The Kidnapper (2 page)

I went out and got two cokes and brought them back, and she gave me a kind of funny look, but she said, “Thank you,” and took a coke. And after that she had some popcorn, and we got to talking, and it was easy.

By the time I got her dated for supper and out of there, I had all the dope. Her name was Mary Adams, and she was a maid, and she had Sundays off. Her folks lived up north someplace, but she stayed at the place she worked, out on Shore Point where all the big shots live. She was supposed to meet her girl friend at the show, but the girl friend got sick or something and called it off. So she came alone, because there was nothing else to do.

I figured I could show her something else to do. And I played it right. All through supper I was a good little boy. With my blue suit on and all, she could of taken me for a guy who worked downtown in an office—or a bank, maybe. She was the timid kind, and I didn’t want to scare her off.

It worked. After supper I asked her if maybe she’d like to go out dancing, and she said no, she wasn’t dressed. But I told her I knew a place where they had a juke-box and it didn’t matter.

“Not a tavern,” she said. “I don’t go to taverns.”

“Well, it’s a sort of tavern, yes. But mostly people just go there to dance.”

In a pig’s hinder they went there to dance, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I just wanted to get her inside.

Well, we went there and we danced. I got her to switch to rum and cokes, by letting her taste mine so she could see it wasn’t strong or anything. The way the stuff hit her was something. I guess she was telling the truth when she said she never drank.

But she was drinking now, and out on the dance-floor we were getting better acquainted every minute. At first she told me about her boy friend, some guy she used to go around with up north before she came down here to work. He was in Korea now. They used to go dancing a lot together.

“But you know something? You’re a better dancer than Ken. He—oh, I don’t know—the way he held me, you’d think I was going to break.”

She’d break, all right, but that didn’t stop me from holding her.

Then I wished I had a car. That’s what cars are for, when you get ready to operate with a dame like this one who hasn’t been around.

But I didn’t have a car.

That was a hell of a note, because I was beginning to get the score on this Mary Adams. This boy friend of hers, this Ken, hadn’t made the grade with her. I could tell. And from her way of talking, I could see she was scared of a lot of things—drinking, and smoking, and getting picked up by strange men. Two or three times she told me, “You know, I can’t help feeling funny. I never did anything like this before.” Of course they all pull that, but with her it was true.

Then I thought of Specs. He had this heap of his, but he never drove it much. Maybe he’d be home tonight—and he only lived three blocks away or so.

I parked Mary down at our table and said, “Excuse me, will you? I have to make a phone call.”

That was all right with her. So I beat it over to Specs’ and he was home, all right. I didn’t have any trouble. He gave me the keys and he wouldn’t even take the fiver I offered him.

“Just so you bring it back before morning,” he said.

I promised and thanked him and got out of there in a hurry. In ten minutes I was back with Mary, and in twenty I was driving her home—she thought.

There’s a beach just before you get to Shore Point, with a big parking space. The cops don’t come around there very often at night, and I knew you could drive even further in back of the regular parking space and hit a gravel drive right inside the woods. That’s where we went.

Even now, it’s hard for me to figure out the way I felt about Mary. I don’t go for this love crap. The big thing about a woman is the way she can make you feel, so you’re just crazy to get at her and have her. And if she’s really good, maybe you’ll keep on wanting to have her again, for a long time.

Well, I was crazy to get at Mary, that night. But there was something else, too. She was such a big overgrown kid; she wasn’t fat, or even plump, but she had those dimples and her arms were round like a little girl’s arms, and she looked at you with her big eyes as if she didn’t know what would happen next, but trusted you. That was it. She didn’t fight me, even after she figured out what I was going to do. She just, well, surrendered. Like they say in the popular songs.

Of course, I was seeing to it that she got her kicks, too. And that helped. But she just let go, and that was the big thing. None of this, “Please—don’t!” business. No scratching or fighting back. She just let go. And that did something to me, because I knew I had really found what I’d been wanting for a long, long time.

