It was two o’clock on Tuesday morning when Ed was awakened by someone shaking his shoulder. He thought he was still dreaming at first – a strange airless dream of waiting in a funeral parlour for the body of his father to arrive – and he struck out with his left arm and hit Della on the side of the head. She seized his wrist and said, ‘Quiet. I don’t want to wake up the Muldoons.’
Ed rolled over and sat up in bed. He’d been drinking for most of the afternoon, and his mouth tasted as if he’d been chewing alfalfa seeds. Della was wearing an emerald green silk wrap, and she smelled of Paco Rabanne. ‘What’s the matter?’ Ed asked her, frowzily. ‘Couldn’t you just have slipped into bed?’
She smiled in the darkness. ‘I don’t have time for that tonight. I’m afraid. I need your help.’
‘Help? What kind of help?’
‘Shearson and Peter Kaiser have been forced to clear out the Blight Crisis Appeal faster than they wanted to. That’s why you haven’t seen them around today. They’ve been diverting as much money as possible into false-bottomed trusts and phoney accounts.’
‘Well? What do you expect me to do about it?’
‘Ed – all the telexes and the memos and the accounts are still downstairs in Shearson’s office. All the documentary evidence I’m going to need to bring him before a Grand Jury. But if I leave it until tomorrow, Peter Kaiser’s going to have time to spirit them all away, and file them where they can’t be traced.’
‘You’re going to break into Shearson’s office and steal his papers?’ asked Ed, incredulous.
‘It’s the only way. I can’t get through to the FBI office in Wichita and order up a search warrant. Shearson’s keeping a check on every single telephone call. But I can get in there and take the paperwork I need.’
‘What’s Shearson going to do if he catches you at it?’ Ed wanted to know.
‘I think I know the answer to that better than anyone,’ Della replied. ‘Shearson Jones is suspected by the FBI of implication in at least five killings, and probably more.’
Ed frowned, thinking of Season and Sally, and Peter Kaiser’s threat to kill them. ‘Do you mean that?’ he asked. ‘Of course I mean it. He’s a very wanted man.’
‘Somebody in the FBI actually has proof?’
Della sat up straight. ‘What do you want, Ed? One minute you’re publicly tearing the man apart, and now you’re doubting he’s a potential killer. Do you want to see blood?’
‘Not my own, thanks. And not yours, either.’
‘Well, in that case, why don’t you give me some help? The sooner I can lay my hands on some incriminating paperwork, the sooner Shearson Jones is going to find himself in the federal penitentiary. That’s if they can find him a cell large enough.’
‘This is crazy,’ said Ed. ‘I’m a farmer, not a burglar.’
‘You used to be an actuary, though, didn’t you? There’ll be scores of accounts and bank drafts to sort out down there, and if I’m going to get it done quickly. I’m going to need some expert assistance.’
‘How the hell are you going to break in there?’
‘Just leave that to me. I’ve been trained. All you have to do is keep quiet and do what I tell you.’
Ed ran his hand through his scruffy hair. ‘This is a heck of a way to spend the night,’ he said, but he climbed out of bed, and reached for his pants and his red sweatshirt, the one with South Burlington Farm emblazoned on the front.
As he was pulling the sweatshirt over his head, Della asked him, ‘Did you manage to call your wife?’
Ed’s head appeared through the circular neck-hole. ‘Not yet. Why?’
‘No reason. I wondered if they were still giving you that busy switchboard routine.’
‘I haven’t tried since seven o’clock last night.’
Della stood up, and tightened the silk tie around her waist. ‘I guess Shearson’s trying to keep us all out of public circulation until his money’s been safely salted away.’
Ed said, ‘The truth is that Peter Kaiser said I could call Season if I wanted to.’
Della looked up. ‘He did? And you didn’t? Don’t tell me you didn’t want to.’
Ed stooped down and picked up his sneakers. When he stood straight again, he simply gave Della an unhappy smile.
‘It’s not because of me, is it?’ asked Della. ‘You mustn’t ever think of abandoning your wife because of me.’
‘No,’ said Ed, quietly. ‘Peter Kaiser says there’s a private detective following Season and Sally around. Well – I don’t have any way of telling whether he’s bluffing or not. But the twist is that unless I suffer severe loss of memory whenever anybody asks me about Shearson Jones and the Blight Crisis Appeal, that private detective is going to get orders to kill both of them, right away. I’d like to call them, but I think it’s safer if I don’t. Not just yet, anyway.’
Della came slowly over to Ed and laid her hands on his shoulders. Her hair gleamed coppery-gold in the faint light from the open windows. ‘So that’s why you wanted to know if the FBI had any proof that Shearson was really a killer.’
‘Yes,’ said Ed, quietly. He hesitated, and then he said, ‘I know that things haven’t been too good between me and Season lately… We’ve bickered over the farm, and we’ve argued over living in Kansas, and we’ve had enough rows about my mother to send up the Goodyear blimp. But I don’t want anything like this to happen… not in a thousand years.’
Della kissed him, gently and lingeringly, on the lips. It was a kiss of affection and understanding, rather than a kiss of passion. ‘Do you want to back out of this break-in?’ she asked him. ‘I’ll understand if you do. Your wife and child are far more important to you than Shearson Jones.’
Ed shook his head. ‘If we can find something to lock Shearson Jones up in the pen, then I’m ready to help.’
‘You’re sure?’ she said.
‘Just tell me what to do,’ he replied, ‘and make sure that the FBI send me a case of bourbon at Christmas for the next twenty years.’
Della checked her watch. ‘Let’s go, then. The Muldoons are usually awake at the crack, and it’s going to take us at least a half-hour to get what we need.’
The upper landing outside Ed’s bedroom was silent, and illuminated only by a low-voltage bracket lamp. Della paused for a moment, and looked carefully along the landing towards the double doors of Shearson’s personal bedroom suite. They were closed, as usual, and probably locked. One of the Muldoon brothers had told Ed that Shearson had once been attacked in a hotel in New York by a prowler, and ever since then he had been neurotic about the idea of being surprised in his sleep.
‘Don’t they have anybody patrolling the house during the night?’ whispered Ed.
Della shook her head. ‘The Muldoons check on all the doors and windows before they go to bed, and switch on an outside alarm; and there are a couple of Dobermanns loose in the grounds. For tonight, they’ve closed down the switchboard, too. The only telephone that works is Shearson’s private line. Maybe Peter has a phone, too. But that’s all. They don’t need much else in the way of security, out here in the wilds.’
