“Hey, open up,” Eddie called from outside.
Sy gestured at the door with his head. He pressed the blade of the knife shut and returned the knife to his pocket. Kathy unlocked the door. Eddie came into the room.
“You got your cigarettes, I see,” Sy said, smiling.
“Yeah.” Eddie dragged deeply on the butt. “Gee, it’s nice out. Cold, but real clear. Full of stars.”
“That means a good day tomorrow,” Sy said. “Even the weather’s with us. There ain’t nothing going to foul up this job.” His eye caught Kathy’s. “Nothing,” he repeated.
“How come the kid’s up?” Eddie asked.
“The little bastard can’t sleep. He’s worried about what’s gonna happen to him tomorrow.”
“You think it’ll go all right, Sy?”
“It can’t miss,” Sy said. He turned to Kathy again. “You hear that, Kathy? It can’t miss. It’s gonna work, and nothing’s gonna stop it. We’re all gonna be rich. I’ll never ride another goddamn subway as long as I live. I’ll wear silk underwear. You know there are guys who wear silk underwear? Me! I’m gonna be one of them.” He nodded vigorously. “Tell her about it, Eddie. Tell her how we worked it out. Your wife here thinks we’re playing games.”
“Look, let’s just do it,” Eddie said. ‘‘What do we have to talk about it for?”
“I want her to know because it’s beautiful, that’s why. What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you ashamed of it? It’s a goddamn good plan.”
“Yeah, I know, but…”
“We’re gonna call King in the morning, and give him instructions about the drop, and there won’t be a cop in this city who can stop us, or who can even find us!” Sy paused. “How does that sound to you, Kathy?”
“It sounds very smart,” Kathy said tonelessly.
“Yeah, very smart. Damn smart! Not even King is gonna know where the hell to drop that loot, so he couldn’t tell the cops even if he wanted to. All he’s gonna know is that we’re waiting for it. But he won’t know where.” He saw the puzzlement on Kathy’s face. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. And it’ll work. All because of Eddie’s monster there.” He pointed to the radio equipment against the wall. “Why do you think we knocked ourselves out on these radio store jobs? To give Eddie something to play with?”
“I thought you needed a radio for listening to police calls,” Kathy said, more puzzled now.
“A setup like this? For police calls? You know what those two tin cans are over there? Oscillators. And the big thing behind them? A transmitter. Am I right, Eddie?”
“Yeah, that’s right. You see, Kathy, what we’re gonna do—”
“What we’re gonna do,” Sy said, “is surprise the pants off King and the cops both. Once King gets started, there ain’t gonna be a soul in the world but him who knows what to do. Not the cops, not nobody. Nobody but King and us. Once he leaves the house with that money in his hands—”
“If he leaves the house,” Kathy said, “If he pays the ransom.”
“I’ll let you in on a secret, sweetheart,” Sy said. “He better leave the house, and he better pay the ransom.” His hand darted into his pocket, and the switch knife appeared again. The stud made no sound when he pressed it. The blade snicked open with a slight whisper. Sy looked at Jeff, who stood by the bed, terror wide in his eyes now.
“He just better pay the ransom,” Sy said softly.
* * * *
9
The man in charge of the police laboratory was Lieutenant Sam Grossman.
The lab to the casual observer was a sterile place of long white counters and tall green cabinets. The counters were washed with fluorescent light and ultraviolet light, and the cabinets were full of laundry marks and pistols and cartridges and tire patterns and analytical charts and pieces of glass and grass and morass and anything and everything which could be used for comparison purposes against a suspect item. There were a good many suspect items which came into the lab every hour of every day. The items ranged from a headlight glass found on a highway after a hit-and-run to a bloody hand wrapped in last Sunday’s real-estate section of The New York Times. It was not always pleasant to deal with the packages that were dropped at the lab’s doorstep like orphans on a snowy Christmas Eve. There were times when the work assumed ghoulish proportions, and many a man with a weak stomach had instantly applied for transfer to the city’s Bureau of Criminal Identification, or perhaps the morgue at one of the local hospitals. It was one thing, you see, to deal with violent and sudden deaths in an active, participating way. It was another to reduce death to a scientific formula, to deal with severed limbs and errant sperm cells, hair-encrusted blunt weapons, cartridges flattened by impact with bone. The imagination soared when confronted with the grisly inarticulate by-products of murder or manslaughter. A long blond hair tangled into the sharp cutting edge of an ax shrieked more loudly than the corpse of the woman lying on a slab at the morgue. Understatement, a subtle weapon of novelists since the beginning of literature, became a daily working grindstone against which the lab technicians blunted their emotions. Sam Grossman, an emotional man by trade, ran the lab with the uncompromising discipline of an African missionary. The lab, Grossman knew, could very often shorten the work of the men out there in the field. The lab could bring criminals to justice. And if he could help to do this, Grossman felt his life was not being wasted. Sometimes his job was extremely difficult. Sometimes, as was the case with the casting Kronig brought back, Grossman’s job was exceptionally easy. He simply went to his files and came up with the right tire pattern in less than five minutes. The record card looked like this:
The name of the tire, then, was Tirubam, and it was manufactured by the Rubber Tire Corporation of America, whose offices in this city were located at 1719 Carter Avenue in Isola. The tire had been standard equipment in 1948 on products of the General Motors Corporation. In 1949 and 1950, the Ford Motor Company had used it on its entire line. In 1954, Chrysler Motors had equipped its automobiles with this tire. The field seemed a rather large one from which to choose.
The size of the tire, however, was determined from the cast to be 670 x 15. This was a break which automatically eliminated any automobile manufactured before 1949, since the wheel rim had been sixteen inches in diameter up to that time and the change-over for the entire industry had come in 1949. The size of the tire, too, eliminated any of the larger cars which both Ford and Chrysler produced in the respective years they’d used the tires. The 1949 Mercury, for example, carried a 710 x 15 tire. The 1949 Lincoln carried an 820 x 15. The field had been narrowed to the smallest cars produced by either of the companies in the suspect years.
The paint scraping cleared up any doubt. By the time Grossman’s boys had put the sample through a spectographic examination and had made a microscope diagnosis and a microchemical examination, they knew exactly the nature of the beast with which they were dealing. They simply took the results of their tests and compared these with facts already compiled, listed, and waiting in their files. Their record cards told them: