Clutching my ever-present briefcase, I hurried into the airport. I had forty-five minutes — plenty of time. Even with time out for a phone call, it only took me ten.
Raglan was in the coffee shop, sitting at a table which commanded a fine view. With him was a nervous young man in a suit which was obviously new and apparently uncomfortable. They were conversing and didn’t notice me as I approached. I pulled up a chair.
“Hello, Shaffer,” Raglan said. If he was surprised it didn’t show in his face.
“Hi, Joe. I’ll bet your friend is Eddie Rocco.”
“You’ve got quite a memory for faces.”
“Never saw him before in my life. I’m not working for the Bulletin any more, or hadn’t you heard?”
“I’m sorry about that. You’re a good reporter.”
“And you used to be a good cop. But we can let bygones alone. I haven’t forgotten how to write, but I need some technical advice. You know how the criminal mind works better than I do. Maybe you can help me.”
“Buy you a drink?” Raglan asked.
I looked at my watch. “Yeah. It’s half an hour before plane time. I won’t take that long. I’m thinking of switching to mystery stories, Joe. It’s a shame Debbie isn’t here, she might be able to give me a few pointers.”
The Rocco kid blinked at us, first at me, and then at Joe.
“You say you’re having troubles with a plot?” Raglan asked.
“Oh, I’ve got it all worked out,” I assured him. “I’m basing it loosely on your daughter’s tragic disappearance. I’ll change the names, of course, so there won’t be any grounds for a lawsuit. Anyway, this girl and her father are pretty close — two peas out of the same pod. Daughter is intensely interested in Daddy’s work, catching criminals, you know. I have no choice but to make him a detective.”
“Do,” Raglan said, with a trace of amusement.
“They decide to vanish, take a lot of money to a foreign country. Cuba would be ideal, if it weren’t for the international situation. I think it would be safer in Mexico, or one of the Banana Republics.”
“Venezuela is pretty,” Raglan observed.
“You’ve got a point there,” I admitted. “Trouble is, they don’t have a lot of money, so the girl sits down and figures out a way to do it. Probably with Daddy’s help.”
Raglan smiled. “It’d be better if she worked it out on her own. Make her a real bright kid.”
Rocco sipped his coffee nervously.
I nodded. “With a clinical mind. Anyway, they decide to stage a kidnapping for ransom. That precludes any immediate suspicions that the girl is running away and, if they can figure out a way to raise it, guarantees them enough money to live on for a few years, especially if they invest it wisely.”
“You have all the details worked out?”
“Most of them. First, they need a good place to vanish from; for some reason they can’t use their own home.” I looked at him expectantly.
“Too many sharp-eyed neighbours around,” Raglan said. “Or the physical layout would make things difficult.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Wrong sort of neighbourhood. A wife who’s home most of the time. Third floor apartment and all that. Anyway, they pick a spot where the kid can babysit regularly and get to know the habits of the neighbours. This has to be done carefully, because the timing is very essential. It takes about three months before they’re ready. Daddy has access to a car that couldn’t be traced too easily. An old one would be ideal; nondescript. If anybody spotted it, I doubt they’d even be able to identify the make. Only Daddy and his daughter would be likely to know.”
Raglan’s eyes crinkled. “Building some traps into this, aren’t you?”
“Got to,” I said. “The girl’s character is the major trap, Joe. She’s too precise, too clinical. She never touches anything without permission. Even a hi-fi. I’ve worked out a real clever way for her to be in two places at once.”
Rocco, by now, had stopped pretending a lack of interest.
“When you take a phone off the hook and dial one number, any number but 0, you kill the dial tone and open the line. In case somebody tried to call in they’d get a busy signal. Of course, if they really wanted to get through, they’d ask for a verifying operator to check the line. The operator plugs in just long enough to hear a voice; she’s too busy to listen very long. But how do you get a voice on the line when the house is empty? Turn a TV set on? No, it would probably sound like a TV programme. A tape recorder with conversation on it? That’s out, because anybody could spot the gimmick if they found a tape recorder running.”
“Sounds like a problem,” Joe said.
I grinned. “I bought three Shelly Berman records the other day. You’ve heard of him? The comic who does the telephone conversation routines?”
“This puts the girl in two places at once?”
“Sure. She has the old car parked in the alley. At ten o’clock, or even a little before, she makes the house look like somebody broke in and violent things happened. She calls Daddy so he can come over with a schoolbook and verify that he saw her at ten o’clock. He might be bringing her some clothes, too, to change into boy’s clothing, perhaps?”
I looked at Eddie Rocco, but he just blinked at me.
“She might even cut her hair. Daddy could get rid of the clippings, along with what she was wearing when she left home. She leaves in the old car — after the phone is off the hook with an open line and the record is on the hi-fi. Daddy drives to his office. The girl drives to the airport, where she picks up her ticket for faraway places — Venezuela, did you say?”
Raglan nodded.
“Obviously,” I continued, “if the plane for South America leaves at ten-fifty, and the girl is half an hour away at ten-thirty, she’d never make it. But it works out nicely if she calls the airport at eight and leaves at ten. I’ll admit her means of transportation had me puzzled until I found the car in the lot.”
Raglan frowned; Eddie Rocco looked worried.
“Daddy wouldn’t want the car impounded,” I went on, “for that might have unpleasant side-effects. But it would take two people to drive to the airport and collect it. Daddy and someone else — somebody he could trust. I doubt he’d pick Mummy, since she’s the one he and the girl are skipping out on. He’d look around for somebody who was in a corner. He might even put that somebody in the corner. That would be a nice touch, right in character with Daddy’s usual way of doing things. Someone who, with a little persuasion could be convinced that Daddy could do him some real good.” I looked at Eddie Rocco. “Maybe somebody who’d just lost his job.”
“When did you decide it was a swindle?” Raglan asked suddenly.
I countered with a question of my own. “What’s the most precious thing in the world to a writer?”
“Seeing his name in print?”
“No, Joe. There’s glamour to that, the first time or two it happens. But there’s something far more precious than his byline. His manuscripts. Especially if he’s a beginner. Every word is sort of sacred. If he had to leave everything else he owned behind, he’d take his stories with him, because they’re the only things he couldn’t replace with money.”
“I guess you know writers better than I do,” Raglan admitted.
“I guess I do, Joe.”
“I can put together the rest of the story myself,” Raglan said. “You got a hero in this thing? A detective? A fatal mistake and all that?”
“Sure. A newspaperman. I’m prejudiced towards my own kind. He’s in the detective’s office when the girl calls — from the airport — to report a prowler. There’s no way to tell if the babies’ parents have tried to call their babysitter — Do I have to go into details?”