.

  “Smoke Rise,” Byrnes said. “The kidnaping.”

  The kidnaping. Even the word rankled Byrnes. He had a grown son of his own, and he knew the torments and thrills of raising a child, and he did not hold with that part of the penal law which specified “Provided, however, that the jury upon returning a verdict of guilty against a person upon whom the death penalty would otherwise be imposed, may recommend imprisonment of the convicted person, in lieu of death.” Nor did he hold with the further wording of Section 1250, to wit: “Provided, further, that notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section with respect to punishment by death, if the kidnaped person be released and returned alive prior to the opening of the trial, the death penalty shall not apply nor be imposed…”

  Damnit, either there was a death penalty or there wasn’t. A kidnaper was the lowest form of animal life, even lower than a narcotics peddler—and Byrnes had particular reason to despise any and all pushers. And if anything was going to stop the crime of stealing another man’s child, the death penalty was that deterrent. Kidnaping, by its very nature, was usually a premeditated crime. Careful planning went into the actual snatch, careful psychological manipulation went into the demands made of the parents, the slow torture of uncertainty. Byrnes would rather have seen all murderers get off with prison sentences. For whereas the thin line of premeditation separated many second-degree homicides from first-degree homicides, there was very rarely a kidnaping case in which the entire filthy crime was not thoroughly and fastidiously premeditated.

  “Anywhere along here, sir?” the patrolman asked.

  “What’s that up ahead?” Byrnes asked.

  “Looks like a light, sir.”

  “Pull up over there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The patrolman eased the car to a stop. Byrnes got out and walked to where Hawes and Kronig were squatted close to the ground.

  “Cotton,” Byrnes said. “Kronig. How are you?”

  “Fine, Lieutenant,” Hawes said.

  “Making a cast,” Kronig said. “Looks like it’s gonna be a good one.”

  “Good. Those bastards call again?”

  “Not that I know of, Pete,” Hawes said. “I’ve been outside quite a while.”

  “Where are the rest of the men?”

  “Carella and Parker are up at the house. I think Meyer broke for dinner.”

  “Okay,” Byrnes said. “I put in a call to the Chief of Detectives, and he may be out.”

  “May?” Kronig said, surprised.

  “He’s up to his ears in this income tax thing that broke yesterday. He’s been waiting for a long time to clap that hoodlum behind bars.”

  “Still, a kidnaping…” Kronig began.

  “The trouble with most crimes,” Byrnes said, “is that they don’t respect any other crimes. Nothing gets priority. In any case, if the Chief shows up, I’ll be—” and he stopped talking.

  A figure was coming up the road. In the darkness, the men saw only a hulking shape against the sky. Byrnes’s hand slipped inside the flap of his coat. Nearly all of the detectives on the 87th—with the exception of a few who were left-handed and a few who were stubborn—wore their holsters clipped to the left side of their belts during the winter months. This eliminated the necessity of delay in unbuttoning a coat, and whereas a cross-body draw was slower than a straight one, there were very rarely any wild-West theatrics which necessitated a split-second edge. On the other hand, a cop could be dead in the time it took him to unbutton his coat far enough to reach his gun. The figure came closer as Byrnes’s hand tightened on the butt of the .38.

  “That you, Loot?” a voice called into the darkness.

  Byrnes recognized the voice as Parker’s. His hand relaxed. “Yeah, what is it?”

  “Nothing. Carella was just asking a while ago whether you got here or not. How’s the squad? I’ll bet things are jumping.”

  “They’re jumping, all right.” Byrnes turned his attention back to Kronig, and then his eyes scanned the ground, coming to rest on two large boulders near the edge of the cut-off. He walked to the rocks, knelt by them and then said, “Can you bring that light here a minute, Cotton?”

  “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “Unless I’m mistaken…”

  The light swung over to illuminate the boulders.

  * * * *

  In the living room, the telephone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” King said, moving toward the phone.

  “Wait a minute!” Carella shouted. He picked up the headphones attached to the wiretap equipment and then turned to Cameron. “Mr. Cameron, get on the trunk line. If this is the kidnaper, tell th
em to start tracing immediately. Okay, Mr. King. Answer it.”

  King picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “King?”

  Carella nodded at Cameron. Instantly, Cameron picked up the receiver of the trunk line telephone.

  “This is Mr. King,” King said.

  Into his phone, Cameron said, “Hello? We’ve got him on the phone now. Get started.”

  “All right, King, listen. We don’t care whose kid this is, you got that? We heard the radio, and we don’t care. He’s still alive and well, and we still want that money. You get it by tomorrow morning or the kid won’t see the sun go down.”

  “You want… ?” King started, and there was a sharp click on the line.

  Carella ripped off the earphones. “Forget it, he’s gone. Damnit, I was afraid this would happen.” He went to the phone and began dialing.

  “What happened?” Cameron asked, hanging up his phone.

  Diane, puzzled, looked at her husband. “Is… is Jeff all right?”

  “Yes. Yes, he’s fine,” King said.

  “Hello, Dave,” Carella said, “this is Steve. Can you get me the lieutenant right away?”

  “You’re sure he’s all right?” Diane asked, staring at King.

  “Yes, damnit, he’s fine!”

  “I’ll tell Reynolds,” she said, and she started for the kitchen.

  “Diane!”

  “Yes?”

  “They… they want me to pay the ransom. They know they’ve got Jeff, but they still want me to pay. They want me to…”

  “We’ll do whatever they say,” Diane said. “Thank God Jeffs all right.” And she left the room. King stared after her, a frown on his forehead.

