When you call LaVerne you’re not taken seriously until the phone has rung ten times, so it was almost a minute after I dialed his number before LaVerne picked up the receiver. “Speak,” he demanded.
“Marsh Tanner, LaVerne. How’s it going?”
“I feel like I been shot at and missed and shit at and hit, Tanner, which is an improvement from yesterday. Not that anyone this side of my sainted mother really gives a damn. Who’s on your mind?”
“Mark Covington.”
“Blades.”
“What?”
“Blades. That’s what we used to call him.”
“Why?”
“’Cause of the way he chopped up anything and everything between him and a story.”
“When was this?”
“Mid-fifties. Covington wasn’t born with a byline up his ass, you know. He scratched for crumbs at City Hall and the Hall of Justice like the rest of us chickens before he made it big.”
“Friends?”
“Me and Mark? Never were and never will be.”
“Why not?”
“Try to imagine how you’d feel going out for a few beers with God Almighty after work every night, Tanner. Well, that’s the way I felt around Blades—kind of on edge, you know? Why the interest?”
“Can you keep a secret, LaVerne?”
“Come on. I kept my daughter’s first Wasserman a secret through two husbands. What’s up besides my pecker?”
“Covington’s missing.”
“Presumed dead, I hope.”
“No presumptions, just questions.”
“Well, I ain’t heard nothing, but then I tune out when that guy’s name comes up. I’ll pay attention for a few days. That it?”
I’m not sure what made me go on, except that when I’m talking to LaVerne I develop an urge to run every name I know through his data bank, just to see what pops out. Other people have a similar urge when they find themselves alone with their friends’ medicine cabinets. “How about Karl Kottle?” I asked.
He thought it over. “Nothing. Any relation to Max?”
“Why?”
“Max I knew, rest his soul. Used to go through the girlies like Sherman through Georgia. Insatiable. Nothing in the past few years, though. He must have been sleeping with his money. Which probably gave him a better screw than the bitch I got in the next room. Too bad Max kicked off, though. All the personality in this town’s dropping dead.”
I didn’t bother pointing out to LaVerne that Max Kottle had been happily married during his last years; LaVerne had no interest at all in the norm. “How about Howard Renn?” I went on.
“The poet?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s dead, too. What’d you do, Tanner? Open a mortuary?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Come on, LaVerne. You hear anything about Renn or what he was into when he died?”
“I know his wife was all over him like a bad smell because he threw her out when he came into some bread. I also know in the old days you couldn’t take a shit in a public john without Renn popping out of the next stall and reading you a poem about cosmic screams or some such crap. But Renn was a sixties man. Haven’t heard of him in years, other than his obituary.”
“Pete Zenger.”
“Who?”
“Zenger.”
“Wait a sec. There’s something on that one. I think … no. Nothing. I don’t know nothing about no Zenger.”
“Hey. LaVerne. You sounded scared there for a minute.”
“I ain’t been scared since fifty-two.”
“What happen then?”
“I had my first DT.”
“What about Zenger, LaVerne?”
“What about Zenger is that you’d best keep your nose out of that business. It’s big and it’s as nasty as an elephant with adenoids and it’s no place for people who get off on breathing. Now that’s it. No more. I got to go feed the fish.”
I gave up. “Keep smiling, LaVerne.”
“At my age, the only thing worth smiling about is an effective laxative.”
After LaVerne hung up I puttered around for a while—filling the sugar bowl, taking the stains out of my coffee cup, throwing out the stale bread, sewing a button on my topcoat—keeping ahead of whatever it is that doing those things keeps you ahead of. I had hoped that my unconscious mind would utilize the fallow period to sort and resort the impressions it had collected over the past twenty-four hours and come up with a brilliant place for me to start the next morning, a shortcut to Mark Covington, a way to bring an early end to a job I was tired of, an end to trying to find people who didn’t want to be found.
But my unconscious was uncooperative. All it did was present me with images of kids, kids with weapons—automatic rifles, white phosphorous grenades, electro-explosive devices—kids massing on the Marina Green, clutching the tools of modern terrorism, shouting, chanting, eyes ablaze with thoughtless fervor, preparing to bring a city to its knees in a pool of the blood and guts of random victims.
When I had finished with both my daydreams and my domesticity I put on a robe and slippers and poured another drink and sat down in the only comfortable chair in the place and looked out the window at the nothing that was there. Sometime later I fixed another drink. Automatically. It bothers me when I do things automatically, but I suppose it doesn’t bother me enough. When you get past forty nothing bothers you enough.
Time settled over me like a shawl. Elsewhere in the city people were dining and dancing, drinking and laughing, touching and talking, exchanging the bits of themselves that is the currency of love and friendship. I wasn’t doing any of those things; I was all by myself. If a bomb dropped in the neighborhood it wouldn’t kill anyone I’d ever spoken to more than twice. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t important. That was too hard, so I did something easier. I told myself I didn’t care.
On the way back from the liquor cabinet I made another effort to focus my thoughts on Mark Covington and what I knew about him and what I needed to know, but it was still no dice. Within seconds I was sharing the room with a phantom, a woman who had been in my apartment and had left enough of herself behind to build an image out of, a woman recently widowed, a woman named Belinda.
