Ransom (3 page)

Sylvia got up from the table, moving with the graceful fluidity of a woman who had never been awkward even as a child and which had been improved by ballet lessons and the

watchful eye of a vigilant mother. She went forward to kiss her father-in-law as he came in the door. There was warm affection between the two of them; they were related by ambition as well as by marriage. Michael, standing off, had to admit they made a fine-looking pair: the lovely red-haired woman and the stiff-backed, white-haired old man. A pity that these days Americans would not vote a June-December couple into the White House. They had accepted the marriage of the middle-aged Cleveland and his 21-year-old bride, but that had been almost ninety years ago, when Americans had been less respectful of the office of President.

“You’re breakfasting late. Sorry if I’m too early-” Samuel Forte had not quite managed to eliminate the roughness of his early years from his voice. He had gone to work for his father at eighteen and it had been ten years before he had been able to escape from the shouting above the job noises and the yelling at the immigrant construction workers in the dialect that they understood. He had a town house in the East Sixties, an estate an hour out of town that overlooked the Hudson and a small mansion at Palm Beach in Florida; but Astoria was still there on his tongue. You may never look back at the past, Michael thought, but you’ll always hear the echoes of it.

“No, we’re finished. We had a late night and we’re going to be late again tonight. We gave ourselves the luxury of an extra hour in bed this morning.”

They had made love that morning, she stifling her cries against the possibility of being overheard by the servants. They had always enjoyed each other in bed, but the demands of public life too often tired them out; and the privacy of their bedroom was always subject to the urgent phone call or the knock on the door by Nathan or one of the other servants to say there was an unexpected visitor downstairs. Michael sometimes wondered if hernia, as well as a heart-attack, was a health hazard with those in power.

Sylvia brought her father-in-law to the table and poured him a cup of coffee. The old man sat down, carefully

arranging the creases in his trousers, and looked up at his son. “The day after tomorrow you may not need to get up at all. I’ve been talking to Ed Horan - he says things are going against us up in the Bronx. He thinks you have been too complacent, Michael.”

Michael held in his temper; it was too early in the day to start expending his energy that way. “Ed Horan is an uneducated horse’s ass. He wouldn’t know the meaning of complacency.”

“The word was mine. Ed actually said you had left it too late to get off your butt and take your finger out. Excuse me, Sylvia.”

“Think nothing of it. I gather the Duke of Edinburgh uses the same expression.” Sylvia looked at her husband. Lately she had noticed that after they had made love she often became impatient with him, almost as if he had left her unsatisfied; she sometimes wondered if other couples went through this post-coital reaction, as if hurt had to be added to love. “It seems rather apt, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.” Michael kept his voice down, though he was tempted to shout at them both. “It’s easy for Horan to sit up there in the Bronx telling me what I should have done. When anyone criticizes him, he can brush it aside - he’s not running for office, never has.” He paused, looking at his father; but Sam Forte, impervious to barbs from his son, was carefully measuring sugar into his coffee. “When Tom Kirkbride came out with his campaign for law and order, what was I supposed to do? Tell Des Hungerford that the police force had to go out and double its daily quota? Already we’re arresting more law-breakers than we have room for - the bail bondsmen are making more money than they’ve ever made in their lives before. They will vote for me,” he said bitterly. “One of them told me so last week.”

He turned away from them and went back to the window. A uniformed patrolman stood leaning against a tree in the grounds, idly watching a squirrel as it shopped among the

leaves for its winter larder. Out on the river a Fire Department tender, all fresh red and white paint, moved up towards Hell Gate, fastidiously skirting a garbage scow as the latter came downstream heading for the open Bay. Who will they vote for tomorrow, the fire tender crew and the cop ? He recognized the squirrel and felt surer of its vote. At least when he went out into the grounds occasionally and fed it, it didn’t put one paw behind its back and cross its toes.

“I’ve done everything I can,” he said, still gazing out the window. “From now on it’s a question of luck.”

“Luck should never come into an election. It suggests a poor campaign or a poor candidate.”

He turned round slowly and faced his father. “And what do you reckon you’ve had of those two?”

Sam Forte tasted his coffee, nodded approvingly at Sylvia. “Excellent coffee - but then it always is. How do you do it?”

