The Puzzled Heart (9 page)

T
HE
next morning four of them, Kate and Reed and Toni and Leslie, held a council of war in Leslie’s loft. Harriet was guarding the “girls,” as Toni and Reed continued to call them. Jane, who—as Leslie the artist liked to put it—worked for a living, had left earlier. She was in their confidence but was not able to be part of their consultation. Leslie, who had been brought up to date on the events and discussions of the previous evening, announced her agreement with Toni’s plan.

“You two can stay here as long as you like,” she said to Reed and Kate. “After grandchildren, believe me, you will hardly be noticed.” But of course they would be. Lofts are designed for one or two people, never more, not unless one built a lot of rooms—in
which case why not rent an ordinary apartment? Leslie and Jane had raised the bedroom walls to assure themselves of privacy in case of guests, but otherwise it was all open space.

“That’s generous of you and Jane,” Toni said, “but I think it will make most sense to let Kate and Reed go home. Kate can go home in the ordinary way. We’ll have to sneak Reed in, wrapped in a Persian rug like Cleopatra if necessary. He’ll have to pretend not to be there with Kate, which, once he’s in, shouldn’t be too hard. But what about your teaching?” she asked Reed.

“If I’m kidnapped, I can’t teach. I’ve already missed classes. It’s true that when they learn that I could have returned and didn’t there’ll be a certain amount of explaining to do, but I think I can straighten it all out and make it up to the students. The question is, once Kate and I are returned home, what next?”

“Let’s get you home first,” Toni said. And by providing suitable diversions for the doorman and arranging for the fire stair to be opened for Reed’s ascent (the elevator being closely monitored), getting him in the apartment was accomplished without too much difficulty. Toni, Kate was mildly amused to observe, went into her sexy act to distract the doorman while she, Kate, having returned to the apartment in the elevator, descended the stairway to the ground floor and from inside released the gate for Reed and Toni, who by that time had persuaded the doorman to look around the corner to see if her car was likely to be ticketed. It was all a matter of a few
moments. The doorman, having earlier been memorably greeted by Kate, was prepared to swear that she had returned to the apartment alone with the cute puppy.

The three of them, once home, and after Reed had changed his clothes, settled down to continue their council.

Toni began. “With the girls held in their apartment incommunicado—that’s going to be Harriet’s job, dealing with the phone, visitors, whatever comes up—everyone but those girls will assume Reed is still properly kidnapped. Either the powers that be, the ones we’re searching for, will get in touch with the girls about Reed or they won’t. If they don’t, fine. If they do, we have to have a plan. The point is, you see, that with Kate willing to write her article, they have every reason to wait patiently.”

“But surely they’re going to want a report from the girls.”

“Surely, and with Harriet’s threats the girls, or the one she selects, will tell them what we want them to hear. This can’t go on for very long, as you can see, so I suggest that Kate send in her article today or tomorrow.”

“Saying what exactly?” Kate asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Reed said. “If you don’t send in an article, they’ll threaten to do something terrible to me, but since I’m here, they can hardly do it. They would then, of course, find out I wasn’t where they thought I was. If you do send in
the article it will come to exactly the same thing in the end, since the article, however cleverly you devise it, will not be what they want. So”—here he turned to Toni—“why should Kate bother writing?”

“Here’s my reasoning,” Toni said. “They’re planning to run the article in one of their right-wing journals or papers, so you know that what you write will be printed. Why not write something in code, like every other word says what you mean while the whole reads as though you were saying what they wanted? Then, when the article is picked up by the media, you can tell the whole story. And the code will indicate that you haven’t really done what they wanted but rather the opposite.”

“Where will that get us?” Kate asked.

“Probably nowhere. But it will give us a short time in which to trap them before they discover that Reed has eluded them. In that short time, we’ll try to set up a case of kidnapping and blackmail against the bastards. If you don’t send in the article in a day or so they’ll take immediate action of some sort and discover that Reed’s gone, and we’ll have lost the testimony of the girls, who when that happens will have every reason to deny their part in the kidnapping.”

