Bowman came over to me and whispered, "I'll have fifty men out here tonight. We'll get 'em."
I said, "I have lied to my friends, Ned. That's not one of my usual bad habits. You guys hadn't better slip up."
"No sweat. And congratulations, pal. It's the first time I've known you to be all the way on the side of the law. I may shed a tear."
Dot slammed down the receiver. "Now this is just beyond endurance!"
"Who was that?" Bowman snapped.
"It was… that voice again. 'You dykes better get out of there. You dykes leave or die.' If I ever get my hands on-"
The phone rang yet again.
"You got an extension?" Bowman asked.
"In our bedroom upstairs. The front, southwest corner.
Bowman said, "Pick up when I do," and trotted off down the hall. I placed my hand on the receiver. Midway in the fifth ring the phone fell silent and I lifted the receiver and passed it to Dot.
"Y-yes. Hello?"
We waited, watched her breath catch, then flow slowly out of her.
"It's for Timmy." She sighed. "It's not the voice. It's a man for Mr. Callahan. Oh me, oh my."
I said, "Did the first caller mention Peter?"
"Why no," Dot said. "He didn't. Or she. I'm still not certain whether it's a man or a woman."
Bowman came back. I said, "I think we've got two of them. Two separate people, or groups."
"Yeah. Or thirty-five. I've gotta get a tap and trace rig on this phone number, but fast."
Out in the yard, Kay Wilson had Timmy backed into a lilac bush and was singing the praises of Crane "Quite-a-Guy" Trefusis. Timmy's eyes were open, but I suspected he was nonetheless napping lightly. I'd seen him do it before at cocktail parties put on by insurance industry lobbyists. Edith was off by herself over by the peonies, gingerly emptying the Japanese beetle traps.
"Phone call," I said, ambling up to Timmy and Kay.
Kay turned. "For me? It must be Wilson, wants his lunch. Tell him I just left."
"No, it's for Mr. Callahan."
"Oh, your boyfriend, huh?"
"This is the man."
She snickered. "Hey, Bob. Tell me somethin', then. Which one of you's the boy and which one's the girl?"
Timmy quickly walked by me toward the house, his eyes raised heavenward.
I said, "Wouldn't you like to know. To tell you the truth, Kay, only our chiropractor knows for 50 sure."
"Your what?"
I said, "What's your hubby up to today, Kay? Bill Wilson make you rich yet?"
"Hah! You pullin' my leg, kiddo? The day that bozo gives me more'n a lotta lip'll be the day Charles Bronson sends me a dozen roses and a case of Jack Daniel's. Say, don't you just love Dot's flower garden? Hey, what are you doin' over there, Mrs. Stout? Mealybugs chewin' up your tulips?"
"Eh? What's that, Mrs. Wilson?"
"I asked if you got chigs on your posies? Looks like you got 'em, all right. Up to your left tit. I got a can of Raid down to the house if you want to try a shot of that. That stuff'll fix 'em."
I said, "Kay, you're needed in the house for a few minutes. The police need a set of your fingerprints. So they can tell yours from those of whoever else handled that package you delivered."
Her eyes got big as we turned toward the house. "Hey, Bob, what the Sam Hill is goin' on around here, anyways? Police dicks crawling all over the place. This used to be a respectable neighborhood. What was in that package anyhow? Your lover boy wouldn't tell me what was goin' on. What's the big secret?"
I said, "One of Dot's houseguests is missing. The police are helping locate him. He'll turn up, though, don't worry."
"Maybe he was snatched," she said eagerly. "And they're sending him back here a piece at a time.
I read in the paper how the Mafia does it like that. Is that what was in the package? Some poor clown's tongue, or left ear, or pecker? Hell, nobody's safe anyplace anymore. They're gonna getcha, they're gonna getcha."
I went queasy but didn't reply as we stepped into the house. Timmy was off the phone now and Bowman was on the line with, judging by his civil tone, a superior in the department. I presented Kay Wilson to the fingerprint man, and Timmy pulled me aside.
