The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost three o’clock. “Benny, what time do the boys get out of school?”

  “About now, I guess. Why?”

  “Do they take a school bus?”

  “No, it’s not that far from home. They walk most of the time.”

  He had a street map of Seattle taped up on a wall to one side of his desk. “Show me where the school is.”

  He got up and pointed it out. “What is this, Pete?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe nothing. But call the school. Tell them if the boys are still there, to hold them until I show up.” I headed for the door.

  “Hey, what is this, Pete? You don’t think…”

  “I don’t know, Benny. I just don’t want to take any chances. I’ll be in touch with you later.”

  FIVE

  I could have been all cockeyed. Maybe the phone call to Benny’s home the evening before had been an innocent mistake or some sort of Pacific Northwest prank I couldn’t relate to. But some months earlier, the television stations in the San Francisco area had run a series of public service messages suggesting that parents be a little more concerned about their children out on the streets as the evening wore on. As I recalled it, the message had been: It’s ten o’clock. Do you know where your children are?

  Granted, an anonymous voice on the phone saying that it was nine o’clock wasn’t necessarily the same thing. But it was close enough to bother me. It could have been a warning to do with the Bartlett youngsters. It could have been meant as a warning, only the caller might have been thrown off his stride when he realized it was one of the boys who had answered the phone rather than one of the parents. Maybe it was all in my imagination and I was the one being thrown off his stride. It didn’t matter right then. I just wanted to assure myself about Timmy and Al.

  Once you get onto the Interstate 5 freeway, it’s a fast shot to the north end of town, where Benny lived. It took me five minutes to get from Benny’s office to the freeway, and about seven minutes later I was back off the freeway, a mile from the school where the boys went. One thing I’d forgotten to ask Benny was what route the boys took going to and from school. But chances were he wouldn’t have known anyway. Chances were the boys themselves wouldn’t have known until they sniffed the air leaving the school grounds and let the zephyr breezes point their toes. I sped along a road running west of the freeway. When I got to the vicinity of the Bartlett home, I drove in a ragged northwesterly direction toward the school, a mile farther. I didn’t see the boys.

  At the school, a sprawling brick and pastel-paneled building, I parked on the street and trotted inside and found the principal’s office. There still were kids around in the halls and out on the grounds, and classes had let out just twenty minutes earlier, I was told. They’d received the phone call from Benny a few moments later, but the Bartlett kids had already left the grounds. Nobody knew which way the boys walked home. Was there anything wrong at home, I was asked. No, ma’am. Nothing wrong at home. Not that I knew about. I used the office phone to call Dolly. I didn’t want to alarm her, but it turned out that Benny had called her a few minutes before, asking if the boys were home yet, and she already was suspiciously upset.

  “Pete, what is it? I knew there was something about that telephone call last night. What did it mean?”

  “Probably nothing, Dolly. Now, just stay calm. Do you know which way the boys walk home?”

  She wasn’t sure, but she was able to tell me the route she used on the days it rained hard enough for the boys to talk her into giving them a ride, provided Benny hadn’t already taken the car into work. It was close to but not exactly the same as the way I’d traveled up to the school. I told her I’d be calling again and went back out to the car.

  I was halfway back to the Bartlett house when I spotted them. They were a couple of blocks ahead of me, on a residential street of neatly tended homes on widely spaced lots. The boys had stopped to talk to a man in pale slacks and a brown sports jacket, who was standing with his back to me beside a large sedan with both right-hand-side doors open. The man had one hand on Timmy’s shoulder. Al, the younger boy, was standing nearby with his hands on his hips staring at the man grasping his brother.

  I sped up and began honking the horn. The man and both boys turned to stare in my direction. I kept hitting the horn button in short honks. The man turned and slid into the front passenger seat and closed the door. As the car pulled away from the curb, he reached back and pulled shut the rear door. I wasn’t able to get much of a look at him. I screeched to a stop beside the boys.

  “Uncle Pete!” cried an astonished Timmy.

  “What was that all about? What did the people in the car want?”

  “They wanted us to go with them,” said Timmy.

  “I think they were going to try a snatch,” said Al.

  “Okay, get in, boys. Let’s go see if we can catch up with them.”

  “Wow,” said Timmy, climbing into the front seat beside me.

  “Hot dog,” said Al, pushing the back of his brother’s seat forward so he could scramble into the back.

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “They said Mom had sent them,” Timmy told me. “Said I’d won a new set of drums in a contest she’d entered without telling me about it. I was supposed to go pick out the outfit I wanted in some store in West Seattle. I figured, boy, what a crock.”

  The large sedan was moving in a hurry, about two blocks ahead of me. I kept after it until we both were headed south on First Avenue Northeast. It was a well-traveled thoroughfare but only had one lane of traffic in each direction. When I started closing the gap between us, the sedan began taking some chances passing other vehicles. They were chances I felt I couldn’t take with the boys in the car.

  “Don’t you have a siren?” asked Al from in back.

  “I’m not that sort of detective,” I told him. “Who all was in the car?”

  “The guy who put the arm on Timmy and a wheelman,” said Al.