She gripped Ed’s sleeve, and led him swiftly along the length of the landing to the angled cedarwood staircase. The stairs were so well constructed that not one of them creaked as they padded down to the main living area. They waited for just a second, listening, to make sure that they hadn’t been heard; and then they crossed the wide living-room floor, and approached the passage to Shearson’s study.
A portrait of a sour-faced trooper by George Caleb Bingham observed them from the passage wall; and a little further along, they were stared at fiercely by a Kwakiutl Indian mask in green and scarlet, fringed with real human hair. The cold magnetic light of the moon fell across the passage from a triangular wood-framed window, and pointed to the door of Shearson’s study as if it were a mystic sign.
Della said, ‘Keep an eye open, will you? This shouldn’t take long.’ And while Ed loitered at the corner of the passage, wishing that he’d thought of going to the bathroom before he ventured out on this bag job with Della, she reached into the pocket of her emerald green bathrobe and took out a plastic envelope, which, by the clinking sound it made, probably contained lock-picks.
‘They teach you to burglarise people’s houses?’ asked Ed, in a breathy whisper.
Della raised one finger to her lips. ‘They call it “gaining essential access”. It’s only called “burglarisation” when you get caught, and the agency disowns you.’
She peered at the lock closely. ‘It’s nothing special,’ she told him. ‘A five-lever armour-plated deadlock.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Ed. ‘In that case, you should be able to open it with your hairgrip.’
‘Will you keep a look-out, and shut up, and trust me?’ hissed Della.
Ed waved a hand at her to calm her down. ‘Just open the door. I trust you.’
He kept a watch on the silent living area as Della worked at the lock. The polished tables, the empty chairs, the long-case clock that ticked away the small hours of the morning with tired reluctance. From where he was standing, he could see the stairs and most of the upper landing, too, and there was no sign yet that anybody was stirring. He looked at his watch and it was eleven minutes after two. He wondered why he felt so unreal, so detached from everything that was going on. Maybe it was this stylish and stylised house, with its Indian art treasures, and that indescribable aura of sheer wealth and political power which surrounded Shearson Jones. Maybe it was the terrible events of Sunday night, the looting and the burning – events which he felt responsible for starting, but which he had only been able to experience at second-hand, on television.
Another oddity, too, as far as his feelings of reality were concerned, was that the television news programmes kept informing him that ‘Kansas farmer Ed Hardesty, who publicly exposed the threat of a nationwide famine, is now in hiding in Washington, DC, along with Senator Shearson Jones, the man he claims is responsible for the crisis.’
The gates of Lake Vista had been firmly locked against the press since eleven o’clock Sunday evening, and two attempts by CBS News to land in the grounds by helicopter had been thwarted by Shearson’s yapping dogs and by the Muldoon brothers, waving scatter-guns and threatening all kinds of murder. Through his office in Washington, Shearson had announced that he was returning to the capital, in due course, and that he would make ‘a full and uninhibited statement’ later – but first he felt it his duty to make several ‘private and confidential’ visits to friends and political associates in Kansas. That had lent him the time to empty the Blight Crisis Appeal of anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor, while reassuring the President that he was quite prepared to return to Washington and face the music.
What Ed didn’t know was that Season had called Lake Vista five times during Sunday night and Monday morning, and that Willard Noakes had called, too, just to leave a message that ‘we’re right behind you, and if you need us, call.’
Della, wrestling with the door of Shearson’s study, said, ‘I can’t get to grips with this fucking lock. What the hell does he need with a five-lever deadlock?’
‘I thought you said it was easy,’ said Ed.
‘It should be,’ she told him, irritably. ‘It just so happens that it isn’t.’
‘Do you want me to try?’ Ed asked her.
‘Are you an FBI agent? Or a professional thief?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Well then, keep quiet, and let me get on with it.’
‘All right. I’m sorry. I was only offering to help.’
‘Don’t.’
Ed turned away from Della, and checked the living area again. It was 2:21 a.m., and the house was still silent. He thought he could hear someone snoring, but he couldn’t make out who it was.
The events of Sunday night had created an extraordinary kind of tension in the house. Ed had seen hardly anything of Karen since Sunday morning: Peter Kaiser had been keeping her away from anybody who might be considered an enemy of the Lake Vista establishment. Peter wasn’t sure yet if Karen had been responsible for tipping Ed off about the extent of the crop blight, but he wasn’t taking any chances. His mother had once told a new and rather sophisticated girlfriend of his that he had wept as a child in Bambi, especially in the scene where Bambi wanders through the fiery forest calling ‘Mother! Mother!’, and Peter had never trusted any woman since.
The tension had been heightened by Shearson’s silence. Instead of storming and raging about the house as Ed had expected him to, he had closeted himself away, and spoken to nobody but Peter and his servants. Several times during the day Ed had felt tempted to ask to talk to him, if only to clear the air. But Shearson had stayed out of sight. He wasn’t interested in Ed’s apologies, or explanations, or even his pledges to see Shearson roasting in hell. Shearson had several millions of dollars to rake off, and that was all that mattered.
‘That’s it,’ said Della, with surprising suddenness. Ed turned, and the door was already ajar.
‘You’re a genius,’ Ed told her. ‘A five-lever, armour-plated lock?’
‘They give us a pretty thorough training,’ Della explained, with unconvincing modesty.
‘You bet your investigative ass,’ said Ed, flippant, but also impressed. He’d tried to pick a padlock once, on Season’s diary, and he knew just how damned difficult lock-picking could be. He’d had to wait until Season had gotten around to telling him about her affair with Clive Harris of her own accord, and by then he hadn’t been really interested any more.
‘Come on,’ whispered Della. ‘And make sure you close the door behind you.’
They stepped into the office. It smelled of wine and cigar-smoke, and Shearson’s underarm sweat. Della switched on the green glass desklamp, and directed it away from the window, in case it cast any light across the gardens outside which could be seen from a balcony upstairs.
The wide oak desk was in chaos, heaped with scratch pads and graph paper and accounts books. It looked as if Shearson and Peter had finished their day’s work and then left everything exactly where it was, without bothering to clear up. There was even a half-smoked cigar in Shearson’s ashtray, and a congealing cup of coffee beside Peter’s chair. Ed picked up a yellow legal pad that Shearson had carelessly dropped on to the floor. On the top page, he had doodled an animated dollar-sign, with a broad smile, a big nose, and two little legs.
