Evan Hunter - Every Little Crook and Nanny

“A poker game, did you say?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“How can you think of playing cards at a time like this?” Nanny asked.

“I hope to take fifty thousand dollars out of that game, if all goes well,” Benny said. “Nanny, this is not something we can discuss over the telephone, as you never know who’s listening these days.”

“Will you let me know later about the game?”

“Very definitely. Have you heard from those crazy maniacs yet?”

“Not yet. They said five o’clock.”

“All right then, I’ll call you back around six or so, and we can exchange information at that time. Does that sound all right to you, Nanny?”

“Yes, that sounds fine,” Nanny said.

“Good,” he said, abruptly she thought, and hung up.

When the telephone rang at five-fifteen, Nanny was certain the kidnaper was calling at last with the instructions he had promised. Her delicate hand trembling, she lifted the receiver.

“Hello?” she said.

“Nanny? This is Benny Napkins. Everything’s set for tonight. I’ll call you as soon as the game is over. I hope to have the money by then.”

“Good,” Nanny said.

“Have you heard from the kidnaper yet?”

“No.”

“He didn’t call?”

“No.”

“Did you look in the mailbox? Maybe he left the instructions there.”

“Nobody could be that stupid,” Nanny said.

“I would put nothing past this crazy maniac,” Benny said. “Go check the mailbox and call me back.”

“All right,” she said, and hung up.

The second note, as Benny had surmised, was waiting in the mailbox. Like the first note, it was fashioned of newspaper and magazine print clipped out and pasted to a sheet of blank white typing paper. Nanny had no way of knowing, of course, that the kidnaper had painstakingly scissored the words from reviews written by his two favorite critics. In the half-light of dusk, she stood by the mailbox and read the note out loud, the words echoing and floating away up the long driveway to Many Maples, airborne, inspired:

She went into the house and called Benny Napkins at once.

“I have another note from him,” she said.

“What does it say?” Benny asked.

“I don’t know ,” Nanny answered.

At seven o’clock that evening, one of Bozzaris’ detectives picked up a man who looked suspicious for several reasons. One reason he looked suspicious was that he was a stranger to the precinct. Another reason was that he was straddling another man and pummeling him with both fists in the middle of the sidewalk outside a cafeteria not two blocks from the station house. He kept telling the detective who picked him up that he had only been acting in self-defense, but the detective knew a murderous stranger when he saw one. He brought the man up to the squadroom, whereupon it was promptly discovered that he was carrying on his person $10,000 in cash.

The man’s name was William Shakespeare.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Bozzaris asked.

“That’s my name,” the man answered in perfect English, which was suspicious in itself.

“Where do you live, Willie?”

“Downtown. On Mott Street.”

“Why?”

“I like Chinese girls.”

“Be that as it may,” Bozzaris said, “what were you doing up here in the confines of my precinct, aside from committing assault on that poor man who was taken to the hospital?”

“That poor man tried to hold me up,” Willie said. “I was protecting my life’s savings from him.”

“There are rarely daylight holdups in this precinct,” Bozzaris said.

“Well, there was almost one today,” Willie said. “Until I foiled it.”

“One theory of criminal investigation,” Bozzaris said, “is that the person who invites a criminal act is as guilty as the perpetrator of that act. That is an old Hebraic theory, if you are familiar with rabbinical law.”

“I am not,” Willie said.

“Be that as it may. A person who carries around ten thousand dollars in cash could be considered provocative, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I needed the money,” Willie said. “Which is why I came up here to draw it out of my savings account.”

“For what purpose did you need the money?” Bozarris asked.

“For a personal purpose.”

“Such as?”

A knock sounded discreetly on the lieutenant’s door. “Enter,” Bozzaris said, and a detective walked in and put a sheet of paper on the desk. “Thank you, Sam,” Bozzaris said, and picked up the sheet of paper. “What do you do for a living, Willie?” Bozzaris asked.

“I manufacture mah-jong tiles. I became interested in the game and also in Chinese girls when I was a resident of Hong Kong many years ago.”

“Willie,” Bozzaris said, looking up, “according to this sheet of paper here, you are a known gambler in the Fifth and also the Ninth Precinct. What do you have to say about that?”

“I sometimes play cards, yes.”

“You have also sometimes been arrested for Bookmaking, and Keeping a Gaming and Betting Establishment, and also Cheating at Gambling.”

“Yes, sometimes,” Willie admitted.

“ Many times, it says here, and for the same offense a few times, in fact. An Assault charge added to this illustrious record might prove very troublesome,” Bozzaris said, “in terms of the amount of time you might have to spend incarcerated.”

“That man was attempting to hold me up,” Willie said. “He probably saw my roll when I was paying my check in the cafeteria, and decided to follow me. It’s no crime to protect yourself.”

“Be that as it may,” Bozzaris said. “It’s also no crime for the District Attorney’s office to automatically assume that a known gambler with a previous and lengthy record might be at fault in an Assault case where the arresting officer had to pull him off a man lying flat on his back on the sidewalk. The penalty for Assault in the Second Degree, which is probably what the charge would be, is five years. That’s even if you did not have a previous record. I see here that you are a three-time loser, Willie, and I do not have to tell you what a fourth felony conviction could mean in terms of interminable incarceration.”

“This is ridiculous,” Willie said. “The man really was trying to steal my goddamn money!”

“Why were you carrying around so much money to begin with?”

“My sister needs it.”

“For what?”

“My sister, whose name is Mary Shakespeare, and who lives on...”

“We are not interested in your family geniality here,” Bozzaris said.

“My sister is going out to San Francisco to organize a protest there.”

“Against what?”

“Conditions,” Willie said, “which as you know are bad all over. It costs a lot of money to organize a protest, and I agreed to lend her my meager life’s savings.”

“That is pure and simple bullshit,” Bozzaris said. “Pardon the French.”

“It is the God’s honest truth.”

“Be that as it may, why did you really withdraw ten thousand dollars from your bank?”

“It has nothing whatsoever to do with the card game,” Willie said.

“What card game?” Bozzaris asked.

“Do we forget all about the possible Assault charge, which is a bum rap anyway since I was the victim of an intended holdup?”

“I am not in a position to make promises of any nature,” Bozzaris said.