The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel Read online

  Dwight shouted cheerfully: “You’re a heel!”

  And Frankie put in some good work with: “She’ll sue you. Goddammit, she ought to sue you. This’ll set you back a quarter of a million.” And at that B.G. winced, because he knew what quarter of a million the boys were referring to. It was what an indiscretion of his could have cost the firm but for their resource and loyalty to Gissenheim’s.

  He started to shout at them, his eyes darting frantically everywhere behind his glasses, appalled to find himself the centre of a scene in a public place. He was bleating: “I didn’t ask her to chase me. I don’t care if some sex-starved female does get a yen for me. I’m not interested in women.”

  Marty spread his hands and looked around the hotel. He said: “Casanova says he’s not interested in women. He must have had a bad night.”

  And Frankie called out: “Mebbe he’s got a conscience.”

  And Dwight’s comment was a laconic, “Mebbe.”

  I concentrated on the lawyer man while B.G. went around bleating furiously: “You’re tearing my character to shreds. You know damn well I never gave that dame any encouragement. There ought to be a law to protect men against women like her.”

  Now the lawyer man was beginning to register. He was saying: “Mr. Heggy, my client informs me you reported to the police that she had been abducted from this hotel last night. That news has caused distress among her friends. My client demands a full and proper explanation and, failing that, I’m afraid this matter will have to go before a Turkish court.”

  My eyes I’m sure were glinting hard at that sleek, well-dressed lawyer. I’ll bet my face looked as inviting as the steel jaws of a Gissenheim mountain grabber right then. I said: “Listen, pansy, I saw what I saw.” My eyes flickered to that lovely girl who seemed to be watching me in such distress and agony, and yet was shrinking away from me. I said, my voice grating: “I saw so much of you, sweetheart, I could describe you perfectly.” But I didn’t. My eyes were looking beyond the lawyer man at another man who had just entered the foyer. This newcomer was my police shadow of the night before.

  Marie Konti was almost crying, as if she didn’t want this scene in public and was trying hard to make me believe her story. She called, with that rising note that Europeans get when they’re excited:

  “I never left my apartment all last night, I was out when the police came, but I reported to them by telephone immediately afterwards.”

  I looked at the tall young man standing alongside my shadow. That tall young man was the Turkish police officer. He was standing silently there, listening intently, but when I looked at him he gave a little nod as if to confirm what Marie Konti was saying.

  My eyes fell to her hands. She was carrying a room key to which was attached a large brass number plate. I could see the number on it and it was 102.

  I said: “You can do what the hell you like. My story stays the same as it was. And I’ll add to it. There was another dame passing herself off as Marie Konti when I went up to her room last night. She had boyfriends, too, and they were playful. They tried to drop me on my head down an empty elevator shaft, and then they tried to rough me up in the Galata area.

  “They even used a gun on me, when they thought it was safe.” I was speaking now for the benefit of that Turkish police officer, and everybody there knew it.

  “I’ve been knocked around by four big apes, and I’m sore about it. Let me tell you that I’m sticking to my story, and if I get the chance I’ll do things to those apes that will be a shame!”

  Joe P. Heggy’s blood was up. This lovely girl was lying, and that lawyer man knew she was lying, and they were trying to make me look a fool. I wasn’t having any of it, and I was putting out a challenge to them deliberately to come and have another smack at Joe P. Heggy.

  For I was beginning to think of a plan to do unto those others what they wanted to do to Joe P. Heggy. I was forgetting that I am normally a nervous man.

  The lawyer-man got very brusque and he said: “Very well, if that’s your attitude, I have no alternative but to go to the Courts, and complain about your behaviour.”

  I had a feeling then that he said it significantly, but it didn’t impinge for the moment. I just nodded and started to push my way past them, because I was on a job of trouble-busting and private interests came second to those that gave me my paycheck.

  I couldn’t resist it, however. As I went past the attractive Marie Konti I said: “Honey, any time you want a big brother, come and weep on my shoulder.”

