Ransom (12 page)

The television screen almost cracked; certainly Roger’s face splintered. “He’s just about the biggest name in television news in America! Don’t you have TV in Australia?”

I must sound like someone from the Arunta tribe; they’re probably wondering why I haven’t got my boomerang and

spear with me. “Yes, but we’re still showing lantern slides on it.”

Roger stared at him, then abruptly grinned. “You’re okay, Inspector.”

But Pier wasn’t smiling. “When I phoned Mother, that was the last time I spoke to her.” She looked down at the hands folded in her lap and Malone, watching her closely, saw the fingers tighten. His own hand went out of its own volition, touched her arm. She looked up at him, blinked, then said quietly, “Thank you, Inspector. I’m going to be all right.”

Then Malone all at once felt at home with the two children; the three of them settled back like a family for a night’s television viewing. Mr Gronkite, the stranger to Malone, was already on the screen, green-hued enough to have passed for St Patrick; Roger got up, adjusted the colour tone, then flopped back in his chair. Malone listened to the introduction to the Fortes, wondering why all American commentators sounded like ventriloquial dolls for the voice of God, then the film of Michael and Sylvia Forte began to run.

The children both sat forward, something Malone was sure they had not done other times they had seen their parents on television. Roger’s face was wide open and very young, his love for his mother exposed through the cloak of sophistication that was several sizes too big for him; and Pier’s eyes were brimming with tears, her hands in her lap now held in the attitude of prayer. I wonder how much would show in my face, Malone wondered, if Lisa were also there on the screen ?

But Lisa was not there and so he looked at the woman he had never seen but whose fate was linked so tightly now with Lisa’s, who, blameless as she might be, was the reason Lisa was in danger. He now dimly remembered seeing a photograph of Sylvia Forte in Time, but it had not done her justice: he would have remembered her better if she had looked as she did now on the screen.

“Your mother’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” said Pier, and her brother nodded. “But she’s more than that. Dad loves her so much - you can see it even there.”

It was true: Michael Forte turned and smiled at his wife and there was a moment of intimacy between them when the camera suddenly was an intruder. Cronkite was interviewing them, but Malone was not listening to the words: the sound could have been turned off for all the notice he took of it. He stared at Michael and Sylvia Forte, and as he did, like a double image, he saw the ghosts of himself and Lisa behind them.

The phone rang. Malone, lost in the nightmare fantasy on the television screen, jumped nervously but recovered at once. He looked anxiously at Roger as the boy picked up the phone; then tried to tell himself that a hundred calls a day must come into this house and there was no reason why this one should be any different from all the others. Then he saw the puzzled look on Roger’s face.

“What is it?”

The boy put his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s some dame wanting Dad - “

Malone took the phone. “This is Inspector Malone - “

A man’s voice answered. “This is Lieutenant Denning, Inspector. We’ve set up an emergency switchboard here, just in case something like this happened. We’ve told the woman the Mayor’s not here. Do you think we should tell her where she can get him? She could be just a crank- “

“Put her on,” said Malone. “If I keep her talking, can you trace the call?”

“We can try, sir. We’re linked through to Headquarters and they’ve alerted the telephone company.”

The woman’s voice was soft and pleasant, but Malone could notice the faint undertone of tension in it: whoever she was, he would bet she was not an old hand at this game. “I understand Mayor Forte is not there. Who is this?”

“Malone. You’re holding my wife with Mrs Forte.”

Behind him he could feel the strained attention of the children. Roger had taken hold of Pier’s hand, the first sign the boy had shown of any concern for his sister. The sound on the television set had been turned off, but Michael and Sylvia Forte still walked in the garden of the house, laughing at each other in the happy past of a week ago.

There was silence for a moment, then the woman said, “I am truly sorry about that, Mr Malone. We’d rather not have her with us, but we had to take her.”

“Is she still all right? Both of them?” The children leaned forward; he could almost hear them holding their breath. He stared at the screen: Sylvia Forte was there in close-up, alone, a frown of amused puzzlement on her face as the unseen Mr Cronkite asked her a question.

“They are both well, Mr Malone.”

“Can you give us some proof of that? Can I speak to my wife? To both of them?” He had no real hope that the woman would grant him his request, but he had to keep her on the line: somewhere the electronics experts were seeking to pinpoint the call. “We want some proof that you’re going to carry out your part of the bargain - “

“Oh, we’ll carry it out, Mr Malone. But there may be a hitch-” Oh Christ, he thought, what’s gone wrong? Have we buggered up things at our end? “This storm - planes might not be able to get off the ground tomorrow here in New York. What happens then?”

