Читать книгу The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel - Gordon Landsborough - Страница 4

CHAPTER ONE

KIDNAPPED?

Some sound brought me from that body in the marble palace the Turks call a bathroom. And that was queer, for it wasn’t much of a sound. Just something like a scuffle out in the alleyway alongside my hotel.

I don’t know what there was about it, but it took me across to the long, high window, and as I went I threw that blunt, lethal instrument under the bed—my bed. I stood at the window and looked out.

First thing I saw was a cop. He was standing in the shadow cast by a high-riding, silver-bright moon from the gloomy building across this narrow cobbled alley. But I could see him, and I didn’t like him.

From that angle he looked squat, a round peg of a man with shining boot toes sticking out from under him. His face was blank, a thing of anonymity lost in the darkness under his peaked cap.

Yet I knew he was looking up at me, attracted by my sudden appearance at the window. It made me shiver, knowing I was being watched by a cop without a face—without a face that I could see, anyway. I’m a sensitive sort of guy, and I like my cops to have features. Then you can spot them in an identification parade, if ever you feel like asking for one.

Next moment I forgot about that cop. From right below some people spilled onto the alleyway. There were three of them. Two were men; the third—a girl.

They were big and round, well-fed and heavy-muscled, those men. They were wearing drape suits, American style, but I had a feeling right from the start they could never vote against Eisenhower—or Truman.

But it was the girl I looked at. Curiously, it’s the girl I always look at. She was in pyjamas, and she was struggling in frantic fear against those apes.

A big car began to nose into view from a side alley. It was a large American sedan, and it was travelling without any lights.

The girl saw it and seemed to go crazy. She threw herself around, and I could hear her moaning, and then she got one hand free and tried to claw her way out of the grip of the other rube. But she hadn’t the strength, and that egg seemed to be using his, making his grip hurt.

She was free for a fraction of a second only. Then the other rube grabbed again, and began to drag her towards the car.

I saw moonlight on her face right beneath me. She had jet-black hair, which said she wasn’t a stranger to these parts, and her face was a terrified white oval. That light was so good I saw her eyes, and they looked like black pools pinpointed with light—I saw her mouth wide open in a silent scream...yeah, a silent scream.

That gal was terrified, but for some reason she didn’t dare let out a cry for help. I was to remember that later.

The buttons had snapped on her thin, silk, pyjama jacket, and I had a momentary glimpse of a flat, white stomach and her breasts above it. Just a glimpse. Enough to encourage at a normal time, but this time was not normal. Not for Joe P. Heggy.

I went out of that room so fast I don’t remember even opening the door. Maybe I went right through it.

For when I see a damsel in distress, I get kinda hot and wanting to do things about it.

You won’t know Joe P. Heggy—me—of course, but let me tell you this. I’m just a corny sentimentalist at heart, for all the jobs I hold down, and the people I run around with. I’m chivalrous—yeah, chivalrous—where the fair sex is concerned. I’d give up my spare seat in my jalopy to any dame, blonde or brunette, any day.

Where dames are concerned, I’m soft, and that softness sent me leaping down the broad, shallow, marble steps, three flights down into the foyer.

The elevator? Sure they have an elevator in that hotel, but don’t tell me anyone ever uses the elevator in a Turkish hotel! Not at night, anyway. If it’s not out of order, the old man who alone knows how to operate it won’t be found, so you might as well use the steps every time. As I do.

There weren’t many people in that palm-decorated foyer, but there was Benny behind the reception desk. Benny never seems to go home. Benny is the most important man in all Turkey, for he can speak American and he’s nearly the only man in Turkish hotel service who can. He’s a young man who lived for many years in America and then came back to Turkey.

And he’s slime, pure slime. An opportunist, if ever I’ve seen one. And I’ve seen plenty.

I shouted: “What in hell’s goin’ on in the alley?” and that brought him to his feet, startled, his dark eyes seeming to jump all over his yellow face. He threw down his paper, but didn’t come round the desk. Neither did he say anything. Even then I got the impression that he knew what was happening.

So I swore at him, because I was worked up, and I got the revolving door spinning and I ran round into the alley.

It was deserted. There was no one there at all. No cop. No apes with a struggling girl. And no car.

