“This—this whole thing is frightening,” she said. “The more I think about that phone call—” She let it go unfinished.
“Have you talked to your parents since they arrived?”
“No,” she answered. Then, in a heavily ironic voice, she added, “Katherine called, though, just before you did. There’ll be a family dinner tomorrow.”
“Will it be at the Fairmont, or at your home?”
“It’ll be at home.”
“It seems that I’m not allowed to see your father,” I said. “So if you can find out anything, I’d appreciate knowing about it.”
“Yes,” she answered absently. “Yes, I’ll tell you.”
I thanked her, asked her to keep in touch and broke the connection.
Eleven
I KNOCKED ONCE, SOFTLY, then twisted the knob and entered the darkened bedroom. I closed the door, locked it and turned toward the bed. Sheets and blankets rustled as Ann moved to her side, making room. It was an exciting, intimate sound, a special secret we’d shared during the past two months.
For the trip down the hallway, I’d worn pajamas. Ann, too, wore pajamas. Without ever having said it, we’d come to agree that the ritual of lovemaking was more erotic, more fulfilling, when it began slowly, with our pajama-clad bodies first touching, then exploring, finally demanding the naked touch of flesh on flesh.
I drew back the light blanket and slipped in beside her.
“Hi—” In the darkness, I found her face, lightly stroking her hair, her cheek, the base of her throat. For more than an hour, lying in my own bed, I’d been thinking of her, wanting her. So that now my genitals were already tightening, straining to touch her with desire.
“Hi—” I felt her move toward me. But only tentatively. Not urgently. Not erotically. First, Ann wanted to talk.
All evening, sitting beside her on the sofa while we watched a movie on TV, I’d sensed that something was troubling her. But the three-hour movie had been one that both Billy and Dan had wanted to see, so I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her privately.
I moved my hand down to the curve of her hip, gently caressing. Once more she responded, but only tentatively.
We must talk, then.
With my hand still resting on her hip, but more lightly now, I said, “Did you talk to Victor today?”
I heard her sigh, felt her body shift slightly under my hand as if she’d experienced a twitch of pain.
“How’d you know?” She sighed again.
“Policemen are very intuitive. I keep telling you that.”
“I know you’re very intuitive, Frank,” she whispered. “I keep telling you. Remember?”
“What’d Victor say?”
A long moment of dispirited silence followed. Then: “He says that he talked to his lawyer yesterday.”
“Do you think he really did?”
“Yes,” she answered slowly. “Yes, I think he really did. Victor doesn’t bluff.”
I took my hand from her hip, slipped my other arm under her head and turned on my back. At the thought of Victor Haywood’s badgering Ann, my desire had faded.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“I suppose I’ll hear from his lawyer.”
“What’ll the lawyer say?”
“He’ll threaten to cut off my child support, I suppose. Or maybe even threaten to sue for custody of the children.”
“Christ.”
For a moment we lay silently side by side. Finally I said, “I wish we could move somewhere out of the city. He could take his goddamn child support and stuff it. As long as you’re getting it, you’re dancing to his tune.” But, even as I said it, I knew we couldn’t move. Ann was a schoolteacher, forty years old. I was a middle-aged cop. Both of us, like it or not, were civil servants. We were both too old to start over again somewhere else at the bottom of the civil service advancement roster. The system simply wouldn’t hire us for entry-level jobs.
“No, we couldn’t move,” she said, echoing my thoughts. “Not really. Not unless I wanted to wait tables and you wanted to pump gas. And, besides that, I wouldn’t move. This is home for the boys. All their friends are here. They might think they’d like to go live in another town, but they wouldn’t. Not really. At school I see too many kids who’ve been uprooted. It’s hard on them. It’s very hard on them.”
“Christ.”
Once more, we lay silently side by side, staring up at the ceiling. We both knew that we hadn’t talked about the only workable solution—marriage. We both knew it, and we both knew the other knew it. Separately, we were thinking identical thoughts.
