King's Ransom

by Ed McBain

  What the…? Sy thought, and then he cursed Eddie for not having warned him somehow, and then stopped cursing because he realized it had been impossible to warn him, and then wondered what had gone wrong, and then turned the ignition key and started the car, and then ducked because that son of a bitch with the gun had opened fire. He drove straight for the man with the gun. The man kept firing. Two bullets shattered the windshield, but Sy drove past, seeing another man jump out of the Cadillac. The car had no sooner hit the macadam highway than Sy heard a fusillade of shots and felt the car give a sudden lurch, and knew at once that a tire had been hit. The back window shattered and Sy figured he’d be better off on foot from here on in. He drove the limping car for another few yards, hopped out before it had stopped rolling, and began running into the woods.

  The guy with the gun was reloading.

  The other guy, a tall man with graying temples, began running after Sy.

  Sy instantly drew his own pistol, turned, and fired twice, missing.

  He thrashed into the woods.

  “Give it up!” the man behind him yelled. “We know where your partner is!”

  “Go to hell!” Sy shouted, and he turned and fired again but the big man behind him did not slow his pace. He stamped into the woods after Sy and again Sy fired, and again, and suddenly the gun was empty. He threw away the useless pistol. He reached into his pocket, and the switch knife flashed into view, and suddenly the big man came around an outcropping of rocks, and Sy said softly, “Hold it!”

  “Hold crap!” Douglas King said, and he lunged.

  The knife ripped upward, cutting a swath across King’s overcoat. Again it slashed, digging deeper this time, tearing into King’s jacket and running a thin line of blood across his flesh. King’s hands tightened on Sy’s throat.

  “You son of a bitch! You lousy son of a bitch!” King muttered, his hands tightening, tightening, as he backed Sy against a tree. The knife flashed erratically now, searching for flesh. King’s grip on Sy’s throat would not loosen. A powerful man with hands that once had cut leather, he battered Sy’s head against the tree, never relaxing his grip, silently, coldly, viciously pounding the other man until the knife dropped quietly from his lax fingers.

  Exhausted, dizzy from the pounding, Sy Barnard only mumbled, “Give… give me a break, will you?”

  Douglas King didn’t know the Dragnet answer. He held Sy until Carella came up with the handcuffs.

  And that was that.

  The patrolmen who responded to the call from Headquarters drove into the front yard of the farm and stopped the squad car. They drew their revolvers and took up positions flanking the door, listening. The house was silent. One patrolman cautiously tried the knob, and the door eased open.

  An eight-year-old boy sitting in the center of an open sofa bed, a blanket draped over his shoulders.

  “Jeff?” the patrolman asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  The patrolman studied the room. “Anybody here with you?”

  “No.”

  “Where’d they go?” the second patrolman asked.

  Jeff Reynolds hesitated a long time before answering. Then he said, “Where’d who go?”

  “The people who were holding you here,” the patrolman said.

  “No people were holding me here,” Jeff answered.

  “Huh?” the first patrolman said. He studied his black note pad. “Look,” he said patiently, as if he were talking to a confused adult rather than a child, “a detective named Carella called Headquarters from a car telephone. He said you were being held in a farmhouse on Fairlane, half a mile from Stanberry. Okay, so here you are. He also said a dame named Kathy had shouted the dope over a radio microphone, and that there was a guy with her. Now where are they, son? Where’d they go?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Jeff said. “I’ve been all alone here ever since Sy left.”

  The two patrolmen stared at each other.

  “He must be in shock,” one of them said.

  * * * *

  Jeff stuck to his story.

  And, if life must have its little surprises, Sy Barnard corroborated the child’s fable. He did not know whom the police were talking about, he said. He knew of no one named Kathy. He had engineered and executed the job singlehanded.

  “You’re lying and we know you’re lying,” Lieutenant Byrnes said. “Somebody had to be there to operate that transmitter.”

  “Maybe it was a Martian,” Sy said.

  “What the hell do you hope to gain by lying?” Carella asked. “Who are you protecting? Don’t you know the woman was the one who gave you away?”

  “What woman?” Sy said.

  “A woman named Kathy. The man yelled her name the minute she blew her stack.”

  “I don’t know any dame named Kathy,” Sy said.

  “What’s this, some code of yours? The law of the pack? No squealers allowed? She told us exactly where we would find you, Barnard!”

  “I don’t know who coulda told you, because I was in this alone,” Sy insisted.

  “We’ll get them, Barnard. With or without your help.”

  “Will you?” Sy asked. “I don’t know how you’re gonna get somebody that doesn’t exist.”

  “One thing makes me want to puke,” Parker said, “is thieves who got honor.”

  “So puke,” Sy said, and Parker hit him suddenly and viciously.

  “What’s the broad’s last name?” Parker asked.

  “I don’t know who you mean!”

  Parker hit him again.

  “Kathy, Kathy,” Parker said. “Kathy what?”

  “I don’t know who you mean,” Sy said.

  “What are you selling us?” Parker said. “You know damn well who…”

  “I ain’t selling you nothing,” Sy said.

  Parker drew back his fist.

  “Put away your hands, Andy,” Carella said.

  “I’d like to…”

  “Put them away.” Carella turned to Sy. “You’re not doing yourself any good, Barnard, and you’re not helping your pals, either. We’ll get them. You’re not giving them anything but time.”

