The rain had abated and the sun was breaking through high clouds when I got back to my office, and 42nd Street had that steamy translucence that reminded me of a long-lens movie shot that makes everything look shimmery and unreal. I had a gut feeling that something ominous had happened, and one look at Trish told me I was right. She sat round-shouldered at the desk, chin in hands, staring vacantly at her work.
“All right,” I said, “first the bad news.”
She finally looked up. “It’s hard to say what’s good news and what’s bad. The bad news is, Timmie Lee died this morning. But from what Tatum told me, Timmie was probably better off dead. So maybe that’s good news.”
I searched within myself for an emotion. It wasn’t really sorrow, because I didn’t know Timmie very well. And it wasn’t anger, because I’d expended that already. What I felt was a kind of disgust, disgust for the senseless waste. You bring a human being into the world and you nurture him and sacrifice for him and invest your love in him and you see him flowering into something of value, something unique and useful, something that promises to reward you and perhaps even achieve some modicum of glory and bring honor to you and invest your life with a little meaning. And then some scum comes along and kills it and pisses on it. This is waste of such magnitude it’s tantamount to tragedy. I felt so disgusted I wanted to throw up.
“God,” Trish sighed, as if she’d read my thoughts, “what a fucked-up world this is.”
“How much money do we have in checking?” I asked.
“Enough to pay our salaries for the next half hour.”
“How about the emergency fund?”
“About two thousand.”
“Send a check for the whole thing up by messenger to Tatum and tell him it’s for the funeral. And tell him Roy’ll be in touch with him today about a plan.”
“A plan?”
“He’ll understand. Oh—and find out when the services are and tell Tatum I’ll be there. Now, what’s the good news?”
“The commissioner called. Stanley Vreel has heard from the kidnappers. I guess you can call that good news. Anyway, the commissioner is on his way over.”
“Did he say… ?”
Before I could finish the sentence the door opened and Commissioner Lauritzen strode in. He was faultlessly attired, as always, but his face was pasty and drawn and I detected more than a trace of alcohol on his breath. I’m the last person to criticize a man for drinking in a crisis, but goddamn, there’s something indecent about doing it before one o’clock.
“Can we go into your office?” he said clamping my hand briefly, more for support than anything else, and marching past me like a zombie. I followed him into my office, closed the door behind us, and opened the liquor cabinet. “Maybe just a little one,” the commissioner said. I fixed him a big one. I poured myself some club soda.
The commissioner gulped half his drink down and said, “Stanley Vreel heard from them a little while ago. They gave him instructions.”
“What are they?”
“They want Vreel to bring the money up to some place in Connecticut.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Where exactly?”
“Some place called Macedonia. You ever heard of it? It’s in the western part of the state. Near the New York line. Here, I’ve got it all written down.” He pulled a leather-bound notebook and gold pencil out of his jacket and read me the instructions. They sounded like something out of Treasure Island: Vreel was to drive nine-tenths of a mile into Macedonia State Park, where he’d find a picnic table, Then he was to walk sixty paces north till he came to a certain tree. He was to leave the money under it and return to New York immediately. If he did this, Richie would be released that afternoon. There were to be no tricks—or else.
I jotted down the instructions. “What are you going to do, Commissioner?”
“I want to stake the spot out tomorrow.”
“They said no tricks,” I reminded him.
“I think we can do it unobtrusively. You know Bo Bowen?”
“Bo? Sure. Guard, Detroit Pistons, 1968 through 1972.”
“Good memory, Dave. Bo is an electronics expert. He does jobs for me. He told me it’s standard procedure in kidnapping cases to plant a tiny transmitter in with the ransom money. Then the FBI is equipped with these receivers and they can track the guy with the money for miles. Bo is rounding up the gear now. We can have our people planted in a wide perimeter around the drop so the bastards can’t detect us.”
“That’s fine, but what about the guys that are holding Richie? Suppose they’ve been instructed to shoot Richie if they don’t hear from their confederates by a certain time?”
