Ransom

by Jon Cleary

“I am a political prisoner,” said the young black standing inside the bars. He was thin and he had the biggest eyes Malone had ever seen in a man’s face; they reminded him of the eyes he had seen in the faces of starving children in pictures of Asian famines. The man’s hair was in paper curlers, the hair wound tightly into thin strands that stuck straight out from his head; his head looked like a black pudding studded with fancy cocktail picks. He was dressed in a yellow frilled blouse and a red-and-yellow flared skirt and he was barefooted. He’s straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Malone thought, a caricature piccaninny. The man’s voice had a high lisping note to it: “Women’s Liberation is a legitimate movement - “

  “There are no political prisoners in here.” Malone was surprised at the coldness in Jefferson’s voice. Even though he must know he was dealing with a mentally unbalanced transvestite, it seemed to be a sore point with Jefferson that the jail was holding political prisoners. “Every one of you who is in here is here because he broke the law. Whether he broke it for political reasons doesn’t matter - he broke it and that’s why he’s here. You’re not here because of your politics.”

  “Bullshit,” said a voice from the back of the cell.

  The transvestite looked over his shoulder. “You are right, honey, but that’s no language to use in front of a lady.”

  I’m dreaming all this, Malone thought. I’m exhausted and worried and now everything is becoming a nightmare. The chanting had almost died awav and evervone in the cells was trying to hear what was being said down at the end cell; occasionally there would be a scream or a wild laugh, but the offender would angrily be told to shut up. A barred window high in a wall at the end of the bridge was partly open and through it came the sound of the storm as it tore its way through a narrow alley outside. There was a thick smell in Malone’s nostrils, of sweat and ammonia and stale

  food and excreta, the sour smell of prison, and somewhere in a cell on the upper tiers a man was crying quietly, like a child afraid of the dark. And in front of Malone and Jefferson the thin dark head with its paper curlers swung itself back and forth on its bony shoulders.

  “No respect, no respect! How can we get equality when there’s no respect?”

  Jefferson looked past the transvestite into the back of the cell. A white youth lay on a bunk, hands behind his head, dark expressionless eyes staring down past the lower planes of his face at the two policemen. “Mr Latrobe, we’d like to talk to you.”

  Latrobe said nothing, the expression on his still face remaining unchanged. Malone could not see him clearly in the gloom, but one feature did mark him: through his long dark hair there ran a broad white streak, as bizarre in its way as the paper curlers on the head of the other man in the cell.

  “Oh, he don’t talk, except to be insulting to me.” The transvestite reached out a hand through the bars at Malone, but the latter stepped back; suddenly the black spat at him and the spittle hit Malone in the face. His immediate reaction was to lunge forward, but Jefferson put an arm in front of him. The transvestite giggled delightedly and wiggled his hips, swaying the skirt from side to side. “We fed up with your insults too, white honey.”

  Malone wiped his face with his handkerchief, looked at Jefferson. “Maybe I had better go downstairs. You’ll probably get further without me up here.”

  “Why don’t both of you get lost?” That was a man from the next cell, a huge brute who looked as if, were he to put his mind and strength to it, he could bend the bars that encaged him like vermicelli stalks. “You pigs stink up the place.”

  Jefferson ignored him, looked back at Latrobe. “You could maybe save the lives of two women, Latrobe, if you talked to us.”

  Latrobe still said nothing, but now turned his face to the wall beside his head. The giant in the next cell pressed his face against the bars, making himself even uglier; his small dark eyes, surrounded by scar tissue, stared out on either side of the yellow bar that split his broad face. He put a huge paw down and rubbed the front of his trousers.

  “They white pussy? You saving ‘em for yo’self, black

  Pig?”

  Malone suddenly knew he had to get out of this place, at

  once, before he tried to reach in through the bars to get at

  these men who hated him. He abruptly wheeled about and

  walked down to the entrance gate. As he did so the chanting

  started up again: Kill, Kill, Kill, a litany of hate whose

  echoes he knew would never die away in his ears. Cops were

  disliked in Australia, but he had never met anything like

  this: he was branded by both his badge and his skin, and the

  latter he could never hand in. You could not resign from

  your race: the men yelling and screaming and spitting at

  him on either side of him told him that; they knew it even

  better than he did. He understood their hatred of him, yet

  he hated them for it. If any one of the men had stepped out

  of his cell Malone knew he would have attacked him, would

  have vented all his fury on the black skin that faced and

  taunted him.

  The young guard let him through the gate and he stood on the landing outside the elevator. A senior guard, also a black, had just stepped out of the elevator and he looked angrily at Malone.

  “I dunno who you are, mister, but you asked for that.” Jefferson came through the gate and the guard captain turned to him. “They should never have let you up here, not this time of night. Christ, don’t you think we got enough trouble on our hands?”

  “I’m sorry, but we needed some information. We didn’t get it, unfortunately.” Jefferson looked at Malone. “You all right, Scobie?”

  Malone stood facing the wall, both hands leaning on it;

  he looked like a suspect about to be frisked by the two black law officers. He was trembling, something he could not remember ever having had happen to him before; he felt cold, as if a fever had suddenly left him. The shouting and the banging on the cell bars was still going on, and behind it all was the loud mad laughter of a prisoner who had suddenly gone hysterical.

