"Is the money in the mailbox?"
"Yes."
"I'll pay it back. Wherever it came from, I'll pay it back."
Watching him carefully, I said, "Dot and Edith don't know this, but when the pickup is made tonight, the kidnappers' car will be followed. Very, very discreetly. No arrest will be made until Peter is free. But we're all reasonably certain that whoever has done this will be in the lockup by dawn."
He flinched and sat up again, breathing heavily. "You told me you weren't going to do anything like that. You and the cops. You agreed it was too dangerous."
"We lied. We all concluded from experience that Peter's chances are better this way."
He stared at me with hard, bitter eyes. "Lying for the higher cause, huh? Wicked means to a just end."
"Something like that. Yes. To save a life. Nothing terribly abstract or arguable about that."
"But it's still just your opinion."
"An informed opinion."
He started to speak, then just laughed once, harshly. At both of us, I thought charitably.
I said, "The phone here has been tapped by the police. If you call anyone, you'll be overheard.
Did you know that?"
"No. But why should I care?" He turned away from me onto his side, and lay still except for his breathing, which came and went in deep sighs.
I left him there in the sticky heat and shut the door as I walked out. I passed the cop in the kitchen and went outside again. I sat on the veranda under the stars and tried very hard to rethink the whole bloody mess. I was sure I had been conned by a master. But I couldn't decide who he was. end user
16
I walked down Moon Road toward
Central in the hazy starlight. A quarter-moon hung above the western horizon with three stars inside its crook, like an astrological sign. It was Saturday night on Central Avenue.
"Hi, bet you're a Taurus, aren't you, big guy?"
"No, but you're close. I'm a Presbyterian-born under the sign of a golf ball on a tee. I'm surprised you couldn't tell from the alignment of the divots on my skull."
"Well, you're certainly a weird one. Huh! Guess I'll just go dance some more. Last call's in ten minutes, but I could just dance forever. "
"For sure."
The air was still, wet, black. I passed the Deems' house. The living room was lighted behind closed drapes in the picture window. The screen door was open and I could hear raised voices.
"I don't care! I don't care! I don't care!"
"Get back here, I'm not finished with you!"
More distant: "Jerry, not so loud!"
"No one in this family has ever broken the law! Joseph, if your grandfather-"
"I don't care! I'm sick of you! I'm sick of this place! I'm sick of all of you!"
"Go to your room!"
"Jerry!"
"I'm going! I'm going!"
"Jerry, don't hit him!"
"You selfish miser! I know you! I know you!"
The wooden door was eased shut. The voices became muffled. I stood in the shadows and waited. The wooden door flew open again, then the screen door. Joey Deem burst out into the night, charged across the lawn, flung open the driver's door of the T-bird, then banged it shut.
The lock clicked.
Sandra Deem stepped out in a bathrobe and hair curlers and stood for a moment on the low stoop. She pressed her fingers across her cheek several times. Then she turned and went inside, closing both doors behind her.
I walked on down the road.
A light burned in the Wilson living room, and I crept up to a window in the darkness. Wilson was seated in an easy chair, a row of Pabst empties lined up on the table beside him. His gaze was fixed on a noisy spot across the room. "And as we move into the top half of the eleventh, inning, it's still all tied up, Yankees six, Brewers six." I could see Kay's immense bare legs hanging over 73 the end of the couch.
I backtracked onto Moon Road and walked the remaining fifty yards down to Central. The Saturday night revelers traffic was heavy, but in the car dealer's lot across the avenue I could make out two figures seated in the front of a blue Dodge. It was the only Chrysler product in three acres of Hondas. I shot them a two armed Nixonesque victory sign, then turned and walked back toward Dot's.
Just after one-thirty I chose my spot. I brought an old Army blanket from the back of my car and placed it under the curtaining arch of a group of forsythia bushes, the kind of cool, secret bushy cave where I'd hidden from the world when I was eight. I stuffed one end of the blanket up into the thicket of branches to form a lumpy, scratchy backrest. The mammoth clump of bushes grew atop a slight rise halfway between a rear corner of the barn and the pear orchard, and I had an unobstructed view of the house, the mailbox, and, off in the other direction to my right, the farm pond.
