I was not concerned, at the moment, with the cold light of logic and statistics; and of course I was no longer with the Bureau. Their special agents are skillful and trained to a fine, admirable edge of perfection, and under the new kidnaping laws they can go into action, officially on a kidnaping after twenty-four hours, and unofficially at once. But one of their most admirable qualities, in a kidnaping case, can work against you.
We are not a police state, and the Bureau will bend over backward to make that point. When questioning a suspect, they leave the door open and tell him so. He is free to leave at any time. He is free to use the phone as often as he wishes. But the agents are relentless too, and astonishingly patient and skillful at questioning. More often than not they will get the information, they’re after, and if it adds up to an arrest either by themselves on the Federal government’s behalf or by the local authorities on a state’s, they will first summon a physician to examine their man and put in writing that he was not beaten or maltreated. Then, and only then, will they act.
I thought of all this before answering Marianne, and then I told myself there is another way to deal with kidnapers. What I told myself was this: I am a private eye who lives too often on the thin edge of violence, and because that was what I was, and because I had worked two years for the Bureau and remembered enough of their skills and techniques, Marianne and the twins were no ordinary victims of kidnaping. I did not tell myself this cockily, but it was fact.
“We’re not going to call the cops,” I growled finally. “But here’s the thing, Marianne. I don’t think they’ll wait, because waiting gives us time to make plans. Besides, you don’t need time to collect ransom money: you just have to deliver Ilya’s letter.”
“Did you ever see him?” Marianne cut in. “Ilya?”
Tell her Ilya had been murdered, in cold blood, in my office? That was all she’d need to hear, I said: “I saw him. It’s not important now. We’ll get to that when we have the twins back.” I repeated, “Here’s the thing. They’re going to move, and move fast. And when they do they’re going to want you to deliver Ilya’s letter. You, Marianne.”
“Me? Oh God, Chet, I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”
“If I’m right, you’ve got to. You’re a woman, and you’re upset, so they won’t have to worry about you. That’s the way they’ll want to work it.”
As if to drive my point home, the telephone rang. Marianne didn’t quite jump a foot. She took a deep breath and shuddered. She looked at the crib near which we were standing. On the second ring Dr. Nickerson called: “I’ll take it.”
“No,” Marianne said. “Let me take it.”
I followed her into the hall. Mrs. Gower hovered near the phone table, staring at the phone. If looks could have killed, whoever was calling would have rolled over and died.
“Them?” Mrs. Gower asked in a furious whisper. “You think it’s them already?”
I looked at Jack Morley over her shoulder. His face was tense and white.
Marianne picked up the phone on the third ring.
“Hello?”
I saw her shoulders slump.
“I … I know, Suzanne,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just forgot. The twins … one of them isn’t feeling well. Yes, the heat, I guess.”
She hung up. “A beach party,” she said, her voice empty and flat. “I was supposed to go to a beach party.”
I glanced at my watch. It was twenty to six. Time enough for the kidnapers to go wherever they were going? I thought so, and I still thought they’d contact us any minute now. But I could have been wrong six ways from Sunday.
I squeezed Marianne’s hand. We waited.
Chapter Seven
The call came at ten after six.
This time Marianne grabbed it on the first ring. She’d been standing there, chain-smoking.
“Yes?”
Her back was to us. Her free hand rose to the blond hair brushed back over her ear, and the fingers clutched there.
“Yes. I understand. Are they all right? You haven’t.… Yes. I know.”
She turned to me, cupping the phone’s mouthpiece with her hand. Her eyes were wild and desperate. “Chet. Oh God, Chet. They want to know who owns the Chrysler outside. Your car. They … they’re watching the house.”
Maybe that explained the delay, I thought. Now that it had come I felt cool, detached. I wanted to get it over with. I said: “Tell them the truth. You sent for me. I’m the twins’ godfather.”