“We’re not going to capture the men on the spot,” the commissioner explained. “We’re going to follow them to their hideout.”
I went over the plan in my mind and shrugged. “I guess it’s as good a strategy as any I can think of. Is there anything you want me to do?”
“Yes. Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?”
“No sir. I’ve been keeping myself open.”
“Good. I want you to drive up there at once and scout out every inch of that area. I want to know the layout around the drop. I want to know about paths and access roads, escape routes, the whole bit.”
“Okay. Meanwhile, there’s something you can do for me.”
What’s that?”
“It’s gonna sound strange, but can you have a couple of your people follow Mr. and Mrs. Sadler today?”
“Mr. and Mrs.—Richie’s parents?” He looked into his glass as if a genie had just risen out of the booze.
“Uh huh. Sondra says her father goes out some days and doesn’t say where. Her mom supposedly goes shopping. I think we should check up on them.”
“But what possible connection...? Well, why not? It’s no more crazy than the rest of this thing.” He helped himself to one for the road and left.
I gave Trish some instructions for the afternoon and was about to leave the office when I decided it would be nice to have Sondra for company. I called the St. Regis and she answered. Her voice was husky and sensual. “Hello, Dave. I was just thinking about you.”
“Reviewing last night?”
“Yes. I get all squirmy when I think about it.”
“Would you like to spend the afternoon with me?”
“Very much,” she murmured.
“Be under the canopy on the 55th Street side in half an hour, I’ll pick you up.”
“What are we going to do?”
“What would you like to do?”
She answered this with heavy breathing.
“What else would you like to do?” I said.
I taxied to the Pavilion and picked up my Camaro in the garage, drove down Second Avenue to 55th Street, and pulled up at the St. Regis. Sondra was waiting, looking shamelessly sexy in a kind of mock tennis outfit with a pleated white skirt and halter-top. Her bare midriff and long, tapered legs turned a dozen heads as she dashed in front of the car and hopped in.
As we pulled into traffic inching toward the West Side, a curtain of discomfort seemed to descend between us. It was odd, but as intimate as we’d been a scant 12 hours earlier, we really didn’t know each other well enough for the sort of familiarities long-time lovers bestow on each other, the hello kiss or the teasing banter. I think she was wondering whether I was still interested in her after my “conquest.” I was wondering if she was mad at me for certain things I’d done with her which, in the bright light of the morning after, might make a nice girl like her feel a little unclean.
She sat leaning against her door and I hunched over the wheel stealing peeks at her tanned legs as if I’d never seen them before.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Connecticut.”
“I assume you haven’t heard from the kidnappers.”
“We have. That’s why we’re going to Connecticut.”
She spun around as if yanked. “Are we going to get Richie?”
“No, we’re going to the place where the kidnappers want us to drop off the ransom money. The drop is set for tomorrow and the commissioner warns me to check the area out.”
“Are you going to try to capture them?”
“Something like that.”
“What if...?”
“We’re trying to cover every contingency,” I said. “Richie’s safety is the prime consideration.”
She lapsed into a nervous silence and I turned on the radio. We got on the Henry Hudson Parkway at 57th Street, heading north, and listened to rock for half an hour as we drove along the stately Saw Mill River Parkway. Just before the highway widened into route 684, Sondra finally broke the silence with, “Why do I feel like a stranger with you?”
“Maybe because you don’t know anything about me.”
“Yes. Yes. I’d have thought that, um...”
“Last night? What did last night tell you about me? That I’m good in bed, that’s all.”
She slumped lower in her seat, embarrassed. Another ten minutes passed before she said, “Well, who are you, masked man?”
I laughed. “That’s 35 years you’re asking about.”
“We have time.”
“Not for all of it, but I can run some highlights past you.” I told her my pedigree, going back to Northumberland and including the family crest. And I told her about my Texas boyhood, which had been divided between the ranch and the house in town. The result had been a young man divided. I loved the ranch, knew every inch of it by the time I was 6 and had mastered every task before I was 10. But I also loved the house in Fort Worth, with its fine library of leather-bound books dating back to the seventeenth century. When I got to high school I was the best-read kid in my class and my teachers started talking about grooming me for a classical education at an Eastern school. At the same time, my daddy started talking about my taking over the ranch.
