A Dog's Ransom Read online

  “Marylyn,” Clarence said, glad that his mother hadn’t got the name right. “She’s all right.” He was in shirtsleeves now, sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Did something go wrong?”

  Clarence laughed. “No! Is that the only reason I’d come out, if something went wrong?”

  “Why don’t you bring Marylyn around? You’re hiding her.” His mother turned from the stove, a spatula in her hand. She had insisted on making a brace of eggs—Clarence could sleep afterwards if he wanted to.

  “Oh, it’s hard for her to find time. Marylyn works freelance. Typing jobs.” He should have had Marylyn meet his parents by now, Clarence supposed, but Marylyn was a bit shy, Astoria was a boring trip, and in short he hadn’t arranged it as yet. He hadn’t met Marylyn’s mother, either, but Marylyn wasn’t the type to suggest that. Her parents were divorced.

  His mother poured coffee, then turned her attention back to the stove while she chatted with Clarence. Nina was forty-nine, blondish with short, naturally wavy hair that needed little attention. She was practical, but in a sense had never found her métier. She had tried running a dress shop, interior decorating, had started a restaurant with a friend, and had stayed with none of these things, though none had been a financial catastrophe either. Now in her spare time, which was at least six hours per day, she did volunteer work for handicapped children, and was unofficially on call day and night.

  Clarence’s father, hearing the stir in the house, came down in bathrobe and slippers. This was Ralph, fifty-two, an electrical engineer at a turbine factory ten miles away called Maxo-Prop. Clarence had been named for Ralph’s brother, whom Ralph had adored and Clarence had never met, who had been killed in France in the Second World War. Clarence disliked his name, but it could have been worse—Percy or Horace. Clarence was not close to his father, but he respected him. Ralph made a decent salary, had a skilled job, and he had got where he was with no college education, merely by taking correspondence courses in engineering and by studying at night. The fact that Clarence had gone to Cornell, an Ivy League university, for four years, was a source of pride to his father, Clarence knew. Not just NYU or City College, but Cornell, as a boarding student. His family had sacrificed for that, Clarence realized, though it had probably not caused them to buy one overcoat or bottle of whisky less, if they wanted it. But they might have gone to Europe, for instance. A diploma from Cornell was something Clarence had and his father hadn’t. His father had never said to him, “I expect you to work summers, be a waiter or a taxi driver, but pull your weight a little.” Lots of rich families said that to their sons and daughters. Clarence had gone to Cornell like a prince. His parents could have moved, years ago, to a better neighborhood in Long Island, but they had chosen to stash away their money, bequeathed to Clarence their only child, in case they died. And in case they didn’t die, they were going to retire in eight years now, and buy a house in California overlooking the Pacific. Clarence thought his parents hopelessly old-fashioned, but he had to admit they were decent, honest people, and he didn’t meet decent, honest people every day in New York. That was why the Reynoldses were such an exception for him.

  “Well, Patrolman Duhamell, how goes life?” asked his father. “Are you mingling with delinquent youth, setting them on the right path?”

  Clarence groaned. “Not all of them are young. Lots with gray hairs in their whiskers.” When he had started on the force, he had talked to his parents about making contact with young people in trouble. He had tried to get a job along these lines when he had been at the 23rd Street Precinct, but men already with such jobs (patrolmen with special connections with Bellevue) hadn’t wanted to yield place, or there hadn’t been a place then for a newcomer. But had he been forceful enough in asking for such work? The matter still bothered him. He could of course try again.

  They drank coffee, and his father smoked a cigarette.

  “What brings you here at this ungodly hour? You’ve deprived me of an hour’s sleep,” Ralph said.

  Clarence said he’d come out on a whim. Clarence realized he couldn’t tell them about Rowajinski, because he felt ashamed (at that moment) of his stupidity, therefore he couldn’t tell them about the Reynoldses. He wanted to talk about the Reynoldses, because he liked them.

  “I hope you don’t have to go to work today, Clary,” said his mother, serving his father a pair of fried eggs flanked by two pieces of neatly buttered toast.

  “No,” Clarence said.

  “You were on duty tonight?” asked his father.

  “No. But I’m off today.” Clarence didn’t want to tell them he was on an 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift, because they thought it was the most dangerous part of the twenty-four hours, so he was glad that his mother began talking of neighborhood affairs.