My thoughts were en route to a place I shouldn’t have been going, so I resorted to the best thought-killer of them all—the television set. Ten minutes later there was a fresh drink in my hand and Lou Grant was screaming at Rossi and vice was screaming so loud at versa I barely heard my door bell ring over the pointless din.
I marched to the door and opened it recklessly. That’s because I was tough. I had nothing to fear because I could not be harmed. Or maybe I had nothing to fear because I could not be harmed enough. In any case I opened the door and looked into the face of my most recent dream.
I invited her in and apologized for my informal attire and my informal habitat and anything else she found offensive. She looked at me funny. “Are you drunk, Mr. Tanner?” she asked archly. She looked drunk herself, or at least jostled by something extraordinary. “You can’t help me if you’re drunk.”
“Oh, yes I can,” I said. Drunkenly.
Her eyes rolled and she searched for things, first in me and then in the room, that could help her. When she didn’t find any she turned to go. “I’ve made a mistake,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
She had the door open before I could get to her, but she was still in the apartment when I put a hand on her arm. “Don’t go,” I said. “I’m all right. I’ve been having a mixed drink and it didn’t agree with me. White Label and self-pity. The combination’s toxic, but not irreversibly. I’ll make some coffee. Sit down. I’ll put on some clothes. Please.”
Given her stage of agitation I thought she’d leave anyway, but I was wrong. She marched to the couch and sat down without a word, stiff and wary, and waited for me to do as I’d promised. I put on some water and ground some beans and went to the bedroom and got dressed. I was ready before
the coffee was.
Five minutes later I handed her a mug. The contents were too hot to drink so she put it on the table beside her, moving mechanically, heedlessly, her mind on something neither of us could see.
I told her I was sorry to hear about her husband, that I’d tried to reach her when I heard he was dead but couldn’t get through, that I hoped his last hours with Karl had gone well. She didn’t seem to hear a word of it. The steam rose off her coffee like the veil off a reluctant bride. I wanted to hold her hand. I looked at her carefully, trying to anticipate her needs, trying to remember that she was Mrs. Maximilian Kottle. But the thing I remembered best was my own desire.
She wore a tan skirt and nut-brown top, boots, belt. No jewelry, no makeup. Her hair wasn’t a slum, but it hadn’t been tended since daylight. I guessed her visit was a whim. What I couldn’t guess was what had prompted it. I was certain it had more to do with her than with me.
When she finally spoke it was with a voice that had gained strength since her arrival. “You seemed to be a man I can trust. I hope it’s still true. I’m counting on that, Mr. Tanner. Just so you know. I’m counting on that very heavily. More than anything, I don’t want to cause further grief.”
Tears welled up and she groped in her purse for something to dab them with. When she didn’t find anything she loosened her grip on the purse and it fell to the floor. A lipstick cylinder spilled out and rolled across the room. “Damn. Oh, dammit all.” The words were overloaded.
My handkerchief was clean if not white and I reached out and handed it to her. She reached for it, but when she felt my hand she took it instead. She held it for a long time, tightly, relentlessly, until the tears dried. “I’m here about Karl,” she said thickly, giving me my hand back even though I didn’t want it.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He isn’t. That’s the whole trouble.”
“You mean he took off again?”
“I mean he was never here. Max lied to you. He didn’t hear from Karl. He hasn’t even spoken to him. He just wanted you to stop looking.”
“Why didn’t he just take me off the case?”
“He was afraid you might suspect something, that you might keep looking in spite of being fired. He didn’t want that, at any cost.”
“Why not?”
She clenched her fists in her lap and leaned toward me. “Karl’s been kidnapped,” she said. “They’re holding him for ransom. They want two million dollars. And Max is going to pay it.”
“Max is dead.”
“No he’s not. That whole story was a lie, too. He’s alive and he’s got a suitcase full of money and he’s waiting for a call from the kidnappers and he needs help and I don’t know who else to turn to. Will you help? Please?”
TWENTY-THREE
The ravage of disease may appear more tellingly on the face of its witness than its victim. From the look of her, Belinda Kottle had endured every pang and wrench of her husband’s affliction until it had become virtually indistinguishable from her own. Her eyes burned, their rims seared red, their sockets scorched black by the heat of her grief. She had lost weight and, more pitifully, her will seemed to have vanished with the flesh. She was a blank page, awaiting script.
Whatever my inclinations, I couldn’t waste time charting the wounds on my guest. There were a thousand questions to be asked and I wasn’t at all certain I was in shape to ask them or that Belinda Kottle was in shape to answer. “Let’s go back to the beginning. What was the first thing your husband heard about Karl?”
“He got a telephone call. Friday. At the apartment.”
“How did they get through? It can’t be that easy to reach your husband on the telephone.”
She clenched her fist, as though to squeeze out memories. “It came over Max’s personal line. I answered it. The voice said it had word about Karl. I told Max. He thought it was someone you had talked to. He took the call immediately. Eagerly. You should have seen his face when they told him they were holding Karl for ransom. It was horrible. Horrible.”
