The Far Side of the Dollar (5 page)

“All right. Where did he spend his time away from home?”

The Hillmans looked at each other, as if the secret of Tom’s whereabouts was somehow hidden in each other’s faces. The red telephone interrupted their dumb communion, like a loud thought. Elaine Hillman gasped. The photograph in her hand fell to the floor. She wilted against her husband.

He held her up. “It wouldn’t be for us. That’s Tom’s private telephone.”

“You want me to take it?” I said through the second ring.

“Please do.”

I sat on the bed and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Tom?” said a high, girlish voice. “Is that you, Tommy?”

“Who is this calling?” I tried to sound like a boy.

The girl said something like “Augh” and hung up on me.

I set down the receiver: “It was a girl or a young woman. She wanted Tom.”

The woman spoke with a touch of malice that seemed to renew her strength: “That’s nothing unusual. I’m sure it was Stella Carlson. She’s been calling all week.”

“Does she always hang up like that?”

“No. I talked to her yesterday. She was full of questions, which of course I refused to answer. But I wanted to make sure that she hadn’t seen Tom. She hadn’t.”

“Does she know anything about what’s happened?”

“I hope not,” Hillman said. “We’ve got to keep it in the family. The more people know, the worse—” He left another sentence dangling in the air.

I moved away from the telephone and picked up the fallen photograph. In a kind of staggering march step, Elaine Hillman went to the bed and straightened out the bedspread where I had been sitting. Everything had to be perfect in the room, I thought, or the god would not be appeased and would never return to them. When she had finished smoothing the bed, she flung herself face down on it and lay still.

Hillman and I withdrew quietly and went downstairs to wait for the call that mattered. There was a phone in the bar alcove off the sitting room, and another in the butler’s pantry, which I could use to listen in. To get to the butler’s pantry we had to go through the music room, where the grand piano loomed, and across a formal dining room which had a dismal air, like a reconstructed room in a museum.

The past was very strong here, like an odor you couldn’t quite place, It seemed to be built into the very shape of the house, with its heavy dark beams and thick walls and deep windows; it would almost force the owner of the house to feel like a feudal lord. But the role of hidalgo hung loosely on Hillman, like something borrowed for a costume party. He and his wife must have rattled around in the great house, even when the boy was there.

Back in the sitting room, in front of the uncertain fire, I had a chance to ask Hillman some more questions. The Hillmans had two servants, a Spanish couple named Perez who had looked after Tom from infancy. Mrs. Perez was probably out in the kitchen. Her husband was in Mexico, visiting his family.

“You
know
he’s in Mexico?”

“Well,” Hillman said, “his wife has had a card from Sinaloa. Anyway, the Perezes are devoted to us, and to Tom. We’ve had them with us ever since we moved here and bought this house.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Over sixteen years. We moved here, the three of us, after I was separated from the Navy. Another engineer and I founded our own firm here, Technological Enterprises. We’ve had very gratifying success, supplying components to the military and then NASA. I was able to go into semiretirement not long ago.”

“You’re young to retire, Mr. Hillman.”

“Perhaps.” He looked around a little restlessly, as if he disliked talking about himself. “I’m still the chairman of the board, of course. I go down to the office several mornings a week. I play a lot of golf, do a lot of hunting and sailing.” He sounded weary of his life. “This summer I’ve been teaching Tom calculus. It isn’t available in his high school. I thought it would come in handy if he made it to Cal Tech or M.I.T. I went to M.I.T. myself. Elaine was a student at Radcliffe. She was born on Beacon Street, you know.”

We’re prosperous and educated people, he seemed to be saying, first-class citizens: how can the world have aimed such a dirty blow at us? He leaned his large face forward until his hands supported it again.

The telephone rang in the alcove. I heard it ring a second time as I skidded around the end of the dining-room table. At the door of the butler’s pantry I almost knocked down a small round woman who was wiping her hands on her apron. Her emotional dark eyes recoiled from my face.

“
I
was going to answer it,” she said.

“I will, Mrs. Perez.”

