CHAPTER 28
I met Tama again late that afternoon in the hills of Uranie Cemetery where the coffins of Bob and Susan West were being lowered into the damp brown earth.
“Ugh!” Tamara had cried. “Why do you want to go to that?”
“Tradition, I guess. Policemen always go to murder victims’ funerals. They keep thinking the murderer will show up looking guilty, and maybe even confess.”
She looked at me skeptically. “And do they?”
“Not so’s you could count them.” I winced as a pang stabbed me in the ribcage. “Anyway, Bob West saved my life, remember? It’s the least I can do.”
French cops, I saw, were no different from American ones. Tama was covertly scanning the mob of several hundred curiosity seekers, grimly waiting for the murderer to betray himself, when he caught a glimpse of me on the edge of the crowd, where my baroque appearance was causing something of a stir in itself. He groaned theatrically and turned his back. I grinned, and slowly made my way to him. I got there just as the first handfuls of dirt were being tossed by mourners onto the cheap wooden coffins.
“What progress with the great letter watch?” I asked. “I take it you haven’t grabbed anyone mailing a finger or even a gas bill to the Payton estate?”
He favored me with a dirty look. “You have some better ideas?” he said sourly.
As it turned out, only the kidnappers did.
While Tama and Tamara and I stood that evening in the reception lounge watching The Quest for Truth taxi in to its berthing area, somebody strolled by Tamara’s Mercedes on the other side of the building and slipped an envelope onto the front seat. We found it there twenty minutes later, after Payton had cleared immigration and customs and had spoken briefly with Tama.
“Damn fool wants me to promise not to pay any ransom without notifying him first,” Payton grumbled as we walked toward the car. “Says it’s against the law and a million other things, blah blah blah. Well, screw him, it’s my money and my wife.”
And my political career, I added to myself. Aloud I said, “Where is this five million? Not in that briefcase, I take it?”
“Hell no, it’s sitting in a safe on the plane, and that’s where it’s staying.”
We reached the car and I swung the door open for Tamara. “What’s this?” she said curiously, holding up the envelope.
“Oh oh,” I said, taking it from her. “Just get in and drive off normally. We don’t want Tama getting any ideas.”
When we were rolling, I switched on the overhead light and read them the message.
YOUR WIFE IS ALIVE AND WELL. NOW YOU HAVE FIVE MILLIONS CASH. FOR TESTED YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS WE WILL ASK YOU JUST ONE MILLION FOR NOW. TOMORROW NIGHT TUESDAY OCTOBER 26 ONE PERSONNE WILL TAKE ONE MILLION, I REPEATE ONE MILLIONS, IN A BREEFCASE AND WITH MOTOCYCLE HIS GOING TO THE TIARE BAR AT 19:30. WAIT IN THE BAR UNTIL WELL’ WILL BE CONTACT. EVEN A LITTLE SOUPCON OF POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND YOUR WIFE WILL BE KILL IMMEDIATELY WITH NO DELAY!
“It looks like we’re off to the races,” I said to Payton. “But it’s up to you. We can do as they say, or we can bring Tama and Schneider into it and try to follow the bagman.”
“What do you think?”
I turned it over in my mind before replying. “I think it’s a smart move by the kidnappers,” I said. “The payoff is always the most dangerous moment for a kidnapper. By only asking for one fifth of the money now they’re trying to tempt us into setting a trap. We’d lull them by letting them have the million without trying any tricks. Then on the $4 million payoff, just when they think everything’s going smoothly, the cops would jump in and grab them.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Payton.
“That’s what’s so clever. Suppose we do give them this one million, just as bait. We’re then saying to ourselves, ‘They got that with no trouble, no one is going to pass up the chance to grab another easy four mill.’ That’s what they want us to say. But remember: they’ve already got one million free and clear. That’s a lot of loot. Suppose they just fold up their tents with it and we never hear from them again. We’re sitting there waiting for the next ransom note, all ready to spring a trap, and they’re off in Brazil laughing at us. Like I said, clever.”
“But what about my mother, in that case?” Tamara asked plaintively.
