King's Ransom

by Ed McBain

Jeff suddenly scrambled off the bed and rushed to where Kathy was standing, burying his head in her sweater, throwing his arms around her waist. Like a jealous suitor, Sy shouted, “Get your hands off her!”

  Kathy pulled the boy closer. “That’s enough, Sy.”

  “What’s enough? Who the hell are you—What the hell are you saying to me? You’re telling me? There ain’t a skirt alive who can tell me what to do!” He seized Jeffs arm and tore him away from her, flinging him across the room. “There!” Sy said. “How about that? How about that, you two-bit slut?” and Kathy slapped him with all the power of her arm, her shoulder, and her outstretched palm.

  His hand flashed to his face. Slowly he lowered it. “You want to play, huh?” He said. He reached into his pocket, and the knife came into view, the blade opening almost before it had cleared his pocket.

  “You’re finally ready to play, huh?” he said, and he swiped at her with the knife, forcing her to back away from him. He followed her across the room, slashing at her with the knife, not intending to cut her, simply toying with her, forcing her back until she collided with the door, and then he crouched before her with the knife swinging in front of his body in a wide arc.

  “Sy, don’t…”

  “Don’t what, baby? Don’t cut you? Baby, would I cut you?” he said, and he lashed out with the razor-sharp blade, catching Kathy’s sweater with the tip, drawing it away from her body, and then suddenly ripping upward with the knife, slashing the sweater up the front toward the neck.

  “Sy!”

  Again he slashed, using the knife with the precision of a duelist, ripping at the sweater, exposing her brassiere. She tried to cross her arms over her breasts, but the knife flashed again, and she pulled her hands away from her body, the sweater hanging in tatters over the white brassiere.

  Sy grinned. “Now the bra,” he said.

  Her hands moved instantly, instinctively, to cover her breasts. He thrust out with the knife, and she pulled her hands back again, gasping uncontrollably now, waiting for the rip of steel that would sever the cotton bra.

  “We’re gonna let them beauties free,” Sy said, and he moved closer with the knife. “Keep your hands down. I’d hate like hell to cut you! We’re gonna let them big ripe…”

  The boy seemed to materialize from nowhere. He landed on Sy’s back with the ferocity of a wildcat, clawing, pummeling, punching, pulling at Sy’s hair in a frenzy of unleashed anger. Sy straightened up, surprised, and then swung about and tried to shake the boy loose as Kathy ran for the door. He reached behind him for a grip, clutched at the boy’s trousers and tore him loose, flinging him halfway across the room. Kathy, at the door, was fumbling with the lock. He reached her in two bounds, caught her arm, and pulled her to him, the knife tight in his right hand.

  “Maybe you just better relax, baby,” he said. “Maybe you’ll like it better that—”

  The three knocks sounded on the door. Leaning against the door as they were, Sy and Kathy recoiled sharply from the minor explosions against the wood.

  “It’s Eddie,” Kathy whispered, and she said the words like a prayer.

  Sy backed away from her instantly. “Put your coat on. Hurry up!”

  She moved away from the door rapidly, took her coat from the bed, slipped into it and buttoned it to the throat.

  “You mention a word of this to Eddie,” Sy said, “and the kid is dead. You hear me? The kid is dead.”

  Kathy nodded dumbly.

  Sy went to the boy and sat beside him. “Okay,” he said. “Open it.”

  Kathy stepped close to the door again. “Eddie?” she said.

  “Yeah. How about it? Open up, will-ya?”

  She opened the door. He stepped into the room quickly, closing the door behind him and locking it. “Jesus, what took you so—” he started, and then he saw Kathy’s face and knew instantly that something was wrong.

  “Welcome home, hero,” Sy said nonchalantly. “You get the milk?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. He carried his package to the table. Kathy began unpacking it silently. Eddie watched her. “Hey, what’s the matter here?” he said.

  “Nothing,” Kathy said. “Everything’s fine, Eddie.”

  “Kathy and I just had a little spat, that’s all,” Sy said.

  “What about?” Eddie asked. He looked at his wife again. “What are you wearing a coat for?”

  “I’m… It got chilly in here.”

  “What’d you fight about?”

  “She doesn’t like the idea of the whole damn job,” Sy said. He shrugged. “I shouldn’ta flown off the handle, I guess. I’m sorry, Eddie. You run into any trouble out there?”

  “No. I didn’t see a single cop the whole time I was on the road.” He looked at the pair suspiciously again. “This is no time to be squabbling,” he said ineffectively. “I mean, what the hell.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Sy said.

  “Yeah. Well.” Eddie shrugged.

  “I’ll make you some hot chocolate,” Kathy said to Jeff.

  “Tune in the monster, Eddie. Let’s see what’s happening out there.”

  “What time is it?”

  Sy looked at his watch. “Little after nine. I should leave by about nine-thirty, just to make sure.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said from the receiver. He threw a switch and began tuning the set. “I still don’t know what you two had to fight about. We’re almost near the end now, and you…”

  “… POSSIBLE LICENSE PLATE RN 6120. THAT’S …”

  “Jesus, lower that, will you?” Sy shouted over the sudden roar from the radio. Eddie quickly turned down the volume.

