scott free

by Unknown Author

  “The painting was on its side. He’ll notice it’s been moved. Al notices everything!”

  They heard another thud. He had apparently jumped from the roof to a ledge or a porch.

  “Keep your voice down, honey,” Scotti cautioned.

  “Put the painting back the other way.”

  “It won’t cover me then.”

  “He’s going to cut off our ears!”

  “Shhhh.”

  A door slammed. Footsteps sounded inside the house.

  The child was shivering—not from the cold, from fright.

  They could hear him tramping up the stairs to the second floor, and then he caught the chain and pulled down the attic stairs.

  Scotti felt her heart stop.

  He shouted up, “Come down here!”

  Deanie looked at Scotti, who signaled to go ahead.

  “I’m coming!” Deanie answered.

  Scotti nodded encouragement as the child went down the stairs back ward. Scotti could see her eyes, wide with fear, tears starting to roll down her cheeks.

  “Stop right there,” the man said.

  Then he said, “Stop blubbering! We’re going to phone your mama now. This is what you say. You say, ‘Mama, I’m all right but make sure

  Delroy answers the phone in an hour because these men are dangerous and they could kill me. Make sure Delroy takes the Lucky We where he’s told to and no police tailing him.’ Can you repeat that?”

  “Mama, I’m all right but make sure Delroy answers the phone in an hour and takes the Lucky We where he’s told to and no police tailing him.” “Say these men are dangerous and could kill me.”

  “These men are dangerous and could kill me.”

  “Let’s go over it once more, kid. Get it right if you want to grow up to be a big girl.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  As soon as Deanie had finished calling her mother on Liam’s cell phone, she was ordered back into the attic. The wooden plank was put in place, locking Scotti and Deanie in.

  “Delroy could get the instructions wrong,” said Deanie. “He’s not too swift. That’s what my mother says. Daddy doesn’t let me talk that way, but it’s true.”

  “You don’t have to be very swift to be the messenger. Delroy’s really just the messenger.”

  “What if he goes to the wrong place? Mario’s the one who knows his way around the Hamptons. Why didn’t they choose Mario, I wonder? Do you know Mario?”

  “A little. Don’t worry. Delroy will know where to go. That will be made very clear to him.”

  “By the dangerous men?”

  “I don’t think there cm any dangerous men, Deanie. I think he just wants your folks to believe there are.”

  “Because Rona isn’t dangerous. He bosses her around.”

  “I don’t know Rona.”

  “They’re doing this to get the Lucky We,” Deanie said.

  “What is it?

  “My parents engrave that on everything they give to each other. But A1 wants my mother’s ring, probably, because the real Duchess of Windsor owned it once.”

  “Is that what he said his name is . . . Al?”

  “Yes. And she’s named Rona.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Scotti tried to think of a next step, tried to act calm so the child would not know how panicky she felt. Damn! Why had Yeats stuck the plank there? They were trapped.

  “Do you know about the Lucky We’s?” Deanie asked. “ W stands for Wallis and E stands for Edward, and they were a duke and duchess in London, England. My mother looks like the duchess.”

  “She must be very attractive.”

  “She is. And there’s even a Lucky We ‘lawnette.’ It’ll be my mother’s. But she won’t know about it until my father dies.”

  “A ‘lawnette,’ honey?”

  “A black panther lawnette with emeralds for eyes. Daddy keeps it in a Tiffany box but it didn’t come from there. Daddy bought it from a private person. It’s very rare.”

  The pair sat huddled together in the cold attic while Scotti tried to pretend she was calm, talking with her in a casual tone although she could feel her heart beating under her shirt. It had been one of Scott’s, a lovely soft cotton one from Paul Stuart.

  “What does someone do with a lawnette?” she asked the child. “Daddy says ladies used to carry them in their evening bags because they didn’t like to wear glasses when they were all dressed up. They took them out of their beaded purses and looked through them at people on stage like dancers in a ballet.”

  “Ah! A lorgnette.”

