Hostage For A Hood (17 page)

"The New York Police cooperated with us and they've been using their boys ever since. Both Mitty and the shyster were tailed. The shyster is connected with a mouthpiece named Goldman, a big shot. Real estate operator, sports promoter and a little bit of everything. Shady, but not shady enough to lose his professional standing or ever get into trouble. Goldman represented Mitty once or twice before when he was in trouble, as it was logical that he call him in this time. There's nothing to do as far as Goldman or his assistant is concerned. They acted like lawyers, and that they had a right to do.

"Mitty himself has just been hanging around town. He's made no attempt to get in touch with his lawyers, hasn't seen anyone in particular. He's checked into a flea bag on West Forty-Seventh Street near Broadway. The New York boys are staying with him. And that's just about it."

"It seems that is it," Sims said.

Parks made a wry face. "Right," he said. "Well, let's get back to the sweat shop. You know," he added, "I wish this was the way it was in those new, realistic detective books where the cops solve the crime with nothing but plain, dull, routine police work. You know, just the boring, steady, consistent monotony of everyday procedure. Police procedure, hell! What we need is a miracle."

They stopped at the counter and without discussing it, took coins from their pockets and matched each other. Parks lost and paid up.

They were crossing the street to enter the police station when Sims saw the man entering the building ahead of them. "You've got another headache waiting, Lieutenant," he said. "He just walked into the building. That Sherwood guy. Remember, we talked with him last night. The guy who's wife is missing."

Parks groaned. "I knew it was going to be one of these days. This is what my old man meant, I guess. Maybe she's come home. I can hope, anyway."

"Don't hope, Marty," Sims said. "You know they never bother to let us know if it's good news."

* * * *

It was the sense of complete helplessness which bothered him most. He'd been in tough spots before—any guy who'd seen active duty had been in tough spots. But this was different. This time he wasn't given the option of doing anything about it.

Bart Sherwood turned over on the bed and looked at the small, square alarm clock on the side table. It was seven o'clock and he pulled himself up, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was beginning to wonder how long a man could go without sleep.

Seven o'clock, Thursday morning. Joyce had been missing for almost three whole days.

It was funny how a house could change. The very sight of their apartment depressed him. The place, without Joyce, was nothing. He would have left and stayed in town except for that chance that she might call. He had to be available. But within the last three days he'd grown to hate the place. The apartment had never been much, but they had been happy in it. Wildly, ecstatically happy, it seemed to him now.

This morning he determined to go through the old routine. He knew that he didn't dare let down the bars, couldn't permit himself to crack up.

When he entered the shower, he turned on the cold water. Afterward he toweled himself and dressed. He took out his best suit and was careful in the selection of a shirt and tie. He was determined to keep up his morale. He started for the garage to let Flick out for his morning run and it wasn't until he was halfway there that he remembered that Flick too was missing. The sudden remembrance brought a lump to his throat.

It was while he was having ham and eggs and coffee in a small restaurant over in town, to which he had walked with the thought that the exercise would be good for him, that he made the decision about the private detective. He'd suggested the idea to the police the night before, but they hadn't been enthusiastic.

"We're doing everything that can be done," they'd told him.

Well, maybe they were, but Bart wasn't going to miss any possible bets.

From the restaurant he walked to the railway station and caught the commuting train he usually took into New York. He got off of the train at Grand Central, but instead of walking up Madison Avenue to his office, he turned south when he left the station and went down to the Advertising Club. He didn't want to face the curious glances of the people in his office.

Entering the club, he found a telephone booth and called Bill Henricks. Henricks was a man he'd known for several years and was connected with the editorial side of an afternoon paper.

It was difficult finding out what he wanted to know without taking the man into his confidence, which his natural sense of reticence prohibited him from doing, but he finally managed to get the idea across.

"All right, Bart," Henricks said after the long and confused conversation. "I can give you a name. But I should warn you. There really is no such animal as a private detective, at least in the sense that the layman who reads paperbacks and mystery stories thinks of one. There are a number of men licensed as such, and the vast majority of them stick to divorce work. Either that or they are credit investigators, or labor spies, or operate in kindred fields. I still say that no private operator can hope to compete with the police if your trouble is a police matter.

"However, if you insist on seeing one, I can give you a name. He's no better or worse than the rest, but at least he's honest. That's the best I can say for him, and more than I can say for some of the others. He won't give you any bum steers. He'll take your money like all the rest of them, but he won't cross you up."

Three-quarters of an hour later, Bart walked into the office of Arthur Gutzman. It was an unimpressive, two-room suite on the fourteenth floor of a rather outdated Forty-sixth Street office building, on the less expensive side of Fifth Avenue. Gutzman was expecting him.

Gutzman, a short, fat man with hooded, sleepy eyes, sat behind an old-fashioned roll-top desk. He wore a baggy tweed suit and a slightly dirty shirt. He looked like a rather impoverished bookkeeper.

He waved Bart to the chair beside the desk.

