Deadly Deception

by Gilbert, Morris

  There was a click, and both Lanzas looked at Ben. He lifted his shoulders and admitted, “Now, the hardest job of all.”

  “Which is what, Ben?” Frank asked.

  “Get some sleep. None of us wants to, but we’ve got to be sharp when he calls back, and we can’t do it if we’re dead for sleep. Use sleeping pills if you have to, but get some rest.”

  Frank nodded. “I want to be with Rosemary,” he said and left the room.

  Thomas Rossi came over and, without instructions, began pulling Dom to his feet. Dom protested, but the tall man ignored him and led him out of the room. Alone, Savage went to the window and looked out into the bright sunshine. “Well, Boss,” he murmured aloud. “I don’t mind telling you, I’m pretty scared.” He looked down at his hand, which trembled slightly. “Didn’t think there was anything in the world could do that to me,” he commented with wonder in his voice. Then he moved out into the sunshine and for a long time walked around the track, his mind working like a machine.

  The first twenty-four hours had been easy.

  Dani had spent much time talking to Pat, for she discovered that he had to have the sound of her voice, or he grew fearful. Hour after hour she told him stories, mostly from the Bible. Later, she found herself talking about her childhood, and though it seemed strange to her, he found it fascinating. Why would a small boy want to hear stories about a little girl? she wondered at first. Then she realized that Pat took refuge in them; they took place in a normal setting and permitted him to ignore his bizarre world.

  Besides keeping Pat occupied, she monitored every aspect of the routine of the place. Breakfast had come at nine that first day. A knock had startled her, and then a voice had commanded, “Turn your backs to the door and stare at the wall! If you get a look at me, you’ll be feeding the fish!”

  It was not a voice she knew, but she took it seriously. She put her arm around Pat, and the two of them faced the wall. The door opened, and she heard the sound of someone entering. “Just stay right there,” the man directed. After some movement, she heard the door shut. When Dani turned around, she found two plastic trays and two cups on the floor. They were from a fast-food place. The eggs and bacon were cool, so they had been purchased some time ago.

  At noon, the routine was repeated. This time the meal was in a paper sack from the same place, containing two large hamburgers and two large fries. There were two large diet Cokes and a bucket of ice. Dani made a ceremony out of each meal, setting the table with napkins and plastic knives and forks and then trying to make the food last as long as possible. Pat loved hamburgers, and so did Dani, for that matter, but she saw that he wasn’t eating. “Hey,” she proposed cheerfully, “why don’t we save some of this for a midnight snack, Pat? I always get hungry about that time. And you can stay up as late as you want to tonight.”

  He agreed with that, and all afternoon they played games that she remembered or invented. By pulling the table beneath the window, she discovered that Pat could see out, and this occupied part of the time.

  At six-thirty, the voice came again, “All right, face the wall.” Dani got Pat, and they stood patiently. But this time, she requested, “Please, could you bring us something to read? Something a boy would like?”

  There was no answer, and the door slammed hard. Dani and Pat turned, and she picked up the food. “Looks like soup tonight, Pat,” she reported, “and apple pie.” The soup was in two large containers, and it was cool. “My favorite!” Dani blurted out. “Chicken and rice! Come on, let’s set the table.”

  They set the table, pulling napkins out of the sack, and found two watery milk shakes. Dani talked rapidly and managed to down most of the soup; more important, she was able to get Pat to eat most of his. “Now, apple pie!” she crowed, but after a couple of bites, Pat could eat no more. “Well, we’ll save these for our midnight snack,” Dani decided. “Let’s clean up, then we can watch the river. It’ll be pretty with the sun going down.”

  For a while, they watched the river through the narrow aperture. “Can I sit in your lap, Dani?” Pat asked as they moved away.

  He would never have done such a thing under normal circumstances, but Dani showed no surprise. “Hey, that’s a good idea, Pat!” She smiled. “I’m glad I thought of it!” He climbed up in her lap and put his face against her at once. “Tell about when you were a girl,” he insisted.

