Day of Reckoning

by John Katzenbach

  She drove quickly across Greenfield, constantly checking the rear-view mirror, each time wondering whether the dark sedan, or the station wagon or the sports car or the delivery van that cruised behind her was tailing her. I must know for certain, she thought. Twice she pulled into gas stations and paused, letting traffic sweep by, but she wasn’t persuaded that it was a successful way of losing someone following her. Finally, she hit upon another course. She drove to the entrance to Greenfield College, on the outskirts of town. It had a long, circular driveway in front of the admissions office. She pulled quickly across traffic, into the drive, accelerating around it, and coming out heading in the opposite direction. Then she paused, searching in the mirrors for any vehicle that might make a U-turn. When she saw none, she went on, not exactly certain how she was going to approach her task, but sure that she was going to try.

  In the farmhouse, the kidnappers argued.

  The previous evening’s money-counting euphoria had given way to debate over what their next course of action should be. Olivia, settled in a large armchair, listened intently as Bill Lewis and Ramon Gutierrez snapped out their desires. It was odd how a little bit of money changed people, how quickly it caused them to lose sight of what was really important. She wanted to laugh at the change in their attitudes. Twenty-four hours earlier, they had both been shaky and indecisive, hamstrung by tension. Now, with success in their grasp, they were filled with bluster and bravado. She had nothing but contempt for them both, but she was cautious not to display it. It was time for the next step in the plan.

  “I don’t understand,” Ramon was saying, “why we don’t just get the hell out of here right now. What’s to keep us? We’ve done what we came for. Every minute we wait is a mistake.”

  “Have we?” Olivia asked coldly. “Are you sure we’ve accom­plished what we set out to do?”

  “I have,” Ramon answered. But then he turned silent.

  “Ramon’s right, Olivia. Why should we hang around here? Why don’t we just jump in the car and split?”

  “You think they’ve paid enough?” She had to play this carefully now, make them believe one thing while she did another.

  “It’s almost fifty grand each. It’s more than I’ve ever had. It’s enough to get started somewhere new.”

  “You don’t think they’ve got more?”

  “Where? He robbed the bank. What’s left?”

  “What about all the money he’s cashed in? Stocks, bonds, trust accounts, real estate, all that shit Duncan owns and which he’s selling like crazy. Don’t you see, he probably figures he can pay back the bank, I know that’s what he thinks he can do. Well, that money should be ours.”

  The two men thought about that. Olivia watched them closely.

  “How do we get it?”

  Olivia smiled. Got them! “We could always come back for it.”

  “How do we do that?” Bill Lewis asked.

  “We just do it. We leave. Time passes. We get broke. We come back. Simple as that.”

  “How can we be sure he’ll cooperate?”

  “Because he has no choice. He will never have a choice. Coop­erating with us will always be the safe and expedient thing for him.”

  Lewis nodded.

  “I don’t know,” said Ramon. “How far can we push them?”

  “As far as I like,” Olivia replied.

  “You’re crazy,” he sputtered. “Suppose he thinks he’s had enough and calls the cops.”

  “He won’t.”

  “Yeah—but suppose he does?”

  “He won’t. I know him. He won’t.”

  “I don’t like it. I don’t ever want to come back here again. I want to take the money, cover our tracks, and leave. We shoulda just killed him out there. We shoulda done what I said. Then maybe you’d be happy.”

  Olivia nodded. “I thought of that. It wasn’t the right moment.”

  “What about the guests?” Bill Lewis asked. He pointed upstairs. “They’re getting pretty antsy. I wonder how long they can hang on. Especially the kid. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Fair?” Olivia asked. Her face filled with sarcastic surprise.

  “Well, you know what I mean,” Bill retreated.

  “What should we do with them?” she asked.

  “Kill them,” said Ramon.

  “Let ’em go,” said Lewis. He glared at Ramon. “I didn’t think you were like that,” he sneered.

  Ramon shouted back at Lewis: “They aren’t worth my life! They know who we are. They can describe us. I don’t want to spend my next ten years like you have, always looking over my shoulder. I want to be free. That means no witnesses. It’s pretty damn simple.”

  “Yeah, real simple. Like you. We kill them,” Bill Lewis said calmly, sarcastically. “And what’s to prevent Duncan or Megan from spend­ing the rest of their lives hunting us down? If we could find them, what makes you think they couldn’t find us? Christ, are you stupid.”

  “If they have a rest of their lives,” Olivia interjected.

  “Jesus!” Bill Lewis said, his voice filling with exasperation. “What are you saying? Pull some Charlie Manson? This isn’t getting us anywhere. I’m not murdering old men and kids, got it? I’m just not doing it. I didn’t want to do that guy in California, but that was your show, and I went along. But not some kid. He’s a good kid, too.”

  “You don’t have to,” Ramon said. “Maybe others don’t have the same feelings. Maybe others aren’t so scared—”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m not scared of, you bastard—I’m not scared of you.”