  “Yes. In the olden days there were no contact lenses.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s not as valuable as the Lucky We ring. The ring is the most expensive jewelry my mother has.”

  “Is it very beautiful?” Scotti had scrutinized the place very carefully. There was 110 exit, not even a single vent.

  “I only saw it once and I was too little to remember it. My mother says it’s too heavy. She only wears it at special times.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Rona said my father owed money to Al and her which was why they have to steal it. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

  “I’d say so. . . . What was Rona like?”

  “She was dumb, too. She reads with her finger. Maybe I shouldn’t say someone’s dumb. My father said it was rude, and a nun I know said only God could judge a thing.”

  “She could be right.”

  “So maybe God did this to me for calling people dumb.”

  “Oh, I don’t think God’s that mean.”

  “He can be. ‘The sword of the Lord is filled with blood.’ And he smites people with it, too.”

  Scotti held the child close and said, “You’re not God’s enemy, Deanie. None of what’s happening now is your fault.”

  “Life is just the way the ball bounces, Daddy says. You know what else he says?’’

  “What?”

  “He says the way to make God laugh is tell him your plans. I’m not sure I get that joke but everyone laughs at it.”

  Scotti said, “It means not to always think tilings will turn out as you thought they would.” She could not hear anything now but the wind. She had not heard a car start, either.

  “Why would God laugh if your plans didn’t turn out?”

  “He might just smile, hmmmr Because he knows what’s coming and we don’t ... I think I know one thing that’s coming, though.”

  “Is Al coming back?”

  “I don’t mean Al. I mean I think I have a cold coming. I have the sniffles. I have to blow my nose.” She searched the pockets of the L.L. Bean parka she’d given her mother for Christmas. All she found was a stale green Doggie Donut and a box of Good & Plenty candy.

  “I’ll use my shirttail if I have to blow my nose,” Scotti said. “Want a piece of candy?”

  “I guess so. Sugar gives you energy. I didn’t sleep last night.”

  Scotti said, “Maybe this box is empty. It feels that way.”

  But it wasn’t.

  Myrna House had hidden three Camels inside, and three oven matches.

  Fina Merola believed in jinxes. Sometimes places jinxed you, sometimes weather jinxed you, sometimes people did. When it came to people, they were usually women, in Fina’s opinion.

  “That house in Greenwich was a pushover,” she said, “but you had Nell Slack for a partner.”

  “She did the time. I didn’t,” Jimmy Rainbow said.

  “I’m not talking about who did the time. I’m talking about how come there was time to do? I don’t like to knock my own sex, but I wouldn’t work with a female.”

  “What do you think you’ve been doing? Nell Slack is part of the team.” “Team,” Fina said bitterly. “Liam swore he was never going to work with anyone again after that hijacking went against him.”

  “I’d like to know how either one of them got their hands on the Lasher child,” Rainbow said.
<
br />   “I would not! How clients get what they sell me is their business. But I don’t like Liam’s sudden announcement that she’s not in the picture anymore.”

  “Was she supposed to do the snatch?”

  “I told you: I don’t ask. I don’t care what their connection is with them.”

  Jimmy Rainbow said, “More than anything Nell fears going back to prison. Yeats wouldn’t leave her. She must have gotten cold feet. I wouldn’t mention this to your Mr. Smith. He might think the whole operation is a little sloppy.”

  “Jimmy, you don’t get it. Mr. Smith doesn’t even know anyone’s name, doesn’t know or care about any details. Mr. Smith is a collector. He does business the way I want to do it, and that’s to just do it. Use the military rule for fags: don’t ask, don’t tell. . . . Even if I gave you Mr. Smith’s real name, you wouldn’t know it.”

  “So you said, Fina. He must be a very mysterious man, this Swiss.” “Who said he was Swiss?”

  “You did. A rich Swiss collector, you said.”

  “He’s way past rich. He adds to his collection by hook or crook. The only one who’d recognize his real name would be a representative of Winston, Cartier, et cetera. And a few, very few fences, like yours truly.”

  “This will be in the papers, you know. Lasher’s a big deal.”