I settled back and listened to the peepers, and the muted roar of traffic back on Central and from the interstate beyond the woods on the other side of Dot's house. A couple of times I heard rustling in the bushes down at the other end of the barn, and once I watched four men in flak jackets emerge from the barn and stumble into the foliage across Moon Road.
I smeared myself with insect repellant, which had little effect, though my constant scratching and slapping at the gnats and mosquitoes kept me from dozing off. The air was as heavy and tepid as a night in Panama. The fields smelled sweet.
At five to two the back door of the house creaked open. The outside spotlights had been shut off, but in the starlight I could make out McWhirter and the patrolman who'd been in the kitchen moving quickly across the lawn. They climbed into the back seat of Bowman's darkened car and carefully pulled the door shut, click-click. Then it was quiet again. I felt more alone than I wanted to.
At two-ten I was startled to see the back door of the farmhouse ease open yet again. Two figures emerged. One wore a long frilly bathrobe, peach-colored it seemed in the white starlight, and she poked the wobbly beam of a flashlight a few feet ahead of her.
Edith was followed across the veranda and onto the lawn by Dot, who carried towels and was clad in a red terry cloth beach robe, which hung loosely on her slight frame. The two women spoke in low voices and made their way across the damp grass toward the pond.
At the water's edge Dot set the towels on a wooden bench and let her robe fall away. Edith removed her robe and folded it carefully before placing it and the flashlight on the bench. Dot was naked, but Edith had been wearing a calf-length nightgown under her robe, and now Dot helped her hitch it up over her head and place it neatly alongside the folded robe.
Dot stepped into the water first and bent to splash her face and breasts.
"Oh, my! Oh, it's just grand, Edie!"
Edith moved her head about, up, down, right, left, trying to focus on the surface of the black water before stepping down to it. Dot reached out and guided her. The two women stood waist-deep facing each other for a moment before Dot squeezed Edith's hand, let go of it, and let herself fall backwards into the water. She backstroked languidly to the far side of the pond while Edith watched, then turned and sidestroked back again.
Lowering herself into the water with a little cry of astonishment, Edith lay on her back and let her feet bob whitely to the surface. Dot also fell back now, and the two floated in lazy circles, exclaiming softly from time to time, as the moon rose higher above them.
When the women rose dripping from the water after a time, they gently wrapped towels around each other. After a moment Dot let her towel fall away and wrapped Edith's around the both of them as they embraced. They stood holding each other for a long time before they lay down together atop Edith's towel on the moon-whitened grass.
I lay back and looked up at the stars through the leafy branches of my cave, and I thought about my life. I said, Timmy. end user
17
I tried to focus on the luminous dial of my watch, but it kept blurring out. I rubbed my eyes furiously, squinted, brought the watch up to within six inches of my better eye, ba
cked it out to ten inches, and saw it. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them, looked again, and said, "Christ."
It was ten to five.
I poked my head out of the bushes and saw Bowman standing with two cops on the veranda of the farmhouse.
The sky was gray above, pink in the east. I crawled out, shook and stretched as I moved, and crossed the lawn.
"You look like shit, Strachey."
"Where is he?"
"Where Izzy? Dunno. Where Heimie?"
"Greco. Is he inside?"
"Hey, Strachey, did I ever tell you the one about the rabbi and the monsignor who were up in a plane that flew through a storm? This plane is bangin' and bumpin' all over the sky, see, and the monsignor starts crossing himself, and-"
"They got away, didn't they?"
"— and then the rabbi, he starts crossing himself too, and the monsignor, he looks over at the rabbi and he says-"
"Spit it out, Ned. Who fucked up?"
He yawned lightly. "Your money's safe, pal. Not to worry. It's in the kitchen."
"Good. So what happened? I fell asleep."
