The Wabash Factor Read online

  The Wabash Factor

  Howard Fast writing as E. V. Cunningham

  For Julie, Brother and Friend

  Chapter 1

  “WHO WAS THAT?” I asked my wife, Fran, after she had answered the telephone and had finished talking.

  “That was Professor Oscar Golding, advisor to presidents, and Stillman Professor of Sociology at New York University—” And seeing my face, “Come on, come on, Harry. I’m only trying to lighten things up. You’ve been on edge all day. Enough.”

  “You know what I dislike most about intellectuals, about people like you and my brother? I’ll tell you—”

  “Harry, you’re more of an intellectual than either of us. You’re better read—”

  “I’m a high school graduate and I’m a cop, so don’t give me that and don’t patronize me.”

  “I’m not going to let us have a fight about this,” Fran said.

  “What did Oscar say?”

  She stared at me with that half smile of hers, and I considered the luck that had brought me to a tough little Irish kid who happened to grow into an amazing woman. We had a good marriage. We had two kids who were in college. We had a nice place to live. Fran was a teacher at Columbia, only an instructor in the English department, but still at Columbia. We had a lot of things going for us, and if we had an occasional battle—well, we were only human.

  “What did Oscar say?” I asked her again. Oscar was my brother, a college professor who had used the media and his own talent for publicity to give himself a national reputation. He had been called down to Washington as an advisor to former President Ford—who certainly needed all the advice he could get—and he had been interviewed at least fifty times on various talk shows. We had a pretty good relationship as such things go. Oscar liked the notion of a brother who was a police detective. It added color to his life. He liked color.

  “He said that interest was very high, and that they’ve scheduled it in a larger lecture hall. That means at least five hundred students, maybe more. He feels that you must answer questions.”

  “No.”

  I had been fool enough to let Oscar talk me into giving a lecture on “Homicide in an Urban Setting” for one of his sociology classes. It was the last thing in the world that I should have done.

  “No,” I repeated. “You call Oscar back and tell him to forget it. I’ve been working all day on this miserable speech. I’m willing to stand up there like a dumbbell and read it. I am not willing to answer questions. So just call Oscar back.”

  “He’s your brother,” Fran said. “You call him.”

  “He’ll talk me into it.”

  “Then you have no backbone, which is something I can do nothing about. For God’s sake, Harry, you’re an intelligent man. You’re a lieutenant of police in New York City. You didn’t need me to call in sick and take a day off to write a speech for a bunch of college kids. I know that you’ll never forgive yourself for not going to college and you’ll live your life in awe of the idiot kids who do. But if you just stand up there and speak for an hour on some aspect of real police work, you’ll be giving them something they never got from people like Oscar. I know. My life at work is filled with Oscars.”

  “How about the speech I have here?”

  “Great.”

  “You’re not putting me on?”

  “Cross my heart. Look, it’s four o’clock already. You pour some vodka, and I’ll get crackers and cheese. We’ll have a late dinner after your talk.”

  Then as I began to pour the vodka, the telephone rang, and that was the beginning of a very crowded and curious evening. After that evening, nothing was the same again.

  The telephone call was from Frederick Lawrence, curator of seventeenth and eighteenth-century paintings at the museum. He had been close to out of his mind these past three days because the museum’s most precious Vermeer had been stolen. For those who find this confusing, let me note that Jan Vermeer was a Dutch painter, born in 1632 and dead forty-three years later. In this short time, Vermeer managed to produce a body of paintings that rank with the best the world has known. This according to Lawrence. Having looked at the Vermeers that were not stolen, I found them very beautiful; I am not competent to make any further judgments.

  But according to Lawrence, Vermeers were valuable beyond belief, every single painting noted, catalogued, and verified; so to steal a Vermeer made no sense whatsoever, since it could never be sold. Lawrence’s mind danced with images of mad collectors who would keep such a painting in a locked room, images which, as a practical policeman, I rejected. As far as I was concerned, the painting had not been stolen but kidnapped.

  “What is it worth?” I asked Lawrence at the time our investigation first began. He had already shown me a print of the picture, a lovely young woman in a blue and white dress, her skin a translucent milky white touched with pink.

  “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “Kidding? Why should I be kidding? I asked you what the picture is worth.”

  “Painting, painting, please call it a painting, Lieutenant.”

  “Painting.”

  “Yes, oh, yes. You were asking me how much it is worth?”

  “That’s what I’d like to find out, Mr. Lawrence.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “It’s really impossible to say.”

  “Why? Why is it impossible?”

  “Well, suppose it were to be put up for auction at Sotheby’s. I mean, that’s out of the question, of course, but suppose the museum were in such desperate straits that we had to put it up for auction. Today they’re all in the collecting game, Japan, Germany, France, and the Arabs, of course, and even a few Americans in the same league, not to mention Fort Worth and Los Angeles and Houston—city museums—and well—well, I’d set a floor for the bidding at ten million dollars. But that’s not what it would sell for.”

  “What would it sell for?”

  “I really can’t say, but over the floor.”

  “Guess,” I pressed him.

