Bill Pronzini - The Snatch

We let silence build for a few moments, thinking our own thoughts. An idea occurred to me, and I said, “Listen, suppose Lockridge did have a partner after all, a kind of silent partner, somebody who knew him for one reason or another and who also knew the Martinettis. Suppose this silent partner got in touch with Lockridge with the kidnap scheme and brought him out here to California to do the job. Hell, somebody had to tip Lockridge to the situation; according to the Hanlon girl, he’d only been out here for three weeks, and he was talking about ‘a business deal’ from the beginning. It doesn’t figure that he would come all the way from Cleveland to pull a snatch without having a victim in mind; and living back there, how would he know who to pick in California?”

“Why wouldn’t the silent partner do the job himself?” Eberhardt asked, making argument.

“Maybe because the boy knew him by sight,” I answered. “It would have been a risky proposition, pulling it off himself if he was known to any member of the family.”

“Okay, you’ve got a good point,” Donleavy said. “It would explain the kidnap note on Martinetti’s stationery adequately enough, from what he tells me about his office layout-and it would also explain something else that’s been bothering me: how Lockridge knew the San

Bruno hills well enough, being from out of state, to use that dirt road as a ransom drop. Sure, he could have driven around looking for a likely place, but since he was staying in San Francisco, why would he pick something so far south? There are other isolated areas, closer ones, that he might have chosen.” He uncrossed his ankles and crossed them the other way. “But what it doesn’t explain is the bug.”

“It could if the bug is nothing more than a red herring to hamper an investigation. The partner and Lockridge could have cooked that up figuring you would examine every possibility.”

“That makes them out to be master criminals,” Eberhardt said in his dour way. “Master criminals are fine for those pulp magazines of yours, but they’re a plain crock in real life and you know it.”

Donleavy’s eyes were speculative. “Now that I think of it, I can figure an explanation for the tap myself. This silent partner, assuming there is one, would likely have wanted as little contact with Lockridge as possible once Lockridge reached California-for obvious reasons. If he distrusted him, he could have used the bug to make sure Lockridge kept up his end of the deal.”

“Fine,” Eberhardt said, “but why would he bring Lockridge in in the first place if he distrusted him? And why, for Christ’s sake, would this silent partner kill Lockridge up at the drop site? Why wouldn’t he just wait until the pickup had been made and the money safely taken away, and then do the job on Lockridge if he was planning a double-cross?”

I gave him the theory I had conceived in the hospital. “It’s pretty isolated up there in the hills, Eb. A body wouldn’t necessarily be found for some time.” I went on to tell him why it could be that this hypothetical silent partner had not waited until I was gone before killing Lockridge-that he had gotten excited by the prospect of the money, made his attack too quickly and merely wounded Lockridge with the first thrust of his knife instead of killing him, thus giving him time to cry out and warn me of what was happening.

“It makes sense, I suppose,” Eberhardt said, but his voice was skeptical.

Donleavy said, “Yeah, it’s pretty thin, all right- but it’s better than anything else we’ve got at the moment. The only trouble with it, we don’t have any goddamned idea where to begin looking for a silent partner.” He sucked in his cheeks and puffed them out, the way he had in the hospital. “The girl didn’t give you anything at all on a connection between Lockridge and somebody else out here?”

“Nothing,” Eberhardt said. “As far as she knows, Lockridge conceived and executed the whole thing himself.”

Donleavy yawned and patted his mouth the way Oliver Hardy used to do it; all he needed was a derby hat and a wide silk tie and a little mustache under his nose. He said, “Why do you suppose Lockridge brought the girl into it? It doesn’t figure that she was part of any conspiracy, if there is one-and from what you told me over the phone, she only knew it was a kidnapping when Lockridge took the boy to the San Francisco house.”

“Well, she said she was in love with the guy,” Eberhardt said. “Maybe it was reciprocal, and he felt he could trust her. Maybe he figured it would be better to have somebody with the kid the whole time, and thought she was too dumb to tumble to the kidnap idea.”

“I guess we’ll never know about that now,” Donleavy said sadly. “It doesn’t figure this silent partner- again, if there is one-knew about her.”

“I’d say it was pretty unlikely.”

We kicked around what Lorraine Hanlon had told Eberhardt and me for a little while, and then Donleavy sighed and got up on his feet again. He went to the desk and put the phone bug in his pocket; the way he was handling it, he had already gone over it for prints-and the fact that he had not mentioned that, told me there had been none. He yawned again and looked at me and said, “Martinetti told me he’d hired you to do some investigating on this business. You planning to keep on with it now the boy is home?”

“If he still wants me, and you don’t object, I guess I will,” I told him.

“I figured as much,” Donleavy said. “You seem to be all right, and you’ve been on this thing from the start; that’s why I let you sit in just now. I can trust you to notify the office if you come up with anything, can’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’ve got my sanction then. I need all the help I can get.” He said the last without irony.

There was a knock on the door, and Donleavy went over and opened it and spoke in low tones to a thin guy with a brushlike mustache. Then he shut the door again and came back and said, “That was one of the men I sent out to scout the area. None of the neighbors remember anybody hanging around before the snatch or after it; they turned up exactly nothing.”

He puffed out his lips and sighed and looked at Eberhardt. “Do me a favor, would you? Ring up your Hall and see if Reese is still there?”

Eberhardt made the call for him, and Reese had not left as yet. Donleavy spoke to him, briefly, and put the receiver down and said, “I’m going to talk to the Hanlon girl myself, if you don’t mind. Reese has a tendency to be too eager in his questioning, and he overlooks things; besides that, I like to be in on it first-hand. I told him to wait for me to get there.”

Eberhardt inclined his head. “Listen,” he said, “can I ride up with you? Hot shot here probably wants to talk to his client, and I got to get back.”

“Glad to have you,” Donleavy said.

We left the study then, without having reached any conclusions or made any startling discoveries after the revelation of the phone tap. It was just like most police work: a lot of conjecture, a little bullshit, and a constant rehashing of pertinent facts. Sometimes you clicked on something, and sometimes you didn’t; but it was time well spent, because in the long run that was the way most cases were solved.

* * * *

After Eberhardt and Donleavy had said their goodbyes to the Martinettis, I went with them out to the street. It was dark now, and very cool and still; the night air contained the faint, almost anachronistic presence of woodsmoke. It was a nice evening, all right.

I asked Donleavy, “When are you going to release the news of the boy’s homecoming to the press?”

“Later on tonight, probably, after I have a talk with the Hanlon girl.”