There was so much confusion that it looked as though the bank robbers were going to get away after all. The police cars were aiming the wrong way and, as they’d come down with sirens wailing, there was a clear path behind them.
Then, after the getaway car had gone more than two blocks, it suddenly started jouncing around. It smacked into a parked car and stopped. And all the police went running down there to clap handcuffs on the robbers when they crawled dazedly out of their car.
“Hey,” said Eddie Clayhorn, ten years old. “Hey, that was something, huh, Mom?”
“Come along home,” said his mother, grabbing his hand. “We don’t want to be involved.”
“It was the nuttiest thing,” said Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. “An operation planned that well, you’d think they’d pay attention to their getaway car, you know what I mean?”
Detective-Sergeant Pauling shrugged. “They always slip up,” he said. “Sooner or later, on some minor detail, they always slip up.”
“Yes, but their tires.”
“Well,” said Pauling, “it was a stolen car. I suppose they just grabbed whatever was handiest.”
“What I can’t figure out,” said Stevenson, “is exactly what made those tires do that. I mean, it was a hot day and all, but it wasn’t that hot. And they weren’t going that fast. I don’t think you could go fast enough to melt your tires down.”
Pauling shrugged again. “We got them. That’s the important thing.”
“Still and all, it’s nutty. They’re free and clear, barrelling out Rockaway toward the Belt, and all at once their tires melt, the tubes blow out and there they are.” Stevenson shook his head. “I can’t figure it.”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” suggested Pauling. “They picked the wrong car to steal.”
“And that doesn’t make sense, either,” said Stevenson. “Why steal a car that could be identified as easily as that one?”
“Why? What was it, a foreign make?”
“No, it was a Chewy, two-tone, three years old, looked just like half the cars on the streets. Except that in the trunk lid the owner had burned in ‘The Scorpion’ in big black letters you could see half a block away.”
“Maybe they didn’t notice it when they stole the car,” said Pauling.
“For a well-planned operation like this one,” said Stevenson, “they made a couple of really idiotic boners. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What do they have to say about it?” Pauling demanded.
“Nothing, what do you expect? They’ll make no statement at all.”
The squad-room door opened, and a uniformed patrolman stuck his head in. “The owner of that Chevvy’s here,” he said.
“Right,” said Stevenson. He followed the patrolman down the hall to the front desk.
The owner of the Chewy was an angry-looking man of middle age, tall and paunchy. “John Hastings,” he said. “They say you have my car here.”
“I believe so, yes,” said Stevenson. “I’m afraid it’s in pretty bad shape.”
“So I was told over the phone,” said Hastings grimly. “I’ve contacted my insurance company.”
“Good. The car’s in the police garage, around the corner. If you’d come with me?”
On the way around, Stevenson said, “I believe you reported the car stolen almost immediately after it happened.”
“That’s right,” said Hastings. “I stepped into a bar on my route. I’m a wine and liquor salesman. When I came out five minutes later, my car was gone.”
“You left the keys in it?”
“Well, why not?” demanded Hastings belligerently. “If I’m making just a quick stop — I never spend more than five minutes with any one customer — I always leave the keys in the car. Why not?”
“The car was stolen,” Stevenson reminded him.
Hastings grumbled and glared. “It’s always been perfectly safe up till now.”
“Yes, sir. In here.”
Hastings took one look at his car and hit the ceiling. “It’s ruined!” he cried. “What did you do to the tires?”
“Not a thing, sir. That happened to them in the holdup.”
Hastings leaned down over one of the front tires. “Look at that! There’s melted rubber all over the rims. Those rims are ruined! What did you use, incendiary bullets?”
Stevenson shook his head. “No, sir. When that happened they were two blocks away from the nearest policeman.”
“Hmph.” Hastings moved on around the car, stopping short to exclaim, “What in the name of God is that? You didn’t tell me a bunch of kids had stolen the car.”
“It wasn’t a bunch of kids,” Stevenson told him. “It was four professional criminals, I thought you knew that. They were using it in a bank holdup.”
“Then why did they do that?”
Stevenson followed Hastings’ pointing finger, and saw again the crudely-lettered words, “The Scorpion” burned black into the paint of the trunk lid. “I really don’t know,” he said. “It wasn’t there before the car was stolen?”
“Of course not!”
Stevenson frowned, “Now, why in the world did they do that?”
“I suggest,” said Hastings with heavy sarcasm, “you ask them that.”
Stevenson shook his head. “It wouldn’t do any good. They aren’t talking about anything. I don’t suppose they’ll ever tell us.” He looked at the trunk lid again. “It’s the nuttiest thing,” he said thoughtfully…
That was on Wednesday.
The Friday afternoon mail delivery to the Daily News brought a crank letter. It was in the crank letter’s most obvious form; that is, the address had been clipped, a letter or a word at a time, from a newspaper and glued to the envelope. There was no return address.
The letter itself was in the same format. It was brief and to the point:
Dear Mr. Editor,
The Scorpion has struck. The bank robbers were captured. The Scorpion fights crime. Crooks and robbers are not safe from the avenging Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS!
Sincerely yours,
The warning was duly noted, and the letter filed in the wastebasket. It didn’t rate a line in the paper.
II
The bank robbery occurred in late June. Early in August, a Brooklyn man went berserk.
It happened in Canarsie, a section in southeast Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay. This particular area of Canarsie was a residential neighborhood, composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins.
Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the third time. He reported himself sick and spent the two days at home, brooding, a bottle of blended whiskey at all times in his hand.
As the police reconstructed it later, Mrs. Higgins had attempted to awaken him on the third morning at seven-thirty, suggesting that he really ought to stop being so foolish, and go back to work. He then allegedly poked her in the eye, and locked her out of the bedroom.
Mrs. Higgins then apparently called her sister-in-law, a Mrs. Thelma Stodbetter, who was Mr. Higgins’ sister. Mrs. Stodbetter arrived at the house at nine o’clock, and spent some time tapping at the still-locked bedroom door, apparently requesting Mr. Higgins to unlock the door and “stop acting like a child.”
Neighbors reported to the police that they heard Mr. Higgins shout a number of times, “Go away! Can’t you let a man sleep?”