The Project Gutenberg EBook of Call Him Nemesis, by Donald E. Westlake
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Title: Call Him Nemesis
Author: Donald E. Westlake
Release Date: January 3, 2020 [EBook #61090]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALL HIM NEMESIS ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
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CALL HIM NEMESIS
By DONALD E. WESTLAKE
Criminals, beware; the Scorpion is on
your trail! Hoodlums fear his fury--and,
for that matter, so do the cops!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The man with the handkerchief mask said, "All right, everybody, keep
tight. This is a holdup."
There were twelve people in the bank. There was Mr. Featherhall at
his desk, refusing to okay a personal check from a perfect stranger.
There was the perfect stranger, an itinerant garage mechanic named
Rodney (Rod) Strom, like the check said. There were Miss English and
Miss Philicoff, the girls in the gilded teller cages. There was Mister
Anderson, the guard, dozing by the door in his brown uniform. There was
Mrs. Elizabeth Clayhorn, depositing her husband's pay check in their
joint checking account, and with her was her ten-year-old son Edward
(Eddie) Clayhorn, Junior. There was Charlie Casale, getting ten dollars
dimes, six dollars nickels and four dollars pennies for his father
in the grocery store down the street. There was Mrs. Dolly Daniels,
withdrawing money from her savings account again. And there were three
bank robbers.
The three bank robbers looked like triplets. From the ground up, they
all wore scuffy black shoes, baggy-kneed and unpressed khaki trousers,
brown cracked-leather jackets over flannel shirts, white handkerchiefs
over the lower half of their faces and gray-and-white check caps pulled
low over their eyes. The eyes themselves looked dangerous.
The man who had spoken withdrew a small but mean-looking thirty-two
calibre pistol from his jacket pocket. He waved it menacingly. One of
the others took the pistol away from Mister Anderson, the guard, and
said to him in a low voice, "Think about retirement, my friend." The
third one, who carried a black satchel like a doctor's bag, walked
quickly around behind the teller's counter and started filling it with
money.
It was just like the movies.
The man who had first spoken herded the tellers, Mr. Featherhall and
the customers all over against the back wall, while the second man
stayed next to Mr. Anderson and the door. The third man stuffed money
into the black satchel.
The man by the door said, "Hurry up."
The man with the satchel said, "One more drawer."
The man with the gun turned to say to the man at the door, "Keep your
shirt on."
That was all Miss English needed. She kicked off her shoes and ran
pelting in her stocking feet for the door.
* * * * *
The man by the door spread his arms out and shouted, "Hey!" The man
with the gun swung violently back, cursing, and fired the gun. But he'd
been moving too fast, and so had Miss English, and all he hit was the
brass plate on Mr. Featherhall's desk.
The man by the door caught Miss English in a bear hug. She promptly did
her best to scratch his eyes out. Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson went scooting
out the front door and running down the street toward the police
station in the next block, shouting, "Help! Help! Robbery!"
The man with the gun cursed some more. The man with the satchel came
running around from behind the counter, and the man by the door tried
to keep Miss English from scratching his eyes out. Then the man with
the gun hit Miss English on the head. She fell unconscious to the
floor, and all three of them ran out of the bank to the car out front,
in which sat a very nervous-looking fourth man, gunning the engine.
Everyone except Miss English ran out after the bandits, to watch.
Things got very fast and very confused then. Two police cars came
driving down the block and a half from the precinct house to the bank,
and the car with the four robbers in it lurched away from the curb and
drove straight down the street toward the police station. The police
cars and the getaway car passed one another, with everybody shooting
like the ships in pirate movies.
There was so much confusion that it looked as though the bank robbers
were going to get away after all. The police cars were aiming the wrong
way and, as they'd come down with sirens wailing, there was a clear
path behind them.
Then, after the getaway car had gone more than two blocks, it suddenly
started jouncing around. It smacked into a parked car and stopped. And
all the police went running down there to clap handcuffs on the robbers
when they crawled dazedly out of their car.
"Hey," said Eddie Clayhorn, ten years old. "Hey, that was something,
huh, Mom?"
"Come along home," said his mother, grabbing his hand. "We don't want
to be involved."
* * * * *
"It was the nuttiest thing," said Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. "An
operation planned that well, you'd think they'd pay attention to their
getaway car, you know what I mean?"
Detective-Sergeant Pauling shrugged. "They always slip up," he said.
"Sooner or later, on some minor detail, they always slip up."
"Yes, but their _tires_."
"Well," said Pauling, "it was a stolen car. I suppose they just grabbed
whatever was handiest."
"What I can't figure out," said Stevenson, "is exactly what made those
tires do that. I mean, it was a hot day and all, but it wasn't _that_
hot. And they weren't going that fast. I don't think you could go fast
enough to melt your tires down."
Pauling shrugged again. "We got them. That's the important thing."
"Still and all, it's nutty. They're free and clear, barrelling out
Rockaway toward the Belt, and all at once their tires melt, the tubes
blow out and there they are." Stevenson shook his head. "I can't figure
it."
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," suggested Pauling. "They picked
the wrong car to steal."
"And _that_ doesn't make sense, either," said Stevenson. "Why steal a
car that could be identified as easily as that one?"
"Why? What was it, a foreign make?"
"No, it was a Chevvy, two-tone, three years old, looked just like half
the cars on the streets. Except that in the trunk lid the owner had
burned in 'The Scorpion' in big black letters you could see half a
block away."
"Maybe they didn't notice it when they stole the car," said Pauling.
"For a well-planned operation like this one," said Stevenson, "they
made a couple of really idiotic boners. It doesn't make any sense."
"What do they have to say about it?" Pauling demanded.
"Nothing, what do you expect? They'll make no statement at all."
The squad-room door opened, and a uniformed patrolman stuck his head
in. "The owner of that Chevvy's here," he said.
"Right," said Stevenson. He followed the patrolman down the hall to the
front desk.
The owner of the Chevvy was an angry-looking man of middle age, tall
and paunchy. "John Hastings," he said. "They say you have my car here."
"I believe so, yes," said Stevenson. "I'm afraid it's in pretty bad
shape."
"So I was told over the phone," said Hastings grimly. "I've contacted
my insurance company."