  “For this Vermeer, twelve to fifteen million.”

  “And that’s real, twelve to fifteen million for that little painting? Is that a fact?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ve read stories and seen movies about crazy collectors who hid stolen treasures so that they could feast their eyes on them when they desired to, but I don’t buy that kind of thing. A man owns something important, he wants people to know about it. From what you tell me, I gather this painting could not be offered anywhere for sale?”

  “It’s a Vermeer, Lieutenant. A Vermeer offered for sale today would be an international event.”

  “Then the painting was kidnapped, and it will be held for ransom.”

  Mr. Lawrence did not like the idea of a police lieutenant telling him flat out that one of New York City’s most valuable paintings had been kidnapped, but then he would not have appreciated a person of my intellectual level telling him anything at all. For some reason, he preferred the notion of a mad collector, and perhaps in spite of his lecture on price and value, he was licking his lips at the thought of the four million dollars that would be paid by the insurance company. Conceivably, he was not as passionately in love with Vermeer as he made out. So I was not too surprised on this afternoon to detect a note of disappointment in his voice when he told me that the museum had received a ransom note.

  “Your Captain Courtny gave me your number, Lieutenant. Otherwise I would not have dreamed of disturbing you at home.”

  “That’s all right. Tell me about the ransom note.”

  “It was mailed to the museum yesterday, special delivery.”

  “I presume Captain Courtny told you to copy it and send him the original for the police lab.”

  �
�Yes.”

  “What does it ask for?”

  “Five million. Tomorrow. In cash. Which is why I must see you immediately.”

  “That’s impossible. An hour from now I have to address a class of New York University students.”

  “I don’t believe you, Lieutenant!” Lawrence shouted. “Here we’re dealing with the survival or the destruction of one of the most valuable paintings on earth, and you tell me you have to address a class of college students?”

  “It won’t alter the odds for survival, I promise you, Mr. Lawrence. We should be finished no later than seven-thirty, and then my wife and I will have a bite to eat and we can meet you at the museum at nine-thirty.”

  “That’s no good. The museum will be closed.”

  “Open it.”

  “Open it? Open it? Do you know what it means to open the museum after the alarms are set?”

  “I think I do. I still want the museum opened, and I’d like the director and the president to be there with you.”

  “That’s out of the question,” Lawrence said.

  “Considering that we’re dealing with five million dollars, I should think they’d both want to be there. Tell them I might just recover the picture”—I used the word deliberately—“tonight.”

  “I’ll tell them no such thing. I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but you’re making a poor joke out of a very important matter.”

  “My wife and I will be at the museum at nine-thirty. I suggest that you be there.”

  I put the telephone down and turned to Fran, who was observing me with interest. “I don’t think Mr. Lawrence is very fond of you,” she said.

  “I’m a Philistine.”

  “Yes. Of course you are, and Philistines become very irritating when they turn out to be right. Why aren’t you more interested in the ransom note? I’m not a witch. I heard you mention it.”

  “Sure you’re a witch. The hell with his ransom note and his damn Vermeer. The thing is, if I agree to this question-and-answer thing tonight—I mean, where do I draw the line? Oscar gives me a lousy subject like ‘Homicide in an Urban Setting.’ The last thing in the world any cop wants to talk about.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him that?”

  “He always intimidates me. You know that. Now suppose these kids ask questions about those crazy Hollywood crimes that you read about? I don’t want to speculate.”

  “That’s outside of your purview, Harry. But there are just as many crazy crimes in New York. You just have to be firm. You can talk about something, or you can tell the student that you have no wish to discuss it.”

  All of which I knew, but everyone has his own terrors, and one of mine was public speaking. How my wife did it every day, standing up before a class of smartass kids, I do not know. She pointed out that I had no problems talking to the detective squad over at the precinct. She had walked in once when I’d blown my top completely and was letting them have it from both barrels; but that was another matter entirely. A New York City policeman—and I have no hesitation in stating that they are the best in the world—has his own problems of existence, very unlike those in civilian life, and being a Jewish cop complicates them even further. I remained sane because this lovely woman I had married kept a balance in my life and saw me through my bouts of copdepression.

  My brother, Oscar, on the other hand, always faced me with a mixture of wonder and affection, still unable to believe that the same genetic factors had given rise to both of us. The Stillman Chair of Sociology at New York University paid one hundred thousand dollars a year, which enabled Oscar, in spite of inflation, to live on Park Avenue in a four-bedroom apartment. What with speaking dates and television appearances, his income was twice that; but Oscar was openhanded. He found it hard to believe that Fran and I could live on East 89th Street without my being on the pad. The fact was that we had bought the apartment sixteen years ago for twenty-two thousand, borrowing the money and paying it off slowly and painfully. Today, the apartment is worth ten times what we had paid for it, but that was luck, not brains and not dishonesty. Oscar’s wife, Shelly, always seemed a bit miffed that our apartment was as pleasant as it was, mostly I suppose because Fran had done a better job than Shelly’s professional decorator. Shelly had gone to Wellesley and it hurt that a streetwise Irish kid who had a public education at Hunter College should have both taste and brains. On the other hand, it may be that I’m leaning too heavily on Oscar and his wife. Certainly, on this evening, Oscar was cordial and appeared genuinely delighted to see Fran and me. Even Shelly was being her nicest. I’m sure Oscar convinced her that I needed all the moral support that could be provided.

