Ellery Queen - Cop Out

“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.”

“He’s gone 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.