  “…a 1949 Ford sedan, gray, possible license plate RN 6210.”

  “Wh—?” Sy said.

  “Once more for the West Coast,” the police dispatcher said. “Car used in the Jeff Reynolds kidnaping may have been a 1949 Ford sedan, gray, possible license plate RN 6210…”

  “They know the car!”

  “Don’t get excited!” Sy snapped.

  “And I was driving it! Even with the changed plates, they could have—”

  “Relax! For Pete’s sake, don’t panic!”

  “They coulda picked me up. I coulda—Hey! How we gonna… ? Sy, the car figures in our plan. How we gonna use it now?”

  “I don’t know. Take it easy now.” Sy began pacing the room.

  “What are we supposed to do? We can’t let all that money go!”

  “No. No, we can’t. We won’t have to. You said the roads were clear from here to the grocery store. Okay, chances are they don’t have road blocks everywhere, how could they? Okay, that radio is gonna tell us just where they do have the road blocks! It’s just a question of listening all over again, and taking down the information this time.”

  “Sy, that don’t sound safe!”

  “What the hell are you worried about? It’s me who’ll be driving the car.”

  “Still…”

  Sy looked at his watch. “We got about a half hour. Let’s hope they give a lot during that time. Because whether they do or not, that car leaves here at nine-thirty. And you better be ready to do your share come ten o’clock.”

  “Sy, if they get one of us, the whole damn job’ll…”

  “Don’t you worry about me, kid,” Sy said. “Nobody’s gonna get this boy. Not when five hundred thousand bucks is riding on his back.”

  “… corner of Agatha and two-one-oh…”

  “Shhh,” Sy said.

  “… to relieve Car 108 in road block. You got that, 112?”

  “This is 112. Roger.”

  “Good,” Sy said, nodding his head vigorously. “Spiel it out, boy. Keep spieling it out.”

  * * * *

  13

  At ten o’clock in the morning, the front door of Douglas King’s house opened. Douglas King, wearing a dark overcoat, black Homburg and pearl-gray gloves, stepped out of the house. He was carrying a brown carton stuffed with newspapers. He walked to the side of the house, looked bri
skly about him, went directly to the garage, pulled up the overhead door, entered the black Cadillac parked there and started the engine. He let the engine idle for several moments and then pulled the car out of the garage, executed a turn, and drove up the driveway to where the twin stone pillars flanked the road. He turned onto Smoke Rise Road and glanced into the rearview mirror. There was not a car or a person in sight. If anyone was watching his departure, that person was certainly well hidden.

  He began driving aimlessly, going on a straight course for several blocks, turning off Smoke Rise Road and onto the viaduct over the River Highway, and then heading crosstown. No police cars were behind him. To the observer, Douglas King was following instructions to the letter. He had left the house at 10 A.M. carrying a plain carton full of money. He had got into his car alone and begun driving, awaiting further contact.

  Any observer, casual or intent, could not possibly have known that Detective Steve Carella had entered the garage at 9:30 a.m. through the door leading from the kitchen, or that he had then climbed into the Cadillac and made himself comfortable on the floor in the back.

  Lying there now, he said, “Do you see anything?”

  “What do you mean?” King answered.

  “A car following us? A pedestrian signaling us? A helicopter hovering?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “How the hell are they going to make contact?” Carella grumbled. “Is God going to send down a thunderbolt?”

  * * * *

  At ten o’clock in the morning, Eddie Folsom began warming up his radio equipment. Sy had left at nine-thirty with a list of road blocks clutched in his hand and embossed on his mind. Now, as the tubes glowed with life, as the hum of the oscillators and the transmitter filled the room, Eddie could feel a nervousness starting somewhere at the pit of his stomach and spreading through his body. He consulted his meters again, made sure he was on the right frequency, and then sat down before the equipment, the microphone set up directly before his face, the street maps not two feet from where he sat, the dial three inches from his right hand. He looked at his watch. It was ten-three. He would give King another seven minutes. And then at ten-ten it would start.

  * * * *

  “Anything yet?” Carella asked.

  “No.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten-five.”

  “Why’d you come along, Mr. King?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “You didn’t have to. A detective could have taken your place.”

  “I know.”

  “Besides, I doubt very much that the house is being watched. Unless this gang is enormous, they couldn’t possibly have that many…”

  “Are you married, Mr. Carella?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love mine, too. She walked out on me this morning. After all these years of marriage, she walked out on me. Do you know why?”

  “I think so.”

  “Sure. Because I wouldn’t ransom Reynolds’ boy.” King nodded his head, his eyes glued to the road. “You think that’s pretty rotten of me, too, don’t you?”

  “You won’t win the Nobel Prize for it, Mr. King.”

  “Maybe not. But then, I don’t want the Nobel Prize. All I want is Granger Shoe.”