  “You ought to be, you damn fool. Can’t you see that you’re going to get sentimental and screw this up for all of us? This is my big chance and I’m not going to let some faggot ex-hippie screw it up!”

  Lewis started across the room toward his former lover, his hands clenched. Ramon jumped from a chair and reached for a revolver.

  “Stop it!” Olivia yelled.

  They both hesitated and looked at her.

  She pointed at the two of them. “You’re going to do what I say when I say it. This is my show and I’ll tell you when it’s over.”

  The two men stood staring at her.

  “So what are we going to do? Kill them all?” Bill Lewis spat.

  “Whatever we’re going to do, let’s do it and get the hell out of here,” Ramon said.

  Olivia assessed each man’s will to struggle against her. They are scared and strung out, she thought. Give them both what they think they want. Then do what you want.

  “All right,” she said, as if lecturing children, “you’re both agreed that you want to wrap this up, right?”

  Both men nodded, still glaring at each other.

  “And I think Duncan owes us a bit more.” Much more, she thought.

  They continued to stare at her uncomfortably. She noticed that they did not look at each other. Spring the trap, she thought, and smiled.

  “Now take it easy, you two. Has anything gone wrong so far? Haven’t I spent years figuring every angle?”

  The two men glanced at each other, then back at her and nodded.

  “Hasn’t everything happened exactly as I said it would?”

  They nodded again, appearing slightly relieved.

  “Well, this is one of the angles I’ve spent the most time working out. It’s the final twist of the knife—and it’s foolproof. Here’s the plan: I’ll contact Duncan tonight, just when he’s ready to go com­pletely crazy. I’ll tell him to meet us tomorrow morning. Someplace nice and isolated. And I’ll tell him he’s not through paying. We’ll be out of here by eight-fifteen. On a plane by noon. That good enough for you?”

  Olivia looked at the two men. They were still fidgeting a little, but just a little.

  “I still
think we should just kill them and go,” muttered Ramon.

  “Real smart,” said Bill Lewis. “It sounds fine, Olivia. But why wait until the night?”

  “Because that’s when he’ll be most vulnerable. People are always more twitchy when darkness falls. The world seems smaller, closer, more dangerous.”

  “But look, we could take off right now and do it from some pay phone far away. We don’t have to be here.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Olivia. “Don’t you think he’d be able to tell? It’s being here that puts the edge on it, the knowledge that we could still go up and blow them away. With everything combined, the waiting, the dark, the threat—Duncan will do whatever we say.”

  “How’s it going to work?”

  “Simple,” Olivia said. “What I plan to do is send him out to some Godforsaken place and then just leave the two hostages upstairs. They’ll figure it out eventually, and we’ll be long gone. We’ll simply sneak out, leave the door unlocked, it will take the old bastard some time to get up the nerve to try the door. Then he’s going to have to figure out how to get out of here. We’ll cut the phone line. Maybe take their shoes with us. By the time he manages to contact Duncan and Megan, we’ll be at Logan airport in Boston and flying somewhere warm. Then, when we get short, we’ll just take a little holiday to Greenfield and visit our personal banker. He won’t want to go through all this again. I know Duncan. The math-man will want to take the easy and expedient way out. He’ll get us the money. End of story. Until we need a hit more. And more. And more.”

  Ramon shrugged, but Bill Lewis appeared relieved.

  “You’re right,” he said. “The bastard will pay forever. And we’re not leaving witnesses, we’re leaving reminders. He’ll always remember how easy it was for us to snatch them. How we could do it again.”

  “Ah,” said Olivia with a small laugh, “you’re learning.”

  “I’d still rather leave no witnesses,” Ramon said.

  Olivia hesitated, then responded.

  “Are you going to make me insist?” She fingered a revolver.

  Ramon shrugged.

  Olivia narrowed her gaze at the small man.

  “No,” he said. He pouted.

  “Good,” Olivia said. She stood up and walked over to Bill Lewis. She ran her fingers down his cheek, then patted him. “You’re getting soft,” she said, smiling. “We knew beforehand that there might be deaths. We knew that and we agreed.” She jabbed her finger into his stomach, hard. “You must be strong. Not soft.” He shook his head, but she reached up and grasped his chin tightly with her long fingers and turned it into a nod, forcing his head up and down.

  Ramon laughed, and Olivia smiled. Bill Lewis smiled, too, but he rubbed his skin where Olivia’s fingers had dug in.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I should just listen to you.”

  “That would make matters easier,” Olivia replied. She gave him a playful slap on the cheek. “All right, now take lunch up to the guests. You can tell them that they’ve only got a little time to wait. Don’t be too specific, but tell them you think they can go home tomorrow or the next day. Give them a little bit of hope and tell them to keep in line. It’ll do wonders for their patience.”

