The Heckler

“What do you mean, Bert?” Byrnes asked. Meyer, standing alongside him, was dialing again.

“You know the story, don’t you? These men run an ad in a London paper, advertising for redheads to fill a vacancy in the League. The idea is that the League will pay this man I-forget-how-many pounds a week for copying words from the encyclopedia, but the copying job must be done in the League’s offices. Well, this redheaded man applies for the position and gets it, and every day he trots out to the office and copies words.”

“It sounds implausible to me,” Meyer said. Into the phone, he said, “Let me talk to Mr. Chen, please.”

“Not implausible at all,” Kling said. Meyer suddenly began talking again, so he shifted his attention to Byrnes. “The reason they want the redhead out of his shop, you see, is because they’re digging a tunnel to the bank across the way. Finally, when they’re ready to rob the bank, the man loses his job. He contacts Holmes to see if he can’t do something about his being fired, and of course Sherlock figures out exactly what’s going on.”

“How the hell does he do that?” Meyer asked, hanging up. “That was the Chinese restaurant. It’s over an antique shop. Rare jade mostly. I’m gonna call one more place.” Rapidly, he began dialing again.

“So what’s happened here?” Kling asked Byrnes. “This guy called God knows how many stores which are alongside banks and jewelry shops and—”

“We’re not sure onall of them yet,” Meyer said, waiting for someone to pick up the phone on the other end.

“We’re pretty sure,” Kling said. “He calls all these guys and he hopes one of them’ll call the cops, or all of them. He wants them to call the cops. Why? Because there’re twenty-three stores so far, and who knows how many others who didn’t bother to call us. Then he directs attention to Raskin’s loft because he wants us to think he’s going to hitthat bank. And today he takes out an ad forredheads, making sure we don’t miss the significance of the Sherlock Holmes story. He draws a direct parallel. He wants us to tip, wants us to figure out he’s going to rob the bank under Raskin’s loft. Okay, why?”

Into the phone, Meyer said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Goldfarb. Yes, thank you.” He hung up. “The travel agency,” he said. “It’s next door to a bank.”

“Sure,” Kling said. “So you know why he’s doing this?”

“Why?” Byrnes asked.

“Because he’s not going to hit that bank under the loft at all. He’s going to hit one of the other twenty-three. The rest are just his smoke screen.”

“Which one is he gonna hit?” Meyer asked.

Kling shrugged. “That’s the big question, Meyer.”

“What do we do, Pete?”

“What’s today?” Byrnes asked.

“The twenty-eighth.”

“And his deadline is the thirtieth?”

“Yes.”

“That gives us two days. I imagine we can put some men on.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll cover those shops. I’ll have to get help from some of the other squads. One man to a shop. You say there are twenty-three of them?”

“So far.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of men to be throwing out of action,” Byrnes said. He shook his head. “I’d better call Headquarters on this. I’m going to need more help than the squads can give. We can’t put so many detectives out of action.”

“Why not patrolmen?” Kling said.

“They’d never catch him. He’d spot the uniforms.”

“Put them on special duty. Plainclothes. It’s only for two days.”

“That’s a good idea,” Byrnes said. “I’ll talk to Captain Frick.” He reached for the phone. “There’s only one thing that puzzles me,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“If none of these shopowners move—if none of them yield to his threat to get out by the thirtieth—how in hell will he pull his job?”

The men stared at each other blankly.

They had just asked the two-and-a-half-million-dollar question.

And none of them knew the answer.

13.

THE FOUR MEN SAT on the hillside overlooking the ice-cream factory. The factory was surrounded by a cyclone fence and within that fence there were at least thirty white ice-cream trucks lined up in three identical rows. Two smokestacks jutted up into the April sky, and a huge sign straddled the stacks:

PICK-PAK ICE CREAM

The Big Lick on a Stick

The four men looked like a group of congenial buddies who had been out for a late afternoon stroll, who’d discovered this grassy hillock overlooking the ice-cream plant, and who’d decided to sit and rest their weary feet. There was certainly nothing sinister-looking about any of the men. If they’d showed up at Central Casting for parts in a grade-B gangster film, each and every one of them would have been turned down. And yet three of the four men had police records, and two of the men were, at that very moment, carrying guns. And even though their conversation was carried on in low and gentle tones, accompanied by sincere facial expressions, these men were discussing the future commission of a crime.

The deaf man was the tallest and handsomest of the four. He sat looking out over the rows of white trucks, a strand of grass between his teeth.

“That’s where we get it,” he said.