“I’m sorry. The only sign-out that day to anywhere in New England was one to Hartford, Connecticut.”
“None to Springfield …” Then he wondered about a man who lied about his name: would he tell his real destination? He was going somewhere in New England, somewhere where the bus stopped. “May I look at the Hartford one?” She turned the form so that it faced him. He scanned the details and saw that a Floyd Collins had checked out a red Plymouth Volare, marker number New Jersey S34543, for Hartford and used an American Express Card to cover the rental. “Can you tell me if this car has been returned yet?”
“In a sec.” She punched some numbers into a small computer terminal. “No, it’s still out. Due back the day after tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
The man at the far end of the hotel lobby, with the newspaper in front of his face, lowered the paper. He waited until Lyon left before carefully folding the paper and walking toward the rental car desk.
11
“THIS IS AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY.”
Lyon spread the city of Hartford street map across the card table in his study and used a straightedge to mark it off into squares. “It’s the only futility we have left.”
Bea took the Magic Marker from his hand and made a rapid calculation. “If I take the population of the city and divide it by one car for every four people, that means there are forty thousand cars in Hartford. And that doesn’t even consider the possibility that it could be parked in some garage.”
“Garages are usually filled with people’s own cars. Visitors park in the drive or street.”
“It’s such a slim lead. We could spend a week looking for a car that we’re not even sure belongs to the right man.”
“He took back the marker and continued dividing squares on the map. “It’s the only thing I know of to do.”
“If I told you I was driving to Hartford, I could also mean one of the dozen suburban towns around it. Are we to check them out too?”
“If we have to.”
“When do we start?”
“Right now.”
She sighed. “Okay, only keep my area away from the state capitol. I am supposed to be working today.”
The city of Hartford has a population of slightly less than 150,000, but with its surrounding suburban environs, there is a statistical area of close to 800,000. Lyon knew this, and although he had tried to sound positive with Bea, if they were not able to find the Plymouth Volare in the city itself, they would be facing a nearly impossible task in the remaining time they had left. He could only hope that the car was still within the city limits and parked somewhere visible.
They divided the city in half. Lyon took the northern sections, Bea the southern.
That night Rocco Herbert shook his head as the dejected pair recounted their lack of success. “Were you able to cover most of the city?” They nodded. “Did it ever occur to you that he might have taken the car out to go somewhere?” Again the affirmative nod. “Why didn’t you come to me in the first place?”
“I hate to bother you, Rocco.”
“Amateurs,” Rocco said as he reached for the phone. He talked in a low voice for a moment and then dialed another number. “Rose? How are you? Rocco Herbert. Is Pat around?”
Lyon smiled. Sergeant Pat Pasquale of the Hartford Police was an old friend of Rocco’s, and had helped them before on several occasions.
“What are you doing home, you guinea bastard? Stuffing your face with pasta?… If Rose hears you using that language she’ll … Need a favor, Pat … Yeah, I’ll give your kids a ride in the helicopter.… A red Plymouth Volare with Jersey plates, marker number S34543.… No, I’m not calling you at home about a hot car. I only want to know where it’s parked. We’ll take it from there. Urgent, Pat. I’ll give your kids a ride on the duck.… No, duck … with a D.” He hung up and turned to them. “Pat’ll call the watch commander and have the word put out on this shift and also on the twelve to eight. If it’s there, they’ll find it.”
Lyon answered the phone so quickly before the completion of the first ring that Bea only made a low sound and turned over in bed. Pat works fast, he thought as he pulled the receiver to his ear.
“Wentworth?” It was the voice from the other calls, but its quality had changed so that the intonation of his name implied a latent menace.
“Yes?”
“I got your letter. I told you we’d pay a bonus for the reels, but this is extortion. But the old man is willing to go along and pay the hundred thousand on delivery. Do you have them yet?”
“No.”
“I don’t like delays. Time is running out and the old man is sick. Foul up and we get you. Remember, I know who you are.”
