The Kidnapper Read online

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.

  I never went back. And I never bought me a motorcycle, either. But you know, sometimes I wonder how things would of turned out if my old man had been different and let me have it.

  Maybe I’d never of hit the road, or got tossed in the clink a couple times, or pulled any funny stuff. Maybe I’d of just had my fun until I got out of school and taken a steady job and settled down.

  I thought about it, sitting there in the park, and then I figured to hell with it. I didn’t want a motorcycle any more—these punks were just a bunch of jerkies anyway, with their imitation soldier suits and their lousy beer. Riding down the streets and making a lot of noise trying to get people to look at them. Picking up tramps for a quickie and thinking it was a big deal. Kid’s idea of how to be an operator.

  No, I was better off, right now, just sitting here and working on my plan. That was the important thing. If I could only figure it right, I’d really be set for life. None of this leather jacket and six-pack stuff for me.

  No reason why I couldn’t end up with a classy joint of my own, with a couple of johns on every floor. And drinking off the top shelf, anything I wanted, as much as I wanted. And it didn’t have to stop there. Once I got my hands on a decent stake, hit it off for Florida or one of those islands in the West Indies or East Indies, whichever they are, I could maybe set myself up in something big. Plenty of chances to make real dough, if you have a stake to start out with. And with my brains, I could handle it.

  Motorcycles, hell. Those guys kept their brains next to their saddles.

  I got out of the park, had me some supper, and went over to the shop.

  Cutrelli caught me right after I came in.

  “What the hell’s the big idea, Collins?”

  “I been sick, I had the flu.”

  “I know that. I called your landlady a couple of times, asked you to call back.”

  “She never gave me no message. She’s a lush, canned up all the time—”

  “Who’s your doctor?”

  “I didn’t have a doctor.”

  “Well, how the hell do you expect to fill out a form for sick-leave benefits without a doctor’s statement?”

  “I never thought about it. I was sick, I tell you, I had a fever, I didn’t get out of bed for five days—”

  “You look all right now. And you were well enough to go downtown yesterday. Why weren’t you here last night?”

  “What do you mean, I was well enough to—?”

  “I called yesterday afternoon again, that’s how I know. And I heard about this girl friend of yours who comes up to see you all the time. You sure you were sick, Collins? Or just—”

  “Lay off, will you? I’m back, what’re you squawking about?”

  “Well, you’re not getting any compensation. I’ll see to that. And next time you pull a stunt like this, you’re through. Get me?”

  “All right.”

  It wasn’t all right, but I didn’t want to force a showdown now. The time would come, soon enough.

  I went back to work, and Specs was waiting for me.

  “Hi, Steve, how you feeling? Boy, am I ever glad to see you! You know, I was coming over on Sunday, only I called first and your landlady she said you was still pretty low. Did she tell you?”

  “No. But thanks, anyway.”

  “What was the matter with you?”

  “Just flu or something. I’m all right now.”

  “Well, I missed you.”

  “Thanks, Leo. I missed you, too.”

  He liked that, when I called him Leo instead of Specs. From now on I wanted him to like a lot of things, because I had plans for him.

  That night, after work, we went out to eat and I said to him, “Hey, Leo, you doing anything tomorrow night?”

  “Friday? No.”

  “Well, how’d you like to go out with me? Sort of a celebration, seeing that I’m well and besides, it’s my birthday.”

  “Your birthday? Congratulations, Steve. Say, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.” That was true, but it wasn’t really my birthday.

  “All right, Steve, sure. Where you wanna go?”

  “Just leave that to me. We’re going to have ourselves a ball.”

  The next afternoon I went over to this crummy joint where Specs had taken me that Saturday night. I talked to the old biddy that ran the place and I fixed things up.

  I fixed things up for Specs for all night, with that dizzy blonde and also the redhead. Anything he wanted, including all the stuff he could drink. Even a bottle of champagne.

  It cost me an even hundred bucks, but it was worth it if it worked. And it was worth it to Specs. The guy almost went crazy the way those two floozies worked on him—they had him thinking he was the answer to a maiden’s prayer. And he got higher than a kite.

  That was good, because he never noticed I wasn’t drinking much, or going upstairs either. Specs had it all to himself, and it was the biggest deal he ever had.

  Afterwards, in the morning, he passed out and I drove him home and put him to bed. He lay there with a smile on his face, and when I saw that smile I
knew I had him. From now on he’d be easy to handle.

