“Sorry I wasted your time, Joseph,” she called without breaking step, then added, “You don’t have to worry…I’ll leave you out of it.”
The pigeons had followed them. As they swirled overhead, a solitary feather fluttered to the ground past Joe’s face. He picked up the feather and stared at it. In Malmö, he thought, when David died…in the bell tower...there was a pigeon feather. Or am I just imagining it?
Gently, he put the feather in his coat pocket.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Allegra Wise was perplexed: the other reporters seemed to be avoiding her as she arrived in the newsroom. Her greetings were met with glacial smiles and awkward silences; their eyes would not meet hers. Gee, am I suddenly a leper? she wondered. Something’s up…and it can’t be good.
She was not surprised in the least when the producer shouted her name from his office door, unceremoniously summoning her to a private audience. Okay. This must be the moment of truth. Let’s see what the hell I did wrong now. He probably wants to nickel and dime my expense account for the New England trip.
“Close the door,” he said. Those ominous words sent chills down Allegra’s spine.
The producer got right to the point. “We’re pulling you off the Pilcher campaign, Ally.”
She was stunned. That was the last thing she expected to hear. “Come on, Sid,” she pleaded. “This is just getting good!”
The producer scoffed. “It ain’t getting good, honey. You’ve had your chance, but you’ve come up with squat. Pilcher’s a big story now. The network wants a bigger name covering him.” Finished with her, he shuffled some papers on his desk and said, “See the editor for your new assignments.”
The brutal finality of his words stung worse than a slap in the face. In a few seconds, Allegra Wise was back at her desk, an isolated, defeated woman with nothing to do, adrift in a sea of very busy male colleagues.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Mrs. Riley put the last of the supper dishes away. Diane and Meredith had helped with clearing the table and started to wash the dishes, but Mrs. Riley shooed them out of the kitchen. “You girls go do your schoolwork. This is my job,” the housekeeper said.
She knew it would not be her job for much longer, though. Professor Gelardi was going to take that job in New York; she was sure of it and had already made her peace with the thought of moving on. I ain’t got no choice, she reasoned. I can’t be moving to no Armonk.
Still, Professor Gelardi’s sudden change of plans for tonight seemed so out of character. Those IBM hot-shots must be sparing no expense wining and dining him, Mrs. Riley thought. Why else would a day trip turn into an overnighter on such short notice? Unless they’ve rolled out the call girls? Just as well…God knows that man could use a righteous screwing. Good thing I packed him a change of drawers.
Edna Riley would miss this house. She would miss Diane. She would even miss Joe Gelardi a little.
In the dining room, she found Diane and Meredith intently working with slide rules, deep into some math. “I made you fresh cookies for your little pajama party, girls. They’re in the pantry,” she said as she put on her coat.
Diane looked up from her calculations. “Gee, thanks, Mrs. Riley! See you tomorrow!”
The two girls sighed with relief as the door closed behind the housekeeper. “She can be a little stern, can’t she?” Meredith asked.
“Oh, she’s all right,” Diane replied. “Sure, she’s not a bundle of laughs…and she can be a little territorial...”
Meredith laughed out loud. “Yeah, I can’t believe she threw us out of the kitchen. We were just trying to help.”
“But she takes care of me and Daddy really well.” Turning serious, Diane said, “And thanks for staying over tonight. This is just like having a really smart big sister.”
Meredith smiled; she liked the sound of that. Always wanting a sister, her parents had managed to curse her with nothing but annoying younger brothers. She laid her slide rule down on the table. “You said your dad sounded so secretive when he called…I’ll bet he’s seeing some lady.”
Diane scowled and stomped off to the refrigerator. “Who cares? I wish he wouldn’t take that stupid job.”
A voice in Meredith’s head whispered you and me both, little girl…
Diane rummaged in the refrigerator for a moment; her head popped up from behind its open door. “Darn it, Meredith! We’re out of root beer. I had my heart set on root beer floats.”