  “All my bloody life,” said Malone dazedly, talking to himself as much as to the two middle-aged black men behind him, “I’ve tried to tell myself I was tolerant, that I didn’t care a bugger what colour a man’s skin was. But just then, for a minute or two, I was a bloody racist. I’d have killed any one of those bastards, if you’d let me at him. Just because he was a bloody nigger.” He dropped his arms, turned round, stared at the two dark faces looking at him expression-lessly. “And don’t tell me you understand, because I won’t believe you. I don’t understand myself, not now anyway.”

  The two blacks exchanged glances, then Jefferson pressed the button for the elevator. “Let’s go downstairs, Scobie.”

  The shouting and banging were dying away as Malone and Jefferson got into the elevator. They rode down in silence and when they got out Jefferson, still saying nothing, led the way to the Warden’s office. Davidson, The Female Eunuch nowhere in sight now, was poring over some papers. He looked up as the two men came in.

  “There was a ruckus up there. Captain Hemmings blew his top because I let you go up.” Davidson was a tall angular man whose unflappability had been his main recommendation towards his promotion; he knew that the world, its joys and griefs, its wars and riots, would never alter its course because of anything he might do. Come Judgment Day he would be standing patiently in line, reading a paperback, while everyone else was adding up his merits or demerits. He would take neither heaven nor hell for granted, but he would accept the fact that, wherever he was bound, someone else had already booked his place for him. He accepted The

  Tombs and everything in it as a fact of life. “I was just about to send up the riot squad.”

  “It was all just noise, nothing serious,” said Jefferson, but he did not look at Malone. “Phil, could we have a look at what you took off Latrobe when he cam
e in?”

  “Sure.” Davidson picked up his phone. When he put it down he said, “You get anything out of him? Nothing? Neither have we. We get silent bastards in here, but most of ‘em are psychos or junkies. But he just seems to have withdrawn from the human race. Can’t say I blame him, the section of it he’s got up there with him on that floor.’

  “Why did you put that fag in with him?”

  “I had nowhere else to put the fag. I got a whole block of them on the fourth floor, but there was no room for that one. If I put him in a cell with any of the straights, they’d rape him before we locked the door. He’s safe enough with Latrobe.”

  A guard brought in a tin tray in a cloth bag. A tag was tied to the bag: Charles Latrobe and the date of his admission. When the guard had gone out Jefferson ran his fingers through the few belongings in the tray.

  “Not much there.” A wallet, some money, a gold-nibbed fountain pen, a pearl-handled penknife, a gold signet ring. “No social security card, nothing like that?”

  “That’s all he had on him,” said Davidson. “The wallet had nothing but those dollar bills in it, not even a driver’s licence. Just as if he knew he was gonna be picked up and he was gonna have nothing on him that would identify him.”

  “What about the pen and ring?” Malone was almost his normal self again. The experience upstairs had almost wrenched him apart; but he had to remember that the safe recovery of Lisa was his sole objective. He tried being a cop again: “That’s a pretty expensive Parker pen, isn’t it? How many anarchists go around with those?”

  “Fred Parker, maybe,” said Jefferson, then grinned with embarrassment. “Sorry.”

  Malone recognized the small, poor joke for what it was: an attempt by Jefferson to tell him that the mood upstairs was forgotten. He managed a smile in return. “It was probably a present from someone. We don’t do it back home, but don’t you Americans give graduation presents or something?”

  “We celebrate everything,” said Jefferson with only mild sarcasm. “I remember when I was a kid I was sorry I wasn’t a Jew - I missed out on bar mitzvah presents. Latrobe isn’t old enough to have graduated from college. This could be a high school graduation present.”

  “The ring could be anything,” said Davidson, holding it up to the light. “On the head of it it’s just got two colours, black and gold, with the initials ZT laid over it. Those could be his initials, Z.T. Z? Zeke? Zachary?”

  “Could it be a high school ring?” Jefferson took the ring. “ZT. There’s the Zachary Taylor High School out on Long Island. Did anybody check this out?”

  “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. That’s the job of you guys up at Headquarters, John. We just look after them when you bring ‘em in. We don’t get paid for playing detective.”

  Jefferson gave him a sourly amused look, then said, “If Latrobe was so keen on hiding his identity, why did he keep something like this?”

  “Sentiment,” said Malone. “Maybe some girl gave it to him, or his parents. Maybe that and the fountain pen are the only links he has with who he really is, and he couldn’t give them up. He’s a brave man who chops off his past. For most of us it would be like chopping off an arm.”

  Jefferson looked at Davidson. “That’s why we get paid for playing detective.”

  “I’m very impressed,” said Davidson, but he smiled, “I hope you get somewhere. But where do you go from here?”

  “I think we’d do better to go straight out to the school.”

  “This time of night?”

  “There’ll be a caretaker, or someone in the neighbourhood

  who can tell us where we can find the principal.” He looked up at the clock on the wall above Davidson’s head. “I’ve never been on a case where I’ve had to watch the clock like this. Ten hours - it’s not long.”

