Cop Out

Thursday-Friday
The Money

“What do you mean?’5 Malone said. “What do you mean it isn’t here any more?”

“Somebody took it.”

“Who? How? I told you not to let it out of your sight!”

“Don’t yell at me› Loney. I don’t think I can take any more.”

“Will you answer me, for God’s sake? How did it happen?”

Ellen got out of the rocker with Barbara. She pressed her lips to the child’s defenseless neck. “After I’ve got this baby in bed.”

He sank onto the sofa staring. Halfway up the stairs she turned. “Did you say whisky? They gave a nine-year-old whisky?”

He did not answer. She hissed something profane and vicious and ran the rest of the way.

Malone sat there listening to the small sounds from upstairs.

I got Bibby back. The money is gone. Now what?

His elbows dug into his dirt-soaked knees and he took his head in his hands and tried to think. But the thoughts were stuck, going round and round like a toy train.

When Ellen came down she was calmer. Give a woman her kid to tuck in and she doesn’t give a damn about anything else. She took his cap off and got him out of his hunting jacket and smoothed his hair. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

Malone shook his head. “Now tell me what happened.”

She sat down by his side and held on to her own hands.

“There’s not an awful lot to tell, Loney. It happened so fast. I had to go to the bathroom this afternoon-”

“And you left the money in here?”

“What was I supposed to do, take the bag to the toilet with me? Why didn’t you chain it to my wrist? How was I supposed to know-?”

“All right” He did a swiveling exercise with his head, making his neckbones creak. “I can’t seem to get this tiredness out. I could be coming down with the flu.”

“You’re such an optimist. You could be fighting it off.” She smiled at him, anxious to get away from the money. She didn’t want to talk about it.

“You went to the toilet and you left the bag here in the parlor,” Malone said. And he could think of nothing else. “You came out and it was gone?”

“No, he was still here.”

“Who was still here?”

“The man-”

“What man? What did he look like?”

“I’ll tell you if you’ll only let me,” Ellen said sullenly. “He must have heard me flush and realized I was coming out so he hid in the hall next to the bathroom door. I guess. Anyway, just as I stepped out something hit me on the head and I fell down.”

“Hit you?” For the first time Malone saw the bruise. It was well up in her hair, a purple and yellow-green lump the size of a robin’s egg. The hair around the lump was stiff with clotted blood. “Christ!”

He clutched her. She made a hard bundle in his arms.

“And I sounded off at you! We’d better get Dr. Levitt to look at your head right away.”

“I don’t need any doctor. It throbs like hell, that’s all. The main thing, Loney, we’ve got Bibby back.”

He cursed. He did not know whom or what he was cursing-the unknown thief, the punks, Tom Howland, himself, or fate. The main thing, yes, but it was not over, not by a long shot. Not with that money gone. They’d have real blood in their eyes this time.

“I don’t get it,” Malone said, trying to. “Who could it have been? Did you get a look at him, Ellen?”

“Barely, as I was falling. And then it was all in a blur, sort of. It’s a wonder I saw anything at all. I don’t even remember landing on the floor. I must have been out fifteen minutes.”

“Can you give me a description? Did you see his face?”

“Not hardly. He was wearing something over his head.”

He was startled. “One of those Three Bears masks?”

“No, it was a woman’s stocking. You know, like they use in movie holdups. That they can see through, but you can’t make out anything clear.”

“Did you see what he hit you with?”

“No, but I found the pieces afterward,” Ellen said grimly. “It was my St. Francis.” Ellen’s St. Francis had been given to her by her father’s sister Sue, whose name became Sister Mary Innocent. It was a cheap ceramic, but Ellen prized it. “I tried to paste the pieces together with Epoxy glue, but there were too many little ones.”

He knew what losing her St. Francis meant to her. Her aunt had died in a Bolivian mission, throat cut by a crazy bush Indian convert.

Crazy. This whole thing is crazy.

“Did you see anything else, Ellen? What about his clothes?”

“A jacket, pants.”

“Anything else?”