  They didn’t put that in any of the kidnapping stories I read, but that was the way I got Specs for my driver.

  Chapter Five

  “Oh, Steve, you’re so wonderful. I missed you so much.”

  “I can tell that.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care about anything, as long as I can be with you like this.”

  “Sure.”

  “When you weren’t here yesterday, I didn’t know what to think—I almost went crazy worrying.”

  “I had to see about my sick benefits.”

  “Steve, I been thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “You know, since last September, I saved up nine hundred dollars. You got any money saved?”

  “Sure. I got a little.”

  “Steve, why don’t we get married?”

  I sat up.

  “Don’t get sore, I was just thinking about it, how swell it would be.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t have to worry any. I wouldn’t be any trouble, you know that. I mean, I wouldn’t care whether we got a house right away, or a lot of furniture. I wouldn’t care if we lived in a tent, just so we could be together. All the time, like this.”

  “This is what you go for, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m not ashamed, I love you so much I’d do anything—I always used to think it was so awful and everything, but now I know. Because I love you, and I’m not alone any more.” She ran her hands through my hair; that was another thing about Mary, she couldn’t keep her hands off you for five minutes.

  “So how about it, Steve? I meant it, what I said, that you wouldn’t have to worry. I wouldn’t ever nag at you, you know what I mean. If you wanted to go out and have a couple of drinks, or stuff like that. And I could keep on working here, it’s a good job—or if you wanted to go someplace else, I could get a job there. Why not, Steve?”

  I looked at her. “I’ll tell you why not, Mary. Because I’m sick of this penny-ante stuff, that’s why. I’m sick of this job, sick of this room, sick of this lousy stinking town. If I had the dough, I’d marry you in a minute. You know that. You know how I feel about you.”

  “You really feel that way, then why won’t you marry me?”

  “Because of the dough, I told you. When I get married, I don’t want my wife to work at some lousy maid’s job, talking nice to a lot of creeps, taking orders from them. Hell, I want my wife to have maids of her own—and a big house, nice clothes, maybe some jewelry like this Mrs. Warren. That’s what I want you to have, Mary.”

  “But, Steve, I don’t want to wait that long. Why, Mr. Warren’s almost fifty—he worked years and years to get that factory going, and even then it wouldn’t have turned out, I guess, except that he inherited the bank to begin with.”

  “I know all that,” I told her. “The way things are, I could work until I was a hundred and I’d still be a punk. You can’t get rich on a job nowadays, what with taxes and all.”

  “Then what’re you going to do?”

  “I got ideas.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No. You’re not the type, Mary. You’re—oh, let’s not talk about it.”

  “But I want to talk about it. You can tell me, Steve. I wouldn’t care. It’s something—dishonest—isn’t it?”

  “See? That’s the way you think. Dishonest. No, let’s skip it.”

  “Please, Steve. I won’t be angry. I’d do anything for you, anything.”

  “All right. I figured things out in my own mind. There’s only one way to get ahead in this world, and that’s to take what you want.”

  “You mean stealing?”

  “There you go again. Right away I’m a crook or something.” I turned away.

  “I’m sorry. Please tell me, Steve.”

  “Stealing’s out. That’s a sucker’s way. And besides, it’s too easy to hurt somebody. I’m not the type who wants to hurt anyone.”

  “I know that, Steve,” she said. That was a laugh, because she had these big bruises on her arms and shoulders where I’d grabbed her today.

  “So that leaves only two other ways. One way is out—that’s the way guys like your friend Mr. Warren operates.”

  “But he’s not—”

  “A criminal? Don’t be afraid to say it, Mary, it’s only a word. A fancy word that guys like Warren dream up to pin on the little fellow who tries to get ahead. Anytime a little fellow takes dough from a big shot, he’s a criminal. But when a big shot takes dough, he’s a smart business man. He’s got the law on his side because he makes the law to begin with. Like Warren and the bank. You know where a bank makes money, Mary? From these mortgages, where they lend money and charge stiff interest. They lend money to people to buy houses, cars, apartment buildings, businesses. And lots of times they know the guy who borrows it will never make it. So they just take interest until he gets in a tight spot. And then what do they do? They foreclose on him. They take away the house, and the car, and the apartment or whatever, and turn around and sell it. Or they fix up a dummy corporation and run the business themselves. Get into real estate. Or take a factory that would make money and operate it.”

  “But that isn’t wrong.”

