Operation Deathmaker

by Dan J. Marlowe

  THREE

  I DROVE TO THE MIRAMAR MOTEL AND IMMEDIATELY duplicated the setup the clerk had showed me. I used the phone in Valerie’s room. I checked it out by calling room service after I had the microphone, tap-in, and recorder hooked up. I ordered a ham and cheese on rye with a bottle of Heineken beer, and I asked the room service waitress to repeat my order.

  I looked up the number of the Environmental Weather Service and placed the call through the switchboard. I listened to the latest weather forecast, principally because I wanted to find out how a recorded message of a recorded message sounded. Then I played the whole thing back.

  The equipment Beanpole had recommended to me was worth every cent I’d paid for it. The quality of the playback seemed to me every bit as good as the original. I could even hear background kitchen noises underlying the room service order acknowledgment. It would have taken a better ear than mine to discern a qualitative difference in the taped weather report and the room service order. I erased the tape and set the Uher to actuate itself at the sound of the next telephone voice.

  I went back across the hall to my own room, picked up the telephone receiver, then put it back. I didn’t want to make this next call through a switchboard. I left the room and went out to the lobby where I used a pay phone.

  “This is Bob Morris of the Independent Star-News,” I said after I’d looked up the number of the Viking Motel and dialed it. “Which hospital was Mrs. Andrews taken to?”

  “Shasta Memorial Hospital,” the Viking telephone operator said. “Is there any—”

  “Thanks,” I cut her off.

  I called Shasta Memorial and asked to have Mrs. Valerie Cooper paged. I told them to try the emergency room first, but they finally located her in the visitors’ lounge.

  “Who is this?” she asked when she came on the line.

  “You know who it is.” The call was going through the hospital switchboard. It was no time to be indulging in specifics. “How is she?”

  “They won’t tell me a thing. Actually, they probably don’t know. She’s been taken to X-ray. She’s still unconscious.”

  “Do you have an impression?”

  “Well—no. It’s been such a mess. Nurses running in and out, doctors standing around. And just like you said, there’s a policeman watching everything.”

  “Uniformed or plainclothes?”

  “A regular officer in uniform.”

  “He’s been told to stay with her. When they move her to a room, he’ll be posted outside her door.” And not a bad thing, either, except for the possibility of Hazel talking without realizing it.

  “I asked if I could stay with her, but they haven’t given me an answer.”

  “Keep beating on them.” I waited for a count of five. “There’s something you could do for me, Valerie.”

  “What is it?”

  If her tone wasn’t cold, it was definitely frosty.

  “When you go back to the Viking, you’ll want to pack a bag for Hazel before you visit her again. Get the key to the suite from the front desk. There’s a chance the police might have someone at the suite, too. But if they don’t, throw in a weekend’s stuff for me. Slacks, a couple of shirts, a couple sets of underwear. Socks and handkerchiefs.”

  “And assuming I’m able to do all this, what am I supposed to do with these things for you?” The frostiness was still present.

  “I’ve moved to another motel,” I said.

  “Yes, I expected it,” she answered. Thou art lower than a worm, her tone said.

  “I’ve taken a room for you across the hall from mine.”

  “You’ve what?” Incredulity crowded all other emotion from her voice.

  “Neither of the names is our own.”

  “No. I won’t do it.”

  “No female curiosity?”

  “It sounds to me as if you’re planning on female availability!” she snapped.

  “I’ll buy you a chastity belt.” I could hear her breathing. “Listen to me. What good will it do the woman in X-ray if I hand my head to the police?”

  “Then you admit—you admit you’re not—”

  “A hundred cents on the dollar morally? Did our friend seem dissatisfied around me?”

  “N-no.” There was a short silence. “If I decide to do this, where is the new motel?”

  “You don’t need to know that right now. There’s a good chance you’ll be followed when you leave the hospital, because you’re just about the only connecting link the police have. I’m hoping they don’t realize it yet. When you’re ready to go, call me from a pay phone at …” I glanced down at the base of the telephone “… 994-7340. Ask for Dewey Elliott. Got it?” She repeated the number and the name. “Fine. I’ll tell you then where I’ll pick you up, and I’ll make certain you’re not being followed before I bring you here.”