“Never trust to luck,” said Sylvia. “I make it myself and time the percolation exactly.”

“One second for every granule,” said Michael, “sucked dry like a voter. But you haven’t answered my question.”

Sam Forte took his time, as he always had with his son. When his boy had been born he had taken the long view: it took years, decades, to put a man into the White House, especially when you decided, when he was one day old, that that was his destination.

“You have been a good candidate, Michael. You have been a good mayor too, even though you have had a lot of critics. But the Holy Spirit himself couldn’t make a success of running New York.”

“And, no reflection on you, I never had the Holy Spirit’s family behind me. But you don’t think I’ve run a good campaign this time?”

“No.” Sam Forte finished his coffee, wiped his mouth deliberately with the napkin Sylvia gave him; she knew his fastidiousness, as if he were afraid of finding himself flecked with some grit from the past. “You let Kirkbride

get away too soon with his claim that he can bring back law and order if he is elected. You should have hit him right at the start.”

“How?”

“By giving him the same argument you’ve given me. Ask him where the money is coming from for more police, for more prisons - “

“Do you really think people listen to that sort of argument? When they’re scared to walk down the street after dark, scared to open their front door for fear they’re going to be mugged, do you really think they’re going to listen to logical argument?”

“It would have been worth a try - “

“Jesus!” Michael gestured in exasperation. “Look, I believe in law and order - I believe in it so much, as a - a way of life, if you like, that I find it hard to accept it as an election issue. But how do I convince the ordinary guy in the street that I’m even more concerned than he is, because it’s my responsibility? He’s a Monday morning quarterback when it comes to politics, knows all the answers - but when the issues get right down to the street he lives on, he’s a knuckle-head, he knows nothing and he doesn’t want to know. He just expects miracles and he votes you out if you don’t produce them.”

“You could have made some sort of gesture - “

“A gesture at a miracle? I’d need the Holy Spirit for that one.” He looked out the window again. A bald-headed jogger in a track-suit went past on the path outside the mansion grounds, head bobbing up and down as if it had come loose on his neck; he had the despairing look of a man tempted to catch the first cab he saw back home, someone who saw no logic at all in what he was doing. “When we had the British Prime Minister to dinner here last year, I remember something he told me - if you wanted to stay in politics and enjoy it, always remain in Opposition. That way no one can ever blame you for anything, but you always get marks for trying.”

“That may work in the House of Commons. But there’s no Opposition in the White House. Nor even in City Hall,” Sam added as an afterthought.

“Don’t curl your lip. There are a lot of people who think City Hall is more than just a bus station. Tom Kirkbride is one.”

“Tom Kirkbride has no ambition. Not real ambition.”

Not like you, thought Michael. He heard the clatter of the Police Department helicopter as it went over the house and down to the wharf below. Once a week he rode downtown by helicopter, one week going down the East Side, the next down the West, like an old-time king surveying his domain: he sometimes wondered if the P.D. pilot had the same thought. He had been doing it every Monday for four years and he still got the same thrill: the tall buildings seeming to shuffle into ranks as he swept by them, the giant spiders’ webs of the suspension bridges glinting in the morning sun, the million mirrors of the windows reflecting the helicopter as it went by: when you stood off from it New York was still the most exciting city he had ever seen. From the helicopter you never saw the maggots that were already at work in the body that was not yet a corpse.

“It’s time I was leaving.”

“I’ll stay and have a little talk with Sylvia. We haven’t seen much of each other this past month.”

“You can drive me down to my dentist,” said Sylvia. “We can talk in your car.”

“How will you get to St Mary’s?” Michael asked; he was forever worried for her, though he knew in his heart she was stronger than he was. “I don’t want you riding around in some crummy cab, with the hackie recognizing you and telling you what’s wrong with me.”

“Lester can pick me up at ten-thirty.” She kissed him, loving him but still wondering why lately she had begun to lose patience with him. “Don’t worry, darling. I shan’t expose myself to any strangers.”

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it,” he said, and

his father and his wife glanced sharply at him. “There’s some safety in anonymity.”

“It’s a little late for that,” said Sam Forte.

“Yes,” said Michael. “You saw to that.”

