A Dog's Ransom (3 page)

“We are watching the clock,” Eric said in his smiling, precise way.

The minutes before midnight went swiftly. Ed stood up at six minutes to twelve.

“See you soon again!” Ed said.

Greta’s face looked strained, not hopeful now. “You’ll come back when?” she demanded.

“Twelve-twenty at the latest,” Ed said for at least the third time. They had arranged that if Lisa wasn’t there, he was to return and tell them, though Ed was prepared to go back and wait longer. Eric and Greta had of course wanted to accompany him to get Lisa, but Ed thought it a bad idea, because Anon might notice them (however much they tried to make themselves inconspicuous) and veer away.

Ed walked more quickly now, and only on the east side of York slowed up and peered ahead in the darkness. He was trying to see the black four-legged dot of Lisa near the fence, perhaps alone and straining first in one direction then the other to see who was coming to untie her. It was too dark to see anything really, and when Ed paused to read his watch under a streetlamp, he saw it was only three minutes to midnight. He stopped in the block between 61st and 62nd Streets, leaned on one hand against a tree, and waited. How easy it was to wait now. Anon ought to blow himself to a taxi, and maybe he had done, and got out north of here, and was walking Lisa downtown. Just as likely the reverse, Ed thought, and quickly turned to look downtown. Nothing on the east side of the pavement that he could see. He looked across the street and his heart gave a jump at a dog on a leash, but it was a white dog of some kind, led by a woman. Wouldn’t it be odd if Anon were a woman?

It became five past midnight. Ed went closer to the rails where he had left the packet of money, and saw that it was gone. That was splendid! Ed looked up and down for taxis that might be slowing, letting out a man with a dog. He saw none.

At eighteen past, as he had promised Greta, he left his place and walked quickly back to the bar. He raised his hand and smiled a little as he approached Greta and Eric. But he sat down before he spoke. “The money’s gone, but no dog as yet. Sorry.”

“Oh, Eddie,” Greta said. All hope seemed to pour out of her.

“He could be late,” Ed said. “I’m going back, of course.”

“A schnapps first,” Eric said. “A coffee maybe.”

“Oh, no. Thanks.” Ed didn’t want to waste the time. He stood up. “I’ll give it till one.”

“And then it’ll be two, then three,” Greta said.

“We’ll come with you,” Eric said. “If he’s
bringing
Lisa—”

“I’d better be alone, really, Eric. I’ll be back by one, but I’d better go back now.” Ed walked to the door.

Again the sidewalk by the fence was deserted. It was 12:32 a.m. Ed tried to be calm. Give it till 1 a.m., fine. Maybe there’d been some delay, difficulty in getting a taxi. If the fellow, for instance, lived in Greenwich Village and had to take the money all the way back there—or even uptown west towards Riverside Drive—

By ten of one, Ed began to realize he’d been hoaxed. His eyes smarted from straining. Two minutes to one. Then 1 a.m., and Ed walked restlessly to the corner where he might have crossed York, but he could not bring himself to leave. At ten past one, Ed saw Greta and Eric crossing York Avenue, Ed had thought they might come.

“Nothing?” Greta said when she was still several feet away.

“No. Nothing.”

She gave a groan. “Eddie, it’s a trick.”

“Maybe,” Ed said.

“Where was the money? Show me,” Eric said.

Ed counted off the rails, more or less, and pointed.

“What a bastard! It is disgusting! One thousand dollars. Now I hope you’ll go to the police.”

Ed was still looking into the dark distances, ready to ask Greta and Eric to walk away in case he saw Lisa. Now the presence of Eric and Greta annoyed him.

“Eddie, how long are you going to wait?” Greta asked him.

“I’ll smoke a cigarette,” Ed said. It was his last cigarette. He lit it with his lighter. Suddenly he felt tired and angry. “Yes, I’ll tell the police. You bet I will.”

But when Eric and Greta made a move to leave to find a taxi, Ed said, “Look, I want to wait another half-hour.”

“He knows where to find you if he’s late,” Greta said. “He could
telephone
us.”

That was true. Ed yielded. It was like defeat, like death, Lisa’s death, as he moved towards the taxi and got into it with Eric and Greta. They dropped Eric off at his apartment building on East 79th Street, then drove homeward.

The telephone was ringing as they entered their apartment, and Ed made a dive for it.

“Hello, Ed. Lilly. Any luck?” she asked eagerly.

