“That’s a nasty word,” he said, equally quietly.
“Pop Holland. Mike Holland,” Reardon added, and watched the other man’s face.
Porky frowned. “Pop Holland? Mike Holland? Am I supposed to know him?”
“Maybe not,” Reardon said. “Probably not. He’s a cop. Retired today — yesterday, to be exact. A sergeant on Communications these past twelve, fifteen years, I guess. Used to be in Homicide, before I was on the force. A widower. A nice guy. A real nice guy. Sixty-five years old last week. No kids. No family, I gather.”
Porky’s frown deepened. Anything bad happening to cops often meant a general tightening up of the town, from the hustlers in North Beach to the innocent bookies, wherever they might be. But that, of course, had nothing to do with the case, and certainly nothing to do with the reason Reardon had wanted to meet with him. He drew his ale to him and took a large draught as he thought. He set the flagon down, wiped his lips, and gave his full attention to the problem.
“A retired cop? Any money?”
“None that anyone knows of.”
“Any that somebody maybe thinks they know of?”
“I doubt it.”
“Any enemies?”
“You don’t kidnap enemies; you shoot them, or stab them, or run them over with a milk wagon,” Reardon said shortly. “Kidnapping is to punish someone else — financially, usually — but not the victim. It’s true the victim often gets killed, but that’s generally secondary to the kidnapping itself.”
“Then why was he snatched?”
“Now, that’s a real good question,” Reardon said sarcastically. He shoved his beer glass around the table, staring at the damp trails the glass left. He looked up. “The man said there would be a tape in the mail tomorrow with their demands, addressed to me. Maybe we’ll know more, then.” He looked at his glass again, avoiding Porky’s eyes. “In the meantime, have you heard anything?”
“About a snatch? Or even a potential snatch?” Porky’s eyes suddenly narrowed. When he continued there was an edge to his normally pleasant voice. “Mr. R, I hope I am misunderstanding you. True, I usually sell my wares after-the-fact, so to speak, but I sincerely hope you aren’t sitting there and suggesting that I would hear anything about a kidnapping — any kidnapping, not just the kidnapping of a policeman — and fail to inform you.”
“I didn’t mean that at all,” Reardon said wearily, and suddenly found himself yawning. He brought the monstrous yawn under control, realizing he was tired, and added a bit lamely, “I just thought you might have heard something in one context, for example, and that maybe you didn’t connect it up, but now that you know there’s been a kidnapping, maybe—”
“You’re getting yourself in deeper,” Porky said sternly, but his previous honest umbrage had largely disappeared. “You’re tired, Mr. R. You need rest. But I understand what you mean. And, no, I haven’t heard a thing.” He paused, and then added, “And before you can say it, yes, I shall listen closely from now on.”
“That’s all I was trying to say,” Reardon said, and yawned again.
“That’s what I thought was all you were trying to say,” Porky said forgivingly, and pushed aside his half-eaten tuna-salad sandwich, looking at it with a curious frown. “You know, they’re not as short on bat wings and mice hair as they think, or else they’ve developed some marvelous substitutes.” He drank the last of his ale, dabbed at his lips neatly, and tucked his napkin into his ale mug. He shoved the whole affair away from him and lit a cigarette, prepared to get down to business. “All right. Where did this snatch take place? And when?”
“We think it took place outside his house, in the driveway, late this afternoon,” Reardon said quietly. “I was out there with Dondero a while ago, and we got inside the house. Nothing there to indicate nothing; everything looked the way it usually did, I suppose. I was never there before. As for the time, Pop was due at a dinner we were throwing him for his retirement, and he never showed up. In his bedroom there was the stiff cardboard you get with a new shirt, and pins, from the cuffs, you know—”
“Or just to stab you,” Porky interjected, but he was listening closely.
Reardon paid him no attention.
“They were on top of the bedspread, so we gather he came home from the Hall, changed clothes, went outside, and that’s when they picked him up. His car is gone, so of course they might have snatched him any time after he left the house, but it would be a lot easier to grab him there, before he got started, than it would be after he was in town, with the lights and the people around and everything.”
“He might have put on the new shirt this morning.”
“Doubtful,” Reardon said. “He told the boys he was going home to clean up before the dinner. And his evening paper was in the house, and he’s the only one who could have brought it in.” He shook his head. “No, the chances are they picked him up when he came out to get into the car. That would be the easiest deal. No neighbor home on the side of the driveway, and it’s pretty quiet out there. That’s when I figure they pulled it.”
“They?”
“They, he, them, or her for all I know,” Reardon said wearily. “Anyway, we were waiting for Pop to show up for the dinner, and I got this call. We were at Marty’s, in the back room—”
He recounted the events of the evening, beginning with the call from the kidnapper, while Porky listened intently. When Reardon had finished, surprised in his tired state at the amount of detail he had been able to recall — and even more surprised to find himself relating all this to a man in the other’s profession — Porky nodded.
“I see. What did this character sound like? High voice? Low voice? Did he sound as if he were trying to disguise his voice? Sound as if he were speaking through cloth, or with a wad of something in his cheek? Although all that does,” Porky said in all honesty, “is make you sound like yourself, only muffled.” He thought a moment “You know, I’ll bet if you clench your jaw real tight, and then start to choke yourself, you could actually change your voice considerably. You could also, of course, fracture your larynx if you weren’t careful, or if you got carried away, but that would be the chance you’d take.”
Reardon started to smile and found it turning into a yawn. He tried to remember the nuances of the voice on the phone.
“He sounded — well, educated, but not overly educated, if you know what I mean. He wasn’t a dese, dem, and dose guy, but he wasn’t the head of the speech department at Berkeley, either. His tone? Medium, I’d say, not deep and not tenor. A little above middle baritone, I suppose you could call it.”
“Great. That brings it down to about ninety-nine per cent of the male population.”
“I know, but that’s the way it is. And he didn’t make any attempt to conceal or disguise his voice. He spoke clearly and with no long pauses. And one more thing,” Reardon said. He didn’t know what made him say it, but suddenly he knew he was right. “Speaking of voices, Mike was in pain when they taped that bit of him talking.”
Porky looked at him. “In pain?”
“That’s right.” Reardon waved a hand. “Oh, I don’t mean he said ‘ouch’ or anything like that, but I’m sure they hurt him somewhere along the line. He sounded — I don’t know — strained...”
“Well,” Porky said reasonably, “a man gets picked up and kidnapped on an empty stomach — although if he missed a dinner in the back room of Marty’s, that’s nothing to complain about — he’d sound a bit strained, don’t you think?”
“This was something different,” Reardon said stubbornly. He ran his fingers through his hair without being conscious of doing so. “We hear it in the voices of men we see who are shot, or stabbed, or in a bad accident. Before they’ve been taken care of, while they’re waiting for the ambulance, for example. They can be talking about anything else in the world, how it happened, how it wasn’t their fault, anything — but underneath their tone is something that says they know they’ve been hurt, and one part of their brain hangs onto that fact while the rest comes out as usual. Or tries to.”