Ransom

by Jon Cleary

  “You crazy? Wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not in your position, Mr McBean.”

  McBean’s laugh was one of genuine amusement. “I got imagination, man, but not that much - you in my position!”

  Butlin sat back, flushing slightly under his sun-lamp tan. Malone, watching everyone at the table carefully, well aware that they were the ones on whom he had to depend to get

  Lisa back, had remarked the deep, healthy colour of the FBI man and wondered if he had just come back from an assignment somewhere in the sun. Then he had seen Butlin’s pale hands and knew the tan on the man’s face had come from a lamp; like so many lamp-users, Butlin had forgotten his hands.

  So far Lieutenant Markowitz had said nothing. He was a burly, balding man of middle height, with intense dark eyes and a nervous impatience that seemed to exhaust him as he tried to control it. He did not lean forward now as he spoke, but his body was strained as if he were bound by invisible cords to the back of his chair. “McBean, we’ll be candid with you. We got nothing, no record, on any of you but old Fred Parker

  “Oh, Fred,” grinned McBean. “The daddy of us all.”

  “We know him - he’s been around for years. But the rest of you - you’re all strangers. None of you have even had any visitors while you been in here - “

  “You think that’s strange? They come here, right away you pigs gonna be leaning on ‘em. No, man, they know enough to stay outa this scene.”

  “Would you blame us for leaning on them? You killed two of our men - “

  McBean shook his head. “Not guilty. You heard our plea.”

  Mankowitz took a deep breath, looked at Lewton. The latter looked at Jefferson and Malone, then nodded at the guard standing by the door. “You can take him back. Thanks, McBean.”

  “For what?” McBean stood up, the bright dashiki catching the light, adding a note of frivolity that seemed indecent in the sour atmosphere of the room. “I’m sorry, Malone. I hope your wife is okay. But like I said - you’re gonna need all the luck you can get.”

  When McBean and the guard had gone Jefferson said, “What do you reckon?”

  “He knows nothing,” said Lewton. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Where do we go from here?” All four men looked at

  Malone, and Lewton’s eyes narrowed at the grating harshness in the Australian’s voice. International boundaries were being drawn, but Malone was too worried for Lisa to be concerned with diplomacy. At the best of times, even on cases dealing with strangers, he had never been noted for it. “What about the other four bastards? If they won’t come down here, let someone go up and see them.”

  “Inspector-” Lewton began; but Jefferson, rising from his chair, interrupted him.

  “I’ll explain it to him, Ken. Inspector, let’s go back to Headquarters. Maybe something’s been happening while we been away.”

  Malone stood up, all at once feeling stiff, exhausted and depressed to the point of sickness. He was at the door when he paused and looked back. “Sorry, Captain. It’s just the frustration of doing bugger-all - “

  The three men still at the table nodded, their faces for a moment softening with sympathy. When he and Jefferson were outside in the street Malone said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have come down, Captain - “

  “Call me John. I think you and I might be spending a lot of time together.” He went across to the car, checked with the driver that there were no messages, then came back. “Let’s walk- Scobie, isn’t it? I always like to get the stink of that place out of my nose. It’s not really a smell, it’s - well, you know what I mean?”

  “I know,” said Malone, all at once glad of the black detective’s company. “I once picked up a vagrant back home, a Pole who’d been in a concentration camp in Europe. He said that freedom had a smell all its own and he’d become an addict of it. I thought he was having me on, then I realized he was fair dinkum.”

  “Fair dinkum?”

  Malone grinned. “On the level. I’ll stick to English.”

  “Looks like Hurricane Myrtle is gonna drop in on us after all.”

