I looked around and saw the hulking, slouched figure of Roy draped in that perpetual raincoat of his. He was talking to somebody who, as I sidled up to him, turned out to be Tatum. We shook hands solemnly.
“Thank you for the check,” Tatum said.
“Sorry it couldn’t be bigger.”
“We was just talking about Mike Amos?” Roy said. “We set him up in the schoolyard, you know? Well, Slakey came around to look him over and started hitting him with the agent line?”
“And?”
“Slakey’s hooked. They made a deal. Slakey’s going around calling Frisbee his protégé and telling everybody Frisbee’s the next Oscar Robertson. He told the kid he was contacting several college coaches. For that privilege, Mike paid him five hundred bucks. Which you owe me, pal—I laid it out for him.”
“And did Slakey contact those coaches?”
Roy grinned and pulled out a little note pad. I phoned Mal Griswold at Ohio State, Connie Chochran at Mizzou, Steve Gray at Stanford, Parker Smith at Cincinnati, Mark Keller at USC, and Ab Stein at Niagara.’’
“And? They never heard of Slakey, right?”
“Right.” Roy snapped the pad shut. “What’s the next move?”
“What do you usually do when you’ve got a fish hooked, asshole?”
At that moment there was a tremendous commotion around the door, and it carried over into the parlor as word traveled about who had just arrived. I peered at the door but the throng was too thick to see anything. Then, as suddenly as the uproar had begun it died down to a hush, and the crowd parted. The silence was eerie and the air seemed to crackle with static like the heavy atmosphere before a summer storm. And a moment later I understood why. Warnell Slakey had come to pay his respects.
“There’s a man with brass balls,” Roy murmured as Slakey, wearing an expensive dark suit, walked arrogantly through the gauntlet of sullen black faces, stepped up to the bier, and looked down at Timmie. I had to agree with Roy: it took what Trish calls “chutzpa” for Slakey to turn his back on that volatile crowd.
Tatum was breathing heavily and I braced for trouble. Roy picked up on it too and put a soothing hand on Tatum’s shoulder, but Tatum wrenched away, stepped forward and pointed a wrathful finger at Slakey. “Murderer!” He pronounced each syllable with venomous precision.
Slakey was cooler than ice. Aside from his shoulder blades twitching a little he didn’t move. My peripheral vision picked up movement on the fringe of the crowd and I spotted Slakey’s bullyboys threading their way to the front of the parlor. The funeral director standing at the back began wringing his hands and a number of mourners began loosening their ties and taking off their glasses. I hadn’t been in a good brawl since Dick Modzelewski stuck his finger in Don Meredith’s eye in a 1964 Giant game, but this one was shaping up to be a doozie. I was sorry as hell when the funeral director shrewdly pushed his way into the center of the crowd trilling, “Everyone into the chapel, please. The services are about to begin.” There was a surge toward the door and a promising rumble was nipped in the bud.
We funneled out the door and were just starting for the chapel when Roy nudged me and gestured with his head down the corridor. Mike Amos, half hidden behind a potted palm, was gesticulating at us. Roy, Tatum, and I cut away and walked down the corridor. Mike slipped into the men’s room and we followed. “Sorry about the spy stuff,” Mike said, leaning against the door so no one else could get in. “I didn’t want Slakey to see me frat’nizin’ with you.”
“What’s happenin’, son?” Tatum asked.
“Slakey’s doin’ his UCLA number on me. Says he’s got John Wooden interested in me.”
“How much is he asking?” I said.
“Another five hundred.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Tol’ him it’d take a while to round it up.”
I looked at Tatum and Roy but they looked back to me for the initiative. “Okay. I want you to tell Slakey you’ve changed your mind. Tell him you don’t feel he’s doing anything to earn his money. Tell him you don’t want him for an agent any more.”
Mike looked at me levelly, as if my instructions had not registered on him. But his eyes flickered with fear. This was the crunch. This was what he’d volunteered to do. But until now it was just a game. Now it got dangerous, and maybe it got deadly.