“I can run down to the corner and get some,” Meredith said. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”
“Of course I’ll be okay…I’m almost fourteen, for Pete’s sake!”
Grabbing her coat, Meredith headed for the door. “Be back in a jif. Finish up those problems while I’m gone, little sister.”
Chapter Sixty
Tad Matthews had barely picked at the main course, a delicate soufflé. He could not muster any interest in the crepe suzette his lover now prepared for dessert. Watching the delicate pancakes, soaked with liqueur, being set alight only reminded him of the flames of Hell, flames in which he was sure he would soon be roasting.
Brad—the cook, his roommate and lover—was a bit put out that Tad was not enjoying this special feast he had slaved to prepare. “Come on, baby…lighten up, for crying out loud. At least loosen your tie a little,” Brad said as he snuffed the flames with the lid of the chafing dish. “Nobody can pin anything on you. You’re just their employee.”
Angrily, Tad pushed back from the table and walked to the picture window of their big apartment. How could he expect Brad to understand anything about how this business—how politics—worked? He’s just a kid of twenty-five. A full fourteen years younger than me. What does he know of the world?
Suddenly, Brad was nestled against his back, arms wrapped tightly around his waist. Tad broke his grip and turned to face him.
“You don’t understand, Brad. I set up the payment for Blanding’s murder…”
“But you didn’t know what you were doing!”
“It doesn’t matter! I’m an accessory, Brad…an accessory to murder!”
Brad backed away, the body language and facial expression unmistakable: complete rejection of Tad’s pronouncement. Tad hesitated, unsure of the grounds for this rejection. Was Brad refusing to accept an inconvenient fact, as a child would? Or was he daring to challenge its legal basis?
Brad quickly resolved the puzzle. With deep conviction, he said, “No court in the world would convict you.”
The reply exploded from Tad’s mouth. “AND JUST WHAT FUCKING LAW SCHOOL DID YOU GO TO, YOU STUPID LITTLE SHIT?”
Immediately, he wished he could take those words back. He had never spoken to Brad like that in their two years together. Oddly enough, Brad might be legally correct, but it did not matter. The Pilchers were above justice. The law did not apply to them, and they had no trouble setting up other people to take the fall when it suited them. Insulting the man he loved was not going to make his involvement in the Blanding murder go away.
The hurt look on Brad’s face had been most deceptive, however. Before Tad could make a gesture of amends, Brad hauled off and punched him—hard—in the stomach. The strength of the blow startled Tad Matthews, who found himself sitting on the floor, arms protecting his midsection, gasping for breath.
Brad squatted beside him; now it was his turn to make amends. “I’m sorry, baby, but you had that coming. Now listen to me…we’ve got to get you far away from those people. Let’s pack the car. We’ll leave tonight. How does San Francisco sound to you?”
Tad shook his head violently. He was surprised to find he had the wind to speak. “No. You don’t understand. Nothing will ever happen to them. But they’ll find me and they’ll ruin me…They’ll ruin us.”
Brad really did not understand. The law still seemed black and white to him; he could not fathom these shades of gray. Before he could say a word, the phone rang. He turned to answer it.
“Don’t touch it,” T
ad said. “Let me get it.”
Brad did as he was told. Tad struggled to his feet and lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
There was a long pause as Tad listened to the caller. With each passing second, his face fell deeper into a look of grim resignation. Finally, he said, “Yes, I’ll take care of it. I’m on my way, Leonard.”
Brad watched wordlessly as Tad pulled on his coat, then stopped at the dining room table. In an attempt at conciliation, he took a hasty bite of the crepe suzette. For a brief moment, Tad’s grim countenance softened. “Hey, that’s really good,” he said. “Can you save some for when I get back?”
Sullenly shaking his head, Brad replied, “It can’t be saved.”