Marianne spoke into the phone again. “I’m a widow. I sent for the childrens’ godfather. I—yes, all right. It’s a blue-and-white Ford. In the garage. You haven’t—right away. Yes, I understand. I have it. I can—hello? Hello!”
She let the receiver fall. I picked it up. The line was dead.
“They set up the delivery?”
“I asked them. They wouldn’t say. I asked them how the twins were.”
“That figures. They want to keep you scared.” I prompted: “The delivery. What’s the setup?”
“They wouldn’t discuss the return of the twins till after I delivered Ilya’s letter.” Marianne sobbed. “Maybe they’re dead already. Maybe they.… They’re so helpless, Chet.” She began to cry.
I slapped her face. Not hard, but hard enough. Dr. Nickerson took an angry step toward me. Jack held his arm.
“How soon?” I urged.
“Right away. They want me out of the house right away. The letter. I’m to address it to a Mr. Allen, care of General Delivery at the Main Post Office. I’m to deliver it there, alone. In the Ford. But it’s closed. Isn’t the post office closed? If they don’t pick it up till tomorrow; the twins.…”
“The Main Post Office is open till nine every night,” I cut her off. “Let’s have the letter, Jack.”
Giving Marianne the letter and a ballpoint pen, Jack said: “Pappy Piersall’s in town, Chet. We could—”
I shook my head. Pappy Piersall, a fellow classmate of mine and Jack’s at the FBI Academy, was still with the Bureau. “Marianne’s going,” I told Jack. “I’m going with her. That’s all.”
“They said alone,” Marianne protested. She had finished addressing an envelope.
“Where’s the Ford?”
“In the garage.”
“I’ll get in back, on the floor. Did they give you a route back from the post office?”
Marianne nodded. “Along Pennsylvania Avenue to M Street. M clear into Georgetown.”
“They have a man watching the house. They have someone with the kids, someone who just called. There can’t be an army of them. I’ll get out a couple of blocks from the post office. I want to be there when Mr. Allen makes his pickup.”
Jack said, angrily: “What’s the matter with you? That’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. The man making the pickup will probably have to call in to—”
“You’re a nice guy, Jack,” I said. “But let me handle this, will you? And we’ve got a job for you.”
“What’s that?” Jack brightened.
“Stay here. They’re probably going to call back to check on the twins’ godfather. That’s you. And the name, if they ask, is Drum.”
“Sure, but what difference could the name possibly make? They don’t know you.”
I remembered Laschenko outside Lucienne Duhamel’s summer place last night. Remembered how scared Ilya had been. Suppose Laschenko was the man behind the kidnaping? He wouldn’t be about to dirty his own hands with it, but he could be pulling the strings. The kidnapers might know my name, and my line of work. If they did, their believing I was on ice might help us.
I told Jack that, then asked Marianne: “Ready?”
“I’m so scared I can hardly breathe. But I’m—ready.”
Dr. Nickerson said: “See here, I don’t approve of my patient—”
“Got any better ideas?” Tension had tightened the muscles of my calves. The hardest thing was just standing still, just waiting.
Dr. Nickerson had no better ideas. He glared at me.
Then he stuck his hand out and I shook it. “She is a very brave woman, Mr. Drum,” he said. “Don’t let her down.”
Less than a minute later Marianne and I entered the garage through the hall door. After I got in back on the floor of the Ford, Marianne opened the garage door. Thirty seconds after that we had backed out and were on our way.
Chapter Eight
As she drove, Marianne told me she hadn’t seen anyone loitering outside the house. Several cars had been parked on the street, though, and she hadn’t been able to identify all of them as belonging to her neighbors. So far as she knew, we weren’t being followed. But that was the part that worried me; a good tail would be hard to spot, and Marianne was no pro.
“Do I just drive home after delivering the letter?” she asked me.
“Right home, exactly the way they told you.”
“Then what?”
Then, I thought, she waits while the heavy-footed seconds drag by, while the leaden minutes build. But I said: “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
We drove for ten minutes. It was still light out, and hot.