  “Then it shouldn’t bother you that your wife walked out.”

  “No, I guess it shouldn’t. If Granger Shoe were all I wanted, I wouldn’t care very much about Diane, or Bobby, or anybody, would I?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Then what am I doing here?”

  “I asked first, Mr. King.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Mr. Carella. I only know this. I cannot pay that boy’s ransom. I cannot because it would mean destroying myself, and that’s impossible. I don’t believe in fairy tales, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I’m what I am, Mr. Carella. I don’t think I’ll ever change. Business is a part of my life and without it I might as well be dead. That’s what I am. I make no apologies for it. And maybe I’ve been rotten, yes, maybe I have. And maybe I’ve hurt men. But I’ve never gone out to get anybody without a damn good reason, and that’s what I am, and I make no apologies. It’s taken me a long time to get where I am today, Mr. Carella.”

  “Where are you today, Mr. King?”

  “In a car, waiting for instructions from a thief.” King smiled thinly. “You know what I mean. It’s taken me a long time to get the things I always felt I needed. A man doesn’t change, Mr. Carella. Diane doesn’t know what poverty is. How would she know? She’s had money all her life. Not me, Mr. Carella. I was dirt-poor. I was hungry. You don’t forget poverty, and you don’t forget hunger. I started working for Granger when I was sixteen. In the stockroom. I worked harder than the others. I stacked more damn shoes, and I carried more damn shoes, and I took pride in what was the cruddiest part of the plant because I knew that someday I was going to own that company. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Ambition never sounds crazy.”

  “Well, maybe not. I learned that factory inside out and backward. Every operation, every phase, every person. I learned shoes. I learned shoes because this was going to be my company. It was going to be the only thing I ever knew or ever wanted. By the time I met Diane…”

  “Where’d you meet her, Mr. King?”

  “I picked her up. The war was still on. World War Two, I mean.”

  “Was there any other war?” Carella asked.

  “I was in on furlough, a sergeant, a T-five. Were you in the Army?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t have to explain how lonely your own home town can seem when you’re home on furlough. I picked up Diane at the U.S.O. She was one of those rich girls doing their bit for the enlisted man. We danced together a few times. We clicked. Just like that. The rich girl from Stewart City had met the poor boy from Kelly’s Corners and—Do you know the city well, Mr. Carella?”

  “Fairly.”

  “Then you know the part familiarly referred to as Stewart City, hugging the river on the south of Isola, very fancy, doormen, penthouses, air conditioning. And you know where Kelly’s Corners is, we used to call it Smelly Corners when I was a kid. We met, Mr. Carella. Never the twain, but we met. And we clicked. And she married me. I went back to Granger after I was discharged. I was earning about sixty dollars a week for the first year of our marriage. That wasn’t enough. Not enough for Diane, and not enough for me. So I began doing what had to be done. I began solidifying my position in that factory, and I stamped on anyone who got in my way because nothing had changed. I was still going to own it. I was going to make Diane Kessler’s father eat his words. I was going to trudge up to his Stewart City apartment with the air conditioning and the mile-high carpeting and make him apologize to me for ever referring to me as a ‘worthless nobody.’ As a matter of fact, I never tasted that particular revenge. The old man died before I really got a toehold. And he died without asking for his daughter and never having spoken to her since that day we broke the news to him. I never had my revenge.”

  “Revenge isn’t sweet,” Carella said. “It’s only boring.”

  “Sure, but I would have liked it. I know I would have. Five years later, I was ready to spit in his eye, but he was six feet underground, and you don’t go to a man’s grave to dance on it. Five years later, I bought the house in Smoke Rise. I wasn’t quite ready for the house yet, but I knew the house would be important to me. And it was. A house is a wonderful bargaining tool, Mr. Carella. You’d be surprised how many people in this world are impressed by the accouterments of everyday living, the houses, the silverware, the cars—the window dressing. And now… here I am. I’ve still got the house, and I own or am about to own enough stock to make me president of Granger. My son goes to a private school, and I’ve got a cook, and a chauffeur, and a gardener, and a housemaid, and a sports car for my wife, and a Cadillac fo
r me and enough money to get whatever I want, Mr. Carella. Whatever I want.”

  “Then why are you here?” Carella asked. “Why are you driving your own car waiting for contact from men who may turn out to be worse than murderers?”

  “I don’t know. Or, yes, I do know. I can’t give those men the money they want. I can’t because it would kill me. If that makes me rotten, then all right, I’m rotten. But I can’t change the way I am, Mr. Carella. That’s for the fairy tales. The mean witch who turns into a lovely princess, the toad who turns into a prince, the rotten louse who suddenly sees the error of his ways and vows to do good for the rest of his life, fairy tales, pap for the television viewers of America. I’ll never change. I know it, and Diane knows it, and she’ll come back to me, Mr. Carella, because she loves me. I’ll never change. And if I’m rotten, I’m rotten. But I’ve fought all my life, and if I can’t give those men the money they want, I can fight them this way, by going along, by doing something.”