Chapter Sixty-One
It was nighttime in Manhattan, and Joe Gelardi roamed the streets aimlessly. He was still reeling from the momentous events that marked this roller coaster of a day: the thrill of a new job, the thrill of old love, a painful wound ripped open and rubbed with salt.
It was wonderful to see Pola again…at least at first. So exciting to be together again, even if it was just for a stroll! I’m sure she felt it, too…but why did she have to ruin it? Why does she want to go after Pilcher now, after all these years?
Those words she said when he refused to help her: now you’re the one who thinks he has something at stake! They were true—and they meant only one thing: he had failed David Linker all over again.
He paused before an electronics store. A television in the window blared a news program. The talking head on camera was reading a political story:
Now the Pilcher juggernaut rolls into Wisconsin. A win in that state’s primary will give the congressman a considerable boost over Vice President Nixon for the Republican nomination. We asked the congressman what he thought about his chances in Wisconsin...
The image on the screen cut to the smiling face of Leonard Pilcher. He was being interviewed; his words were confident:
I know the fine, hard-working folks of Wisconsin appreciate our message of strength, courage, and integrity. I believe we’ll do just fine here.
Joe recoiled in disgust and turned away from that face on the screen. He wished he had never made that call to Pola, never missed that train. He just wanted to be home.
His hands were jammed in his coat pockets. One hand found the feather he had put there as Pola walked away. He pulled the feather out and stared at it, thinking Pola, Pilcher, pigeon shit...that pretty much sums up my sorry state. I’ll bet my late wife could have whipped that up into one hell of a poem.
Gently, he returned the feather to his pocket and walked on.
Carrying a sack full of root beer bottles, Meredith approached the front door of the Gelardi house. She smiled as she saw Diane waving from the window. She would have waved back, but her hands were full.
A dark sedan lurched to the curb, stopping with a loud screech. Shadowy figures of two men leapt out. They grabbed Meredith; one clamped a hand over her mouth as a needless precaution—she was too startled to scream.
Now the damsel in distress in this streetlight theater, Meredith made a vain attempt at struggling, but it was no use. In an instant she was in the car. The sack lay on the sidewalk; sparkling shards of glass from broken pop bottles crunched under the men’s shoes. The root beer flowed to the gutter in a half dozen shimmering rivulets.
Inside the house, Diane watched in disbelief. She grabbed the telephone and, with a trembling finger, dialed. “Operator, get me the police!” she said, surprised at the calmness and command in her voice.
Sitting in the back seat of the sedan, sandwiched between the two men who abducted her, Meredith had no idea where they were driving. She was sure a long time had gone by—maybe an hour, she thought, but it’s really hard to tell time when you’re blindfolded. Why did they bother, anyway? I guess they don’t realize I’m blind as a bat without my glasses.
The only thing anyone had said to her, right as they sped away from the Gelardi house, was sit still and we won’t have to use the cuffs. A few times early in the drive, they pushed her head down to her knees and held it there, probably because they were in a place where she might be seen. That had not happened for quite a while, though. To her relief, no one had otherwise laid a finger on her. At least, so far.
She was surprised to find herself only angry and not terrified. This has to be some kind of fraternity prank or something…Maybe this is Mitch Grayson and some buddies getting even for how I demolished his work in Linear Algebra class. I wish I could hear more of their voices...but from the little I’ve heard, they don’t really sound like boys I know. They’re not acting like them, either.
Now she was scared. These guys are too calm, too organized...like they’ve done this lots of times before. These aren’t boys…these are men.
A gruff voice from the front seat said, “Tell your father that he’d better stop talking to reporters, kid.”
She could not help it—the first thing out of her mouth was a laugh. They had obviously made some kind of mistake.
“My father?” she said. “What are you talking about? My father is a reporter…and he lives three thousand miles from here, in Sacramento, California.”
The car screeched to a halt. If Meredith had not been blindfolded, she would have seen the driver pivoting toward the back seat. His angry face would have emerged from shadow as he flicked on the dome light. She would have seen the Hard-Boiled Man.