  “Maybe time is all they need,” Sy said, and there was a sudden sadness in his voice. “Maybe a little time is all anybody ever needs.”

  “Lock him up,” Byrnes said.

  * * * *

  14

  In the squadroom of the 87th Precinct, Detective Steve Carella typed up his final report on the Jeffry Reynolds kidnaping. It was a bitter-cold day at the end of November, and the steam rising from the cup of coffee on his desk gave a feeling of coziness to the otherwise drab squadroom. The feeble November sunshine sifted through the meshed grillework covering the long windows, patched the floor in pale gold. Carella ripped the three copies of the report from the machine, separated them from the carbon copies, turned to Meyer Meyer and said, “Finis.”

  “End of story,” Meyer Meyer said. “Steve Carella, star reporter for the Isola Rag, writes thirty to another dazzling assignment. Justice once more triumphs. Sy Barnard rots in jail. The police are jubilant. Another threat to the safety of John Q. Public is eliminated. Steve Carella, star reporter, lights a cigarette and meditates on crime and punishment, justice and the power of the press. Hooray for Carella, the crowd shouts. Long live Carella, the crowd roars. Carella for Presi—”

  “Up yours,” Carella said.

  “But what of those behind the scenes?” Meyer asked grandiosely. “What of the mysterious woman known only as Kathy? What of the man who shouted her name into the transmitter microphone in that lonely deserted farmhouse? Where are they now? You might well ask,” Meyer said, “because even the intrepid star reporter doesn’t know.”

  “Out of the country is my guess,” Carella said. “I wish them luck.”

  “What the hell for? Kidnapers?”

  “Kids are like puppies,” Carella said. “If Jeff Reynolds refused to b
ite somebody’s hand, that hand must have been kind to him. That’s the way I figure it. Who the hell knows what was behind all this, Meyer? Barnard isn’t telling, and he never will. He’d rather get the chair than the mark of a squealer. His silence makes him a big man at Castleview Prison, the hoodlum the cops couldn’t break. Okay, give the louse his day of glory. Maybe everybody’s entitled to his day of glory.” Carella paused. “Kathy. That’s a nice name.”

  “Sure. She must be a nice girl, too,” Meyer said. “She only took part in a kidnaping.”

  “We don’t know the facts,” Carella said. “Maybe she deserved what Jeff Reynolds gave her. Who knows?”

  “Steve Carella’s flintlike eyes softened,” Meyer said, “for beneath the crusty exterior of this star reporter’s breast there beat the heart of an old washerwoman.” Meyer sighed. “Who do we whitewash next? Douglas King?”

  “He got his lumps,” Carella said.

  “He brought them on himself. You know what the bastard was most pleased about after all this was over? The fact that his damn stock deal went through and that he’s going to be president of his lousy shoe company. Now how about that, Steve? Just how about that?”

  “Some guys always pick up all the marbles,” Carella said. “His wife went back to him, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Why do the louses of the world always get the rewards?”

  “While the good die young,” Carella finished for him.

  “I ain’t dead yet,” Meyer said.

  “Neither is King. Maybe nobody got ransomed in this damn case, or maybe everybody did.”

  “How’s that again?” Meyer asked.

  “Give the man time. He didn’t have to stick his neck out against that switchblade.”

  “Just because a guy has the guts to face a knife,” Meyer said, “it doesn’t necessarily mean he has the guts to face himself.”

  “Pearls, pearls,” Carella said. “Give him time. He figures he can’t change. I figure he has to change, or he’s dead. Why do you think his wife went back to him? Because he helps old ladies across the street?”

  “Because she’s got an investment in the louse, that’s why,” Meyer said.

  “Sure. But not in Granger Shoe, though. Her investment is in Douglas King. And she struck me as the kind of woman who knows when to sell a stock that’s falling.”

  “Careful or we’ll switch you to the financial pages,” Meyer said.

  “Whoo!” Andy Parker said from the gate in the slatted rail divider, slapping his arms at his sides, stamping into the room. “If it gets much colder out there, I’m leaving for the South Pole.”

  “What’s the street like?”

  “Cold.”

  “I mean…”

  “Who knows? You think I look for crime on days like this? I look for warm candy stores, that’s what I look for.”

  “Everybody changes, huh?” Meyer said. “The day Andy Parker changes is the day I become a street cleaner.”

  “You’re a street cleaner already,” Parker said. “Where’d you get that coffee, Stevie?”

  “From Miscolo.”

  “Hey, Miscolo!” Parker bellowed. “Bring in the joe!”

  “He’ll have to pay it one day,” Carella said thoughtfully.

  “Huh? Who’ll have to pay what?” Parker asked.

  “King,” Carella said. “His own ransom.”

  “I don’t like riddles on cold days,” Parker said.

  “Then why’d you become a cop?”

  “My mother forced me.” He paused. “Miscolo, where’s the goddamn coffee?”

  “Coming, coming,” Miscolo yelled back.

  “I hate to file this,” Carella said, studying the report.

  “Why?” Meyer asked.

  “Maybe because I feel the case is still open. For a lot of people, Meyer, it’s still open.”

  Meyer grinned. “You only hope it is,” he said, and the coffee came into the room, Miscolo staggering under the load of the cups and the huge pot, the aroma assailing the nostrils. The men poured and drank and told their dirty jokes.

  Outside the squadroom, the city crouched.

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  Ed McBain

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