That brought him to life. "Is that a fact? Fell asleep. Well, I'll be mothered! Hey, you guys hear that? 'Travis McGee takes a Nap.' 'The Deep Blue Snooze.' Hope you didn't flake out too early to miss the late show up by the pond last night, huh, Strachey? You didn't let that get by you, did you? Huh?"
He chuckled lewdly, and the two cops with him picked up the cue and joined in. They looked like shit too.
I said, "What happened? With Greco. Where is he?"
"Beats me. As a matter of fact, not a goddamned thing happened. It was no show. No pickup, no drop-off". The department paid out a lot of overtime, though. Boys don't mind that at all."
"Nothing happened? No car, no phone call, no nothing?
"Zilch."
"Yeah. Well. I guess that could mean a lot of things. So, what's your next step, Ned?"
"Wait. Get some sleep and wait. We'll talk to the Deems again, and this Wilson character. And, I suppose I'm obliged to pay a call on your employer Mr. Trefusis, for the sake of neatness. But you'll see, Strachey, this is outside the neighborhood, only indirectly connected to this Millpond business. It's some tetched boyo who read the papers and got an idea in his head. Even dressed up like a police officer to make the snatch. He's a psychopath, but he wants that hundred grand, and he'll be in touch. The department is checking out all the weirdos we know of who might think up a stunt like this, and we might just land him fast. If not, my guess is he just got nervous last night, and he'll be back. We'll be here when he gets here."
"What about Greco in the meantime? These people are nuts. They might saw off another appendage."
"Well, it's not that I'm not concerned about that. Believe me, I am. But what choice have we got at this point in time?"
He still wasn't onto the finger scam. Nor was he aware of my suspicions about McWhirter. I thought, Should I tell him? I said, "Where's McWhirter? How's he reacting?"
"He was real twitchy a while ago. But he bounced back pretty good. He just jumped in Mrs.
Fisher's car and went over to Central to pick up some doughnuts. The guy is tougher than I figured somebody like that would be."
One of the other two cops jerked his head around and said, "Hey, that's the radio!" He trotted over to Bowman's car, now parked out in the driveway. "Lieutenant, you better take this."
We all jogged puffing over to the car. Bowman spoke with an officer at Division Two Headquarters who told him that a phone call had been placed to Dot Fisher's house six minutes earlier and that the dispatcher had been trying to reach Bowman since then.
"Well, who was it, goddamn it? What was it?"
"I'll play you the tape."
"So play it, play it!"
"Here it is."
McWhirter's voice: Hello?
Male voice; harsh, tense: You want your lover back?
McWhirter (pause): Y-yes.
Voice: In three minutes, call this number I'm gonna give you. Call from another phone. Call 555-8107. And bring the fuckin money!
McWhirter: Let me write it down -
Click. Click, dial tone.
Bowman snapped, "You get a trace?"
"Sorry, Lieutenant. Not enough time."
"What's 555-8107? You get that?"
"It's a pay phone on Broadway in Menands."
"Did you send some men out there, I hope?"
"As soon as the call came in. We tried to raise you, too, but-"
"Well, what have you heard from that car? What's the report?"
"We're… uh, we're trying to raise him now. Hang on."
Bowman's face was all purple again and I could see his pulse pounding on his left temple. I said,
"The caller. On the tape. I've heard that voice somewhere."
"Whose is it?"
"I don't know," I said. "I can't place it. I can't remember."
The money was gone. No one could recall McWhirter's carrying anything when he drove off.
Bowman said they would have noticed that and checked it out. One of the other cops said McWhirter had been wearing fatigues with oversized pockets and a jacket. Whitney Tarkington's hundred grand had slipped away. My hundred grand.
Three minutes later Bowman's radio squawked to life again. "We've still got two cars out at the pay phone on Broadway, Lieutenant. So far, no show."
"Weeping Jesus, we missed them! Crimenee! Damn it! Damn it to hell!"
I squatted on the dewy grass and tried to think. The air was heating up again. I waited for Bowman to ventilate. He took out his frustration on his underlings. They shifted from foot to foot and appeared to be thinking unclean thoughts. I was having a few myself.