  “You certainly don’t leave anything to chance.” There was a different note in her voice I couldn’t quite analyze.

  “Thanks for the help. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  I hung up before she could answer.

  I’d given her enough to think about.

  I was fairly sure she’d follow through.

  There was always that inbred female curiosity.

  I went over to the cashier and changed a five-dollar bill into quarters, then went back to the phone booth. There are a dozen telephone numbers I never write down. I carry them in my mind. I dialed the long-distance operator and gave her a number in Hudson, Florida.

  “Hi, ol’ buddy,” I said when Jed Raymond’s voice came on the line. “This is Kaiser’s guardian angel.” Kaiser is a big German shepherd, my dog when I’m in Hudson. When I’m not, he’s Jed’s.

  “Oh, yeah, hi,” Jed answered. “Where’s—”

  “No names,” I interrupted him. “And no specifics right now, but there’s a problem. The redhead’s in Shasta Memorial Hospital in Duarte, California, under her own name. I want you to call the hospital administrator and guarantee payment for the best possible treatment.”

  “Yeah, sure, of course, but what happened? What have you—”

  “No details,” I cut him off again. “If you don’t know anything, you can’t be expected to answer any questions. Eventually there’ll be a few. If anyone wants to know how you knew enough to call the hospital tell them you had an anonymous phone alert.”

  “Is it serious? Is there anythin’ more I can do?” Jed sounded anxious. “Dammit all, you’re leavin’ me high an’ dry! What happened, man? Why can’t you tell—”

  “Sorry. I’ll be in touch.”

  For the second time I hung up before there could be an answer.

  I met the room-service waiter in front of my motel room door. He followed me inside and placed his tray on the desk top. I was scribbling my new name on the check when the phone rang. It caused an extra squiggle in the middle of my signature. I was more jumpy than I’d realized.

  I hurried the waiter out of the room with a bill in his palm. I latched the door before hurrying to the telephone and snatching up the receiver. “Yes?” I said, dragging out the sound. Through the clear Plexiglas top of the recorder I could see the activated tape moving in the cassette.

  “Who is this?” Cottonmouth’s unmistakable corn-pone voice inquired.

  “You know who it is.”

  “Ah thought ah did.” He was really laying on the southern accent this time. “Listen close now, man, ‘cause ah’ll only say this one time. We want foah hundred thousand in small, unmarked bills. Take—”

  “Four hundred thousand! You blithering idiot, where the hell am I supposed to get that kind of money?”

  “Shut up an’ don’ hassle me, man.” Cottonmouth’s tone was both dogged and nasty. “Y’all git it. Y’got till five o’clock t’morrow afternoon.”

  “Listen to me.” I tried to eliminate the pleading note I heard in my voice. I could feel my forehead perspiring. “Use some sense, will you? This is Friday afternoon. Where can I go to—”


  “Jus’ listen, man. Stop interruptin’.” The voice was edgy. “Git the cash, that’s all. What you don’t do is go to the po-lice or the FBI. If’n you do, Missy M’lissa ain’t gonna be much use to anyone. So don’t blow it. Git the money.”

  I found it impossible to stay cool in the face of Cottonmouth’s unreasonableness. For all the professionalism shown so far during the snatch, the group wasn’t being very intelligent in handling the follow-up phase. “You’ve got to be out of your skull!” I protested.

  “Knock it off!” Cottonmouth said angrily. He sounded in a real ugly mood. “We know you c’n git it. If’n you don’t have it by t’morrow afternoon, you c’n write off the college kid. An’ maybe yore big-assed girlfriend, too. We got ways. Now git movin’.”

  The tape in the cassette recorder continued turning, but it was picking up only the sound of my breathing.

  Cottonmouth had hung up.

  My throat felt dry, but my palms were sweating.

  There were very few times in my life when I had felt as helpless.