She shook her head and he saw her wince. He clutched her tighter.

“How big was he?”

“I don’t know. Not very big. I’m not sure of anything, Loney. It’s like I saw it all in a dream.”

“Did he say anything? Did you hear his voice?”

“No.”

“It’s one of those three.”

It was Ellen’s turn to be startled. She twisted in his arms.

“One of them doublecrossed the other two. It’s got to be, Ellen, nothing else makes sense. I fell asleep in the bushes out there while I was spying on the cabin. I was so exhausted I slept the whole day. Any one of them could have gone into town and I wouldn’t have seen. They could even have taken turns. It figures. Nobody else knew the money was here. And if he wasn’t big, like you say, it couldn’t have been that Hinch. So it looks like it was the gun-happy one, Furia. You didn’t see or hear a car?”

“I told you, I was in the bathroom not paying attention. And afterward, by the time I came to, whoever it was was gone. I ran outside and there wasn’t a soul on the street, no car, anything.”

Malone was glaring at the carpet.

“What is it, Loney?”

“Listen, baby, I’ve got to tell you. We’re in a worse spot than before.”

“But we’ve got Bibby back,” Ellen said, as if that wiped out everything. She pulled away and jumped up. “I think I’ll go back up and see if she’s all right.”

He reached for her. “You don’t understand-”

“I don’t want to!” And that made a lot of sense, that did.

“You’ve got to. Will you please listen, honey? They’ll be back for their blood money. They’ll be mad as mad dogs because I got Bibby away from them, and when they find out the money’s gone, too, our name is mud.”

“But one of them took it! You said so yourself.”

“You don’t think he’s going to admit it to the other two, do you? Ellen, you and Bibby are in terrible danger. I’ve got to get you both out of here fast. I’ll phone John right now. You go on up and get Bibby awake and dressed-”

“You do and you’re dead,” said the spinning voice.

They filled the archway.

He had not heard them come in, they must move like cats after a nest, it was ridiculous, they didn’t look dangerous, they looked like a corny act on TV, the little one in the neat suit, the bruiser in the leather jacket and sneakers, the blonde in slacks and pea jacket with a scarf of psychedelic colors hanging down her front, as freaky as some farout hippie combo and as unconvincing. Ridiculous.

But my revolver in Furia’s mitt, that’s not ridiculous, and the Walther automatic in Hinch’s (so Gunslinger didn’t throw it in the Tonekeneke after all, he couldn’t bear to part with it), and the look behind the eyeslits in the girl’s mask that’s somehow worse than the guns-not ridiculous, no.

They were back in their masks again (why? was it for making horrible faces like the kids make when they’re feeling nasty, to get the upper hand through looking horrible, half in play, half serious?), but there was nothing playful about these three, Tom Howland found that out, so did Ed Taylor, and what game is little doublecrossing Furia going to play now?

I wish I could see his face.

Furia marched in and asserted himself from just outside Malone’s reach. The Colt Trooper was doing a dance. Malone watched it, fascinated. The bobcat’s tail had done that just before he shot it. I wish I had it now. Put a slug right between Papa Bear’s eyes. And a lightning second shot at Mama Bear. He fought with his fantasy.

“There’s one thing puts me uptight it’s a wise-guy cop,” Furia was saying. There was a thickness, a curdle, in his tight voice; Malone could almost taste the sludge. “You made a first-class monkey out of me, fuzz. Didn’t you?”

“She’s my kid,” Malone said. “What would you do if it was your kid and she’s in a spot like that?”

But Furia wasn’t listening. “Look at my hands!”

The trim little hands were stippled with soot. The spidery black hairs on their narrow backs had been singed off by the brush fire.

“I’m sorry about that,” Malone said. In that TV drama he had seen recently, where the escaped convicts took over a suburban household led by a kill-crazy nut, the father had defied the criminals and talked tough to them through the whole thing. He had thought the father nuttier than the convicts. You don’t get tough with a desperate criminal holding a gun on you, not if you want you and yours to keep on living. “My wife has some ointment if you got a burn.”