"Good. The car's in the police garage, around the corner. If you'd come
with me?"
* * * * *
On the way around, Stevenson said, "I believe you reported the car
stolen almost immediately after it happened."
"That's right," said Hastings. "I stepped into a bar on my route. I'm
a wine and liquor salesman. When I came out five minutes later, my car
was gone."
"You left the keys in it?"
"Well, why not?" demanded Hastings belligerently. "If I'm making just
a quick stop--I never spend more than five minutes with any one
customer--I always leave the keys in the car. Why not?"
"The car was stolen," Stevenson reminded him.
Hastings grumbled and glared. "It's always been perfectly safe up till
now."
"Yes, sir. In here."
Hastings took one look at his car and hit the ceiling. "It's ruined!"
he cried. "What did you do to the tires?"
"Not a thing, sir. That happened to them in the holdup."
Hastings leaned down over one of the front tires. "Look at that!
There's melted rubber all over the rims. Those rims are ruined! What
did you use, incendiary bullets?"
Stevenson shook his head. "No, sir. When that happened they were two
blocks away from the nearest policeman."
"Hmph." Hastings moved on around the car, stopping short to exclaim,
"What in the name of God is that? You didn't tell me a bunch of _kids_
had stolen the car."
"It wasn't a bunch of kids," Stevenson told him. "It was four
professional criminals, I thought you knew that. They were using it in
a bank holdup."
"Then why did they do _that_?"
Stevenson followed Hastings' pointing finger, and saw again the
crudely-lettered words, "The Scorpion" burned black into the paint of
the trunk lid. "I really don't know," he said. "It wasn't there before
the car was stolen?"
"Of course not!"
Stevenson frowned. "Now, why in the world did they do that?"
"I suggest," said Hastings with heavy sarcasm, "you ask them that."
Stevenson shook his head. "It wouldn't do any good. They aren't talking
about anything. I don't suppose they'll ever tell us." He looked at the
trunk lid again. "It's the nuttiest thing," he said thoughtfully....
That was on Wednesday.
The Friday afternoon mail delivery to the _Daily News_ brought a crank
letter. It was in the crank letter's most obvious form; that is,
the address had been clipped, a letter or a word at a time, from a
newspaper and glued to the envelope. There was no return address.
The letter itself was in the same format. It was brief and to the point:
Dear Mr. Editor:
The Scorpion has struck. The bank robbers were captured. The
Scorpion fights crime. Crooks and robbers are not safe from
the avenging Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS!
Sincerely yours,
THE SCORPION
The warning was duly noted, and the letter filed in the wastebasket. It
didn't rate a line in the paper.
II
The bank robbery occurred in late June. Early in August, a Brooklyn man
went berserk.
It happened in Canarsie, a section in southeast Brooklyn near Jamaica
Bay. This particular area of Canarsie was a residential neighborhood,
composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a
Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins.
Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the
third time. He reported himself sick and spent the two days at home,
brooding, a bottle of blended whiskey at all times in his hand.
As the police reconstructed it later, Mrs. Higgins had attempted to
awaken him on the third morning at seven-thirty, suggesting that he
really ought to stop being so foolish, and go back to work. He then
allegedly poked her in the eye, and locked her out of the bedroom.
Mrs. Higgins then apparently called her sister-in-law, a Mrs. Thelma
Stodbetter, who was Mr. Higgins' sister. Mrs. Stodbetter arrived at the
house at nine o'clock, and spent some time tapping at the still-locked
bedroom door, apparently requesting Mr. Higgins to unlock the door and
"stop acting like a child." Neighbors reported to the police that they
heard Mr. Higgins shout a number of times, "Go away! Can't you let a
man sleep?"
At about ten-fifteen, neighbors heard shots from the Higgins residence,
a two-story one-family pink stucco affair in the middle of a block of
similar homes. Mr. Higgins, it was learned later, had suddenly erupted
from his bedroom, brandishing a .30-.30 hunting rifle and, being
annoyed at the shrieks of his wife and sister, had fired seven shells
at them, killing his wife on the spot and wounding his sister in the
hand and shoulder.
Mrs. Stodbetter, wounded and scared out of her wits, raced screaming
out the front door of the house, crying for the police and shouting,
"Murder! Murder!" At this point, neighbors called the police. One
neighbor additionally phoned three newspapers and two television
stations, thereby earning forty dollars in "news-tips" rewards.
* * * * *
By chance, a mobile television unit was at that moment on the Belt
Parkway, returning from having seen off a prime minister at Idlewild
Airport. This unit was at once diverted to Canarsie, where it took up a
position across the street from the scene of carnage and went to work
with a Zoomar lens.
In the meantime, Mister Higgins had barricaded himself in his house,
firing at anything that moved.
The two cameramen in the mobile unit worked their hearts out. One
concentrated on the movements of the police and firemen and neighbors
and ambulance attendants, while the other used the Zoomar lens to
search for Mr. Higgins. He found him occasionally, offering the at-home
audience brief glimpses of a stocky balding man in brown trousers and
undershirt, stalking from window to window on the second floor of the
house.
The show lasted for nearly an hour. There were policemen everywhere,
and firemen everywhere, and neighbors milling around down at the
corner, where the police had roped the block off, and occasionally Mr.
Higgins would stick his rifle out a window and shoot at somebody. The
police used loudspeakers to tell Higgins he might as well give up, they
had the place surrounded and could eventually starve him out anyway.
Higgins used his own good lungs to shout obscenities back and challenge
anyone present to hand-to-hand combat.
The police fired tear gas shells at the house, but it was a windy day
and all the windows in the Higgins house were either open or broken.
Higgins was able to throw all the shells back out of the house again.
The show lasted for nearly an hour. Then it ended, suddenly and
dramatically.
Higgins had showed himself to the Zoomar lens again, for the purpose of
shooting either the camera or its operator. All at once he yelped and
threw the rifle away. The rifle bounced onto the porch roof, slithered
down to the edge, hung for a second against the drain, and finally fell
barrel first onto the lawn.
Meanwhile, Higgins was running through the house, shouting like a
wounded bull. He thundered down the stairs and out, hollering, to fall
into the arms of the waiting police.
