“Well?” Fay frowned at me. “Damn it, say something! Do something!”
“Turn the radio on. Get the newscast.”
“Turn the radio on!”
“There ought to be something about this,” I said. “About the boy. I think I know what’s the matter, but I want to make sure.”
She turned it on. A minute or two later Uncle Bud arrived from town with an armload of newspapers, so we got the word both ways at once. And it was just what I’d thought. I was right about the boy, and I wished to God that I wasn’t.
I covered him up good. Then, I got a spoon and a cup, and fed him a few sips of lukewarm water. That didn’t seem to help much, but it was about all I could do. I turned the light off and went into the living room.
Fay was working on a water glass full of whiskey. Uncle Bud, who also had a drink, was settled back in a chair taking things easy. He’d been all pepped up when he arrived. The family had got the ransom note, and they’d asked the police to stay out of the deal—to “cooperate,” as the newspapers put it. Just to keep hands off, and let them pay the ransom and get the boy back. And it looked like the police were going to let them have their way.
I sat down, looking from Fay to Uncle Bud. He wiped the pleased grin off his face, turned on a sympathetic frown.
“Diabetes,” he said. “Now, that’s bad, that is. Who’d’ve ever thought he’d have a thing like that?”
I could think of a couple of people who might have thought it. Who damned well ought to have known about it. Because, hell, Uncle Bud knew everything else about the kid, didn’t he? He and Fay had been kicking the kidnapping around for months, and he’d been digging into the boy’s and the family’s background even before that. So why wouldn’t he have found out about this?
But—well, maybe he hadn’t. If the kid was taken care of properly, if he was kept on a strict diet and got the right amount of rest and exercise and so on, the disease wouldn’t bother him much. He wouldn’t need too much in the way of actual medical treatment. Then, maybe his family was touchy on the subject—like some people are touchy about anything in the way of sickness or weakness—and they’d tried to keep the trouble hushed up.
It could have been that way; the family keeping quiet, the boy not too bad off. Anyway, regardless of whether Fay and Uncle Bud had known or not, it didn’t change anything. And there was no point in trying to pin them down.
“Yes, sir,” said Uncle Bud. “Yes, sir, it’s sure a shame, a nice little boy like that. I guess you know quite a bit about the stuff, huh, Kid?”
I nodded. “People in mental institutions have it the same as anyone else. They don’t always get treated for it, but they have it.”
“Yeah? Now, that’s sure a shame. I don’t suppose you—uh—you wouldn’t have any ideas about what we ought to do?”
Fay laughed and choked on her drink. I said I had a pretty good idea of what we ought to do, but I didn’t have the stuff to do it with.
“I’ve worked as an orderly in several places. They never have enough help, so when they find a patient that’s intelligent, they—”
Fay let out another whoop. I looked at her, not saying anything. Just sitting and staring until she was all through laughing. She cut it off pretty fast. She raised her drink, holding it up in front of her face, and I went on staring a moment longer.
“The boy’s in a diabetic coma,” I explained. “It isn’t a bad one, and I think he’ll pull through it. I think he can be pulled through it. But if he is, if we get him through this, he’s practically a cinch to slide into another one. And as weak and run down as he is…”
“Yeah,” Uncle Bud frowned. “I guess all that starch and sugar was pretty bad for him, huh?”
“It’s a wonder it didn’t kill him.”
“Well, maybe it will yet!” Fay snatched up the bottle, refilled the water glass. “Maybe I’ll get him next time! Why, the h-hell don’t you say what you mean?”
“Now, now.” Uncle Bud shook his head. “So what do you drink, Kid?”
“He needs insulin. He’ll die if he doesn’t get it.”
“Yeah? Well, let’s see. I know a few places, drug stores where they ain’t too particular if they know a guy. But to do it now, when it’s in all the papers and the heat’s on…It’d be asking for trouble, really begging for it. I’m out in front on this deal, and if the word leaked out…”
He was right. Even someone with a prescription would probably be checked on now.