I shrugged helplessly. “On the other hand, I think they mean their threats this time. Holding a captive alive for a couple of weeks on a small island like this must be hell on their nerves. If the cops messed it up again by grabbing the payoff man, I think they’d be ready to cut and run.” I didn’t have to tell them what would most likely happen in that case. “At least by paying the first million there’s still some hope.”
Payton sighed. Whatever decision he made had at least a fifty percent chance of being wrong. And being wrong would almost certainly mean a dead wife, not to mention a dead hope for a seat in the Senate.
I waited for him to tell me what to do.
When the rich need something, they go out and buy it. In this case it was a motorcycle. Payton handed me a Bank of Polynesia check with his signature at the bottom. “You’re the guy who’s driving it, so you’re the one who better pick it out. just fill in the amount on the check.”
I stuffed the check in my pocket and went out to look for a used 500cc Honda. As long I was getting one, I’d get one that had some swift to it and that was already broken in. Though what good it would do me I didn’t know.
As I left the house, I could hear Payton talking on the phone to Bobby Lee Tanner somewhere back in New Mexico for the benefit of Colonel Schneider’s tap. “Naw, we’re just waiting for them to send the next note,” he was saying. “Once we see what the payoff picture is, we can start making some plans.”
It’s always a pleasure to listen to politicians lying—they do it so naturally.
A million bucks, even in $100 bills, takes up a fair amount of bulk: it was more like a small suitcase than a briefcase that I carried into the Tiare Bar at 7:30 that evening. I set it on the floor under a table and ordered coffee. Then I waited.
It was already dark, but the Tiare Bar was an open, well-lighted café on the main street of town just across from the parking lot on the waterfront. It would be easy with binoculars to spot me from a couple of hundred yards away. Or any cops that might be casually reading newspapers in doorways or under streetlights. Twenty minutes later I yawned and ordered another coffee. I was halfway through it when the waitress came to tell me I was wanted on the phone. With one eye on the suitcase, I walked over to the bar and raised the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“LaRoche?”
“Yeah?”
“You have forty-five seconds to take the money to the bar of Le Frégate.” The voice was heavily muffled, and spoke English with a peculiar sing-song inflection.
“What—”
The phone clicked in my ear.
Le Frégate wasn’t far, a couple of long blocks away from the waterfront, but forty-five seconds wasn’t much time to get there, even on a high-powered Honda Silver Wing. I cursed, and ran for the door.
Fifty-six seconds and a dozen traffic violations later I puffed into the air-conditioned cool of Le Frégate. I’d hardly set down the suitcase when the phone on the bar rang. A moment later a puzzled bartender pushed the phone in my direction.
“The Madrepore,” said the same voice. “One minute, twenty seconds.”
I was running even before I heard the phone click off.
The Madrepore was a posh restaurant on the second level of the downtown Vaima Center, and I had to run two red lights to get there. I left the bike on the sidewalk at the foot of the stairs and puffed my way up, the million dollars swinging by my side. With my half head of hair and the stitches sprouting from my scalp, a suitcase in hand, and a wild gleam in my eye, I was a Maître d’s nightmare. His eyes widened and his mouth began to work, but I brushed past as I hurried through the restaurant and around the corner to the bar in the rear. Ten seconds l
ater the phone began to ring. I reached for it without waiting for the indignant Maître d’ to arrive.
“Go out the back door and down the stairs to the garage,” said the voice. “On your left you will see a light blue Renault. Get in it.”
“A real fast food restaurant,” I said to the poor Maître d’ as I shoved my way past him and out into the corridor.
Below the restaurant was a public parking garage. I found the Renault with no trouble and got in. There were keys in the ignition and a piece of paper on the seat.
RESTAURANT AORAI, ARUE, read the note. SIX MINUTES. GIVE THIS TO PATRON.
Not bad, I had to admit as I drove off. If any cops had been on my trail, they’d be waiting for me to return to the motorcycle in the front of the building, not looking for LaRoche at the wheel of a pale blue Renault.…
I didn’t dare jump any lights while driving a car, so it took me some eight minutes to get to the Arue restaurant. I parked on the side of the road, and handed the note to the baffled Chinese sitting behind the Aorai’s cash register. I was telling him that some mistake had been made when the phone beside his elbow began to ring.