They had trouble holding him. At first they thought he was actually
trying to get away, but then one of them heard what it was he was
shouting: "My hands! My hands!"
They looked at his hands. The palms and the palm-side of the fingers
were red and blistering, from what looked like severe burns. There was
another burn on his right cheek and another one on his right shoulder.
Higgins, thoroughly chastened and bewildered, was led away for burn
ointment and jail. The television crew went on back to Manhattan. The
neighbors went home and telephoned their friends.
On-duty policemen had been called in from practically all of the
precincts in Brooklyn. Among them was Detective-Sergeant William
Stevenson. Stevenson frowned thoughtfully at Higgins as that unhappy
individual was led away, and then strolled over to look at the rifle.
He touched the stock, and it was somewhat warm but that was all.
He picked it up and turned it around. There, on the other side of the
stock, burned into the wood, were the crudely-shaped letters, "The
Scorpion."
* * * * *
You don't get to be Precinct Captain on nothing but political
connections. Those help, of course, but you need more than that. As
Captain Hanks was fond of pointing out, you needed as well to be both
more imaginative than most--"You gotta be able to second-guess the
smart boys"--and to be a complete realist--"You gotta have both feet
on the ground." If these were somewhat contradictory qualities, it was
best not to mention the fact to Captain Hanks.
The realist side of the captain's nature was currently at the fore.
"Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?" he demanded.
"I'm not sure," admitted Stevenson. "But we've got these two things.
First, there's the getaway car from that bank job. The wheels melt for
no reason at all, and somebody burns 'The Scorpion' onto the trunk.
Then, yesterday, this guy Higgins out in Canarsie. He says the rifle
all of a sudden got too hot to hold, and he's got the burn marks to
prove it. And there on the rifle stock it is again. 'The Scorpion'."
"He says he put that on there himself," said the captain.
Stevenson shook his head. "His _lawyer_ says he put it on there.
Higgins says he doesn't remember doing it. That's half the lawyer's
case. He's trying to build up an insanity defense."
"He put it on there himself, Stevenson," said the captain with weary
patience. "What are you trying to prove?"
"I don't know. All I know is it's the nuttiest thing I ever saw. And
what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?"
"They were defective," said Hanks promptly.
"All four of them at once? And what about the thing written on the
trunk?"
"How do I know?" demanded the captain. "Kids put it on before the car
was stolen, maybe. Or maybe the hoods did it themselves, who knows?
What do _they_ say?"
"They say they didn't do it," said Stevenson. "And they say they never
saw it before the robbery and they would have noticed it if it'd been
there."
The captain shook his head. "I don't get it," he admitted. "What are
you trying to prove?"
"I guess," said Stevenson slowly, thinking it out as he went along, "I
guess I'm trying to prove that somebody melted those tires, and made
that rifle too hot, and left his signature behind."
"What? You mean like in the comic books? Come on, Stevenson! What are
you trying to hand me?"
"All I know," insisted Stevenson, "is what I see."
"And all _I_ know," the captain told him, "is Higgins put that name on
his rifle himself. He says so."
"And what made it so hot?"
"Hell, man, he'd been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do
you _think_ made it hot?"
"All of a sudden?"
"He noticed it all of a sudden, when it started to burn him."
"How come the same name showed up each time, then?" Stevenson asked
desperately.
"How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these
things happen. A bunch of teen-agers burgle a liquor store and they
write 'The Golden Avengers' on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens
all the time. Why not 'The Scorpion'? It couldn't occur to two people?"
"But there's no explanation--" started Stevenson.
"What do you mean, there's no explanation? I just _gave_ you the
explanation. Look, Stevenson, I'm a busy man. You got a nutty
idea--like Wilcox a few years ago, remember him? Got the idea there
was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned
refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting
all upset, and pretty soon they had to put him away in the nut hatch.
Remember?"
"I remember," said Stevenson.
"Forget this silly stuff, Stevenson," the captain advised him.
"Yes, sir," said Stevenson....
The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a
crank letter to the _Daily News_:
Dear Mr. Editor,
You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people
could not escape the Scorpion. The Scorpion fights crime. No
criminal is safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.
Sincerely yours,
THE SCORPION
Unfortunately, this letter was not read by the same individual who had
seen the first one, two months before. At any rate, it was filed in the
same place, and forgotten.
III
Hallowe'en is a good time for a rumble. There's too many kids around
for the cops to keep track of all of them, and if you're picked up
carrying a knife or a length of tire chain or something, why, you're on
your way to a Hallowe'en party and you're in costume. You're going as a
JD.
The problem was this schoolyard. It was a block wide, with entrances
on two streets. The street on the north was Challenger territory, and
the street on the south was Scarlet Raider territory, and both sides
claimed the schoolyard. There had been a few skirmishes, a few guys
from both gangs had been jumped and knocked around a little, but that
had been all. Finally, the War Lords from the two gangs had met, and
determined that the matter could only be settled in a war.
The time was chosen: Hallowe'en. The place was chosen: the schoolyard.
The weapons were chosen: pocket knives and tire chains okay, but no
pistols or zip-guns. The time was fixed: eleven P.M. And the winner
would have undisputed territorial rights to the schoolyard, both
entrances.
The night of the rumble, the gangs assembled in their separate
clubrooms for last-minute instructions. Debs were sent out to play
chicken at the intersections nearest the schoolyard, both to warn of
the approach of cops and to keep out any non-combatant kids who might
come wandering through.
Judy Canzanetti was a Deb with the Scarlet Raiders. She was fifteen
years old, short and black-haired and pretty in a movie-magazine,
gum-chewing sort of way. She was proud of being in the Auxiliary of the
Scarlet Raiders, and proud also of the job that had been assigned to
her. She was to stand chicken on the southwest corner of the street.
Judy took up her position at five minutes to eleven. The streets were
dark and quiet. Few people cared to walk this neighborhood after dark,
particularly on Hallowe'en. Judy leaned her back against the telephone
pole on the corner, stuck her hands in the pockets of her Scarlet
Raider jacket and waited.
At eleven o'clock, she heard indistinct noises begin behind her. The
rumble had started.
