Ransom

by Jon Cleary

  “For them, too?” She didn’t answer and after a moment he said, “Carole - I was worried, baby-Jesus, anything could’ve happened to you, you know?”

  Without looking at him she said, “What would you have done with those women if something had happened to me?”

  “I dunno.” Slightly reassured by her response, he came into the kitchen, slid on to one of the stools at the breakfast bar. He had changed out of his wet clothes, but his hair was not yet dry; sleeked back and down into his collar, it made him look a stranger. “Just left ‘em, I guess.”

  “Left them here - not told anyone?”

  “They’d have got away eventually. They just got away now, didn’t they?”

  She turned round, sat on one of the stools opposite him. She and Mark used to sit here in the early hours of the morning, when each of them had come back from a party; the memory was too sudden and too sharp, she felt a catch in her throat. She could see the hurt look in Abel’s face, but she resisted the urge to be sympathetic. Mark was the important man in her life now, even if he could never be a real replacement for Roy.

  “Abel, you’ve got to understand - nothing is absolutely cut and dried for us. I thought it was - I thought I had planned every little detail - but things have come up that I just could not anticipate. That, for instance.” She nodded at the curtained window; the rain beat like grapeshot against the shutters outside. “I heard on the car radio that they’ve closed all the airports between Washington and Boston.”

  Concerned only with their own relationship, it took him a moment to realize the implication of what she had said. “What are we gonna do then- I mean if they can’t take those guys to Cuba?”

  “I’ll - we’ll have to think about it.” She made a concession, let him think he might help in the decisions. The coffee had begun to percolate and she got up and turned down the burner. “There’s something else - someone named Frank Padua.”

  “Who the f- ” He held back his tongue; he was still on edge. “Who the hell’s Frank Padua?”

  “I don’t really know. He’s someone in politics, but what he is, I don’t know.” She looked for something to eat with the coffee; suddenly she was very hungry. She had hardly eaten all day, consumed as she had been by nervous excitement, but now she was ravenous. She saw the dirty dishes in the sink and the empty cans on the draining board. “I wish you’d clean up after yourself.”

  “Baby, we’re gonna be gone from here tomorrow. Who cares?”

  “/ do!” She rattled through the cans of food in the cupboards, her fingers thick and awkward with anger and nerves. Since the death of Roy she had not been able to handle close relationships, her capacity for tolerance and sympathy eroded by the bitter grief that was still part of her. It had taken her weeks to commit herself to Abel and she had only done so when she had finally decided he was necessary to the success of her scheme. A crisis in their relationship was something else she had not anticipated, but she knew now that, given the circumstances, it was one of the first things she should have planned for. She grabbed a can of chili con carne, fumbled with it at the can-opener mounted on the wall, swore savagely.

  “Baby- ” He took the can from her, opened it expertly as he looked at her and shook his head reproachfully. “You wanna watch your language, you know?”

  She took the can from him, emptied the contents into a saucepan. She said nothing till she had steadied herself, determined not to let him score any more points off her. “Have you fed the women?”

  “No. Let them go hungry.”

  She found two more cans of chili, opened them herself this time, and added the contents to that already in the saucepan. He watched her, then abruptly he wheeled round and went back into the living-room. She turned down the burner under the coffee as low as possible, began to stir the chili in the saucepan. She felt weak and exhausted and, suddenly for the first time, hopeless. Was it really worthwhile going through with the operation?

  When she had driven up the driveway beside the cottage and seen the two women in the glare of the car’s headlights, it had been as if the night were gradually climbing to a climax of disaster. The journey back from Manhattan had been a nightmare, even on the almost deserted expressways and roads; and riding with her had been the nagging wonder at who Frank Padua really was and how he had become involved in the kidnapping. She had not planned against the interference of outsiders, but she should have known that nothing in life was ever self-contained. Her four years of isolation since Roy’s death had proved that. It had been one long struggle to remain alone: people offering friendship, asking for sympathy, some asserting authority. She had been stupidly naive to think outsiders would not interfere in such an affair as the kidnapping. The world was full of meddlers, all with their own excuses or motives.

  She had switched on the car radio and heard the repeated news that all airports between Washington and Boston had been closed; depressed all of a sudden, she would not have been surprised if a car had appeared out of the driving rain and run into her. But she had reached home safely; only to find the culmination of the night’s misadventures right there in the rain-silvered beam of the headlights. She had been fortunate to catch Sylvia Forte before the latter could escape past her, flinging open the door of the car and knocking the Mayor’s wife to the ground. Abel, responding to her urgent blowing of the car horn, had come out of the cottage on the run, but too late to catch the Australian woman before she had disappeared into the darkness. When he had returned

  to the cottage without Lisa Malone she was waiting for him, ready to leave the house and find somewhere else to hide. They had been arguing about where they should go when there had come the hammering at the front door.

  She had waited in the living-room, her gun pressed against the side of the shivering and weeping Sylvia, while Abel, gun in hand, had gone along the hallway to the door. If it was the police, if Lisa Malone had by sheer luck found a prowling squad car, she was not sure what she would do. She had thought about murder in cold blood, but now she was so close to it her mind had stopped functioning. The hand that held the gun in Sylvia’s side did not belong to her; it was as if her whole right arm had become numb and useless. If the gun went off it would go off of its own accord.