Ed let his breath out. “No . . . Yes.” (Yes he had delivered the money.)

“Oh, I
am
sorry. It’s a criminal act!
Definitely
!”

“Would you like to speak with Greta?”

Ed wanted very much to ring the police tonight. The police could keep a watch on York Avenue all night, a plainclothesman. But Ed was afraid he couldn’t explain it all clearly enough tonight. He realized he was angry, confused, and very tired. Better to start tomorrow morning early.

3

E
d could not get to sleep, and when Greta became aware of this (though he had been lying motionless), she suggested a sleeping-pill, but he declined it. He wanted to fall asleep with his arms around Greta, but he couldn’t. Everything seemed suspended, unfinished. Greta found his hand, squeezed it and held it. Why was he so badly upset? Well, Lisa’s death, possibly. And the money lost. No, that wasn’t it, they could afford it. It was the evil. It was Lisa’s absence, the emptiness in the house. As when Margaret had died: she had disappeared for four days, and they had rung all her friends whose telephone numbers they knew. Then from the police had come the news of her death, the news that her body was at the morgue. Ed remembered the silence of the apartment afterwards. Greta had cleared Margaret’s room, the room across the hall from the bedroom, shifted the furniture of the whole house so that everything looked completely different. And still, now and then when he walked past the open door of Margaret’s room (it was now a reading-room, or guest-room, there were two tanks of goldfish in it, Greta’s painting things and her sewing-machine), he felt a shock of loss, as if her death had just happened. She had been in her second year at NYU. Ed had wanted her to go to Barnard, since his school was Columbia, but she’d had more friends from high school going to NYU. Ed remembered expecting the sound of Margaret’s key in the door, expecting her to walk into the foyer, full of energy and news, or hungry, and now it was the same with Lisa’s absence, absurd as it might be. He waited for Lisa to trot in from some room, to look at him and give the grunt-growl which meant it was time to be taken out. Lisa kept track of time better than Ed. Lisa’s bowl of water was still on the floor in the kitchen, and tonight before going out to make contact with Anon, Ed had changed the water because of a compulsion, a compulsion which he had thought might bring bad luck, but on the other hand he didn’t believe in luck.

At some point, he slept.

By a quarter past 8 a.m., Ed was at the precinct station on 109th Street, equipped with the four letters from Anon, each in its proper envelope. Ed was taken to the office of a Captain MacGregor to whom he told his story and showed the letters. The letters were not dated by Anon, but Ed had dated the last two, guessed at the dates of the first two, and written them at the top of the pages. The letters spread over thirty-five days.

MacGregor, a lean man of about fifty with close-cut dark blond hair, looked over the letters while standing at his desk.

“I thought,” Ed said, “you might have had complaints from people who’d received the same kind of letters. From the same man.”

“I don’t
think
so,” said MacGregor. “Can you come with me please? The file for this kind of thing is in another room.”

Ed followed him. They went into a larger office whose door was open. A plump cop sat at a desk with a telephone at his ear. There were lots of files. In another smaller room towards the rear of the station, Ed saw an electric burner with an old-fashioned gray metal percolator on it. Two young patrolmen were standing in the room. MacGregor was looking through a big green file in a corner. The cop on the phone was saying nothing but letters and numbers, and an occasional “Right.” MacGregor wouldn’t be overly interested in a dog, Ed supposed. Until they did something like kidnapping a child, or setting a house on fire, anonymous letter-writers were merely nuisances. Ed felt also that MacGregor thought him an ass for having come forth with the money.

MacGregor came over with a folder. “This isn’t exhaustive by any means. Just our precinct. The real files are at Centre Street. I don’t see anything resembling that printing here. Best we can do is photostat your letters and send the originals to Centre Street for checking out.”

The fat officer hung up, and MacGregor said to him: “Seen anything like this before, Frank?” He laid one of the letters on the officer’s desk.

The officer sighed, planted his hands on the desk and peered at the block-lettered page. “No.—Nope. Lives in this neighborhood?”

“We don’t know. Seems like it. This gentleman Mr.—”

“Reynolds,” Ed said.

“—lives on a Hundred and sixth. These four letters came to him, last one asking a thousand dollars’ ransom for a dog. Missing since Wednesday night, was it?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Reynolds last night delivered a thousand dollars in ten-dollar bills, left them where the letter says here, money was picked up—and no dog.”