“Shove it! Where’s the kid?”

Malone half rose. Ellen was standing there like a deer.

He saw her throat move as she swallowed. “What are you going to do to her?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out, missus! Give me the bag.”

Malone got all the way up, taking it slow, as he had done approaching the bobcat. He had no idea what he was about. I’ll have to do something, I can’t just let him shoot us down without lifting a finger. My bare hands against two guns… Ellen… Bibby… Maybe if I talk. The way I say it.

“Look, Mr. Furia,” Malone said.

“The bag!”

“I’m trying to tell you. I got home with my daughter tonight to find my wife practically in hysterics. This afternoon, while she had to go to the bathroom, somebody got into the house and ran off with the money. No, I swear to God! We knew how sore you’d be, and we’ve been sitting here trying to figure out-”

An ammunition dump exploded. When the peace fell Malone found himself sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa seat holding his shattered head, Ellen moaning and batting his hand away and dabbing at the wound with a bloody handkerchief, Furia an arm’s length away, the Colt in his fist shaking. Malone had not even seen the barrel coming.

He shook his head cautiously, trying to clear it.

“He’s lying,” the blonde woman said. “Don’t you believe him, Fure.”

“Heisting us,” Hinch snarled. “Let me at the sonofabitch, Fure. I’ll open him up.”

“I’m handling this!” Furia shouted. He poised the pistol over Malone’s head. “You want another clout, smart cop? Or I should put a bullet in your old lady’s ear? Now you tell me and you tell it like it is. Where’s that bag?”

Malone raised his arm defensively. There was a rising howl in his head that overrode argument and any sort of rational plan. All he could think of was I’m going to get my brains splashed over my own rug by my own gun in front of my own wife without a lousy prayer to help her or Bibby or myself and then they’ll get it, too.

“He’s telling you the truth, Mr. Furia,” Ellen screeched. “It was stolen from me by some man with a stocking over his head. I came out of the bathroom and he hit me over the head with my St. Francis, the pieces are in the garbage pail if you don’t believe me. Look at the lump on my head if you don’t believe me.”

Furia seized her by the hair and yanked her backward. Malone to his own surprise made a feeble attempt to get at him. Furia kicked him in the jaw. Everything stopped.

When it started again Furia was saying in a worried way, “I don’t get it.”

“So she’s got a lump,” the woman Goldie said. “How do we know she got it like she says?”

“Yeah,” Hinch said. “She could of fell down or something.”

“But you saw the pieces of that statue in the pail,” Furia said.

“So what?” Goldie said. “She broke it herself to make it look good, Fure. That’s the way I see it.”

“The gall,” Hinch said. “To heist us out of our own heist!”

“They’re lying all right, Fure.”

“You’re lying!” Furia yelped.

“You know we’re not,” Malone heard Ellen cry. He wanted to stop whatever she was going to say, push Ellen to the wall and thinking is out. But he had no strength to do anything. I wonder if he broke my jaw. “You’re putting on a great big act for your two friends!” Ellen cried. “You came here today and stole that bag so you could keep all the money for yourself.”

“Me?” Furia screamed.

Malone thought Furia was going to throw a fit on the carpet. The prospect turned him on. The howling cut off, the dark began to turn gray. He pulled himself back to a sitting position. He could feel the restorative adrenaline shooting. He’ll turn on Ellen now. Malone bunched himself.

But it was a funny thing how Furia calmed down. He did not throw a fit. He did not turn on Ellen. He made no further move toward Malone. Instead he backed off with the Colt half raised, and when he spoke it was to Hinch and the blonde, in a wary tone. Malone saw his trigger finger tighten the least bit.

“You fall for that, Hinch?”

Hinch was staring at him. “You could of, Fure,” he said. “While me and Goldie was in town.”

“I never left the shack!”

“Fure wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Goldie said to Hinch. “Not Fure. Aren’t you the clever one?” she said to Ellen. “Trying to split us up.”

