Find Her a Grave (28 page)

“My point, though, is that there can’t be many guys in the Chinese underworld who answer this guy’s description. Maybe there’s only one.”

“Yeah, well—” Tate shrugged. “Well, okay, you know somebody on the Chinatown detail, I suppose you could come up with a short list of names. But then what? You might get a name, and maybe you even get an address. But then what’d we do? Blast our way in, rescue Paula and Angela?” Grimly smiling, Tate shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Still,” Bernhardt mused, “if we had a name, that’d be a start.”

“When’s this guy going to call back?”

“I’ve no idea. He said he’d give us time. He even said I should get some sleep. I don’t think he’s going to rush it. I get the impression he thinks time is on his side.”

Tate glanced at his watch. “Four more hours and the banks’ll be open.”

Grimly, Bernhardt shook his head. “No. If we do that—put the stuff in a safe-deposit box—then that’s the end. They’d start cutting on Paula and Angela. He said if we—”

“They’re watching us, aren’t they? They’re out there somewhere right now, aren’t they?” Louise’s voice was cowed, trembling on the ragged edge of hysteria. Wide-eyed, blinking spasmodically, she was staring at the drawn drapes. A breeze was blowing through the broken window: a ghostly hand behind the drapes.

When Bernhardt answered her, he spoke with grave deliberation, an attempt to steady her, force her to face facts. “They probably
are
out there, Louise. I’d be surprised if they weren’t. I’d also be surprised if your place isn’t bugged.”

“But—” She frowned, a denial. “But one of us—either Angela or me—we’ve been home almost all the time, since Tony Bacardo came. No one could’ve gotten in to plant a bug.”

“They don’t have to get inside. All it takes is a little luck.”

“But—but I thought it was Profaci. I thought—” Suddenly she sharply shook her head. “Fabrese. Whatever his name is, I thought he told them what we were doing. I thought they were in it together, Fabrese and this other one. The Chinese.”

“They probably
were
in it together,” Tate said. “Then, when the Chinese guy saw he didn’t need Fabrese anymore, he killed him.” He shrugged. “It’s called trimming the overhead.”

Louise fixed her stricken stare on Tate. Accusing him: “You act like this is a joke, the way you talk.”

Tate made no reply, gave no sign that he’d heard. Instead, cradling the shotgun, he turned again toward the street, listening. From outside came the sound of an engine: a car, going down the hill. In the silence that followed, Bernhardt leaned back in his desk chair, let his eyes close. Instantly the images began: Paula, bound to a chair, with one arm free. They would be in a damp, musty brick basement in Chinatown. She would be seated beside a small wooden table. Overhead, a single bare light bulb hung from a cord cast a cone of light on Paula and the table, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Now her tormentor—the man on the phone—stepped out of the shadows to stand close to the table, looking down on Paula. Then two other figures materialized out of the gloom: two men, both Chinese. One of the men held a hatchet. Impassively, he advanced on the helpless woman, grasped her free arm. He began—

“—got to give it to them,” Louise was saying. “Angela—I can’t risk it, having Angela hurt. I’ve got to give it to them.”

Bernhardt looked at Tate, a long, searching moment. Then, in unison, both men turned to face Louise. Under their scrutiny, she drew herself up, squared her shoulders, brought her knees together, clasped her hands in her lap, lifted her chin a defiant half-inch. Saying again, firmly: “I’ve got to give it to them. Angela—I’ve got to do it for Angela. If they hurt her, ruin her looks, I could never live with myself. Angela’s only twenty. She—she’s got her whole life to live. She—” As if she were confused, Louise broke off, dropped her eyes, let herself go slack in the chair. Then, in a dull, defeated monotone, as if she were confessing to something shameful, she said, “All my life, I heard Carlo Venezzio. That’s all I heard. But only in whispers. My father—” She said it as if it were an obscenity. “God, what is it, being a father? A couple of times a year, without even telling us he’s coming, he drives up to the house in a Cadillac. He tells the driver and another guy riding in front to stay put. Then he gets out of the car, all smiles, carrying a goddam stuffed animal. Is that being a father? A million dollars’ worth of jewels and gold stuffed into a sewer pipe—is that all there is?”

“Well,” Tate said, “it all depends on where you’re sitting, Louise. My neighborhood, where I grew up, they’d think they were in heaven, living your life.”

