Hammered: A Jewel to Die For

There were no signs that anyone else had been there, with no booby traps and seemingly nothing out of place. Diamond had told me she'd always been careful to keep her personal and "professional" lives separate so the kidnappers must not have figured it out yet. I hoped that they weren't trying to beat it out of her, or worse.

I spotted Diamond's phone and found a second phone with a Panasonic Easa-Phone answering machine next to it in a cupboard. On running it back, the messages started playing.

"Hi, Dyna Myte! It's Charlie123. Are you free for a date—"

I hit skip. Beep

"Hiya, Dyna! This is Clint from last month. You available for another—"

Beep

Three more messages sounded before I came to the last one on the tape, the one of interest. I called George and he came over to listen as I played it again.

"This message is for Sergeant of Detectives Les Pardee. We've got what you want, Sergeant. Somebody accidentally happened onto something that belongs to us and we need it back, very, very badly. She means nothing to us and hasn't seen our faces so we have no reason to hurt her or keep her if you cooperate and do exactly as I say. So, while you get our stuff, we'll keep your girl safe and will call you back on this number at 10 tonight to arrange a swap. But, Sergeant, listen very closely, if you get the police involved in this, we'll know and she'll be dead, or if you don't answer that call or don't do exactly as I say...well, the old saying holds doubly true this time: dynamite goes boom."

With my hands clenched and my blood boiling, George and I listened time after time, trying with each play to hear something in the background that might give us a clue to where they were holding her. There are so many sounds in the city but we finally gave up; there was nothing on the tape to help us. Wanting to protect Diamond, I erased the five messages at the beginning before pocketing the tape with the kidnapper's message. Maybe the guys at the lab could pick up something with their equipment that our ears couldn't.

I was worried that we might not be able to find the cash, but that worry was unfounded. Being a small-town girl in the big city, she had a little strongbox with a combination lock hidden in the back on the top shelf of her closet. It didn't offer a lot of protection but with no one associating Diamond Woodall with Dyna Myte, it was enough that no one would ordinarily suspect that she had it.

And besides, it was enough protection that even when I found it, we couldn't get it open without tools.

"Want to shoot it off?" asked George with the first hint of a grin since we'd gotten the message. "It always works in Westerns."

"You watch too many Westerns," I laughed. "Knowing our luck, I'd get hit with shrapnel or you'd get hit with a ricochet."

"Nah, we wouldn't want that, either of them," he agreed.

When we finished searching, finding nothing else that seemed related to the case, we drove to a nearby hardware store where we bought a large bolt-cutter that we used to cut off the lock and several other items we thought might come in handy in rescuing Diamond, all-the-while hoping that they wouldn't be needed.

As we drove back to her place, we debated whether we should have the lab check the cassette. It wouldn't take too much for word to get back to Crosley. Or maybe even the kidnappers. The tape stayed in my pocket.

Diamond had a lot of cash in the box, almost six thousand dollars, but it was the stack of crisp new bills with sequential serial numbers in the middle that drew our attention. Holding them up to the light, George and I looked at a number of them before looking at each other.

"Fake?"

"Yep, as a Picasso signed by Rembrandt. That's probably why they want them back so badly," I replied. "They're not quite good enough to be passed, so I'm guessing they're still working to improve them to make them passable. Nachman was probably involved in the operation and stole them—"

"Or maybe he was tasked to destroy them?" interjected George.

"Yeah, good point. Any going into circulation, like the one Nachman started to spend at the bodega, would almost certainly be caught almost at once and that would put the Feds on their tail and that would threaten their whole operation before they could launder the bills and get them in circulation."

"Or sell them to another operation."

"Yeah. When Nachman realized his boss was onto him, he probably figured he could give them to Diamond or, probably more likely, stash them with her planning to get them back later."

"The bodega guy, Mr. Santana, called the cops, so they would probably have called the Feds, right? You think they might have an active investigation going into this?"

"Yep," I said with a nod. "Next stop, the New York field office of the Secret Service."