“She’s trying to split us up,” Furia said. “Yeah. She figures she can get us in a three-way fight they might find a chance to cut out. You see that, Hinch?”

Hinch hesitated. “I guess,” he said.

“You better believe it.” He turned to the Malones, gesturing with the revolver. “Sit down!”

Malone pulled himself up to the sofa. Ellen fell down beside him.

“Now,” Furia said. “Payup time, folks. Where’s that twenty-four grand?”

“Do you think I’d pull a stunt like this and put my family in danger of getting shot?” Malone said. He sensed a hairline advantage, a sliver of crack in the doom. He tried to keep the thump and throb of his head and jaw out of his voice, you don’t show weakness to an animal. “Just to get somebody’s payroll back because I’m a cop? Or even to keep it for myself? You can beat up on us, torture us, kill us, we can’t tell you what we don’t know. We’re telling the truth. Somebody sneaked in here today and half brained my wife and took the bag. She didn’t even get a good look at him.”

Furia pounced. “Then why’d she say it was me? Huh? Huh?”

“Because nobody knew the money was here except us and you three. We didn’t take it, so we figured it had to be one of you. As my wife was falling she saw he wasn’t a big man. If he wasn’t a big man we didn’t see how it could be anybody but you. Anyway, that’s what we figured. Maybe we were wrong, Mr. Furia. Maybe it was some housebreaker who just happened to pick our place today to see what he could steal and hit the jackpot. But that’s the way it happened. That’s all we know.”

The eyes in the mask blinked uncertainly.

“He’s a real con, this cop,” Goldie said. “A regular mouthpiece. You going to swallow this, Fure?”

“See?” Hinch said. “He says it couldn’t of been me.”

“No,” Furia said. “No, I ain’t, Goldie! It’s a stall, all right. You and Hinch turn this dump upside down. After we find our dough I’ll learn this smartmouth who he’s dealing with.”

The first search was slapdash. Malone saw half a dozen places in the parlor where the money could have been hidden that Hinch missed. And from the sounds of Goldie’s hunt upstairs, the rapidity with which she went through the bedrooms told the same story. The Malones sat with clasped hands under Furia’s gun, straining for the first whimper of Barbara overhead, but she slept through the noise.

At one point in the dream Ellen asked if she could go get ice for her husband’s jaw and something for his head, but Furia sneered, “You’re breaking my heart,” and Malone had to lick the blood off his lips. It was still trickling down from his hair.

Hinch was crashing around in the cellar when Goldie came downstairs lugging Malone’s rifle and the boxes of ammunition.

“Look what I found, Fure.”

She offered it to him like a mother with candy. He grabbed it with a snarl of pleasure. But he had regressed, it was not the sweet thing he wanted, and he flung it back at her.

“A lousy.22! No dough?”

“I couldn’t find it.”

Furia ran over to the landing under the stairs and yelled down, “Any sign of it, Hinch?” and when Hinch came clumping up shaking his head Furia ran back and jabbed Malone’s throat with the Colt and squealed, “Where is it, you mother lover?” while Ellen, eyes starting from her head, tried to cover him with her body and to Malone’s surprise the woman Goldie took hold of Furia’s arm with her free hand and pulled him off.

“Shooting them now won’t get us our money, Fure. Fure, you listening to me? What good are they dead?” which sounded true to Malone and left him feeling gratitude, that was the New England tradition talking, her good old Yankee horse sense. Bless you, Goldie Whoever-you-are.

Furia tore the mask from his face and for the first time Malone and his wife saw him in the flesh, a corpse-face with the shine of corruption and ears like the White Rabbit’s in Barbara’s tattered Alice and the sad dead expression of a younger version of the little comic on the Smothers Brothers show, Pat Paulsen, but without the humanity or discipline, one of life’s rejects, as frightening as an incurable disease.

He seemed to need air.

“You okay, Fure?” Goldie asked. She sounded concerned.

Furia batted her hand away and dropped into the rocker breathing like a fish. He kept hugging the revolver. Hinch and the automatic were holding up the arch looking at Furia with anxiety and a little something extra. A doubt?

