"Do better than that, man. I be right here in the laundromat, just another cat waitin' on his clothes.
Neighborhood here's enough different colors so's I don't stick out too much. Kongs ever call you?"
"No. Did you reach them?"
"Beeped 'em and put your number in, but if Jimmy don't have the beeper with him, it's like it ain't beepin'."
"Like that tree in the forest."
"Say what?"
"Never mind."
"I be in touch," he said.
WHEN the next call came in Yuri answered it, said, "Just a minute," and passed it to me. The voice I heard was different this time, softer, more cultured. There was a nastiness in it but less of the obvious anger of the previous speaker.
"I understand we have a new player in the game," he said. "I don't believe we've been introduced."
"I'm a friend of Mr. Landau's. My name's not important."
"One likes to know who's on the other side."
"In a sense," I said, "we're on the same side, aren't we? We both want the exchange to go through."
"Then all you have to do is follow instructions."
"No, it's not that simple."
"Of course it is. We tell you what to do and you do it. If you ever want to see the girl again."
"You have to convince me that she's alive."
"You have my word on it."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"It's not good enough?"
"You lost a lot of credibility when you returned Mrs. Khoury in poor condition."
There was a pause. Then, "How interesting. You don't sound very Russian, you know. Nor do the tones of Brooklyn echo in your speech.
There were special circumstances with Mrs. Khoury. Her husband tried to haggle, in the nature of his race. He sliced the price, and we in turn—
well, you can finish that thought yourself, can't you?"
And Pam Cassidy, I thought. What did she do that provoked you?
But what I said was, "We won't argue the price."
"You'll pay the million."
"For the girl, alive and well."
"I assure you she's both."
"And I still need more than your word. Put her on the phone, let her father talk to her."
"I'm afraid that won't—" he began, and the recorded voice of a NYNEX announcer cut in to ask for more money. "I'll call you back," he said.
"Out of quarters? Give me your number, I'll call you."
He laughed and broke the connection.
I WAS alone in the apartment with Yuri when the next call came.
Kenan and Peter were out with one of the two guards from downstairs, looking to raise what cash they could. Yuri had given them a list of names and phone numbers, and they had some sources of their own. It would have been simpler if we could have made the calls from the penthouse, but we only had the two phone lines and I wanted to keep both of them open.
"You're not in the business," Yuri said. "You're some kind of cop, yes?"
"Private."
"Private, so you been working for Kenan. Now you're working for me, right?"
"I'm just working. I'm not looking to be on the payroll, if that's what you mean."
He waved the issue aside. "This is a good business," he said, "but also it's no good. You know?"
"I think so."
"I want to be out of it. That's one reason I got no cash. I make lots of money, but I don't want it in cash and I don't want it in goods. I own parking lots, I own a restaurant, I spread it out, you know? In a little while I'm out of the dope business altogether. A lot of Americans start out as gangsters, yes? And wind up legitimate businessmen."
"Sometimes."
"Some are gangsters forever. But not all. Wasn't for Devorah, I'd be out of it already."
"Your wife?"
"The hospital bills, the doctors, my God, what it cost. No insurance. We were greenhorns, what did we know from Blue Cross?
Doesn't matter. Whatever it cost I paid. I was glad to pay it. I would have paid more to keep her alive, I would have paid anything. I would have sold the fillings out of my teeth if I could have bought her another day. I paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and she had every day the doctors could give her, and what days they were, the poor woman, what she suffered through. But she wanted all the life she could get, you know?" He wiped a broad hand across his forehead. He was about to say something else but the phone rang. Wordless, he pointed at it.
I picked it up.
The same man said, "Shall we try again? I'm afraid the girl cannot come to the phone. That's out of the question. How else can we reassure you of her well-being?"
I covered the mouthpiece. "Something your daughter would know."
He shrugged. "The dog's name?"
Into the phone I said, "Have her tell you— no, wait a minute." I covered the phone and said, "They could know that. They've been shadowing her for a week or more, they know your schedule, they've undoubtedly seen her walking the dog, heard her call him by name.
Think of something else."
"We had a dog before this one," he said. "A little black-and-white one, it got hit by a car. She was just a small thing herself when we had that dog."
"But she would remember it?"
"Who could forget? She loved the dog."
"The dog's name," I said into the phone, "and the name of the dog before this one. Have her describe both dogs and furnish their names."
He was amused. "One dog won't do. It has to be two."
"Yes."
"So that you may be doubly reassured. I'll humor you, my friend."
I WONDERED what he would do.
He'd have called from a pay phone. I was certain of that. He hadn't stayed on the line long enough for his quarter to run out, but he wasn't going to change the pattern now, not when it had worked so well for him. He was at a pay phone, and now he had to find out the name and description of two dogs, and then he would have to call me back.
Assume for the moment that he wasn't calling from the laundromat phone. Assume he was at some phone on the street, far enough from his house that he'd taken a car. Now he would drive back to the house, park, go inside, and ask Lucia Landau the names of her dogs. And then he would drive around to still another phone and relay the information back to me.
Was that how I would do it?
Well, maybe. But maybe not. Maybe I'd spend a quarter and save a little time and running around, and call the house where my partner was guarding the girl. Let him take the gag out of her mouth for a minute and come back with the answers.
If only we had the Kongs.
Not for the first time, I thought how much easier it would be if Jimmy and David were set up in Lucia's bedroom, with their modem plugged into her Snoopy phone and the computer set up on her dressing table. They could sit on Lucia's phone and monitor her father's, and whenever anyone called we'd have an instant trace.
If Ray called home to find out the names of the dogs, we'd be perching on that line, and before he knew what to call the dogs we'd know where they were keeping the girl. Before he had relayed the information to me we could have cars at both locations, to pick him up when he got off the phone and to lay siege to the house.
But I didn't have the Kongs. All I had was TJ, sitting in a laundromat in Sunset Park and waiting for someone to use the phone.
And if he hadn't been profligate enough to squander half his funds on a beeper, I wouldn't even have that.
"Makes a person crazy," Yuri said. "Sitting, staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring."
And it was taking its time. Evidently Ray— that was how I was thinking of him, and I had come alarmingly close once already to calling him by name— evidently he had not called home, for whatever reason.
Figure ten minutes to drive home, ten minutes to get the answers from the girl, ten minutes to get
back to a phone and call us. Less if he hurried. More if he stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes, or if she was unconscious and they had to bring her around.
Say half an hour. Maybe more, maybe less, but say half an hour.
If she was dead it could take a little longer. Suppose she was.
Suppose they'd killed her right off the bat, killed her before their first call to her father. That, certainly, was the simplest way to do it. No danger of escape. No concern about keeping her quiet.