Johnny Get Your Gun (4 page)

Maggie got up, opened the outside door, and remained there for a long minute. When she turned back, her face was lined with anxiety. She said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

“He might be asleep in his room.” Mike spoke quickly, then led the way for the few steps to Johnny’s little sanctuary. He was not there. His bed was smooth and undisturbed, just as Maggie had made it for him that morning. They both stood and looked at the narrow empty bed.

“Is his radio there?” Mike asked.

Maggie did not have to search for long to determine that it was gone. While she was looking she came across his little strongbox, which was actually made of light metal and held shut with a toy lock. She left it strictly alone because it held a secret which she shared with her son.

Mike turned toward the other bedroom. He swung the door open quickly, took one look, and saw that it too was empty. He smothered his disappointment with the thought that if his son had been asleep it would have been in his own room. But it had been worth a look.

Then he thought about kidnappers. They picked up children, sometimes without any knowledge of who their parents were or how much they might be able to raise to get them back. Another idea hit him: Johnny was nine now and there were people who were looking for young boys of just about that age. He clamped his teeth together and for one hot instant saw himself throttling to death anyone who would attempt such a thing with
his
son. Then he forced himself to calm down and remembered that Johnny had only been gone a little more than an hour past the time when he should have been home.

He turned to his wife. “It’s light now to past eight-thirty. He’s forgotten about what time it is; he’s probably playing baseball somewhere. Kids are like that. Let’s finish dinner.”

Reluctantly Maggie accepted his judgment and went
back to the kitchen where the beef stew she had prepared was now cold and congealed. “It’s all right,” Mike said. “I like it this way.” He ate a few mouthfuls in silence, listening for the sound of footsteps on the concrete walkway outside. When he heard them he jumped, although he knew at once that it was not his son who was coming. When he heard the sound of the doorbell he was already on his feet.

He flung the door wide and found himself looking at a slender but well-built Negro who appeared to be in his early thirties.

“Well?” Mike demanded.

“My name is Tibbs,” the man said. “I’m from the Pasadena police. It’s very important that I talk to you and your son immediately.”

“Well Johnny ain’t here!” Mike blazed out the words. Then his chest tightened at the sudden thought that perhaps this black man had news to tell him. “What’s happened?” he asked.

“Nothing—yet. May I come in, please?”

Mike let him in, hostility forming an aura around him. He disliked all policemen automatically, today more than usual.

Maggie looked up and saw the visitor was wearing better clothes than her husband owned. She was dubious of his color, but anxiety overrode her other feelings and she said, “Won’t you sit down, please.”

Virgil Tibbs seated himself quietly at the table and
then waited for Mike McGuire to calm down enough to join them.

“As far as we know now your son is all right,” Virgil began. “Can you tell me when you saw him last?”

Maggie pressed the back of her hand against her forehead. “He came home this afternoon after school. He poked around a little while in his room. I didn’t pay much attention; I was ironing. Then he went out again.”

“Has he been out late like this before?”

“Never,” Mike answered.

“Has he any close friends he might be visiting?”

Maggie unwittingly confirmed what Billy Hotchkiss had already said. “He don’t really have any friends here yet. We’re new.”

Tibbs said, “You left Tennessee in February I assume.”

Mike tightened so that the veins of his muscular forearms stood out. “You been checking up on us?” he demanded.

Virgil shook his head. “When I came in, I noticed the cars parked downstairs. There were seven—four with California plates, and one each from Canada, New Jersey, and Tennessee. Your manner of speaking suggests that the Tennessee car is yours. And most people with young children plan their moves, if they can, at the end of school terms.”

Mike rubbed his fingers hard against his jaw. “I guess it’s all right, I just never like to have people prying into our business.”

Tibbs studied him. “I don’t pry, Mr. McGuire, I’m
a police investigator and it’s my business to notice things. Right now I’m trying to use what abilities I have to help you.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said.

Virgil produced a notebook and opened to a clean page. “I’d like a description of Johnny,” he requested. “And please tell me what he’s now wearing.”