  Jefferson looked up at the darkening sky. A wind had

  sprung up, ambushing people as they came to corners. Papers blew along the gutters like derelict birds; a wino sat on the kerb surrounded by a whirling aviary; he clutched at the flying papers and giggled like a child. Other citizens narrowed their eyes against the grit in the air, looked more bad-tempered than usual, bumped into each other and snarled like sworn enemies. A fire engine went by, charging through the traffic like a red rhino, the firemen riding it with faces turned back away from the wind, looking like reluctant heroes. The city had abruptly begun to show its nerve-ends.

  “Someone will stay there with those anarchists,” said Jefferson, “just in case one of them decides he knows something. But I think in the end the Mayor’s gonna have to agree to the ransom demand. We could be beating our heads against a wall for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Do you think he will - agree to the demand, I mean?”

  A headline flew by in the air: 2 DEAD. Jefferson caught the newspaper, screwed it up, dropped it into a bin they were passing. “He’d agree, I think. I dunno - sometimes I think he’s not as ambitious as the people around him. His old man, for instance - and his missus, come to think of it. She’s in the news as much as he is. Look there.” The wind had flattened the front page of the Post against a wall: Sylvia Forte smiled at them as from an election poster; then her face wrinkled, the wind played another trick, and the sheet was whipped away. “That’d be the early edition. She’ll be on the front page of every paper in the country by tomorrow morning.”

  “The reporters asked me if I had a photo of my wife. I’ve got one in my wallet, but I didn’t want to part with it.”

  “I don’t blame you. But I might have to ask you for it, run off some copies. Our men don’t know what she looks like, other than your description. Tall, blonde and good-looking. Could be a million women. Can I see it?”

  They stopped on the corner of a street and Malone took

  Lisa’s photo out of his wallet. Jefferson, turning away from the wind, looked at it carefully. “You downgraded her. She’s beautiful.”

  “I think so, too. But I couldn’t say that.”

  “I know. I used to think my wife was beautiful - she’s dead now-” He was silent for a moment: he could have been waiting for the traffic light above them to turn green. When it did he stepped off the kerb, going on, “Maybe other people thought she was no more than pretty. She was black, darker than me, and that don’t appeal to everyone. Can I keep this a while?”

  “Be careful of it.”

  “I will, Scobie. I’ll have some extra copies run off for you, if you like.”

  “No, the original will do.” It would be too much like tempting fate to ask for extra copies, as if he were storing up mementoes of Lisa against an empty future. The Gelt in him was rising, as gritty and depressing as the wind swirling about him.

  Police Commissioner Hungerford looked up as Sam Forte came into the Mayor’s office. The old man took off his velvet-collared coat and laid it carefully on a chair, sat down, arranged the creases of his trousers, then at last gave his attention to Hungerford.

  “Michael still upstairs at the reception?” Hungerford nodded. “So in the meantime, what have you got for us, Des?”

  “Nothing.” Hungerford jammed a cigarette into his holder, lit it and blew out a cloud of smoke. “We’re up against it, Sam. In every wav.”

  “Which ways do you mean ?” But Sam Forte did not sound curious or ignorant, only as if he wanted confirmation of what he already knew.

  “First, getting Sylvia and this other woman back. That’s the main thing, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But there’s the other aspect - ” Hungerford chewed on his holder. “If we release Parker and those others, it could mean losing the election. It’ll certainly make a laugh of what Mike and I are supposed to stand fo
r - law and order.”

  “We’ll forget the election for the moment,” said Sam Forte, taking the long view. “The law and order principle is the one we have to sustain.”

  He wiped his lips with the silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. He had been a fastidious dresser from the very first day he had escaped from work on the construction gangs. He still remembered driving over to Manhattan in the Packard, parking it outside Sulka and Company in the days when one could still park on Fifth Avenue, going in and ordering a dozen silk shirts and a wardrobe of other clothing that had at once established the image of him for the years ahead. From that day on he had never again been dirtied by grit and dust and mud; and he had built a corporation that, at book value, was worth several hundred million dollars. In a land that, he had come to learn, placed such a high value on appearances, he had achieved the appearance of the chairman of such a corporation. And, if he should last long enough, and he hoped God would be willing, no one would be able to say that he did not look like the father of a President.