The line went dead. Lyon hung up and lay back on the pillow. Sleep disappeared as he looked into the darkness deep in thought.
Pasquale called Rocco at seven the next morning. Rocco immediately called Lyon and gave him the address. At eight the Wentworths were on their way to Hartford.
“I passed this house yesterday,” Bea said. “I’m sure the car wasn’t there then.”
Lyon glanced at the red Volare in the driveway of the three-family house and checked the license number against his notes. “He must have been out with it. Well, let’s go.” He left the car and started up the walk toward the front door.
“WENTWORTH, COME BACK HERE.”
“Huh?”
“This is a three-family house and we don’t even know the real name of the man we’re looking for. Or are you going to pretend you’re a census taker and …”
“He’s got a grandson between six and ten.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s the age group for the Wobbly books.” He walked briskly up the street to where two little girls were playing hopscotch on the walk. He talked to them a few moments and returned to lean in the car window. “There’s a seven-year-old boy who lives in the ground floor apartment and whose grandfather from Florida drives the red car.”
“Do your informants know the name of the granddaddy?”
“Grandpops, but I don’t think that’s much help.”
The curtains had been removed from the window on the front door and they could see into the apartment. Cardboard cartons were strewn across the living room and some were filled or partially filled with the knickknacks of everyday living.
“Looks like someone is moving in or out,” Bea said as Lyon knocked.
A woman in her late twenties wearing a man’s large white shirt with the tail tied at her midriff and paint-spattered dungarees moved into the living room and waved at them. “Open Sesame. Come in. It’s not locked.” As they stepped into the cluttered apartment she moved around them with dancelike steps and pointed to various cartons. “There’s this stuff in here, and there’s more stuff in the other rooms. Don’t know where it all comes from. All the furniture goes except the stove, thank God. We’ll have a built-in stove at the new place. What do you think?” She turned toward them expectantly with arms akimbo and a fey smile below wide, ingenuous eyes.
“I’m afraid we’re not the moving company.”
“I thought you were the estimators. Uh oh, I know you two.”
“You do?”
“Listen, guys. I bought two copies of the Watchtower last week. Which is really two more copies than I really need. I’m really sort of busy, okay?” She smiled again and Lyon liked her.
Bea stuck out her hand and the woman automatically grasped it. “I’m Bea Wentworth and this is my husband Lyon.”
“Wentworth? Sounds sorta’ familiar.”
“I met your father during his trip north. He made me promise to stop in if I got to Hartford.”
“Pop isn’t here right now. He took Mark for a walk. They ought to be back soon. Can I get you some coffee or something? If I can find a pot.”
The apartment was designed in semirailroad fashion. A tiny vestibule into the living room, behind which was a dining room, a short hall with two bedroom doors,
and then the kitchen to the rear.
“You’re obviously moving,” Bea said.
“Yep. Tomorrow the moving van comes for us, and Pop flies to the old country. Did he tell you what he did for us?”
“I think he meant for it to be a surprise,” Lyon said, still wondering if they were in the right house.
“He bought us a wonderful condominium out in the country. It has everything: swimming pools, tennis courts, woods. No more worry about that old dinosaur who lives upstairs yelling at Mark or traffic in the street.”
“That’s just wonderful,” Bea gushed in her best political manner.
“The old country. That’s Yugoslavia, as I recall?”
“Don’t let Pop hear you say that. It will always be Serbia to him.”
The relief was so powerful that Lyon sank on the couch and almost crushed a model airplane. “Your father bought one of my books for Mark and had me autograph it. I hope your boy liked it.”
“Hey, that’s where I know your name! Wentworth. Sure. You write those Wobbly books. Pop said he met the guy who wrote them.” She turned to Bea with the same exuberance. “You’re Beatrice Wentworth. You’re running for the Senate or something.”
“Congress.”
She vigorously grabbed a startled Bea’s hand. “I’m going to vote for you, Mrs. Wentworth.”
