Ellen was explaining things to Barbara.
“I knew those people were bad,” Barbara said in her grownup voice, the one she used when she disapproved of something. “Did Daddy get me back?”
“Yes, darling. How’s your head?”
“It feels icky. You know what they did, Mommy? That lady made me drink some
“I know, baby. Don’t think about it.”
“Why did I sleep in your bed last night?”
“They’re here in the house, Bibby,” Malone said. “I want you and your mother to stay in this room. Be very quiet and do what Mommy says.”
“Where you going, Daddy?”
“I may have to go out for a while.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Now none of that,” Malone said. He turned away.
“I’m
“I’ll get you some breakfast later,” Ellen said.
“Ellen, I’m going down,” Malone said.
“Loney, for God’s sake.”
“Don’t worry. Just stay up here unless they call you. Do exactly what they say. Don’t cross them.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Try to get Furia to let me go into town.”
“Do you think he will?”
“He’s got you and Bibby.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Malone opened the door. He could hear Hinch grousing and Goldie’s sarcastic laugh. He went over and kissed Barbara and then Ellen and left in a hurry so that he would not have to see their faces any more.
They were in the kitchen slupping coffee. The kitchen looked like a battlefield on the morning after. They had yanked out every drawer and emptied every cupboard. Dishes and cutlery and pots and bottles and boxes of cereal lay strewn about like the unburied dead. The door to the freezer compartment was open and Malone saw that half Ellen’s supply of meat was gone.
“Well look who’s here,” Goldie said. It seemed to him her brightness was forced. She’s walking on eggs, too.
“Who told you to come down, fuzz?” Hinch growled. He had a growth of red pig bristles and his eyes were shot with pig pink.
“Shut up, Hinch.” Furia looked at Malone over his cup. “Going somewheres?” Malone had changed into his good civvy suit. He was wearing a tie.
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“Now that’s being a smart fuzz.”
“I mean about-”
“I thought you’re ready to talk.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “I’ll tell you everything I can, Mr. Furia. But what I mean-”
“For openers, how about where you stashed my loot?”
“I told you, I didn’t take it. For one thing I had no time.”
He tried to keep his eyes ofl: the revolver on the table beside Furia’s cup. Hinch had the rifle and the automatic.
“Okay, you had no time. But your missus did. Where did she hide it?”
“She didn’t take it either. I don’t know what I can do, Mr. Furia, but keep telling you that. Ellen’s not out of her mind, you had our daughter. Look, I know this town inside out. If some local Lightfinger Louie snatched that bag yesterday, which is what I think happened, I could maybe get a line on him. If you’ll let me nose around. I want you to get the money and get out of here as bad as you do, Mr. Furia.”
“It’s a trick,” Hinch complained. “Don’t listen to him, Fure. I don’t know why you won’t let me bang it out of him.”
“Because he just ain’t the bang-out type,” Furia said. “Drink your coffee, Hinch. You think it’s a trick, too, Goldie?”
Goldie shrugged in a swirl of hair. She had not bothered to brush it and she looked like a witch. “I still say they took it. He’s stalling for time.”
“I don’t know.” Furia pulled on his longish nose. Then he drummed on the table. He had scrubbed the soot off his hands and they were clean and neat again. “Suppose they see you?”
“Who?” Malone said.
“The fuzz. Your buddies. I was going to tell you to call in sick.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Malone said quickly. “The flu hit the department and I did double tricks for four days running. The Chief gave me a couple days off to rest up. So nobody ‘11 think anything of it if I’m seen in town in civvies.”
“He’s telling the truth about that, anyways,” Furia said. “I read in this New Bradford paper yesterday about how the flu hit the cops.”
Goldie said, “I still don’t like it.”
“Who asked you?”
“You did.”
“Well, I’m letting him go in. He ain’t going to be a hero, not with his wife and kid with us. Wait a second, fuzz.” Furia picked up the revolver. “Go upstairs, Goldie, and make sure those two are okay.”
Goldie pushed away from the table and brushed past Malone without a glance. She’s walking on eggs is right. He stood where he was respectfully.
“Okay,” Goldie called down.
“Okay,” Furia said. “Your story is this was an outside heist, Malone, you prove it. You got till one o’clock. You either bring me that bread or proof where it is or who’s got it. If you know what’s good for the missus and kid upstairs. Oh, and one more thing.”
“Yes?” Malone said.
“When you come back here you better not have nobody with you. And don’t try any hairy stunts like coming back heeled. Put it out of your clyde. Because you do that and Hinch and me we’re going to have to decorate your floor with your wife and kid’s brains. Kapeesh?”
“I kapeesh.”
The Vorsheks lived in the Hollow near a narrow bend in the Tonekeneke. It was a settlement of poor men’s houses huddled in the companionship of misery, but with an impersonal beauty unknown to city slums. The usual dirty children played on the tincan landscape or on the lunar stones of the riverbed during droughts and there were always flapping lines of wash, but backyards in the spring showed unbuyable stands of very old magnolias in impossible bloom, and everywhere in the summer vegetable plots as green and true as Japanese gardens.
Peter Vorshek worked in the incubator rooms at Hurley’s chicken farm. Mrs. Vorshek did handironing for the ladies of New Bradford to boost the family budget, her free time given passionately to her church. Their daughter Nanette ran a loom at the New Bradford Knitting Mill and baby-sat nights for a few favored clients. The Vorsheks were of Slovak or Czech stock, Malone had never known which. The old man, who carried around with him the smell of chickenshit, still spoke with an accent. He had the European peasant’s awe of authority. He always called Malone “Mr. Poleetsman.”
Malone pulled the Saab up at the front gate and got out. Nanette was perched in a rocker on the porch reading a movie magazine. She was wearing skintight slacks and a turtleneck.
They look a lot alike all right.