  “We still have time on our side, Des.”

  “Not much.” Hungerford looked up at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece: like all cops, he hated a deadline.

  “But some. And I think we must use it. My own first impulse was to do anything they asked, so long as it got us back Sylvia and this - this Mrs Malone.” Sam Forte had an infallible memory for the names of voters and political workers and business contacts; but this unknown Australian woman was beyond his ken and he had difficulty in giving

  a name to a faceless stranger. “But I think I can persuade Michael that we should ask for some proof from the kidnappers that the two women are still alive. Pat Brendan is certainly going to ask for that sort of guarantee.”

  Brendan was the District Attorney. “Have you suggested it to Mike?”

  “Yes. He wouldn’t give me an answer. I think he has to hang on to the belief that Sylvia is still alive.”

  “What about the other man - Malone?”

  “He has no cards at all to play. I’m afraid he will have to go along with us.”

  - You callous old bastard. “They said they won’t be calling back till - God knows when. What if they don’t call back till five minutes of nine? It could be too late then.”

  “Michael can go on television, make an appeal to the kidnappers to give some proof that Sylvia is still alive, and hope that they are watching.”

  “They will be. Or listening to a radio. But what happens if they don’t give us any evidence?”

  “Then we don’t release Parker and the others.”

  “But what happens if the women are alive and the kidnappers just ignore Mike’s appeal ? When we don’t release Parker and the others, what happens then?”

  Sam Forte shivered in his chair as if he were suddenly cold. He put his hand to his mouth; when he took it away there were deep fingermarks in the soft flesh round his jaw. He had shut his mind against the thought of the worst happening to Sylvia, but Hungerford, with the brutal facing of truth born of his job, had forced the possibility of the fact on him.

  “I think we shall have to set ourselves a time limit. Give ourselves till say seven o’clock tomorrow morning. If we have made no progress by that time, then we release Parker and his gang.”

  The door opened and Michael Forte came in. He paused to give some instructions to Manny Pearl behind him; then he shut the door, crossed to his desk and sat down. His father

  and Hungerford sat across the room from him, saying nothing and waiting for him to recognize their presence. At last he glanced across at Hungerford with an inquiring look.

  The Commissioner shook his head. “Nothing. The garage attendant found nothing in our files on the young guy who hit him. And the last I heard we were getting nowhere with Parker and the others.”

  Michael Forte could feel the beginning of a severe headache, something he had not had since he was in his teens, when he had occasionally suffered mild attacks of petit mal. Even over the past four years of crises, savage criticism and the civilized assassination that was called political comment, the old malady had never recurred. But now the headache was attacking him and soon, he feared, there would be the odd feeling of detachment, the sensation of being removed from everything that was happening to him. He hoped he would not faint as he had done two or three times when he was young.

  “I’ve just been upstairs talking to an Arab sheikh. He told me that where he comes from, kidnappers are beheaded and their heads stuck on a pole in the public square for a week. He thinks advertisement is a good deterrent.”

  “Insensitive bastard,” said Hungerford.

  “No, I think he was trying to be sympathetic, in some roundabout way. He appreciated that a head stuck on a pole in the middle of City Hall Park wouldn’t get me many votes.” He swung his chair round, stared out the window for a while at the darkening sky, then turned back. The other two men saw how close he was to breaking and they kept quiet, not wanting to push him any closer to the edge. At last he said, “I’m no longer interested in law and order or votes. The next time the kidnappers call I’m going to tell them they can have Parker and his gang.”

  Sam Forte was aware of Hungerford’s quick glance in his direction, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He got up, moved across past his son to the window and looked out at the trees, their leaves dying and being whisked away by the wind, the

  seasons appearing to change even as he looked at them. He wondered if Sylvia had a window to look out of wherever she was being held; he felt an abrupt wave of pity for his daughter-in-law. Then he wondered if she would understand his efforts to save what he could of the career they had both nurtured so patiently all these years.