‘It seems like even dollars can walk,’ said Ed, throwing the pad down again.
‘Sure they can,’ said Della, who was busily leafing through the papers that Peter Kaiser had been working on. ‘They walk right out of the Blight Crisis Appeal fund, around the block a few times, double back around the next block, and then dodge in to Shearson Jones’s hank when nobody’s looking.’
‘I call that smart,’ said Ed.
‘I don’t,’ said Della. ‘I call it embezzlement.’
Ed looked around the office. The walls were clad with knotted pine, sanded and varnished. There were five or six photographs of Shearson making presentations to smiling wheat farmers in Kansas, and a misty early-American landscape by George Catlin. On the oak bookshelf beside the desk reclined a Victorian alabaster sculpture of an idealised Indian maiden, Pocahontas out of Wonder Woman, with feathers in her hair and bare breasts.
Della threw Ed a heavy pile of loose papers. ‘You can start on those. You’re looking for any financial movement out of the Blight Crisis Appeal fund. You’re looking for where it goes, who handles it, which banks are involved, account numbers, possible pseudonyms, that kind of thing. You’re looking for double entries and obvious laundering jobs. You think you can manage?’
‘Sure I can manage,’ said Ed, taking the papers across the room and spreading them out over a small side-table. ‘I mean, pinning down two expert embezzlers out of a whole mess of memos, that can’t be difficult.’
‘You don’t have to find anything specifically criminal. All we need is names, or account numbers. Anything that looks remotely unorthodox.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘This is your party.’
They worked their way through the papers for forty minutes. Most of the notes and jottings were indecipherable, crowded with notes about tax law – such as ‘Arizona acct exempt under Code Sec 501(c)3??’ and ‘trnsfr to cemetery company poss?’ – and then there were columns and columns of figures, hardly any of them annotated or explained.
But after a while, Ed began to detect a distinct flow of correlated figures from one page of all these scribbled accounts to another. He pulled the desk lamp nearer, and switched on Peter Kaiser’s print-out calculator, and after five minutes of intensive button-punching, he said, ‘That’s it. I think I’m on to something.’
Della came across and looked over his shoulder. ‘See here,’ he told her, ‘this figure of 1.72 million dollars has been ostensibly transferred into a holding fund, to accrue interest while the Blight Crisis Appeal fund management decide how best it’s supposed to be spent. It’s been split six ways, and invested under the perfectly legal terms of the holding fund into six different agriculture-related industries. But if you look at the figures on this page here, you’ll see that a real-estate development company in Fort Myers, Florida, has been lent by six different sources a stun of money that amounts to 1.548 million dollars, which is 1.72 million dollars less ten per cent. There are only two names jotted down here – “Olga” and “Jimmy” – but God knows who they are.’
Della quickly looked through the accounts. ‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘But maybe it’s enough to point the FBI fraud people in the right direction. At least it’s something. Shearson Jones is usually so good at dusting over his tracks.’
She collected up the papers, folded them, and tucked them in the pocket of her robe.
‘Supposing Shearson notices they’re missing?’ asked Ed, replacing the desk lamp, and tearing the strip of paper off the calculator.
‘It won’t matter if he does. As soon as the Muldoons are up, and the alarms are switched off. I’m getting out of here, and fast.’
‘Where does that leave me?’
‘It leaves you right here. You’ll be safer that way. If Shearson thinks you’re implicated in stealing his personal papers, he’ll hang your guts on the outhouse door.’
‘You FBI agents have such a delicate turn of phrase.’ Della checked the office to make sure that everything was back where it was supposed to be. But she was about to switch off the desklamp when the door opened. Just like that, unannounced. And there, in a plaid cowboy shirt and BVDs, his eyes still blinking with sleep, was one of the Muldoon brothers.
For a moment, Muldoon stared at them both in total surprise, and they stared back at him, and nobody said a word. But then Muldoon turned back towards the passage and yelled out: ‘Calvin! Calvin, c’mere! And bring the gun!’
Ed made a rush for him. He managed to seize Muldoon’s right arm, and pin it behind his back, but Muldoon twisted around and punched him very hard in the ear. Ed said, ‘Shit!’ and lost his balance, banging his head against the door-frame.
Della unceremoniously pushed Ed aside, and struck Muldoon on the collar-bone with her elbow. Then she jabbed him straight in the throat with her rigid fingers, and he pitched backwards across the passage with a high whining sound, like a vacuum cleaner with its bag full.
‘Now – quick, for Christ’s sake!’ panted Della, and seized Ed by the hand.
Ed’s ear was still singing, but he jostled his way out of Shearson’s study, and down the passage, and across the living area. He barked his shin against a chrome coffee-table, and swore under his breath, but Della reached back and tugged at his sweatshirt to get him moving.
Calvin Muldoon popped out from a door beside the staircase, his pump-gun raised, his face white with surprise. Della snatched at the barrel of the gun, missed her grip, but chopped Muldoon in the kidneys with a short, vicious stroke of her right hand. Muldoon folded, and Ed hit him again, straight in the mouth. The gun dropped to the wooden floor with a clatter, and Ed reached down to pick it up.
‘Shearson!’ gasped Della. ‘He’s our only way out!’
Ed wasn’t sure what she meant, but he hauled himself up the staircase after her, and pelted along the landing just behind her, and they skated along the last few feet together and collided with Shearson’s double door at the same moment.
Della jiggled the door handle, but the doors were locked.
‘Shall I blow the lock off?’ asked Ed.
Della snapped her head around and stared at him as if he was mad. ‘Are you crazy? You can’t shoot locks off with a rifle! All you get is noise and smoke and bullets flying in all directions.’
‘Oh,’ said Ed, disappointed. ‘They always do it in the movies.’
‘In the movies they don’t have solid cedarwood doors.’
Behind them, Calvin Muldoon was already up off the floor and coming up the stairs. Ed turned around and pointed the pump-gun at him, along the length of the landing.
‘You come any nearer and I’ll blow your head off!’ he shouted, in what he hoped was a convincing tone of voice. Muldoon raised his hands, but still kept on coming, in a slow and sidling kind of a walk.
Just then, across on the other side of the landing, Peter Kaiser’s bedroom door opened, and there was Peter himself, in a white T-shirt with PK embroidered on it, and white shorts.