  “Would you recognize them again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’d recognize the man who got out,” said Timmy, “but I didn’t pay any attention to the driver. I was trying to figure out this drums business the guy was talking about.”

  I had a chance to go around a couple of cars and began moving up behind the target car again. It whistled through a green traffic light ahead. I went through the light as it was turning red.

  “What kind of voice did the man on the walk have?”

  Timmy shrugged. “Normal.”

  “I think he was trying to disguise it,” said Al.

  “How do you mean?”

  “It seemed a little high for such a tall dude. I think he was faking it.”

  “Any kind of accent?”

  “Not that I noticed,” said Timmy.

  “Were they waiting for you there at the corner?”

  “They were tailing us from school,” said Al. “I spotted them a block in back of us.”

  “What made you spot them?”

  Al didn’t say anything right away. So his brother told me.

  “Jellyroll Hansen said he was going to beat the stuffing out of Al after school.”

  “Why would he say something like that?”

  “Because Al lipped off to him at the end of lunch period.”

  “I didn’t lip off. I just made a joke,” Al complained.

  “You’re always lipping off. And Jellyroll didn’t think it was funny. So Al kept looking over his shoulder.”

  “And spotted the getaway car,” said Al.

  “What getaway car?” asked Timmy.

  “You know what I mean. You think they were trying to put the snatch on us, Pete?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mom says to call him Uncle Pete,” Timmy chided his brother.

  “Did your mom or dad tell you about the threats your dad’s been getting?”

  “Yeah, but that’s crazy,” said Timmy. “Everybody likes
Dad.”

  “Can’t you rev up this old bucket anymore?” Al asked.

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  The sedan went around a couple of more cars and began to widen the distance between us, then at North 130th Street it braked and made a left turn. Another car pulled out of a parking space a half block ahead of me and I had to slow, and by the time I got to 130th and turned the corner, the sedan was out of sight. I muttered a curse under my breath.

  “It probably went onto the freeway,” said Timmy.

  “Where’s the on-ramp?”

  “Down another block,” said Timmy.

  I slowed as we went past it. There was no hope of finding the sedan again if it was headed south on I-5. I went over a block but had trouble trying to circle around back to the west side of the freeway.

  “You have to use 130th or go a little ways north or south,” said Timmy helpfully.

  “They sure screwed up the streets when they put that thing in,” I complained.

  “Wasn’t it here when you lived up here?” Al asked.

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “Wow,” said Al softly. “It’s been here since before I was born, even.”

  I started to say something, but dummied up. What can you expect kids to know? I wondered about what the boys had just experienced. Was it a kidnap attempt by the people trying to run Benny out of town? Some sort of mistake? Or, nearly as bad as a kidnap attempt, an approach by men who just liked the physical company of young boys? Whatever, it was the sort of thing that could give you sleepless nights. I’m sure it would with Dolly and Benny. I slowed, then pulled over to the parking lot of a small market.

  “You know what we need, gang?”

  Timmy blinked at me from behind his large-lensed glasses and shook his head.

  “Sure,” said Al from the back seat. “Faster horses, older whiskey, younger women, and more money.”

  I turned around to look at him.

  “Well, that’s what Pop is always saying.”

  “Okay. But one more thing we need is a code. One we can use between us in case we’re ever separated, so we can speak to each other without anybody else knowing what we’re saying.”

  “Wow,” said Al. “You mean a secret code?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Maybe we could all learn some obscure language,” said Timmy.

  “That would take too long,” I told him. “Don’t you have something like that you can talk to your buddies at school with so the teachers can’t understand you?”

  “They can’t understand us when we speak English,” said Al.

  “What do we need this for, Uncle Pete?” asked Timmy, a gleam of suspicion building behind the goggle glasses.

  “Emergencies,” I told him. “In case World War Three starts or something.” I thought a minute. “Pig Latin.”

  Timmy’s eyebrows went up again.

  “What?” asked Al.

  “Don’t you guys know how to speak Pig Latin?”

  “Never heard of it,” said Timmy.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Just maybe it’s been out of vogue long enough. Want to learn it?”

  “Is it complicated?” asked Timmy.

  “Not at all, if I can remember. Ooey-phay oo-tay ou-yay. Guess what that means.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Al.

  Timmy just shook his head.

  “Phooey to you, is what I just said. You take the first letter of a word, provided it’s a consonant, and move it to the end of the word and add the sound ay. So you becomes ou-yay. Timmy becomes immy-tay.”

  “What does Al become?” asked Al.

  “I don’t know. I forget what happens if the word begins with a vowel. You just have to improvise, fellows. You don’t speak in complete sentences in Pig Latin. It’s code, right? For emergency use only. Hopefully, you could give an important, short message without some grown-up standing around knowing what you’re saying. But you guys should practice it between yourselves. What’s my name in Pig Latin, Timmy?”

  “Cle-unpay Ete-pay?”

  “Good. Al?”

  “Ragg-bay.”

  “See? You got it already.”

  Timmy shook his head doubtfully.

  “Ooey-phay oo-tay ou-yay,” said Al with a whoop.

  I put the car back in gear and drove the boys home.