Malone shut his eyes.

When he opened them Goldie was saying, “Why not, Fure? We can hole in here for a day or even two and like really take the place apart. That money’s here, it’s got to be. Right?”

She had taken her mask off, too. Her hair was just-polished brass. The mask had smeared her makeup, it gave her features a blurred look like the TV sometimes when it pulsed. Malone squinted, trying again to place her, but she kept just out of reach. She was younger and must have been fresher then, not runny around the edges, maybe that’s why I can’t put my finger on it.

He stopped trying because Ellen was leaning her head on his shoulder and her face was turned up, her eyes were faraway glass. Even if we get out of this she’ll never be the same, she’ll have nightmares the rest of her life, she’ll make a nervous wreck out of Bibby, she won’t let the kid out of her sight… and never, never forgive me. Not because all this is my fault but because I somehow didn’t rise to it like one of her heroes, Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole, Michael Caine, or her special favorite Spencer Tracy on the Late Late Show the two or three nights a month when the cramps keep her from sleeping. I’m the dropout of her dreams, a smalltown hick who can’t make it even medium-sized. And the cop tag a big gas.

Malone hauled himself back to what was going on. Furia had recovered, he was the boss man again. “Didn’t you hear what I said, fuzz? You pay attention when I speak!”

“I’m sorry,” Malone said. “What did you say? My head aches.”

“I said we’re moving in on you till we find that bread. You got nosy neighbors?”

“No,” Malone said.

“How about delivery men?”

“Just milk. He leaves it on the porch around eight a.m.”

“The rube who delivers the mail.”

“He drops it in our mailbox near the gate.”

“That’s all?”

Malone nodded with caution. His head felt like a bongo drum.

“Well, just in case. Anybody comes to the door and asks, we’re relatives from out of town. How’d you like me for a relative, missus?”

Ellen almost said something.

“Not good enough for you, ha?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ellen said.

Furia laughed. “You got it, fuzz?”

“Yes,” Malone said.

“You, too, missus?”

Ellen gulped something and finally nodded.

“And don’t let me catch you trying to use the phone, I’ll break your dainty ladyfingers one at a time or, hell, why not? I’ll sick Hinch onto you. You like that, Hinch?”

“Mama mia,” Hinch said. “What I could do with her.”

Malone was hit by ice water. I never thought of that. I never thought of that danger to Ellen.

“Now Hinch,” Furia said. “This is a nice lady. Don’t go thinking none of your dirty thoughts about Mrs. Fuzz.” Goodhumored now, the thing was settled for him by Goldie and he can act the big brass with the reverse of responsibility-ordering the tactics after the chain-of-command below works out the strategy, a hell of a way to run a war. But it was a cockeyed war. Malone kept his eyes on Hinch.

Hinch took off his bear mask, too. No doubt to give Ellen the benefit of his manly beauty. He was looking pleased. Malone’s glimpse of that Neanderthal face in the clearing had hardly prepared him for the reality of the closeup. He could imagine how Ellen was feeling at her first look, especially with thoughts of rape trembling in her head. He felt her shudder and he wanted to tell her that gorillas were peaceable animals, it was the sort of thing he would have said to Barbara to hush a fear. But Ellen shuddered again and burrowed closer, a big smart girl who knew the difference between a fairy tale and seeing it like it is, baby. Malone found himself fumbling around with a prayer.

“That goes for both of you,” Furia said. “If the phone rings you don’t answer without me or Goldie listening in. And about the door, front or back. Anybody comes you don’t open till I give you the nod. Got all that?”

Malone said they did. Ellen said nothing.

“Okay. Soon as we tear your bedroom apart I’ll let the two of you go up there, I’m sick of looking at you. But you stay there and no tricks. Remember about that phone.”

“There’s no phone in their bedroom,” Goldie said.

“Anywhere.”

“My child,” Ellen said. “Is it all right if we take my child in with us?” She added quickly, “In case she wakes up, Mr. Furia. I don’t want her to be any trouble to you.”

