Recoil (37 page)

Frank was scratching the top of his head through the toupee. “Why don't we hear from them?”

“Trying to make us nervous,” Ezio said. “Sometimes they do that. They snatch the wife and let the husband spend the night alone, missing her. Then they make the call in the morning. Don't be surprised if we don't hear until morning.”

He saw the rage in Frank and he added quickly, “Listen, it's an occupational hazard. Guys in our business, they know we won't go to the cops. But you think about all the snatches you heard about people in our business. They usually handle the victim with a lot of care and they don't hold you up for an arm and a leg. That Galleone kid, what was his name, they took him three-four years ago, somebody out in Kansas City. They called Galleone, they told him to drop twenty kay in small bills. He made the drop, they delivered the kid safe and sound. They don't mess up the merchandise and they don't ask for too much money because they know that would bring the whole organization down on them.… That's all this is, Frank. Tomorrow night, Saturday morning, I bet you she's home right here in perfect health. You want to try and take it easy.”

“I don't think you're reading it right, Ezio.”

“It's not professionals, Frank. Professionals don't kidnap people in the first place because the odds are wrong. In the second place nobody in the business is going to mess with Frank Pastor's wife. So it's a bunch of amateurs, maybe longhair kids or something, they want some quick money.”

“This guy that decoyed Belmont away from the beauty shop wasn't any longhair kid.”

“So maybe they're a bunch of middle-class middle-age businessmen that fell on hard times. Somebody he's in trouble. I don't know who they are but I'll bet you they're not professionals. It's not some rival guy trying to put any kind of pressure on you. That leaves amateurs. Amateurs get scared, they don't want trouble, they take the ransom and give her back safe.”

“Amateurs get scared, they start killing. You know that as well as I do. Don't try to soft-soap me with reassuring lies, Ezio. I don't need that crap.”

“I still say they're not going to hurt Anna. Nobody's that stupid.”

“I hope to God you're right.”

2

It wasn't a phone call. It was a small package, marked
Personal
, delivered by hand messenger at eleven-fifteen Friday morning.

Ezio signed for the package. Behind him in the foyer Frank said, “That's probably it.”

“Sure.”

Frank said to the messenger, “What's the name of your outfit?”

“MRDS. Midtown Rapid Delivery Service.

“Where'd you pick the package up?”

“Forty-second Street Library. The main reading room.” The messenger was an old man without teeth; his jaw chopped up and down like a marionette's when he talked.

Frank went into his pocket and took out his roll. He peeled off a twenty. “Describe the man who gave it to you.”

The old man gaped at the money. “Well I don't know as I noticed him all that much. Young man, he was. Not a kid, you know, but young. A little younger than you, anyway.” He laughed, high-pitched and nervous.

“For twenty bucks you can do a little better than that, old man.” Frank held the bill up a yard from the messenger's nose.

“Well he was kind of dark, I remember that. Not Negro, a white man but he had dark hair, dark clothes.”

Ezio said, “Black suit?”

“Maybe. I guess it was. Young man, dark hair, that's it. Not very big. No bigger than me.”

“What kind of voice did he have? How did he sound?”

“Ordinary. Nothing special. He wasn't no foreigner or anything.”

Ezio said, “Sounds like the same guy.”

Frank pushed the twenty-dollar bill into the old man's hand and Cestone ushered him out.

They opened the parcel on the pool table. There were two enclosures: a cassette of recording tape and a small gold ring. Frank held the ring up and squinted at the tiny inscription engraved inside it. “Anna's wedding ring all right.”

“Got a recorder to play this tape on?”

“The kids have them. I'll be right back.”

While Frank was gone Ezio examined the cassette. On Side One it had the words
Frank Pastor
printed in block letters in pencil. There was nothing written on Side Two. It was an ordinary half-hour cassette; you could buy the brand in any electronics shop.

Frank came into the study carrying a small recorder. They plugged the cassette in and Ezio punched the “start” button. The tape ran silently for a bit; then there was a click and a hollow noise as if the microphone had banged against something when it was picked up.

Ezio clenched his fists and prepared to listen.

3

“This is for Frank Pastor's ears only. And I suppose Ezio Martin's if it's unavoidable.”

Ezio looked up. He couldn't read Frank's face.

“I'm sure you recognize my voice, although it's been a long time since you've heard it.”

“I recognize it, Merle.”

“… We've invited Mrs. Pastor to spend a vacation with us. She's a little run-down, I think she needs a holiday.”

“Vicious bastard,” Frank said. He swung roughly away but not before Ezio saw the moisture in his eyes.

“We have a few requests to make of you. They're simple and you shouldn't have any trouble following them. You may have thought that your wife had been kidnapped, but that's not true. She's taking a vacation, that's all. Nobody is asking for ransom money or anything of the kind.”

Ezio said, “That's in case we brought a few friendly cops in.”

Frank said irritably, “Shut up,” and because they'd missed a few words he pushed the “stop” button and rewound the tape slightly. Then he started the machine again.

“… vacation, that's all. Nobody is asking for ransom money or anything of the kind. Your wife is in perfectly good health, she's just a little tired. The rest should do her good. The only thing that could endanger her health, and the health of the baby, would be an attack on her or the place where she's resting. I'm sure you understand what that means.

“We don't know yet how long Anna will choose to stay here. That's up to her, of course. It depends on how well she responds to therapeutic treatment.

“She doesn't want you to worry, but I think you should. We'll be in touch at fairly regular intervals. Expect to hear from us again in a week or so. In the meantime, as I said before, we have a few simple requests and recommendations.

“First, it would be unwise for you to issue an alarm. Mrs. Pastor doesn't need excitement right now. It could be injurious to her. Please don't make any efforts to find her, or to find us. We'd hear about them and we'd act accordingly.