“I just don’t see what we can do, Kid. I don’t hardly know what we could do if we had the stuff. I mean, you’ve been around people with the disease—worked with the doctors—but the papers and radio don’t say how much of the insulin the boy’s been getting.”
“They couldn’t. The dosage would vary according to his condition. I’d have to kind of feel around for what he needed, start off with the minimum dose and work up.”
“Uh-huh. I see…”
He went on asking questions, sort of aimlessly it seemed to me. Not paying too much attention to the answers…He was all for helping the boy, y’know. He loved children, Uncle Bud did. But it looked to him like there was every chance of harming him rather than helping him. After all, I wasn’t a doctor. I just naturally couldn’t be sure of whether I was doing the right thing or not. And with the boy as bad off as he was, just one little wrong move would probably push him over the line.
“You see my point, Kid. And it ain’t that I don’t think you mean well.”
“I see your point,” I said. “I see yours, all right. But maybe you don’t see mine. If there’s no trouble, like we’re all hoping, we don’t need the boy alive. In fact, it’s a lot less risky for us if he isn’t alive. They have to take our word for it that we’re going to return him. We get the money either way; and without him around as evidence—someone we might get caught with, and who’ll be telling all he knows afterwards—we’d be a lot safer. But…”
I broke off for a moment. Because it was hard to talk this way, so cold-blooded and everything. But I figured it was the best way to talk. I didn’t know what was in their minds, whether they were just putting on an act or whether they really didn’t want the boy to die. But I knew that if they did want him dead, they’d see that he was. They’d arrange it somehow sometime. And the only way I could stop them was to prove that it just wouldn’t be smart.
“Go on, Kid,” Uncle Bud nodded. “Of course, I wouldn’t want a nice little boy like that to die. But if we just can’t help it, well, it’s like you say. It would work out pretty nice for us.”
“I didn’t say that. I mean, I said it but I was just pointing out how you might look on it. Me, I don’t look on it that way. That family has half of the money in the state. If they don’t get the boy back, they’ll probably spend every nickel of it running us down. But then—well, suppose things don’t come off as smooth as we hope they will and we got caught. It would sure be a lot better for us if the boy was alive. Even if he wasn’t, if we could just show that we’d done everything we could do for him, it would be a lot better.”
Uncle Bud frowned, chewing his lip. He hesitated, nodded slowly. “Yeah.” He sighed. “I guess you’re right, Kid. We sure got to do what we can, even if it don’t work out right. But how can we get that insulin?”
“Doc Goldman,” I said impatiently. “He comes back to his office at two, and he’s there until five. He doesn’t take any office patients after that time. If someone could call him just before five, get him out on a fake call, I could have a good look around.”
“I get it, I get you, Kid. There wouldn’t be anyone there? You could get in and out all right?”
“Easy. He never locks the place up. I know right where he keeps everything. The chances are he’d never know that anyone had been there.”
“Swell. Well, that settles that then.” He got up and put his glass on the table. “Now, I’m going to be tied up right until about five. I got to keep right on top of this deal, you know, keep in touch with e
verything that’s happening. So I’ll just run along now, and you can come in later.”
“Come in?” said Fay. “How’s he going to get there? You think I’m going to be stuck out here without a car?”
“Why not?” I said. “What do you want with a car?”
“What do you think, stupid? I want to take the tires off and make myself a girdle!”
“But why—”
“She’s right, Kid,” Uncle Bud broke in hastily. “Everything’s going to be jake, but still the little lady’ll feel a lot easier with a car. I know I would. So you come in with me.”
I guessed I probably would, too. Anyway, with Fay dead set on keeping the car, there was no use in arguing about it.
I ran over to the garage and got my coat and tie. He was waiting in his car for me when I came down, and we started for the city.
He’d dumped the station wagon with a salvage dealer pal of his, he said. A guy that bought hot cars and wrecked them for their parts. Of course, he went on casually, he hadn’t been able to get any money for it—only a few bucks, that is. The guy was just trying to be friendly, y’know, just being a pal. So it wouldn’t have been right to take money from him.