Once more she stared at Tate, her face unreadable. Then, exhausted, she dropped her eyes. Muttering: “I’ve got to get some sleep. Whatever happens, I’ve got to get some sleep.” She looked down at the paper sack, on the floor beside her chair. She seemed to study it for a moment. Then, as if she were deeply reluctant, she picked up the sack, folded it over, and rose to her feet. “I want to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Then I’ve got to go to sleep.”

“Sure.” Bernhardt stepped out into the hallway, pointed out the bathroom and the guest room. “That’s where Angela was sleeping when—” Angry with himself, he broke off, waited for her to use the bathroom. When she reentered the hallway he smiled, took her into the bedroom. The pattern of the blankets clearly showed where Angela had lain. Even though the bedroom window was closed, there was almost no odor of tear gas.

“Shall I open the window?” he asked. “For ventilation?” Then, reading her hesitation, he said, “There’re stops, so it’s impossible to open the window more than six inches at the top and bottom. Also, it’s on an airshaft.” When she nodded hesitantly, he opened the window, wished her well, and closed the door. He went into the office, stood for a moment looking down at Crusher, who still slept. Bernhardt bent down, lifted the dog in his arms as he spoke softly to Tate: “Let’s go back to the dining room.”

“Right.” Tate switched off the light in the office, checked the chair jammed against the front door, and followed Bernhardt down the hallway. Once in the dining room, Bernhardt bent down again, put Crusher on his feet, tried to hold the dog steady, standing on all four paws. The dog sagged; his legs began to splay. His eyes were glazed, half open.

“Here.” Tate put the sawed-off on the floor. “You hold him.” He slapped the dog sharply—left side of the head, right side, left, right. Now he shook the dog’s head sharply from side to side. The dog protested weakly, tried feebly to pull away.

“Do it again,” Bernhardt said.

Two more slaps, and the dog’s protest was stronger. His eyes were open, for the first time focused, no longer glazed.

“Okay.” Tentatively, Bernhardt released his supporting embrace, first the dog’s front legs, then the hind legs.

“Hey.”
Tate said. “Lookee there—he’s doing it, making it. Way to go, Crusher.” Whereupon the dog sighed, let his eyes close as he settled to the floor, once more to sleep.

“He’s going to be okay,” Bernhardt said. “Don’t you think so?” As he spoke, he went to the dining room door, closed it.

“Yeah,” Tate answered, laconically nodding. “Yeah, I’d say he’ll be all right.”

The two men went to the dining room table. They sat side by side with the sawed-off on the table between them.

“So?” Tate spoke so softly that only Bernhardt could hear. “So now what? We lay back while Louise hands over a fortune? Is that it?”

“This guy’s talking about disfigurement. And the way he says it—the feeling I get—that’s what he’ll do.” He paused, his eyes locked with Tate’s. Then: “If Louise wants to hand over the jewels, I’m not going to stop her.”

“Yeah, well—” Tate drew a long, lugubrious breath. “Well, it’s her call. Except that I still like the idea of us skimming off a little cream. Christ, it’s not like there’s any accountant looking over our shoulders.”

“I’ll see what she says.”

“That lady …” Tate shook his head, a gesture that expressed both irony and futility—and, yes, a certain sadness, reflecting on the human condition. “When you think about it, she’s in a pretty shitty corner. But she’s got guts, seems like to me. She’s—what?—stubborn, I guess I’d say.” As he said it, Tate smiled, looked slyly at Bernhardt. “Like you. You’re stubborn, too.”

Bernhardt returned the smile. At five o’clock in the morning, he was too exhausted even to frame a properly modest response. Then, back to business: “Listen, C.B., you don’t have to stay for the whole show. I mean, you’re welcome—I’d
like
to have you stay. But I’ve got my thousand dollars’ worth.”

“When d’you figure this Chinese guy’s going to call?”

“I’ve no idea. Sometime in the next few hours, certainly.”

“You have to arrange a swap. That can get tricky.”

“Maybe,” Bernhardt answered. Then, tentatively, feeling his way: “Or maybe not. If I take this guy at his word, all I’ve got to do is deliver the brown paper sack, and then back off until he releases Paula and Angela.”

“And that’s it? The end? Seventy-five thousand for you and twenty-five for me—you’re going to walk away from that?”

“We have to get the women back. Then let’s see what happens.”

Tate studied Bernhardt carefully before he said, “You’ve got an idea. I can see it in your face. I know that expression.”

“Call it the germ of an idea.”

“The cops?”