“And you?” Sondra said. “Which did you prefer?”
“I preferred football,” I said. “And baseball and track and basketball and just about every other sport. And, to the dismay of all these folks who had some plan or another for my future career, I was a good athlete.’’
“Trish says they used to call you Sleeper.”
“Sleeper, that was me.”
“A sleeper’s a player who lets the other team think he’s not very good, right?”
“Right. Then, when they’re off guard, he burns ‘em.”
She looked at me and seemed to be sizing me up. “You don’t strike me as a sleeper.” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, embarrassed again. “I wasn’t referring to last night.”
“It never crossed my mind that you were,” I said, fibbing. “See, in high school I was kind of rangy and uncoordinated. I moved like a marionette, arms and legs jerking every which way. People tended to underestimate me. Then I grew up and filled out.”
Sondra reached out and touched my arm, sending goose bumps up it. “You’re still like that a little. I’m afraid. I underestimated you at first.”
“That’s not hard to do,” I said.
Just before Pawling, N.Y. we picked up 22 North. The countryside opened up like a panorama and we skirted some spectacular farmland. I talked about how I’d won all my letters and graduated with high honors and was inundated with sports scholarship offers. For, as Sondra well knew, the combination of athletic prowess and scholastic achievement turns college recruiters on like a bottleful of greenies. I chose the University of Texas, where I could play the best brand of football the nation has to offer but keep my hand in literature as well as take courses in ranch administration. The first I did well enough to set one or two records that still stand, the second, well enough to graduate magna cum laude.
I looked at Sondra. “You impressed?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes I think it doesn’t amount to a pile of buffalo chips. Anyway, I found myself drafted by the NFL, the AFL, the New York Mets and the Detroit Tigers on account of I was also a pretty good catcher, by a basketball team that had never seen me play but figured I must be good at it, plus I had a boxing promoter tell me I could be the greatest white hope since Gentleman Jim Corbett.”
“So you joined the Dallas Cowboys?”
“No, I joined the Army.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “Sleeper strikes again!”
“I had the Army obligation hanging over my head anyway, so what the hell. But the real reason was, I just didn’t feel I was mature enough to decide what I wanted to do with my life. So I joined up. Best decision I ever made, too. Nothing like the Army for postponing decisions. Did my hitch, saw as much of Germany as a Texas boy might want to see, and led my division to a football title. Got my discharge, went home, told my daddy sorry, it was still football, and dropped in on Coach Landry and asked him if he was still interested in me. The rest you know. Still feel like a stranger?”
I could feel the shimmering green eyes fixed on me, and it was hard to concentrate on driving. “No,” she said, “I feel like . . .”
“Like what?”
“Like making love.”
She placed her hand on my thigh, and suddenly my vision blurred so badly the narrow ribbon of route 22 seemed to expand into an eight-lane superhighway. I swerved onto a dirt shoulder and braked to a skidding halt.
“Darlin’, that’s an evil thing to do to a man while he’s driving.”
“I really want you, Dave.” She slid her arms around my neck and drew me to her. Her lips were pliant and hungry and her body electric with desire for a repeat performance of last night, right there with tractor-trailers whizzing by so close the car shuddered like a dinghy in a gale. Last night’s shyness was gone, replaced by a predatory lust and a need that were awesome. I didn’t know what to do, with God and everybody watching, but my hands were way ahead of my mind and had glided beneath her halter to envelop the roundness of her breasts. But I was uneasy about the publicness of the thing. I kept glancing in the mirror, expecting a police car to stop at any moment. In fact, some distance back, a green car was pulling onto the shoulder. Probably a coincidence, but that was enough for me. With the utmost reluctance I disengaged. “Business before pleasure.”
Panting, she pulled her halter down over her breasts and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe when this is all over...”