"My friend Henricks tells me you got problems, Mr. Sherwood," he said. "You want to tell me about them?"

Bart hesitated a moment, not knowing just how to begin.

Gutzman had had plenty of experience with hesitant clients. "You can tell me anything," he said. "It never goes any further. Don't be shy. Nothing surprises me."

"It's about my wife," Bart said. "She's missing. Has been gone since Monday."

"You've reported it to the police?"

"Certainly."

Bart told the man then, as quickly as possible, exactly what had happened. He started with Monday morning and brought the story up to date. Gutzman didn't bother to take notes, but he was very careful to ask for names and addresses and definite times. When Bart finished, he asked a number of questions; how long they had been married, how long they had known each other and about their friends. Finally he took time to light a blackened pipe and then stood up and paced back and forth.

"And why have you come to me, Mr. Sherwood?"

Bart looked at him, puzzled. "Why, because I wanted a private detective to work on the case, and Henricks recommended you," he said.

Gutzman went back and sat at the desk again. He looked at Bart and shrugged his thick shoulders.

"Mr. Sherwood," he said, "doesn't it occur to you that maybe your wife left of her own volition? That maybe she is staying away because she wants to stay away? She did take the money out of the bank, she took the dog and the car with her, she ... "

"It's utterly impossible," Bart said. "Of course I realize you don't know Mrs. Sherwood and that you don't know me. But you have to take my word for it. She would not have left of her own volition. I've considered it, thought a lot about it. She didn't. I don't think the police themselves believe for a moment that she did. Something has happened to her."

"The check has not been cashed?"

"No. At least up until yesterday afternoon, it hadn't hit the bank."

"And there has been absolutely no trace of Mrs. Sherwood? The police have found out nothing?"

"Nothing. That's why I've come to you. It seems impossible, but the only conclusion I can come to is that she's suffering from amnesia. There is nothing in her medical history to suggest it, but the only other alternative would be that she had an accident of some sort. And if she had, certainly we would have learned about it by now. The car and the dog or something would have turned up."

"Amnesia." Gutzman looked at Bart for a long moment under hooded eyes. "You know," he said, "I want to tell you something about these so-called amnesia cases. I've been hearing about them all my life. I've even worked on half a dozen jobs where the missing person was supposed to have temporarily lost his memory. But do you know something? I've yet to encounter one, or even hear of one, that wasn't a phony. Mind you, I don't say it can't happen and doesn't. All I say is that from my experience they're phony. It almost always turns out that the victim either took off on a drunk, got mixed up with a woman—if it happened to be a man—or absconded with money which didn't belong to him and blew it. Almost always."

"Are you ruling amnesia out, then?"

"No. I wouldn't rule anything out. I can't. But I try to be sensible about it. You don't think there's one chance in a thousand that your wife could just have taken the money and left you. Well, I want to tell you that there isn't one chance in a hundred thousand that she's suffering from amnesia, if what you tell me about her is true."

"Then you think that something did happen to her. That it was an accident of some sort or that someone  ... "

"I could think that, Mr. Sherwood, or to be absolutely frank with you, I could think that she just decided to leave you." He quickly put his hand, up as Bart started to protest. "Listen," he said, "about half of my work is tracing missing wives and missing husbands. Nine times out of ten the party who isn't missing and who comes to me is completely surprised by what has happened to him. Just as surprised as you are. How would you feel about wanting me to find your wife if it turns out she has left you—of her own volition?"

"I'd still want to find her."

"Why? So you could get a divorce? So you could get the money back?"

Bart got to his feet, his face white with anger. "You haven't understood me at all," he said. "My wife and I are in love with each other. Joyce wouldn't leave me. Even if she wanted to, which is preposterous, she couldn't have done it this way. There would never be any question of a divorce. She would never have to run away from me. You have to understand that."

The fat man nodded. "I believe you," he said. "But I'll have to tell you this. You're a friend of Henricks and I want you to know the truth. If your wife ran away with someone else, or just plain took the money and left you, I might possibly do you some good. I might be able to find her. In fact, I probably would be able to, sooner or later. But if, as you insist, something has happened to her, an accident or something else, there isn't a thing I can do for you that the police can't do a lot better and a lot faster."

Bart looked at the other man, discouragement written on his face.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. You can offer rewards for information, you can advertise and so forth. But you don't need me for that. Frankly, I think it would be a waste of money. You say the police think the way you do, that something must have happened to her. Well, believe me, they'll be working on it, doing everything that can be done. There's nothing you yourself can do except possibly keep after them. Cops are pretty busy most of the time and it's a good idea to keep after them on things like this."

He hesitated for a moment and then went on. "I guess those boys out at Brookside where you live have plenty on their minds right now, too," he said. "I remember reading about an armored car stickup out there this week."

"It happened Monday morning," Bart said. "The same day that Joyce disappeared."

Five minutes later he thanked Gutzman for his time and left the office. He decided to call his secretary at the office and then catch a train back to Brookside. He would do the only thing which Gutzman had to suggest—keep after the police.