Abel Simmons, cruising slowly down Second Avenue like a driver who knew exactly what pace you had to maintain to catch the traffic lights all the way downtown, glanced at his watch. Nine-forty: time to move. He stepped on the gas pedal as he came to East 70th, then had to brake sharply as a green-and-white police car, badly in need of a wash, pulled out from the kerb right in front of him. He cursed; and cursed again when he saw the lights go red at the corner. He halted behind the police car, bouncing his hands impatiently on the steering wheel of the delivery truck. He was going to miss the lights at East 69th and if he did that it could blow the whole show. He could feel the sweat beginning to break on him and his legs began to tremble. Carole was going to be down there in the garage waiting for him, the Forte woman on her hands, the garage jockey wondering what the hell was going on, and all because a couple of pigs didn’t follow their own rules about pulling out into moving traffic. It would serve them right if he took the gun out of his pocket and shot both the bastards in the back of the head.

The light turned green and instinctively his hand touched the horn button. The two cops turned round in their seats and for a moment he thought the guy beside the driver was going to get out and come back to him; he took his hand off the wheel, put it in his pocket and clutched the gun; then he smiled and waved the other hand in an apologetic gesture. Neither of the cops smiled back, just stared at him a moment longer, then they faced forward again and the driver unhurriedly set the police car going. Abel, resisting the tempta-

tion to speed up past them, fell in behind; he didn’t want them following him, for Christ’s sake. He could see the light still green at 69th, but he hadn’t noticed when it had changed and he could not guess when it would turn red. The police car cruised slowly on, the driver and his partner lolling negligently in their seats, and Abel, trembling so much now he could feel his headache coming on again, tried to memorize the number of the car. When this job was over he’d come back here and kill those two pigs.

Then they were at 69th Street. The police car swung slightly to the right and Abel felt his stomach empty, then tighten; but the police car straightened up and went on down Second Avenue, and he swung the delivery truck on to 69th just as the lights turned. He wanted to stop, sit there for a minute or two and regain his cool. But there wasn’t time …

Up the street Carole Cox was already turning into the steps that led up into the small garden fronting the building known as Cornwall Gardens. She was dressed in a plain grey suit, wore dark wrapround glasses and a short curly wig that was much darker than her own straight brown hair; she hoped she looked like a thousand other working girls in New York City, felt sure that she did. Over the past four years she had come to accept anonymity, something she had once thought impossible for her: till she had met Roy in her last year at college and fallen so deeply in love with him, she had wanted recognition, to be an actress, a writer, someone. But even after today she would still be anonymous: that was part of the perfection of the plan.

She paused at the top of the steps, looked down the street and saw Abel driving up in the delivery truck. He had come by here twenty-five minutes ago and she hoped no one had seen them speaking to each other when he had pulled into the kerb across the street; they had exchanged no more than half a dozen words, but it had been necessary to confirm that Sylvia Forte’s appointment with her dentist was still scheduled for ten o’clock. Maybe a signal would have been

enough, but there was always the chance that a signal could be misunderstood. And nothing must be left to chance in this operation.

She saw Abel drive up past her, carefully not looking at her, then swing out of sight down the curving ramp that went under the garden to the basement garage. She hoped Abel had no trouble with what he had to do down there; she felt her palms in her brown kid gloves starting to sweat. She checked her watch: nine-forty-five. She moved on to a side path, watchful that she did not brush her stockings against the scruffy bushes bordering the path. God, how New Yorkers grabbed at their piece of greenery like people prizing shards of a bygone age. A hundred feet by twenty of patchy lawn, an ornamental pool that appeared to be filled with sludge oil, and several clumps of shrubs that looked as if they were hosed daily with acid: Walden Pond-on-6o,th. She glanced up at the tall building above her: how many tenants there ever looked down here hoping for a reflection of Thoreau ? Probably none; but she felt no pity for them. She checked her watch again, feeling impatience taking hold of her like a chill. Nine-forty-seven. Would Sylvia Forte be early, right on time, or late for her appointment ? Then the answer came up the street, the big black Lincoln Continental pulling into the kerb below her. The door opened and Sylvia Forte, red-gold hair so easily recognizable, got out of it …