I grinned to myself. Kind of embarrassed for him, for Uncle Bud, I mean. Kind of ashamed for him. Here he was, about to pull down a hundred thousand dollars, his share of the ransom, and he couldn’t pass up the smallest chance to chisel someone. It was the way he was made. He’d rather chisel a dollar than earn a hundred.
“That’s the way I am, Kid,” he continued. “I play straight with my pals, and I like to have them play straight with me. Like take us for example. Now, we’ve had our little spats and misunderstandings maybe, but they don’t amount to nothing. We all like and trust each other, we’re pals, y’know. Everything’s on the up and up with us, with no one holding out anything on another one.”
He paused, studying me slyly out of the corner of his eyes. I didn’t say anything, and he went on.
“Now, take that little yarn you told me, Kid. I was kind of hurt at the time, but I know you were just joking. Why, hell you wouldn’t have passed that card I gave you to someone else! You’d be afraid the party might ask you some questions, try to cut himself in maybe. That’s right, ain’t it?” He laughed and nudged me with his elbow. “You were just having a little joke with your old Uncle Bud?”
I shrugged. I still didn’t say anything.
“Well?” he said, his laugh trailing off. “What about it Kid?”
“What about it?” I said.
“Well, uh, what I was saying, dammit. I said you wouldn’t have done it, because you’d be afraid that—that—” He broke off abruptly, his face falling. “Oh,” he said. “The guy ain’t in a position to ask questions, huh? Or maybe you promised him a nice piece of change?”
I shrugged again. He was doing a lot better with the answers than I could.
“But that’s not giving me a fair shake, Kid! Suppose something happens that’s not my fault? I play it straight with you, but someone else pulls something and this guy cracks down on me!”
I still didn’t say anything. He looked at me uncertainly.
“You wouldn’t put me on a spot like that, Kid. You’re a guy that likes to play fair, and you’d have seen it wasn’t fair. You didn’t do it…did you?”
I smiled at him. He waited a moment, and then he grumbled something under his breath. And for the rest of the ride he didn’t have much to say either.
It was two-thirty when he pulled up at a bar on the edge of the business district. He said he’d pick me up there in a couple hours, and I got out and went in.
It was a dingy, dimly lit place with a bar and lunch counter up front and a few pool tables in the back. There were only a couple of customers, and they drifted out while I was having a sandwich and some beer. I bought another beer, picked up an afternoon newspaper from the counter and went over to a booth.
There was a big picture of the boy on the front page. There were pictures of his parents and the playground matron and the chauffeur; practically everyone that could be tied into the case in any way. And just about the whole paper was filled with news of the kidnapping. Or, I should say, stories about it. Because they hadn’t been able to dig up much of anything new.
A ransom note had been received. The kidnappers had demanded a quarter of a million dollars for the boy’s return. How, where—and when—the money was to be paid, “had not been revealed.” The details were a secret between the police and the family.
And, of course, Uncle Bud.
I went through the stories carefully, making sure that I didn’t miss anything. I took them apart word by word, and they still added up to nothing. But for me it was a kind of uncomfortable nothing…The cops wouldn’t reveal the details about the ransom payment, but there could be more than one reason for that. It could be that they just didn’t know any to reveal. Uncle Bud said that they did. He’d said that the family had shown them the ransom note to make sure that they wouldn’t accidentally mix up in the case. Get in the way of the pay-off, you know, and endanger the boy’s life.
That sounded reasonable enough, because the boy wasn’t to be released until twenty-four hours after the money had been paid. The cops might grab the guy at the pay-off, but it was likely to get the boy killed if they did. So—so, it sounded reasonable. It was the way Uncle Bud had planned things, the way he’d explained them to Fay and me, and everything seemed to be going according to plan. So perhaps everything was okay. But I was beginning to have some doubts.