The gods restaged the horror on Belinda’s face, fashioning a mask, forcing it upon her, warping her features. I inched forward to the edge of my chair and reached out and touched her knee. She took my hand and raised it to her face. My fingers grew damp with the second wave of her tears. “What was said on the telephone?” I asked softly. “Exactly.”
Her words were halting, without inflection. “Very little was said,” she said. “‘We have your son. We are not afraid to kill if it becomes necessary. We will do so if we do not receive two million dollars within the next five days. We are giving you time to get the money together without arousing suspicion. You will not hear from us again until you are instructed where to deliver the money.’ That’s all I can remember. Max didn’t get a chance to say a word.”
“Male voice?”
“Yes. Deep. Educated. Confident.”
“Did you hear the conversation?”
She nodded. “Max put it on his speaker phone. It was like a séance. None of us moved. None of us breathed.”
I hoped that was as close to a séance as it would ever become.
“Was there any background noise?”
“Not that I could hear.”
“I don’t suppose the call was recorded by any chance.”
She shook her head. “Max does record some calls on his business line, but he can’t do it on his personal one. There wouldn’t have been time, anyway. It was a very brief conversation.”
“Who else was there when the call came through?”
“Walter Hedgestone and me. That’s all.”
“Did they put Karl on the phone?”
“No.”
She looked at me. I didn’t look back. “Did they offer any proof he’s alive?”
Her eyes widened at what had passed unstated. “Alive? Why wouldn’t he be alive?”
There were a lot of reasons not to tell her, and maybe I should have yielded to one of them, but she had made the decision to come to me and she was going to have to make another decision before the evening was out and I wanted her to know it all. “Sometimes the victim is dead before the ransom demand is even made,” I stated evenly. “Leopold and Loeb did it that way, to name one case.”
A little sound came from within her, a little sound of anguish. “Then how can I possibly know what to do? How can Max be sure he’s doing the right thing, the thing that will get Karl back?”
“He can’t be sure,” I answered. “No one can. That’s the beauty of it. There are at least three ways to proceed, and if it goes bad you will wonder for the rest of your life what would have happened if you’d done something different.”
“My God,” she said, so softly I barely heard her. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing heavily through her nostrils, making sounds as forlorn as a departed train. “What would you do?” she asked finally.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Since I don’t have money or family I’ll never have to find out.” There was silence then, space enough for each of us to contemplate our histories and our fate if we wished to. “Was there anything else about the call?” I asked. “Anything at all?”
Her brow furrowed prettily, in spite of it all. “Oh, yes. They had a name, a silly little name, as if that would make it all right to do what they were doing. Max thinks it’s a political thing. Extremists, or something.”
The tumblers were falling into place despite my inebriation. “Let me guess,” I said. “The Sons and Daughters of Isaiah.”
Her surprise turned quickly to suspicion. “How did you know? How could you know?” She was almost screaming.
“It’s nothing sinister,” I said quickly. “It’s just that I’ve stumbled over that group several times lately. If the stakes weren’t so high I’d think it was a Parker Brothers game.”
“Well, who are these, these Sons and Daughters?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Max is right as far as I can tell. I think they are some kind of terr
orist group, but their ideology’s a little vague. They bombed Laguna Oil and got mad when the press didn’t report it. Then today they presented some manifesto to the Investigator and demanded it be published or they’d blow up the building or some such rot. That’s all I know. Maybe if the paper prints what they want we’ll learn more.”
“Max owns Laguna Oil,” Belinda said quietly.
“I know he does. Interesting, isn’t it?”
“But what does it mean?”
I didn’t know and I told her so. Then I asked if her husband knew she was here.
She shook her head. “He won’t have to know, will he?”
I considered it. “Probably not. He’s not a client anymore. But if this gets nasty, nastier than it already is, there are legal and ethical requirements that could pop up. I never like to predict who will have to say what to whom.”
Belinda nodded and fell silent. I sipped my coffee, making a noise in the process. It was the only sound in the room.
As I watched her, Belinda looked out the window, as though an answer to it all floated out there, suspended somewhere above the street and below the stars. I looked out there, too, but I didn’t see anything but air. Black air.
“Max is going to pay,” Belinda said dreamily.
“Does he have the money?”
“Yes.”
“Has he told the cops?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The man who called told him not to. He said he would know immediately if Max contacted the police or the FBI, and would slit Karl’s throat if he did. You should have heard his voice. Max believes him. So does Walter. So do I.”
“Two million,” I said.
“Two million,” she repeated.
I didn’t say anything for a while. There wasn’t much I could say that would comfort Belinda or her husband. The odds of coming up winners in a kidnapping are never good, and they’re getting worse. I thought of some of the recent ones—Exxon paying fourteen million for one of their executives, Firestone paying three million for one of theirs, a German company sixty million for three of theirs—on and on, with the cards entirely in the hands of the terrorists who could decide to take the money or, like the Aldo Moro case, to prove a deadly point.
Death Bed Page 16