"Mel Glempt just called. You don't know him. At least I think you don't. One of the Green Room bartenders I phoned earlier ran into him a while ago and told him Peter was missing. Just missing, no more. That's all anybody knows so far. Glempt saw something last night, and the barkeep had him call me and tell me about it. Glempt saw some kind of fight or scuffle in the Green Room parking lot last night just before midnight. He'd just pulled in."
"And?"
"And… well, this must have been it. A young man-a 'kid,' Mel said, but it must have been Peter-this young man was shoved into a car. He seemed to be resisting, but a guy wrapped a bandage or something around his head so he couldn't see, and got him into the back seat of this car-some kind of big old dark green job-and then the car drove away fast. There were two men, the shover and the driver."
"And Glempt didn't report this to anybody? Shit." Timmy said nothing." Well, did he at least get a make and model on the car?"
"No."
"Did he recognize the people doing it?"
"No."
"Can he describe them?"
"One of them, he said. The one who was outside doing the grabbing, but not the driver."
"Which way did they go?"
"Out Central. West."
"We'd better clue Bowman in right away. Have his people talk to Glempt. I'll want to talk to him too."
I turned toward Bowman, who was still on the phone. Timmy said, "Wait."
He looked grim, his cornflower blue eyes taking on the November gray cast they had whenever he was apprehensive about something, or frightened.
Timmy said, "At least one of the two-the one outside the car, the one Mel got a quick look at was a cop. A cop in a uniform. That's why Mel didn't call the police. He thought it was the police."
I looked over at Bowman, who, catching me watching him, turned his back to me as he spoke quietly into the telephone. end user
11
I phoned Mel Glempt, who repeated to me what he had told Timmy. I asked him to tell his story to Bowman's people, and he eventually agreed, though, with considerable trepidation.
My service reported no messages. I reached Patrolman Lyle Barner at home and set up a meeting with him for three-thirty. He said, "You coming alone?"
I said no and asked him if he'd turned up anything in his check of the night detective squad. He said he hadn't. I told him he might need to check again.
Bowman's two assistants drove off, one of them to carry the finger and the two notes to the crime lab, the other to interview the Deems, Wilsons, and Tad Purcell.
I got Bowman off in a corner and described to him what Mel Glempt had seen outside the Green Room the night before.
Bowman said, "This is a con. You're setting me up. You're lying."
I shook my head. A setup was not out of the question, but I knew it wasn't mine.
He asked for the name of the witness. I told him and provided Glempt's address and phone number. I added, "He'll talk to you and your people, but he won't talk to the night squad guys and would rather they did not know his identity."
"How come? Why's that?"
"Because," I said, "certain elements of the Albany Police Department cannot be trusted to do what's right a good part of the time. Or even what's legal. Face it, Ned, that's the sad truth."
He threw his head back and snorted in disbelief, as if I had tried to convince him that the world was an ovoid slab supported by a three-pronged stick.
Bowman knew what I meant, though. He walked to the telephone and hesitated. Then, making sure his back was to me, he dialed a number.
Dot Fisher was fixing club sandwiches and Senegalese soup and setting out more iced tea. She moved about the kitchen muttering under her breath and forcing a wan smile whenever anyone addressed her.
M
cWhirter returned to the room and resumed his pacing. He had questions: "Has the FBI been called?" "Why don't you arrest this Trefusis mobster? He must be the one behind all this." "When could they have taken Peter? How?"
Watching McWhirter carefully, I told him what Mel Glempt had seen. He stood trembling for a moment, then slumped into a chair and buried his head in his hands.
Bowman completed his call and ambled back to the table. He was shaking his head, clear-eyed, his movements a tad jauntier than the occasion, as I saw it, required. He looked at me coolly and said simply, "Uhn-uhn." As if that was the end of that: Glempt had been mistaken about the cop 52 he saw, or lying.
Timmy caught this and gave me a look. Here was an education for this sunny, optimistic fellow who had spent much of his adult life in the more wholesome and uncomplicated atmosphere of the back rooms of the state legislature.