  She said something. It was a whisper. I walked past as if I hadn’t heard, as if she hadn’t said anything. B.G. and the boys, still yapping at him, came up behind me. The big young police officer turned and went through the doors ahead of me. There was a police car alongside the sidewalk. B.G. and the others started to go round the alley where taxis usually parked, but I dallied to have words with the police officer.

  I looked at my shadow and said: “Brother, I didn’t ditch you purposely. Things just happened. I’d have given a million to have had you tailing me later last evening.”

  I don’t think he believed me. I think under that impassive countenance he felt sore because I had apparently tricked him, and he had fallen down on a job. I had a feeling it wasn’t too good to fall down on a job in the police force of Istanbul.

  The big young police officer was slapping his gloves into his empty palm—a characteristic habit of the man. He said nothing, but his eyes were smiling invitingly, suggesting that I opened up to him.

  I stood in the sunshine on that sidewalk, my head bent, and I brooded for a second, and then I lifted my eyes to his and said: “How much do you know of von Papen?”

  My question startled the police officer. He repeated: “Von Papen?”

  I nodded: “Yeah, I know a bit about him. He was Hitler’s ambassador here in Turkey around 1943, wasn’t he?”

  The police officer nodded. The smile had left his face and he seemed to be watching me narrowly.

  I said: “What else can you tell me about von Papen?”

  The police officer was nonplussed. Again his shoulders shrugged, and he said; “I don’t know much about him. He didn’t last long.” His eyes seemed to be thinking back. “He didn’t approve of foreigners,” the handsome, well-groomed young officer said abruptly, and then he explained a little more fully. “He caused a law to be passed by the Turkish government at the time, a law which aroused a lot of interest throughout the world, I remember.”

  I began to feel a little excited, as if I felt that the dawn of revelation was at hand. I said: “Go on!”— quickly.

  “That law said that any foreign nationals resident in Turkey lost all rights of return if they left the country even for the shortest of periods.”

  I began to nod. I remembered that law. It was really anti-Semitic, aimed at Jews, principally, resident in Turkey, in accordance with Hitler’s racial theories.

  But I couldn’t for the life of me see how this tied up with the abduction of a pretty girl—and her later reappearance.

  For those were the two words that Marie Konti had whispered to me when I passed her just then—“Von Papen.” That’s what she’d said.

  I shook my head.

  That husky young police officer was trying to smile again. But his eyes weren’t smiling. They were searching my face, trying to read through the riddle. He asked: “I do not understand. What is this talk of von Papen? What has von Papen got to do with—”

  He shrugged. He didn’t need to enlarge upon this complex and mysterious affair.

  I sighed, and it was a sigh so long it must have been a world’s record. But I was a weary, puzzled man. I told him: “Damned if I know,” and then I changed the conversation. “Now, you tell me, who was that gink with Marie Konti?” I changed the conversation because I didn’t want him to know those were the two words uttered to me by Marie Konti.

  The traffic went noisily by. People thronged the sidewalks, there was the babble of many tongues, and I sa
w faces that belonged to every continent in the world.

  And yet, in the midst of all this almost-cheerful gaiety, I was standing there brooding, near to being disconsolate, so that it was only distantly and with half my mind that I heard that young Turk say, noncommittally: “He is a big lawyer. He is the most powerful lawyer in the country, because he is also one of its most powerful men.”

  I came out of my reverie then. “You mean he’s a politician?”

  The officer nodded. He had his hand on the handle of the police car awaiting him. I think he didn’t wish to be seen in too close a conversation with me after Marie Konti had appeared to discredit my statement.

  And yet I knew without being told that this smart young officer was still on my side, and that meant that he believed my story. “He’s in the government, and a most powerful man.” I knew he was warning me to watch my step and I was grateful to him. “His name is—”

  It seemed to me that the officer gave a strangulated cough. I said: “Pardon?”