  “Mr. Smith doesn’t read the papers. He doesn’t watch television. He cares only about his collection.”

  Jimmy Rainbow strolled across the room of the cottage at Gurney’s Inn to look out at the ocean. He was handsome enough to eat and Fina would probably do him that favor later that night, once they got back to New York with the Lucky We.

  Her only regret was that Nell Slack wouldn’t be around when Fina spread her square of black velvet and looked at the emerald and diamond ring with her loupe.

  When they’d been in Haven together, Nell Slack had had more airs than the white-collar crooks, waltzing out of there for dinner dates with Jimmy, bringing back matchbooks from Union Square Cafe, Tavern on the Green, the Four Seasons, dropping them on the table in the lounge where she’d smoke her long, brown Nat Sherman cigarettes and look down her nose at everyone. She’d take out a purse atomizer and touch Shalimar to her wrists and forehead as though something around her smelled foul.

  When Liam Yeats came on the scene, she pretended she’d ditched Jimmy. Everyone laughed behind their hands. They knew he’d had it with her way before she got to Haven. He was only seeing her out of guilt, because she’d taken the rap for him. He was biding his time while his real squeeze went up for her next parole hearing and got a nickel off her dime.

  Now Fina had him, thanks to Liam. Thanks to Liam, Fina had something big to offer Mr. Bally, alias Mr. Smith. And who better to be her partner than Jimmy Rainbow?

  She was ready to move into more distinguished circles, and one thing Rainbow had to propel her in that direction was class . . . something Jose-fina Merola was short of, thanks to having to hustle her ass since she was out on the streets from the time she was twelve years old.

  It was Rainbow’s idea to keep their partnership secret so they could surprise Liam and Nell. If Nell had chickened out, it wouldn’t take Liam long to get past it once the cash was in his hands, all of it his. Forget Nell Slack! It was more than Liam Yeats had ever made for one job in his life, more than they all had.

  What Fina liked most about Jimmy, besides the fact that he was tough, smart, and easy to look at, was that he knew what money was for. He reminded her of that old song about being able to tell the minute he walked in the room he was a big spender! Hey, Big Spender!. . . What did he do but take himself over to Amagansett Wines and buy the most expensive bottle of champagne he could find there, to take with him to the house on North Bay Lane, where Liam had told them he would bring the Lucky We. They’d all toast their luck in 1961 Krug, at $400 a bottle.

  Fina called over to Rainbow, “If you’re not doing anything, check the map again. I have no sense of direction, darling.”

  “I know exactly where the house is. I did a dry run this morning when I went out for the Krug. It’s a gem, set back in the woods, big! How did Liam Yeats get access to it?”

  “I told you that I don’t ask questions. But he house-watches for people.

  “It says Ned Frazier on the sign out front. I bet Mr. Frazier is someplace south, where I’d like to be.”

  “How does Miami sound to you? South Beach.”

  “Tacky,” Rainbow snorted.

  “How about St. Martens?”

  “How about St. Barts?”

  Fina was transferring the forty 1,000-dollar bills into his old pigskin camera case. She’d bought him a new one for Christmas.

  “St. Barts is new to me,” she said. So was St. Martens.

  So were all those places the rich tooted off to that Jimmy knew about. She had a lot of catching up to do.

  “I’ll show you around, Fina.”

  “I might take you to a place you’d like tomorrow night,” she said. “I might break one of my rules and take you with me when I meet Mr. Smith.” She would never do it. There would be some last-minute excuse. But the anticipation of such a thing would sweeten the hours between now and then.

  “First things first,” Jimmy said. “First I want to get a look at Liam Yeats’s face when he sees me.”

  Delroy did not need the map to locate Chatfield’s Hole. Neither did he need the thirty minutes the kidnappers had given him to get from The Highway Behind The Pond to the trail, a few feet from the enormous rock marking Chatfield’s Hole. It would take him only ten minutes, but he put off leaving the Lashers’, and then drove slowly, to carry out the instructions exactly as the kidnappers gave them to him.