Bowman did say he was sending two of his own men out to interview Glempt to get his
"confused account of the abduction," and Bowman further announced that he now had half the detective bureau working on the case and needed more information on Greco's background and recent activities, as well as Dot's and Edith's. I convinced McWhirter that I would personally follow up on "the cop Mel Glempt saw"-this made Bowman writhe with indignant disgust-so for half an hour, over lunch, a tense, snappish interrogation went forward.
It yielded nothing. Greco's family had moved to San Diego eleven years earlier and he had no known remaining Albany connections other than Tad Purcell. Nor could Dot come up with names of any "enemies" of hers or Edith's-former students, colleagues, relatives, neighbors beyond the ones we already knew about: the Wilsons, Deems, and Crane Trefusis.
Bowman said he had detectives out at that moment checking into the activities of Dot's Moon Road neighbors and would personally interview Crane Trefusis, which struck me as a wonderfully droll waste of time. Bowman allowed as how his bureau was also looking at some of the notorious local "hate groups," although he was clearly disinclined to investigate further the particular hate group which the only evidence we had pointed to.
"Lieutenant Bowman," Dot said. "You're not eating your Senegalese soup. Could I get you something else?"
"No, no, I'm fine. What's in this?"
"Tons of fresh vegetables straight from our garden. The herbs and spices are from Edith's little plot."
"Nnn. Looks good." He contemplated the greenish-yellow curried soup.
There was a light rap at the door and Dot heaved herself up.
"It's for you, Don. A man with a beautiful suitcase."
I went outside and watched Whitney Tarkington, in white ducks and a burgundy Calvin Klein polo shirt, place a Gucci bag on the terrace. He unsnapped it and held it open.
"It's all here, Donald. One hundred thousand-soon to become one hundred ten thousand-big ones."
"Dollars, you mean."
"Of course, dollars. What else?"
"In that bag it might have been lira."
"Ha-ha."
I peered into the bag and did a double take. "I see dollars, yes. I also see… Checks?"
"Twenty-eight thousand in cash, seventy-two thousand in checks. Best I could do on a Saturday, Donald. God, I had to bust my carefully toned buns just to come up with this on three hours' notice. I mean, a hundred grand in cash? You think I'm Grams or somebody?"
"Checks, Whitney? You think kidnappers are going to accept checks for a ransom payment?"
"They're good. Really they are."
"Crap. That's hardly the point. Crap."
"I mean, all of them will be good first thing Monday morning. They'll be covered, for sure. You can bet your life on it, Donald."
"Not my life, Whitney. Peter Greco's life. Thanks anyway. "
"That's quite all right. I owed you one, didn't I? Now we're even. Or will be, when you hand me a 53 hundred and ten thousand dollars-U.S. currency, please-seventy-two hours from this second."
He grinned dazzlingly and touched his perm.
"Of course," I said. "See you Tuesday, Whitney. Same time, same place. I might even return the bag."
"Just have it dry-cleaned if it's smudged," he said. "Toodle-ooo." He climbed back into his canary yellow sports car and drove off.
Timmy looked out. "Is that a Porsche nine-eleven? You don't see those around here too often."
"Looks like a Gloria Vanderbilt to me," I said, and went inside.
I phoned Crane Trefusis again. "I have to cash a number of checks. Seventy-two thousand dollars' worth. They're good. But the banks are closing, and Price Chopper revoked my We-Do-More-Club card last March over a minor incident involving a rib roast, a bunch of asparagus, and a smallish check the State Bank of Albany inexplicably declined to take seriously. You'll help me out, of course."
A pause. "Of course. Have you found the culprits yet?"
"Which ones?"
"Any of them."
"Not yet."
"You will."
"You bet, Crane. Have you come across any information that might help me in my labors?"
"I'm sorry, but I haven't. I don't actually spend a great deal of time with criminals in my business, Strachey."
"How much?"
"How much what?"
"How much time do you spend with criminals in your business? An hour a week? Three days?
Forty-five minutes? What?"
"None that I'm aware of. Not that I'll ever convince a professional skeptic like you."
"Just keep your ear to the ground, Crane. That's all I ask. You never know."