“You overestimate me,” Kate said. “I’ve never been any good at word games or codes, much as I admire those people who can break them. But I know what I’ll do. When I was visiting Radcliffe many years ago, a young man gave a graduation speech that the whole audience applauded, all about law and order, getting
crime off the streets, that sort of thing, and when they had finished their wild expressions of appreciation, he told them his words had been written by Hitler. I’ll bet I can find a passage from Hitler that they will accept as my perfect renunciation of all women’s rights. Later, I’ll identify the author.”

“Sounds okay—if you think they’ll go for it. I suspect they will.”

“The first thing Hitler was against was women outside the home. Family values, provided the family was Aryan, were his ideal. He didn’t get around to killing the Jews till later.”

“The things you know,” Toni said. “Well, I’m off. Reed, do take care not to be seen by anyone like a delivery man, or the man on the back elevator, or someone cleaning the hall—you know.”

“I’ll be careful,” Reed said.

“I know, I know.” Toni smirked at him. “You think, and Kate thinks, and Harriet certainly thinks, that I’m too bossy and too eager to take charge. But I get things done, and I figure results are better than smooth manners. If you disagree, I’m always dischargeable.”

“We’ll take it under advisement,” Reed said, smiling. “While Kate’s searching out the perfect passage from Hitler, don’t forget to let us know what the next step is.”

“Check your e-mail,” Toni said. “I’ll be back.”

“I thought you thought they were keeping a watch on me,” Kate said.

“So they probably are. But with Leslie visiting and
maybe Jane and Harriet, they can’t keep track of everybody. And do remember, dear Kate, we are no longer worried about Reed’s safety.”

And with that, she swept from the room and the apartment.

“Bossy but probably effective,” Reed said.

“I’m holding my opinion in abeyance,” Kate responded. “Must I rush off and contemplate the writings of Adolf Hitler?”

“Not immediately,” Reed said. “We’ll both work on it in a little while. Right now, I could use a bit of a nap. Where does Banny sleep, by the way?”

“In our bed, I’m afraid. She was a comfort.”

“Are we keeping her?”

“We can’t, Reed. That was made very clear. She’s a dog with outstanding conformation, apparently evident at her birth. She’s wanted by her owners, for breeding and I hope love.”

“We’ll keep her for now. We may need her for more messages. Do you think she can manage to sleep in the kitchen if we shut the door?”

“Absolutely not,” Kate said. “Under the bed is the most we can hope for.”

“Well,” Reed said, “she’ll be a nice change from incarceration by nymphs. You’d be a nice change too.” And Banny, pleased with that, jumped up on the couch and licked his face.

Kate woke after their somewhat extended nap and stayed quiet, pondering their situation but not wanting
to wake Reed, when a slight stirring in the bed revealed Banny sleeping at his feet.

“I’m awake,” he said. “I know she shouldn’t be up here, but I thought, with a total lack of consideration, it will be the problem of the lady who will have to bring her up. I am merely an indulgent foster parent.”

“How are you?” Kate asked.

“Dissatisfied with the current plan; I’ve been mulling it over. How about you?”

“Very dissatisfied. I began to realize, rather belatedly after they had kidnapped you, that I was being wholly passive in the plan for your retrieval. I suppose the shock was so great it took me a while to wake up. I feel that we’re being pushed into something of the same position again. I’m rather sure I don’t like it. Not that Toni and Harriet don’t mean well.”

“They mean the best. And from a certain point of view, their plan is a sensible one. The only trouble is, it doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t like hiding out, I don’t like your being the only target—nor would you like me to be—and I think that the more people we involve in this caper, the more successful we will be. Finding out who kidnapped me, who was behind it, isn’t the hard part. It’s what sort of support and organization is behind
them
. Do you agree?”

“Totally,” Kate said. “I’m relieved, because I didn’t like the thought of urging you back into the open where you could be assaulted again. On the other
hand, I want to be out there, talking about this, asking for help, finding out where everybody stands. You know it’s a risk, though, beyond the personal risk of danger to us. We may, we almost certainly will, get tarred with the brush of left radicalism. My thought is, it’s time someone was willing to say what he or she believes.”