  Lester Witt, lover of Sade and proprietor of Whale Hardware, had been a figure skater in his youth. Rare Sunday afternoons in winter, when he could escape his wife’s insistent presence, he met Sade at Chatfield’s Hole to show off his figure eights and sit with her in his ancient Oldsmobile, listening to opera while Delroy waited in Sade’s Volkswagen.

  Delroy headed straight down Newtow'n Lane, then made a left onto Long Lane, past the high school Delroy always wished he had attended. The Amish did not allow a child to go beyond eighth grade. Delroy had thought that once he got to Sag Harbor, he would go right through to senior year. After Sade’s death, he did move to East Hampton, but he barely paid his rent working two jobs, and the only times he got to the high school were once for a performance of The Sound of Music and once when he drove the old Volks to a car wash there.

  One of the secret games he played with Eelan was “Cheerleader.” There was a high school near their farm, and sometimes they would pass the sports fields in the family buggy on Saturday afternoons. They would see the football players and the pom-pom girls, and Eelan would jump up and down in her seat and whisper, “When we get home, will you watch me do a cheer, Dclly? Will you do a handstand?”

  She would paint her cheeks with strawberry juice in the barn, and sometimes after “cheering” she would do one of her wild dances, hugging herself and scratching her bony little arms until they bled, going around and around in circles weeping, while Delroy caught her and held her close to quiet her. He would be afraid of the way she acted. He would remember his father saying Eelan needed protection.

  After Eelan had run off with Bernado, it was Sade who told Delroy the Philadelphia police had finally found her when a stranger had taken her to a hospital. She’d been living in an abandoned building near a city park where she often recited scripture, singing hymns in German and setting fires. She had cut her arms with a razor, and she was pregnant. She claimed she did not know anyone named Bernado.

  She was committed to some institution for children who were “mental,” Harrell Davenport had told Sade. He would not say where. Her child was to be adopted when it was born. She was just sixteen then.

  After his father’s death, Delroy had tried to find out more about Eelan from a brother, who wrote that the family had moved to an Amish colony
in Indiana. Harrell Davenport had gone to his grave without ever revealing Eelan’s whereabouts, and they presumed that she was probably dead.

  Fastened to the mirrors of bathrooms and bureaus, Delroy kept a small “souvenir” of his Amish life, a hand-painted bookplate his mother had made, which his father had put into his jacket pocket sometime before he rode away to the train station in the deacon’s buggy. The bookplate was festooned with curlicue letters and small drawings of blue doves.

  The printing was in a loopy style that was elaborate and difficult to read, befitting the message: let us pray not for lighter burdens, but

  FOR STRONGER BACKS.

  When he had moved some of his things from the little house to the Lashers’, he had left it behind, along with most of his other scant possessions.

  Delroy drove along remembering how he’d gone from room to room and job to job after Sade died, until the Lashers had rescued him.

  He went down Two Holes of Water Road, pulling over at the stone marking Chatfield’s Hole.

  He knew that well behind him was the black car that had been discreetly following, with the plainclothesmen inside.

  He got out of the Jeep, noting the large stones that marked the trail he had been told to take.

  He kept one hand on the small, black Sportsac, with the Lucky We inside. It was the same one that the taxi driver had brought to the Lashers’, Deanie’s gold locket sent from the kidnappers.

  It was still light; Delroy could see the blue pond water on his right barely reflecting the trees overhead. It was very quiet, only tire sounds of his own footsteps and some crows calling, a squirrel rustling the leaves.

  Follow the trail, he had been told, and he did, wondering if the policemen had parked by the Jeep and set off on foot. There was a fork ahead, and Delroy did not know if he should go to the left or to the right.

  Then, careening toward him on a silver-and-blue Kawasaki was a man wearing a cap pulled down over his eyes. He braked, kicking up soil and leaves.

  He said, “Deanie will be home in time for dinner if you have what we want. Get on and hang on.”

  The Kawasaki sped to the left, up and across to Bull Path, along another trail, then down Mile High Road through the woods somewhere near the Grace Estate Reserve.