“Lafayette Park,” Marianne said. “We’re almost there.”
We turned right, then left a moment later. East Executive Avenue, I thought, and Treasury Place. I wished I could see. We were close.
The car stopped.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing. Red light.”
I asked quickly: “Where are we?”
“14th Street corner. Near the Willard Hotel.”
Two blocks from the post office, which was on 12th and Pennsylvania. It might be my best chance.
“Inside lane?”
“Yes.”
“What’s ahead of you?”
“A cab.”
“With a fare?”
“Empty.”
“Behind you?”
“A bus. Chartered, it says.”
I sat up on the floor. The rear door would open on a space between two parked cars.
Marianne knew then what I had in mind. Her breath caught on three words: “The light’s changing.”
“I’m going. Do what they told you to. All the way.”
I opened the door, jumped out in a crouch, shut the door and was on the sidewalk less than a minute after I’d first touched the handle. It had all been too quick for Marianne. She stalled the car putting it into first. The starter ground and ground, then the engine caught and the Ford lurched away. When it crossed 14th Street I started walking in the same direction.
The Post Office Department and the Main Post Office held down the southwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street. Diagonally across from it was the Raleigh Hotel, and a taxi line. Marianne’s Ford was still parked outside the post office when I got there. I stayed on the north side of the street, heading for the taxi line.
I poked my head inside the window of the first cab and said: “Can you pull out of line?”
The driver gave me a surprised look. “That’s what I’m here for, mister.”
“I mean, pull out and wait?”
He nodded slowly. “I got a meter.” Crushing a cigarette out in the dashboard ash tray, he asked: “Wait where?”
“Up the block.” I gave him a ten-dollar bill. The look of surprise hadn’t quite left his face yet and that wasn’t likely to chase it away.
“I’ll be in the post office,” I said. “Keep your eyes open. If I come out heading this way, get ready to roll. If I stay on the south side of the street, you’ve earned yourself a quick ten bucks.”
“You law?” Then he shook his head and answered his own question: “Not with the kind of swindle sheet where you can toss around a sawbuck like that.”
“Well?”
“I ain’t giving you back the ten bucks, mister, am I? You bought yourself a deal.”
I nodded and crossed the street just as Marianne came out of the post office, climbed into the Ford and swung it in a wide U-turn to head back along Pennsylvania Avenue in the direction we’d come.
A moment later I entered the post office. It was cool in there. I hadn’t realized, till then, that I was sweating. Only two of the grilled windows were open for business at this hour. The sign on one of them said: Parcel Post, General Delivery. On the other: Stamps & Money Orders.
I went over to the General Delivery window. The balding, bespectacled clerk was canceling the stamp on an envelope. I read the address upside down. Mr. Allen, General Delivery, Main P.O., Washington, D.C. Marianne’s handwriting, of course, and Ilya Alluliev’s letter.
The clerk shoved the letter into the “A” slot on the General Delivery board to his left. “Help you, mister?”
“A dozen stamped envelopes, please.”
He gave me a mildly exasperated stare and jerked a thumb to his right. “Other window.”
I bought my envelopes there and took them over to a wooden table against one wall. It was still too early for the kidnaper to make his move, I thought. I lit a cigarette and spread the envelopes on the table blotter in front of me.
Seven o’clock. A man and a woman came in. He had a camera case slung over his shoulder, she was carrying a nylon bag that said Capital Airlines.
“I’d like to buy some of those there commemorative stamps,” the man said.
“Room 6505,” the clerk told him. “But the sales windows are only open from nine to four.”
“But we’re flying home at midnight,” the man protested.
“Winston-Salem,” the woman said. “That’s in North Carolina.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the clerk said. “6505 opens at nine o’clock Monday morning.”