At five after eleven, a bunch of little kids came wandering down the
street. They were all about ten or eleven years old, and most of them
carried trick-or-treat shopping bags. Some of them had Hallowe'en masks
on.
They started to make the turn toward the schoolyard. Judy said, "Hey,
you kids. Take off."
One of them, wearing a red mask, turned to look at her. "Who, us?"
"Yes, you! Stay out of that street. Go on down that way."
"The subway's this way," objected the kid in the red mask.
"Who cares? You go around the other way."
* * * * *
"Listen, lady," said the kid in the red mask, aggrieved, "we got a long
way to go to get home."
"Yeah," said another kid, in a black mask, "and we're late as it is."
"I couldn't care less," Judy told them callously. "You can't go down
that street."
"Why not?" demanded yet another kid. This one was in the most complete
and elaborate costume of them all, black leotards and a yellow shirt
and a flowing: black cape. He wore a black and gold mask and had a
black knit cap jammed down tight onto his head. "Why can't we go down
there?" this apparition demanded.
"Because I said so," Judy told him. "Now, you kids get away from here.
Take off."
"Hey!" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume. "Hey, they're
fighting down there!"
"It's a rumble," said Judy proudly. "You twerps don't want to be
involved."
"Hey!" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume again. And he went
running around Judy and dashing off down the street.
"Hey, Eddie!" shouted one of the other kids. "Eddie, come back!"
Judy wasn't sure what to do next. If she abandoned her post to chase
the one kid who'd gotten through, then maybe all the rest of them would
come running along after her. She didn't know what to do.
A sudden siren and a distant flashing red light solved her problems.
"Cheez," said one of the kids. "The cops!"
"Fuzz!" screamed Judy. She turned and raced down the block toward the
schoolyard, shouting, "Fuzz! Fuzz! Clear out, it's the fuzz!"
But then she stopped, wide-eyed, when she saw what was going on in the
schoolyard.
The guys from both gangs were dancing. They were jumping around, waving
their arms, throwing their weapons away. Then they all started pulling
off their gang jackets and throwing them away, whooping and hollering.
They were making such a racket themselves that they never heard Judy's
warning. They didn't even hear the police sirens. And all at once both
schoolyard entrances were full of cops, a cop had tight hold of Judy
and the rumble was over.
Judy was so baffled and terrified that everything was just one great
big blur. But in the middle of it all, she did see the little kid in
the yellow-and-black costume go scooting away down the street.
And she had the craziest idea that it was all his fault.
* * * * *
Captain Hanks was still in his realistic cycle this morning, and he was
impatient as well. "All right, Stevenson," he said. "Make it fast, I've
got a lot to do this morning. And I hope it isn't this comic-book thing
of yours again."
"I'm afraid it is, Captain," said Stevenson. "Did you see the morning
paper?"
"So what?"
"Did you see that thing about the gang fight up in Manhattan?"
Captain Hanks sighed. "Stevenson," he said wearily, "are you going to
try to connect every single time the word 'scorpion' comes up? What's
the problem with this one? These kid gangs have names, so what?"
"Neither one of them was called 'The Scorpions,'" Stevenson told
him. "One of them was the Scarlet Raiders and the other gang was the
Challengers."
"So they changed their name," said Hanks.
"Both gangs? Simultaneously? To the same name?"
"Why not? Maybe that's what they were fighting over."
"It was a territorial war," Stevenson reminded him. "They've admitted
that much. It says so in the paper. And it also says they all deny ever
seeing that word on their jackets until after the fight."
"A bunch of juvenile delinquents," said Hanks in disgust. "You take
their word?"
"Captain, did you read the article in the paper?"
"I glanced through it."
"All right. Here's what they say happened: They say they started
fighting at eleven o'clock. And they just got going when all at once
all the metal they were carrying--knives and tire chains and coins and
belt buckles and everything else--got freezing cold, too cold to touch.
And then their leather jackets got freezing cold, so cold they had to
pull them off and throw them away. And when the jackets were later
collected, across the name of the gang on the back of each one had been
branded 'The Scorpion.'"
"Now, let _me_ tell _you_ something," said Hanks severely. "They heard
the police sirens, and they threw all their weapons away. Then they
threw their jackets away, to try to make believe they hadn't been
part of the gang that had been fighting. But they were caught before
they could get out of the schoolyard. If the squad cars had showed
up a minute later, the schoolyard wouldn't have had anything in it
but weapons and jackets, and the kids would have been all over the
neighborhood, nice as you please, minding their own business and not
bothering anybody. _That's_ what happened. And all this talk about
freezing cold and branding names into jackets is just some smart-alec
punk's idea of a way to razz the police. Now, you just go back to
worrying about what's happening in this precinct and forget about kid
gangs up in Manhattan and comic book things like the Scorpion, or
you're going to wind up like Wilcox, with that refrigerator business.
Now, I don't want to hear any more about this nonsense, Stevenson."
"Yes, sir," said Stevenson.
* * * * *
The reporter showed up two days later. He was ushered into the squad
room, where he showed his press card to Stevenson, smiled amiably and
said, "My editor sent me out on a wild-goose chase. Would you mind
chatting with me a couple minutes?"
"Not at all," said Stevenson.
The reporter, whose press card gave his name as Tom Roberts, settled
himself comfortably in the chair beside Stevenson's desk. "You were the
one handled that bank job down the street back in June, weren't you?"
Stevenson nodded.
Roberts gave an embarrassed chuckle and said, "Okay, I've got just
one question. You answer no, and then we can talk about football or
something. I mean, this is just a silly wild-goose chase, frankly. I'm
a little embarrassed about it."
"Go ahead and ask," Stevenson told him.
"Okay, I will. Was there the word 'scorpion' connected with that bank
job at all? In any way at all."
Stevenson looked at the reporter and smiled. He said, "As a matter of
fact, Mr. Roberts, there was."
Roberts blinked. "There was?"
"Yes, indeedy. There certainly was." And Stevenson told him the full
story of the bank job.
"I see," said Roberts dazedly when Stevenson was finished. "I see. Or,
I don't see. I don't see it at all."
"Your turn," Stevenson told him. "Now you tell me what made you ask
that."
