The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  He didn’t reply right away. “She’s not where she can come to the phone,” he said finally. “It would take a little while to arrange that.”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  “All right. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Only hear this. Don’t make any attempt to arrange to have the call traced when we bring her to a phone. It will be a very brief call. Just long enough so you can know she’s all right.”

  He hung up.

  I replaced the receiver and did a little pacing around the room, trying to pretend Allison was somebody else’s girl. That it was just a job, like any other job, to find her and to get her out of the trouble she was in. Be cold and disassociate, I told myself. I worked on that for a couple of minutes or longer, until I felt I was far enough back from it to make decisions that had to be made.

  I telephoned directory assistance in the small Pennsylvania town on the return address of the envelope from Alex’s mother. Using the last name and street address, I was able to get the phone number. I dialed it, but nobody answered. I hung up and began to pack.

  I phoned the desk and asked them to have my bill ready, that we were checking out. When I was finished packing and had made a final check of the room, I put the luggage over by the door, then sat down by the window and stared out at the trees across the street and the water beyond. And I thought some pretty awful thoughts.

  The phone rang a half hour later. Allison was on the line when I answered.

  “Pete?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I guess…I got shoved around some. And they have something tied around my eyes. But I guess I’m okay.”

  “Did they—”

  But the flat male voice came on the line then. “Get out of town,” he said and hung up.

  I settled up at the motel office, put the luggage in the car and drove over to the highway. I made one stop, at a pay phone, and called Jo Sommers. I told her I wouldn’t be in touch for a while, but she was to stay where she was until she heard from me again. I told her it could be for as long as a day or two. She began to chatter, but I cut her off and hung up, then got in the car and headed north.

  When the road widened into a freeway again at the top of the hill, I traveled at a steady 55 miles an hour. I began watching traffic around and behind me.

  I was on a stretch of road that passed through Fort Ord, home of the 7th Infantry Division. There were rifle ranges off to my left, built into the high, buff-colored sand dunes along Monterey Bay. I had read recently that they were planning to trim the 7th from its normal complement of fourteen thousand men to a lighter-weight ten-thousand-man, quick-reaction strike division. Lean and mean and quick.

  I remembered Allison when she had made the lightning sketch of the trees and water below the motel room. She had pumped enormous concentration into just a few moments of marking on paper and created a scenic wonder. That was the nub of her reservations about hanging out with me. She could only work the way she did by that sort of concentration, and the freedom from worry that made it possible.

  I stared at the rearview mirror, ticking off the cars I’d seen since leaving Carmel. Making note of the additions, watching for signs of erratic position changes.

  I left behind the plains and dunes of Fort Ord and drove past artichoke fields. Four miles farther along, Highway 1 pinched down from a freeway to a two-lane highway. Some of the traffic behind me turned off onto Highway 156, leading to Castroville and Prunedale. I continued up Highway 1, past the big steam-generating plant at Moss Landing to the right, and a rambling yard where they sold Mexican pottery on my left.

  Allison had told me she wanted to stop at the pottery lot on our way home. It was the sort of thing she liked to do, window shopping, mostly. She seldom bought things but liked to stroll around the rows of pots and dishes and statues, a little frown pinching her forehead, concentrating on the designs. She called it idea shopping. Out of the blue I got a lump in my throat. I squeezed the steering wheel and studied the traffic behind me.

  At 21.7 miles north of Carmel I passed a Fast Gas station. Next to it was a little shop called Military Collectibles. I had been coming down to the Monterey area for a dozen years. Each time, I told myself, I’d have to stop in there and see what sort of military collectibles they had. Medals and helmets and belt buckles and division patches, would be my guess. I wondered if they stocked any cammies.

  I wondered something else, as well. I wondered who all of us thought we were kidding. They hadn’t bought themselves a couple of days by taking Allison. They’d bought themselves a couple of hours.

  At 22.8 miles north of Carmel I passed Leoninie’s Fruit Stand. The highway widened again ahead of me into a divided freeway, and I gradually increased my speed. I kept increasing it until I was moving along at 80 miles an hour. The closest traffic behind me was back a mile or more. At 27.9 miles and thirty-five minutes out of Carmel, I shot off Highway 1 onto Airport Boulevard in Watsonville.

  I parked and locked the car in a lot behind a small general aviation office. I traveled light. I had my toilet kit, the .38 revolver and the .45 automatic along with spare ammunition. I left the luggage in the car. I went into the office and told a sandy-haired fellow behind the desk I wanted to hire me a plane and pilot for a flight to the Monterey County Airport.

  “It’s an emergency,” I told the man. “I need to be there ten minutes ago.”

  He put aside a pipe and got up to walk past me and stick his head out the door. He called for somebody named Chuck. Ten minutes later Chuck and I had reached the high point of a parabolic curve we flew between the two airports and began our landing glide.

  I had paid for the flight before we took off. When we landed at Monterey, he taxied over toward the terminal building and I got out.