The way I’ve got it figured out, there’s only two kinds of women. There’s one kind, the ordinary kind like the dame I shacked up with who had this motel. The kind who goes for you and then after a while takes you for granted. The kind who thinks she’s pretty hot stuff, and thinks everything is coming to her. That’s the kind of woman most guys marry nowadays.

But there’s still some of the other kind, if you can find them. The kind I mean is like the kind in this song,
My Man,
or whatever the hell it’s called. You know, where she sings about what a sonofabitch the guy is, how he beats her and everything, but she can’t help it because she loves him.

That’s the other kind. The best kind, for me.

Out at Shore Point, that night, I found out what Mary Adams was. I had to hurt her, it was the first time, but she loved it.

And that’s how I got my woman.

Chapter Three

M
onday night, back at work, Specs started to ask me questions.

“How come you walked out on me Saturday night?” he wanted to know.

“You don’t catch me paying for it,” I told him. “Hell, I went downtown Sunday and picked me up some real stuff.”

“You did, huh? Is that why you wanted to borrow the car?”

“Sure. And let me tell you, that old back seat of yours really got a workout.”

“Honest?”

“What’s the matter with you, don’t you believe me?” I went ahead and told him all about it, then.

“And what do you know?” I said. “I gave her my phone number at the rooming house, and this noon she was calling me up already, asking please could she come over. Could she come over? Boy, I had her up in my room right up until four, I was almost late for work.”

“But how could she get off?” Specs asked. “I thought you said she was a maid or something.”

“Of course she’s a maid. Works for some rich bugger and his wife, Warren, out in Shore Point. But they have this kid, see, about four years old, and Mary takes her to a nursery school. She doesn’t have to call for her until four and so she generally bums around downtown or does shopping for the family in the afternoon. Only from now on, she’s got better ways of spending her spare time.”

“I don’t see how you do it,” Specs said. “Nothing like that ever happens to me.”

“Things don’t happen,” I told him. “You got to make them happen. Trouble with you, you just sit around and wish. Me, I figure out a plan. You can get anything you want if you know how to go after it.”

“All right, you guys, break it up.” Cutrelli came down the line and gave me a dirty look. I went back to work, then. I didn’t let Cutrelli bother me because I was feeling pretty good.

It was kind of funny, in a way—me telling Specs about how you plan if you want to get something. Because he was the guy who owned the car and had a couple grand stashed away in the bank, and I was just goofing around.

But what I told him was the truth, really. I knew it. You can get what you go after if you really sit down and figure out the right way, and then work it through. Trouble with me, up to now, was I never wanted to put in the work. But I knew I could think about a problem and come up with the answer whenever I felt like it. I always had what you call an analytical mind. I never stop thinking.

Even with Mary, that first week, I was using my head. We’d lay there in my room, afternoons—the landlady was an old bag, Mrs. Delehanty, she always had a bottle of that Jewish wine in her room and she didn’t give a damn whether school kept or not. So we’d lay there and talk, and I kept asking questions.

“What kind of people are they, the ones you work for?”

“Oh, they treat me real nice. Mrs. Warren gave me this dress, she wears the same size I do, only she has so many clothes she doesn’t know what to do with them all. You should see it, Steve—two great big closets full of clothes, and a mink coat and I don’t know what all.”

“Lots of money, huh?”

“Well, Mr. Warren’s the president of the Acme Trust, you know that. And I guess he owns most of Levitt-Cooper. That’s that big knitting mill.”

“He around much?”

“Why, he takes trips to New York about once a month and you know—” She sat up. “Oh, Steve, what do you want to talk about them for?”

“Just interested.”

“Kiss me.”

“In a minute.”

“Please.”

I batted her hand down. “I told you just a minute. I don’t like it when you interrupt me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She was, too. Boy, I could wind her around my little finger.

“Mrs. Warren has a lot of clothes,” I said. “I suppose she goes in for jewelry and stuff, too.”