  Dani began to tell stories, making up a few now and then, and in twenty minutes, Pat was sound asleep. Dani found herself nodding off, and coming awake with a jerk, she looked around in shock. Then her eyes fell on the soup containers, and she took a sudden deep breath. “They doped the food,” she muttered. The drug must have been powerful, for she was barely able to put Pat on the cot and pull a blanket over him. She groped her way to the second cot, fell onto it, and tried to pull up the blanket, but sleep felled her, and she dropped off as if her captors had thrown a switch.

  “Come on, wake up!” a harsh voice roused her the next morning. Her tongue felt thick, and Dani staggered when she tried to get off the cot. Pat, she saw, had not moved, but she called out, “All right—you can come in now.”

  She knelt beside the boy, keeping her face turned away, and waited until the door slammed. Straining to focus her eyes, Dani turned and discovered with a slight thrill that beside the food, lay a stack of magazines. Twenty comic books, filled the hoard, most of them terrible, but the collection included a few harmless ones. There were also some adult women’s magazines—slick and mindless, to Dani’s way of thinking. But there were also several news magazines and a copy of Popular Science.

  She made up her mind instantly not to eat the evening meal. Got to keep a clear head, she told herself. Going to the water jug, she took a long drink. Her tongue felt dry as toast, and a terrible taste filled her mouth. She glanced at Pat, then went to the window. It was a bright day and the chocolate-brown river rolled along with the might of its flood. There were no barges in sight, but she knew they would come. Looking carefully for landmarks, she realized she faced a nearly empty landscape. This was flat country, the home of bayous and swamps. She had hoped for a large building or even a small one—perhaps a radar tower or something that would mark the spot. But only the brown river and the rolling green of trees met her eyes. The warehouse was set inside a curve in the river. At the base of the building the rotted remnants of a dock showed Dani it hadn’t been used in years.

  Fishermen sometimes come close in, hugging the shore as they look for fish. I could have a note ready, she told herself and began trying to find writing materials. The magazines would have done for paper, but she lacked a pen or pencil. Finally in desperation, she tore the cover from one of the magazines, and breaking off all but one tine from a plastic fork, she began punching holes in it. She made the holes large, and spelled out, Kidnapped—Call FBI—Dani Ross. She added her telephone number and held it up to the light. I guess if they see it, they can read it, she thought. She was trying to think of a container for the note, when Pat woke up.

  He was thickheaded and frightened, but she cheered him up, “Hey, your favorite breakfast, Pat! Pancakes and sausage—and lots of syrup!” He awoke slowly and ate little, but as the day passed he seemed to cheer up.

  All morning Dani kept him busy, using the magazines. She made games that required him to look through them, searching for certain words and pictures. The noon meal came—hamburgers again—and to her captor, she said, “Thanks for the magazines.”

  “Forget it!” a gruff voice responded, and this time he took the Porta-Potti with him. Dani felt a strange sense of irrational gratitude to the man, but shook it off. That emotion was common enough with kidnap victims, she knew. The victims became so anxious to please their captors that they let it get into their thinking. But Dani had no illusions: It would take a miracle to get Pat and herself free.

  While Pat was taking a nap that afternoon, she stayed at the window. The answer’s got to be here, she told herself. There was no pen to take notes with, but s
he filed every detail in her mind. She had spent considerable time there the day before, so a pattern of sorts was established. All afternoon she watched, and slowly she began to put together what she and Pat must do. It was weak, and doubts came at her in waves, but how else could she help Ben to find them?

  She knew in her heart that Savage was sitting somewhere, waiting for a tiny clue. He would throw his life away like a trifle to save the two of them, she well knew, but now he was helpless.

  He’ll be waiting to hear from me, she thought. I’ve got to give him something to go on! I’ve got to! She prayed steadily, and when supper came, she suggested, “Pat, let’s skip the soup tonight. It made me a little sick last night. We’ve still got some hamburgers and fries left from lunch.”

  Pat agreed, and she poured the soup out the window. As the sun went down, she told him, “Pat, you and I have got to give God a hand.”

  His eyes grew large. “I didn’t know God ever needed help!” he exclaimed in awe.