“After we search your room, okay.” Her humility seemed to gentle him. Or maybe he’s turned on. Can he be high on junk or LSD? No, not him. He’s got to have control.

“She can remind you the spot you’re in, missus.”

Malone saw suddenly that Furia’s bag was fear.

“Thank you,” Ellen said humbly.

Furia had done a job on their room all right. While Hinch held the Walther on them downstairs. Every once in a while making a face at Ellen. He seemed to enjoy watching her shrivel and blanch. Malone could see Hinch’s lips, red and wet as fresh blood, and occasionally the gray tip of his tongue. Those lips on Ellen. The picture made him pull his legs up as if he had been kicked in the groin.

Everything in their bureau drawers had been tossed every which way. The clothes in their closet had been ripped apart garment by garment. The bedroom rug, a handhooked American Colonial that Ellen had wheedled out of her mother, had been slashed in three places-how could it have hidden anything?-and kicked aside. A loose board of the old chestnut floor Ellen kept in a perpetual gleam had been hacked with Malone’s handax from the cellar and pried up; they could see in the cavity before Malone replaced it a fossilized rat’s nest that had probably been there for generations. Their imitation maple double bed had been taken apart and two of the slats broken, sleep-on-that-damn-you they seemed to say in Furia’s alto, Malone had had to put the bed together again before they could transfer Bibby from her room. The child’s head was lying on his hunting jacket. Furia’s switchblade had disemboweled their two pillows, goose feathers lay all over the room.

They sat on the floor at the foot of the bed in the wreckage listening to Barbara’s heavy breathing. She had waked from her alcoholic sleep when Malone picked her up and begun to cry, complaining that her head hurt, and Ellen had had to get the boss man’s permission to go for an aspirin in the upstairs bathroom. She finally got Bibby back to sleep. Malone was holding an icebag to his swollen jaw, and with the bandage on his bloody head that Ellen had applied he looked like a refugee from a defeated army.

Ellen said with a shiver, “Hold me, Loney.”

He held her.

“I’m scared.”

“We’re still alive,” Malone said.

The Irish in her stirred, and she showed the faintest dimple. “You call this living?”

He lowered the icebag to kiss her. “That’s my girl.”

“Loney, are we going to get out of this?”

“I think we’re all right for the time being.”

“And how long is that?”

He was silent.

“Couldn’t you make a rope out of the bedclothes and climb out the window while they’re tearing up the house?” She’s back at the movies again. “You could make a call to Chief Secco from the Cunninghams’ or the Rochelles’… “

“How long do you think you and Bibby would last if they found me gone? You’ve got to face it, Ellen. We’re in this alone.”

She was silent.

I’m in this alone.

A glass crashed downstairs and they heard Hinch laughing. He’s found the bottle of scotch Don James gave me for finally catching that white kid who kept heaving trashcans through their front windows. He tried not to think of Hinch drunk and tightened his grip on Ellen.

After a while Malone said, “Our best chance is if we can get the money back or at least figure out who took it. I could maybe make a deal with Furia, the money for him letting us go.”

“I thought you thought Furia stole it.”

“I thought he did. Now I’m not sure. A punk like him could put on an act, I suppose, but I think I’d see through it, I can usually tell when they’re lying. He sounded pretty convincing to me.”

“But if it wasn’t Furia who could it have been? Maybe it was Hinch after all, Loney. He could have been like in a crouch-”

“Can’t you remember anything else about the man who hit you?”

She set her head back against the patchwork quilt. “I told you all I saw.”

“Sometimes things can come back. We’ve got to try, baby. Ellen?”

“Yes?”

“I know you’re fagged out, but don’t go to sleep on me now. Think! His suit. What color was it?”

Ellen’s head rolled a negative.

“Was it a suit? Or could it have been a sports outfit? Did the pants and jacket match?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

“Or maybe a leather jacket?”

She shook her head again.

“Could he have been wearing a topcoat?”

“I just didn’t see, Loney.”

“A hat?”