“You name it. We’ll do whatever you say, just so long as we get my wife and Mrs Forte back safely.” He looked at the children, nodded reassuringly; but there was no reaction on their faces, they would believe nothing till the silent smiling ghost on the television screen was a live reality in the house again.

“You’ve decided to release Parker and his friends?”

“Yes.” She had asked him if he had decided: he was not speaking for Forte and the politicians who surrounded him.

“We’ll be back to you.” The tension went out of her voice; she sounded - relieved ? he wondered. “If the storm keeps

up, we’ll tell you our other plans. We’ll call again first thing in the morning.”

“Wait!” How could he keep her on the line? Had they succeeded in tracing the call yet? Michael Forte was now on the screen, looking directly into the camera, silently pleading for last week’s cause, whatever it had been: law and order? Then Malone said, “What about Frank Padua?”

“Who?”

“Your go-between - ” He hoped he sounded convincing. “He was here an hour ago, said he was acting for you - “

“Padua?”

“I don’t know him. He’s a - a political acquaintance of Mayor Forte’s - “

There was silence for a long moment, then a click. A man’s voice came on the line at once: “She’s hung up, Inspector. We traced the call, but I’m afraid it’s not gonna be much use. It was a phone booth out on the Island, at Patchogue. We’ve sent a coupla squad cars to it, but we’ll be lucky if she’s still there.”

Malone hung up, turned back to the children. He shook his head in answer to their silent question. Then Nathan, the butler, came to the door.

“Captain Jefferson is here, Inspector. He says he has something for you.”

Chapter Five

Carole hung up the phone, stood staring at the wall in front of her. Something was wrong; and once again she felt the uneasiness grip her. It had clutched her this afternoon when the wind had come battering at the cottage; it was the first warning that things might not go exactly as she had planned. She would have to find out who Frank Padua was, do something about him. She had no idea what could be done, if she did find him, but no outsiders could be allowed to interfere with her plan.

She ran across the sidewalk to her car, got in and drove down the deserted street. Neon signs glimmered like watery fires through the rain-swept windscreen; the lighted windows of stores splashed the pavements with gold that ran off into the gutters. A huge truck, loaded with potatoes, overtook her, riding alongside her for a full block, flinging up mud and water against the window beside her. She cursed the truck driver, urging him to get quickly by her. She did not see the two police cars speeding down the other side of the street, nor did they see her.

It had been a mistake to come out on such a night. But she had had to escape from the cottage; she had become as much a prisoner there as Sylvia Forte and the Australian woman. It would have been useless to explain to Abel; the only memories he retained were the ones he wore like a hair-shirt. He would never understand that pleasant memories could, in the sad realization that the experiences that had prompted them had gone forever, turn into a form of torture. Childhood and girlhood had scratched at her, raising welts of memory: Julie Birmingham had not been buried after all.

“You’re crazy, baby, wanting to go out nowV Abel had said.

“I have to. I - I think we ought to call them, tell them the storm may change our plans.” It was as good a reason as any, though she had had to invent it.

“The hell with them!” Abel was angry; he did not like the thought of her leaving him even for a couple of hours. “If they want the dames back, they’re gonna let those guys go, don’t matter what the weather’s like.”

“We’ve got to think of Parker and the other men - we can’t risk their lives by insisting that the plane take off for Cuba regardless of what the weather’s like. No, I’m going into Patchogue, honey - “

It was part of their plan that they should make no phone calls any closer than thirty miles to the cottage. There was a phone here in the living-room, but they had agreed it was to be used only in the utmost emergency; she had been pleased to find that her mother hadn’t changed, had, with her usual vagueness, forgotten to have the phone disconnected when the cottage had been closed up. The first call by herself had been made from the house in Jamaica; the second, by Abel, from a call-box in Flushing; so long as they spread the calls the police would have difficulty in pinning down their location. She would be safe enough driving into Patchogue: anywhere would be an escape from what was beginning to torment her in this cottage.

Unguardedly she said, “I need to get out - “

He had a trick of looking from the corners of his eyes, half-suspicious, half-frightened; as a small child he had learned not to trust anyone or anything, the helping hand had too often turned into a fist. “You getting tired of me?”