I stamped back into the foyer. Benny was trying to read. I stood across the desk from him and said: “You can put that down, Benny. You’re not seeing any words on that paper.”

Benny’s face came out of the sheet, and he was scared.

Man, how that clerk was scared. But he kept his mouth shut. Benny normally likes to hear the sound of his Brooklyn-acquired accent, but this didn’t seem to be one of the times.

I yapped: “A couple of apes just dragged a girl out of this hotel in her pyjamas.” Benny said nothing. You’d have thought all the hotel’s female guests left that way. “She got thrown into a car and carried away.”

And Benny said nothing, but kept looking over my shoulder, and he seemed a bit sick about something.

But he wasn’t as sick as I was. Look, I’m not kidding, but my stomach was going round and round, remembering that silent struggle in the alley. It looked to have something to do with the police—maybe the political or secret police, if Turkey has such things. I wouldn’t know. I don’t know anything about the set-up in these countries, so far as police systems are concerned.

But I’m never quite happy in these countries when a cop’s around. I always have a feeling of undemocratic influences—you know what I mean. Maybe I’ve read too many spy-thrillers, and swallowed Hollywood’s idea of what goes in countries outside the Yew Ess of Ay. Maybe.

But right then all I could see was a helpless girl, dragged into a car and taken off maybe to some secret-police prison somewhere. And I saw a lot of pictures flitting through my mind of what a bunch of flat-faced apes could do to a helpless girl behind walls where her moans wouldn’t be heard.

Holy jeez, the thoughts I had in my mind were enough to set me jumping quicker than a bug on a hot griddle. I couldn’t stand what I was thinking. I had to be a sap and try and do something about it.

I shouted: “The hell, I won’t stand for seein’ girls treated thataway in any country. Not without standing on my hindlegs and mouthing a gripe agen it.”

I let my eyes drop to Benny’s. I reckon I must have looked madder than mad, right then, and he was scared stiff of me.

He said, quickly: “I got nothing to do with it, brother.” Always brother with Benny. He believed in democracy in some aspects. His quick, big dark eyes fluttered and looked away and then came back and then looked quickly away again. Benny was giving an impression of a man wholly out of ease with himself.

So I snarled something, and I kicked my way out through that revolving door, leaving Benny back of his desk under the yellow electric lights. I had an impression that he was reaching for the telephone as I stomped away.

I went to the police station round the corner before I could cool off. I was in such a mood I was determined to make a song about the handling of that girl. I didn’t care what she had done—if she had done anything.

Istanbul police are picked men. They all look like six-footers, and they’re physically first-class. But their uniform is something inspired by a Nazi storm trooper’s get-up, and we’ve been taught to dislike it in the Western World. So I wasn’t on my best behaviour inside that police station. I was rude and arrogant, loud-mouthed and truculent.

I was scared.

Don’t tell me most people aren’t scared when they get inside the police stations of these countries around the Mediterranean. When you go in, you have a feeling that maybe you aren’t ever going to come out again. You feel anything can be done to you, and no one will be any the wiser.

Maybe we have read too much....

The main receiving room—or whatever it’s called in these countries—wasn’t sinister. It was small, not well-lighted, imposingly solid in its furniture, and comfortable looking.

Two big cops without helmets rose from a bench as I went in. Their eyes were upon me. They were tough babies, so I looked tough at them. A sergeant came in, buttoning his tunic. I don’t know whether he was a sergeant, because I don’t know Turkish police ranks, but I kept calling him that to myself and—well, take him as a sergeant and quit the sidetracking.

He spoke English, though not too confidently.

I gave him the story. “I saw a girl taken from my hotel. She was in pyjamas. There was a cop standing by, watching the apes bring her out. He went off in the car with them, so it was police work.”

I took a deep breath. I always do when I tell a lie.

“I want to know what you’re going to do to her. I want to see her. She’s a friend of mine.”

That was sticking my neck out. It could bring a whole lot of trouble on me. But I was all worked up, I guess—sight of that partly dressed girl...had got me moving inside.

That sergeant just stared at me. He struggled with a foreign language and then said, blankly: “No police have removed any girl from your hotel tonight.”