“Then what?” he asked.
“Then you show up tomorrow morning like you been doing, to play basketball. Hopefully, Slakey and company will come around to have a little discussion with you.”
“What are you goin’ to do?”
“Let’s just say you’ll have help. Do what Slakey tells you and leave the rest to me.”
Mike shifted his gaze to Tatum, as if checking it out with a soul brother. Tatum nodded. Mike said, “Later.” We filed out of the bathroom.
We took seats at the rear of the chapel just as the preacher, a weathered, battered, beautiful old gentleman with tightly kinked silver hair, reached the end of his eulogy. “Yes, my friends,” he said with one hand resting on the foot of Timmie’s coffin, “the death of a youth is a special kind of tragedy. When our elders depart this life for the hereafter, our sorrow is deep, yes, but it is also tempered by resignation, for we are prepared from childhood for the passing of our parents. But who can prepare a mother for the loss of a son? Who can resign a father to the loss of a daughter? Where is the logic, where the justice, where, we ask, the fairness that God should have us bring forth a child on a bed of agony, have us suffer and sacrifice for him that he may grow tall and strong and straight and righteous, and then watch him interred in the prime of his years? Are we not justified in angrily asking God, with Job, ‘Is it good unto thee that thou should’st oppress, that thou should’st despise the work of thine hands?’ And because this child”—he thumped the coffin with his fist—”because this child, Timothy Lewis Lee, was smitten down by a violent hand, is his mother not justified in demanding to know of God, as Job demanded, ‘Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea are mighty in power?’” He shot a withering glance toward the back of the room.
“NO, BROTHER NO!” the congregation cried out, twisting in their seats to look scornfully at the object of his wrath. Slakey stood leaning defiantly against the doorjamb. I felt Tatum’s body, wedged between Roy’s and mine, grow taut as a ship’s cable in a gale, but he gritted his teeth and turned away.
“...To accept,” the preacher was saying quietly. “Nay, not merely accept but praise the Lord and repent, yet again with Job, for doubting of God that ‘Thou canst do everything.’ Small consolation, you will say, to offer a bereaved mother. Yet I would have her remember that the selfsame hand that taketh away also giveth. And I would have the sinners among you remember that the selfsame hand that strikes down the innocent also BRINGS DOWN THE WICKED! Let no man leave this room without inditing that lesson on his heart of hearts.”
“Amen!” I shouted with the congregation as we stood up for the benediction. I looked over my shoulder for Slakey, but he was gone. I wondered if he’d indited the preacher’s last words on his heart of hearts, or whether he even had one.
Chapter XV
I scarcely had a foot in the door when Trish jumped up from her desk, spun me around and pushed me out the door. “The commissioner’s office, right away.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, but I think this is it.”
“It,” I muttered hustling to the elevator. I taxied up to 666 Fifth, and Connie thumbed me right through to the commissioner’s office. Niles was sitting, Vreel pacing, and both looked like men stretched to the snapping point. Their greeting was strained, and I noticed they didn’t look at me directly as we talked. Of course there was no love lost between Stanley Vreel and me, but I was puzzled by the commissioner’s frosty air.
“I heard from the kidnapper again just a little while ago,” Vreel said.
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“The real one this time, I hope.”
“Yes, no doubt about it. He says he’s giving us one more chance, but he warned me very explicitly, any more funny business and Richie will be murdered.”
I looked at the commissioner. “What’re we gonna do?”
He heaved such a big sigh I thought he’d deflate down to a bagful of skin. “We’re going to pay the money.”
“You mean, without a fight?”
“We can’t take the risk. These people seem to know everything we’re doing.”
“At least put the bleeper...”
“No bleeper,” the commissioner said. “Nothing.”
I shook my head. “Look, we don’t have to do anything elaborate. Just one guy staked out...”
“No,” Lauritzen said. “And that’s final.”
I walked around the room for a minute, too stunned to speak. Then I remembered something I’d been thinking about since that morning. “Commissioner, how did the kidnappers know we were planning a trap this morning?”