  “You’re both having dinner with me after the lecture,” Oscar decided.

  “As long as we break loose at nine or so.”

  “Nine? Why nine?”

  “The case of the stolen Vermeer,” Fran said. “Harry has a meeting at the museum at nine-thirty.”

  “The stolen Vermeer. Of course, that’s in your bailiwick, Harry, isn’t it? Every so often, a thief steals something as utterly outrageous as this, and of course it’s entertainment for everyone.”

  “Except me,” I said shortly.

  “I just don’t believe it’s worth ten million dollars,” Shelly said.

  “Why not?” Fran asked. “One large missile costs twice that.”

  “Come on, Fran. We’re not going to argue about the freeze.”

  “Not tonight,” Oscar agreed. “Let’s get over to the lecture hall. We start in five minutes.”

  We were still at Washington Square, and now we picked up our pace. There was no line of stragglers drifting into the lecture hall when we got there. Every seat, except two at the front being held for Shelly and Fran, was taken and there were kids standing two-deep at the back of the room. Oscar whispered to me that this was a tribute to me; but the plain truth was that they didn’t know me from Adam. While there might have been an added measure of interest on the basis of a lieutenant of police scheduled to talk about murder, it was Oscar who drew them with his reputation of walking, so to speak, where no other professor dared to tread, dealing with delicate subjects without a shred of delicacy.

  Oscar, fifty pounds heavier than I and four inches over my five foot eleven, introduced me as his brother and possibly one of the very best cops on the New York City police force. He also mentioned my commendations and a particular medal that I keep in a drawer and never talk about.

  That was all I needed, and even with Fran smiling encouragement from the front row, the first two or three sentences lay dead in my throat. But then my voice picked up, and when I realized that the young men and women who packed the hall were listening openmouthed to what I was saying, I began to feel more at ease.

  I had structured my remarks to rebut the notion of New York City as the homicide capital of the nation, reminding them that in terms of population, Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit, and a number of other cities could put New York well out of the running.

  “As a city, we are very special, very unique,” I said. “We have over fifty different nationalities living here in this city, and for the most part, they live in peace with each other. Of course there is murder, but most of these murders are murders of passion, a great many where family members kill within the family. Then we have mob execution, drug-related to a very large extent. And burglaries, of course, burglaries that turn into homicides, muggings that turn into homicides, and even random killing. But the notion that so many out-of-towners have that the streets of New York are unsafe to walk is simply not true.”

  Fran nodded. “Go on doing exactly what you are doing,” her nod stated.

  “Tonight,” I went on, “I’ll try to explain how we deal with a specific homicide. And when I finish, you can ask questions that might fill in the empty holes.”

  Well, it was not exactly the best construction and it didn’t have the neat phrasing that one of Oscar’s lectures might have had, but it held my audience and possibly gave them a better notion of how
a city precinct goes about dealing with a homicide. When I finished, a dozen hands went up, and I began to answer questions. I discovered what every teacher knows, that the best kind of instruction comes out of the question-and-answer process.

  After I had answered half a dozen questions, Oscar, who was dealing with the students, pointed to a tall, skinny young man with glasses.

  “I’m not one of Professor Golding’s students,” the young man said, rising. “I’m a medical student, and my name is James Oshun. I hope that still gives me the right to ask a question?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “You work in Bellevue, that gives you a vested interest in homicide. Wouldn’t you say so, Lieutenant?”

  “Not exactly as you put it, Mr. Oshun, but I get your point. What is your question?”

  “Well, isn’t it true, Lieutenant Golding, that these homicides you are so proud of solving are committed by very stupid people?”

  I hesitated. Fran had warned me that there’s frequently a student with a game to play, with a noose, a trap, a neat net to drop over the head of the unsuspecting lecturer.

  “Stupid people,” I said slowly. “Perhaps. Some are stupid, some are neurotic, some are victims of uncontrollable passions—and most of course are pathological.”

  “But isn’t it true,” Oshun went on before I could stop him, “that if a really smart guy set out to do a murder, you characters wouldn’t even know that a murder had been done—much less solve it?”

  Now Oscar rose to take care of Oshun, but I waved him back. Something about the boy intrigued me. I had the feeling that he wasn’t trying to provoke me, that something bottled up in him was exploding.

  “That’s possible,” I acknowledged. “Do you have something specific in mind?”

  “You bet I do, Lieutenant.” He was scared but he couldn’t stop now. “Stanley Curtis. That’s what I have in mind. They murdered Stanley Curtis and then walked away grinning. There wasn’t even an investigation.”

  There was a buzz of voices all over the audience now, and once more Oscar got up to silence Mr. Oshun. “No,” I whispered to Oscar. “I want to hear what this kid has to say.”