For the next stop I continued on through Arue a couple of miles and up One Tree Hill, where the Hotel Tahara’a was built on a sharp promontory overlooking the bay. Whoever was making the phone calls had obviously worked out his timetable with care. Twenty seconds after I walked into the lower-level bar by the swimming pool the familiar sing-song voice was directing me back towards town.
Smart, I said to myself. They wait in the bushes somewhere along the road and watch me go by on my way to the Tahara’a. Five minutes later they watch me come back. Any car they spotted following me both times has got to be the cops. At that point the game would end and they’d go home and slit Danielle Payton’s throat. I drove on.
On the other side of Arue, not far from the Hotel Taaone, was one of Tahiti’s two drive-in theaters. I bought a ticket and drove on in. John Wayne was riding across the screen. I parked the Renault somewhere near the center of the lot and switched off the ignition. I sat back and let out a sigh. The run was almost over and so far I’d learned nothing at all except that the kidnappers were a lot smarter than poor battered old LaRoche.
Following the instructions I’d got at the Hotel Tahara’a, I left the suitcase in the car and walked back to the snack bar at the rear of the lot. By the time I got there the Renault was lost to view.
I ordered a Coke and sipped it slowly, enjoying its tart coldness. Somewhere, far away, a motorcycle engine was racing. It faded away into the night, and I walked back to the car, a nervous half-smile on my face. It was as I expected.
The suitcase with its million dollars was gone.
CHAPTER 29
Tama was icy and Schneider furious about our activities of the night before, but short of throwing Payton and me into jail there was nothing they could do about it. They could shout and bellow, of course, and they did, but in the face of Payton’s total impenitence they began to run down.
“I’ve set them up for you,” he insisted stubbornly. “When they try to work the next ransom payoff we’ll be ready for them.”
“I still say—” fumed Tama.
“LaRoche has told you about the routine they ran him through last night,” said Payton irritably. “Do you really think you could have followed him as far as the drive-in in that stolen car without being spotted and getting my wife killed. Well?” He leaned over Tama’s desk, his chin thrust out aggressively. He looked like two hundred million angry dollars.
“Hrmph.” Tama fiddled with an intricately carved Marquesan warclub that had made an appearance upon his desk since the last time I had been in his office. I had no doubt at all that he would have loved to use it for its original purpose: to brain both of us. “You keep saying you’ve set them up for the next time. I say, if there’s a next time.”
I looked at my watch. 9:41. “Gotta go to the hospital,” I said, without telling them why. They paused in their argument to eye the stitches sticking out from my skull, nodded indifferently, and picked up where they’d left off.
I had no intention of sitting around all day waiting for the out-patient butchers to fiddle around with my scalp any more than they already had, so on the way I stopped off first at the office of Jackie Laurent the swinging doctor. He eyed my scalp disdainfully. “What a bunch of clowns,” he said, “it’s a wonder they left you alive.” He poked and trimmed, cut and sewed, and although I left feeling no better, I might have looked a trifle more presentable. His touch was deft and delicate.
“You’ve got the good hands,” I said. “You’d be a great shortstop for the Giants.”
I left him studying his fingers thoughtfully.
Ten minutes later I’d picked up Mareta at the hospital and carried her stuff out to the battered Renault that had replaced the demolished Fiat. Mareta walked slowly, and with a noticeable limb, but with determination.
She tossed her head in the morning sun and flashed her teeth. “As last,” she cried gaily, “at last!”
I drove her to the home she and Patrick had shared in a residential area of Papeete not far from the big Mormon church. There was a small Peugeot station wagon in the garage, and while she spent forty minutes in the house getting some of her affairs together I managed to get it started and to the neighborhood filling station for a quick check.
When I got back she was sitting on the porch, two suitcases and a box of kitchen equipment beside her. I loaded them into the station wagon and handed her into the front seat. Fifteen minutes later we were somewhere in the Faaa hills on the other side of town. We bounced along for a quarter of a mile on a dirt road cut through the tall grass and choked with weeds, till we came to a small beaverboard structure that was more than a shack but less than a house. The faded green paint was peeling off but it was nestled in the shade of an enormous old ironwood tree and was the only habitation for hundreds of yards. “Nice,” I said.