All right, what do you do under such circumstances? I did it, brother, I did a lot of desk-thumping, a lot of shouting, a lot of talk about seeing my ambassador. I even called them a lot of so-and-so’s and generally behaved as an angry man, a bit scared of his surroundings, behaves.

But it did no good. That sergeant was impassively polite. He took all I had to give him and he just stared solemnly at me and repeated his statement: “No police have taken any girl from your hotel tonight.”

Those other babies just stood around and said nothing and did nothing, and I think that scared me more than if they had behaved as truculently as I had. It gave me a feeling of utter helplessness. I felt that they must be sure of themselves to be able to watch my tantrums and listen to my yapping offensiveness, and be so stolidly silent all the while. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards that probably neither of them understood English, anyway.

Well, I got out of that police station after about five minutes. I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere. I knew I could thump that desk until it was a ruin on the floor, and that sergeant wouldn’t change his tune. I went out and I felt glad when I got outside into yet another of those narrow, cobbled, Turkish alleys which abound in Istanbul. There was the moon beautifully white and clear, riding in an absolutely cloudless sky. And the soft, warm, night air of summer along the Bosporus was a joy to breathe after the claustrophobic atmosphere within that old police station.

I’m telling you all this, and I’m telling you what a so-and-so I am inside for all the big mouth I carry most times in my job. I felt the most relieved man on earth when I walked out on those cops.

I was also the most surprised man.

Somehow I hadn’t thought it could be so easy, that I could go into a Turkish police station and shoot off my mouth and then swagger out, as I did. I suppose I’d been certain that there’d be a hellova rumpus, with a lot of shouted orders and heel clickings and the beginnings of an international situation. I felt for certain they’d try to slap me in the cooler and only release me when the American Embassy came down to protect an undeserving national.

Yet nothing like that happened. They just let me walk out.

I went along that busy main street of Pera, back to my hotel. That street is always busy. No one ever goes to bed before two o’clock in Istanbul. I moved along the crowded sidewalk, and this time I had no eye for the cuties who promenade by the hour along that fashionable shopping thoroughfare. And that shows the kind of emotion gripping me right then.

Usually I can think of nothing better than to amble slowly along that Istanbul sidewalk and gawk at the fashionable females who make this city such a Paradise for the traveller.

You see them of every Mediterranean nationality, from the dark-skinned Arabic types to the fair-haired Greeks who form such a large part of this population. And, brother, let me tell you those babies are sure good to look at. They seem to mature early and they have a softness and a roundness that somehow you don’t seem to see back in the States or in more Northern countries. There’s a kind of exotic touch about these females, something of the old Arabian Nights’ magic, I suppose. They wear dainty, flimsy, highly-coloured dresses, and I’m telling you that any climate kind enough to keep women out of shapeless coats is a climate which suits Joe P. Heggy. There’s a flamboyance about these Istanbul girls—a vividness—which somehow wouldn’t go down in any other city in the world except perhaps Cairo.

But this night they could jiggle themselves past me and I never admired the goods, never even saw them.

I was still seeing that terrified white face in that alley. I was feeling the helplessness, the hopelessness, which had gripped that pyjama-clad girl, being dragged away by those shapeless, moon-faced apes.

I couldn’t get my thoughts beyond that incident.

I went back into my hotel. Benny was behind his desk, and if he was reading that paper he’d got darned good eyesight. He didn’t notice he’d got it upside down, and that shows the condition he was in at that moment.

I hesitated, looking at Benny, and it was at that moment that my brain began to come round to a significant little item—the girl could have screamed, but she hadn’t done.

That was something to think about, because when a girl is terrified there’s almost nothing in the world that will keep her voice free from the most ear-splitting screams. She had moaned, but had made no more noise than that.

I looked at Benny and I was thinking. “She didn’t want to go with them, but she didn’t dare attract attention to herself.” And I couldn’t make it out, couldn’t understand it.

Benny looked at me uneasily over the top of his paper. He had crinkly black hair, and it was well greased, and under that light it threw out highlights and made him look...cissyish.

I stopped looking at Benny because I didn’t think it was going to do anyone any good. Instead I turned, intending to go up to see B.G.