  Benny and Dolly came to the front door when they saw us drive up. Benny had left work early. They sent the boys down the hall while we talked about the phone call and the two men in the sedan who had followed Timmy and Al from school.

  “The contest story is ridiculous,” said Dolly.

  “But it tells us they know Timmy plays drums,” I told them. “That bothers me some. Somebody’s been doing some homework on you people.”

  “You think it was a genuine kidnap try?” Benny asked, lighting his third cigarette since we’d sat down.

  “I don’t know. But I’d take precautions if I were you. Either arrange for rides for the boys between here and school or keep them home for the next couple of days.”

  “You figure you can get to the bottom of things by then?” Benny wanted to know.

  I threw up my hands. “I don’t know. But these odd doings seem to be occurring more frequently. If it keeps up, there’s bound to be something I can go after.”

  Dolly took a deep breath and looked across at her husband. “What are we going to do?”

  Benny stared at her a moment, then lowered his eyes and shook his head.

  “Maybe you should do what they want,” I suggested. “Or at least give the appearance of it. Leave town for a few days. Take some time off. Get out of the way.”

  “No,” Benny said sharply. “This is my town. I’m not going to let some slob chase me out of it, or even think he has. Dolly and the kids, maybe.” He looked across at his wife. “Hon?”

  “I don’t want to do that any more than you do,” Dolly told him. “Let’s give it a little more time. If anything more happens to do with the boys, I’ll take them out of school and send them off somewhere.”

  Benny looked up at me. “Sound right to you?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t answer that for you. I guess take it a day at a time. But get on the phone to Hamilton. Tell him what happened this afternoon. Maybe it’ll finally get him off his tail. Maybe he’ll start to take you seriously. I’ll be in touch.”

  I drove back to the motel, not particularly happy with myself. I should have had brains enough to ask Benny earlier if there’d been any funny telephone calls. I might even have been able to set up something so I could have grabbed the two men who followed the boys from school. I might have had things all wrapped up by now and been on my way back to San Francisco. I thought about that some and told myself, No, I might have had things wrapped up, but I wouldn’t have been on my way back to San Francisco.

  From the motel I tried to phone Lorna, but she’d already left work for the day. I called down to my office and chatted with Ceejay for a few minutes. Nothing had come up that couldn’t wait.

  “How does it go up there?” she wanted to know.

  “Not well. I missed a good opportunity to clear up things today.”

  “Hmmmm. Are you charging your friend the usual rates for what you’re doing?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I thought not. Maybe you should. Maybe it’d help keep your mind on business.”

  That was the problem with Ceejay. You had to take the sharp mouth along with the keen brain. After we hung up, I tried phoning Lorna at home. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, it’s Pete.”

  “Oh hi. Gee, I was hoping it would be you. I came home a little early to freshen up in case I got that dinner invitation.”

  “Yeah well, the reason I’m calling is I’m not sure I can make it. Something more happened involving Benny today. I probably should spend the evening working. I have to make a couple of calls, at least. There’s somebody I want to see, and if he’s available to
night, I think I’ll just drive on over to see him.”

  “Something happened to Benny?”

  “Not directly. I’ll tell you about it another time.”

  “Well, I guess if you have to go see a man, you have to go see a man. Where does he live?”

  “Mercer Island, Benny said.”

  “And where are you now?”

  “At my motel, out on Aurora.”

  “Well gee, why not stop by and make your phone calls from here? It’s not far out of the way. At least we can have a drink together.”

  I hesitated. My brain shrugged. “Okay. Why not? I want to clean up first. In about forty minutes?”

  “Oh grand, Pete. Thank you. I’ll expect you.”

  I hung up and stared at the phone. She had that same half-out-of-breath tone she’d had the night before, when we’d first met at Benny’s place. She never used to sound that way talking to me. But then I’d only been her husband back then.

  I took a quick shower and shave, then sat on the edge of the bed trying to decide something. I still had the .38 in the glove compartment of the rental car, but I wondered if I should be carrying the .45 as well. The hesitation turned into a couple of minutes of changing my mind back and forth. I stared out the window. It was starting to get dark out there. The pavement was dry, but more clouds had been scudding low overhead. More rain on the way, probably. I went to the closet and got my black raincoat off its hanger. I stared down at the suitcase with the .45 in it. The town had me off balance. The buildings that didn’t belong there, the freeway that screwed up driving the streets I used to drive, and the weather you could never depend on. And on top of all that, I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing fooling around with Lorna again. I’d been through all that once; it should have been enough. And still…

  I finally left the .45 in the suitcase. Maybe with my scrambled frame of mind I shouldn’t be packing that much gun. Seattle could be the death of you.

  SIX

  Lorna greeted me with a little squeeze of the arm when she opened the door. Her place wasn’t really spacious, but it was comfortable enough for one person. The main living area was a large, airy room of blond wood paneling, mission white walls and big sheets of glass looking out over Ballard and the government locks a couple of miles away. Off one side of the room was a small breakfast bar and kitchen beyond. A short hallway to the rear of the place had deep closets on one side and a small bedroom off the other. She didn’t use the bedroom to sleep in but as a dressing room. She slept in a bed up on a balcony over the main living room.