“Honey!” She put almost too much protest into the endearment; she leaned forward and kissed him, hoping he wouldn’t see the truth in her face. “That’s a terrible thing to say - we’re only at the beginning of things - “

He put his arms round her, pulled her to him. “Sorry, baby. I love you so much - too much, maybe - “

no

“Never too much. You can’t love too much - ” But maybe if she had not loved Roy too much her life would not have ended four years ago, she would not be enduring this husk of an existence …

As she drove out of Patchogue she debated whether she should stop and phone Abel; then she decided against it, exhausted even by the thought of the argument that would go on over the phone. He worried too much for her and, she had begun to realize only after she had driven away from the cottage, he too had made a prisoner of her.

She drove as fast as the storm would allow her. Several times, when she had got on to the parkway that led to Manhattan, she slowed, wondering if she should turn back. But each time she picked up speed again, driven on by the determination to find out who Frank Padua was, to stop him, if she could, from ruining her plans.

She knew where Michael Forte had his campaign headquarters and she reasoned that would be the best place to start looking for information on Padua - “he’s a political acquaintance of Mayor Forte’s,” the Australian had said. Once in Manhattan she had very little trouble finding a parking spot; tonight was a night for sensible people to stay at home. She got out into the wind and rain, staggering a little under the force of them, buttoned her raincoat to her neck and tied her rainhat firmly under her chin. Her wig and her dark glasses were in the glove compartment of the car, and this afternoon she had changed out of the suit she had worn this morning into a tan sweater and brown skirt. She was taking a risk going to the Biltmore Hotel, into Michael Forte’s very own territory. But she knew she would merge easily with those who were working for the Mayor; the newspapers had been full of stories of the number of young middle-class people he had gathered about him. And she had been middle class almost all her life.

The lobby of the Biltmore was thronged: sensible people might stay at home on such a night, but campaign workers and kidnappers were not sensible people. She smiled to her-

self at the thought, and a passing young man, a Forte for Mayor button in his lapel, stopped beside her to help her off with her raincoat.

“You’re a real worker to come out on a night like this. You’ve lost your button, though.”

She smiled up at him. “Where can I get another?”

He took the button out of his lapel. “Be my guest. I haven’t seen you down here before - how about being my guest later on for a drink or something? I’m Bill Brewer.”

She looked him up and down, keeping her smile friendly. Does he know how much he is one of them, the ones Roy so despised? she wondered. Straight Ivy League: it was the image her parents had wanted for Mark, her brother. He had rebelled, turned his back on the image; but this smiling, good-looking man with his Brooks Brothers suit and shirt would go to his grave exactly as he was now, conservatism personified. The image of her own father … “I’ll think about it. First, I have to find Mr Padua - Frank Padua.”

Brewer frowned. “Frank Padua? I don’t think you’ll find him around here. But you might try up in one of the rooms -someone up there may know.”

As soon as she got out of the elevator on the floor that had been taken over as campaign headquarters, she was afraid; but the elevator doors had closed and she was trapped in the loud rapids of the crowd surging down the corridor. Then she heard the yells for Quiet! and she saw all the heads turn towards the far end of the corridor.

Four girls were standing on a bench against one wall; before she could protest one of the girls had grabbed her arm and pulled her up beside them. “You want to see our hero ? God, the poor man! Doesn’t he look sick and worried ?”

Michael Forte was coming down the corridor, a phalanx of aides pushing their way through the crowd ahead of him like the prow of a boat over-populated with figure-heads. Carole stepped down from the bench, suddenly realizing how conspicuous she was. Then all at once the crush of people in front of her thinned out and she was face to face

with the Mayor. She saw the strain in his face, the dark exhaustion in his eyes; but he was smiling and reaching out with both hands to those around him, going through the motions of a wound-up political doll. He reached towards her and, suddenly laughing, she took his hand and pressed it.

“Good luck!”

“Thanks - thanks for working for me - ” He smiled at her, but she knew he could not see her; the faces in the crowd were not registering on the dark, worried eyes. “We’ll win tomorrow - thanks a lot - “

He passed on, the crowd closing behind him, claiming him, and she moved in the opposite direction through the rapidly thinning wake. She found herself opposite a doorway, looking into a room in which a man, weary-faced and dishevelled, sat with his feet up on a paper-strewn table. He looked up at her and grinned tiredly.

“Thirty years I been a volunteer for this sorta thing. My old lady asks me what’s in it for me and I can never give her an answer. Every time it’s been like it’ll be tomorrow night - the same old debris - ” He waved a hand at the posters, already torn and crinkled, hanging from the walls like the papering of a room waiting to be demolished. “The faces and the names change, but every time I finish up in here with just a mess of paper. Maybe I’m working for pollution, you think?”

She smiled, humouring him. If he had been in politics for thirty years, even just as a campaign volunteer, he should know who Frank Padua was. “I’m looking for Mr Padua -Frank Padua.”

