I met Tama again late that afternoon in the hills of Uranie Cemetery where the coffins of Bob and Susan West were being lowered into the damp brown earth.
“Ugh!” Tamara had cried. “Why do you want to go to that?”
“Tradition, I guess. Policemen always go to murder victims’ funerals. They keep thinking the murderer will show up looking guilty, and maybe even confess.”
She looked at me skeptically. “And do they?”
“Not so’s you could count them.” I winced as a pang stabbed me in the ribcage. “Anyway, Bob West saved my life, remember? It’s the least I can do.”
French cops, I saw, were no different from American ones. Tama was covertly scanning the mob of several hundred curiosity seekers, grimly waiting for the murderer to betray himself, when he caught a glimpse of me on the edge of the crowd, where my baroque appearance was causing something of a stir in itself. He groaned theatrically and turned his back. I grinned, and slowly made my way to him. I got there just as the first handfuls of dirt were being tossed by mourners onto the cheap wooden coffins.
“What progress with the great letter watch?” I asked. “I take it you haven’t grabbed anyone mailing a finger or even a gas bill to the Payton estate?”
He favored me with a dirty look. “You have some better ideas?” he said sourly.
As it turned out, only the kidnappers did.
While Tama and Tamara and I stood that evening in the reception lounge watching The Quest for Truth taxi in to its berthing area, somebody strolled by Tamara’s Mercedes on the other side of the building and slipped an envelope onto the front seat. We found it there twenty minutes later, after Payton had cleared immigration and customs and had spoken briefly with Tama.
“Damn fool wants me to promise not to pay any ransom without notifying him first,” Payton grumbled as we walked toward the car. “Says it’s against the law and a million other things, blah blah blah. Well, screw him, it’s my money and my wife.”
And my political career, I added to myself. Aloud I said, “Where is this five million? Not in that briefcase, I take it?”
“Hell no, it’s sitting in a safe on the plane, and that’s where it’s staying.”
We reached the car and I swung the door open for Tamara. “What’s this?” she said curiously, holding up the envelope.
“Oh oh,” I said, taking it from her. “Just get in and drive off normally. We don’t want Tama getting any ideas.”
When we were rolling, I switched on the overhead light and read them the message.
YOUR WIFE IS ALIVE AND WELL. NOW YOU HAVE FIVE MILLIONS CASH. FOR TESTED YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS WE WILL ASK YOU JUST ONE MILLION FOR NOW. TOMORROW NIGHT TUESDAY OCTOBER 26 ONE PERSONNE WILL TAKE ONE MILLION, I REPEATE ONE MILLIONS, IN A BREEFCASE AND WITH MOTOCYCLE HIS GOING TO THE TIARE BAR AT 19:30. WAIT IN THE BAR UNTIL WELL’ WILL BE CONTACT. EVEN A LITTLE SOUPCON OF POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND YOUR WIFE WILL BE KILL IMMEDIATELY WITH NO DELAY!
“It looks like we’re off to the races,” I said to Payton. “But it’s up to you. We can do as they say, or we can bring Tama and Schneider into it and try to follow the bagman.”
“What do you think?”
I turned it over in my mind before replying. “I think it’s a smart move by the kidnappers,” I said. “The payoff is always the most dangerous moment for a kidnapper. By only asking for one fifth of the money now they’re trying to tempt us into setting a trap. We’d lull them by letting them have the million without trying any tricks. Then on the $4 million payoff, just when they think everything’s going smoothly, the cops would jump in and grab them.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Payton.
“That’s what’s so clever. Suppose we do give them this one million, just as bait. We’re then saying to ourselves, ‘They got that with no trouble, no one is going to pass up the chance to grab another easy four mill.’ That’s what they want us to say. But remember: they’ve already got one million free and clear. That’s a lot of loot. Suppose they just fold up their tents with it and we never hear from them again. We’re sitting there waiting for the next ransom note, all ready to spring a trap, and they’re off in Brazil laughing at us. Like I said, clever.”
“But what about my mother, in that case?” Tamara asked plaintively.
I shrugged helplessly. “On the other hand, I think they mean their threats this time. Holding a captive alive for a couple of weeks on a small island like this must be hell on their nerves. If the cops messed it up again by grabbing the payoff man, I think they’d be ready to cut and run.” I didn’t have to tell them what would most likely happen in that case. “At least by paying the first million there’s still some hope.”
Payton sighed. Whatever decision he made had at least a fifty percent chance of being wrong. And being wrong would almost certainly mean a dead wife, not to mention a dead hope for a seat in the Senate.
I waited for him to tell me what to do.
When the rich need something, they go out and buy it. In this case it was a motorcycle. Payton handed me a Bank of Polynesia check with his signature at the bottom. “You’re the guy who’s driving it, so you’re the one who better pick it out. just fill in the amount on the check.”