It was Uncle Bud’s job to pick up the money. It was his job to keep track of what the police knew. And if they didn’t know how or where or when the ransom was to be paid—if they were “cooperating” because they had to, it made a nice setup for him. Or even if the cops did know, it was still just about as nice. If they weren’t ready to cooperate yet, he’d just wait until they were.
And only he knew exactly when that would be. Only he knew how much time the Vanderventers had been given to come across. He’d told Fay and me it was seventy-two hours, but it could be less. He could collect the dough one night—tomorrow night, say—and be out of the country the next morning.
I got another beer, and brought it over to the booth. I wondered how, if he was planning a fast one, I could head him off…Demand to pick up the money myself? Uh-uh, I guessed not. He could send me into a police trap. Then, while I was getting bumped off, he could grab the money and skip. He wouldn’t need to worry about that “friend” of mine then. That “friend” couldn’t make him any more trouble than I could.
Fay? Should I wise her up, see if we could work out something together? Uh-uh, again. She might be in on Uncle Bud’s scheme. She might have plans of her own. Anyway, and regardless of whether she was on the level with me or not, it wasn’t safe to tell her anything. Not after she’d turned on me like she had. Not with her boozing like she was. She might do something crazy and dangerous, just for the hell of it.
I didn’t know what I should do. Hell, I didn’t even know whether I should even be thinking about doing anything. Everything was working out like we’d planned, wasn’t it? The only thing that had really changed was me—my mind. I was getting so confused and mixed-up that nothing looked straight to me, and any little thing made me suspicious. Anything or nothing. If things went one way I didn’t like them, and if they went another way I didn’t like them. And—and it had to stop! If it didn’t, if people didn’t stop worrying me, coming at me from every direction, pushing and crowding and…
A band seemed to tighten around my head. I closed my eyes, and for a moment I just wasn’t there. There was nothing but blackness with me floating away on it.
After a while the band got looser, and the blackness faded away. I gulped down the rest of the beer fast. And in a minute or two I was all right again. Or as right as I was going to be.
I lighted a cigarette. I heard the screen door slam, and I started to peer out of the booth. Then, I jerked my head back,
and raised the newspaper up in front of my face. Because it was Uncle Bud, all right; he’d come right on the dot of four-thirty. But he had someone with him—Bert.
14
Uncle Bud was in front. Bert was walking right on his heels, kind of moving him along with his body. The bartender glanced at them casually and went back to polishing glasses. Uncle Bud was looking straight ahead, his face a white blur in the dimness; and Bert was looking straight at the back of Uncle Bud’s neck.
They passed down the length of the bar. They went down the long lane at the side of the pool tables. They reached the rear of the place, and Uncle Bud stopped in front of the rest room door. Bert nudged him. He said something to him, gave him another nudge.
Uncle Bud opened the door. Bert shoved him through it and went in after him.
I was on my feet the moment the door closed. I carried my beer bottle over to the bar, took a step or two toward the front door, then turned around and headed back toward the rear.
Just short of the rest room, I turned and glanced behind me. The bartender was still at his glass-polishing. No one else had come in. I hurried on, walking on the balls of my feet and paused outside the rest room door.
Keeping an eye on the bartender. Listening.
“Cheatin’ bastard!” Bert was saying. “Thought I’d never catch up with you, huh? Well, I’m the last guy you’ll ever chisel! I’m gonna—”
“Naw, naw, B-Bert!” Uncle Bud gave a kind of stuttering gasp. “You got to listen to me! You got to give me a little time! J-just give me—No!”
There was a click—a knife coming open. And a slow scuffing of feet as, I imagined, Bert moved toward him and Uncle Bud backed away.
“Naw, naw!” He gasped again. “A little time B-Bert, j-just give me a little time an’ you’ll get every penny! I swear it, B-B—”
I eased the door open a crack, saw that Bert’s back was toward me. I pulled it open a little further, watching him, watching that long sharp knife in his hand.