“I’ll say. There’s this fancy necklace she wears to parties—it’s like a choker, sort of all diamonds. Real ones, too, not imitation. And she has a bracelet to match that she got for their fifth anniversary, and about a dozen rings.”

“Say, do these people ever go away together? Like say on a vacation?”

“I guess so. I only been there since September, you know, but last winter they were all set to go to Mexico only Shirley Mae got diphtheria.”

“Shirley Mae? Oh, yeah, the kid.”

“You should see her, Steve, honestly, she’s so cute! Some day you can walk over to school with me and call for her. She calls me Mary—”

“Shut up. I was asking about vacations.”

“I heard Mrs. Warren say something the other day about going to California this summer, after school lets out. Gee, I was so excited, I figured maybe they’d take me along. But that was before I met you.”

“You don’t want to go now, eh?”

“And be away from you? Steve, I’d
die.”

I kissed her. She had it coming.

“Oh, darling.” She sure could make a production number out of it. “I never knew it could be like this. If you only knew how lonesome I used to get. And now—”

“You like this, eh?”

“Can’t you tell?” She pulled my head down. “Steve. Do you love me?”

“What do you think?”

“I just want to hear you say it.”

“I’d rather do it than talk about it.”

“Just once, Steve. Please.”

I pulled my head away.

“What’s the matter, darling? Don’t you feel well?”

“I feel all right. It’s only that I’m getting damned sick of listening to all this romance crap. Where the hell you think you are, in the movies or something?”

“Don’t be angry, darling. I didn’t know it made you nervous. Only a woman kind of likes to be told that—”

“I got my own way of telling things.” I reached over and grabbed her. “Like this.”

Catch me telling some dumb broad that I love her! I could of crowned her, except that I was using my head. I was getting what I wanted from her, and not just the way you think, either. Those questions were beginning to tell me what I wanted to know.

That’s what I call using my head. Asking her about the setup there where she worked. I was beginning to get a pretty smart idea.

So other times, I found out more stuff. The way the house was laid out, when their chauffeur came to work, how often they had people over nights. I got more of a line on this Warren guy, too—Raymond E. Warren, his full name was. He collected old coins for a hobby. He used to get high about once every two weeks down at the Athletic Club. He wouldn’t eat scrambled eggs. Oh, I learned a lot.

Some of it wasn’t important—I should give a damn if he ate scrambled eggs or not, or collected Indian head pennies or whatever.

But what was important was how the house was laid out. And when they were going to California. And if the place would be empty this summer. And whether or nor Mrs. Warren was going to take all her ice with her.

You can see what I was driving at now, what I mean when I say I never stop thinking.

I’d never pulled off a house job before, but from the way this thing shaped up, it might be plenty easy. The right way to work it wouldn’t be to try crashing in there some night. The right way would be if they left Mary home this summer while they were gone. And I just got in the habit of dropping in.

That would be the perfect setup. One fast haul and I could be on my way to Toledo. There’s two or three good diamond fences in Toledo I heard about.

Of course, I wasn’t set on the job, yet. I’d have to figure a way of working it so that Mary stayed home. I’d have to check and double-check on the ice being there. I’d have to get the whole deal set up in my mind so there wouldn’t be a chance of anything going haywire.

By the end of the week, I was certain I could swing it. She’d stay here—and I even thought of a way for her to make it perfect. Along about the time school closed she’d start complaining about not feeling so well. Dizzy spells, stuff like that. And she’d go to a doctor, and he’d tell her she had to rest for a couple of months.

So chances were, if I coached her on just how to pull it, the Warrens would fall for her act. And she’d stay on at the house, alone, while they went to California.

I wouldn’t have to monkey around, then, making diagrams of rooms and all that crap. I’d just walk in and take over.

Nights, after work, I sat in my room figuring it out. I even got the bus schedules for Toledo; then I thought what the hell, if it came to pulling the job I’d buy me a car first. That way I’d make my deal in Toledo and go barreling right down to Florida.

It was a great idea, all right. Only trouble was, one afternoon in my room, Mary had news for me.

“Steve, you know something?”