‘What the hell goes on here?’ he said, irritably.
Ed swung the pump-gun around and fired. There was an ear-splitting bang, and an Indian tapestry that was hanging only two feet away from the open door of Peter’s bedroom was ripped into black ribbons. Peter slammed his door shut instantly, and locked it.
While Ed was distracted, Calvin Muldoon tried to make a silent rush up the landing on tippy-toes, but Ed whipped the gun back around just in time, and levelled it at Muldoon’s head with an expression of such fierceness that the poor man was brought up short, teetering on his toes.
‘I warned you,’ Ed told him, harshly. Muldoon backed off, his hands raised high.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. Take it easy. I was only doing my job.’
Della meanwhile had been trying to pick Shearson’s lock. She was hunkered down in front of it, her teeth bared in a grimace of concentration, her fingers trembling as she tried to sense the levers inside.
Ed said, ‘Hurry up, will you? They’re going to go off and get guns of their own before we know where we are.’ Calvin Muldoon was already backing down the staircase, and Ed heard his brother call from the living area, ‘Are you all right, there, Calvin? Didn’t get yourself hurt, did you?’
Della said nothing, but reserved her attention for the lock.
Peter Kaiser’s door opened again, only an inch or so. There was a pause, and then Peter said, ‘Is that you Hardesty? Can you hear me?’
‘I can hear you,’ Ed told him.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Hardesty, but whatever it is you won’t get away with it. This house is locked up tighter than a prison.’
‘Let me worry about that,’ Ed called back.
Peter thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘If you harm Senator Jones in any way – and I mean this – you’ll have every police force in the country after you.’
‘He won’t be harmed, unless he’s stupid,’ said Ed.
‘You won’t get away with it,’ Peter repeated.
Della said, ‘Come on, you pig of a lock. Come on.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Ed exhorted her.
Now, Calvin Muldoon was climbing back up the staircase, crouched low on knees and elbows. Ed couldn’t see too clearly through the carved wooden banisters, but he glimpsed a nickel-plated .45 automatic in Calvin’s right hand. He was frightened now. There wasn’t any doubt that the Muldoons were as well armed as the Marine Corps, and that they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if they thought it was part of their job. He wondered if he ought to fire a warning shot along the landing, but he didn’t know how many shells were left in his pump-gun, and so he decided not to.
Della said, ‘Done it,’ in such a quiet voice that Ed didn’t hear her. But then she pushed Shearson’s door open, and Shearson’s alarm bells went off, and amidst the shattering, blinding noise, Ed realised that she had saved their skins at the last possible moment. Holding the pump-gun in his right hand, he pushed Della through the open door with his left, and then backed in after her.
‘I hope you know you scared the pants off me just then,’ Ed told her, and he was so genuinely frightened that his voice sounded strangled and high. The bells kept on shrieking, so they could scarcely hear each other speak. ‘Let’s go get Shearson,’ shouted Della.
They locked the double doors behind them, and then strode purposefully down the short corridor that led to Shearson’s bedroom. Ed kicked open the louvred door, and pounced into the room with the pump-gun held high, like something out of Starsky and Hutch. He needn’t have bothered. The huge king-sized bed with its puffy white coverlet was empty, and Shearson Jones was standing instead on the far side of the room, next to a small cocktail cabinet, dressed in a vast white nightshirt, and lighting up a Partagas cigar.
The alarm bells were so shrill in here that Ed didn’t even attempt to speak. He simply waved the rifle at Shearson, and inclined his head towards the door.
Shearson puffed at his cigar, and shook his head. He mouthed the words, ‘no way.’
Della, in her bright green wrap, walked directly over to Shearson and yelled something in his ear. He stared at her for a moment, and then thoughtfully laid his cigar down in a silver ashtray. He opened a louvred wardrobe door, and tugged out pants, shirt, and a dark blue sweater that must have taken the wool of two dozen sheep. Without another word, he gave the clothes to Della, and led the way out of the bedroom.
‘What did you tell him?’ shouted Ed.
‘I told him we only had one shell left in the gun,’ Della told him. ‘I also told him what part of his anatomy was going to get hit first.’
Ed raised his eyebrows. ‘He believes that I’d do that? I mean, maim him that way?’
‘No. But he believes that I would.’
They reached the doors of Shearson’s suite, and Della quickly unlocked them. Shearson stood by, as fat and white as an apparition of Falstaflf. Della shouted at him, ‘Do what you’re told. That’s all. No jokes, no tricks, no nothing. I don’t have much of a sense of humour tonight.’
Shearson made a moue amidst his four double chins.
Gradually, Della drew the door inwards. As she did so, the alarm stopped ringing, and there was an extraordinary silence, still crowded with ghostly after-images of clangorous bells.
They waited. Ed glanced down, and saw the sweep hand of his watch counting out more than thirty seconds. The landing outside was utterly silent, and yet the Muldoons had to be there, and maybe Peter Kaiser, too, if he’d summoned up the nerve.
‘We’re coming out now!’ called Della.
There was no reply. Only silence, and darkness.
‘If you try to stop us. Senator Jones will be seriously wounded,’ she said. ‘Not killed, but wounded in a way which is going to cause him agony and distress for the rest of his life. Do you understand that?’
Still no reply. Della looked back at Ed, and then at Shearson Jones, and from the expression on her face she was obviously trying to calculate the risks of taking an enormously fat senator and a nervous farmer-cum-actuary on a run for freedom that could get them all killed.
‘Ed,’ she said, ‘you could still stay behind. I’m not saying that Shearson would give you a particularly nice time, but it could be better than dying.’
Ed shook his head. ‘I’m coming, and that’s all there is to it. Don’t worry about it, Della, I won’t hold you back. Just say the word and we’ll go.’
Della looked at Shearson. ‘You hear that, my darling? You’re coming on a little trip.’
Shearson sighed. ‘My father always told me to stay clear of women with oversized breasts,’ he replied. ‘Their sense of loyalty can always be assessed in inverse ratio to the measurement of their bazumbas.’
Ed prodded Shearson’s fat side with the muzzle of the pump gun. It was like prodding a pillow. Shearson looked round at him, offended, but Ed gave him what Sally had always called his ‘nice alligator’ smile in return.
‘Are you going to tell me who you are?’ Shearson asked them. ‘Do I get to know why you’re kidnapping me? Are you Symbionese Liberation Army? Are you Israelis? Not that it really makes a great deal of difference.’