Maggie responded. “Johnny has just turned nine. He’s a little small for his age, but he’s a nice-looking boy. His hair is still light and he has blue eyes. He’s got on a pair of jeans from Penney’s and his black school shoes.” Then she remembered. “He has his jacket,” she added a little lamely. “A red one. It’s out at the elbows and we’ve been meaning to get him a new one.”

“Do you have a picture of him?”

Maggie got up. “I’ll try and find one,” she said.

As soon as she had gone Mike leaned forward, enough to be heard softly, but not enough to bring him too close to the black man who was a cop in the bargain. “You think he’s been kidnapped?” he asked.

Tibbs shook his head. “I’m very confident that that isn’t the case, for a number of reasons.”

“Such as?” Mike asked.

“If kidnappers were looking for a child to seize and hold for ransom, I doubt if they would choose one who was wearing a worn-out jacket.” He could have supplied a much better reason, but he was not ready yet to disclose all that he had learned at the Hotchkiss house.

The phone rang, loudly because it was installed in the kitchen. Mike scooped it up quickly and made the word “Hello?” into a question.

“Mr. McGuire?”

“Yes, Mike McGuire speaking. Go on.”

“This is Ralph Hotchkiss, Mr. McGuire, Billy’s father. I’ve just been given your number by the police department.”

“I don’t want to talk about the accident now.”

“Very well, but I just wanted to tell you how very sorry Billy is for what he did. If your son is there, Billy would like to talk to him.”

“He ain’t come home. We’re worried about him.”

Hotchkiss was very guarded. “Have you spoken to the police?”

“One of ’em is here now.”

“Good. If I learn anything at all, I’ll call you. Good night, Mr. McGuire.”

As he hung up the instrument growing suspicion began to take over in the forefront of Mike’s mind. He did not see his wife as she reappeared in the doorway holding a snapshot in her hand, instead he stared straight ahead while he allowed the cancer of distrust to nourish itself and grow. His jaw muscles began to work and his eyes grew hard. “I think that guy knows somethin’!” he exploded. His voice echoed back from the hard walls. He turned toward Tibbs as though expecting him to do something at once.

“Mr. McGuire,” Virgil asked, “do you own a gun?”

“Yes, I’ve got a gun—what of it?”

“What kind of a gun?”

“A Colt thirty-eight. Why?”

Tibbs ignored the question. “Do you customarily keep it loaded?”

“What the hell good is a gun if it ain’t loaded? I’ve got a right to have it, the Constitution says so. Don’t you give me no argument on that!”

There was a moment of thick silence.

“You have the legal right to own a gun,” Tibbs said. “You’re asked to register it for your own protection, but you’re not required even to do that.”

“Then what’s the gripe?”

“I didn’t say that there was a gripe. Mr. McGuire, have you ever allowed your son to handle your gun?”

“Sure every kid should know how to handle a gun. He might have to protect his ma sometime when I’m not here.”

“He knows, then, where you keep it?”

“Of course he does.”

Virgil rose to his feet, automatically Mike did the same. That brought them face-to-face and Mike, to his surprise, read power and authority in the dark eyes opposite his.

“I’d like to see your gun, Mr. McGuire. Immediately, if you please.”

Mike sensed that he would have to comply. He walked firmly past his wife, out of the kitchen, and across the small
living room in his role as master of the house. He paused in front of a narrow linen closet and opened the door. A moment later he turned around to find that Tibbs was behind him and waiting.

“It’s gone,” Mike said.

This time Virgil Tibbs did not wait to ask if he could use the telephone, he returned to the kitchen, picked it up without ceremony, and dialed the headquarters number.

“Tibbs at the McGuire home,” he reported in. “The boy, Johnny, has not come home. Almost certainly he has his father’s loaded handgun with him and he knows how to use it.”

“Good God!” the desk sergeant responded. “It’s true.”

“Right. You’d better call the Hotchkiss home immediately and tell Barry Rothberg the score. Then set up a stakeout to cover the exterior. The boy may still come home on his own, I hope to heaven that he does, but we can’t bank on it. Also run the full missing child routine—hospitals and all the rest. I’ll be here for a few more minutes.”

He hung up, turned, and found the McGuires where they had been standing, listening, behind him. “I don’t want to upset you,” he told them, “but this could develop into a very serious situation. I’m hoping that Johnny will come home by himself. If he does, I suggest that you treat him with an extra measure of consideration and love, because he will be needing it.”

