The Kidnapper (3 page)

“Huh?”

“I’ve been so worried these last few days.”

“Why?” I sat up right away, and from the look on my face I guess she knew I smelled trouble.

“Oh, it’s not—what you’re thinking. I mean, I was worried because I’d have to go away with them to California this summer.”

“Well, what about it?”

“It’s out, that’s what. Mrs. Warren told me this morning, they’re not going, because they’re buying a new house instead.”

“Where?”

“Out further, on Ranger Road, I guess. They’re going to drive out there Saturday and I’ll see it. A real big ranch-style, she said. It costs eighty thousand dollars. But isn’t it wonderful? Now I’ll be here this summer.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t have gone anyway, Steve. You know I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have left my lover, my sweetheart, my—”

“Cut it out and leave me alone.”

“Steve, aren’t you happy? Aren’t you—”

“Sure, I’m happy.” I got up and lit a cigarette. “Only I don’t feel so hot. Guess I’m getting a cold or something.”

It wasn’t her fault because this rich bastard was laying eighty grand on the line for a fancy shack instead of going on his lousy vacation.

Only my plans were spoiled. And I’d been getting so I was counting on that diamond job.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk or something. I’m sick of this stinking room.”

“All right, Steve. It’s almost four, anyway. Maybe we can walk over to the school together.”

“I don’t care.”

The way I felt, I’d just as soon walked her to the nearest pier and dumped her off. I was beginning to get a little tired of the whole thing. Every day like this was a little bit too much.

I was getting fed up on all her love stuff, too. She was just a dumb kid, and having her around all the time got on my nerves. I wouldn’t have minded putting up with her until the job came off—but now there wasn’t going to be any caper.

So when I walked along with her, over to the school, I began to try and figure out a way of shaking loose of her. Not just telling her to go to hell, because it would be nice to have her around for kicks once in a while. But I’d have to scheme up some story about a day job, part-time, or something.

“You haven’t said a word for five minutes,” she told me. Just as if I didn’t know it.

“It’s this cold. I feel lousy.”

“Oh, you poor darling! Maybe you shouldn’t go to work tonight.”

“I’ll be all right. Got to get some rest.”

“Have I been—too much for you?” So help me, she was blushing.

“No. Oh, forget it. I’ll be all right, I tell you.”

“Let me feel your forehead.”

“Keep your hands off me!”

“I’m sorry.” We turned the corner, and she said, “Here we are. I’ll just go to the door and wait for her. She should be down in a minute. We always walk to the corner and Paul picks us up in the car. He can’t park here.”

“Oh, the chauffeur. Well, okay then. I’ll get going.”

“No, Steve. Wait. I want you to see her. She’s such a doll.”

“Well—”

“It’ll only take a minute. Oh, here she comes now.”

A bunch of kids were coming out of this big private school, most of them with their old ladies or maids. But this one was all alone.

She wore a red hat and a coat to match, and she had long black hair hanging down to her shoulders. But she was a skinny-looking kid, and her nose was kind of big. I didn’t think she was anything to get excited about.

Mary brought her up to me.

“Shirley Mae, this is a friend of mine. Mr. Collins. Steve, this is Shirley Mae Warren.”

“Hello,” she said, and held out her hand.

So I took it, not knowing what else to do.

And that’s how I shook hands with trouble.

Chapter Four

I
hadn’t been kidding about that cold. By the time I got to work that night my head was all stuffed up, and when I got off it was worse. I didn’t feel like eating, and I couldn’t taste cigarettes any more. Even Specs noticed it.

“You sick or something?”

“Cold.”

“You sure? Maybe this girl friend of yours—”

“Shut up and leave me alone.”

“All right, Steve. Gee, you don’t look so hot. You better get some sleep. My old lady, she always used to tell me to take a good hot bath and then—”

“To hell with your old lady. I’m going home.”

I went home and took a hot bath and went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. And by noon I was good and sick.

Mary showed up around one, like she always did, now, and I wouldn’t let her in.

“I got a cold,” I told her. “I’m staying in bed.”