Della ignored him. ‘I want you to step out of this door with your hands up,’ she instructed him. ‘And I’m just going to warn you that if you attempt to get away, or do anything at all except what I tell you to do, then Ed here is going to take your balls off as fast as you can say Vatican choir.’
‘Well, you can’t be Israelis,’ said Shearson. ‘Israelis never have such a colourful turn of phrase.’
‘Move!’ said Della, and pulled him towards the door.
Shearson grinned at her as he stepped out on to the landing. ‘Whatever happens, my dear,’ he told her, ‘I’d like you to know that you were a great lay.’
With Shearson ahead of them, Ed and Della walked out of the bedroom and along the landing. There was no sign of Peter Kaiser or of either of the Muldoon brothers. The house was so silent they could almost hear the dust falling.
Ed looked nervously from one side to the other as he escorted Shearson down the staircase. Shearson was humming to himself under his breath, and that unsettled Ed even more. It sounded as if Shearson knew something that he and Della didn’t.
They crossed the living area. Shearson remarked loudly, ‘I wish you’d tell me what devious political purpose this kidnap is supposed to serve.’ And almost instantly, every light in the living area was switched on, and both Muldoon brothers stepped out from passages at the side, with automatics raised in both hands.
Later, Ed remembered what happened in such detail that he couldn’t believe it had all been over so quickly. He had thrown himself forward, right on to Shearson’s back, and toppled the senator to the floor. As he did so, he had twisted himself around and seized Shearson’s neck in the crook of his arm, wrenching it back, so that Shearson’s head protected his chest. Della had dived behind one of the sofas.
Calvin Muldoon had dodged down beside a chair, squinted along the sights of his Colt .45, and fired twice. One shot had shattered a white porcelain lampshade base into a blast of snowy shrapnel. The second had echoed its way down one of the passages.
There had been a second’s silence, and then Calvin’s brother had fired a wild shot that broke a window on the other side of the room. There had been another second’s silence. Neither dared to shoot again in case he hit the senator. There had been a sharp smell of gunsmoke in the air.
‘Muldoon!’ Ed had called out. ‘Muldoon – there’s nothing at all you can do.’
‘You just try to move and I’ll get you,’ Calvin Muldoon replied. ‘Either that, or I’ll get the woman.’
Ed had thought about that, in one of those vivid, jumbled, instant flashes of processed information. Then, without hesitation, he had lifted the pump-gun and fired.
The shot had blown the stuffing out of the cushions in the chair which Calvin Muldoon had been using for cover. The room had suddenly been filled with smoke, and echoes, and hundreds of floating duck feathers. Calvin Muldoon had been hit in the neck, and he had suddenly appeared with his hand held around his throat, kneeling bolt upright, his face as horrified as one of Shearson’s Kwakiutl masks. Thick red blood had been jetting out from between his fingers across the floor, spurt after spurt after spurt. His brother had shouted, ‘Calvin! Calvin, my God! Calvin!’
Next, they were out of the door, out into the night, and running. Della was way ahead, crossing the wide front drive to the travelled stand where the cars were parked. Ed trailed fifty or sixty feet behind, trying to drag Shearson along by the sleeve of his nightshirt.
‘I can’t run! I can’t run!’ wheezed Shearson.
‘I don’t give a damn!’ Ed shouted at him. ‘Run, or I’ll blow you to big fat pieces!’
There were three cars parked by a windbreak of red pines – Ed’s own Caprice Classic station wagon, in which he had driven up to Lake Vista with Della; a Chevy Suburban wagon which the Muldoons used to drive around the grounds; and Shearson’s rented Lincoln Continental. The chauffeur, a quiet and serious man with a permanent frown, had been put up in the guest cottage close to the main gates.
‘Keys!’ said Della, as Shearson and Ed caught up with her. ‘Did you remember your car keys?’
‘I didn’t even know I was going to have to drive tonight,’ said Ed.
Shearson gasped, ‘No more running. Please. I beg you. No more running.’
Della opened the Suburban’s left-hand door, and felt around for keys. ‘No damned keys,’ she said. ‘Why couldn’t they be careless for once?’
Ed, one-handed, the pump-gun still waving at Shearson Jones, opened up the Lincoln. It smelled of leather and car-freshener. ‘No keys here, either.’
Della looked back towards the house. Peter Kaiser appeared briefly in the open front doorway, and then disappeared again. All around them the night was windy and strewn with stars. They could hear Muldoon shouting, and Peter calling, ‘Don’t do that, you’ll choke him, for Christ’s sake!’
Della bit her lip. ‘They’ll be after us in a minute. You wait until Peter Kaiser finds those papers are missing. Listen – get in the car.’
‘What’s the point? We can’t get it started.’
‘Just get in the car. It’s downhill all the way to the guest house. If you can give it enough of a push to start with, we can coast to the gates, and then get hold of the keys from the chauffeur.’
Muldoon appeared in the doorway of the house now, and unexpectedly fired a shot. Ed saw the flash of the .45’s muzzle, and heard the bullet drone away into the pines.
Shearson said, ‘You’d better make up your tiny minds, because they’re quite liable to shoot us all.’
Ed tugged open the back door of the Lincoln. ‘Get in,’ he ordered Shearson. Shearson beamed smugly, and wedged himself inside with a great show of puffing and blowing.
‘I hope you realise this is all futile,’ he said, as Ed slammed the door on him.
Della opened the passenger door. ‘Give me the gun,’ she told Ed. ‘I’ll try to give you some cover while you get us started.’
Ed looked at her for one questioning second, and then tossed the pump-gun across the roof of the car. Della caught it in one hand, without effort, as if she’d been trained in gun-handling all her life. Even Ed couldn’t have caught it like that.
Releasing the Lincoln’s parking brake, Ed gripped the steering wheel in one hand and the door frame in the other, and started to push. At first, the car wouldn’t move at all. He grunted, and pushed again, and it swayed forward about a half-inch. Behind him, Shearson Jones said, with mock concern, ‘You don’t want me to get out again, do you? Would that be of any help?’
Ed gasped, ‘You stay – where you – are. I need – the ballast—’
There was another loud shot from the house, and a bullet pinged off the Lincoln’s rear bumper. Ed shouted to Della, ‘They’re trying to hit the tyres!’