  “One thing before we go,” Malone said to Davidson. “That white streak in Latrobe’s hair - Did you run any photos of him in the newspapers ? Nobody came forward to identify him from that?”

  “That streak has only come out since he’s been in here. That’s been two months now. It must have been dyed when they first brought him in. In daylight you can still see the streaks of dyed hair in it. The photo in the newspapers didn’t show it. No, nobody’s come forward. For him or any of them.”

  Malone nodded, then gestured towards the phone. “May I call the Mayor, just to let him know where I am. And just in case he’s had another message.”

  Davidson waved at the phone and Malone waited for the switchboard operator to connect him. Then: “Inspector Malone? This is Lieutenant Denning. The Mayor has been trying to reach you for the last hour. He wants you to call him at City Hall.”

  Malone pressed down the receiver buttons, then asked to be connected to City Hall. While he was waiting he looked at Jefferson. “I’m not daring to hope, but do you think - ?”

  Jefferson shrugged, but his face remained blank. “We could have been lucky. Let’s hope so.”

  Then Michael Forte came on the phone. “Inspector Malone ? Scobie - where have you been ? Where are you now?” It was impossible to tell from his voice what news he had. “Get across here to City Hall as soon as you can. Something’s come up.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Why do so many American men always wear black socks?” said Lisa. “They look like a lot of defrocked priests.”

  “What?” Sylvia looked up from examining the ladders in her stockings.

  “Nothing. Just making conversation. But I might just as well save my breath.”

  “I just don’t feel like talking. Chattering isn’t going to help us in this situation.”

  “I’m not suggesting we chatter. I want to talk - about trying to escape from here.”

  “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it. We’d never get out of this room - and that boy outside would beat us up unmercifully just for trying.”

  “That’s a risk we’d have to take. God, haven’t you risked anything in your life ? Have you always waited for everything to be cut and dried and safeV

  Sylvia took her time about answering. She did not think she was any less brave than Lisa; but all her adult life had been given to weighing percentages. She did not think she would lack courage if instant action were required, certainly not lack it enough to immobilize her. Years ago, out on the Sound, she and her father had been caught in a sudden storm, their small craft driven before the wind like a crippled bird. She had never been so frightened, not until these past hours; but she had not panicked, had reacted instinctively to her father’s shouted instructions and had helped bring the boat and themselves back to safety. She had hated and been frightened of storms ever since, and this was part of the reason she did not want to risk the attempt to escape from this cottage: the storm outside might be less dangerous than the boy in the next room, but it still held its fear for her. It,

  and the certainty in her own mind that Abel would hear them escaping, were percentages she could not ignore.

  “He’ll hear us - “

  “With the noise of the storm? And he’s got the television on, too. Look how loudly we’ve had to knock each time we’ve wanted to go to the bathroom.”

  “You’ll never get those boards off- “

  Lisa had been standing by the window examining the boards. They were planks, six inches wide by an inch thick, cut to fit exactly the width of the windows to the outer edges of the frame; Abel, who had cut the boards, had allowed no room for leverage between the wall and the raised edge of the frame. Each plank was held by three big nails at either end, each nail driven right into the timber. “If we could slide something in under the end of one of the boards - “

  “What, for instance?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you be constructive?” It was only in the past half-hour that they had begun to snap at each other. Though they were not stumbling over each other, their prison room was proving too small for them; they did not have to adapt, as long-term prisoners in a penitentiary would have t
o, and their nerves were rebelling against the proximity of each other. They did not know each other well enough to make allowances. They had nothing in common but their predicament and it was not proving enough, despite its seriousness. “What if your husband can’t do anything for us?”

  “Then will be the time to think about escaping - “

  “It’ll be too bloody late then!” There was an echo in her ear of Scobie: she couldn’t remember using bloody before, it was not one of her words. Oh God, let me see him again! Get us out of here - please! She turned back to the window, began to run her fingers up and down the edges of the boards, searching for some leverage.

  Sylvia stood up, lifted her head and listened: it was an instinctive habit she had, as if she could hear nothing unless she strained for it. She heard the storm outside, the rain

  hammering against the shutters and the wind blasting its way through trees; she moved to the door and listened to the voices on the television set out in the living-room. Then she took the belt of her suit from where it hung on the end of the bed. “Try that. That buckle is brass - it may not bend.”

  It was a big square buckle with the initial S worked into the centre of it. “I might ruin it,” said Lisa. “That’s an expensive suit - “

  “Goddammit, do you want to get out of here or not? What’s more important - getting away from here or worrying about my suit? Or were you just talking -just chattering?”

  “No, I wasn’t just talking! I’ll damned well show you!”

  Lisa turned her back on Sylvia, began looking for a gap where she could insert a corner of the buckle under one of the boards. She was trembling with temper and her fingers fumbled; then she found a slit under the bottom board. She had to get down on her knees to get at it. The end of the buckle slid under the edge of the board, but not far enough to give her any leverage. She took off her shoe.

  “What the devil are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to have to hammer it under the board. Are you having second thoughts about me ruining the buckle?”