“Yes. We walk in fear, while the radical right trumpets its lies and delusions. Someone has to do something.”

“True.” Kate reached over to touch him. Banny crawled farther up the bed until she was completely between them, making Kate laugh. “Who knows what your law school and my English department, let alone my university, will say about all this, but hell, what is tenure for? I shall never stop worrying about you, however, and that troubles me. I was shocked at how profound the shock was, if you see what I mean—the shock of your being simply lifted like that, taken from our daily life.”

“Indicating a weakness?”

“Indicating a dependency. Frightening, that, and don’t laugh.”

“I wouldn’t dream of laughing. And if I felt equally or even more desperately shocked by your being kidnapped, that would just be normal male behavior: a man doesn’t want others messing around with his woman. Is that it?”

“Fair enough. We all know about men; they are desperate for a while, and then find another wife, or
female companion, whatever. I felt what I felt was different, frighteningly different. I was scared, not to put too fine a point on it.”

“Yes,” Reed said. “It’s always hard to discover one’s vulnerability. Particularly when one had declared oneself satisfactorily unassailable.”

“That’s nonsense.” Their hands met, brushing down Banny’s coat. “Who knows better than you how assailed I’ve been. You might even say that being assailed was my way of being. But to be paralyzed as I was, to be stricken into such passivity, that was terrifying.”

“Yes, I see. I do see. Well, no more paralysis, no more passivity. What do we tell Harriet and Toni? That I, having been rescued, will take over the operation in partnership with you?”

“We certainly have to talk to them. Let’s call and request a meeting. I think we’d better get Harriet to call Banny’s owner too. We’re getting too intimate with a dog we can’t keep. Anyway, how could we keep a dog while pursuing the radical right?”

“Point well taken,” Reed said, ruffling the dog’s hair. “Call Harriet now.”

Toni and Harriet, having been tracked down through beepers and other electronic beckoning devices, gathered at Kate and Reed’s apartment in the late afternoon. Drinks were offered. Toni refused, suggesting, only half humorously, that Harriet drank enough for the two of them, but Kate suspected that Toni never
drank at work and, if she drank at all, did so only at home, off the job—an admirable policy but considerably out of line with the image of American private eyes. Still, Kate thought, almost everything these days is out of line with our images. Some of us want to revive the old forms, and others, like Reed and me, want to move on.

Kate and Reed had agreed that he would speak first, partly because he was the one supposed to be hiding out, and partly because he wasn’t the one who had hired them and could therefore criticize their plan with less offense, or so he hoped.

“Kate and I,” he began, “want to offer a different plan of action. We’ve talked this over, and we both feel strongly that we should get back to our jobs, and speak publicly about what has happened and about our eagerness to discover the contrivers of the plot—not the students, but those who planned the students’ moves and thought up the whole scheme. This doesn’t mean that we don’t want you to continue working with us, if you will agree to. It does mean that everything we do is proposed in consultation and agreed upon by us all. We’d like you to continue underground, as it were, while Kate and I operate in the open. How does that strike you?”

“What about the girls still being held in that apartment? Harriet left them with my operators when she came here at your urgent request,” Toni said, in a tone of voice indicating her disapproval of this development.

“I think we shall have to turn them over to the police now,” Reed said. “I know you’ve left yourself open to severe complaints, at the least for not calling the police at once, and I intend to take the blame for that. No, nothing noble,” he said as Toni began to object. “It might well have been a logical request of mine at the time, and I think I’ll be able to deal with the consequences a lot more easily than you. For one thing, I’ve got connections left over from my days in the D.A.’s office, and for another, I’m less vulnerable, not being a private eye, always a suspicious identity to the police. Why don’t you call your operators and then call the police now?”

“That means the girls may not talk,” Toni said.

“I think they probably will.” Reed looked at his hands. “After all, I’m a valid witness; they may well want to cut their losses. And I don’t think those girls know who was behind all this, other than Kate’s student’s boyfriend who bullied or persuaded them into it.”