“Frank Padua?” He looked at her curiously, the weariness abruptly gone from his face; and she felt suddenly afraid. “You a friend of his, miss?”

She shook her head almost too vigorously. “Someone must be playing a trick on me - they told me to report to him here-”

He relaxed, smiled again. “They are, they are indeed. People do it to relieve the strain - like sending a kid out for

a can of striped paint. I haven’t seen Mr Padua around these headquarters in, oh, maybe two or three campaigns. He used to be known as Stabber Frank. He’d stab you in the back - figuratively speaking, of course - if he could make a political point for himself. But I understand he’s retired from politics now. He’s either rich and respectable or he ran out of knives.”

“Well,” she said, smiling at him, the poor bastard who had been coming here for thirty years, working for a system that he only half-believed in, the volunteer slave for what was euphemistically called democracy, “I guess my friends were putting me on.”

“Yeah,” he said, ignorant of the tricks being played on him: won’t they ever open their eyes? she wondered. “I’d go back and give ‘em hell, miss.”

“I’ll do that. Good luck.”

“It’s not me needs the luck. It’s our candidate.” He looked up and around at the posters; a dozen Michael Fortes smiled at him from the walls. “In more ways than one, eh? Terrible business about his missus.”

Carole found some back stairs, made her way down and out a side entrance to the street. The wind and the rain hit her at once, pushing her back against the hotel wall; a policeman went by, head bent into the storm, walking like an oil-skinned robot. Then he stopped and came back, stood threateningly in front of her.

“You want a cab, miss? Over at Grand Central is your best bet.”

Rain ran off her face, streaking it beyond recognition: she looked directly at him, daring herself as much as him. “Thanks, officer, but I have my car.”

“Driving on a night like this? Be careful.”

“Oh, I will be.”

He went on, leaning into the storm, all law and order and helpfulness, and she hated him for being so solicitous of her. But she followed him, heading for Grand Central and a phone booth. It was going to take her hours to drive back

to Sunday Harbor and she knew Abel would never forgive her for letting him worry for so long.

Abel angrily hung up the phone, cursing Carole for her stupidity. But what had gone wrong, what had taken her all the way into Manhattan? “I’ll explain when I get back. It may be nothing, but I had to check. Don’t worry - I’ll make it back okay.”

Don’t worry! Sweet Jesus, what did she think he was made of? He turned off the small lamp in the living-room where he had been sitting, went out through the dark kitchen to the back door. There was a porch outside the door and he was able to step out on to it without the rain reaching him. But the wind hit him like an invisible wave, and at once he retreated into the house, slamming the door shut against the battering wind. In the darkness of the kitchen he leaned against the door, sick at the thought of Carole driving all the way out along the Island in that bitch of a storm. Hurricane Myrtle had not been included in their plans, simply because when they had made their plans and committed themselves to the timing of them, the hurricane had not been born. Part of their plan was to leave here tomorrow by ferry and cross the Sound to Bridgeport; Carole’s car, stripped of its plates, was to be dumped and they were to buy another in Bridgeport. But now they might have to take the risk of driving back to Manhattan if the storm kept up.

He cursed again, went into the living-room and turned on the light. All the shutters were up outside and all the windows had been blanketed. Even though this outer section of Sunday Harbor was made up entirely of summer cottages closed for the fall and winter, they had done everything they could to ensure that nothing would expose their presence to any casual passer-by in a car. The only risk they had taken

“5

had been their arriving here in daylight and then his taking off to dump the delivery truck; but that had been unavoidable in view of the timing of the kidnapping forced on them by the Forte woman’s dental appointment. He was sure no one had seen them during the day and he was even more certain that no one was likely to be out tonight and catch a glimpse of Carole driving back this way. But what had gone wrong, had taken her into Manhattan of all places ? Jesus, she must be out of her head to take such a risk!

There was a knock on the door of the bedroom across the narrow hall. “We want to go to the bathroom.”

He crossed the hall, stood outside the door. “You both went a coupla hours ago.”

“It’s damned cold in here,” said Lisa. “If this heater was stronger, perhaps we shouldn’t trouble you so much.”

He was about to unlock the door when he remembered his dark glasses and wig were on the table in the living-room. He went back and put them on, took the gun out of his belt and returned to the bedroom door. He had had very little to do with guns, but each time he held one he got the same thrill, a sexual one. It was a thrill he had never described to Carole and he didn’t think he ever would. In lots of ways she was as much of a square as the two women in the bedroom.