The fat officer’s black eyebrows went up at the mention of the thousand dollars being paid, and they stayed up. On a block of wood on his desk was printed
LT. FRANK SANTINI
. “Any strange telephone calls?”

“No,” Ed said.

“We can check this printing out,” said Santini. “Can you give us your name and address, Mr. Reynolds? Or have you got that, Mac?”

MacGregor hadn’t, or wasn’t sure they had it, and Santini took it. Ed gave also his business address and telephone number. “I’d like to give you a description of the dog. French poodle, miniature, black with light brown eyes—aged four. Dutch cut—”

“What’s that?”

“She’s trimmed. It’s a style of trimming. Answers to the name Lisa. L-i-s-a. Identification and license on her collar.”

“Last seen where?”

The telephone rang, and Santini took it.

“Riverside Park at a Hundred and sixth Street, Wednesday night, October fourteenth around seven-thirty.”

MacGregor wrote this, closed the notebook and pushed it back on Santini’s desk. Ed felt that the information on Lisa was lost among its pages. MacGregor was now absorbed in what Santini was saying on the telephone, giving him urgent instructions about something.

“All right, where was the squad car?” Santini said. “
We
sent a squad car . . . Don’t tell
us
!”

The two younger patrolmen stood patiently near a wall, as if awaiting orders from their superiors. One of them looked very young, and more like a college student than a cop.

When Santini had finished speaking, Ed said, addressing both him and MacGregor, “I hope you can find out something soon. The main thing is, I want to get my dog back alive. I’m not concerned about the money. Can I telephone later today and see if you’ve found out anything?”

Santini glanced up at MacGregor. He had long crocodile lips, neither quite smiling nor cynical.

MacGregor seemed to fumble for something to say. “Sure. Certainly. We’ll get these to Centre Street today and ask for a quick reply.”

MacGregor walked with Ed to the front door of the station house. A shambles of a man, who looked as if he had been drunk for days, was sitting on a bench just inside the door. He had a wounded cheek and swollen, half-closed eyes, and was evidently too far gone to warrant surveillance, because there was no guard around.

“Not a pretty sight, eh?” said MacGregor, noticing Ed’s glance. “You’d think it was the old Bowery here sometimes.”

Ed turned on the front steps. “Do you think you can find the man?” he asked, trying not to sound unreasonably insistent. “What’re the odds? I’d like to know, honestly.”

“Fifty-fifty. Maybe worse, Mr. Reynolds. Honestly. That’s all I can tell you. We’ll keep in touch.”

Ed walked homeward. The last phrase sounded about as promising as the phrase, the same phrase, that people gave to people who came asking for a job. Ed found himself looking at other people on the street, watching to see if any gave him more than the absent, involuntary glance that the average person gave a passer-by. He saw none, but in one of these buildings with all the windows behind which people quarreled, laughed, made love, ate meals, or fretted waiting for someone who was late—behind one of those windows lived Anon. He must be someone in the neighborhood. This thought made Ed feel momentarily naked and afraid, even now in daylight, gave him a sense of impotence and danger. The kidnapper knew him, but he didn’t know the kidnapper. One of the two or three men now walking towards him, apparently paying no attention to him, might be the kidnapper chuckling inwardly at the sight of him alone and without his dog.

This was Saturday morning. Sunny again. Not even nine o’clock. What could he buy to pick Greta up? Maybe a coffee ring from the good bakery on Broadway, a Jewish bakery, more or less. He turned towards Broadway. He still glanced at people he passed, wondering if they might be Anon, but now his face was confident and almost cheerful. After all, he’d laid his case before the police.

The young blond girl in the bakery knew him and Greta, and gave Ed a big smile. “Hello, Mr. Reynolds. How’re you? And how’s your wife?”

“She’s all right, thank you,” Ed said, smiling too. “Can I have one of your—a coffee ring, please.” The shop smelled of fresh, buttery baking, of cinnamon and baba
au rhum
.

The girl reached for a coffee ring with wax paper in each hand, then paused. “Oh, someone told me about
Lisa
! Have you had any news?”

“No. But just now I spoke with the police,” Ed said, smiling. “We’re hopeful. I’ll take a couple of croissants, too, please.”

Then he bought three packs of cigarettes from the store in the middle of the block, in case something happened today and Greta or he couldn’t get to the supermarket for the usual Saturday morning shopping.

“Ah, Mark was telling me you’re missing your dog, Mr. Reynolds,” said the cigar-shop man, a thin Irishman of about sixty.