Something timid quivered at my elbow and asked: “Please, where can I get a guide book about the mosques in the old quarter?”

I took one look at her. That dame didn’t rate for more than one look, and that not a lingering one. She wasn’t my type.

She was English, and you know what that means. Full of inhibitions, and ready to run away from what they would like to enjoy. And she was older than she should have been. Which means if she wasn’t rising forty, she was trying to look more than her age.

But there’s a heart of gold under the Heggy vest. I took time off to say: “Ask that rube. He’s got everything.” I looked coldly at Benny and added: “And he knows a whole lot more than he makes out.”

Benny fidgeted and tried to smile but it made him look even more sick than usual. That boy sure had something on his mind right then!

I left that teetering middle-aged dame to get what she could out of Benny. I reckon her mind never rose higher than getting brochures out of any man, anyway. Which, maybe, is why she looked turned forty.

I went into the elevator, which again shows how distraught I was. After a couple of minutes I came out and climbed the stairs, and said vicious things with every stride I took. That old man who should have operated the elevator must have been having a session with a chambermaid somewhere,

I passed my room and thumped on the door next to mine. That’s where B.G. was hibernating. And B.G., I might tell you, is my boss.

Strictly speaking, B.G. is the boss’s son. The old man, back in Detroit, doesn’t get around much now, because he’ll never see seventy again. So he’s put his little boy in circulation, and B.G. goes around the world where they have contracts and in general gums up the works.

He’s what Europe fondly conceives to be a typical American businessman, and he knows it and tries to live up to the part. He’s big and he’s shaped like an egg and he’s got about as much brain as an egg—one that’s thirty days addled. He wears rimless, octagonal-edged glasses perched on a stub of a nose set into a big flat pancake of a face. And he’s got a stomach that’s no concern of anybody else except himself. In fact, B.G. is mighty concerned about that stomach of his.

I forget now whether at that moment, standing outside his door, I was on his payroll or fired. He changes his mind so quickly. He won’t get drunk, and sometimes we do, and then we get to forgetting that he’s the boss, and instead we think he’s the sap he really is, and we treat him like that. He’s got an unforgiving nature, and when we come out of the oil, we generally find ourselves with a month’s paycheck in our hand.

Yet somehow we always get back on the payroll.

This time we’d thought it funny to give B.G. a leg-up with his linguistic aspirations. B.G.’s the humourless, earnest, persevering type of man who tries to learn a few words of every language of the countries he visits. He trumpets that it makes the foreigner pleased to hear someone who’s taken the trouble to learn at least a few words.

So we helped him. When he touched down at the airport he wanted to know what the Turkish equivalent was for “Thank you.” We tried to help him.

After that he kept using the word and the Turks looked surprised but would politely take him and leave him outside the door in question. This happened about six times before he rumbled it. He didn’t accept our explanation easily, either—that we’d made some awful mistake and instead of giving him the word for “thank you” we’d given the word which is seen mostly on that door where the ladies go in to powder their noses.

Call it rude humour if you like, but when the boys get together, that’s how they behave.

So we were all in the doghouse, and, as I say, I didn’t even know whether I was on his payroll after that incident, or available to look for another job.

I thumped on the door. To hell with B.G.; he’s only the boss, anyway.

I heard the rattle of metal inside, and pricked up my ears. It sounded like—chains.

And then I heard B.G. call out to me: “Who’s there?” and I had a feeling he was in trouble even as he called out.

I shouted back: “The hell, it’s Heggy. What’ve you got in there—a dame at last?” And that was sarcasm, because B.G.’s got more inhibitions concerning the female sex than any man I’ve ever met.

He didn’t rise to it this time, but his voice took on a note of quick concern, and he shouted: “For God’s sake, get the pass key and come in to me. My God, Heggy, I need you right now!”

So I found the floor servant with his tarbosh and I got him to open up. He wanted to come in and there was a big grin on that Turk’s brown face, but I didn’t see that it was any business of his, so I politely kept him out in the corridor.

I went into B.G.’s bedroom and B.G. was there.

He was lying on his back, spread-eagled, and fastened by wrists and ankles with shining chains to the four corner-posts of his bed.