Bea laughed. “I appreciate support wherever I can find it, but I’m afraid my district stops at Murphysville.”
“Hey, coffee, you guys? I think I have some leftover Twinkies.”
“Coffee would be fine,” Bea said. “Without any Twinkies, thank you.”
“Sure. One java and hold the Twink.” She laughed and turned to Lyon. “You, Mr. Wentworth?”
“Coffee would be great.”
“Back in a flash.” She disappeared into the kitchen as Lyon shook his head affirmatively. He liked the young woman whose apartment they were in and the freshness of her exuberance. He only hoped that whatever came of this caused her no harm.
A partially packed carton of books on the living room floor before the couch was still unsealed, and resting on top was a copy of The Wobblies’ Revenge. He took it from the carton, turned to the inscription, and read it again:
To my beloved grandson Mark. May he one day understand the secret of the karst and why it was necessary. Your loving grandpops.
It was written with the small handwriting of an accountant using a fine-point pen. Below the signature were the small rows of strange symbols:
He closed the book thoughtfully and replaced it in the carton.
“Here it is.” She returned to the living room with three mugs of coffee. A small edge of Twinkie protruded from the corner of her mouth, while a dab of cream filling stuck to the tip of her nose.
“I hate to say this. I remember Mark’s name, but not yours.”
“Hey, my fault. I’m Darlene. Darlene Whipple.” She stuck out her hand again. “I’m twenty-eight, have one child, and am divorced. My husband—my ex, that is—said it was like trying to live with a box of Wheaties.” She laughed. “I never did figure that one out.”
A series of sharp knocks on the lower part of the front door made a quick passing frown flick across Darlene’s face. “That must be Mark.” She opened the door and knelt to hug and pat a sniffling seven-year-old. “Hey, little guy. It’s all right. Where’s Pops?”
“He left me and I was lost. I didn’t know how to get home until I saw the school.” He wrapped his arms around his mother until the tears quickly dried and he looked over her shoulder with wide eyes at Bea and Lyon.
“Lyon,” Bea said.
“I know.” He crossed quickly toward Darlene and the small boy and stooped next to them. “Mark, tell me what happened to your grandad. It’s very important.”
Darlene looked puzzled.
“We were walking along and a man came in a car and got out. My grandpop told me to run home and he got in the car and left.”
“You had better call Pat and Rocco.”
“Where’s the phone?” Bea asked Darlene.
“In the kitchen. Hey, what’s going on, guys?”
Bea was halfway through the dining room when she stopped. “I don’t know his name.”
“What’s your father’s name?”
Darlene stood and held her son protectively. “Hey. I thought you were his friends. What’s going on here? If this is some sort of flimflam … I don’t have much flim to be flammed out of. Huh? Okay?”
“I think you had better tell us his name and find me a photograph of him very quickly,” Lyon said softly.
Kim stood by the fireplace and dominated the living room. She held papers in one hand, while the other pulled her reading glasses to the tip of her nose so that she could glance from her notes toward Bea and Lyon on the couch. “Recently,” she read, “Secretary Wentworth stated that she is some sort of modified socialist.” She took off her glasses and shook her head. “My God, Bea. Why didn’t you just come right out and endorse Karl Marx?”
“That’s not what that means, and you know it.”
“I do, but your opponent has seen fit to capitalize on it, if you’ll pardon the pun. May I proceed?”
“I’m sure you will anyway.”
Kim read further excerpts from her notes. “We need a state income tax in order to increase social services.”
“I’m running for Congress, not state office. My views on state taxes are not a question here.”
“But they are, hon, they are.”
“A shambles, huh?”
“If we’d found Nikola Pasic today it would be over and Bea could give proper attention to the campaign,” Lyon said.
Kim looked puzzled. “You’ve lost me there. I thought we were talking about Bea’s campaign. Who is Nikola Pasic?”
“AKA Floyd Collins.”
