Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

“Pretend that’s your car over there,” Mitch said softly. “You bring me over there and make me drive, see? You just keep your gun on me, and I can’t do a thing about it.”

The kid still stood his ground, still didn’t say anything. Maybe he was scared or maybe they’d left the brains out of him and he didn’t have enough sense to scram. Anyhow, all he did was say, “Boom-boom” again, but in a frightened kind of a whisper.

So Mitch put his arm around him, and when the kid tried to pull back, Mitch picked him up and said, “What’s your name, huh? What are you doing here?”

The kid shook his head and dropped the toy gun. Mitch picked it up, stuck it in his pocket, and brought the kid over to the squad car and settled him down on the front seat Mitch chattered all the way back to headquarters, but the kid didn’t say a word. His vocabulary was boom-boom, and that was it He took Mitch’s hand when they got out of the car, and he kept hanging on tight while they walked down the corridor and through the door marked Homicide Squad. There, a couple of the boys were kidding around with the blonde who did secretarial work for the lieutenant.

They stopped talking at the sight of Mitch and the kid. Bankhart said, “Holy hell — did you make a pinch?”

The blonde smiled and bent down and said to the kid in a soft, sugary voice, “Hello. What’s your name?”

Junior’s face puckered up like a walnut and he burst out crying. Mitch, still holding his hand, said, “He don’t talk much. Lieutenant in?”

The girl nodded. Mitch, dragging this yowling brat along with him, crossed the room, knocked on the lieutenant’s door, and went in.

Lieutenant Decker had the smallest office and the biggest collection of junk in the Police Department. He went in for souvenirs of his cases and for magazines on criminology, and he stacked them up on the filing cabinets and the shelves and the window sill and the extra chair, along with the official reports he was always in the middle of reading. He swung around and looked at Mitch and the kid as if they both belonged in the loony bin, which maybe they did.

“Well?” Decker said. But the kid let out a blast and kept pumping it out, and Decker put his hands over his ears. When the kid finally stopped for breath, Mitch had a chance to say something.

“Take a gander at him,” Mitch said. “What does he look like?”

“Like a damn nuisance,” Decker said. “What’s the idea?”

Things weren’t working out exactly the way Mitch had intended. He’d figured the gang outside might be a little slow on the trigger, but the lieutenant ought to be sharper. Still, Mitch had to admit that a six-year-old, with his face screwed up and his heart in shreds on account maybe he wanted his mother, didn’t look much like Public Enemy Number One.

All Mitch said was, “He got lost.”

“Brother!” the lieutenant exclaimed. “You’ve pulled some screwy ones, but this time — wow! Listen, Taylor. In case nobody ever told you, the Homicide Squad handles crimes of violence against the person, but there’s a Lost and Found Department and a Juvenile Bureau, and you can classify the kid either way. Use your own judgment.” Decker grinned. “What’s really on your mind?”

Mitch came straight out with it. “He’s Rogan’s kid.”

Decker flipped back in his chair and almost dumped over. “Did he tell you that?”

“No. But when he quits crying, he looks like Rogan.”

“And when does that happen?” Decker asked.

“Lieutenant,” Mitch said, “this looks like a lead. I could be wrong, but do you want to bet on it?”

Decker nodded. “Yes,” he said. “How much?”

Mitch didn’t take the bait. “What I want,” he said, “is we should put the kid’s description on the teletype and on the municipal radio. A kind of appeal. Then somebody comes and picks him up, and we tail whoever it is.”

Decker frowned, searched his soul, and decided to give Mitch a break. “All right,” Decker said. “You’re going on vacation tomorrow, you’ll be out of my hair. Tell the girl to send it out.”

“Thanks,” Mitch said, and went outside.

The kid quieted down a little, but he wasn’t happy. He needed somebody to blow his nose and tie his left shoelace, which the blonde proceeded to do. Meanwhile, Mitch pulled a form from the supply shelf behind the door and began filling out the description: age, color of eyes, color of hair, height, weight, clothing worn, where found, identifying scars or marks, if any, and so on.

He handed the sheets to the blonde and told her what the lieutenant had said. Then Mitch took the kid upstairs to Jub.

Jub turned out to be no smarter than the others. He frowned at the kid and said, “Who’s he?”

“Rogan,” Mitch said.

“Doesn’t look like him.”

“You know how kids are,” Mitch said. “They change. They look like one thing one minute, and a couple of minutes later they’re different.”

“All right,” Jub said, smiling. “Make him look like Rogan.”

Mitch perched the kid on a stool, gave it a spin, and turned his back. “What about the hub cap?” he asked.

“A thirty-eight slug, and the car was moving fairly fast when it was hit. What about that Chevy?”

“I found the kid, instead,” Mitch said. “I figure Rogan was hiding out back there and used the kid for a lookout. All the kid had to do was make a nuisance of himself, which he’s good at, and that would warn Rogan so he could beat it. I picked up Junior on account somebody has to come around and claim him.”

“Sure,” Jub said. “His mother.”

For the next couple of hours Mitch hung around kind of nursemaiding the kid. Word spread that Taylor had come up with a lulu, and guys from other parts of the building dropped in to see.

Mitch explained cheerfully. “He’s a child prodigy. Going to grow up and be a mental defective. No work, no trouble. State’ll take care of him.”

The kid sat in a corner and played with a busted pinball machine. Mitch almost got to like him, because he was a guarantee against a last-minute assignment. So Mitch was figuring on staying put until five, and then he could blow.

But the kid’s mother walked in, and she had brown, bulging eyes. Her forehead was sort of wide and her ears almost stuck out of her hairdo. She was a dead ringer for the kid.

She gave her name as Mrs. Leonard Jackson and she said her husband ran an automobile junk yard and her child had been playing there when he’d disappeared. And she thought something ought to be done about it.

She was nervous and scared and determined, all at the same time. She threatened to bring a kidnapping charge, but she wouldn’t sign a complaint and nobody could figure out exactly what she was after.

Finally the lieutenant got fed up and gave her a lecture on how she shouldn’t let a six-year-old run around loose in a junk yard where he could hurt himself or get lost or something, and she was lucky they didn’t bring charges against her and her husband for not taking proper care of their child.

She said they wouldn’t dare say that to her husband, they were taking advantage of her because she was a woman, and she up and left. As soon as she was gone, the lieutenant burst out laughing. And the ribbing that Mitch got after that was just a beginning. He figured these wisecracks, they’d still be coming at him three weeks from now, when he got back from the lake.

Mitch let them ride him — there was nothing he could do about it; but he kept remembering that hub cap and how the kid had looked like Rogan when he aimed the toy gun. And how maybe that Chevy and the $14,000 in loot were in the junk yard. And finally, if a kid looked like his mother, why couldn’t he look like his old man, too?