  “Oh, isn’t it? Well listen to this—I happen to know how Mr. Warren got hold of that knitting mill. These two guys, Levitt and Cooper, started the business back in the depression. They were hard up and they went to Warren’s bank to borrow some dough. Warren gave it to them on a mortgage, just like I explained it, see? Well, along came the war.

  “Levitt and Cooper had been paying a good stiff rate of interest to the bank, and now they had a chance to really make some money. Government was ready to give them a big order on some G.I. equipment, only they had to put in some new machinery if they wanted to land the contract.

  “So they went to the bank and tried to borrow some more. Warren told them no. Then they went to another bank, but you think that Warren hadn’t gone around and slipped this other bank the word? They’re all in it together, these big shots, thick as thieves. So the second bank said they were sorry, no soap. And Levitt and Cooper’s mortgage ran out, and the bank wouldn’t renew, and Warren took the factory. The minute he got it he bought the bank mortgage, paid it up himself, and shoved some dough into equipment. He got the order, and he was set. He made a fortune out of the war and after. And Levitt went out to Colorado and died of a stroke, and Cooper still works at the factory, some flunky job, while Warren sits up there in his big house and plays God. Tell me that isn’t crooked?”

  “I never knew all that, Steve.”

  “Why do you think Mrs. Warren is running around dripping with diamonds? Because she won a Sunday School medal or something? Do you think she ever did anything to deserve a mink coat, stuff like that? Probably never did a day’s work in her life—but you have to wait on her hand and foot, and all you get is forty-five dollars a week, and she thinks that’s a fortune.”

  “It’s good wages for a maid, Steve. After all, I don’t do much except look after Shirley Mae, and—”

  “Sure. You look after the kid for her, don’t you? You see that she’s dressed warm enough for school, and gets her milk at lunch, and goes to bed on time. And Mrs. Warren horses around wearing diamonds at parties while you sit home and play babysitter. You’re more of a mother to that kid than she is.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong there, darling. She loves Shirley Mae. They both do. You should see the fuss they make over her! Mrs. Warren can’t have any more children, she had an operation, and they’re so crazy about her.”

  “I know that, too. And that’s what I been thinking about.”

  “I don’t get it, Steve.”

  “Remember when I said there’s two ways to make money? Warren’s way—big business—which is just a lot of cheating and stealing under another name. Ruining guys, making them suffer. Everything legal, but crooked just the same.

  “That’s one way. Th
e other way is my way. That’s to make guys like Warren suffer.”

  “How, Steve?”

  “That’s a good question, Mary. I thought about it a lot. I want a lot of dough in a hurry. I don’t want to harm anyone, hurt them, to get it. And what really counts is to be sure of getting away with the scheme.” I took a deep breath. “Well, I figured out what to do.”

  I looked her straight in the eye. “Mary, you and I could have ourselves a couple of hundred grand, just like that, and clear out of here in a month, if you’d go through with it.”

  “Go through with what?”

  “We could go down to Florida, Cuba, anywhere in the world. We could get married and have our honeymoon in Europe. We could spend the rest of our lives doing whatever we felt like, whenever we felt like it. If you’re willing.”

  “You’re serious, you really mean it?”

  “Mary, I’m talking about you and me, getting married. I wouldn’t kid about a thing like that. We can do it, and we can be set for life, without harming anyone. And it won’t ruin Warren, he can spare the dough.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Suppose somebody put the snatch on Shirley Mae? What do you suppose the Warrens would pay to get her back?”

  “Steve, why—that’s kidnapping!”

  She was telling me.

  “You couldn’t do a thing like that, you can’t mean it!”

  “Why not? I’ve got it all figured out. There isn’t a chance in the world for anything to go wrong. And nobody gets hurt, the kid’ll be all right, the whole thing’s clean as a whistle.”

  “No, I don’t believe it, you wouldn’t—”

  “I thought you were so hot to get married?”

  “But Steve, that’s awful! Why, the way I feel about Shirley Mae, it’s just like she was my own.”

  “How do you feel about me?”

  “No, Steve. No, I couldn’t. I’d rather starve.”

  I got up.

  “Steve, where you going?”

  “Nowhere. Just wanted to give you plenty of room.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can get dressed and get out of here, and start starving. You and I, we’d never hit it off, Mary. We don’t have the same ideas. I thought I was explaining things so you’d understand, but I guess you can’t. So let’s not fool ourselves. You want one kind of life, I want another.”