"Of course."
We worked out details for the check cashing and I rang off.
Bowman had neglected his Senegalese soup but was finishing off a second sandwich.
I said, "Hey, Ned. What if the kidnappers are hiding out at the bottom of that soup bowl?"
He blew me a tiny kiss. Dot, a woman of apparently limitless reserves of charity, shook her head, embarrassed for Bowman, a man very hard to be embarrassed for, if not about.
McWhirter was pacing again.
"I've got the money," I said. "Part cash and part in checks that I'll cash and get back here in plenty of time."
McWhirter stared at the bag With fear in his eyes, as if it might contain eight pounds of severed appendages.
Dot said quietly, "Thank you."
Bowman said, "Wish I had friends like yours, Strachey. Good work. Looks like we're all Set. I'll get a man out here to mark the bills and record serial numbers."
"What do we do now?" Timmy asked. "Just wait? I could use some sleep."
"Come on," I said, removing the checks from the valise and stuffing them into a bread bag I snatched from the kitchen counter. "You can sleep tomorrow. When this is all over. Right now we've got places to go, people to see."
"Where? Who?"
"You'll find out. We're both going to be busy. I've got a little list."
"Now don't you get in the way of my people," Bowman warned. "And if you hear anything I need to know, I want to know it goddamn quick. You got that, Strachey?"
I said, "Got it, Ned. You know me. For sure." end user
12
Passing the Deems' house, I told
Timmy, "I'll stop back here later. I don't think the Deems are the main problem in all of this.
Maybe none at all. But there's something I want to check. You can help me out by looking into another nagging matter."
As we bumped past the Wilsons' I explained to Timmy what I wanted him to find out about Bill Wilson.
"I'll do what I can," he said, "but this whole thing is starting to scare the hell out of me. I'm not sure I'm cut out for this rough stuff. It started out as some homophobic vandalism, which was sickening enough. And now people are actually getting hurt. Mutilated."
"I don't like it either."
"Imagine having your lover's finger arrive in a box. Of course, it could have been worse."
"It wasn't his," I said.
We turned onto Central.
"It-
What wasn't whose?"
"That finger wasn't Greco's."
"Come on. Really? How do you know? I thought McWhirter told Bowman it was."
"Greco has thick black hair on the tops of his fingers. I know. He touched my face. It tickled a little. The finger in that box was slender like Greco's but practically hairless. And what little hair there was was lighter than Greco's."
"He touched your face? Kee-rist, Donald." He undulated awkwardly in his seat belt. "Do you want to describe the circumstances, lover, or should I just draw my own sensational conclusions and stick it all in your 'Seven Since June' file? Crimenee. You're just-incredible."
"He did it once standing in Dot's front yard and once standing in the parking lot outside the Green Room. It's a habit Greco has. Touching faces. He's a sweet, affectionate, uninhibited guy.
It's no automatic High Homintern cocktail-party-kiss kind of thing. It's just something he can't help doing. Unconventional, but winning. Not that there's anything calculating in the gesture.
You can't not like him."
"'Like.' Right."
I turned onto Colvin, south into the Pine Hills section of the city. I said, "Now who's not trusting whom?"
He threw his head around, sulked, threw his head around some more. Then he looked over at me in utter amazement. "But… McWhirter must have known!"
"Ah-ha."
"Presumably McWhirter is familiar with his lover's finger."
"A safe assumption."
"But then- Why did he lie? Dot told me McWhirter identified the finger as Greco's."
"Beats me. Before the day is over I'll ask him."
We swung left onto Lincoln.
"And you didn't say anything because…?"
"I figured the news should be broken to the authorities by the loved one. The fact that it wasn't seemed to me a piece of information almost as fascinating as the fact of the finger itself. I think I 55 know why McWhirter didn't speak up. But I'm not sure."
"I'm surprised Bowman didn't doubt his word. Press him on it. Maybe take him downtown for a lineup. 'Mr. McWhirter, is any of these eight fingers that of the man with whom you participate in an un-Godly relationship?'"
On the other hand,death ds-2 Page 10