  She had almost collapsed with relief when Abel had come back along the hallway carrying the unconscious Lisa. A hissing sigh had escaped her and she had stepped back from Sylvia, half-sitting on the back of the couch to take the weight off her weak empty legs. She had been glad then of Abel’s help, leaving him to take the two women into the bedroom, revive Lisa, tie their hands and feet, then board up the window again. If she had needed any proof that she could not have accomplished the kidnapping on her own, he had provided it then.

  She could not remember the first time she had seen him, only the first time she had noticed him. He had been in her night class three weeks then, a quiet boy sitting right back at the far corner of the classroom, never asking a question, never putting himself forward to answer one. She had been teaching English, the course aimed at those who had never got above the tenth grade; she knew she was not a good teacher and it had taxed her patience to lower her intelligence to that of the class in front of her. But the school had provided the retreat she wanted. No one was likely to come looking for a summa cum laude Barnard graduate in a night class in one of the poorer sections of Kansas City.

  Then one night after she had dismissed the class Abel had come shyly up to her desk. “Miss - ?”

  “Yes?” She had to struggle to remember his name; none of the students really meant anything to her. “Simmons, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Could I walk you to your car?” She looked at him curiously and he stumbled on, “I heard a coupla guys talking. They gonna wait for you outside.”

  “Who?”

  He shook his head. “Dunno their names. But they been talking dirty about you. I wouldn’t want nothing to happen to you, you know?”

  She had experienced a little trouble with some of th
e men in her class, but she had managed them without difficulty; she had wondered for a moment if this was just his awkward way of leading up to a date with her. Her first reaction had been to brush him off, but there had been something in his thin, serious face that had suddenly caught her, a look of concern for her in his pale, cautious eyes that told her that this boy saw her as more than just a pick-up date. And when they got outside the school there were indeed two of the boys from the class waiting there. They had said nothing, just stared sullenly at her and Abel, then hurried off into the night. They had never come to her classes again.

  The relationship with Abel had developed slowly, he never pushing himself on her, she giving him only small encouragement. She would occasionally have coffee with him, but she had kept the association on a strictly teacher-student level and he had accepted it. She told him nothing about herself, but she learned that he came from Chicago, that he had run away from home at sixteen, that he had bummed his way through the Midwest and now was working as a laundry deliveryman in Kansas City. He had come to night school because he had some vague ambition to be something more than a working stiff for the rest of his life. But what had intrigued her was that his hatred of the

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  Establishment (though he did not call it that) and its uses of authority was even stronger than her own.

  Then two months ago there had occurred the incident for which she had been waiting four long years, the opportunity to revenge herself on the society that had killed her husband. There had been an added sweet irony that the revenge would be effected through the release of Mark; she had suffered a severe shock when she had seen his photo in the newspapers, because she had had no idea what he had been involved in since she had left home. The plan had come into her mind as a sudden inspiration; she had spent the next few days studying it as thoroughly as any course she had taken at college. Her decision to take Abel in with her had been deliberate; she did not expect him to be surprised by what she suggested and he had not been. She had told him nothing of Roy or Mark: the plan was just to effect the release of five men who believed the same as they did, that all authority was rotten.

  But once she had involved him, she had had to commit herself to him. He had at once lost his shyness with her, had told her what she had suspected, that he was in love with her. She had had no man in bed with her since Roy, but she felt she owed Abel something and she had allowed him to make love to her. He was a fumbling, aggressive lover and, to get some satisfaction from the act after so long without it, she had tried to educate him. He had mistaken her self-interest for an expression of love for himself. From then on she had known that when she had to break away from him it would have to be secretly and she would have to head for a destination where he would never find her. She might even have to join Mark in Cuba.

  In the living-room Abel had turned on the television set again. Another ancient movie was being shown: Glive Brook and Marlene Dietrich were on a train somewhere in China. But they were ghosts in a world he did not know and was not interested in, and he switched the set off. Then he heard one of the women call weakly from the bedroom.

  He was about to ignore the call, then.abruptly changed his mind: they were his prisoners as much as Carole’s. He put on his wig, which he had not worn out into the storm, and donned the dark glasses. He unlocked the bedroom door and went into the room where Lisa and Sylvia, hands and feet bound, lay uncomfortably on their beds.

  “Untie us so that we can get out of these wet clothes,” Lisa pleaded. “Otherwise we’re going to catch our death - “

  “Won’t make much difference one way or the other. You asked for trouble, you can’t complain if you get it.”

  “What do you want us to do - apologize?” Sylvia lay on her back, her bound hands resting on her stomach.

  “Too late for that, Mrs Forte.” He smiled at their discomfort.

  Sylvia tried to control her shivering, but she was afraid as much as cold and she spoke through trembling lips: “Please let us be comfortable - at least for as long as we’ve got.”