I closed the box and added a new lock I'd purchased from the store before we locked her apartment and headed out again with the clock ticking toward our deadline. I wasn't sure but I think George was humming the first few bars of the theme song of that show about the Secret Service guys in the old west as we made our way downstairs.

***

The United States Secret Service began operation shortly after the Civil War ended, but President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill authorizing the organization into law on April 14, 1865, the very day he was shot.

In a further twist of irony, the Secret Service's original mission was not to protect the president or other political leaders; it was to combat counterfeiting. The duty to protect the president and other political leaders was only added later in 1901 following the assassination of President McKinley.

With three presidential assassinations in thirty-six years, I guess someone finally wised up.

Wanting to see if they had any information that might help us, we visited the New York field office of the Secret Service. When we showed our credentials and stated our business, the receptionist made a call and we were ushered into a conference room. After a long wait, two men entered.

"Detectives, this is Special Agent Adison and I'm Special Agent Kagan. We understand you may have information on a case we're working?"

"What was believed to be a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill was passed but then retrieved at a store in Hell's Kitchen," I said. "We've heard that someone passed one of the bills to the owner of the store, but on the man spotting it, the perp grabbed the bill from his hand and paid with another."

At this point, I passed from known fact to conjecture. "We believe that the perp was a minor member of the counterfeiting operation and that he tried to pass some other fakes, probably test prints that weren't quite good enough to pass even a casual observation, but his employer caught him and he's now no longer among the living."

Kagan shook his head. "You know as well as I do, detectives, that rumors don't make cases. Do you have any hard leads to give us? Any names? Any locations? Or is all of this just rumor and hearsay? If so, we're wasting time and this meeting is over."

I'd been prepared to tell him everything, but I found myself disliking Kagan and his attitude, so I hesitated, not sure if I could trust the man or trust him to keep things under wraps until we could get Diamond back. While we could give him a lot and I could connect the dot to Nachman and tell them of his death, their investigation would be kicked into high gear and word might get out on the street and back to the kidnappers before we could recover her. Therefore, I decided to avoid the tempest that would stir up if I told him now, trying a different path instead.

"Special Agents, there's one other thing. Our information, still to be confirmed, is that the perp passing the bills crossed paths with an innocent young woman. She's missing and we believe her life is in extreme danger as a result. If we're going to have any hope of saving her, we need whatever you have on these guys," I said with conviction.

"I'm sorry, Sergeant, we'll look into it but we don't have anything now. We can't help you," Kagan repeated.

"Well, thanks for your assistance," I deadpanned as George and I rose from our chairs.

"You be sure to let us know if you come across anything else...that's real, anyway," demanded Kagan.

"Yeah, we'll be sure to do that," I replied, wondering if either of them understood the meaning of sarcasm.

***

"You didn't tell them about Diamond," said George after we got in the car.

"No, after seeing their attitude, I'm 99 percent sure they'd have put word out on the street and that would probably get Diamond killed. No, I, ahem, we, are going to have to do this on our own."

Once we reached George's apartment, he whispered with his wife in the kitchen for quite some time while I played with little Alicia, a sweet young girl who made me think of the years I missed with Dinah and with Diamond, assuming she was mine. The little girl was about the same size as the tyke at the fountain.

When they came out, Jessica went in the back while George came to sit with us. Alicia forgot all about me as she climbed on her dad's lap and started regaling him with tales and demands.

Minutes later with their bags packed, George took them down to their family car and sent them away for a long weekend at Jessica's sister's house in New Jersey. With them safely out of the way in case anyone tried an attack on George's place like they had mine, we secured it and then slipped out separately to go shopping for a few more items we hoped we wouldn't need before returning and trying to get some rest so we'd be ready for whatever the long night ahead held in store for us.

***

The phone in the cabinet in Diamond's apartment rang at 10 and I picked it up before it could ring again.

"Hello?" I asked, figuring it would be the kidnapper but also knowing it could be a potential client looking for Dyna Myte.