‘That’s another fallacy,’ said Della. ‘You can’t burst a tyre with a bullet. They’re aiming for the gas tank, more likely.’
‘Whatever,’ panted Ed, and heaved at the Lincoln again. Gradually, with a slow gravelly crunching sound, the limousine began to creep forward. At first it wasn’t rolling at any speed at all, and Ed was worried that it would come to a stop as soon as it came to a gentle rise in the driveway. But he kept on heaving at it, and it picked up more and more momentum, until Della had to run along beside it.
There was a crackling fusillade of pistol-shots from the house. One of them ricocheted off the Lincoln’s trunk, with a noise like a complaining seagull. Another struck the gravel close to Ed’s feet.
‘Peter Kaiser’s shooting as well,’ said Della. She stepped up on to the sill of the Lincoln’s open passenger door, rested the pump-gun across the roof, sighted it, and fired one loud booming shot towards the doorway of the house. Shearson, inside the car, grimaced and said, ‘Jesus.’
‘All right,’ said Ed, ‘let’s get the hell out of here.’
The large black Continental bounced silently along the sloping driveway. It was eerie, travelling without an engine. There was no sound but the crunching of the tyres on the ground, the squeaking of the suspension, and Shearson’s thick panting in the back seat.
‘There’s the guest cottage,’ said Della, pointing to a small white-washed house set back amongst the silhouette of the trees. It was almost three o’clock in the morning now, and the sky had faded a little, to a pale shade of oyster, but the ground was still thick with the shadows of the night.
Ed steered the Lincoln around the curve which took the driveway to the main gates. Then he applied the brake, and opened his door.
‘Give me two minutes,’ he said. ‘If Shearson tries anything, shoot him. Anywhere you like.’
‘I hope you realise that the gates are locked, and that you don’t have a key to them, either,’ smiled Shearson, fatly.
Ed said nothing, but walked briskly across the driveway to the brick steps which led up to the guest cottage. He skirted around the shadowy wooden verandah, his feet echoing on the boards, until he came to a window with floral drapes pulled across it. He listened, and he thought he could hear the chaffeur snoring inside. He banged loudly on the window with the flat of his hand.
The bedside light went on straight away, with almost comical speed. A voice said, ‘Who’s that? What’s happening?’
‘Everything’s okay,’ said Ed. ‘I just need the keys to the car. Someone locked it by mistake, and Senator Jones has left some important documents in it.’
A long silence. Then the chauffeur said, ‘Do you know what time it is? It’s three o’clock in the morning.’
‘Sure it’s three o’clock in the morning. But the President’s called on Senator Jones for some urgent information, and we have to have those keys. Come on, pal, just pass them out, and then you can go back to sleep.’
Ed heard a cot creaking, and a loud sniff. ‘I’m not supposed to hand them over to anybody, you know.’
‘Senator Jones isn’t just anybody, and neither is the President. So will you give me the keys?’
Up at the house, Ed heard the whistling roar of the Chevy Surburban’s engine starting up. He stepped back from the cottage window, and peered up the hill. He could make out the wagon’s lights as Peter and Muldoon circled around the front of the house in pursuit.
‘Will you hurry up, please?’ Ed called out. ‘Senator Jones is real impatient.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ said the chauffeur, from behind the floral drapes. ‘I’m trying to remember if I left the keys in my uniform pants or my Levis. I did some work on the car earlier on, you know. The brakes were squealing like hogs. Do you know what it was? Dust, that’s what it was. This perishing Kansas dust, in the linings.’
Ed stepped back again. The lights of the Muldoons’ wagon were already halfway down the hill, flickering their way through the pines. He could hear the whine of the four-wheel drive, and the crunching of the tyres on the gravel.
He thundered on the chauffeur’s bedroom window with his clenched fist. ‘Are you going to give me those fucking keys or do I have to tear down the wall and get them myself?’
The drapes abruptly parted. Then the sash window came rattling up. The chauffeur was standing there in pink striped pyjamas, solemn and frightened, with his hair sticking up from sleeping. He was holding out the keys like a small boy who’s been caught stealing candies.
Ed snatched the keys out of the chauffeur’s hand, and ran back along the verandah. As he hurried down the brick steps, he could see the Chevy wagon only two hundred feet away, and he was caught in the glare of its lights. He threw himself into the open door of the Lincoln, stabbed the wrong key into the ignition, wrestled it out again, stabbed another key in, and then twisted the engine into screaming life.
Dazzling headlights crowded his rearview mirror. There was a shot, and the back window turned to milk. Della screamed at Shearson Jones, ‘Get down! They’ll take your head off!’
Ed tugged the gear shift into reverse, and then pressed his foot on the gas pedal. Another bullet banged into the Lincoln’s trunk, with a hollow echoing sound.
The limousine’s rear wheels slithered and shrieked on the gravel, spraying up dust and stones. Then it shot backwards, straight into the oncoming Chevy wagon, and there was a loud kabbosssh! of colliding metal. Ed felt his neck wrenched from the impact, and Shearson tumbled against the back of his seat with all the elegance of two hundred and fifty pounds of Idaho potatoes. But Ed pulled the gear shift right down to second, shoved his foot on the gas again, and the Lincoln roared forwards towards the main gates with its rear end sliding sideways and its suspension bouncing wildly.
The car collided with the wrought-iron gates, and stopped, its engine bellowing in frustration. Della was clutching the back of her seat, her eyes wide, her pump-gun ready for a last quick shoot-out with Peter Kaiser and Muldoon. Shearson was lying sideways now, and puffing in pain.
‘They’re coming again!’ shouted Della, her voice shrill.
Ed threw the Lincoln back into reverse, stepped on the gas again, and for a second time the long black car hurtled backwards into the battered Chevy wagon. For long seconds, both vehicles were locked together in a crunching, grinding tangle of bumpers and crushed lights, their tyres whinnying and their engines outraged. Then Ed changed back into drive, and the Lincoln surged forward into the gates with another resonant crash of metal.
They wouldn’t have made it through if it hadn’t been for Muldoon’s powerful wagon, right up behind them. Muldoon gave them an extra shunt as they hit the gates, and the force of both vehicles together was enough to burst open the locks. The Lincoln slewed out into the road, its trunk lid flapping up in the air, its radiator grille twisted and broken, but still roadworthy and going at full speed.
‘Now, hit it!’ screamed Della, in excitement. ‘Get your foot down and really hit it!’
