“Shut up, Parker!” Kronig said. “I don’t feel like discussing my wife’s attributes with you, if you don’t mind.”
“What are you?” Parker asked. “The nervous type?”
“Yeah, I’m the nervous type.”
“And they call the Eskimos primitive,” Parker said. “Man!”
The men trudged up the gravel road silently. The night was a piece of crystal, sharp, clear, brittle. Like work horses stamping under a heavy load, they walked to the turnabout, the vaporized moisture of their breath trailing behind them.
“This it?” Kronig asked.
“Yes,” Hawes said. “I noticed it when we drove up.”
“Not a very big turnabout, if that’s what it is.” He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a turnabout at all. Or at least I don’t think it was planned as one. I think it just became one through use. There. See where some of those shrubs were knocked over?”
“Yeah,” Hawes said. “But a car could have waited here, don’t you think?”
“Sure, it could have. Let’s have some light on the subject.”
Hawes turned on the flash. The beam covered the ground.
“Frozen mud,” Parker said disgustedly. “Like Italy during the war. More than fifteen years go by, and I’m still up to my ass in frozen mud.”
“Any tracks?” Hawes asked.
“Anything I hated,” Parker said, “it was trudging through the mud. You walk around in that slime all day long, and then you sleep in it all night long and next day you get up and walk around in it some more. And cold? You touched the barrel of your BAR and your hand stuck to it, that’s how cold it was.”
“You should have joined the Navy,” Kronig said drily. “I think we’ve got something here, Hawes.”
“What is it?”
“A skid mark. Somebody pulled out of here in a hell of a hurry.”
“That figures.” Hawes knelt beside Kronig. “Does it look any good?”
“It’s covered with a thin sheet of ice.” Kronig nodded reflectively, as if he were suddenly alone. “Well, let’s see what we can do with it, huh?”
He opened his black bag and Hawes brought the flash up so that he could see into it.
“Shellac,” Kronig said, “sprayer, talcum, plaster, water, rubber cap, spoon and spatula. I’m in business. There’s only one thing I’d like to know.”
“What’s that?” Hawes said.
“Do I spray my shellac over the ice, or do I try to get rid of the ice with the possibility of damaging the tire pattern?”
“That’s a good question,” Hawes said.
“One thing you sure as hell can’t do,” Parker said, “and that’s wait for the ice to melt. Winter’s here to stay.”
“Andy Parker, boy optimist,” Kronig said. “Why don’t you take a walk or something?”
“That’s just what I’m going to do,” Parker said. “Back to the house where I can get a cup of coffee from the cook. She’s got knockers almost as big as your wife’s.”
* * * *
The man from the telephone company drilled another hole in the woodwork, handed the drill to Reynolds, and then blew the sawdust out of the hole. Squatting close to the floor, he eyed the hole like a cat waiting for a mouse, and then stood up.
“Okay,” he said. “Now for the wire.” He started across the room, passing Carella, who was busy on the telephone.
“You got nothin’ to worry about, mister,” the telephone company man said to Reynolds. “Figure it out for yourself. When they find out they got your kid by mistake, they’ll just turn him loose, it figures, don’t it?”
“It just seems we should have heard something by now,” Reynolds said.
“Look, don’t get nervous,” the man said. “You start gettin’ nervous, you lost half the battle, it figures, don’t it?”
On the phone, Carella said, “Well, what the hell’s the holdup there? Are you getting me a line to the Auto Squad, or aren’t you?” He paused. “Then would you please get the lead out of your behind? A kid’s been kidnaped here!”
“Do you have any children, Mr. Cassidy?” Reynolds asked the telephone company man.
“I got four,” Cassidy said. “Two of each. That’s a nice family, ain’t it?”
“Very nice.”
“I’m thinking of maybe another one, round it off, that figures, don’t it? Five’s a good round number, I told the wife.” He paused. “She said four is a round-enough number.” He picked up a spool of wire and began paying it out across the living-room floor. “That’s the trouble with women nowadays. You want to know something?”
“What?”
“In China, the women have their babies in the rice fields, it figures, don’t it? They drop their plows, and they deliver the kids themselves, and then they get right up off the ground and go back to plowing or whatever it is they do with rice. It figures, don’t it?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Reynolds said. “What’s the mortality rate?”
“Gee, I don’t know what the mortality rate is,” Cassidy said. He paused thoughtfully. Then he said, “But I do know very few of them die.” He paused again. “It figures, don’t it?”
“If they’d turned him loose,” Reynolds said, “wouldn’t someone have seen him already?”
“Mister, I told you not to start worryin’, didn’t I? Okay, so stop. Now that kid’s all right, you hear me? For God’s sake, he’s the wrong kid. What can they do to him—kill him?”
“Well, it’s about time,” Carella said into the phone. “What’s going on down there, a hot pinochle game?” He listened for a moment, and then said, “This is Steve Carella of the Eighty-seventh. I’m up in Smoke Rise on this kidnaping. We thought—What do you mean, what kidnaping? Are you in the Police Department or the Department of Sanitation? It’s only on every radio in the city.”
“If they turn him loose in the street,” Reynolds said, “he won’t know where to go. He isn’t the kind of child who can find his way around easily.”
“Mister, any kid can find his way around, it figures, don’t it?”
“Anyway,” Carella said into the phone, “we thought we’d run a check on stolen cars just in case the car used in the snatch was—” He paused. “What? Listen, mister, what’s your name?… Okay, Detective Planier, I’ve already heard all the jokes about snatches, and I don’t think they’re very funny right now. What do you do when a guy turns up dead in a pine coffin, crack jokes about boxes? There’s an eight-year-old kid missing here, and we want a rundown on stolen cars, so get a list up here right away… What?… No, just covering the last week or ten days. Thank you, Detective Planier… What? Up your mother’s too,” Carella said. “The address is just Douglas King, Smoke Rise. Off Smoke Rise Road. Goodbye, Detective Planier.” He hung up and turned to Cassidy. “Wise guy,” he said. “I broke up a pinochle game.”