"Sergeant Pardee. Please pardon the mess in your apartment. You've asked way too many questions and shined entirely too much light on our operation, but one of my boys greatly exceeded his authority; if he'd succeeded, we wouldn't be able to complete our little transaction. Now, tell me you have what I want and read me the serial number on one of them."

"Hold on," I said, dropping the receiver before the kidnapper had a chance to reply. When I picked it back up a few moments later with one of the counterfeit bills in hand, I read the serial number from it. There was silence on the line for a bit so I finally said, "Hello, are you still there?"

"Mm, yes, and luckily for your friend, you pass that test. Now listen very closely for I'll say this once and not repeat it.

Not sure if the Easa-Phone answering machine could record during an answered call, George had a recorder with a tape ready to go so he pressed the buttons down and held the device up to the receiver. The kidnapper gave me instructions and concluded with, "If you mess this up, Sergeant, you can kiss the young lady goodbye. I'd prefer that not to be the case, so remember, alone, midnight. Don't be late."

***

The kidnapping counterfeiter had chosen a spot in the old warehouse district not far from the waterfront for the swap. It was dark, there were multiple ways out of the area if they needed to escape, it was empty so we weren't likely to be interrupted, and any police flooding into the area could be spotted well before they arrived.

"Not very creative cusses, are they?" remarked George. "None of the going from phone booth to phone booth routine like in that movie a couple of years back?"

"Let's hope they aren't and that they didn't see that one," I countered, adding, "and that there's not a phone booth when we get there with a call or maybe just a note telling us to go somewhere else."

George stared at me for a moment, realizing that this could just be the start of a long night of chasing our tail before they finally met us where they would have an even greater advantage. He nodded and said, "Yeah, let's hope."

Having little time, we pulled out a set of department-issued maps and started to work.

***

Just before midnight, I pulled into the drive that led between two buildings. Circling around to the rear, I stopped facing the line of overhead truck doors and turned my headlights off and back on three times. The last time, I left them on, hoping they wouldn't think it odd that the headlights had been on bright the whole time in an attempt to let me see as much of what lay in front of me as I could.

A moment later, an overhead door at the top of a ramp over to the side opened and a bright flashlight waved from me, up the ramp, and into the building. When I hesitated for a moment, the person holding the light waved it again, more forcefully this time, as if getting impatient or more demanding.

Yes, I'd hesitated but on seeing the second motion, I stepped on the clutch and put the car in gear, easing off to do as indicated. While it wasn't what I wanted to do, this was for Diamond, to save her no matter what might happen to me.

I pulled into the building and my lights showed that it was empty if not completely abandoned. The building columns cast long, strange shadows as I drove by. Then, as I moved forward, a bank of lights lit up, blinding me and lighting up my car and everything around me. I moved forward slowly and stopped.

A man stepped in front of the light and held up his hand before throwing a thumb. I'd known this was coming but the empty warehouse wasn't my first, second, or even twenty-second choice on how I'd wanted it to happen. Other than my Custom and the line upon line of building columns, there was no cover anywhere, leaving me completely vulnerable and questioning whether I'd done the right thing.

While I knew I'd give my life for Diamond if necessary, I didn't want to do it needlessly. Remembering what had happened with her mother twenty years before, how someone on the take in the department had given our location and we'd both almost died as a result, I'd not tried to contact anyone in the department fearing a repeat, especially since the original snitch had never been found. If the kidnappers really just wanted their fake bills back to keep the Feds or whomever off their trail, maybe this would go down right and everyone would live. If not...well, I probably wouldn't make it out of the building alive but I had to save Diamond and planned to take as many of the bad guys with me as I could.

Leaving the lights on and the car running, I got out of the car, planning to stay close but the guy with the light waved me forward so I did as instructed, counting each step that we'd have to cover to get Diamond out.

"Close enough," called another man who stepped into the light. Hearing his voice, I believed this was the man who'd left the message on Diamond's machine and who'd called me just two hours earlier.

"Did you bring the bills?" asked the man.

"Yeah, I have them. But not on me. Do you have the girl?"