‘What the hell do you think I’m doing?’ Ed demanded, juggling with the steering wheel as the Lincoln skidded sideways around a ferociously tight curve. ‘This isn’t a sports car, for Christ’s sake. This is a two-ton limousine!’
The road from Fall River Lake leads down to Fall River itself, and joins up with the east-west highway which runs through Keighley and Augusta and back into Wichita. But it’s a wiggling series of hairpins, through rocks and pines and deceptive tunnels of light and shade, and the thin strip of blacktop is patchy, uneven, and often cambered the wrong way.
Ed glanced in his mirror as they sped beside the lake. Through the frosted rear window, he could see the flash of headlights as the Chevy wagon came after them. He said to Della, breathlessly, ‘They’re right in back of us. Why don’t you try to pick them off when we take the next right-hand curve?’
Della shook her head.
‘Why not?’ yelled Ed. ‘They’re trying to kill us!’
‘Maybe they are, maybe they’re not,’ said Della. ‘They’re trying to catch us, more than anything. But I don’t like to shoot at people unless I really have to.’
Ed lost his concentration for a moment, and the Lincoln barely made it around a long left-hand curve, its tyres screaming in a falsetto harmony that went on and on, until Ed couldn’t believe that he was going to be able to hold on to the car any longer. He was plastered in sweat by the time the road took a twist in the opposite direction, and they were driving downhill through a shadowy archway of pines.
He checked the mirror again, and the lights of the Chevy Suburban were still behind him, although further away now. Nobody in their right mind would have taken a curve at that speed on purpose.
‘Listen,’ said Ed, as he piloted the Lincoln down a fast slalom of alternating bends, ‘They’re chasing us, they’re shooting at us, and you don’t think you really have to shoot back?’
‘I want Peter Kaiser alive,’ said Della. ‘He’s going to be a material witness to this fraud, and he’s more susceptible to legal pressure than Shearson Jones.’
In the back of the car, lolling from side to side as the Lincoln howled around curve after curve, Shearson Jones said, ‘So that’s who you are, my gingery angel. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, incarnate. No wonder they gave me such a cock-and-bull story about you when I asked them to check you out.’
Della twisted around in her seat. With her loosely-tied emerald-green bathrobe and her upraised pump-gun, she looked like some kind of comic-strip Dragon Lady, all silk and cleavage and sawn-off rifle. As he glanced across at her, it occurred to Ed, noi for the first time that night, that she must be naked under that wrap.
‘You know something,’ he said, as he spun the Lincoln through a steep-sloping S-bend, ‘this must be the craziest night of my life.’
‘You’re wrong,’ breathed Shearson, leaning forward and resting his arms on the back of Ed’s seat. ‘Last night was the craziest night of your life. The night you announced to 250 million Americans that they were probably facing imminent starvation. That was the craziest night of your life.’
Ed said nothing. He still hadn’t mentally got to grips with what had happened last night, and right now, pushing this 7-litre Lincoln down a tortuous mountain road, he didn’t have the time to. He flicked his eyes across to the mirror again, and the Chevy’s headlights were still there, still dancing and jiggling close behind him, occasionally obscured by the flapping lid of the Lincoln’s trunk.
They flashed past a sign, and Della said, ‘Fall River, two miles. We’ve almost made it.’
Shearson said, ‘I’ll have your scalps for this. I hope you understand that. You, Hardesty; and you, my dear; and that pontificating Charles Kurnik at the FBI. Three scalps, to add to my collection.’
‘Shut up, senator,’ said Ed, and at the same moment one of the Lincoln’s front tyres burst. There was a loud, flabby report, followed by the slap-slap-slap of tom rubber on the road, and then the huge limousine was swerving and sliding from side to side, with Ed spinning the steering-wheel in a desperate struggle to keep the car out of the trees.
‘Hold it!’ shrieked Shearson, in an unnaturally feminine voice. ‘For God’s sake, hold it!’
The Lincoln’s trunk swung around to the left, and sideswiped the trunk of a roadside pine. Then the car screeched around in the opposite direction, its front wheels banging and shuddering over a line of rocks. Ed, gripping the wheel, saw trees, darkness, sky, and more trees, and then his whole world tilted sideways and he was hit on the bridge of the nose by something as hard as an iron bar.
A whole minute of silence passed by. Ed raised his head. His nose felt as if it had swollen three times its normal size. He looked painfully around him and saw that the limousine had dropped down an eighty foot slope, and was now resting at an angle of forty five degrees in a narrow rock-strewn gully. There was no sound but the ticking of the engine as it slowly cooled down, and the whistling of black-capped chickadees in the trees.
Beside him, Della was holding her head in her hands. The pump-gun had dropped to the floor. In back, Senator Jones suddenly started moaning, and saying, ‘My finger. God damn it, I’ve broken my finger.’
Ed said, ‘Della, are you okay?’
Della nodded dumbly. Ed turned to Senator Jones and asked, ‘Is it just your finger? Nothing else broken?’
‘Isn’t a finger enough?’ snarled Shearson.
Behind them, up on the road, the Chevy’s lights had stopped. Ed picked up the rifle, and tried to open his door. The impact of the crash had wedged it back in its frame, so he had to kick it twice with his heels before it would budge, then he climbed out into the sharp early-morning air.
Peter Kaiser and Muldoon were already on their way down the slope. It was still too dark to see clearly, but Ed caught the glint of Muldoon’s nickel-plated automatic as he came down through the trees.
‘I don’t know why you don’t give up now,’ said Shearson, from the back of the car. ‘You don’t stand a chance in hell.’
‘Just shut up,’ said Ed, and crouched his way along the length of the Lincoln’s fender. Then he lay down on the ground, on a slope of pine needles and pine cones, and positioned himself so that he could take a shot at Peter Kaiser or Muldoon as soon as they were in range.
Della slipped out of the driver’s door behind him, and wriggled her way up close.
‘Whatever you do, don’t hurt Peter Kaiser,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be a number-one plea-bargaining witness. Especially when we put some pressure on his mother.’
‘I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep us alive,’ said Ed.
Soon, Peter Kaiser and Muldoon were less than twenty feet away, and their faces were clearly visible against the black shadows of the pines. This is going to be like shooting coconuts at a fair, thought Ed, as he squinted along the rifle. The front Sight of the pump-gun appeared as a dark notch in Muldoon’s pale head.
‘Senator Jones? Are you there?’ called Peter, anxiously.