  “How’s the girl?” asked Ralph. “When can we meet her?”

  “I don’t know why you take her so seriously!” Clarence suddenly realized that he was very tired. He felt almost hysterical suddenly, as if something had burst in his heart. He felt on the brink, on some brink, on the edge of a great decision. It was whether he stayed in the police force or not. He wanted to tell his parents this. It concerned Marylyn and the Reynoldses. Marylyn didn’t like policemen. It concerned the Pole called Rowajinski, the bastard whom he had allowed to escape him. It concerned the fact that Marylyn didn’t want to marry a cop, and he was still in the force, even though he could quit any time he wished.

  “What is it, Clary?” his mother asked in a kind voice.

  Clarence shook his head.

  “Our boy is exhausted,” said Nina to Ralph. “Walking those streets—Come up to your room, Clary.” She extended a small, energetic hand, then as if realizing he was a grown man, she stopped.

  “I’ll go up,” said Clarence. He was aware that his father was studying his face. Clarence looked straight at his father, ready for his words of well-meant advice or wisdom. But about what? It occurred to Clarence that his father was a little like Edward Reynolds. They were the same height and weight, and their features had a similar rugged handsomeness.

  Then his father said with surprising lightness, “It’s logical that you sleep now, isn’t it?” He put some home-made jelly on a bit of toast and popped it into his mouth. “We can talk later. This evening. I hope you’ll stay over.”

  “Oh, I think so,” Clarence said automatically.

  A few minutes later, he was upstairs in his room, having brushed his teeth with his own toothbrush in the bathroom next door. His room had a gabled front window that made two slants in the ceiling. Under one of these, in a corner, was his bed, under the other a long bookcase that still held some boys’ adventure books along with college texts on sociology and psychology, plus several novels—Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Bellow, William Golding. On the wall was a picture of the Cornell basketball team, himself third from right in the back row. He really ought to remove that, he thought. Marylyn would laugh: she would think it square, snobbish, and childish, though the picture was only five or six years old. Marylyn would think his parents’ house square also, and boring, though not expensive enough to be bourgeois. Well, he and Marylyn would never live in a house like this, in a place like Astoria. They’d have an apartment in Manhattan, maybe a house in northern Connecticut, if he ever got the money together.

  The sheets were fresh. Clarence slid into bed and felt himself in a cocoon of safety. Was this another dead end, the police force? Was it like the bank job, in the personnel department? Not the end of the world, of course, even if people like Captain MacGregor and Santini said, “You’re just not cut out for the police, Dummell.” The trouble was that he had tried, was still trying, and presumably had an advantage over most young cops because he had a college degree, but even so, he had goofed in a way the dumbest most primitive cop wouldn’t have goofed; he had caught his man and let him go. And Marylyn—she hadn’t taken his job seriously, and Clarenc
e knew it would be months before he could get a promotion, even if he went to the Police Academy, which he intended to do. Would Marylyn marry a cop under any circumstances? “No one bothers marrying these days,” Marylyn had said. Clarence felt he could be loyal to Marylyn for the rest of his life. That was something. That was everything. Odd that in the old days men usually fought shy of marriage, while girls held out for it. Now he wanted marriage and—yes, a kind of security, just what the girls used to fight for . . . Must call Marylyn as soon as he woke up. The play tonight . . .

  “Clary?—Clary?”

  Clarence raised himself on an elbow, tense and groggy.

  “Clary, I’m sorry to wake you, but it’s your precinct on the phone. They want to speak with you.”

  Clarence got up. He was wearing only his shorts, and he had to grab his father’s bathrobe from the john. His mother had already gone downstairs, and he heard her saying:

  “One minute, please. He’s coming.”

  Clarence glanced at his wrist-watch. A quarter to two. “Hello? Clarence Duhamell here.”

  “Hi Clarence. Santini. We found this Polish guy, Rojinsk—you know.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, we did. Listen—” Long pause, while Santini blew his nose, or perhaps spoke to someone else. “Listen we want to see you. I know it’s your day off. Had a hard time finding you.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well—see when you get here. Rowajinski’s here. So get here when you can, will you? Say by three, three-thirty?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What is it, Clary?” His mother was standing in the doorway between the sunroom and the living-room.