He looked back behind him and said, "Bring her forward." That meant there were at least three in the group, probably four, and maybe more.

A flashlight came on, lighting Diamond's face so I could see and revealing a gag in her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fear but they were focused on me, silently pleading to get her away.

"Take off her gag so she can tell me she's okay," I demanded.

The man nodded and a moment later, Diamond said, "Les, get me out of here, please?"

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Enough. She's safe and in one piece. Now, I'm sure we'd all like her to stay that way so get those bills so we can see them." He didn't sound happy about my delay but I played my only card.

"Just so you know, if I don't call a certain friend in..." I looked at my watch. "In twelve minutes, he's calling the police and will report gunfire in this area. The police will swarm the area with everything they've got and with everyone in the vicinity being a suspect and being detained. If I call him, that will be the end of it."

Not mentioning the word I had to give Jack Stevens for him to skip that call and thereby avoid that event, I turned around and walked back toward the car, knowing they could punch a hole in my back and then search the car.

For a few minutes, anyway.

I went to the passenger side of the car, got down on the ground, and reached underneath. Feeling carefully, I found the black pipe I'd concealed earlier and worked it out. Rising to my feet, I held it up. "Here's what you're looking for."

"Reg, check it. Count them and read me one of the numbers."

The man named Reg, the one who'd been signaling earlier, came out to me carrying a huge pistol, probably a Smith & Wesson Model 29 like Detective Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry movie from a couple of years before. He waved it at me in warning as he approached and saw what I was holding. "Unscrew the end cap and take it out, slowly."

I did so, and then popped the pipe on my hand a few times so the fake bills, rolled the short way and placed lengthwise in the tube, started coming out. Then I did the same on the other end, pulling out the other half. A look into each end confirmed that I'd gotten them all so I tucked the pipe under my arm and then started counting so Reg could see.

"One, two, three," I started and counted on, concluding with, "...ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred." I handed the stack over to him.

"Reg, read me the serial number of one of the bills," called the leader.

Reg, a red-headed man with what looked like a beard covered by the big bandana over the bottom part of his face like stagecoach robbers in a western movie, read off a number. With the bandana and in that harsh lighting, it was hard to tell but I guessed he was probably in his 20s or 30s.

The leader nodded. "Reg, come on back and let me have a look. Boys, keep Sergeant Pardee covered and we'll be through with this and out of here in just a couple more minutes."

The time passed with me questioning whether I'd done the right thing or if this was all an elaborate hoax that would end shortly with bullets flying and Diamond and me both dead on the slab or in the river with the fishes. My thoughts were just moving on to George when the leader spoke again.

"Sergeant Pardee, you are to be congratulated. Everything is in order; you did just as you were instructed. The way this is going to work is you get the girl while we leave and we all forget about—

I was watching him framed with the spotlight behind him so the sudden movement to his side, right at the edge of the light, surprised me. Reg swung that big hand cannon up at his head and fired without a moment's hesitation. From the explosion that had been his head, the leader was clearly dead before he knew it, his body crashing to the ground like a tree from the impact.

Through the ringing in my ears, I heard another gun go off in the background and I think another body fell, but I couldn't be sure. Then, before I could react, the big revolver was pointing at me as Reg stepped further into the edge of the light.

"Not so fast, Sergeant Pardee. It seems there's been a sudden change in leadership and direction of our enterprise, so I advise you not to flinch; if you do, you die," he said. "Not that you won't in a few moments anyway, but first I want you to know why. You see, you killed my father."

That surprised me. Coming from a redhead, that surprised me even more.

"Reg, unless you've got some really odd Korean or Chinese blood in you, I think you've got the wrong person."

During the war, I'd been a military policeman, an MP, but we'd been forced into the fighting at times when the Norks had been pushing us south and later when the Red Chinese had become involved. When it was kill or be killed, I'd quickly tossed my underpowered Carbine in favor of a dead GI's M1 Garand and killed a number of them with it, just as they'd killed the guns former owner and a number of my friends, but I'd never tried to count the number that fell to my hand. In truth, it was something I'd rather forget.