Was this the time? Should I turn toward her and tell her that—?
Beside the bed, her phone rang.
As I quickly lifted the receiver, I glanced at the bedside clock. The time was almost midnight.
“Lieutenant Hastings?” It was Canelli’s voice. Only Canelli and Culligan and Friedman had Ann’s number.
“What is it, Canelli?” I spoke softly, hoping that the boys wouldn’t hear me talking from behind Ann’s bedroom door.
As usual, even at midnight, Canelli began with a rambling, bumbling preamble: “Jeeze, I’m really sorry to bother you, Lieutenant. But the more I thought about it, the more I figured that you might be madder if I didn’t than if I did. Bother you, I mean.”
“Canelli. Please. What’s it all about?”
“Well, it’s Katherine Bayliss, Lieutenant. You know, Senator Ryan’s assistant, or whatever she is. She wants you to call her. She wouldn’t tell me what it’s about. All she’d say is that Senator Ryan told her to get hold of you.”
“Are you sure that’s what she said, that Senator Ryan told her to call?”
“That’s what she said, Lieutenant. See, that’s the reason I figured I should see if I could get you. I mean, if she hadn’t said that, then I probably wouldn’t’ve. Phoned you, I mean.”
“Where are you?”
“At the Hall.”
“When’d she call?”
“Just about fifteen minutes ago. Communications got it for you and gave it to me, naturally, because I’m catching this week. So I figured that—”
“Did she leave a number?”
“Yes.” He gave me the number. I hung up and told Ann that I would make the call from the living room.
Minutes later, I heard Katherine Bayliss’s calm, precise voice on the phone. “Something’s happened,” she said. “If you can—if you possibly can—we’d like you to come down here, to the Fairmont.”
“Who’ll I be seeing?” I asked. “Senator Ryan?”
I heard her draw a deep breath. “Yes,” she answered, plainly reluctant. “Yes, you’ll be seeing Senator Ryan. Come to the eleventh floor. They’ll take you to me. And I’ll take you to the senator.”
“I’ll be there in about a half hour.”
“Yes. As fast as you can. Please.”
Twelve
KATHERINE BAYLISS MET ME at the door of her suite and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She was casually dressed in slacks and a simple shirtwaist blouse. On her feet she wore big, woolly slippers. The slippers touched a tiny chord far back in my memory. For as long as I could remember, my mother had worn woolly slippers.
At quarter to one in the morning, with her makeup neglected, Katherine Bayliss looked worn and worried. Yet I was aware of sexual electricity as I walked beside her down the deserted hotel hallway. I was conscious of her loose hair, her breasts beneath the blouse, and her bare feet thrust into the woolly slippers, so unexpectedly evocative.
Or was I remembering Ann, warm and tousled in her bed?
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
Still walking beside me, she said, “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?” I let her hear the late-night irritation in my voice. “You’re not sure?”
“I was already asleep,” she said. “Lloyd knocked on my door and said that the senator wanted to
see you.” As she said it, we turned a corner. Ahead, at the end of the corridor, I saw a large, ornate double door. This, certainly, was the entrance to the senator’s master suite, guarded by an FBI agent.
“That’s all Eason said?” I asked.
“That’s all. But obviously the senator has heard about the letters. That’s all it could be.”
“But why would he want to see me? How would he know about me?”
“I don’t know, unless Lloyd told him about you.”
At the door of the suite, the guard smiled at Katherine, glanced at my lapel ID button and pressed the door buzzer. A moment later, Lloyd Eason stood in the open doorway. I waited for Katherine to precede me, but she hesitated, questioning Eason with a quick glance.
“He just wants to see the lieutenant,” Eason said. His inflection was apologetic.
Impassively, she nodded, gesturing me inside.
Dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe, Senator Donald Ryan was half reclining on a sofa. A blanket covered his legs. His face was so familiar that recognition came almost as a shock: the reincarnation of thousands of front-page pictures and television images, with its dramatic white hair, its high-bridged nose, its forceful mouth and jaw, its dark, compelling eyes and its aura of overwhelming command. As I advanced toward him, I felt as if the scene was being recorded for history by dozens of invisible cameramen.