  I went to a phone booth and called my office in San Francisco. Ceejay answered, and I told her somebody had abducted Allison. It cut the legs out from under the small talk.

  “Tell me what you want,” she said grimly.

  “I want you to call Turk Connell at World Investigations. Tell him what happened and tell him I want at least two men—up to four, if he can spare them. Tell him they have to be men willing to harm other men, if it comes to that. He’ll know that, but tell him anyhow. If he can spare only two men, tell him to start them on their way to Monterey. By the time they get here and find a pay phone, I’ll have called their office and told them where I’m staying. If he can spare three or four men, send one of them down to Salinas. When that man gets there, he’s to phone back to the office for instructions, same as the others.”

  “Got it.”

  I thought a moment more. “Then see if you can get in touch with John Foley at the Hall of Justice. Tell him what happened, and say it would be nice if he left word where he’ll be until this is all over with, in case I get into trouble with the local cops and need a reference. I guess that’s it, Ceejay. I have to go find a motel room and think about things. I’ll let you know where I am when I’m settled.”

  “Pete?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m in for the duration.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’ll be here in the office, at the phone, until this is over. Tonight, tomorrow, next week, whenever.”

  “That shouldn’t be necessary, Ceejay. We have a good answering service.”

  “I know. But I’m going to be here. Take care of yourself, and get that girl back.”

  Her voice was a little choked up. I knew how she felt. She’d told me once that taking up with Allison was the only really bright thing she’d ever known me to do. I went over to the rental car counter.

  EIGHTEEN

  World Investigations was, for my money, about the slickest operation around these days. They weren’t as big as Pinkerton’s, but they were large enough to have agents in offices throughout major cities in this country, Europe and parts of Asia. When they needed more manpower, they signed on local investigators for short-term duty. In San Francisco,
I was one of the people they called in when they needed to swell the ranks. And they were the people I went to when I needed backup. They were, for the most part, a daring bunch of scalawags intent on getting the job done.

  The two operatives Turk Connell sent me were named Collins and Reinhardt. Collins was a medium-built man so bland-looking he could blend into the wall behind him. He wore rimless glasses but said they were just a part of his cover. Reinhardt looked the way his name sounded, like a Teutonic beer salesman. He was big and stout with an oversized baby face. But I’d seen Reinhardt in action. He looked like an oaf, but he was sly and could move like the wind.

  We met at the motel I’d checked into just off the freeway in Monterey. They told me a third man would be on his way to Salinas late that afternoon. A fourth man would be on his way down as well the next morning. I told the two men everything except the specific role Jo Sommers had played in the extortion racket that was behind it all. I just told them that my client had participated in some illegalities I didn’t want the local cops to find out about. They took it all in with a shrug. Good men.

  I’d found myself using the word racket when I mentioned the extortion operation. I’d never associated the word racket with what Jo had been a part of until just then. But that’s what it was. The woman just had a way of talking a man out of his britches and all good sense along with it. Maybe it took what happened to Allison for me to be able to see it all a little more clearly.

  “What sort of idiot would go around doing this kind of shit wearing cammies?” Reinhardt asked of nobody in particular.

  “The sort who runs a personal ad in Soldier of Fortune magazine offering to go anywhere and do anything,” said Collins.

  I looked up at him and blinked. “I think you two have already earned your fee.”

  They frowned back at me.

  “I’ll bet that’s exactly the sort of man we’re looking for. And that could be where the man behind it all went to find somebody to do his killing. It had never occurred to me.”

  “You’ve had other things on your mind,” said Reinhardt. “The thing is now, how do we go about finding the right balls to kick?”

  “I’ve thought about that some,” I told them. “From the conversation I had with the man on the phone, it’s set up so they only have two days. The deal was, they were to release Allison by then. If they did release her and she went on home, there would be nothing to keep me from coming back down here to finish whatever I was doing before. And they sure as hell know I’d be down here like a shot if they didn’t release Allison when they said they would. So whatever they want to do, they figure they can accomplish in a couple of days. I think they plan to find and snuff Jo Sommers, or do something at the Sommers home, or both.”

  I turned to Reinhardt. “I think you should get on over to the motel in Salinas and cover Jo until the next man gets down here. There’s no reason they should know where she is, but she’s an unpredictable woman, and she might have gotten lonely and started to telephone friends to pass the time.

  “I want Collins to help me get into the Sommers home without anybody knowing I got in there, then he can come back here and try to reach that number in Pennsylvania. What we’re looking for is the name of the skipper or the executive officer of the ship Alex’s father was serving on in the last days of World War Two. I assume it was his father. Mrs. Kilduff should be able to tell us. Or maybe the man himself will answer the phone.”

  “If I can’t raise somebody soon,” said Collins, “how about I try to get somebody out of our Scranton office to shag on over there and track down people.”

  “Fine idea.”

  “Or I could just give it all to Scranton and come join you at the Sommers home,” he suggested.