“No,” Bernhardt said, impatiently shaking his head. “We’ve been
through
this, what’ll happen if we call the cops.”

“I wasn’t saying
call
the cops. I was saying
talk
to the cops. Your buddy in Homicide, that’s what I meant.”

Yawning, Bernhardt looked at his watch. “Listen, C.B., I’ve got to sleep.” He gathered himself, rose to his feet. “If you want to stay, fine. Take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch in the living room.”

“So it’s not the cops. It’s something else.”

Bernhardt knelt, took Crusher in his arms again. Straightening, he shook his head. “No,” he answered, “it’s not the cops.”

“Something else, then.”

“No comment.”

W
HEN SHE WAS A
little girl, her bed had been a place of refuge, her safe haven, her secret place. Pull the blankets over her head, remain very quiet, and the goblins would pass, slouching off toward another part of the forest. Whenever her parents had punished her, that rare occasion, her bed was her sanctuary of sobs. Even when she was in her early twenties, married to the wrong man for the wrong reasons, an emotional disaster, she’d found refuge in bed, burrowed down among the covers, sobbing as she tried to make herself even smaller than she felt as she listened to her husband, drunk, prowling the house beyond her bedroom door as he mouthed bits of obscene dialogue that, sometimes, she recognized in the screenplays he wrote, the low-budget thrillers that had made him rich.

The Scylla of childhood traumas and the Charybdis of a disastrous marriage …

And now, once more burrowed in a nest of blankets, terrified, her eyes closed, Paula listened.

Just as, last night, once she and Angela had gone to bed, she’d listened. She’d listened, and Crusher, lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, had also listened. Once, soon after she’d gone to bed, she’d heard Crusher growl. Frightened, she’d taken the revolver from the drawer of the nightstand. But then Crusher had subsided. Reassured, she put the revolver away, settled down, closed her eyes—finally drifted off to sleep. The time, she calculated later, must have been about eleven-thirty.

Then there’d been the sound of a crash, a confusion of breaking glass, of wood splintering, of hostile voices raised—Crusher barking, Angela screaming. Eyes streaming, blinded, nose and throat seared, choking, gagging, she’d groped desperately for the nightstand, the drawer, the revolver. But just as she found the revolver something struck her forearm, a numbing blow. Then she’d felt their hands: two men wearing gas masks, fugitives from a horror movie. They’d pinned her against the wall, one of them with his forearm jammed against her throat. The men had spoken in Chinese: short, indecipherable words. From the next room had come the other sounds: Angela, furiously swearing, other Chinese voices shouting her down, finally silencing her.

And, worst of all, she heard Crusher. The dog was whimpering, not barking. Her first coherent thought, irrationally, had been sorrow for Alan, when he found Crusher dead on the bedroom floor.

While, in the eddying clouds of yellowish gas, in darkness, the four men, all Chinese, went about their business.

Military precision
was the catch-all cliché.

They’d even brought two raincoats and two pairs of oversize sneakers. She’d only been wearing panties, no bra, no nightgown. Roughly, they’d bundled her into the raincoat, told her to hurry as she buttoned the coat, then slipped her feet unwillingly into the shoes. During the time it had taken her to dress, that part of her mind still capable of lucid thought told her that, of its kind, this kidnapping was a model of precision.

Just as, now, the same still-rational segment of her mind was calculating the odds on her own mortality. The handicapper’s conclusion: fifty-fifty that she would be dead by this time tomorrow.

Slowly, Paula let her eyes come open.

It was a tiny bedroom, barely large enough to accommodate a double bed, a dresser, two nightstands, and one small armchair.

A Chinese man sat in the armchair. He was a slightly built man, unhealthy looking. His hands were small, his neck was skinny. He wore a heavy wool sweater, corduroy trousers, and slightly soiled white running shoes. Cradled in his lap he held a large automatic pistol.

“You’re awake. Are you all right? I was told to ask.” His voice was bland, his eyes were expressionless.

I was told to ask …

Implying, perhaps, a criminal organization. Suggesting, therefore, that the odds on her living another day might have improved, however minutely. An organization might act more rationally.

“I have to use the bathroom.”

“Ah.” He nodded, rose, went to the closet. Yes, it was the same raincoat they’d given her last night. He took the coat from its hook, tossed it on the bed, returned to his chair, resumed his previous position. As she maneuvered into the coat without exposing her body to him, the inward image of an old soft-core porno film perversely materialized:
How to Undress in Front of Your Husband.