Ed McBain - King's Ransom

“I run a shoe factory,” King said. “Is this another one of your very pertinent questions?”

“Yes, Mr. King. It is one of my very pertinent questions. I don’t know a thing about shoes, Mr. King, except I have to wear them so I won’t get tacks in my feet. I wouldn’t dream of going into your factory and telling your employees how to nail a shoe or glue a heel or sew whatever it is they sew.”

“I get your message,” King said dryly.

“You only get part of it, Mr. King. You only get the part that’s warning you…”

“ Warning me!”

“… warning you to cut out what might be misinterpreted as resisting an officer or impeding the progress of an investigation. That’s the part you get, and now I’m going to tell you the other part, and I hope both parts penetrate, Mr. King, because I’m here to do a job and intend to do it with or without your help. I’m assuming you know how to run a shoe factory or you wouldn’t be living here in Smoke Rise with a chauffeur whose son can be mistaken for yours in a kidnaping. Okay. You have no reason to assume I’m a good cop or a bad cop or even an indifferent cop. Most of all, you have no reason to assume I’m a silly cop.”

“I never—”

“To clear up any doubts which may be lingering in your mind, Mr. King, I’ll tell you now flatly and immodestly that I am a good cop, I am a damn good cop. I know my job, and I do it well, and any questions I ask you are not asked because I’m auditioning for Dragnet. They’re all asked with a reason and a purpose, and you’ll make things a hell of a lot easier if you answer them without offering any of your opinions on how the investigation should be conducted. Do you think we understand each other, Mr. King?”

“I think we understand each other, Mr. Caretta.”

“My name is Carella,” Carella said flatly. “Did the man who called you have any accent?”

* * * *

Reynolds sat on the edge of the bed, weeping unashamedly, shaking his head over and over again. Meyer watched him, and he bit his lower lip, and he wanted to put his arm around the man’s shoulders, comfort him, tell him that everything would be all right. He could not do this because he knew how unpredictable all kidnapings were, the boy could be killed before the kidnapers had carried him five miles from the house. And this particular kidnaping had the added danger of error attached to it. How would the louses react when they discovered they had the wrong boy? And so he could not reassure Reynolds, he could only ask the questions he knew by rote, and he could only hope they did not sound absurd to the man who was torn by grief.

“What is the boy’s full name, Mr. Reynolds?

“Jeffry. Jeffry.”

“Is that G-e-o-f or J-e-f-f… ?”

“What? Oh. J-e-f-f-r-y. Jeffry.”

“Any middle name?”

“No. None.”

“How old is he, Mr. Reynolds?”

“Eight.”

“Birth date?”

“September ninth.”

“Then he was just eight is that right?”

“Yes. Just eight.”

“How tall is he, Mr. Reynolds?”

“I …” Reynolds paused. “I don’t know. I never… I don’t know. Who ever measures children? Who ever expects something like this to…”

“Well, approximately, Mr. Reynolds? Three feet? Four feet?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Well, average height for that age is somewhere between four and four and a half feet. He’s about average height, isn’t he, Mr. Reynolds?”

“Yes. Or maybe a little taller. He’s a handsome boy. Tall for his age.”

“How much does he weigh, Mr. Reynolds?”

“I don’t know.”

Meyer sighed. “What about his build? Stout? Medium? Slim?”

“Slender. Not too stout, and not too thin. Just… well built for a boy his age.”

‘‘His complexion, Mr. Reynolds? Florid, sallow, pale?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, is he a dark kid?”

“No, no. He has blond hair. Very fair skin. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, thank you. Fair,” Meyer said, and he made a note. “Hair blond.” He paused. “Color of his eyes, Mr. Reynolds?”

“Will you get him back?” Reynolds asked suddenly.

Meyer stopped writing. “We’re going to try,” he said. “We’re going to try our damnedest, Mr. Reynolds.”

* * * *

The description of the boy was phoned in to the 87th and then transmitted to Headquarters, and the teletype alarm went out to fourteen states. The teletype read:

KIDNAP VICTIM JEFFRY REYNOLDS AGE EIGHT HEIGHT APPROX FIFTY-TWO INCHES WEIGHT APPROX SIXTY POUNDS XXXXXXXX HAIR BLOND EYES BLUE STRAWBERRY BIRTHMARK RIGHT BUTTOCK XXXXXXXX SCAR LEFT ARM CHILDHOOD INJURY FRACTURE XXXXX FATHER’S NAME CHARLES REYNOLDS XXXX MOTHER DECEASED XXXXXX ANSWERS TO NAME JEFF XXXXXX WEARING BRIGHT RED SWEATER BLUE DUNGAREE TROUSERS WHITE SOX SNEAKERS XXXXX NO HAT XXXXX NO GLOVES XXXXX NO JEWELRY XXXXX MAY BE CARRYING TOY RIFLE XXXXX MAY BE IN COMPANY OF MALE XXXXX LAST SEEN VICINITY SMOKE RISE ISOLA SEVENTEEN HUNDRED THIRTY HOURS STD TIME XXXXX STAND BY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTION ROAD BLOCK COOPERATION XXXXX CONTACT HQ COMMAND ISOLA ALL INFO ETC XXXXXXXXXX

The message rolled out of teletype machines in police precincts, state trooper command posts, dinky shacks housing local one-horse police forces, anywhere in the surrounding fourteen states where the law enforcement agencies owned and used a teletype machine. It rolled out on a long white sheet with all the monotony of a foreign newspaper. The message immediately following it on the tape read:

REPORTED STOLEN XXX 1949 FORD SEDAN XXXXX EIGHT CYLS XXXX GRAY XXXXX ID NUMBER 598L 02303 LICENSE PLATE RN 6120 XXXXXX PARKED SUPERMKT PETER SCHWED DRIVE AND LANSING LANE EIGHT HUNDRED HOURS THIS MORNING XXXX CONTACT ONE-OH-TWO PCT RIVERHEAD XXXXX

* * * *

The gray Ford pulled into the rutted driveway and bounced along the road which had once belonged to a Sands Spit potato farmer. The road, the land, the farmhouse itself had been sold a long time ago to a man who had purchased the property in the hope that the development boom would reach this isolated neck of the city’s suburb. The development boom had come nowhere near reaching the erstwhile potato farm. The speculator, in fact, dropped dead before his dream was realized, and the farm and its adjacent lands, cropless now, run-down, slowly succumbing to the overwhelming encroachment of nature, were handled by a real-estate agent who managed the property for the speculator’s daughter, a drunken hag of forty-seven who lived in the city and slept with sailors of all ages. The agent considered it quite a coup when he managed to rent the old farmhouse for a month in the middle of October. Suckers weren’t that plentiful in the fall of the year. In the summertime, he could tell prospective tenants that the farm was near the beaches—which it wasn’t, being in the center of Sands Spit and nowhere near either of the peninsula’s two shores—and possibly inveigle a city dweller or two into occupying the decrepit wreck for a while. But as soon as Labor Day rolled around, the agent’s hopes vanished. The drunken daughter of the speculator would have to find other means of buying her whisky and her sailors. There would be no income from the sagging farmhouse until summer once more returned to Sands Spit. His delight at renting the hulk in the middle of October knew no bounds. Nor did he ever once realize the careful planning that had preceded the rental. He was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. Cash was paid on the line. He asked no questions, and expected no answers. Besides, the tenants seemed like a nice young couple. If they wanted to freeze their behinds off in the middle of nowhere, that was their business. His business, like that of the landholders of old, was simply to collect the tithes, man, simply to collect the tithes.