"This," said Roberts. He reached into the inside pocket of his sport
jacket and withdrew a business-size envelope, which he handed over to
Stevenson.
It was another crank letter, in the same newspaper clipping form as the
first two. It read:
Dear Mr. Editor,
The bad boys were captured. They could not escape the Scorpion. I
left the mark of the Scorpion on their jackets. Criminals fear the
mark of the Scorpion. They cannot escape. This is my third letter
to you. You should warn all criminals to leave the city. They
cannot escape the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.
Sincerely yours,
THE SCORPION
Stevenson read the letter. "Well, well," he said.
"He says that's the third letter," Roberts pointed out. "We asked
around in the office, and we found out who got the first two. They were
both back a ways. The first one was early in the summer, and the guy
who read it remembered it said something about a bank robbery. So I was
sent out this morning to check up on bank robberies in June and July.
You're the third one I've talked to this morning. The first two figured
me for some kind of nut."
* * * * *
"My Captain figures me the same way," Stevenson told him. "What about
the second letter? Or, wait, don't tell me, I'll tell you. It's that
guy in August, the one who ran amok over in Canarsie."
"Right you are," said Roberts. "How did you know?"
"I was there. He left his mark on the rifle stock."
"Okay," said Roberts. "So there's something in it, after all."
"There's _something_ in it," said Stevenson. "The question is, what?"
"Well," said Roberts, "what have we got so far? Somebody--call it
person or persons unknown, for the fun of it--is stepping in every once
in a while when there's a crime being committed. He stops it. He calls
himself the Scorpion, and he uses some pretty dizzy methods. He melts
automobile tires, makes a rifle too hot to hold, makes knives and
leather jackets ice cold--how in heck does he do things like that?"
"Yeah," said Stevenson. "And just incidentally, who is he?"
"Well," said Roberts, "he's a kid, that much is obvious. That whole
letter _sounds_ like a kid. Talking about 'the bad boys' and stuff like
that."
"What do you figure, some scientist's kid maybe?"
"Maybe," said Roberts. "His old man is working on something in his
little old laboratory in the cellar, and every once in a while the kid
sneaks in and makes off with the ray gun or whatever it is." Roberts
laughed. "I feel silly even talking about it," he said.
"I'd feel silly, too," Stevenson told him, "if I hadn't seen what this
kid can do."
"Can we work anything out from the timing?" Roberts asked him. "He
seems to show up once every couple of months."
"Let me check."
Stevenson went over to the filing cabinet and looked up the dates. "The
bank job," he said, "was on Wednesday, June 29th. At eleven o'clock in
the morning. That Higgins guy was on--here it is--Friday, August 5th,
around noon. And this last one was on Hallowe'en, Monday, October 31st,
at eleven o'clock at night."
"If you can see a pattern in there," Roberts told him, "you're a
better man than I am."
"Well, the first two," Stevenson said, "were in the daytime, during the
summer, when school was out. That's all I can figure."
"Why just those three?" Roberts asked. "If he's out to fight crime,
he's pretty inefficient about it. He's only gone to work three times in
four months."
"Well, he's a kid," said Stevenson. "I suppose he has to wait until he
stumbles across something."
"And then rush home for Daddy's ray gun?"
Stevenson shook his head. "It beats me. The only one that makes sense
is the second one. That one was televised. He probably saw it that way.
The other two times, he just happened to be around."
"I don't know," said Roberts. "Does a kid happen to be around twice in
four months when there's crimes being committed? Now, the Hallowe'en
thing, I can see that. A kid is liable to be out wandering around,
maybe go off to a strange neighborhood after he's done with his
trick-or-treat stuff. Hallowe'en is a good time for a kid to see some
other kids breaking a law. And the thing in Canarsie, like you say, he
probably saw that on television. But what about the bank job?"
"That was the first," said Stevenson thoughtfully. "That was what set
him off. He was there at the time. Just by accident. And he saw they
were getting away, so he zapped them. And right away he put the drama
into it, right on the spur of the moment he decided to be the Scorpion.
Then he sent the letter to your paper. But nothing else happened, and
the paper didn't print anything about his letter or what he'd done, and
he kind of forgot about it. Until he was watching television and saw
the Higgins thing. Pow, the Scorpion rides again. And then it died down
again until a couple of nights ago he saw the rumble, and pow all over
again."
"What you're saying," Roberts told him, "is that this kid wanders
around with Daddy's zap gun all the time. That doesn't seem very
likely."
"Face it," said Stevenson. "Daddy's zap gun isn't the likeliest thing
I ever heard of, either. I don't know how the kid does this. For that
matter, it's only an educated guess that it's a kid we're after."
"Okay," said Roberts. "So what do we do now?"
"Now," said Stevenson, "I think we talk to the captain. And then I have
a feeling we'll be talking to the FBI."
IV
Judy Canzanetti was a frightened girl. First, there had been that crazy
thing in the schoolyard, and then being dragged in by the police, and
then being chewed out by Mom, and now here she was being dragged in by
the police again, for absolutely nothing at all.
They were all there, in the big empty room like a gymnasium in the
police station, the guys and debs from both gangs, all milling around
and confused. And the cops were taking all the kids out one at a time
and questioning them.
When the cop pointed at her and said, "Okay. You next," Judy almost
broke into tears.
This wasn't like anything she knew or anything she could have expected.
This wasn't like after the rumble, with the guys wisecracking the cops,
and nothing to worry about but a chewing-out from Mom. This was scary.
They were taking people out one at a time to question them. And nobody
was coming back into the room, and who knew what happened to you when
it was your turn?
"Come on," said the cop. "Step along."
She stepped along, numb and miserable.
There were four men in the room to which she was led. They were sitting
behind a long table, with notebooks and pencils and ashtrays on the
table. In front of them was a straight-backed armless chair. The cop
sat her down in the chair, and left the room.
One of the men said, "Your name is Judy Canzanetti, is that right?"
"Yes, sir." It came out a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried
again. "Yes, sir."
"You don't have to be frightened, Judy," said the man. "You aren't
going to be accused of anything. My name is Marshall, Stephen Marshall.
This gentleman on my right is Stewart Lang. We're with the FBI. That
gentleman there is Mr. Stevenson, and he's a detective from Brooklyn.