“No,” Ellen said this time. “No hat, or I’d remember. The stocking was drawn over his whole head.”

“You can see something of the face through one of those sheer stockings. Do you remember anything about his face?”

“Just a mashed nose.”

“Mashed? Like Hinch’s?”

“A stocking would mash… anybody’s… nose… “

“Ellen, you’re falling asleep again.” He shook her, and she opened her eyes.

“I’sorry.”

“Hair? Ears? Tie? Hands? Feet?”

She kept shaking her head. But then her eyes got big and she pushed away from the bed. “His feet, Loney! He was wearing galoshes. Or overshoes.”

“Overshoes.” Malone stared at her. “Today? It’s been dry all day, not a cloud in the sky. You sure, Ellen?”

She nodded.

“That’s a hot one. Overshoes… What’s the matter?”

“I just remembered something else.”

“What?”

“His hands. He was wearing gloves. I saw the hand coming down after I was hit. I didn’t see flesh. It was a man’s glove. Black leather.”

“Gloves,” Malone muttered. “That could figure. If he kept his face covered he might also be careful not to leave his fingerprints around… if he was, say, a housebreaker.”

“In New Bradford?” Ellen actually smiled. “You’re making like a detective again, Officer. Why would a sneakthief in this town worry about fingerprints?”

“I admit it’s a lot likelier one of them, the way we’ve been figuring. But why gloves? All three of them came here tonight barehanded… “

Malone looked surprised at the destination of his train of thought. He set the icebag on the floor carefully and slipped off his shoes and put his fingers to his lips and got up, not like an exhausted man now. He went to the door and listened. When he came back he got down on one knee and said in a whisper, “Ellen, you’ve kept telling me it was a man hit you. Why a man?”

“Huh?”

“Why’ve you been saying the one who hit you was a man?”

Ellen frowned. “I don’t know. His jacket, the pants-”

“That doesn’t make a man. Not these days. These days you can hardly tell some women and men apart. A woman can put on a pair of slacks and a man-style jacket and with her hair squashed down by that tight stocking you wouldn’t be able to tell, not from the front and while you were falling from a hit on the head. But there’s two things about a woman would be a dead giveaway if they weren’t disguised some way and that’s her hands and feet!

“That’s why she wore the men’s overshoes on a dry day and men’s gloves. She was taking out insurance in case she was spotted. Remember Hinch saying downstairs he and this Goldie went into town today? Ellen, it’s Goldie who’s dou-blecrossing the other two. She must have given Hinch the slip in town and come here on her own.

“She’s the one knocked you out. She lifted that bag, and it’s a cinch she hid it somewhere before she went back to the cabin. It adds up, because she’s been trying like mad to sell Furia that we stole it. Yes, sir. That’s it!”

Malone was feeling the small triumph. He craved Ellen’s adoration. He wanted her to say, You’ve redeemed yourself in my eyes, my darling, you’re my very own hero, you sure can overcome, I feel safe again.

But all Ellen said was, “All right, Loney, she’s got it. How does that help us?”

And of course she’s right.

Malone got back up and began to pad about. “That’s the problem. What else have we got to work on? Nothing. So we’ve got to make use of it some way. How?”

“That is the question,” Ellen said. She did not sound anything but beat. Her head sank back against the end of the bed.

But Malone’s second wind continued to blow. It was something. It was a light where everything before had been black as the inside of the old gravity well out back that hadn’t been used in fifty years and was full of green slime, like Furia must be.

“Maybe if we accuse her of it in front of the other two,” Ellen murmured.

“No, that wouldn’t work. She’s smart, she’s got Furia around her little finger, he’ll believe anything she says. She mustn’t even suspect we suspect her, Ellen, or she might get Furia to knock us off. I wouldn’t put it past her. Deep down she’s worse than he is.”

“Could we make a deal with her…?”

“What have we got to offer? That we’ll tell Furia? Even if it put a doubt in his mind we can’t prove it to him, and she’d talk him out of it. Up to now, Ellen, she’s held him back. She wouldn’t hold him back any more.” Malone looked down at her. “The way it shapes up, we’ll have to somehow find out or figure out where she’s hiding it.”