But when I came closer to the couch, I realized that flesh and blood were pale imitations of all the thousands of bold, brave pictures. Deeply lined, the skin of his face was sickly, parched and flaccid. Beneath the powerful arch of their brows, the dark eyes were vague and wandering. The mouth was clenched, but the effect in closeup was more desperate than decisive.
Ferguson, Bayliss and Company hadn’t been lying. Senator Donald Ryan was a sick man.
Stopping in front of the sofa, I realized that, unconsciously, I was standing at attention before him.
“Senator Ryan.”
He motioned to a nearby chair. Then he looked at Lloyd Eason and inclined his head toward an inner door. Eason was being dismissed. Surprised, I glanced around the elegantly furnished living room, confirming that, yes, I was alone with Senator Donald Ryan. Once more, irrationally, I felt as if I were on the stage of history in the making. I realized that I was sitting stiffly in my chair, still posing for the invisible cameramen.
Without changing his position on the sofa, Ryan studied me for a moment before he said, “I’m sorry to get you out of bed, Lieutenant. But I’ve had to make some decisions, and when the process was complete, your name came out on top.” He spoke in a low, uninfected monotone: a white-haired, gray-faced man struggling to save his strength. His eyes moved uncertainly, almost furtively, revealing a kind of fretful, exhausted fear. I recognized that look; I’d seen it many times in the line of duty. He’d seen the shadow of death stalking him. He was afraid.
“My name?” As I said it, I realized how silly and ineffectual I must sound.
He nodded, at the same time reaching into the pocket of his dressing gown for an envelope.
I could see the words SENATOR DONALD RYAN typed in the exact center of the envelope, like the letter left at the desk earlier in the day.
“I see you know what this is,” he said, gesturing with the envelope.
“Yes.”
“I went to bed about eleven,” he said. “I found this under my pillow.”
“Under your—” Incredulous, I couldn’t finish it.
Under his pillow …
Watching me closely, he leaned forward, offering the letter. I got hastily to my feet, took it and returned to my chair. Automatically handling the letter by its corners, even though I knew the precaution was useless, I read:
At this moment, you could be dead. If you want to save yourself, the price will be one million dollars. Instructions will follow.
F
Everything was the same: the paper, the neat, square-block typing, the writing style, the signature. Everything.
Under his pillow …
“Who else knows about this?” I asked.
“Lloyd Eason and Jack Ferguson,” he answered.
Not Katherine Bayliss. Not his wife, nor his son.
I looked at my watch. The time was exactly one o’clock. Two hours had elapsed since the letter had been found. Automatically, I looked for a phone. There were calls to make, orders to give, witnesses to interrogate—and questions to ask: When had the bed been made? Who had made it? Who had been in the bedroom since the bed had been made? When? For how long?
“As you know,” Ryan was saying, “all of this had been kept secret from me for reasons that you know about. The result, of course—” The ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “The result was that when I finally learned about it tonight, the shock was probably more profound than it might otherwise have been. However—” Once more a pale smile briefly touched the wasted face. “However, the worst didn’t happen, as you can see.”
“I’m very glad it didn’t, sir.” Once more, the reply sounded inadequate, faintly silly.
“You’re wondering why I sent for you,” he said. Even though his voice was weak, the statement had an authoritative ring of flat-sounding finality. When Donald Ryan made a pronouncement, he didn’t expect a reply.
“I sent for you,” he said, “for two reasons. First, both Jack Ferguson and Lloyd Eason were favorably impressed with you. And, secondly, I’ve got something that needs to be handled by a local policeman—a discreet local policeman who knows his job.” For a moment he looked at me steadily, making his final assessment. “Do you understand what I mean, Lieutenant?”
“I think so,” I answered. “You want me to conduct an investigation, and you want it kept secret.”