  “What?” Carella said into the phone. “Well, how long ago did he leave, Dave? I see. Then he should be here by now. I’ll check outside. How’s it going back there? Murder, huh? Okay, thanks, Dave.” He hung up. “I’m going outside, see if I can scare up the lieutenant. If that phone rings, don’t answer it,” Carella said. He took his coat from the hall closet. “Detective Meyer should be back soon. Do whatever he says.”

  “About this new demand,” King said. “I think—”

  “I want to talk to the lieutenant first,” Carella said, and he rushed out of the house.

  “That guy knew we’d try to trace the call,” Cameron said. “That’s why he got off the line so fast.”

  “Yes,” King said. The frown on his face had given way to a slightly dazed expression now. “Yes.”

  “That means we’re dealing with professionals. But why would pros pull a thing like this, asking you to pay?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Hell, if you pay them—why, your Boston deal’ll go right out the window, won’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes, it will.”

  The doorbell chimed. King started for the door, but it opened before he reached it.

  “Hi, Mr. King,” Meyer said. “Boy, it’s turned cold out there.” He took off his hat and coat and hung them in the closet.

  “Detective Carella went outside to find the lieutenant,” King said. “He said—”

  “I know. I ran into him on the way in. What was all the excitement about?”

  “The kidnapers just called again,” King said.

  “Yeah?”

  “They want me to pay the ransom.”

  “What do you mean? Do they know they got the wrong kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they still…?”

  “Yes.”

  “First time I ever heard of a dodge like that,” Meyer said, shaking his head. “This just about beats it all. This means that any crook can go out and steal any kid in the world, and then send a ransom demand to the richest guy he can think of.” He shook his head again. “Screwy, all right. But nobody says kidnapers have to be normal, huh?” He shook his head again. “Meshugah. Plain meshugah.”

  “What are our chances of getting him back, Detective Meyer?”

  “That’s hard to say, Mr. King. We don’t get kidnapings every day of the week, you know. What I mean is, it’s a little hard to come up with actual statistics. I can tell you that the Department is working like crazy on it. Even the Sands Spit cops and the cops in the adjoining states are going on a round-the-clock schedule.”

  “What about the F.B.I.?” Cameron asked.

  “They don’t come in till a week’s gone by,” Meyer said. “I think Carella explained that to you, Mr. King.”

  “Yes.”

  “But we’ve got them on standby.”

  “Would you say the boy’s chances are good?”

  “I don’t know,” Meyer said. “He may be dead already, for all we know.”

  “We can’t assume that,” Cameron said quickly. “There’d be no sense paying the ransom if we assumed the boy was dead.”

  “Mr. Cameron, they may have killed him five minutes after they picked him up,” Meyer said. “It’s been done before. Figure it out for yourself. The safest kidnap victim, from the standpoint of the criminals, is a dead one. We may deliver the ransom and then find the boy in a ditch someplace.”

  “In your opinion,” King said slowly, “would paying the ransom help the boy at all?”

  “If he’s alive, it certainly would. If he’s dead, nothing’s going to help him. But the ransom bills might help in eventually catching the kidnaper.”

  “I see.”

  Diane came in from the kitchen. “Doug…” she started, and the doorbell chimed. “I’ll get it,” she said changing her course.

  Urgently, Cameron said, “Doug, the boy’s still alive. And your money will keep him that way, remember that!”

  Diane closed the door and then came into the living room. “A telegram, Doug,” she said. “Addressed to us.”

  “You’d better let me take that,” Meyer said, “before anyone else handles it.” He spread a handkerchief over his hand and took the telegram. “Got a letter opener, Mr. King?”

  “Yes. On the dropleaf desk there.”

  Meyer went to the desk. Pinning the telegram with his handkerchief, he slit the envelope, extricated the handkerchief, draped it over his hand again and, with all the dexterity of a puppeteer, reached into the envelope for the message. Still using the handkerchief, he unfolded it, read it, and then put the handkerchief back into his pocket. “It’s okay, Mr. King. You can have it.”

  He handed the message to King. Diane walked over to him, and together they read the wire:

  PLEASE ACCEPT DEEPEST SYMPATHY YOUR MISFORTUNE. WE WILL ADD $1000 CASH TO RANSOM IF KIDNAPERS WILL AGREE TO RETURN BOY AT ONCE. WIRE US 27-145 HALSEY AVENUE, CALM’S POINT.

  MR. AND MRS. THEODORE SCHAEFFER

  “What is it, Doug?” Cameron asked, and King handed him the wire.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Schaeffer,” King said. “Nobody I know.” He paused. “But why send it to us? Our son wasn’t kidnaped.”

  “Half the people out there probably still think it was Bobby,” Cameron said, putting the wire down on the desk.

  “Let me have that,” Diane said. “I think Reynolds would like to see it. He… he expected them to turn Jeff loose and now… he’s… he’s just sitting at the kitchen table in a kind of shock. Let me show it to him. It’s such a wonderful, human offer.”

  King picked up the wire and handed it to his wife.

  “And then I’ll send a return wire,” Diane said, “thanking them for their concern.” She started out of the room, the telegram in her hand. She stopped and turned to face King. “Doug, have you called the bank yet?” she asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Don’t you think…?”

  “Mommy?”

  Diane turned toward the steps. Bobby King, wearing pajamas and robe, stood on the landing.

  “What is it, darling?”

  “Why is there a policeman outside my room?” Bobby asked.

  “Just to make sure that everything is all right,” Diane said.

  “Because of what happened to Jeff?”r />
  “Yes, Bobby.”

  “Daddy, are you getting Jeff back?”

  “What? I’m sorry, son, I didn’t hear…”

  “He’s my best friend. You are getting him back, aren’t you?”

  “Your daddy’s taking care of everything,” Diane said. “Now come, I’ll put you back to bed.”