44

It was a quarter to six when Charley opened the front door at Sixty-fourth Street with his key, tuckered out and ready for an early evening.

He thought he had wandered into the wrong house. The entrance hall was full of uniformed cops and plainclothesmen. He gaped at them. He saw Dick Gallagher, the deputy chief of detectives, whom Charley knew from the old days when Gallagher was a homicide lieutenant. He saw Horace Gavin, agent-in-charge for the FBI, his bald head shining like a spotlight. “What is this?” Charley said. “What’s going on here?”

They turned toward him. He heard Maerose scream at him from the top of the stairs, “Charley!”

He raced across the entrance hall and up the stairs. Mae was haggard. She stared at him as if she could not believe what she had to tell him. “They took the kids, Charley. The babies. They took them, the twins.”

He held her in his arms closely and spoke in a whisper into her ear.

“Where was Al?”

“Al’s dead.” She began to sob. “Two men. They hit Al; then they slugged me, and when I came to, the cops were there and they told me the babies had been lifted. In the park. In that beautiful park.”

“You know anybody?”

“My cousin, Rocco, his son, Beppi.”

“You didn’t say nothing to the people downstairs?”

“No. I hadda talk to you. But I ain’t going along with that omertà shit. I just can’t figure out how I’m suppose to know hoodlums like Rocco.”

Dick Gallagher, allowing a fraction of time for the wife to tell the husband, arrived at the top of the stairs. Two FBI men were right behind him.

“We’d like to talk to you, Mr. Barton,” he said respectfully.

Charley broke away from Mary Barton.

“We’ll go into the upstairs study,” Charley said. “I assume you won’t need my wife for this?”

“No, no,” the agent-in-charge said.

Mary Barton wandered off toward the nursery. One of the nannies came out to comfort her.

Charley couldn’t get himself together. He was shaking as he listened to Horace Gavin. “When they call, we’ll be listening, whether here or at your office,” Gavin was saying.

Charley stared at him.

“Have you had any hint, any threat, that this might happen, Mr. Barton?”

Charley shook his head.

“We’ll get the people. You can be sure of that.”

“Never mind them. Get my children back.” He sat up straight. He laid the fear on them. “Listen to me,” he said. “They want money and we’re going to give them the money. Understand that. And until I have those kids back, you are out of this. Surveillance, contact, payoffs, everything. You stay out until I have my kids back.”

“Within certain parameters, I agree with you, Mr. Barton.”

“Forget parameters,” Charley said slowly. “I am going to handle this. You are out until my children are back in this house.” His voice rose. “Do you understand that? Do you want the president to explain that to the director? You are going to stay out of this until those infants are returned.” He pounded on the arm of the chair in an outburst of fear. “It can’t be any other way!”

He stood up, turned away from them, left the room, and walked rapidly toward the nursery.

He sat with Mae in their Egyptian pharaoh-style bedroom with its pyramid-shaped bed canopies and its red sandstone walls. “Just believe me, sweetheart,” he said. “All Rocco wants is money and he knows we are going to give it to him. He won’t lay a finger on the kids. He showed his face to you so you would know that he isn’t going to do anything to them. His wife, after all, she had four of her own kids. She’ll take care of them and you know she’s a good mother.”

“Why should Rocco let me make him? Where is the fear if that’s what he meant when he showed himself to me?”

“He knows we’ll pay. He knows the kids are more important than money.”

“But where is the fear, Charley?”

“Well, what the hell, Mae—we don’t pay and he can send them back to some little village in the old country for the rest of their lives.”

She moaned. He held her by the shoulders. “That isn’t going to happen, Mae. And no FBI or cops are going to make waves on this. I am going to call the president right now, and he is going to call off all these guys downstairs. It’s all gonna work out.”

“You think so, Charley? You really think so? You will call the president on this?”

“Watch. And Rocco is too smart to set up the contact with us direct. He’ll have a cut-out and the FBI will be whistling Dixie. I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but we’ll be told in a way that nobody but Rocco and us are going to know. He’ll tell me how much and I’ll get the money together. I’ll hand him the money and he’ll hand me Rado and Angier. I swear this to you.”

Mary Barton’s face was all stone. “And when you have them back and they are home and safe, then you give it to my cousin Rocco.”

“You can bet your sweet ass on that.”

Speaking clearly into the phone so that the FBI monitor wouldn’t miss anything, but mostly so that Mae would be reassured that the cops would stay out of it, Charley said, “I hope I haven’t broken in on anything, Mr. President, but—”

“What’s the problem, Charley?”

“My seven-month-old twins were kidnapped this afternoon.”

“My God!”

“I need a favor, Mr. President.”

“Anything. Name it.”

“I want to ask you if you will tell the FBI to stay out of this until the ransom payment has been made. And if you will instruct them to so advise the New York Police Department.”

“Kidnapping is our most heinous offense, Charley. What you are asking is very dangerous. A cover-up.”

“It is the only way I can be sure that my children will be returned to their mother safely.”

“My people have a lot of experience at this. It’s all new to you, Charley.”

“I will pay the kidnappers, get my children back, then cooperate entirely with every law enforcement agency.”

“You know I’d call out the National Guard for you, Charley. As it is you can have the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency, but—”

“I am pleading with you, Frank.”

“Does the media have this?”

“It will certainly be on the seven o’clock news.”

“I’ll talk to my people.” The line went dead.