  I must have sat there with my hand on the replaced telephone receiver for a full three minutes. I was being manipulated, and it didn’t feel good. The conditions laid down by the kidnappers were impossible. The tight time frame was the most unreasonable aspect of all.

  And how could they expect me to put together nearly half a million dollars in less than twenty-four hours? Cottonmouth had sounded confident. “We know you c’n git it,” he had said. He knew more than I did.

  Unless … did Cottonmouth know about the money Hazel had deposited with the broker? Melissa could have overheard us talking about it. Faced with the wrath of the kidnappers when they learned of the loss of Hazel and their money source, could the girl have blurted something about the brokerage office to save herself from a hard time?

  Or was Melissa part of the kidnap group, and this was how they had planned on getting paid all along?

  I needed to get my head on straight.

  Basically, there were only two ways to go. I could try to find Melissa and free her before the ransom deadline. That could be the best trick of the year with the limited information currently available to me. I liked the idea if only because it amounted to getting my hands on one of the kidnappers. Persuading him to talk would be the easy part. But there was no way to stop the clock and give myself enough time for that luxury.

  Or I could get the money together somehow and make the payoff. It had a certain appeal, too. During a ransom payment I should get a look at the pickup man. It would give me a running start for what came afterward when I had Melissa safely hidden away. Because there was damn well going to be something that came afterward. I was ready to spend a little time and a little money sickening Cottonmouth of his whole damn kidnapping idea.

  If I hadn’t let Hazel talk me into stashing my cash, I’d have had nearly enough for the ransom with my own money. She had taken my $347,000 in cash to a brokerage house to be converted into unregistered bearer bonds. I’d agreed finally because it was a precaution against the cash burning me when I went to use it.

  The government, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that all cash transfers over $10,000 be reported to the Treasury Department. It’s a new banking law. The bearer bonds were as good as cash, with the additional benefit that when I cashed one it was the party who took money from a bank to pay me who had to do the reporting. My name would never figure in the transaction. Hazel’s would, on the front end, but Hazel’s financial affairs were such that even an amount like that would hardly draw a second look.

  I’d extracted most of the cash from a Mexican millionaire’s bank account. I’d done it electronically, with the help of a sharp computer technician, and it had been done slickly enough so the cash shouldn’t be able to be traced. But it never hurt to take an additional precaution, and that’s what I’d done. I wished now I hadn’t let Hazel talk me into it.

  I withdrew from the inside breast pocket of my jacket the stuff I’d removed from Hazel’s wallet before I left the Viking Motel. Besides cash and credit cards, there were a few papers. The third one I looked at was a receipt for $347,000 from Davis, Dodds, and Badger, a brokerage house.

  The receipt was made out to Mrs. Hazel Andrews.

  That just about canceled out any idea of my walking in on Davis, Dodds, and Badger and demanding my cash. Still, I had to make the effort. I looked up the phone number of Davis, Dodds, and Badger and went out to the lobby phone booth again.

  I didn’t have time to worry about what kind of spiel I was going to use, because nobody answered the phone. After four rings there was a contact click and a recorded announcement in a woman’s voice that the Davis, Dodds, and Badger office would be closed until nine o’clock Monday morning.

  I went back to the room and tackled the phone book again. There were forty-eight Davises in it, twenty-one Dodds, and twelve Badgers. I put the book down. I’d save those calls for a last resort. Brokers would more than likely have unlisted phones, anyway. And even if I located one of the partners, I had first to persuade him to go to the office during the weekend, and then to turn over the cash to me. Common sense said I had a better chance of finding it in the street.

  I set the brokerage office problem aside for a moment.

  There was something else I wanted to do first.

  I backed up the recorder cassette to the start of the conversation with Cottonmouth, then disconnected the recorder from the phone. I put the recorder under my jacket, unlatched the door, and again made the trip to the lobby phone booth.

  From inside the booth I could see a part of the cocktail lounge. There was only a solitary drinker sitting in the area visible to me. Even the barman wasn’t in sight. There was little foot traffic in the lobby; my vantage point in the phone booth was a quiet backwater.