Grumbling, the tourists left. Seven-fifteen. Marianne would be home by now, waiting. I wrote this and that on a few of my envelopes. I smoked another cigarette. A man came in. He looked seedy and furtive and sinister, but all he did was buy a half-dozen postcards. Hell, he was probably the president of a bank. I was projecting.
Seven-twenty-five, and a quick flurry of business. How much does it cost to mail a letter air mail to West Germany? a woman wanted to know. Fifteen cents anywhere in Western Europe, ma’am. I know, but West Germany? Fifteen cents, ma’am. A man mailed a package, insuring it for fifty bucks. Another man bought a money order for seventy-nine ninety-five.
Alone again. One of the clerks told the other a dirty joke. I’d heard it before.
He would come for the letter, I thought. He’d then make contact with his partner. Probably a phone call. If he left on foot I’d follow him and nab him after he made the call. My hand tightened on the pen. I’d scare him, hurt him. And he’d see the threat in my eyes. He’d take me where they were. If he left by car, I had the taxi waiting. The important thing was to put fear into him, and fast. It would be easy, I figured, thinking of Marianne, back in Georgetown, waiting.
Twenty to eight. A kid entered the Post Office. I relaxed and doodled on some more envelopes. The kid was about twelve years old, with a towhead and freckles. He went right over to the General Delivery window and said importantly:
“Anything in General Delivery for Mr. Allen?”
My fist clenched. I broke the pen.
The important thing was to scare him, hurt him, make him know in the first few seconds of contact that I meant business.
A twelve-year-old kid?
Chapter Nine
That’s timing for you,” the balding clerk said with a smile as he got Ilya Alluliev’s letter down from the “A” pigeonhole on the wall. He was still in good humor from the joke he had told. “Came in less than an hour ago.”
“Oh,” the towheaded kid said.
He had the ransom letter in his hand then. Looking at it without a great deal of interest, he turned and walked outside.
I hit the street five seconds after he did. He was walking west on Pennsylvania Avenue, toward where the sun was going down red and swollen in the hot June sky. Across the street in front of the Raleigh I saw my cab roll back into the taxi line.
The towhead
crossed Pennsylvania Avenue at 14th Street, jaywalking across the broad intersection where Pennsylvania, E and 14th converge. He sauntered along past the Willard Hotel. He was in no special hurry. I stayed a half block back. He crossed F Street one block from the Treasury Department and my office.
Reaching the plate-glass windows of a big Rexall drugstore, he stopped. He seemed to be window shopping. Then he hitched up the belt of his faded bluejeans and went inside.
I went in right after him, saw him head for the soda fountain. Most of the stools were taken. He sat down next to the broad back of a large man wearing a T-shirt and khaki trousers. I stood ten feet from them at the paperbound-book rack.
“What’ll it be?” the big man in the T-shirt said.
“Banana split royal,” the towhead answered promptly. “Chocolate, strawberry and peach-vanilla ice cream. Here’s the letter, Mr. Allen.”
Mr. Allen ordered the banana split royal and placed a dollar on the counter. “Be seeing you around, kid.”
“Thanks a lot, Mr. Allen.”
Mr. Allen turned, shoving the letter into a pocket of his khaki trousers. He looked like a muscle-stiff with the hard ropes of muscle bunched on his bare arms and under the tight T-shirt, but his movements were light-footed and lithe, like a big cat’s. He was a couple of inches taller than I am, and I’m six-one. His sandy hair had been crewcut. His eyes were blue and as innocent as a baby’s. There was a tattoo on the back of his right hand in the inevitable heart shape. He walked right past me, one big arm brushing and turning the paperbound-book rack. It squeaked; they always do.
He hit the street at a slow, carefree amble, and then he started stepping out. I stretched my legs after him, north toward New York Avenue. A block and a half like that, then we reached a parking lot where he turned in, his shoes crunching on gravel. I wasn’t wild about the gravel; he’d hear me coming a mile off. But the parking lot meant he had a car and I didn’t. I had to make my play in there.
Death Is My Comrade Page 5