He and Vreel exchanged looks. “Maybe they saw you driving around Macedonia Park,” the commissioner said. “Or maybe they’ve got this office bugged and heard our strategy meeting last night.”
“Or maybe,” Vreel added, fixing me with belligerent, penetrating eyes, “one of us is playing ball with them.”
I stepped up to him and eyeballed him right back. “You wouldn’t want to say who, would you?”
The commissioner shouldered between us and pushed us apart. “Nobody’s saying anything, Dave.”
“The fuck he isn’t, commissioner. He’s saying I’m in cahoots with the kidnappers, and you know what else? I think you believe him!”
“Dave...”
“Why in the name of creation would I do such a thing?”
“Shit, Bolt,” Vreel snapped. “Three million dollars is as much motive as anybody needs.”
That was it for me. I pushed the commissioner aside and grabbed Vreel by his $300 lapels. “I suppose I also needed a pistol-whipping and a kick in the nuts and sand rubbed in my eyes?”
The commissioner recovered quickly and tugged at my arms, begging me to let go of Vreel, who I had lifted half off the ground about a foot away from one of the commissioner’s picture windows.
“Vreel,” I said, “it would take a helluva lot less than three million dollars to motivate me to chuck you out the window to see if you glide. Someone offer me a quarter.”
Vreel clawed at my fingers. He was strong but I was mad and it would have taken a crowbar to pry me loose. But the commissioner shouted, “Dave, let him go, that’s an order.”
I gave Vreel my best hate-stare, then released him with a shove. “Next time you negotiate anything with me, mister, you’d better wear a helmet with a face mask.” I turned to Lauritzen. “Commissioner...”
He held up his hands and turned his back, like a referee walking away from an irate manager protesting a close call. “I’m sorry, Dave, but my decision is final. Look at it this way, if all goes well tonight, we’ll—”
I didn’t hear the rest of it. I just stormed out of his office.
It was too late to go back to my office, so I walked all the way back to my apartment, shedding sparks all the way from 53rd and Fifth to 77th and York. The walk did me a lot of good, however. By the time I got home, my feelings had begun to settle into their proper proportions. I was still angry enough at Vreel to be sorry I hadn’t defenestrated him. But beyond that I felt a curious sense of relief that the ordeal was soon to be over—at least if the kidnappers kept their part of the bargain. Why should I care if they got away with it? It wasn’t my three million dollars. All I wanted was my client and my commission.
I remembered I was supposed to call Sondra. I did so as soon as I got upstairs. She was half out of her mind.
“What’s going on?” she said stridently. “Why didn’t you call me back?”
“I’ve been at the commissioner’s. The operation has been rescheduled for tonight. You should have your brother back before morning.”
She covered the phone with her hand and I heard her muffled voice repeating the news to her parents. When she got back on I said, “Can you get away?”
“Yes, yes I’d really like to.”
“My place?”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
In a little less than that she rang the doorbell. I opened the door and she went limp in my arms sobbing uncontrollably as she discharged her pent-up anxiety in great wracking gusts. I held her tight saying dumb things like, “There, there,” but they managed to calm her down until her sobs subsided into little hiccoughing whimpers. I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, undressed her and laid her. It was a simple and straightforward task, almost like changing someone’s oil or brewing them a pot of tea. I instinctively felt she didn’t need lovemaking so much as relief, emotional relief in the form of physical relief. She came fast and in deep rolling convulsions, like the swells on a vast open sea.
I held her for a long time and might have begun a second time, this time something closer to the act of love, but another mundane appetite drove us out of bed: we were both starving. We dressed and I reserved a table at another favorite restaurant of mine called Once Upon a Stove, down on East 24th Street.
We never got there. In fact, where we ended up was not just another place but another dimension.
It started when I realized I’d forgotten to speak to the commissioner about lending me a couple of his enforcers for the following day’s confrontation with the Slakey mob. So I called him at home, but his wife said he was still at the office. Of course, I knew what he was doing there: he was preparing to hand that bagful of loot over to Stanley Vreel for delivery to the kidnappers.