I stuffed the check in my pocket and went out to look for a used 500cc Honda. As long I was getting one, I’d get one that had some swift to it and that was already broken in. Though what good it would do me I didn’t know.
As I left the house, I could hear Payton talking on the phone to Bobby Lee Tanner somewhere back in New Mexico for the benefit of Colonel Schneider’s tap. “Naw, we’re just waiting for them to send the next note,” he was saying. “Once we see what the payoff picture is, we can start making some plans.”
It’s always a pleasure to listen to politicians lying—they do it so naturally.
A million bucks, even in $100 bills, takes up a fair amount of bulk: it was more like a small suitcase than a briefcase that I carried into the Tiare Bar at 7:30 that evening. I set it on the floor under a table and ordered coffee. Then I waited.
It was already dark, but the Tiare Bar was an open, well-lighted café on the main street of town just across from the parking lot on the waterfront. It would be easy with binoculars to spot me from a couple of hundred yards away. Or any cops that might be casually reading newspapers in doorways or under streetlights. Twenty minutes later I yawned and ordered another coffee. I was halfway through it when the waitress came to tell me I was wanted on the phone. With one eye on the suitcase, I walked over to the bar and raised the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“LaRoche?”
“Yeah?”
“You have forty-five seconds to take the money to the bar of Le Frégate.” The voice was heavily muffled, and spoke English with a peculiar sing-song inflection.
“What—”
The phone clicked in my ear.
Le Frégate wasn’t far, a couple of long blocks away from the waterfront, but forty-five seconds wasn’t much time to get there, even on a high-powered Honda Silver Wing. I cursed, and ran for the door.
Fifty-six seconds and a dozen traffic violations later I puffed into the air-conditioned cool of Le Frégate. I’d hardly set down the suitcase when the phone on the bar rang. A moment later a puzzled bartender pushed the phone in my direction.
“The Madrepore,” said the same voice. “One minute, twenty seconds.”
I was running even before I heard the phone click off.
The Madrepore was a posh restaurant on the second level of the downtown Vaima Center, and I had to run two red lights to get there. I left the bike on the sidewalk at the foot of the stairs and puffed my way up, the million dollars swinging by my side. With my half head of hair and the stitches sprouting from my scalp, a suitcase in hand, and a wild gleam in my eye, I was a Maître d’s nightmare. His eyes widened and his mouth began to work, but I brushed past as I hurried through the restaurant and around the corner to the bar in the rear. Ten seconds later the phone began to ring. I reached for it without waiting for the indignant Maître d’ to arrive.
“Go out the back door and down the stairs to the garage,” said the voice. “On your left you will see a light blue Renault. Get in it.”
“A real fast food restaurant,” I said to the poor Maître d’ as I shoved my way past him and out into the corridor.
Below the restaurant was a public parking garage. I found the Renault with no trouble and got in. There were keys in the ignition and a piece of paper on the seat.
RESTAURANT AORAI, ARUE, read the note. SIX MINUTES. GIVE THIS TO PATRON.
Not bad, I had to admit as I drove off. If any cops had been on my trail, they’d be waiting for me to return to the motorcycle in the front of the building, not looking for LaRoche at the wheel of a pale blue Renault.…
I didn’t dare jump any lights while driving a car, so it took me some eight minutes to get to the Arue restaurant. I parked on the side of the road, and handed the note to the baffled Chinese sitting behind the Aorai’s cash register. I was telling him that some mistake had been made when the phone beside his elbow began to ring.
For the next stop I continued on through Arue a couple of miles and up One Tree Hill, where the Hotel Tahara’a was built on a sharp promontory overlooking the bay. Whoever was making the phone calls had obviously worked out his timetable with care. Twenty seconds after I walked into the lower-level bar by the swimming pool the familiar sing-song voice was directing me back towards town.
Smart, I said to myself. They wait in the bushes somewhere along the road and watch me go by on my way to the Tahara’a. Five minutes later they watch me come back. Any car they spotted following me both times has got to be the cops. At that point the game would end and they’d go home and slit Danielle Payton’s throat. I drove on.
On the other side of Arue, not far from the Hotel Taaone, was one of Tahiti’s two drive-in theaters. I bought a ticket and drove on in. John Wayne was riding across the screen. I parked the Renault somewhere near the center of the lot and switched off the ignition. I sat back and let out a sigh. The run was almost over and so far I’d learned nothing at all except that the kidnappers were a lot smarter than poor battered old LaRoche.
Following the instructions I’d got at the Hotel Tahara’a, I left the suitcase in the car and walked back to the snack bar at the rear of the lot. By the time I got there the Renault was lost to view.
I ordered a Coke and sipped it slowly, enjoying its tart coldness. Somewhere, far away, a motorcycle engine was racing. It faded away into the night, and I walked back to the car, a nervous half-smile on my face. It was as I expected.
The suitcase with its million dollars was gone.