  “No, until we get a little more depth, you’re better off here. When the man with cammies shows up, I want you to be available as backup in either direction. I’ve lost him twice. I don’t want to lose him again. It’s one of the reasons I called you people. And killing the son of a bitch won’t be good enough. We’ve got to shake him until he tells us things. If he shows up at the Sommers house, you can be there inside of seven minutes. If it’s Salinas, you can make it in under twenty. That’s a long time, but I have faith in your partner. Did you bring hand radios?”

  Reinhardt nodded. “But you might as well take mine. They won’t have Salinas range.”

  “Okay, but I’ll only use it to goose Collins if the man in the cammies shows up. If either of you want to talk to me, ring the Sommers home twice, hang up and call back. I’m not taking any other calls.”

  “Sounds good,” said Reinhardt. “You want a pump?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a shotgun in the car. You want it?”

  “No, I might hit our man in the throat with something like that. Just remember. Right now we’re not concerned about extortion or wartime heroics. We just want Allison. Period.”

  I phoned Jo and told her about Reinhardt and that he’d be checking into a motel unit near her own. She started to complain about it, so I told her about Allison. She was smart enough to shut up after that.

  Reinhardt took off for Salinas, and Collins and I drove up to a large shopping center. I waited in the car while he went in and bought us both some dark work clothes. He changed into his in the car while I drove us over to a truck rental place. Collins went in and filled out the forms to lease a small, enclosed moving van. I showed him on a map how to get to the street the Sommers home was on and gave him the address.

  I climbed into the back of the van. Collins closed the door and drove us on out to Carmel Highlands, backed into the driveway of the Sommers home, used the key I’d given him to let himself in the front door and went around to open the garage door. Then he opened the rear doors of the van and clamped them back flat against the sides of the truck. He got back into the cab and backed the van up right to the garage entrance. I stepped out of the van into the garage. Collins followed.

  The cat was waiting and yowling. I fed it, then showed Collins through the place, so he’d know the layout if he had to come back on business. I changed into the dark clothes while Collins got a beer out of the refrigerator and went into the front room to keep an eye on the van and make sure nobody came nosing around it. He also found a phone jack in there, so he got the phone out of the study to make a couple of calls. He still couldn’t get an answer at the Kilduff home in Pennsylvania, so he called the World Investigations office in Scranton and arranged for somebody to hustle over to Alex’s hometown.

  When Collins had finished his beer, he went back out and went through the rigmarole of moving the van away from the garage door, closing it up, then closing the garage door and locking it from inside.

  “Drive around some to make sure nobody’s interested in your load,” I told him on his way back through the house.

  “Right. I’ll call when I get back to the motel.”

  He drove off and I began taking apart the house, looking for the spiral address book with a black cover. It was a long afternoon. The phone rang a couple of times, but not with the prearranged double ring. I kept on searching. I learned quite a bit about the personal life of Haywood Sommers and his wife Jo, but I didn’t find the address book until it was nearly dark out. I had moved out to the garage and used my penlight to begin going through the cartons up in the storage loft among the rafters. The spiral pad was on top of the tapes in the easiest carton to get to. I took it back inside the house proper to a corner of the doctor’s den and went through it page by page. While I was doing that the phones went off again. They rang twice and fell silent. I’d brought the phone Collins had used back to the den. When it rang again I answered.

  It was Reinhardt, with some disappointing news. “The man who was coming down here is delayed. He might not make it until ten or eleven tonight.”

  “That means you’ll have to stick there. Do you have a good vantage point?”

  “Yeah. The units are in a U-shape. I’m at the top of one of
the legs. She’s partway down the side opposite me. I can keep an eye on her roofline, the courtyard and whoever drives in. The place is well lighted. I’m set.”

  “Okay. You’d better let Collins know you’re sticking.”

  “I will. I was just talking by phone with the lady. She’s bitching about wanting to go out for some hot food.”

  “Tell her to phone some place that delivers. She stays put.”

  “Right.”

  I hung up and went back to the spiral address book. Partway through it, something became apparent. I wasn’t going to find the name I wanted. A few of the names had been heavily scored out, so I couldn’t read them. One of the blacked-out names was opposite the code designation CA 35. There were other names throughout the book that hadn’t been scored out, but I didn’t find the name Wakefield, nor Larry Pitt. The doctor must have crossed out the names of former patients, or in Gus Wakefield’s case, the brother, who lived in the Monterey area. He would remember them well enough, since he traveled in their circles, and it must have struck him as a bit of ethical courtesy to strike those names to safeguard the rough parts of his neighbors’ pasts.

  But then, I wondered, how did Alex manage to identify them? I studied the blacked out names closer and figured I had the answer. Alex had seen the book before the names were crossed out. The ink that scored the names was a brighter hue than that of the other writing in the book. Sommers probably had crossed them out after Alex had put the extortion program into operation, after Billy Carpenter had given him hell thinking Sommers was behind the extortion attempts.

  I put the address book back into the doctor’s desk. The phones rang again, steadily. I prowled around the darkened home. I was getting tired of the place. I was tired of nothing happening. Even the cat had left. I phoned Collins back at the motel to see if anything was going on.