“Why?”
“Because I can’t see a kidnapper standing in front of a window in a drugstore, or out in the open at a street booth, playing a tape recorder into a telephone receiver,” Reardon said firmly. “Too many people could see him and remember the scene.” He shrugged. “Still, we weren’t able to trace the call in any event, so I don’t expect it makes that much difference.”
“On the other hand,” Boynton said, voicing his thoughts, “anyone screwy enough to kidnap a retired cop with nothing but his pension could be screwy enough for anything.” He looked at Reardon. “Did the man sound — well — unstable?”
Reardon didn’t have to think about that one.
“No, sir. He sounded happy, but not slaphappy, if you know what I mean. Not giggly. Just pleased with himself, as if he’d pulled off a good one and was congratulating himself. He laughed a few times, but it was all plenty sane laughter. He was simply enjoying himself.”
“Could he have been on anything? High?”
“I don’t think so, sir. He sounded sharp. On the ball.”
“Any sort of accent to help identify him?”
“You mean, black or white?”
“Or Chicano. Or British. Or French or Chinese. I mean, any accent?”
“White American, I’d say. Almost certainly white American.”
“I see.” Boynton drummed his thick fingers on the table before him while he thought about it. “Well, black or white, screwy or not, it might not hurt to have the footmen check out the drugstores in their areas to see if anyone remembers someone using a tape recorder in a phone booth at that hour last night.” His eyes came up. “Incidentally, what time was it?”
“He hung up at 10:02, sir.”
“Right. The street phone booths would be harder to check, unless we give the story to the media and ask them to ask for the public’s co-operation. Maybe somebody—”
“We can’t do that, sir,” Reardon said quickly. “That was one of the things the man said. No publicity. No newspapers. He was definite on that score.”
“I see.” Boynton didn’t sound surprised. He swung around to a man sitting beside him, scribbling in a shorthand notebook. “Mark, make a note. Get it out to the stations for relay to the footmen. Have them check where possible without advertising. Man at a phone — tape recorder. You know what I want.” He swung back. “All right, Lieutenant. What else?”
“Well, sir, we — Sergeant Dondero and myself — went out to Mike’s house and I got in using a slip card. There was no sign of any disturbance. The evening paper was on the floor near a chair in the living room; Mike had read it and it comes about five-thirty, because we checked this out with the neighbors. There were signs in the bedroom that he’d changed clothes, for the dinner we can only assume, or our guess is he was snatched when he walked out of the house to get into his car. It’s a quiet neighborhood, and apparently none of the neighbors heard or saw anything, because we checked them out, both sides of the street, for a block in each direction. We—”
There was a sharp ring of the telephone, and Reardon paused. Boynton reached over and picked it up, grunting into it. A brief moment and he handed it down the table to Reardon. The lieutenant brought the receiver to his ear.
“Yes?”
It was the lobby desk. “You wanted to know when the mail got here, Lieutenant. The mailman’s here now.”
“Hang onto him!” Reardon said, and came to his feet. He looked at Tower. “Mailman’s here,” he said shortly. “Dondero’s probably still sacked in — he worked late — but Stan Lundahl ought to be in by now. Could you have him meet me in the lobby?” He glanced at Boynton. “Be right back, sir.”
Boynton grunted. The last thing Reardon heard as he left the room was Clark’s voice, a bit more respectful since he was addressing the chief, but still the same niggling whine.
“Chief, if you want my opinion, the whole thing still sounds like a tempest in a—” The closing door ended the sound.
Clark! Reardon thought and wrinkled his nose in distaste as he rang for the elevator. If they had to kidnap somebody from the Police Department, why couldn’t it have been a loud mouth like Clark? Then none of them would have to sweat getting him free; the kidnappers would undoubtedly throw the bastard out into the street just to stop hearing that voice.
Saturday — 8:50 A.M.
Alfred L. Kavulich, Postman, stood firmly beside the wide lobby counter, his expression clearly indicating righteous indignation, his one hand tightly gripping one side of his mailbag, his entire attitude demonstrating his representation of the United States Government, as well as his knowledge of the rights, prerequisites, and responsibilities of such representation. Herodotus may not have included it in his list, but as far as Alfred L. Kavulich was concerned, bag-grabbing was fully as bad as rain, sleet, or dark-of-night any day.
From the other side of the counter, Patrolman William A. Healey, one of three men assigned to day-desk duty, held the opposite side of the mailbag with equal determination, as representing both the people of the municipality of San Francisco and the explicit instructions of Lieutenant James Reardon, which instructions Healey had no intention of disobeying. To Reardon, coming across the marble-floored lobby from the elevators, the touching tableau might have been posed to demonstrate either Devotion to Duty or a test of post office equipment arranged by the Bureau of Standards at the behest of the leather lobby.
He came to the desk, tugged the postman’s hand abruptly free of the bag, motioned Patrolman Healey also to relinquish his grip, and without further ado dumped the contents upside down upon the counter. A few letters slid to the floor from the pile. There was a shocked gasp of outrage from Alfred L. Kavulich.
“Hey!” the postman said, voicing his natural resentment at this cavalier treatment of government property, quite as if the destruction of the mail was a privilege reserved for the august members of the postal branch; but Reardon paid the man no attention. He was poking lightly with a closed fountain pen among the several larger brown envelopes and smaller packages that were submerged in the heap. Under his prodding, more letters joined those on the floor, and the postman, torn between calling for the police or picking up the letters, finally realized where he was and bent down. He held the retrieved letters in his hand and glared at Reardon as he straightened up. “Just what do you think you are doing? That’s government property!”
“True,” Reardon conceded. He had shoved a majority of plain letters to one side and was concentrating on the larger material. “Ah!” He edged one small package free from the pile with the tip of his pen and bent closer to study the face of the package. Healey reached for it but Reardon pushed his hand away. “Don’t touch it.”
The postman, in the midst of further expostulations, stopped dead. He opened his eyes wider and almost closed his mouth. At last he thought he could see a possible reason for the arrogant treatment that had been accorded both his person and his mail by these madmen.
“What is it? A bomb.”
“I sincerely hope not,” Reardon said, and considered the postman carefully. Whatever else Alfred L. Kavulich looked like, he didn’t look like a kidnapper’s accomplice. He touched the package lightly with the tip of the pen. “Where did you pick this up?”
The postman stared. Any doubt he might have had that the entire San Francisco police force had taken leave of their senses, led by the stocky maniac facing him, disappeared.
“Where did I pick it up?” What a question! Where did a postman normally pick up pieces for delivery? At the A&P? “At the post office, naturally! Where else?”
“Without a postmark?” Reardon asked. “Without stamps?”