Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... Part 7

"Sure I can stand up. I want to shake the hand of your buddy, there.

Geez! I ain't seen anything like that since I used to watch Bat Masterson on TV, when I was a little kid!"

"Joey, this is Chief Inspector the Duke Acrington, of Scotland Yard.

Inspector, this is Joey Partridge, the greatest amateur boxer this country has ever produced."

Amazingly enough, Joey extended his hand. "Pleased t'meetcha, Inspector! Uh--watch the hand. Sorta tender. That was great! Duke, did you say?" He looked at me. "You mean he's a real English Duke?" He looked back at Acrington. "I never met a Duke before!" But by that time he had taken his hand away from the Duke's grasp.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Joey," the Duke said warmly. "I liked the way you cleaned up on that Russian during the '72 Olympics."

Joey said to me, "He remembers me! How d'ya like that?"

One of the downed thugs began to groan, and I said, "We'd better get the paddy wagon around to pick these boys up. You'll prefer charges, Joey?"

"d.a.m.n right I will! I didn't let myself get slugged for nothing!"

It was nearly forty-five minutes later that the Duke and I found ourselves in my apartment again. The ice in our drinks had melted, so I dumped them and prepared fresh ones. The Duke took his, drained half of it in three fast swallows, and said: "Ahhhhhh! I needed that."

We heard a key in the door, and His Grace looked at me.

"That's my son," I said. "Back from his date."

Steve came in looking happy. "You still awake, Dad? A cop ought to get his sleep. Good morning, Your Grace. Both of you look sleepy."

Stevie didn't. He'd danced with Mary Ellen until four, and he still looked as though he could walk five miles without tiring. Me, I felt about as full of snap as a soda cracker in a Turkish bath. The three of us talked for maybe ten minutes, and then we hit the hay.

Three and a half hours of sleep isn't enough for anybody, but it was all we could afford to take. By eight-thirty, the Duke and I were in my office, slos.h.i.+ng down black coffee, and, half an hour after that, we were cruising up Amsterdam Avenue on the second day of our hunt for Mr. Lawrence Nestor.

Since we were now reasonably sure that our man was in the area, I ordered the next phase of the search into operation. There were squads of men making a house-to-house canva.s.s of every hotel, apartment house, and rooming house in the area--and there are thousands of them.

A flying squad took care of the hotels first; they were the most likely. Since we knew exactly what day Nestor had arrived, we narrowed our search down to the records for that day. Nestor might not use his own name; of course, but the photograph and description ought to help.

And, since Nestor didn't have a job, his irregular schedule and his drinking habits might make him stand out, though there were plenty of places where those traits would simply make him one of the boys. It still looked like a long, hard search.

And then we got our break.

At 9:17 am, Lieutenant Holmquist's voice snapped over my car phone: "Inspector Royall; Holmquist here. Child missing in Riverside Park.

Officer Ramirez just called in from 111th and Riverside."

"Got it!"

I cut left and gunned the car eastward. I hit a green light at Broadway, so I didn't need to use the siren. Within two minutes, we had pulled up beside the curb where an officer was standing with a woman in tears. The Duke and I got out of the car.

We walked over to her calmly, although neither one of us felt very calm. There's no point in disturbing an already excited mother--or aunt or whatever she was.

The officer threw me a salute. I returned it and said to the sobbing woman, "Now, just be calm, ma'am. Tell us what happened."

It all came out in a torrent. She'd been sitting on one of the benches, reading a newspaper, and she'd looked around and little s.h.i.+rley was gone. Yes, s.h.i.+rley was her daughter. How old? Seven and a half. How long ago was this? Fifteen minutes, maybe. She hadn't been worried at first; she'd walked up and down, calling the girl's name, but hadn't gotten any answer. Then she saw the policeman, and ...

and--

And she broke down into tears again.

It was the same thing that had happened a few days before. I had already ordered extra men put on the Riverside and Central Park details, but a cop can't be everywhere at once.

"I've got the rest of the boys beating the brush between here and the river," Officer Ramirez said. "She might have gone down one of the paths on the other side of the wall."

"She wouldn't go too near the river," the woman sobbed. "I just know she wouldn't." She sounded as though she were trying to convince herself and failing miserably.

n.o.body said anything about Nestor; the poor woman was bad enough off without adding more horror to the pictures she was conjuring up in her mind.

"We'll find her," I said soothingly, "don't you worry about that.

You're pretty upset. We'll have the police doctor look you over and maybe give you a tranquilizer or something to make you feel better."

No point in telling her that the doctor might be needed for a more serious case. "Keep an eye on her till the doctor comes, Ramirez.

Meanwhile, we'll look around for the little girl."

I walked over to the wall and looked down. I could see uniformed police walking around, covering the ground carefully.

Riverside Park runs along the eastern edge of Manhattan Island, between Riverside Drive and the Hudson River, from 72nd Street on the south to 129th Street on the north. In the area where we were, there is a flat, level, gra.s.sy area about a block wide, where there are walks and benches to sit on. The eastern boundary of this area is marked by a retaining wall that runs parallel with the river. Beyond the wall, the ground slopes down sharply to the Hudson River, going under the elevated East Side Highway which carries express traffic up and down the island. The retaining wall is cut through at intervals, and winding steps go down the steep slope. There are bushes and trees all over down there.

I thought for a minute, then said, "Suppose it was Nestor. How did he get her away? It's a cinch he didn't just scoop her up in broad daylight and go trotting off with her under his arm."

"Precisely what I was thinking," the Duke agreed. "There was no scream or disturbance of that kind. Could he have lured her away, do you think?"

"Possible, but not likely. Little girls in New York are warned about that sort of thing from the time they're in diapers. If she were five years old, it might be more probable, but little girls who are approaching eight are pretty wise little girls."

"It follows, then, that she went somewhere of her own accord and he followed her. D'you agree?"

"That sounds most reasonable," I said. "The next question is: Where?"

"Yes. And why didn't she tell her mother where she was going?"

I gave him a sour grin. "Elementary, my dear Duke. Because her mother had forbidden her to go there. And, from the way she was talking, I gather the mother had expressly directed her to stay away from the river." I looked back over the retaining wall again. "But it just doesn't sound right, does it? Surely someone would have seen any sort of attack like that. Of course, it's possible that she _did_ fall in the river, and that this case doesn't have anything to do with Nestor at all, but--"

"It doesn't feel that way to me, either," said the Duke.

"Let's go talk to the mother again," I said. "There are plenty of men down there now; they don't need us."

The woman, Mrs. Ebbermann, had calmed down a little. The police surgeon had given her a tranquilizer with a hypogun, Officer Ramirez was getting everything down in his notebook, and his belt recorder was running.

"No," she was saying, "I'm sure she didn't go home. That's the first place I looked after she didn't answer when I called. We live down the block there. I thought she might have gone home to go to the bathroom or something--but I'm sure she would have told me." She choked a little. "Oh, s.h.i.+rley, baby! Where are you? Where _are_ you?"

I started to ask her a question, but she suddenly said: "s.h.i.+rley, baby, next time, I promise, you can bring your water gun with you to the park, if you'll just come back to Mommie now! Please, s.h.i.+rley, baby! Please!"

I glanced at the Duke. He gave me the same sort of look.

"What was that about a water gun, Mrs. Ebbermann?" I asked casually.

"Oh, she wanted to bring her water gun with her, poor baby. But I made her leave it at home--I was afraid she might squirt people with it.