And that there is Mr. Roberts, and he's a reporter. And we all simply
want to ask you one or two questions. All right?"
The man was obviously trying to calm her down, make her relax. And he
succeeded to some extent. Judy said, "Yes, sir," in a small voice and
nodded, no longer quite so frightened.
None of the four men were particularly frightening in appearance. The
two FBI men were long and lean, with bleak bony faces like cowboys. The
detective was a short worried-looking man with a paunch and thinning
black hair. And the reporter was a cheerful round-faced man in a loud
sport coat and a bow tie.
"Now," said Marshall, "you were present at the time of the gang fight
on Hallowe'en, is that right?"
"Yes, sir. Well, no, sir. Not exactly. I was down at the corner."
Mister Marshall smiled briefly. "On lookout?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"I see. And do you remember seeing anyone present at all aside from the
boys in the two gangs and the police?"
* * * * *
"No, sir. That is, not except a bunch of little kids. They came along
just before the co--the police."
"A bunch of little kids?"
The detective named Stevenson said urgently, "Did you recognize any of
them?"
"No, sir. They weren't from around the neighborhood."
Marshall said, "You'd never seen them before?"
"No, sir. They were just a bunch of little kids. Grade school kids.
They were out with costumes on and everything, playing trick-or-treat."
"Did they go near the schoolyard at all?"
"No, sir. Except for one of them. You see, I was supposed to keep
people away, tell them to go around the other way. And these kids came
along. I told them to go around the other way, but they said they had
to get to the subway."
"The subway?" echoed Stevenson.
"Yes, sir. They said they were out too late anyway and it was a long
way to go to get home."
The man named Marshall said, "You said one of them _did_ go down by the
schoolyard?"
"Yes, sir. I told them all to go around the other way and the one kid
said, 'Hey, they're fighting,' or something like that, and he ran down
the street. I tried to stop him. But he got away from me."
"And then what happened?" asked Stevenson.
"Then I saw the fuzz--the police coming. I ran down to warn everybody.
And all the guys were jumping around throwing their coats away."
"And the little boy?"
"I didn't see him at all any more. Except after the police came. I saw
him go running around the corner."
"What did this boy look like?" Stevenson asked.
"Gee, I don't know, sir."
"You don't know?"
"No, sir. He was in his Hallowe'en costume."
The four men looked at one another. "A costume," said the one named
Roberts, the reporter. "My God, a _costume_."
"Yes, sir," said Judy. "It was all black and gold. Tight black pants
and a yellow shirt and a black cape and a funny kind of mask that
covered his face, black and gold. And a kind of cap like maybe a skull
cap on his head, black, only it was knit. Like the sailors wear in the
Merchant Marine."
"Black and gold," said Roberts. He seemed awed by something.
"So you can't identify this boy at all," said Stevenson forlornly.
"One of the other kids called him Eddie," she said, suddenly
remembering.
They spent fifteen minutes more with her, going over the same ground
again and again, but she just didn't have any more to tell them. And
finally they let her go.
* * * * *
Mr. Featherhall and Miss English were distant but courteous. It was,
after all, banking hours. On the other hand, these four men were police
and FBI, on official business.
"It _has_ been a rather long time," Featherhall objected gently. "Well
over four months."
"It seemed to me," said Miss English, "that the police took the names
of all the people who'd been here at the time of the robbery."
"There may have been other people present," suggested Marshall, "who
left before the confusion was over. There are any number of people in
this world who like to avoid being involved in things like this."
"I can certainly appreciate their position," said Miss English,
reminiscently touching her fingertips to her head.
"Miss English was very brave," Featherhall told the policemen. "She
created the diversion that spoiled their plans."
"Yes, we know," said Marshall. "We've heard about what you did, Miss
English."
"To tell you the truth," she said primly, "I was most concerned about
the boy. To be exposed to something like that at his tender--"
"Boy?" interrupted Stevenson rudely. "Did you say _boy_?"
"Why, yes," said Miss English. "There was a little boy in here at the
time, with his mother. Didn't you know?"
"No, we didn't," said Marshall. "Could you describe this boy?"
"Well, he was--well, not more than ten years old, if that. And
he--well, it has been a long time, as Mr. Featherhall said. He was just
a child, a normal average child."
"Not exactly average," said Stevenson cryptically.
"You said he was in here with his mother," said Marshall.
"That's right. I've seen her in here a number of times."
"Yes, of course," said Marshall.
"Has she been here since the robbery?" asked Stevenson.
"Yes, I believe she has."
"So that you would recognize her if you saw her again."
"Yes, I would. I'm sure I would. She almost always comes in with the
boy. Or, no, she doesn't, not any more. Not since school started. But
she did all summer."
"She comes in often, then."
"I believe so," said Miss English. "Fairly often."
Marshall produced a small card, which he handed to Miss English. "The
next time she comes in," he said, "we'd appreciate it if you'd call us
at that number. Ask for me, Mr. Marshall."
"I will," said Miss English. "I surely will."
* * * * *
The four of them sat talking in Marshall's office.
Tom Roberts had his shoes off, his feet on the windowsill, his spine
curved into the chair and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his
mouth. He had one eye closed and was sighting between his socked feet
at the building across the way.
"The thing that bothers me," he said, the cigarette waggling in his
mouth, "is just that I'm sure as I can be that I'll never get to
write a word of this story. You gimlet-eyed types will clamp down on
this kid, and that'll be the end of it. Security, by George. National
defense. I wonder whatever happened to freedom of the press."
"The press overworked it," Marshall told him.
"The thing is," said Lang, "whatever weapon or machine this boy is
using, it's something that the government knows absolutely nothing
about. We've sent up a report on the effects of this thing, whatever
it is, and there's been the damnedest complete survey of current
government research projects you can imagine. There is nothing at all
like it even on the drawing boards."
"Whatever the boy is using," said Marshall, "and wherever he got it
from, it isn't a part of the government's arsenal of weapons."
"Which it _has_ to be," Lang added. "Can you imagine a weapon that
selectively increases or decreases the temperature of any specific
object or any specific _part_ of an object? From a _distance_? I
wouldn't like to be sitting on a stockpile of hydrogen warheads with
somebody aiming that weapon at me. He simply presses the 'hot' button,
and blooey!"