The back door flew open and Meredith, still blindfolded, was roughly ejected from the car. She heard a soft thump as some object landed at her feet. The car sped off. She pulled off the blindfold. It was already too far away to read its tag number, even if she could see.
The object at her feet was her purse. Its contents appeared intact; even her eyeglasses had been placed inside. She put them on, hoping the dark, myopic blur around her would turn into some form of civilization.
No such luck. She was in the middle of nowhere: a two-lane hilly road in woods devoid of man-made light. She started walking in the direction from which her kidnappers’ car had come.
It was near midnight when Joe Gelardi, exhausted and emotionally drained, finally entered the deserted lobby of his Manhattan hotel. The sleepy desk clerk looked up from his crossword puzzle. “Oh, yeah…Doctor Gelardi…you’ll be with us for another night?” the clerk asked as he retrieved the room key from its slot. A slip of paper came out of the slot, as well. “Oh, and you have a message,” the clerk said.
Although numb from the battering he had taken this day, a jolt of fear awakened Joe’s mind and body as he read the message: CALL HOME IMMEDIATELY. URGENT. DIANE.
Chapter Sixty-Two
As he drove home, all Tad Matthews could think of were the flames of Hell he had seen in that flambé crepe suzette earlier in the evening. What he had just done made it no less likely he would roast in those flames.
He had written a check for $5000, drawn on a Pilcher shadow account, to a firm called AMO Investigations. He had delivered that check through the mail slot of a darkened office in a shabby and deserted downtown building. The firm’s name was written on a crude cardboard sign, held to the door with a single nail. That sign, and any record of that firm’s existence, would be gone by the close of business tomorrow, Matthews was sure. Just as soon as the check was cashed—and as soon as someone ended up dead, probably.
These guys don’t have much imagination, Matthews thought. AMO Investigations...That has to stand for Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio, the three rivers that converge here in Pittsburgh. Surely, it wasn’t from the Latin for ‘I love.’
He lingered on the word love as his thoughts shifted to Brad. Would that lovely boy still be waiting for him when he returned? Tad Matthews hoped with all his heart that he would be.
At a small airport on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, two men, each carrying a satchel, wandered through the parked aircraft in the late night darkness. They did not belong here, but the chain link fence around the airport’s perimeter only s
topped honest people. It was no deterrent to these dark-clad saboteurs. Despite the light burning in the field operations office, they saw no other soul around.
They approached Fred O’Hara’s airplane. The fat one asked, “Is this the one? Tricycle gear, twin engines. N9184K…that’s the tail number, right?”
Using a penlight, the thin one checked a notebook. “Yeah. This is the one, all right,” he replied.
It only took a few moments for the fat one to pick the lock on the plane’s cabin door. Easier than boosting a car, he thought, as he jumped back to the ramp and hurried to the tail of the plane. Bending over, hands on knees, the fat one propped his back against the lower fuselage to lend support.
The thin one had entered the cabin, pulled down the back seat and climbed into the aft fuselage. He crawled from frame to frame until he reached the tail. “You’re under there, right?” he called to the fat one.
The fat one grunted from the strain. “Yeah, I’m here,” he answered. “You weigh more than I thought for a scrawny little shit.”
“Well, don’t fucking move until I’m back out,” the thin one said. “We don’t want this son of a bitch to stand on its tail. That’ll leave marks. They’ll know somebody was screwing with the airplane for sure.”
The thin one removed a device from his satchel. It was made up of two objects taped together. One was a green canister with the word THERMITE in yellow lettering. The other was a barometric altimeter. He set the altimeter to 5000 feet, then clamped the device to the plane’s structure, adjacent to the control cables.
Crawling back out of the aft fuselage, the thin one smiled. That thermite is some hot shit, he thought. In a heartbeat, it’ll burn through that aluminum and stainless steel like butter. Turn this crate into a flying brick…
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