  He told me that that was the lawyer’s name. I waved a paw. “He can keep it,” I said. “I’ll go on thinking of him as the lawyer-man.” I brooded a second, and then changed my mind. “Nope. From now on I’ll call him a poisonous politician,” I said deliberately, “Because he’s all that, and you know it, brother!”

  The Turkish officer nodded politely and got into his car. Through the open window he smiled at me and said, so confidently: “Mr. Heggy, I’m leaving it to you to solve this case for me. I’m pretty sure they’ll come after you again!”

  So I said: “This time, then, forget about a police tail, will you?” Because my blood was up. I wanted to handle these murderous thugs in my own way. After all, wasn’t my profession breaking down trouble when it appeared?

  He nodded. “As you wish,” he said. And that seemed to me to be a compliment. As if the police officer felt that I could hold my own even against powerful thugs.

  The police car slid off. The boys, still going vigorously for a bewildered and unhappy B.G., got into a taxi round the alleyway. I told ’em to go ahead, I’d follow in another cab.

  They didn’t understand it, but I got short with them and they must have realized I was up to something, for Marty nodded and gave the word to the driver and the taxi went out into the main street with its horn screaming in true Istanbul fashion.

  I went to the next taxi in the rank. The driver looked the kind of man I wanted—young, and with the light of adventure in his eyes. I took out a handful of kuruş. That passes for money in Turkey. I shoved ít into that astonished driver’s hand, and it was probably more than he could earn with his cab in a fortnight.

  I said: “You do as I tell you and there’s more kuruş waiting for you at the end of this trip.”

  He didn’t understand, but he kept smiling quickly at me and nodding vigorously, and I knew it would be all right. I climbed in behind him. And the way he looked at me he must have thought I wanted to run somebody. And he was willing!

  I got the window open behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. I told him: “Go left, brother,” and I jerked my head to indicate the way I wanted. I was on my knees behind him now, but I was controlling him with my grip on his shoulder. That grip kept him down to a crawl, and he turned left and came slowly up into the position vacated by the police car.

  A group was standing on the edge of the sidewalk. There was that big, sleek, politician-lawyer, talking to a fawning, uneasy-smiling Benny, and just to one side of them stood lovely Marie Konti.

  Benny started to come along the sidewalk quickly, and I knew he was running round to get a taxi for the big boss. For I felt sure in my mind that this big huckster was the big boy behind all this skullduggery.

  I stooped so that Benny didn’t see me, and he passed on to the rank. I had one hand on the taxi driver’s shoulder now, and the other on the door-handle. I lifted my eyes just above the level of the door frame, and right, there before me was Marie Konti. The huckster was looking after Benny, for one second his attention diverted from the girl.

  I let the door swing open, and I reached out and grabbed a wrist that was slim and smooth and soft, and I pulled, and Marie Konti came falling into the taxi on top of me. I had that door closed quicker than it takes to say it. And then that taxi driver earned his money, because he had seen what had happened, and he didn’t wait for orders, but put his foot hard on the accelerator and went up the hill like greased lightning. I don’t think the huckster even realized that Marie Konti had been snatched from underneath his nose into that receding taxi. She had been abducted a second time successfully—and by me this time!

  For a few seconds I didn’t get up, in case there were people watching the car who might recognize the kidnapper. We lay together in the well of the car, and Marie Konti didn’t move out of my arms, either.

  When I felt the car beginning to turn, I thought it was time to get up, and I pulled myself on to the broad, back seat. A glance through the window told me that we weren’t, so far anyway, being pursued. I looked down at Marie Konti. She was still lying there, and she was looking up at me with an unfathomable expression in her eyes.

  She wasn’t afraid of me, though. I felt glad about that.

  I lifted her and helped her into the seat beside me. Then I leaned forward and told the driver to go out to the new airfield, and then I concentrated on the girl.