"You see a jet bomber coming," said Marshall. "You point the weapon,
press the 'cold' button, and flame-out. That pilot bought the farm."
"What _I'd_ like to know," said Lang, "is where he got his hands on
this thing in the first place. Not only is there no machine or weapon
we know of which can do this sort of thing, but our tame experts assure
us that no such machine or weapon is possible."
"Great," said Stevenson. "We're looking for a ten-year-old kid armed
with a weapon that no adult in the country could even imagine as
possible."
The phone rang at that point, and for a second no one moved. They all
sat and looked at the jangling phone. Then Marshall and Lang moved
simultaneously, but it was Marshall who answered. "Marshall here."
The others watched him, heard him say, "Yes, Miss English. Right." And
reach forward on the desk for pad and pencil. "Right, got it. You're
sure that's the one? Right. Thank you very much."
Marshall cradled the phone, and looked at the others. "The woman came
in. Her name is Mrs. Albert J. Clayhorn, and she lives on Newkirk
Avenue. Miss English said the number would be near East 17th."
"Five blocks from the bank," said Stevenson.
"And about eighty blocks from Higgins' house," said Roberts. "That's
why it took him so long to go to work that time. He saw what was
happening on television, grabbed his weapon and his trusty bike and
went riding out to Canarsie. The Scorpion rides again!"
Marshall looked at his watch. "It's only a little after one," he said.
"We can talk to the mother before the boy comes home."
"Right," said Stevenson, getting to his feet.
V
Mrs. Elizabeth Clayhorn was a short, roundish, pleasant-faced woman
in a flower-pattern apron. She looked at the identification Marshall
showed her, and smiled uncertainly. "FBI? I don't under--Well, come
in."
"Thank you."
The living room was neat and airy. The four men settled themselves.
Marshall, uncomfortably, was the spokesman. "I'm going to have to
explain this, Mrs. Clayhorn," he said, "and frankly, it isn't going
to be easy. You see--" He cleared his throat and tried again. "Well,
here's the situation. Someone in New York has a rather strange machine
of some sort--well, it's sort of a heat machine, I suppose you could
say--and we've traced it, through its use, to, uh--well, to your son."
"To Eddie?" Mrs. Clayhorn was looking very blank. "Eddie?"
"I take it," said Marshall, instead of answering, "that your son hasn't
told you about this machine."
"Well, no. Well, of course not. I mean, he's just a little boy. I
mean, how could he have any sort of machine? What is it, a blowtorch,
something like that?"
"Not exactly," said Marshall. "Could you tell me, Mrs. Clayhorn, what
your husband does for a living?"
"Well, he runs a grocery store. The Bohack's up on Flatbush Avenue."
"I see."
Lang took over the questioning. "Are there any other persons living
here, Mrs. Clayhorn? Any boarders?"
"No, there's only the three of us."
"Well, is Eddie interested in anything of a, well, a scientific nature?
In school, perhaps?"
"Oh, Lord, no. He hasn't had any real science subjects yet. He's only
in the fifth grade. His best subject is history, but that's because he
likes to read, and history is all reading. He got that from me, I read
all the time."
"He doesn't have one of these junior chemistry sets, then, or anything
like that?"
"No, not at all. He just isn't interested. We even got him an Erector
set last Christmas, and he played with it for a day or two and then
gave it up completely and went back to reading."
"The thing is," said Stevenson, with ill-concealed desperation, "he
does have this machine."
"Are you sure it's Eddie?"
"Yes, mam, we're sure."
"Mrs. Clayhorn," said Marshall, "the boy does have this machine. The
government is very interested in it, and--"
"Well, I don't see how a ten-year-old boy--but if you say so, then I
suppose it's so. Of course, he'll be home from school at three-thirty.
You could ask _him_, if you want."
* * * * *
"We'd rather not, just yet," said Marshall. "We think it might not be
the best idea. As you say, Eddie is very interested in reading. He's
been using this machine, and, uh, well, he's been making a big secret
out of it, like the characters in comic books. We wouldn't want to
spoil that secret for him, at least not until we actually have the
machine in our own possession."
"I see," said Mrs. Clayhorn doubtfully.
"Mam," said Stevenson, "we don't have any sort of search warrant. But
we would like to take a look in Eddie's room, with your permission."
"Well, if you really think it's important--"
"It is," said Marshall.
"Then, I suppose it's all right. It's the door on the right, at the end
of the hall."
The three men, feeling large and cumbersome, searched the boy's room.
It was a boy's room, nothing less and nothing more. The closet floor
and shelves were stacked with comic books, there were baseball trading
cards in the top bureau drawer, there were pennants on the walls. There
was no heat machine, nor any hint of a heat machine.
"I just don't know," said Marshall at last.
"Unless he carries it all the time," said Lang.
"Sure," said Stevenson. "That's why he had it with him in the bank that
day."
"Maybe," said Marshall. "I just don't know. You know, I don't really
believe there _is_ a machine."
"Of course there is," said Stevenson. "We've seen what it can do."
"Oh, I'm not denying the boy caused those things. But I just have the
completely insane conviction that there isn't any machine." Marshall
shrugged. "Ah, well, never mind. Let's go back and soothe the mother."
They soothed her, which took some doing, not because she was at all
worried, but because she was so curious she could hardly sit still. But
Marshall, by looking very stern and official, and by speaking in round
long-syllabled sentences, finally convinced her that the welfare of the
nation was absolutely dependent upon her not mentioning anything at all
about this visit to Eddie, under any circumstances.
"We'll be back to talk to the boy in a day or two," Marshall told her.
"In the meantime, we'd prefer him not to be forewarned."
"If you say so," she said, frowning.
* * * * *
The school principal, a gray battleship named Miss Evita Dexter, was
irate. The idea that pornographic materials were being sold in _her_
schoolyard was absurd. It was ridiculous. It was unheard-of.
Stevenson assured her that, adjectives notwithstanding, it was
happening. And they were going to have a shakedown of the student body
whether Miss Dexter liked it or not. Detective-Sergeant Stevenson and
his associates, Marshall and Lang, were going to go through the student
body with a fine tooth comb.