He was plainly pleased with my reply. “That’s correct.”
“Who do I report to?”
“You’ll report directly to me.” The tired eyes sharpened, looking into mine. “Do you have any objections to that?”
“I don’t have an objection, exactly. But—” I hesitated. “But I work for the City and County of San Francisco.”
He nodded, wearily impatient. “I understand that, Lieutenant. Which is, obviously, why I need you. I have other options, of course. Private investigators, for instance. However, for the moment, all I need is information—and discretion. For that, one man is desirable—one man who’s plugged into local law enforcement.”
“What’s the information you need, Senator?”
He hesitated one final moment, making his decision. Then, with obvious reluctance, he said, “There’s a man named Frederick Tharp. He’s a resident of San Francisco. He’s twenty-six years old, and he’s lived here for about ten years.”
Frederick Tharp—F.T.
I tried to keep excitement out of my voice as I said, “Do you have an address?”
“No, I don’t have an address. At least, not a current address. However, it’s probably moot. Because, as far as I know, Frederick Tharp is in prison.”
“Do I understand that you think Frederick Tharp is the one who’s been sending these letters?”
He didn’t reply, but only stared at me with inscrutable, implacable eyes. Finally: “Let’s take it one step at a time, Lieutenant. Let’s see whether he’s still in jail. Then we’ll talk further.”
“Was he jailed on a federal charge or a state of California charge?”
“I have no idea.” As he spoke, he allowed his eyes to close as he leaned his head back against the sofa. My audience was ending.
Should I try for more information? Or should I bide my time? Should I leave quietly, or should I wait to be dismissed? I looked at the door where Eason had disappeared. Logically, I should—
“I understand,” Ryan was saying, “that you’ve talked to my daughter.” He spoke softly. His eyes were still closed. His face looked even more drawn, paler, more deeply lined.
“That’s right, I have.” Surprised, I settled uneasily back in my chair. Did he want to talk? Or did he want inf
ormation? Or both?
“What did you think of her?” he asked.
“I—ah—I thought she was a very unusual person. Very—very strong. Very determined.”
“Well, Lieutenant, I’m afraid you aren’t correct. I’m afraid Susan’s confused. Badly confused.”
I didn’t reply.
Why was he asking me about his daughter? The time was almost one-thirty. He was a sick man, and he’d just had a scare. Why wasn’t he in bed? Why had he sent for me, instead of the FBI? Why hadn’t he assigned Ferguson the job of briefing me?
Thinking about it, I realized that there could be only one answer: Ferguson didn’t know of Frederick Tharp’s existence. And Donald Ryan intended to keep it that way.
“You’re wondering why I’m asking you about Susan,” he said, still speaking with his eyes closed.
“Yes,” I admitted, “I am.”
“I suppose it’s got something to do with my heart attack,” he said. Now he opened his eyes, looking at me squarely. “Have you ever been sick, Lieutenant? Dangerously sick?”
“No. At least, I’ve never been sick with a disease.”
“But you’ve faced death. You could have died, I was told, a few months ago.”
“Yes,” I answered, “that’s true.”
“There’ve probably been other times too,” he said.
“Other times?”
“That you faced death.”
“Yes,” I answered, “there have been other times. Not many. But a few.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about. You know how you change—how everything changes—when you open your eyes and see death staring back at you.”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “Yes, I know.”
He gestured to the letter that I still held in my hand. “A year ago, these letters wouldn’t’ve been a problem. They would’ve been a minor irritation, nothing more. They would’ve been handled. But suddenly, one morning about ten o’clock, I got a pain in my chest. And, instantly, the whole world changed. One moment I was in control. The next moment I was helpless. And I was frightened, too—terribly frightened, and terribly alone. And then I realized that the people around me were frightened too. Not frightened for me, but for themselves. So they decided to conceal the fact that I can’t wield the power that keeps them in power. They made a—a mannequin of me, and propped it up in the window where it can been seen but not heard.
Stalking Horse (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 8