She looked at me intensely and I realized she may have heard more in that remark than I’d meant to convey. I left the sentence dangling and wondered how to complete it. I cared a great deal for Sondra, cared more for her, I think, than anyone since Nancy. But when I thought of the emotional investment, the responsibilities, the complications of a serious affair—well, I’d have to make very sure before I let the thing go deeper.
And so would Sondra. She’d fallen for me, okay, but what did I really mean to her? Her first big love affair? Her brother’s rescuer? An exciting adventure in a lonely city? She’d have to sort it all out. I slammed the gearshift lever into “Drive” and crunched back onto 22 in a shower of gravel.
It was awkward-silence-time again. We stewed in our separate juices as I pushed north on 22 until we picked up 55 a little beyond the Harlem Valley State Hospital. A few minutes later we crossed into Connecticut and picked up route 7, pushing north again along a particularly picturesque stretch of the broad Housatonic River bordered by rolling green hills. About ten minutes later we entered Kent, Connecticut.
The instructions were to make a left at the town’s only traffic light, but I drove on into town and stopped at a stationery store, where I picked up a map of the area. Then we doubled back to the light and proceeded along Macedonia Road, which skirted the grounds of Kent School. Pretty soon we got to the entrance of Macedonia State Park.
I made a mental note of the mileage figures on the dashboard odometer and inched the car over the park’s narrow dirt road, which paralleled a rock-strewn stream flanked by campsites and picnic benches. There were not many people in the park so early in the season, but nevertheless we studied every face carefully, wondering if any masked the knowledge of Richie Sadler’s whereabouts.
I pulled over for a minute and we studied both the map and the kidnappers’ instructions. The road we were on rose into the hills at a gentle grade, then emerged at the other end of the park and linked up with a number of local roads. I tentatively penciled in “X’s” at what I thought were the best spots to place our men on the following day. The coverage seemed sadly inadequate considering the sprawling nature of the area, but the transmitter gadget the commissioner had told me about might even up the odds a little.
I drove at idling speed, watching the odometer until the numbered gauge at the extreme right indicated we’d come nine-tenths of a mile. I stopped and looked around. We were at the foot of a little wooden bridge just wide enough for an automobile. It veered off the main road to a campsite, and we were supposed to drive over it and park. We did and got out of the car.
Still following the instructions, we located the last picnic table and measured off sixty paces north through matted underbrush. The last few paces brought us to a huge old silver birch tree, its bark stripped for kindling and scarred with initials. This was the tree where Stanley Vreel was supposed to leave the satchel containing three million dollars.
I peered through the dappled woods. The tangle was thick, making both mobility and visibility difficult beyond a twenty-five yard range. I waded as far into it as I could, looking for a path, but found none. Unless these guys were skilled woodsmen, they’d probably have to use the main road for entry and exit, which was an advantage for our side.
As I paused to get my bearings, I heard the gravel-crunching approach of a slow-cruising car. At first I thought it was probably just a Winnebago full of campers, but then I heard it stop near the bridge and I had the heart-stopping feeling that someone was watching us. I peered through the brush and thought I detected a metallic green glint. I shouted to Sondra to get back to the car fast, and I plunged through the thicket toward the campsite, cursing the stubborn, clinging brush that slowed me down. Suddenly there was a wild spinning of tires on dirt and the rattling of pebbles against fender guards. By the time I got out of the clearing, there was nothing but a cloud of dust.
I hopped into the car and wheeled it around furiously. Sondra sprang out onto the clearing and jumped into the car beside me. I gunned the engine and we zoomed over the bridge, following the orange haze of dust that still hung over the main road. A minute or two later we reached the exit of the park—where the road forked. I swore.
“Pick one,” I said angrily.
“Left.”
“Luck be a lady,” I said roaring left. We hurtled down a winding road and followed it for 15 minutes. Then we came to a four-corner intersection. I slammed on the brakes and thumped the steering wheel in disgust.
Sondra looked at me apologetically. “I hope I’m luckier in love,” she said.