Neither Marshall nor Lang had mentioned the fact that they were from
the FBI.
The search began at nine forty-five in the morning, and ended at ten
past twelve.
On the persons of three eighth-grade boys, they found pornographic
photos.
On the person of Eddie Clayhorn, they found absolutely nothing....
Abner Streitman Long was a government expert. He was more or less a
government expert in the ready reserve, since he had never once been
called upon to use his expertise for the government.
Not until now.
Abner Streitman Long was Resident Professor of Psychology at Mandar
University. He was also one of the world's foremost and best-known
experimenters in the area of parapsychology, also called Extra-Sensory
Perception, also called psionics.
The government, as a matter of principle, didn't believe in psionics.
But the government, also as a matter of principle, kept a psionics
expert handy, just in case.
The "just in case" had maybe happened.
Professor Long sat in Marshall's office and listened stolidly to the
problem. The expert was a tall, barrel-chested man with a fantastic
shock of white hair exploding out in all directions from his head.
His nose was bulbous, his jaw out-thrust, his eyes deepset, his ears
hairy, his hands huge and his feet huger. He looked like a dressed-up
lumberjack, of the old school.
He listened, and they talked, and every once in a while he nodded, and
said, "Huh." His voice was, predictably, basso profundo.
* * * * *
Then they were finished, and Professor Long summed it all up. "He
changes the temperature of objects. Yes?"
"Yes," said Marshall.
"You looked for a machine. Yes?"
"Yes, and we didn't find it."
"And your thermodynamics people said no such machine could exist
anyway, yes?"
"That's right."
"Then why did you look for it?"
"Because," said Marshall desperately, "we'd seen it in action. That is,
we'd seen the result of its use."
"Yes," said the professor. He sucked on his lower lip and abstractedly
watched his thumbs twiddle. "Pyrotic," he announced at last.
"I beg your pardon?" asked Marshall.
"Pyrotic," repeated the professor. "Yes? Yes. Pyrotic. Do you know what
that is?"
"No," said Marshall.
"Good," said the professor. "Neither do I. But I have a theory. There
are more theories than there are phenomena. That always happens.
But listen to this theory. The mind reaches into the object on the
molecular level, and adjusts the molecules, _so_. The temperature
changes. Do you see?"
"Not exactly," said Marshall doubtfully.
"Neither do I. Never mind. I know lots of theories, none of them make
any sense. But they all try to explain."
"If you say so," said Marshall.
"Yes. I say so. _Now._ As a psychologist, I will tell you something
else. This boy has made this a secret, yes? The Scorpion, he calls
himself, and, like his heroes of the comic books, he uses his power for
good. Shazam, yes? Captain Marvel."
"Yes," said Stevenson, nodding emphatically.
"Now, what happens if you go to this boy and tell him, 'We know you are
the Scorpion? Your secret is out.' What happens then?"
"I don't know," said Marshall.
"Think," suggested Professor Long. "Batman, let us say, or Superman.
Quite apart from fighting crime, what is the major task confronting
these heroes? That of maintaining the secrecy of their identity, yes?"
The four men nodded.
"Now," said Professor Long, "to the mind of a ten-year-old boy, what
is the implication? The implication is this: If the secret of the
identity is lost the power of the hero is also lost. This is the clear
implication. Yes?"
"You mean this boy wouldn't be able to do it any more if we went and
talked to him?" asked Lang.
"I don't say that," cautioned the professor. "I do say this: He will
_believe_ that he has lost the power. And this belief may be sufficient
to destroy the power. Yes?"
"In other words," said Marshall, "you're saying that we can't ask this
boy how he manages his stunt, because if we do then he probably won't
be able to manage it any more."
* * * * *
"A distinct possibility," said the professor. "But only a temporary
possibility. The drama of the Scorpion will not, I imagine, survive
puberty."
"But will the _ability_ survive puberty?"
"No one can know. No one can even guess."
"Now, here's the thing," said Marshall. "Not downgrading your theories
at all, Professor, they are nevertheless still only theories. Frankly,
given my choice between an impossible machine and a boy with the power
to _think_ things hot and cold, I'll give the impossible machine the
edge. At this point, accepting the idea of the machine, our next move
is simple. We go ask the boy to give it to us. From what you say, we
can't even do that."
"My best advice," said the professor, "would be to keep the boy under
careful surveillance for the next three or four years. Gradually get to
know him, carefully work out a long-range program involving his reading
habits, the attitudes of his teachers and parents, the sort of external
stimuli to which he is--"
"Fellas," said Roberts suddenly. "Oh, fellas."
They turned to look at him. He was in his favorite pose, shoes off,
feet up on the windowsill. He was now pointing at the window. "Do you
fellas see what I see?" he asked them.
They saw. The window was frosting. It was a rainy, humid mid-November
day, and moisture was condensing on the window pane. It was condensing,
and then it was freezing.
It didn't take long. No more than a minute passed from the time Roberts
noticed the thing beginning until the time it was complete. And then
they watched various specific sections of the window defrost again.
It was a very strange looking window. It was covered with frost, but
there were lines of bare window, as though the frost had been scraped
away. The lines formed letters, and the letters formed words, and the
words were:
POO. MOM TOLD ME.
"My God," said Marshall.
"Well, well, well, well, well," said Stevenson.
"Yes," said Professor Long. He nodded, and turned away from the window
to look at the door. "You may come in now, Eddie," he called.
The door opened, and Eddie Clayhorn stood there, in civilian clothes.
He beamed at the window. "That was tricky," he said.
"So," said Professor Long. "I was mistaken, eh? Exposure does not spoil
things, is that it?"
"Sometimes," said Eddie Clayhorn, "the hero has one or two trusted
friends on the police force who know who he is and give him tips about
criminals. But they never tell anybody."
"Of course!" said Professor Long. "And we are _your_ trusted friends.
Yes?"
"Sure. But you can't tell my parents or anybody."
Roberts leaned forward and gingerly touched the frosted window. It was
cold, very cold. He turned and looked with awed eyes at Eddie Clayhorn.
Slowly, he smiled. "Scorp old boy," he said, "you can just call me
Tonto. Kimosabe!"
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