“Let’s take the boy back,” Kathy said softly.
“Now hold it a minute. Let’s just hold it one goddamn minute. We’re not—”
“He’s the wrong boy, Eddie,” Kathy said plaintively. “Why stick your neck out? What can you gain?”
“Now, look,” Sy said, “we’re in this together, right, Eddie boy? Fifty-fifty, right? So let’s calm down, okay. We can’t turn this kid loose.” He paused, looking first at Kathy and then to her husband. “He knows us, for Pete’s sake. He can lead the bulls right to us!”
“Who said we were turning him loose?” Eddie asked.
“Nobody said so,” Sy said quickly, “but don’t even let the idea get in your head. This is a sweet setup. Let’s not ruin it because a dame gets hysterical.”
“I’m just trying to figure, that’s all,” Eddie said.
“Okay, nothing wrong with that,” Sy said. “But figure right! Our plan calls for two guys.”
“I know. I know.”
“Okay. And we’ve got five hundred grand invested in this kid, remember that!”
“You’ve got nothing invested but a little time,” Kathy said. “What have his parents got invested in him? What have—”
“Time is right, baby. You know how much time we’d do on a kidnaping rap?
Provided we don’t get the chair? This ain’t busting into a goddamn cash register!”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Kathy, he’s right. We got to hold the kid. At least until…”
“We don’t have to! We could turn him loose right this minute!”
“Sure, and go straight to jail!” Sy said. He turned to Eddie. Seductively, he said, “Your share of this is two hundred and fifty thousand bucks, Eddie. You know how much money that is?”
“Who wants it?” Kathy shouted. “We don’t need it!”
“Sure, she don’t need it. Lady Rockefeller. Wearing a sweater with torn elbows. She don’t need it!”
“I don’t!”
“Well, I do,” Eddie said softly. “That’s all the money in the world. Why shouldn’t I have it?” His voice rose. “Am I supposed to be a two-bit punk for the rest of my life? What’s wrong with making a grab for that kind of loot? I want it! I want that money.”
“Then don’t get talked out of it,” Sy said quickly.
“What the hell, was I born with a Smoke Rise estate like this kid? What did I get, Kathy? South Nineteenth Street and David Avenue. An old man who played the numbers, and an old lady who was a rummy!”
“You can’t blame this boy for—”
“I’m not blaming nobody. I’m saying I had nothing, and I still got nothing—even after all the lousy cheap stickups. Don’t I ever get nothing? Ever? When the hell do I get my chance?”
“This is your chance, Eddie. Turn the boy loose. Then we’ll…”
“Then we’ll what? Get to Mexico? On what? Hope? Love? And do what when we get there? The same thing I’m doing here?”
“A quarter of a million bucks, boy,” Sy said. “It’ll buy all the radio equipment you need, all the schooling. Man, you can own a whole damn radio station!”
“No, just… just a place on the beach—for me and Kathy—where… where I can set up… you know… with the ocean, and maybe a little boat, I don’t know.” Eddie turned to Kathy, and she saw something in his eyes she had never seen there before, a look bordering on tears. “But mine, Kathy. Mine. A place I could own.”
“And a Caddy, man,” Sy said, “with them fins sticking up in the air like sharks! And fancy clothes, and a mink for the bride, how’s that? Blond mink! And a string of pearls a mile long!”
“If only…”
“Anything, Eddie! Anything you want, boy! The world on a string! A quarter of a million bucks!”
“We got to go ahead with this, Kathy. We got to!”
“Now you’re talking,” Sy said.
“But… but he’s the wrong boy!” Kathy said.
“No. No,” Eddie answered. “He… he ain’t the wrong boy.”
“Eddie, you know he is. Why…”
“When you stop to figure it,” Sy said softly, “what difference does it make?”
The room went suddenly still.
“What?” Eddie said.
“Whether we got the wrong kid or not.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Simple. We tried for the King kid, didn’t we? Okay, E for effort. Maybe we goofed. What difference does it make? We want five hundred grand. Does a lousy chauffeur have that kind of dough?”
“No, of course he—”
“All right, who’s got the dough?” Sy waited for an answer and then gave it himself. “King, that’s who. Okay. We call King again. We tell him we don’t care whether this is his kid or his chauffeur’s kid or even his goddamn gardener’s kid. We want the money!”
“We’ll ask King for it?”
“Who we gonna ask? The chauffeur?”
Eddie shook his head. “He won’t pay, Sy.”
“He’ll pay, all right.”
“No.” Eddie kept shaking his head. “He won’t. Maybe Kathy’s right. Maybe we ought to…”
“Because if he don’t pay,” Sy said, “this little boy here is going to be in a goddamn big heap of trouble.” He paused and grinned at Jeff. “And I don’t think Mr. King would want blood on his hands.”
* * * *
7
When Lieutenant Peter Byrnes left the squadroom of the 87th Precinct, the telephones were jangling as if the place were an illegal racing room taking bets before the Kentucky Derby. He walked down the corridor to the end of the hall and then down the steps leading to the muster room. He nodded at Sergeant Dave Murchison, who sat behind the high desk, and then went out into the street, where a squad car and a driver were waiting for him. It was damn cold outside. Byrnes wrapped his muffler about his throat and pulled his fedora down more tightly on his head, as if this would serve as a buffer against the cold blasts which drove across Grover Park to lash the grimy stone front of the precinct building. The patrolman got out of the car, ran to the sidewalk and opened the door for Byrnes. Byrnes nodded, slid onto the seat and thrust his hands into his coat pockets. He was a man built with all the compactness of a traveling iron, hard as steel, capable of giving off tremendous heat in the press of any situation, adaptable to the myriad currents that moved in the precinct under his command.
“Where to, sir?” the patrolman asked, getting in behind the wheel.
“Smoke Rise,” Byrnes said. “The kidnaping.”
The kidnaping. Even the word rankled Byrnes. He had a grown son of his own, and he knew the torments and thrills of raising a child, and he did not hold with that part of the penal law which specified “Provided, however, that the jury upon returning a verdict of guilty against a person upon whom the death penalty would otherwise be imposed, may recommend imprisonment of the convicted person, in lieu of death.” Nor did he hold with the further wording of Section 1250, to wit: “Provided, further, that notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section with respect to punishment by death, if the kidnaped person be released and returned alive prior to the opening of the trial, the death penalty shall not apply nor be imposed…”