  “Well, sometimes He uses people, just as He used David to slay Goliath. Now, I’m going to teach you something, and it’s very important!” She paused and put her hands on his shoulders, gazing into his eyes and saying slowly, “Pat, it’s the most important thing you’ve ever done. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Pat Lanza was only four, but he was bright and perceptive. He had seen enough television to know that danger was all around them. He slowly nodded, and Dani smiled. “Good boy! Now, here’s what we must do. Pretty soon, someone will come and get us. They’ll take us to a room, and they’ll tell you to tell your father that you’re all right.”

  “Daddy!” Pat parroted instantly. “I can talk to him on the telephone?”

  “Just for a minute, maybe less,” Dani warned. Then she began to tell him the probable scenario, how masked men would come and take them away. “You won’t see their faces, but don’t be afraid.”

  “They’re bad men, aren’t they, Dani?” he asked.

  “Yes. But God will help us. Now, Pat, if you say exactly what I’m going to teach you, your daddy and Ben will come and take us home—but you must be very careful.”

  “What am I gonna say?” he demanded at once. His eyes were bright, and he leaned forward as she gave him the words. “Why, that’s easy!” he said. “I can do that!”

  “Of course you can!” Dani smiled. Then she spent the rest of the evening going over and over the message that she wanted him to deliver. Finally he grew sleepy, and she read to him. Just before he nodded off, she had him repeat the message. He did it perfectly, then she prayed with him, and he dropped into sleep. It was not a drugged sleep this time, and she was glad of that.

  She lay on her bed, going over what she had planned. Though it began to sound ridiculous to her, she could think of nothing more. She prayed for a long time before dropping off to sleep.

  A few hours later the door opened without warning, and two men wearing masks came in. The short, muscular man held a telephone in his hand, one of the cordless models. He spoke roughly, “You two are gonna do a little talking. You just tell them you’re all right, see? Nothing else. Especially you, lady!”

  Dani nodded and looked straight at Pat. “You understand what you’re supposed to say, Pat?”

  He looked at her, and her heart skipped a beat. She thought he was going to ask her if it was time to say what she had taught him. But he merely nodded, and the man lifted the phone, “All right, here’s the kid.”

  Pat took the phone and listened; then he said exactly what Dani had told him to say. “That’s enough,” the man snapped. He spoke into the receiver again. “Now, here’s the woman.” He handed her the phone, and Ben’s voice asked, “Are you all right, Dani?”

  She spoke a few words before the phone was snatched from her hand. “All right, that’s enough!” The two men walked to the door and slammed it with a loud noise.

  “Did I do good, Dani?” Pat wanted to know.

  She bent down and hugged him. “You did very well, Pat!” she whispered. “Now it’s time to pray for Ben and your daddy.”

  “They’ll come for us, you wait and see!” He nodded. Dani held him close and felt doubt clasp her with an icy grip. But she observed, “We’re going to believe God to bring them, Pat!”

  17

  The Message

  * * *

  The call in which he spoke to Dani came on Friday, and all night Ben went over its transcript. Frank kept interrupting him, and by the twentieth time the concerned father asked if he’d made anything out of it. In desperation Ben said, “I’m going to take a drive and try to clear the cobwebs out of my head.”

  “What if they call again?” Frank asked nervously. He hadn’t shaved, and his eyes were dull from lack of sleep.

  “Stall them,” Ben demanded tersely. “Say you can’t get the money. Tell them you’ll have it tomorrow.” He left quickly, before Frank could protest. For an hour he cruised the back roads, then took Interstate 10 and drove to Baton Rouge. He stopped at Shoney’s, on Seigen, nibbled at a club sandwich, and sat alone, drinking coffee. He pulled a typed copy of the call from his pocket and studied it.

  The anger and fear that drove him were getting worse, not better. He knew time was his enemy. Ring was a killer who would not blink at two murders. We’ve got nothing to tie the thing to Ring. He could kill them, get rid of the bodies, and nobody could touch him. He stared at the single sheet of paper, willing the meaning of it to unveil itself. She’s got the answer in here—but I’m too dumb to see it, he thought in despair. He was basically a man of action, never completely happy unless he was in motion. Though he had an ability to think on his feet and though instinct often had brought him to answers that more logical thinkers could not discover, he grew restless when confined to a problem that could be solved only by systematic methods.