  “I have to go into New York. Right away.”

  “Oh, Clary! Without any lunch?”

  Clarence ran up the stairs on bare feet. “They want me there by three, mom.”

  When he came down, dressed, his mother said she had cut a slice of roast beef for him. He could eat it standing up, no fuss. Clarence ate half of it. He had taken a hasty shower, scraped at his face with his father’s razor. “This doesn’t happen often,” he said to his mother.

  Santini’s tone had been off-hand, and Clarence felt he had been summoned only because he’d at least seen Rowajinski before and could identify him. The dog had been kidnapped a week ago today. He had let the Reynoldses down horribly and unforgivably.

  9

  Kenneth Rowajinski sat on a bench near the entrance of the precinct house beside a rolling, restless junky whom Kenneth fastidiously avoided touching. It was 2:40 p.m., and Kenneth had been at the station about two hours. He had twice asked to go to the toilet. He was nervous. They had come for him—a single policeman in plain clothes—just after noon. Kenneth still did not know how they had found him. He’d been out that morning around 11 a.m. to pick up some fruit and a hamburger and a couple of cans of beer to take back to his room. Of course there was his limp. And the cop, a black-haired fellow with fat jowls, a nasty grin, had said: “I thought you’d be in some crummy hotel, and I sure hit it right, didn’t I?” Chatting away while he scribbled in his notebook, standing right in Kenneth’s hotel room, the door wide open and a black maid staring open-mouthed from the hall. Invasion! Kenneth’s heart had begun to race, and it had not stopped since.

  But Kenneth had fixed the bastard young cop who had found him at Mrs. Williams’s. That was more than a consolation, it was a bit of a triumph. That was hitting back, good and proper. Just wait till he walked in. Kenneth’s eyes, darting everywhere, darted most often at the front door on his left, because he knew the blond cop was due.

  Across from Kenneth a black cop without a cap sat reading a comic book and chewing gum. His kinky black hair was graying. What a racket the police force was, taking taxpayers’ money, taking bonuses and pensions, swaggering around with guns, slapping tickets on cars, taking kickbacks from gambling joints (often in the back rooms of innocent-looking candy stores), and rake-offs from drug-pushers. All well-fed bullies, mainly Italian, though of course there were some Irish, too. The Italian who’d come into Kenneth’s hotel room had found his money very soon, counted it and pocketed it. Kenneth had seen the money being handed over in the station to a superior officer (another wop) behind a desk in the room opposite. One thousand one hundred and twenty dollars. It left Kenneth with eleven dollars and some change in his pocket. Kenneth did not know if they had telephoned Edward Reynolds yet, but he assumed so. Kenneth did not look forward to facing Reynolds, in view of his position, but he reminded himself that he had a deep and justified contempt for types like Reynolds, so why should he cringe?

  Kenneth glanced at the door, expecting Reynolds as much as the blond cop. Kenneth kept moving a loose lower front tooth back and forth with his tongue and with suction. The tooth gave him slight pain every time he pushed it or sucked it. For at least the sixth time, Kenneth shoved the rolling junky off his left shoulder, and suddenly jumped up, causing the junky to roll all the way over and fall flat on the floor on his face. Kenneth adjusted his new overcoat and averted his eyes.

  The colored guard laughed and got up from his chair, still holding his comic book. “Hey! Sommun gonna give me a hand here?”

  Kenneth refrained from looking. The junky, like an old cockroach, was trying to turn himself over, or something. It occurred to Kenneth to walk out the door, but here was one of the wide-hipped cops—wide-hipped because of the gun and notebook and nightstick and handcuffs under his jacket, and also from sitting on coffee-shop and bar stools—lifting the junky and propping him back on the bench. The cop muttered a joke, the black grinned.

  Then the young blond cop, in plain clothes, came up the steps and into the lobby, and saw him at once. Kenneth scowled and held his ground.

  The blond cop went into the office opposite.

  In a minute or two an older blond officer came out and beckoned to Kenneth.

  “You recognize this man, Dummell?” asked the officer.

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Manzoni picked him up at the Hotel George in the Village. Just casing hotels for a fifty-year-old man with a limp, you know?”

  Manzoni had certainly had luck, Clarence thought, and said nothing.

  They were back in the officer’s room now.