“Second, we'd like you to equip yourself with a motion-picture projector. It should be a sixteen millimeter sound-on-film projector, the standard kind that uses magnetic sound-reproduction and has a single row of sprockets rather than a double row. You'll need this equipment in the next week or two because Mrs. Pastor will be sending you some movie film.

“Third, Mrs. Pastor feels that you should stop hunting for me and for Mr. Benson, Mr. Fusco and Mr. Draper. She said that unless you call off the search immediately, you may not see her again. Ever. She's quite serious about this.

“Fourth, all communications from Mrs. Pastor and from me and my associates will be in the form of messenger-delivered tapes and films. Therefore there is no need for you to install expensive taps and tracing equipment on your telephones. We won't be using telephones.

“Possibly this experience will be good for you. It may teach you what it's like to be frantically concerned for the life and well-being of your wife and your child.”

4

Ezio expected him to explode but Frank only ran the tape back to the beginning and listened to it again. Then he made his way to the leather chair and sank into it.

Ezio said, “The guy's gone psycho.”

“Looks like it.”

“What do you want to do, Frank?”

“Think.”

“You want me to go?”

“No.”

Ezio rewound the tape and stood awkwardly with his hands in his pockets waiting for Frank to speak.

After a while Frank said, “Well we can call off those people in San Diego County, at least.”

“It's for sure he's not down there,” Ezio agreed. “What about the other three?”

“He's trying to make us think the four of them are in this together. I'm having a little trouble swallowing that. I think he just wants to make himself look more formidable than he is.”

“Formidable enough. He's got Anna.”

“He won't keep her forever. And he won't kill her because if he did that he'd know nothing would stop us pulling him apart a hair at a time.” Frank examined his fingernails bleakly. “The movie projector thing, that's what worries me. What kind of home movies does this nut want to show us?”

“I don't know, Frank.”

“He's got her someplace around here. Maybe right here in the city. He didn't have time, to take her very far, and he's got at least one guy with him who decoyed Belmont yesterday and delivered this tape to the messenger this morning. They're right around here someplace.”

“Fifteen million people right around here, Frank.”

“You don't have to give me population figures.”

Ezio said, “What about the Virginia operation? Those guys are already down there casing it. Do we call the whole thing off on account of this business with Anna?”

“Hell no. We don't call anything off except San Diego.”

“He's acting like he's got connections, Frank. Like he's got ears in places where they can hear things. Maybe we ought to call off the memos on Fusco and Draper and Benson.”

“All right. For the time being. Call them off.”

“You want to set anything up to start looking for Anna?”

“No. I don't want to take the chance of him getting wind of anything like that.”

“He's gone nutty, Frank. How can we trust him to keep her alive?”

“He may be nutty but he was never stupid. He knows if he kills her he kills himself.”

“Maybe he's aiming for that. Maybe he doesn't mind going down if he can hurt you doing it.”

“He'd have killed her already if it was that way.”

“Maybe he has.”

“I don't think so. If he had, why string us along with tapes and movie projectors?”

“To buy himself time to get away.”

“There wouldn't be any point in it, Ezio. He's not that crazy. If he was just out to kill Anna to get revenge on me, he'd have killed her and left the body around where we'd find it.” Frank got out of the chair and crossed to the table. He put his finger on the tape recorder. “But I still can't figure out what he's up to. He must think he's going to accomplish something but I can't see what it is.”

“Me neither. But what are you going to do right now?”

“Nothing,” Frank said. “Sit it out. Wait for the next one. What the hell else can we do? He's got us over a barrel right now. It won't last forever but that's the way it is right now.” Frank pushed the button again.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Pennsylvania–New Jersey: 7–9 November

1

F
RIDAY MORNING MATHIESON DROVE WEST WITH HOMER, OUT
Interstate 80 across the Delaware River into the Poconos. They checked out the airport at Scranton–Wilkes-Barre and then drove deeper into the hills through Hazleton, looking for back roads, exploring them for half the day until they found what they sought.

It no longer had a name. At one time it had been a small community; there were a dozen derelict houses, none of them much more than a shack, and along the curving ungraded road stood three large structures that had been barns and possibly a local general store. It was the remains of a coal pocket; the coal had been worked out and the miners had moved on, most of them toward Appalachia; it had been abandoned at least fifty years. The depressed hills of northern Pennsylvania were littered with burnt-out diggings and deserted hamlets. Lying outside the attractive tourist belt of the Poconos and far beyond commuters' radius of New York and Philadelphia, they attracted no interest and stood untended to rot.

The shacks had low stone foundations and plank-board walls; no clapboards, no shingles. Only one of them still had a roof—a patchwork of corrugated rusty metal and frayed tar paper. Homer explored it with his revolver out: There was a possibility of snakes.

The floor was rammed earth covered by the splintered remains of a few rotted floorboards. The window openings had been boarded up long ago; light seeped through the cracks and fell through the open doorways of the two rooms.

“It'll do,” Mathieson said. He marked its position on the road map and they got back in the car to drive back.

They timed the drive to the airport. Just under an hour.

He examined the map and found a route from the ghost town straight across forest and farm land to the banks of the Delaware south of Easton. That would be their return route.

They took another reconnoiter around the airport. The general-aviation hangar was set well back from the commercial terminal and there was a separate entrance from the highway.

“We'll meet them right at the plane. Drive the car out on the runway.”

“Sure,” Homer said. “Nobody gets a look at faces that way.”

“The security measures may be a little extreme,” Mathieson said, “but I'll feel safer.”

“So will I.”

“That about wraps it up then. Let's go home.”

2

Roger opened the door; evidently he'd been alerted by the crunch of their tires on the gravel; Mathieson glimpsed the revolver before Roger put it away under his pullover.