Kim put her sheaf of papers on the fireplace mantle in resignation. “So much for politics. Next question. How do you know Nikola wasn’t picked up by a friend? Maybe they wanted to go to a bar or a dirty movie. Who knows? Just that they couldn’t take the boy along.”
“From the little I know of the man, I’m positive he wouldn’t leave his grandson alone on a strange street. Unless he had to.”
“Then he was kidnapped.”
“He’s been gone for fourteen hours so far.”
“Does his disappearance make any more sense than the rest of it? What do you know about him?”
“Pat’s checking with Florida,” Bea said.
“What do we know?” Lyon mused. “A man who traveled from Florida in a roundabout route under an alias. He was born in the city of Nis in the Serbian province of Yugoslavia, became a naturalized citizen in the forties, and worked for twenty years as a bookkeeper for a Florida company. His wife died of cancer last year, and he has one daughter whom we saw today in Hartford. He seems to have a good deal of money, but that could be from a life insurance policy on his wife. He planned to return to Serbia for an early retirement. As innocuous a life as anyone on that bus.”
“With the exception of one passenger.”
The phone rang and Kim left to answer it in the kitchen. They could hear her voice, which was obviously raised for their benefit. “Wentworth campaign headquarters, where the elite meet defeat … uh huh.” She reappeared in the living room. “Super pig would like to talk to Sherlock Holmes.”
Lyon picked up the phone with dread. “Yes, Rocco … I was afraid of that.… Can’t the daughter do it?… Of course, I know where it is.”
His face was ashen when he returned to the living room. “They found Pasic’s body. For reasons best known to the medical examiner’s office, they don’t want the daughter to make the identification.”
The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office for the state of Connecticut is in the University of Connecticut Medical Center in Farmington, a town a few miles west of Hartford. It took Lyon forty minutes to make the trip. When he arrived he found Rocco and Pat in the parking lot waiting for him. They didn’t speak a
s they entered the building containing the morgue. Pat nodded to the attendant, and they were led to the body storage area.
Lyon had never been in a morgue before, and expected that in this modern, new building, and with modern antiseptic techniques, that there would be no smell. He was wrong. The cloying smell of chemicals and death assaulted him. They were taken to a white tiled room with a stainless steel refrigerated chamber pocked with numbered drawers. The assistant medical examiner pulled open number 10.
Rocco and Pat stood aside as Lyon approached the corpse.
It was the man he had met in the New York hotel room, the man he now knew was Nikola Pasic.
He stepped back in revulsion. “My God! What happened to him?”
“Is it him?”
“Yes, but the condition of …”
“Multiple burns over the thorax and groin surfaces of the body,” the ME intoned. “Probably used a cigarette lighter. Death by strangulation.”
“The wire was still around his neck when we found him,” Pat said.
“He’s been tortured.”
“Yes,” the M.E. said as he slid the body back into the refrigerator chamber. “The wire went back from his neck and was looped around his feet. It took him several hours to die.”
The lights in Darlene Whipple’s apartment were out as Rocco and Lyon parked in front of the three-story house. As Lyon walked reluctantly toward the front door, Rocco called after him.
“I’ll wait for you, and we can go down to Pat’s office and make our statement together.”
Lyon nodded and continued up the steps to knock on the door. He waited and knocked again. The uneven shadows in the dark living room set off a subliminal alarm and he cupped his hands around the edge of his eyes and pressed against the glass.
Street light fell through the room and spilled across overturned packing cases that were now strewn haphazardly around the room. The faint light illuminated the edge of the couch he had sat on earlier in the day. It had been ripped with a knife and stuffing pulled from the cushions in large handfuls.
He elbowed glass from a lower pane and reached inside to unlatch the door. “Darlene!” He stumbled over the mess in the living room and fumbled along the edge of the dining room wall until his hand stuck a switch that lit an overhead light. He called again and ran for the bedroom hallway.
The Death in the Willows Page 13