  He clenched the paper so tightly that his knuckles grew white, and he longed to scream at the top of his lungs— but he sat there silent and lost to his surroundings. When she brought him more coffee, the waitress said, “I’m going off duty now. Would you like some dessert?” When he shook his head silently, she added, “Thank you—and have a nice day.”

  The phrase lingered in his mind: Have a nice day. Such catch phrases, which people spouted, but that meant nothing, irritated him. Have a nice day, he thought bitterly. She doesn’t care if I have a nice day or not. If she really cared, she’d see I was breaking up inside: She’d sit down and let me tell her how, for the first time in my life, I’m into something I can’t handle. “Have a nice day!” If one more idiot says that to me, I’m going to break his face and then walk over his ribs—then I’m going to smile that stupid, meaningless smile and say, “Have a nice day!”

  He jammed the paper in his pocket, threw a dollar on the table, and went to pay his bill. The cashier rang up his tab, and as she took his money, asked, “Everything all right?”

  He wanted to yell at her, No! My world is falling apart, and if you tell me to have a nice day, I’m going to part your hair right down the middle!

  “Have a nice day.” She smiled and handed him his change.

  Savage stared at her and said very slowly, “Actually, I have other plans.” Her mouth dropped open, and he turned and walked away. As he drove off, he suddenly spoke to the steering wheel, “Well, do I care if she has a nice day or not?” He burned rubber as he came out of the parking lot, half hoping a cop would stop him. He had a half-formed wish that he could get into a rousing fight with someone, but by the time he was back on the interstate, he felt calmer.

  On the return drive, he considered every possible move, but nothing came up right. He thought of going to Dani’s father. Maybe he’d be able to make sense out of the transcripts of the phone calls. But Dan had a weak heart, and the news of his daughter’s capture might set him back. He thought of going to the FBI, but rejected the thought. As he turned off on the Pontchartrain Causeway, he found himself dreading returning to the Lanza house. They were all expecting him to come up with s
ome sort of answer— and he didn’t have one.

  As he pulled up to the guardhouse, Louie Baer came out, bent over, and greeted him, “Hi, Ben. Any news on Dani and the kid?”

  “Still working on it, Louie.”

  “Mr. Lanza said to come see him soon as you can.”

  “Thanks, Louie.” Savage parked the car and went directly to the big house. He found Frank and Rosemary in the office, on a small, black-leather couch, and she was holding his hand. “Did they call?” Ben asked, but already knew the answer.

  “Not yet,” Frank told him. He studied Savage, then blinked his eyes and laid his head back on the couch. He seemed defenseless and vulnerable in that position. Rosemary reached out and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, and in that simple gesture Savage suddenly saw her love for Lanza. When Frank opened his eyes and smiled at her, it was clear that the two had come a long way.

  Guess they’re going to make it, Ben thought. “Frank, I still say we need the law on this,” he asserted.

  Frank stared at him, weakening. “You may be right, Ben. Rosemary says so, but you know Pop. I don’t think he’ll ever give in.”

  “He’s a sick man, Frank. Not himself. It’s your decision.”

  “I think Ben is right, dear,” Rosemary supported him.

  Frank Lanza looked harried. He had spent a lifetime letting his father and Phil make the decisions. Now the pressure was piling up on him. He tried to avoid the moment. “Maybe tomorrow. I’ll talk to Pop.” Then he asked, “Do you think it’s one of the family, Ben?”

  Savage shook his head. “I don’t know, Frank. It could be. Somebody knew that Dani was going to be alone with Pat and exactly when. Trouble is, some of the guards or the house help knew that, too.”

  “They’re all broken up,” Rosemary reminded them. “Even Eddy and Max are getting along. I haven’t seen that in years.”

  “One of them may be acting,” Frank exclaimed bitterly. “I can’t believe in anything anymore.” Then he gave his wife a quick smile. “Except you, Rosemary. You’ve kept me from falling apart.”