She retreated into the kitchen and I closed the door after her. The only light in the pantry came through the semicircular
hatch to the dining room. The telephone was on the counter inside it, no longer ringing. Gently I raised the receiver.

“What was that?” a man’s voice said. “You got the FBI on the line or something?” The voice was a western drawl with a faint whine in it.

“Certainly not. I’ve followed your instructions to the letter.”

“I hope I can believe you, Mr. Hillman. If I thought you were having this call traced I’d hang up and goodbye Tom.” The threat came easily, with a kind of flourish, as if the man enjoyed this kind of work.

“Don’t hang up.” Hillman’s voice was both pleading and loathing. “I have the money for you, at least I’ll have it here in a very short while. I’ll be ready to deliver it whenever you say.”

“Twenty-five thousand in small bills?”

“There will be nothing larger than a twenty.”

“All unmarked?”

“I told you I’ve obeyed you to the letter. My son’s safety is all I care about.”

“I’m glad you get the picture, Mr. Hillman. You pick up fast, and I like that. Matter of fact, I hate to do this to you. And I’d certainly hate to do anything to this fine boy of yours.”

“Is Tom with you now?” Hillman said.

“More or less. He’s nearby.”

“Could I possibly talk to him?”

“No.”

“How do I know he’s alive?”

The man was silent for a long moment. “You don’t trust me, Mr. Hillman. I don’t like that.”

“How can I trust—?” Hillman bit the sentence in half.

“I know what you were going to say. How can you trust a lousy creep like me? That isn’t our problem, Hillman. Our problem is can I trust a creep like you. I know more about you than you think I do, Hillman.”

Silence, in which breath wheezed.

“Well, can I?”

“Can you what?” Hillman said in near-despair.

“Can I trust you, Hillman?”

“You can trust me.”

Wheezing silence. The wheeze was in the man’s voice when he spoke again: “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, Hillman. Okay. You’d probably like to talk all day about what a creep I am, but it’s time to get down to brass tacks. I want my money, and this isn’t ransom money, get that straight. Your son wasn’t kidnapped, he came to us of his own free will—”

“I don’t—” Hillman strangled the words in his throat.

“You don’t believe me? Ask him, if you ever have a chance. You’re throwing away your chances, you realize that? I’m trying to help you pay me the money—the information money, that’s all it is—but you keep calling me names, liar and creep and God knows what else.”

“No. There’s nothing personal.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Look here,” Hillman said. “You said it’s time to get down to brass tacks. Simply tell me where and when you want the money delivered. It will be delivered. I guarantee it.”

Hillman’s voice was sharp. The man at the other end of the line reacted to the sharpness perversely:

“Don’t be in such a hurry. I’m calling the shots, you better not forget it.”

“Then call them,” Hillman said.

“In my own good time. I think I better give you a chance to think this over, Hillman. Get down off your high horse and down on your knees. That’s where you belong.” He hung up.

Hillman was standing in the alcove with the receiver still in his hand when I got back to the sitting room. Absently he replaced it on its brackets and came toward me, shaking his silver head.

“He wouldn’t give me any guarantees about Tom.”

“I heard him. They never do. You have to depend on his mercy.”

“His
mercy!
He was talking like a maniac. He seemed to revel in the—in the pain.”

“I agree, he was getting his kicks. Let’s hope he’s satisfied with the kicks he’s already got, and the money.”

Hillman’s head went down. “You think Tom is in danger, don’t you?”

“Yes. I don’t think you’re dealing with an outright maniac, but the man didn’t sound too well-balanced. I think he’s an amateur, or possibly a petty thief who saw his chance to move in on the heavy stuff. More likely a gifted amateur. Is he the same man who called this morning?”

“Yes.”

“He may be working alone. Is there any chance that you could recognize his voice? There was some hint of a personal connection, maybe a grievance. Could he be a former employee of yours, for example?”

“I very much doubt it. We only employ skilled workers. This fellow sounded practically subhuman.” His face became gaunter. “And you tell me I’m at his mercy.”

“Your son is. Could there be any truth in what he said about Tom going to him voluntarily?”

“Of course not. Tom is a good boy.”

“How is his judgment?”