  “Now Rowajinski here—” MacGregor referred to some notes on his desk. “Found in possession of one thousand one hundred and twenty dollars, all in ten-dollar bills. Just like the ransom, no? Ten-dollar bills? He says you took five hundred to let him go.”

  “Yes!” said Kenneth firmly.

  “No. I did not,” said Clarence.

  “He’s bought some clothes, okay. Paid two days’ hotel bill, okay.” MacGregor ran his thumbs under his belt. “Dummell, we’re not accusing you, just asking. The five hundred—that’s about what’s missing from the two thousand, you see.”

  The cop’s face was red, Kenneth saw, like the face of a guilty man. Kenneth could almost believe he had taken it. He might as well believe it, ought to believe it, because he had to stick to his story. “Yes. And I was to pay him three hundred later. Eight hundred in all!” Kenneth said in a burst of inspiration.

  “Captain MacGregor, I give you my word. This fellow—if you’d like to search my apartment—my bank account—I haven’t got the money, sir!”

  “Now don’t get excited, Dummell.”

  “I’m not, sir!”

  “If you say ‘no,’ it’s no.”

  “Thank you, sir.—Have you spoken to Mr. Reynolds, told him we’ve got Rowajinski?”

  MacGregor frowned, looking preoccupied. “No, not yet. Or I don’t know if Pete told him.”

  Pete was Manzoni. “He’d be interested, sir. And the dog. It’s the dog, you know—”

  “Oh,” said MacGregor. “Rowajinski says he told you right away the dog was dead. Is that true, Dummel
l?”

  “It certainly isn’t true! He said the dog was with his sister in Long Island. That’s what I told Mr. Reynolds.”

  The young officer glared at Kenneth as if he could kill him.

  “I told you,” said Kenneth, standing as tall as he could, “that the dog was dead.”

  “You did not! Captain—Captain MacGregor, are you going to believe this nut or me?”

  “We’re not believing anyone yet. Relax, Clarence.” He pushed a bell on his desk.

  Kenneth stood straight and tall, wearing his hat. The young blond cop, Dummell, shifted like a guilty man, afraid to speak. Kenneth sensed a certain victory. He went with good grace with a cop who came to take him away. Pajamas had been laid out on a cot. All right, a cell. But he’d fixed Dummell!

  As the cop closed the cell door, Kenneth said, “I want a lawyer. I don’t have to pay for that, do I?”

  The man drawled insolently, “You-ou’ll get one.”

  Revolting lot! There were two hooks on the wall, not even a hanger, and a toilet and a basin. He peed. He was hungry. But he put hunger out of his mind and went to the barred door to try to hear something. He did hear what he thought were the voices of the Captain and the young cop, but he could not tell what they were saying. Unfortunate. But Kenneth was pleased that he had focused attention on Dummell and away from Reynolds and the dog. He had told a most convincing story to the cop who had found him about the Monday afternoon talk in his room at Mrs. Williams’s. The cop had said he was going to call on Mrs. Williams, and she could certainly confirm (no matter what nasty remarks she might make against him besides) that Dummell had come twice that afternoon, and had pretended the second time to be completely surprised that Kenneth Rowajinski had disappeared.

  10

  As soon as Manzoni and the other cop, whose name Clarence didn’t know, had left his apartment, Clarence went to his telephone, but stopped before he touched it. He was still shaken, and he didn’t want to talk with Mr. Reynolds when he sounded nervous. Clarence lit a cigarette, and looked over his living-room-bedroom, not seeing any detail, but conscious of its veil of soot, of the disorder that Manzoni and the other fellow had left after they had searched the place, conscious of his shame. Drawers were half pulled out, shirts mussed. They hadn’t turned the place inside out by any means, but that they had come here at all was insulting, especially that Manzoni had come, with his personal touch. “Did you need some extra money for your girl, Clarence?” How did he know about Marylyn? Or did he mean just any girl? They had asked to see his savings bank passbook. No recent big deposits. Even the pillows on the bed had been stripped of their zipped covers and were in disorder. “You haven’t been here lately,” Manzoni had remarked. “Where’ve you been sleeping?” Clarence had said he had spent several nights (or anyway his off-duty time) out at his family’s in Astoria. That was another thing: he ought to forewarn his mother to say he’d been out a lot to see them, in case the cops rang her.