Maggie began softly to cry.

“I think you had both better sit down,” Virgil advised. “I have some things to tell you.”

The belligerency drained out of him for the moment, Mike did as directed. Maggie, her shoulders shaking, followed suit.

In quiet, calm tones Tibbs told them what had happened in the schoolyard and of Johnny’s violent reaction. Then he carefully repeated Ralph Hotchkiss’s offer to replace the smashed radio set at once.

Mike pondered the matter. “If this Hotchkiss will buy him a new radio, with a battery and everything, then I guess it’s all right. But it was plain dirty what his kid did to Johnny, and I can’t blame Johnny for getting damn mad. That smart-alec kid of Hotchkiss’s needs a good whipping and maybe someday Johnny’ll give it to him.” As he spoke the last words the first dawn of comprehension began to show on his face. “My gun,” he said, forming the words mechanically, “he took my gun.”

Grimly Virgil nodded. “Yes, Mr. McGuire, he has your
gun. I think he means to use it and the Hotchkiss family is very frightened.”

“Oh, my God, no!”

Maggie flung her hands over her face and bent over the table, her body shaking with sobs. Mike got up quickly and put his arm around her, to comfort her and to hide his own acute embarrassment. After the single, shattering outburst Maggie calmed down and began to sob; she had no handkerchief so Mike tore off a paper towel and handed it to her. Tibbs remained silent; when the paper towel had been used and pushed away he reached into his own pocket and produced a clean linen handkerchief which he offered to her.

She hesitated a second, then took it, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. That finished she looked up at Tibbs. “What can we do?” she asked.

“First of all, stay here and wait for your boy to come home. If he does, tell him you’ve been worried, but don’t upbraid him. Give him his dinner, make him glad that he came home, then please call me right away. If I’m not there, talk to the man who answers the phone.” He laid a calling card on the table.

Mike indicated that they would do as directed. The realization of what might possibly happen was clear in his mind and he was very much sobered.

“Before I go, I’d like to have a little more information,” Virgil said. “It could help us to find your son sooner.”

“That’s all right,” Mike responded.

“I take it that Johnny liked his radio very much.”

“It was his birthday present, he listens to it all the time. He’s nuts about the Angels baseball team and he hears all the games when he ain’t in school.”

“Does he follow the Dodgers too?”

“No, he don’t like the Dodgers, just the Angels. The Dodgers, they don’t play on TV. Mostly he likes the Angels because of Gene Autry. You know about him?”

“Everybody knows about Gene Autry,” Virgil answered. He stressed the first word just a little, he could not help it.

“Well, Johnny met him once. Just a quick handshake, but it was a big thing for him. Autry called him his pal and Johnny never forgot it. That was back home. Now Johnny wants to be a ball player so he can be on his team—Autry’s I mean.”

“Someday soon it might be a good idea to take him to a game,” Tibbs suggested.

Mike was unaware of the hidden question in that simple-sounding sentence, he only knew that he felt obliged to say something in response. “I was planning to do that, but then somethin’ came up….”

“The accident?”

Mike looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You know about that too?”

“You mentioned it on the telephone to Mr. Hotchkiss.”

Again the muscles of Mike’s jaw worked. “I guess
maybe I did.” He drew breath and let it out again very slowly.

“Could Johnny have taken any money with him?” Tibbs asked, deliberately changing the subject.

Mike shook his head. “He gets fifty cents allowance when I can spare it, but it’s always all gone before the end of the week.”

“No, it isn’t,” Maggie said.

Her husband looked at her, surprised and with a slight show of rising temper.

“It was a secret I promised to keep for him,” she explained, her lower lip quivering in spite of herself. “He hardly ever spent anything. He’s been saving his money for weeks to buy a catcher’s outfit. He wants to be a baseball catcher. He knows we don’t have much, so he’s been putting it all away.”

“Do you know where?” Virgil asked quietly.

Maggie nodded and led the way. Maggie ran her hand quickly across her eyes before she opened the bottom drawer of the dresser and pulled out the tin box. She was being forced to betray his little secret.