She handed me a long line about going out for some kind of tablets or something, and why didn’t I call a doctor, and so forth and so on. I told her to shut up and go away, and she did, finally.

Then I lay there and began to shake. Fever. It wasn’t a cold, it was flu. I knew, I had it before.

Ended up I was in bed for five days. Didn’t even go out to eat, felt sicker than a dog. This fever and all those dreams.

Mary brought me stuff from the store, soup and coffee and things like that. I didn’t want any doctor. I just wanted to stay in bed. She was real worried, tried to play nurse, but I told her to get out and she did.

I was sick of her, sick of the plan that wouldn’t work, sick of the whole damned setup. That’s what was really the matter with me.

Nights, I’d lay there and look up at the car lights flashing across the ceiling. Sometimes they made patterns, like big eyes moving around in the room, watching me. Mrs. Delehanty came up one night, half-lit, and wanted to know what was the matter. I told her I was sick and to go away.

So she left me alone, too. And I lay in bed and had these dreams, these nightmares. For a while I didn’t think at all.

And then, one morning I woke up and the fever was gone. The fever was gone, and I was thinking again.

It was like I picked up just where I’d left off—with meeting this Shirley Mae.

And then the whole idea seemed to hit me all at once.

Jewelry?

That was for the birds.

These people had the biggest jewel in the world right under my nose, just sitting and waiting for somebody to come along and grab it.

Shirley Mae Warren.

Her old man was president of the bank and he owned a big factory. He just bought a house for eighty grand. He was rolling in it. And if he’d pay eighty grand for a house he didn’t need, what would he pay if somebody snatched his kid and he wanted her back?

Talk about jewelry!

I sat up in bed and started to shake all over again. Only it wasn’t the fever this time. It was just that this idea had hit me, and it was big, and I knew I could do it.

Get that? I
knew
I could do it.

Easy?

Hell, no. I’m no sucker, I know the score on a kidnapping rap. It’s a state offense, it’s a federal offense, and you can burn for it. If they catch you.

But that’s where the thinking part comes in. So they won’t catch you.

And the setup was perfect. Just perfect!

Sitting there that afternoon, that night, I kind of figured it all out in my head, step by step.

Next morning I felt better and I got up. I went out and had breakfast, and I checked back over everything I’d been working on. Like asking myself questions. What if this goes wrong, what if that doesn’t turn out? Every angle I could think of.

But it was still perfect.

And the way to do it was just the way I’d thought it out—step by step.

The first step would be Mary.

There was one sure way to get to Mary, and I knew it. I started as soon as I was feeling all right.

She came around, of course, and I told her I was going back to work.

“Oh, I’m glad, darling. I was so worried.” Right away she wanted to get affectionate, but I stalled her off.

“Let’s take it easy for a day or two until I get back in shape,” I told her. “I still got a lot of germs in my system.” Like hell I had, but I knew what I was doing.

“All right, Steve,” she said, and I could tell she was plenty disappointed, only she wouldn’t let on.

“Did you see the new house?” I asked her.

“Yes, Saturday, and is it ever keen!” She told me all about the place. It was quite a layout, from what she said. Three-car garage, five bedrooms, three bathrooms. What the hell anybody needs with three bathrooms I don’t know, but the richer you are the more bathrooms you got to have, I guess.

“We’re going to move in around July first. The only trouble is, darling, how can I see you every day then?”

“Don’t worry about that. Maybe I’ll buy a car.”

“Gee, that’d be swell. You got enough money?”

“I been saving.”

“That’s a good job you have at the factory, Steve, isn’t it? Do you think you’ll ever get on days?”

“I could if I wanted to. But then how would I get to see you regular?”

She didn’t say anything, and I knew what she was thinking. Not that she’d come right out with it, but all broads got only one idea in their heads—they’re out to hook you into getting married.

“Besides, I’m a funny guy, Mary. Never can tell when I’m gonna get the old itch to get moving.”

“Steve, you wouldn’t go away.”