They could hear the car’s suspension squeak as Shearson moved his bulk towards the opposite window.
‘I’m all right,’ Shearson called out, hoarsely. ‘I’ve broken my damned finger, but that’s all. It’s Hardesty you’ve got to watch out for. He’s around the car somewhere, with the girl.’
There was a pause, and then Peter shouted, ‘Hardesty? You there?’
Ed looked around at Della, but Della shook her head. Don’t answer, not yet. See what they have to offer first.
‘If you can hear me, Hardesty, you’d better listen good,’ said Peter. ‘You’re guilty so far tonight of burglary, theft, criminal damage, kidnapping, and homicide. You hear that? Calvin Muldoon is dead, and you shot him. You’re holding a US senator against his will. You’re in a pretty sticky position, Hardesty, and you’d better understand it’
‘Why haven’t you called the police?’ Ed shouted back, before Della could stop him. He could see Muldoon quickly jerk his head around to see if he could make out where the voice was coming from.
Peter Kaiser took a couple of steps closer. ‘I haven’t called the police because the police are too busy with all the rioting and the looting you started off with that broadcast of yours. Apart from that, you’ve ransacked some pretty sensitive papers there. I wouldn’t like them to get into the hands of somebody who might misinterpret them.’
‘So what’s your offer?’ asked Ed. ‘You want to make a deal?’
‘The offer’s simple. I’ll let you out of here alive, as long as you let Senator Jones go free, and as long as you never mention anything about the Blight Crisis Appeal again.’
‘One more thing,’ said Ed.
‘What’s that?’
‘You take the tail off of my wife and my daughter. Because I warn you, if anything happens to them. I’ll hunt you down and take your head off.’
‘That’s all right,’ Peter nodded. ‘I can agree to that. Now, do you want to come out, with your hands where we can see them?’
Ed turned to Della again. “What do you think?’ he asked her.
Della said, ‘I don’t trust him. My reason says he’s probably on the level, but my instinct says beware.’
Ed squeezed her hand. ‘Well, I’ve always been the kind of person to follow my instinct. Let’s give them a test. Remember the old cowboy films?’
He handed her the gun to hold, and then, twisting on the needly floor of the woods, he tugged his red sweatshirt off.
‘Striptease, at a time like this?’ she asked him.
‘Just give me the gun,’ he told her.
Quickly, he wrapped the sweatshirt around the barrel of the rifle. Then, hesitantly and jerkily, he raised it up above the protective fender of the Lincoln, as if it was someone coming out of cover.
‘There!’ said Peter.
The silence of the woods was cracked by three pistol shots in rapid succession. Ed’s sweatshirt was flapped up into the air by one bullet, and they felt the wind of a second as it passed narrowly overhead. The third pinged off the Lincoln’s trunk.
Ed snatched down the rifle, rolled around to the slope which he had chosen as his firing position, snuggled the butt against his cheek and looked for Peter and Muldoon.
Muldoon, crouched as low as an arm-swinging baboon, was only a few feet away, running in fast to finish off the red sweatshirt. Peter was already round the other side of the limousine – presumably intent on rescuing Shearson. Della was right behind Ed, her head buried beside his thigh.
Muldoon didn’t have a chance. He was so close that Ed shouted, ‘Muldoon! Drop it!’ just to give the man a break. But Muldoon made a dive for the ground, and fired off another thunderous shot from his .45, and Ed squeezed the trigger without allowing himself to think anything else but kill him.
The shot echoed and echoed, and then there was silence again. Ed cautiously rose to his feet, and walked around the Lincoln with the pump-gun held up and his eyes alert.
Muldoon was lying on his back on the stony ground, his eyes wide open, his automatic thrown aside, his plaid cowboy shirt dark with blood.
Peter appeared, holding a revolver, but Ed swung the rifle towards him and said, ‘Drop it,’ and he did.
‘You’ve killed him,’ said Peter, in a shaky voice.
Ed nodded. ‘I didn’t want to. Believe me. But it was him or us.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Peter. ‘Are you going to shoot the rest of us, too? Or what? One way or another, we’re going to have to report this to the police.’
‘The police already know,’ said Ed, quietly. ‘At least, the federal authorities do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Della works for the FBI. The reason we broke into your office was to find evidence of what you’ve been doing with this Blight Crisis Appeal to take you to court.’
‘You’re joking. Are you joking?’
‘You think I go around shooting people for fun? I never hurt anybody in my life before, until tonight,’ Ed snapped at him. He was shaking, and if he could have done, he would have slung the pump-gun right off into the trees.
Shearson Jones pushed open the passenger door of the wrecked Lincoln. ‘Would someone help me out of here?’ he demanded. ‘And would someone tell me what the devil’s going on?’
Della came up, brushing pine needles from her robe. ‘We’re getting out of here, that’s what,’ she said, in a clear voice. ‘We’re going to leave Muldoon here for the moment, and we’re going to drive into Wichita and turn in these papers to the FBI. And if you’re innocent enough to think that we’re in trouble, Mr Kaiser, just think what kind of trouble you’re in. Fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, carrying unlicensed firearms, attempted murder of a federal agent. You’ll be lucky if they let you out to see the turn of the century.’
‘Is there room in that wagon for all of us?’ wheezed Shearson, plodding up the hill towards them.
‘There should be, with Muldoon gone,’ said Peter. ‘I have Karen with me, too, though.’
‘You brought Karen? Why?’
Peter Kaiser looked embarrassed. ‘Kind of insurance. In case we had to do a trade – her freedom for Shearson’s.’
‘My, my,’ said Della, shaking her head. ‘You do get your money’s worth out of your girlfriends, don’t you?’
With Ed staying a little way behind to keep Peter covered, they slowly made their way up to the road again. Karen was standing by the wagon in bare feet, jeans, and the white puffy-sleeved shirt she usually wore in bed. When she saw them coming – Peter and Della, Shearson and Ed, she couldn’t work out what had happened at first – who had captured whom. But when Ed said, ‘It’s okay, Karen. Everything’s fine,’ she came walking across the blacktop bare-footed with tears running down her cheeks.
‘Oh, God, I was frightened,’ she said, holding Ed’s arm. ‘Oh, God, I can’t tell you how frightened I was.’
Ed put his arm around her and held her close. Della, beside the wagon, gave him a mocking little raise of her eyebrows, and a smile that could have meant anything at all.