  I reached the long-distance operator and gave her a 904 area code and a number. I was calling Blind Tom Walker in De Funiak Springs, Florida. Tom was a white-haired lanky black man, blind since birth, who operated a hideout cabin-camp on the river. I’d stayed with him a couple of times while police from various jurisdictions were taking too much interest in my activities.

  Tom Walker had two remarkable attributes, the second an offshoot of the first. He had the most acute sense of hearing of any human being I’d ever met, a partial offset to his blindness. Tom could detect a swamp moccasin slithering over a dry cypress root fifty feet away.

  But it was his second gift in which I was more interested. Tom remembered and cataloged voices with accuracy. He made a game of it. He could not only recognize voices, but he could often pinpoint the basic origin of a voice, no matter how much it might have been modified through years of living in other parts of the country.

  I could picture Tom’s little shack marked OFFIS with the chain across the driveway. No one passed beyond the chain without Tom’s approval. He was never bothered by the local law because he paid them off regularly. His entire acreage was clothed in ubiquitous jack pines. None of the riverbank cabins were visible from any other cabin. Money bought privacy at Blind Tom Walker’s.

  The steady ring of the phone at the other end of the line was interrupted by a click. “Yeah?” a voice said. The voice was cracked and aged.

  “Hello, Tom,” I said. “How’s Cordelia?”

  Cordelia was a female alligator Tom kept penned on the riverbank. In the spring of the year rutting bull ‘gators serenaded her with roars that could be heard for a mile. When it pleased him, Tom admitted an ardent suitor to Cordelia’s pen.

  “None of ‘em lasts more’n a couple days,” he once assured me solemnly. “An’ they looks at me real reproachful when I comes back to let ‘em out. They git out in the current an’ sink like logs. I tell you that Cordelia is a swinger.”

  Tom chuckled at my query. “Cordelia’s nestin’,” he informed me in his high-pitched cackle. “I reckon we’re gonna have a blessed event. How you doin’, Drake?”

  I purposely hadn’t identified myself to make sure the el
derly Tom had lost none of his talent. “I’m fine, Tom. I’m buying if you’re selling.”

  “Depends,” the cracked voice said cautiously.

  “I’m going to play a tape for you,” I said. “Then you tell me how much I have to pay you to identify the voice if you know it.”

  “Now I jes’ don’ know ‘bout that,” Tom said doubtfully. “I caters to a specialty crowd, you know. If’n word was t’ get out that I fingered someone, I’d lose my trade ‘long with ‘bout sixty-five percent of my black ass.”

  “Listen to the tape,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”

  I took the recorder from under my jacket, still keeping it low, and brought the telephone mouthpiece down to it. I switched the control lever to the playback position and jabbed the start button. I kept my eyes on the lobby while the entire conversation was replayed. No one came close enough to the phone booth to see or hear what I was doing.

  I punched the stop button when the conversation ended. “Well, Tom?” I asked.

  “Now that’s a right horseshit piece of business,” his cracked voice replied vigorously. “I don’ rightly hold with that kind of thing. Someone’s reely holdin’ you up for four hundred grand?”

  “They’re trying. Ever hear the voice?”

  “No.” He said it flatly. I hadn’t realized how much I was counting on a lead until his terse negative died out in the earphone. “But I mought could tell you a thing or two about your caller, Drake.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “No way I could know him, ‘cause the people I deal with been ‘round a while. That theah was a kid.”

  “A kid?”

  “Early twenties, I do b’lieve. An the accent’s a phony. Was you s’posed to think he was black? Well, he ain’t, an’ he ain’t no red-neck Southern white, neither.”

  I tried to fit my dim impression of the two men at the airport into an early-twenties format. Neither qualified. “You’re sure about the accent, Tom?”

  “Shuah I’m shuah.” He sounded indignant. “It’s phony as a third ball on a man. Lissen, you play the tape back again at ‘bout half the volume you did before, an’ I mought be able to tell you some’pn else.”