Hillman didn’t answer me, except by implication. He went to the bar, poured himself a stiff drink out of a bourbon bottle, and knocked it back. I followed him to the bar.

“Is there any possible chance that Tom cooked up this extortion deal himself, with the help of one of his buddies, or maybe with hired help?”

He hefted the glass in his hand, as if he was thinking of throwing it at my head. I caught a glimpse of his red angry mask before he turned away. “It’s quite impossible. Why do you have to torment me with these ideas?”

“I don’t know your son. You ought to.”

“He’d never do a thing like that to me.”

“You put him in Laguna Perdida School.”

“I had to.”

“Why?”

He turned on me furiously. “You keep hammering away at the same stupid question. What has it got to do with anything?”

“I’m trying to find out just how far gone Tom is. If there was reason to think that he kidnapped himself, to punish you or raise money, we’d want to turn the police loose—”

“You’re crazy!”

“Is Tom?”

“Of course not. Frankly, Mr. Archer, I’m getting sick of you and your questions. If you want to stay in my house, it’s got to be on my terms.”

I was tempted to walk out, but something held me. The case was getting its hooks into my mind.

Hillman filled his glass with whisky and drank half of it down.

“If I were you, I’d lay off the sauce,” I said. “You have decisions to make. This could be the most important day of your life.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re right.” He reached across the bar and poured the rest of his whisky into the metal sink. Then he excused himself, and went upstairs to see to his wife.

I
LET MYSELF OUT
the front door, quietly, got a hat and raincoat out of the trunk of my car, and walked down the winding driveway. In the dead leaves under the oak trees the drip made rustling noises, releasing smells and memories. When I was seventeen I spent a summer working on a dude ranch in the foothills of the Sierra. Toward the end of August, when the air was beginning to sharpen, I found a girl, and before the summer was over we met in the woods. Everything since had been slightly anticlimactic.

Growing up seemed to be getting harder. The young people were certainly getting harder to figure out. Maybe Stella Carlson, if I could get to her, could help me understand Tom.

The Carlsons’ mailbox was a couple of hundred yards down the road. It was a miniature replica, complete with shutters, of their green-shuttered white colonial house, and it rubbed me the wrong way, like a tasteless advertisement. I went up the drive to the brick stoop and knocked on the door.

A handsome redheaded woman in a linen dress opened the door and gave me a cool green look. “Yes?”

I didn’t think I could get past her without lying. “I’m in the insurance—”

“Soliciting is not allowed in El Rancho.”

“I’m not selling, Mrs. Carlson, I’m a claims adjuster.” I got an old card out of my wallet which supported the statement. I had worked for insurance companies in my time.

“If it’s about my wrecked car,” she said, “I thought that was all settled last week.”

“We’re interested in the cause of the accident. We keep statistics, you know.”

“I’m not particularly interested in becoming a statistic.”

“Your car already is. I understand it was stolen.”

She hesitated, and glanced behind her, as if there was a witness in the hallway. “Yes,” she said finally. “It was stolen.”

“By some young punk in the neighborhood, is that right?”

She flushed in response to my incitement. “Yes, and I doubt very much that it was an accident. He took my car and wrecked it out of sheer spite.” The words boiled out as if they had been simmering in her mind for days.

“That’s an interesting hypothesis, Mrs. Carlson. May I come in and talk it over with you?”

“I suppose so.”

She let me into the hallway. I sat at a telephone table and took out my black notebook. She stood over me with one hand on the newel post at the foot of the stairs.

“Do you have anything to support that hypothesis?” I said with my pencil poised.

“You mean that he wrecked the car deliberately?”

“Yes.”

Her white teeth closed on her full red lower lip, and left a brief dent in it. “It’s something you couldn’t make a statistic out of. The boy—his name is Tom Hillman—was interested in our daughter. He used to be a much nicer boy than he is now. As a matter of fact, he used to spend most of his free time over here. We treated him as if he were our own son. But the relationship went sour. Very sour.” She sounded both angry and regretful.

“What soured it?”

She made a violent sideways gesture. “I prefer not to discuss
it. It’s something an insurance company doesn’t have to know. Or anybody else.”