“Of course not. I was only talking.” I laughed. “Say, I got some errands to do downtown. I better get going.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Better make it the day after.”

She looked at me. “You wouldn’t kid me, would you?”

“What do you mean, kid you?”

“You haven’t got some other girl on the string, have you, Steve?”

“How the heck could I? I been sick in bed all week.”

“Yes, I know. But if you ever got another girl, I’d—I’d—”

“You’d what?”

“I’d kill her!”

It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing, because of the way she looked when she said it. She really meant it, too, but the idea of Mary killing anybody was funny. A soft kid like her couldn’t hurt a fly.

Anyway, she was getting worried and that’s what I wanted. I fixed up a date with her for the day after tomorrow and then I went downtown.

The first thing I did, I went into the Public Library and looked up a book on kidnapping. They had one there with about a dozen stories in it, true stories, on the Lindbergh case and a lot of other ones, even that last one down south where they got $600,000 for ransom money.

I stayed in the reading room all afternoon, just going through that book. I went out to supper and came back again and finished it up. I didn’t go to work—one day more wouldn’t kill them back at the shop. I wanted to check on all these cases, see where they made their mistakes. And I found plenty.

Every time I ran across something, I made kind of a mental note on it, to think it over later. I got a lot of dope on how they got the ransom money, and how the police and the FBI operated. Most of all, I was looking to see how these guys finally got caught.

Almost every time it was the same thing. They went on the lam the minute they had the dough, and sooner or later somebody spotted them from their descriptions and picked them up. And they got drunk and waved all this moola around. Stuff like that was stupid, just plain stupid.

The next day I goofed around in the park for a while until it was time to go to work. It was a nice warm day, all the leaves were out on the trees, and the grass had turned green. I sat down on a bench and took it easy for a while.

Some guys came along on motorcycles, then, and parked near some bushes. They had maybe two or three of these six-packs of beer along, and they sprawled out on the grass, drinking it and horsing around. They were a lot younger than I was; just kids, twenty-one or twenty-two, thereabouts.

Seeing them made me think back to the time I clouted the old man. It was about a motorcycle, too—a second-hand one, only cost $125, but it was a Harley-Davidson and the guy who owned it got thrown off on his head. That’s what killed him, a concussion, but the motorcycle was in good condition. His folks wanted to get rid of it.

Anyhow, I wanted that motorcycle like I never wanted anything before. I was only a punk sophomore in High School, but some of the older guys, the seniors, had this motorcycle club and they were really sharp. Sharp according to the way kids think, I mean. They wore these leather jackets with the gold and silver studs on them, and black pants and boots, and they all had black uniform caps and goggles.

And they’d go out in the country and buy beer, and they always had these babes riding the back of the seat, dressed the same way. You know how it is in High School, some of the babes put out and some won’t—but the best ones, they went for these motorcycles. I heard about some real parties they had. Anyhow, it was a big deal. Everybody in school knew about it and the guys who had motorcycles were the big shots.

You think my old man would cough up the dough for this second-hand one, though? Not on your life. He was such a stingy old guy, he almost had a stroke when I asked him. All he could do was read the riot act about why didn’t I study more and get better marks. How hard it was for him since my old lady died, and how he worked night and day to keep me and my kid sister Genevieve going.

As if I didn’t know he was always hanging around down at the tavern on the corner, getting his shoes full every night. He spent plenty money there, and I knew it.

Oh, he made me sick, but I didn’t let on. That summer when school was out, I got me a job working over at the lumber yard, and by fall I saved up close to two hundred dollars.

Then I went and told him I was going to buy the motorcycle with my own dough. He had another fit, and said no. But I went over to these people anyway with the cash. Only I found out you had to have your parents sign for you if you were a minor.

So I went back and asked again, real nice. And I told him how bad I wanted one and everything. I even offered to give him the other seventy-five. But he said he had that coming anyway, and it was about time I figured on paying board—and I should give him the money, he’d take care of it and put it in the bank for me.

Then we had it out, and I conked him with a Schlitz bottle, and I got the hell out of there.