When the junior dicks had slunk away, I stood up and said to Bowman, "There are a couple of things I should tell you about Fenton McWhirter."
The eyes in his potato face grew beadier than usual. He said nothing.
"This might or might not have anything to do with the last half hour's developments, but…
McWhirter is not entirely trustworthy."
Now his eyes opened wide and he began to take on his purplish hue again.
"What! You held something back from me, Strachey? What was it? What?"
I described McWhirter's history of well-meaning duplicity. As I laid it out, Bowman's face registered all the colors the Times fashion supplement said would be big in the fall: burgundy, plum, fauve, fuchsia, and finally, disconcertingly, olive.
Through clenched teeth, he hissed, "I was set up."
"Maybe," I said. "Could be. Es posible."
"You-you-you will pay for this!"
I squatted again, looked up at him, and said, "I already have."
That seemed to please him.
Driving back into the city, I caught the WGY six o'clock news, which had it already. Bowman had been swift.
"Capital area police," the newscaster said, "are mounting an all-out search for Fenton McWhirter and Peter Greco, two gay activists from San Francisco, who are wanted in connection with an extortion scheme involving a phony kidnapping.
"A hundred thousand dollars belonging to Albany private investigator Donald M. Strachey was taken in the scam. Strachey was unavailable for comment, but Albany police described the theft as a sophisticated operation in which the two alleged perpetrators tricked Strachey out of the cash, which was paid as ransom after a staged abduction of Greco. The two men planned on using the money for radical political purposes.
"According to police," the report went on, "McWhirter and Greco may be armed and are to be considered dangerous." A description was given of the car they were thought to be driving Dot's little red Ford-and listeners were urged to phone Albany police if the car was spotted.
The weather forecast was for a hot and humid Sunday, followed by a hot and humid Sunday night, and then a hot and humid Monday. I switched over to WMHT, which had on a Schubert octet.
"Armed and considered dangerous." Bowman was having a lovely t
ime.
And yet, something was not right. Before I'd left the Fisher farm I wakened Dot and told her what had happened. She said simply but firmly, "I do not believe it. It isn't true. Fenton would not cheat you or me. Perhaps his judgment has been bad, but his principles are unbending. If he ever stole, it would be from the people he considered to be his enemies. And Peter steal? Oh, my stars, what silliness! No. What you're telling me is all stuff and nonsense, and you should know it!"
Should I? Or was Dot Fisher so sweetly naive that her schoolmarm's imagination was incapable of absorbing an act so cynical as the one Fenton McWhirter now stood- thanks to me-accused 77 of. Dot had met bitterness in her life, and stupidity and small-mindedness, but not, so far as I knew, desperate cunning. If she had never seen it, how could she recognize it?
On the other hand, Dot had spent most of her life among children, who can be as sophisticated in their treachery as the Bulgarian secret police. Maybe she did know cunning when she saw it, and she had not seen it in McWhirter.
And, there was yet another troubling matter: If McWhirter had staged the kidnapping, then who was this third party in the affair, the man who had written the notes, mailed the finger, and then called McWhirter from the pay phone in Menands? The ransom notes had been in neither McWhirter's nor Greco's handwriting; I'd checked that when I went through their belongings.
And the voice on the tape had not been Greco's. I knew that because it was another voice I was certain I had once heard. Somewhere. Sometime. Briefly. I tried again, but I couldn't bring it back.
A local co-conspirator? Or were Dot's instincts sound, and I was missing something again, ignoring the obvious for the seemingly obvious. Crane Trefusis? Maybe. But Dale Overdorf, his thug-about-town, had not been…
My mind shut down. I'd had enough for a few hours. More than enough. I wanted only to sleep.
I stopped at my office, phoned Bowman, and said I'd had second thoughts. I summarized them. I said I was nearly certain that McWhirter and Greco were not conning us all, gave my reasons, and said that both of them were probably in trouble now. I urged him to do something about it. He said he would consider my ideas after he napped for a couple of hours. I understood.
On the other hand,death ds-2 Page 14