  Lisa, still exhausted, felt she was listening to some nightmare dialogue; she struggled as if trying to wake from the dream, but the horror was that she knew she was already awake. She knew she was cut and bruised, but she was so numb with the cold wetness of her clothes that she could feel nothing. She sneezed, and the small ordinary reflex seemed to clear her mind.

  “Ask Carole to come in,” she said.

  “What do you want her for?” Abel stiffened with anger and suspicion.

  “She’s the boss, isn’t she? Perhaps she’ll let us take our clothes off.”

  For a moment Lisa thought she had said the wrong thing. Abel took a quick step towards her and she turned her face away from the expected blow. Then he roughly grasped her hands, began to fumble with the cord that bound them.

  “You talk too much! You’re gonna wind up-” Anger made him cruel and awkward; Lisa had to bite back a cry of pain as he tore at her hands. “Okay, get up!”

  She stood up and at once fell forward. He caught her, held

  her away from him; then savagely he began to tear at her clothing. But the wool suit and the sweater would not rip; she staggered back and forth as he tried to claw the clothes from her. Then, panting heavily, he threw her back on the bed.

  “Take ‘em off!”

  Lisa, ready to collapse again, shook her head and gasped, “Not with you in here - !”

  He glared at her for a moment, the blank dark glasses somehow making his face even more menacing; in her confused and frightened mind she was staring at a death-mask. Then he turned to Sylvia. His head felt ready to burst and he did his best to steady himself. He did not tear at the cords that bound Sylvia; he struggled to keep his fingers methodical as he picked at the knots. He freed her, then stood back.

  “Okay, you take your clothes off!”

  Sylvia looked at him, then at Lisa, who shook her head violently. Then she stood up, turned her back on Abel and took off her wet jacket. She peeled off her sweater, having difficulty with it as the soaked wool clung to her. She slipped out of her skirt and stood in her brassiere and half-slip.

  “They’re wet too,” said Abel. “Take ‘em all off.”

  “Not till you go out of the room. I’m not going to stand naked in front of you.”

  “Why not? You think I wanna screw you or something? I wouldn’t touch you with someone else’s - “

  “What’s going on?” Carole, carrying a tray with food on it, stood in the doorway.

  “They wanted to get outa their wet clothes. I’m helping them.” Abel sensed at once that Carole was on the side of the other two women. Jesus, the bitches of the world! Why did God invent them? “This one’s got some idea I wanna rape her - “

  “I didn’t say that!” Sylvia could feel her whole body trembling as if it were about to shatter; she knew she was on the verge of hysteria. But she mustn’t succumb to it; she searched for some pride to keep her going in front of these

  strangers. All her adult life had been dedicated to putting up a front: the experience came to her aid now. “I just won’t undress in front of strange men, that’s all. Neither will Mrs Malone.”

  Lisa stood up, impressed and encouraged by Sylvia’s defiance. She, too, had sensed that Carole would be on their side. Despite the gun she had carried and the kidnapping she had engineered, the girl had betrayed herself as still possessed by middle-class proprieties; Lisa had heard the argument over Abel’s language out in the living-room and there had been other hints that Carole did not subscribe to complete permissiveness. Scobie had once told her that habitual behaviour was one of the main things that always trapped a criminal in the end: she took a chance now that Scobie was right.

  “I don’t think you’d want to do it either,” she said to Carole. “It’s not that we’re afraid Abel will do something to us - ” that was a lie: he might not rape them but he would kill them ” - it’s just - well, modesty, I suppose. Some of us still have tha
t.”

  Carole said nothing for a moment. She knew the two women were co-opting her against Abel; there was danger if she agreed to let herself be used by them. But she was still angry with Abel; more importantly, she had to remind him that she still was the one running this operation. She put the tray down on the dressing-table, nodded to Abel.

  “Leave them to me.”

  “I’ll stay,” he said coldly. “Just in case - “

  “In case of what? They’re not going to try to escape again. Not without their clothes. I’ll take them out and hang them on one of the heaters,” she said to Lisa and Sylvia. Then she looked back at Abel. “I said leave us, Abel. There’s some coffee in the kitchen for you.”

  He stood absolutely stockstill for a moment, then a faint trembling shook him. His hand went to his belt; but his gun was on the table out in the living-room. He would have killed all three of them there and then if his hand had found the

  gun; he was blind with anger and pain. He made a whimpering sound, like that of an animal caught in a trap; then abruptly he turned and stumbled out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Carole felt a weakening rush of relief and she put out a hand against a bedpost to steady herself. “You’re afraid of him too, aren’t you?” said Sylvia quietly. “You have to save yourself as well as us from him.”

  Chapter Eight

  “The Cubans have said they won’t take Parker and the others,” said Michael Forte. “They won’t allow any plane carrying them to land there.”

  “How do you know?” asked Malone suspiciously: were they playing some callous political trick on him?

  “The State Department has been in touch with them through our contact channels - the Swiss spoke to them for us. The Cubans are quite adamant - they don’t want Parker and his buddies.”

  “Why not? Christ, I thought they’d throw out the red carpet for anyone who wanted to blow up this country.”