  By leaning forward he could see the statue of Horace Greeley, bald head flecked with the dandruff of bird dung. There was another man who had run for political office, had been vilified, who had lost his wife just before an election, though she had not been kidnapped but had died. / am not dead, but I wish I were, Greeley had written; and Michael already had that same look of hopeless despair that must have been on Greeley’s face when he had penned those words. Hope must still be kept alive, Sam decided; not just for the safe return of Sylvia but for success in tomorrow’s election. He looked at his watch: they still had sixteen hours to the absolute deadline, fourteen hours to the deadline he had discussed with Hungerford.

  “Michael -” He kept his voice soft and sympathetic while he told his son of the need for some proof from the kidnappers that Sylvia and the other woman were still alive. “I don’t think you can surrender at once - “

  Michael shook his head, put his hand to his eyes as the pain increased. He felt sick and he suddenly swung his chair round and put his head down between his knees. At that moment there was a knock, the door opened and Manny Pearl stood there with Malone and Jefferson.

  “Mr Mayor - ” Then Pearl was across the room in a swift pattering run, was on his knees beside the still bent-over Mayor. “Mike! Mike, are you all right?”

  Michael Forte slowly straightened up, leaned back in his chair. He blinked, saw Pearl; then a ghastly grin slipped across his mouth. “Okay, Manny - I’ll be all right.”

  Manny Pearl stood up, his face as white as that of his boss. “Jesus, you had me scared!” He looked around at the others, his concern for Michael touching because it was so sincere

  and unexpected by the other men who knew him. “He’s so goddam healthy and fit - You’re sure you’re okay?”

  Michael nodded. “Get me a drink, Manny. Maybe the others would like one - ?” Only Hungerford nodded, and Pearl moved across to the drink cabinet in a corner of the room. Michael, his head still aching but his composure recovered, looked at Malone and Jefferson. “Any luck over at The Tombs?”

  “None,” said Malone. “What’s been happening here?”

  Malone meant it as a general question, but from the expressions on the faces of the two Fortes and Hungerford he guessed at once that there were several answers. It was M
ichael Forte who said, “We’ve decided to hold off releasing those men until seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m going to make a broadcast, ask the kidnappers for some proof that our wives are still alive. Do you agree to that?”

  “I have no vote in this city,” said Malone.

  “That was a pretty low blow this afternoon.” Michael Forte pushed his steak, hardly touched, away from him. “You don’t seem to appreciate the fix I’m in.”

  “Look,” said Malone, pushing his own steak away. He picked up the beer he had asked for with his dinner and sipped it; compared to the stuff back home it tasted like aerated water that had a hop or two dunked in it; maybe Americans made their beer the way they made their tea, with beer-bags in a glass. “Look, I’m not a boneheaded bastard - or at least I try not to be. I’m not a stranger to politics - I’ve had one or two brushes with it back home. One of our Police Commissioners once told me never to expect to outlive politics - I think he also meant never expect to beat them, either.”

  “You think that’s all I’m considering- politics?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, it damn well isn’t!”

  “I don’t care what your considerations are - ” Malone put down his glass, stared at Forte across the table between them. “If I don’t get my wife back, and your politics or whatever has been even part of the reason, I’ll take you apart bone by bone!”

  Forte stared back, then slowly he relaxed. “I think you would, too,” he said quietly. “But only because I wouldn’t fight back.”

  Malone, after more persuasion from Manny Pearl, had decided to leave the hotel and move up to Gracie Mansion. He had not seen Michael Forte till they had sat down to dinner, just the two of them, and then Forte had made his comment on what had happened down at City Hall that afternoon.

  “My kids are due home some time tonight. They’re going to ask the same sort of questions you’ve been asking.”

  “What are you going to tell themV