“You do that.”

“Ellen, we can’t give up.”

“Who’s giving up?”

“You are!”

“What do you want me to do, Loney? I can’t fight them with my bare hands.” That was it. That was it. “All I know is, I’ve got my child’s life to protect-”

“We’ve got!”

“Do you want them to hear us fighting?”

Malone cracked his knuckles and began padding again.

Ellen’s eyelids came down.

“I’m not sleeping,” she said. “The light hurts my eyes.”

He flipped the switch savagely. But then he collapsed against the wall. This is no good. We’re at each other’s throats. What did I expect from her? Up against the first real spot in my life and I try to lean on her like I never leaned on even my own mother. She wants to lean on me. She’s got a right, I’m her husband. It’s one man one vote time. You go into the booth and you’re all by yourself. The American way.

He buckled down to it like Robinson Crusoe.

“Ellen.” Malone shook her gently.

It was much later.

“Loney?” She had fallen asleep. She sat up and groped for his hand. “Is something-did they-?”

“No, they’re quiet, they’ve given up for the night.” Malone squatted beside her in the dark. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Oh.”

“No, this is different. I’ve been going over the whole thing in my head. I think I’m onto something.”

“Oh?”

“Ellen, wake up, this could be important. Then you can climb into bed with Bibby. Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Something struck me funny. How come these creeps picked our house Wednesday night?”

She moved and the floor creaked. “They were running away. Maybe they saw our light on. I don’t think anybody else on the block had their lights on when I got back from the movies.”

“But why pick Old Bradford Road in the first place? There’s a Dead End sign at the entrance off Lovers Hill. A blind man can see it. Robbers running away aren’t going to box themselves in on a dead-end street. And another thing. Before I got home from the station Wednesday night, did you tell them I was a cop?”

“Of course not. I was afraid if they knew they might shoot you down as you came in the door.”

“Right. But just the same they knew, didn’t they? Furia called me a cop straight out. How did he know? I wasn’t in uniform. How did he know, Ellen?”

“That is funny.”

“I’ll tell you how. They had advance information!”

“You mean they saw you on duty in town during the day?”

“Then why did Furia say, ‘Freeze, cop,’ as soon as I stepped into the house? He couldn’t even see my face, they had all the lights out except on the porch, and my back was to that. No, Ellen, they knew without ever having seen me before.”

“But how could they?”

“Nanette.”

Ellen said, “My God. The girl I’ve trusted Bibby to all these years! Nanette’s in on this, Loney?”

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t have to be. Remember how many times Nanette’s mentioned her older sister, how their parents practically disowned her because she went bad? Ellen, this Goldie is Nanette’s sister.”

“That’s just a guess.”

“It’s a fact. I knew right away I’d seen her before, years ago, I was sure she came from New Bradford, but I didn’t place her till I started asking myself all these questions and then it came to me just like that. Nanette said herself they’ve kept up a correspondence on the sly since Goldie left home. My guess is Nanette mentioned her regular baby-sitting job for us, and Goldie remembered it when they were in a jam Wednesday night and talked Furia into coming here and taking Bibby as security for the money. So I’ve got to get to Nanette first thing in the morning-”

“They won’t let you go.”

“I’ve got an idea about that, too. Ellen, it’s our only lead. I can’t pass it up.”

“Lead to what? How can it possibly help us?”

Malone got to his feet. “Maybe it can’t. But it’s better than sitting here like three chickens waiting to get our necks chopped off.”

“Oh, Loney, if you only could!”

And that was better, lots better.

He stooped to kiss her. “Now you’re getting into that bed, young lady.”

“Not unless you do.”

“I’ll come to bed in a while.”

He waited until Ellen’s breathing told him she was asleep.

Then he felt around in the dark until he located the loose board. He split a fingernail prying it up and he stretched out on the floor in front of the door with the board in his arms.

I’ll have to pull it off in the morning.

Some way.