She smiled wistfully. “It’s all mine,” she said. “The house at any rate. All this was my grandparents’ land. It’s been in the courts for twenty-five years now over how it gets divided. In the meantime I built that little house when I left the Marquesas. I lived there for a year before I met Patrick.” She shook her head in dismayed wonder.
“Even so, you must own the Papeete house, now that—”
She turned on me fiercely, her eyes flashing. “I don’t want to ever set foot there! I’ll take my stuff out and sell it. This is my house,” she hissed.
“Sure.” I carried her things in while she set herself to housecleaning. Ten minutes later she looked up and grimaced. “I’m so stupid. No bed. I’ll have to go back.”
“I’ll go with you. My car’s still at your place, remember?”
In Pirae I helped her shove a mattress and some further items of housekeeping into her station wagon and offered to drive her back, but she shook her head. “You’ve done too much already.” She looked down at her feet. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Don’t try.” I looked into her eyes and then we moved forward simultaneously and our arms wrapped around each other. Her lips found mine and her tongue probed softly between my lips. She was taller than I’d realized. After a moment I could feel her stiffened nipples through the light T-shirt she wore. I clutched her tighter but with a gasp she pushed herself away. My breath was coming irregularly.
“Later,” she said huskily. “Let me get things ready. For…for…a housewarming!”
I watched her in the rearview mirror as I drove off. She stood on the side of the road and waved until I was out of sight. I was touched and pleased. She was a nice girl, especially when you considered her against most of the other inhabitants of the cesspool I’d found myself in here in Tahiti.
I sighed, and picked up the envelope that I’d found lying on the front seat when I’d got in the car thirty seconds before.
Some detective, I said to myself bitterly. People follow you all over Papeete and you’
re too busy talking to girls to notice. Suppose that was a bomb they’d been wiring under your seat while you were hauling suitcases around up in the hills.…
I stopped in the shade of a red-flowered flamboyant tree to read the note. It was the same stenciled illiteracy as before, but this time it told me that since the first payoff had gone so satisfactorily I’d find instructions for the next one at Danielle Payton’s house in the mountains.
“Well, why the hell can’t you just give them to me now?” I groused aloud as I started the Renault and shoved it into gear. I drove a hundred yards in the direction of Mahina before my brain began to belatedly work, and stopped again. “Oh,” I said. “Ambush time.”
There was a constricted feeling in my gut as I drove past Avenue Bruat and all its offices of organized law enforcement, all of them filled with eager policemen whose greatest joy would be to convoy me to the Mahina hills. But I kept going, and continued on to Punaauia. Neither Payton nor Tamara was at home. Something else was though, the little .25 Biretta I’d nobbled from the Wests’ bedside table. It was still inside the toe of a brown shoe at the back of the closet, held there by a wadded-up sock. I stuck it in my pocket and returned to the car, my heart beating a little faster and with the first squirts of adrenaline flowing in my system.
By the time I got to Mahina I was tense enough to be snapped in two. As I drove up the mountain road to the Payton’s turnoff I hugged the nearside of the road and kept a constant watch in the rearview mirror, on the heights above me, and on the clumps of bushes and trees that passed alongside. I got out to open the gate only after a long hard look at the surroundings, but finally I shrugged. If there was a sniper in the hills with a high-powered rifle and a good scope my ass was grass and I’d never know it. There was nothing you could do against an isolated gunman, as a number of public figures had learned to their cost. I swallowed nervously and opened the gate.
The trees and growth that hugged the road on the way in offered dozens of likely spots for lethal assault, and it was all I could do to keep from trying to drive in at 100 miles an hour. But the stillness was absolute, and nothing at all happened. I crested the last hill and coasted on down into the high grass that grew around Danielle Payton’s Japanese playpen. The gardener obviously hadn’t been sent out from Punaauia for some time now.
Trouble in Tahiti Page 18