“Yes, since Wednesday night. I’ve told the police. But keep your eye out for her, would you? I’d appreciate it.”

“Sure I will!”

Ed left the shop feeling that he lived among friends in this neighborhood—even if Anon lived in it, too.

“Let’s have a nice lazy breakfast,” Ed said as he came in.

Greta had put on black slacks, red flat sandals, a gay blouse with a floral pattern. “Did you hear
news
?”

“No. That I’m afraid I didn’t. But I spoke with them. The police.” He held up the paper box from the bakery by its string. “Goodies.” He made his way to the kitchen. “I could use another good coffee.”

“What did they say?”

Ed lit the gas under the big glass pot. “Well—I spoke with two men. I told them where I could be found and all that. Told them you were here most of the time. I left the letters.”

“But do they
know
this creep?”

“No, they don’t seem to. But they’re sending the letters to the main office on Centre Street. I’m going to phone them back today.” He put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “I know it isn’t much, my pet, but what else can I do just now?” Walk around the neighborhood, Ed thought, put on different clothes, a false mustache, and try to spot someone who was maybe slyly watching his building? “Open the cake box. Let’s put the coffee ring in the oven for a minute.”

With a movement of her shoulder, Greta pushed herself from the door jamb that she had been leaning against. “Peter called you. A few minutes ago.”

“Already? Um-m.” Peter Cole, a young and eager editor of C. & D., took home manuscripts on weekends and telephoned Ed nearly every Saturday or Sunday to ask some question not always of importance. Ed remembered he had also brought a manuscript to read, a biography. “I suppose he wants me to call him back?”

“I forgot. I don’t know. Sorry, darling.” Absently, she adjusted the coffee-pot over the flame.

Ed and Greta sat in the dining area off the L-shaped living-room. It had windows that overlooked their street, and from where Ed sat, facing the Hudson River, he could look down on part of the long strip of green that formed Riverside Park. Was Anon down there now, strolling about? Would he be loitering around the supermarket on Broadway, probably knowing they went there, he and Greta or one of them, every Saturday morning around eleven? Often they took Lisa with them and tied her outside to a rail.

Greta propped her face on one hand. “Oh, Eddie, I’m discouraged.”

“I know, darling. I’m going to ring them back, the police. If they sound vague, I’ll go to Centre Street myself.”

“Three days now almost. I wonder if they give her enough to eat?”

Ed was glad Greta assumed Lisa was still alive. “Don’t worry about that. She’s in good health.”

Greta put her cigarette down and covered her eyes with her finger-tips. “If she’s dead, I don’t know what I’ll do, Eddie,” she said in a voice squeaky with tears.

Ed knelt beside her. He wanted to say, “We’ll get another dog, right away,” but it wasn’t time to say that—a statement that would sound as if Lisa were definitely gone.

“She’s such a darling. As a dog, she is perfect, you know?”

Lots of their friends said that. As a puppy, even, she had not chewed up shoes, only chewed—with the greatest pleasure—the silly things they sold in pet shops for puppies to teethe on. Ed laughed. “Yes, she’s perfect, and I love her, too, darling!—Dry your eyes and we’ll think about the shopping. Got a list? Then—” He remembered he had to read the biography this week-end, and it was a thick one. Well, he’d sit up at night doing it, if he had to. “How about a movie this afternoon? Or would you rather go tonight? What was that thing we wanted to see?
Catamaran
, no? I’ll look up the time.”

Greta came out of it slowly. Her face was still unhappy, but she was probably already composing her shopping list. Usually on Sunday they had a good lunch at two or three, and a snack in the evening. “I think I’ll make a
Sauerbraten
. Marinate it overnight, you know?”

They went to the supermarket together, Ed first taking the laundry in two pillowcases to the launderette near the supermarket on Broadway. Then he joined Greta in the supermarket and held a place on the line with her nearly full carrier cart while she came and went, adding small items like tinned crabmeat or pâté. There were simpler ways of shopping and doing chores, Ed supposed, and men in his position didn’t usually frequent supermarkets, but Ed and Greta had shopped together in the same way when they first met, and Ed still liked it. They bought their meat at a shop on the other side of Broadway. Ed told himself that when they walked out of the supermarket in a couple of minutes, he wasn’t going to think of Lisa tied to the rail, brightening at the sight of them. A dog wasn’t everything in life. It was just that Lisa took the place of a child now, for both of them. That was obvious.