  Lewis nodded and pounded out of the room. Ramon started to follow after him, but was frozen when Olivia turned, all jocularity instantly vanished, eyes narrowed, jaw set, mouth compacted into a tight frown, her gaze insisting he remain where he was. After a moment, they both heard Bill Lewis’s heavy tread on the stairs.

  “Yes?” Ramon said.

  “The plan will work with your solution as well.”

  “It will? But I thought—”

  “Money is one thing,” Olivia said. “Revenge is another.”

  Ramon nodded and smiled.

  Olivia stepped over to him. She slid a hand through his tangled mass of hair.

  “You think more like I do,” she said. “You’re tough enough. You see things for the way they really are. I wonder why I haven’t noticed that before.”

  He smiled.

  “But when? I mean, Bill thinks—”

  “Not until tomorrow morning. Right when we leave. Right then. Bill will go crazy, so we have to be careful.”

  His head bobbed up and down in agreement.

  “Fuck him. He doesn’t know about these things. Fuck him.”

  “You did once upon a time.”

  “A long time ago. He’s changed. He’s soft. I’ve changed. I’m hard.”

  Olivia smiled.

  “Suppose he doesn’t make it?” she asked.

  Ramon grinned. “Then we will split the money two ways.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Now, do me a favor and check all the weapons.”

  Ramon snapped quickly to attention and hurried out of the room, filling with an unfamiliar, yet narcotizing warmth. Olivia shook her head as she watched him leave. That was easy, she thought. Now all I have to do is let Bill know that I don’t trust Ramon, and stand back out of the way and watch the fireworks. She was impressed with how malleable people were under stress. But I am in control, she said to herself. I have been from the very start. She found herself idly whistling a tune as she settled back into her chair. She did not see the pressing need to split any of the proceeds of Duncan’s efforts with anyone, which, of course, had been the real plan, right from the start.

  Megan sat in her car, warming her hands around a cup of coffee. She had parked next to a convenience store, wondering for an instant whether it was the same store outside which Duncan had hovered the day before. She looked down at her list of potential homesites and shook her head. She stared up into the overcast sky, as she sipped the coffee, thinking that she had only two or three effective hours of sunlight left. She sighed and spread the map out on the dashboard.

  Where are you? she wondered.

  She was impatient with the time it took to approach each house. She couldn’t really barrel up the driveway; consequently she was forced to locate the house, then park some distance away and reconnoiter cautiously. So far she had come up with nothing. The first house she’d seen had children playing out front, which had cracked her will for just an instant. She had remained rooted out by the roadway, staring in at a passel of kids as they raced around in some free-form game that seemed to combine cowboys and Indians and tag. All she could tell was that some children were “it” and there was a great deal of mock shooting going on. She had turned reluctantly away from the scene, remembering times when she’d watched the same games from her own window.

  Another house had an elderly couple raking leaves from the front yard; she’d moved away swiftly from that one. A third had been eliminated when she’d spotted a baby seat in the rear of a battered station wagon parked in front.

  Two houses had been empty of life. She had forced herself up to their front porches and stared in through the darkened windows, checking for any signs of activity. All she had seen had been cobwebs and dust.

  She looked at her map. Four houses remained. She thought of all the possibilities that would keep the house off her list. She recognized that it was possible for Olivia to have rented the house through a newspaper ad—not a realtor. But it wasn’t her style; Olivia would hate having to deal directly with an owner. An owner might require a reference, or look carefully at her, but a realtor would see only her cash. Megan wondered whether Olivia might have moved out of the Greenfield multiple-­listing service area. It was possible she was in Amherst or Northampton. Both those communities catered to students, and there were dozens of rentals available. But would she want to drive that far? Megan doubted it. She remembered what she’d thought the other night: Close enough to watch us, far enough to be just out of our sight.

  She’s here, Megan thought. She’s on the list.

  But her confidence wavered.
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  Megan had traveled progressively farther into the countryside, as she had checked the houses. She stared up into some green pines that swept up a nearby hillside. An occasional group of stark white birch trees broke up the wave of dark green, like death’s bony hand reaching up through the surface of the ocean. Megan shuddered, finished her coffee, and stepped from the car. She saw the telephone and decided to call home.

  Lauren answered on the second ring: “Richards residence.”

  “Lauren?”

  “Mom! Where are you? We’ve been worried.”

  “I’m fine. I’m still out hunting about.”

  “Dad was fit to be tied! And when he realized you took the gun, he was ready to go out after you!”

  “Everything’s fine. Is he there?”

  “Yeah. He’s coming. I told him not to worry, but it didn’t do any good, because we were all really sort of worried anyway. Why don’t you come home?”

  “In an hour or so. Just one or two more.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Duncan asked abruptly. Megan had not heard him take the telephone from her daughter’s hand.

  “I’m just checking some properties.”

  “What are you doing? Checking what?”

  “Just a hunch.”