The commissioner said he was rushed, but he looked up the numbers of Dennis Whittie, Bo Bowen, and Red Lipsett for me and read them off. I thanked him and added, “I’m sorry about that little scene at your office today.”
“It’s okay, Dave. We’re all under a lot of pressure. Stanley feels bad about it too and said he was going to call you tomorrow to apologize.”
“But you’re still going to pay the ransom without—”
“Yes,” he cut me off sharply, “and in fact I’m supposed to meet Stanley downstairs in five minutes, so if that’s all, I’ll speak to you later. Don’t forget to call me, or have the Sadlers call me, the second Richie turns up.”
“Believe me, I will, commissioner.”
I hung up and saw that Sondra was looking at me curiously. “What was that ‘scene’ at the commissioner’s office you were referring to?”
“Aw, Vreel got hot and insinuated I was somehow mixed up in your brother’s kidnapping. Can you imagine?’’
“Why would he think that?”
“Because the kidnappers seem to be hip to everything we’re doing. Vreel thought maybe there was a leak, and it was coming from me.”
She shrugged. “By the same token, it could be coming from him.”
“Sure,” I said airily, not thinking seriously about her remark, “that kind of thing cuts both—” Suddenly it hit me like a Claymore mine. “Hey, give me that again.”
“About Stanley Vreel, you mean? I just said, if information is leaking to the kidnappers, it could just as well be coming from him as from you.”
My heart was pumping so fast I twitched like a hound in the final stage of rabies. “Mama get a hammer, there’s a fly on daddy’s head!” I dived for the phone and called the commissioner’s office again, but there was no answer. I grabbed Sondra’s hand and raced down the hall with her.
“What is it?” she panted, staring at me.
“Stanley Vreel, that’s what it is!” The elevator seemed to take five years to arrive and another ten to descend to the basement. I sprinted to the Camaro and started it swiftly as Sondra leaped
into the seat beside me.
“Can you tell me what’s going on? Where are we going?”
“We’re going to 666 Fifth Avenue,” I shouted as we shot out of the garage the instant the automatic door cleared my roof.
“You think Vreel...?”
“I don’t know for sure, but a lot of things suddenly make sense to me.”
I was too busy driving to explain. Not driving, actually, but breaking the law, for I went through red lights at York Avenue, First, Second, Lexington, Park, and Fifth, getting lucky at Third and at Madison. Then I wheeled onto Fifth Avenue and went through so many red lights I was beginning to think they didn’t come in any other color.
When I crossed 57th Street I edged the car to the left side of one-way Fifth Avenue and continued cautiously downtown. About halfway down Fifth I saw it and breathed a sigh of relief: the commissioner’s gray Caddy was parked in front of 666, surrounded by a little knot of people. The trunk was open and the white post-office satchel was being tossed into it by Vreel, the commissioner, and one other guy that I think may have been Red Lipsett. I parked catty-corner and turned out my lights. A minute later Vreel got into the car and waved good-by to the others. I turned my lights on again and, using a taxi on my right to shield me from the commissioner standing in front of the building, I pulled into traffic about two blocks behind the Caddy.
At 50th Street Vreel turned left and drove east to First Avenue, then headed uptown to 61st Street, where he picked up the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive north. I slid into the flow of traffic about five cars behind him and stayed with him at about fifty miles per hour. Sondra chain-smoked five cigarettes.
For the moment I was able to relax and began to reason out loud. “Why not Stanley Vreel?”
“Because he has money,” Sondra argued.
“Does he? Maybe on paper, but when it comes to hard cash, he’s no better off than I am, and honey, that’s poor. He told me himself he had a cash problem.’’ I stared at the Caddy’s taillights and felt my mind starting to churn out connections. “Do you realize he’s the only person who’s spoken to—or claims to have spoken to—the ‘kidnappers’?”
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