  I offered a cigarette, but she shook her head. She was sitting quietly by my side, smoothing her thin-silk, beflowered dress, which looked so clean and attractive upon her. She was watching me all the time, as if trying to understand what was in my mind—and failing all the time.

  I said to her: “You didn’t mind being snatched away from—him?” I jerked my head back towards the hotel.

  She shook her head.

  I said, gently: “You look like a girl wanting help. Can I help you?”

  At that her eyes turned away, and I thought she was going to weep, and I don’t like girls to get lachrymose. Then, thank goodness, she put aside her feminine tears, and said: “I need someone to help me, but I don’t know how anyone can.”

  I came out with the usual gambit: “Maybe if you told me about it....”

  But she shook her head again, and she wouldn’t talk, beyond saying: “I want to keep away from that man for a while. He—he terrifies me!”

  Well, just then we came out on to the shambles that was the Gissenheim project.

  Whoever had wrecked the equipment had done it pretty thoroughly. It looked to me as if a giant had been turned loose, to create the havoc that I saw.

  The construction of an airfield is, in any event, always a scene of desolation. For as far as the eye could see on this low-lying dreary north coast of the Sea of Marmara, dirt had been grouted out, leaving the ugly grey-yellow undersoil exposed. The whole was crisscrossed with the deep ruts from transporter trucks, and the biting treads of caterpillar equipment.

  But I saw more than that, because that desolation was familiar to me. I saw that the long roller-conveyors had been overturned and the belts ripped off. I saw the damage apparent on bulldozers, grabbers, grouters, and cutters, and all the usual equipment required for a big Gissenheim project. It looked as if men had gone round with iron bars and smashed everything that could be smashed.

  There were several little groups of people standing among that clustered mass of silent machinery, and I got the driver to take us over to where I could see Gorby Tuhlman, with his mobile workshop. Marty was with him, but none of the other boys.

  Marty looked interested in the girl in the back of the car when I got out. He jerked his head without saying a word. I said, laconically: “I won second prize in a radio contest.” Marty looked interested. He said: “What was first prize? A harem?”

  Gorby looked up at me from a workbench scattered with ruins. His face was sour, the face of a man who has seen vandalism among things sacred to him. For these mighty muck-grabbers were like children to Gorby.

  I said: “How are things go
ing, Gorby?”

  He was savage. He said: “Nearly the only thing they missed was the power-grab. I reckon they couldn’t get up into the cabin to do any damage.” I looked round at all the other machinery. Ten million bucks’ worth. “It’s all out of action?”

  “It’s all out of action,” Gorby nodded. For a moment he worked savagely with a box-key, adjusting something. He had some Turkish assistants at work, but they didn’t seem to be getting on with the job very well. That was probably because we were short of spares on the scale required, and they weren’t sufficiently well-trained to be able to improvise. Gorby said, toughly: “But I’ll have half this equipment going before tonight. By God, if I have to work my fingers down to the elbows, I’ll have the cutters going, anyway!”

  That was something. If the cutters could still go driving into the low, rounded hill that had to be cleared, we could at least keep somewhere close to schedule. Gorby was saying: “I’m fixing floods all over the place. We’ll have to take away the spoil on a three-shift system after this. The cutters can get the muck back, but until the conveyors are moving up into the hoppers we can’t get it into the trucks.”

  I nearly said: “How about manual loading?” But fortunately I stopped. To Gorby, work done by hand was anachronistic in this age of mechanisation. There’d been tenders for this contract by local contractors who would have used gangs of labourers to transport muck in baskets on their heads. To employ such labour, even for a short while, would, to Gorby, be a confession that his beloved equipment wasn’t up to the job, that there was something in those laborious, old-fashioned techniques after all.

  So I said nothing, because Gorby looked as if he could use that spanner on anyone who crossed him, right then.

  Dwight came up then. He’d been to cable to Detroit for a list of spares to be sent out by first possible plane. He was looking a bit grim. Evidently the list was a long one. He said to me, toughly: “This is your meat from now on, you know, Joe.”