“… corner of Agatha and two-one-oh…”
“Shhh,” Sy said.
“… to relieve Car 108 in road block. You got that, 112?”
“This is 112. Roger.”
“Good,” Sy said, nodding his head vigorously. “Spiel it out, boy. Keep spieling it out.”
* * * *
13
At ten o’clock in the morning, the front door of Douglas King’s house opened. Douglas King, wearing a dark overcoat, black Homburg and pearl-gray gloves, stepped out of the house. He was carrying a brown carton stuffed with newspapers. He walked to the side of the house, looked briskly about him, went directly to the garage, pulled up the overhead door, entered the black Cadillac parked there and started the engine. He let the engine idle for several moments and then pulled the car out of the garage, executed a turn, and drove up the driveway to where the twin stone pillars flanked the road. He turned onto Smoke Rise Road and glanced into the rearview mirror. There was not a car or a person in sight. If anyone was watching his departure, that person was certainly well hidden.
He began driving aimlessly, going on a straight course for several blocks, turning off Smoke Rise Road and onto the viaduct over the River Highway, and then heading crosstown. No police cars were behind him. To the observer, Douglas King was following instructions to the letter. He had left the house at 10 A.M. carrying a plain carton full of money. He had got into his car alone and begun driving, awaiting further contact.
Any observer, casual or intent, could not possibly have known that Detective Steve Carella had entered the garage at 9:30 a.m. through the door leading from the kitchen, or that he had then climbed into the Cadillac and made himself comfortable on the floor in the back.
Lying there now, he said, “Do you see anything?”
“What do you mean?” King answered.
“A car following us? A pedestrian signaling us? A helicopter hovering?”
“No. Nothing.”
“How the hell are they going to make contact?” Carella grumbled. “Is God going to send down a thunderbolt?”
* * * *
At ten o’clock in the morning, Eddie Folsom began warming up his radio equipment. Sy had left at nine-thirty with a list of road blocks clutched in his hand and embossed on his mind. Now, as the tubes glowed with life, as the hum of the oscillators and the transmitter filled the room, Eddie could feel a nervousness starting somewhere at the pit of his stomach and spreading through his body. He consulted his meters again, made sure he was on the right frequency, and then sat down before the equipment, the microphone set up directly before his face, the street maps not two feet from where he sat, the dial three inches from his right hand. He looked at his watch. It was ten-three. He would give King another seven minutes. And then at ten-ten it would start.
* * * *
“Anything yet?” Carella asked.
“No.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten-five.”
“Why’d you come along, Mr. King?”
“That’s my business.”
“You didn’t have to. A detective could have taken your place.”
“I know.”
“Besides, I doubt very much that the house is being watched. Unless this gang is enormous, they couldn’t possibly have that many…”
“Are you married, Mr. Carella?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love your wife?”
“Yes.”
“I love mine, too. She walked out on me this morning. After all these years of marriage, she walked out on me. Do you know why?”
“I think so.”
“Sure. Because I wouldn’t ransom Reynolds’ boy.” King nodded his head, his eyes glued to the road. “You think that’s pretty rotten of me, too, don’t you?”
“You won’t win the Nobel Prize for it, Mr. King.”
“Maybe not. But then, I don’t want the Nobel Prize. All I want is Granger Shoe.”
“Then it shouldn’t bother you that your wife walked out.”
“No, I guess it shouldn’t. If Granger Shoe were all I wanted, I wouldn’t care very much about Diane, or Bobby, or anybody, would I?”
“I guess not.”
“Then what am I doing here?”
“I asked first, Mr. King.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here, Mr. Carella. I only know this. I cannot pay that boy’s ransom. I cannot because it would mean destroying myself, and that’s impossible. I don’t believe in fairy tales, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I’m what I am, Mr. Carella. I don’t think I’ll ever change. Business is a part of my life and without it I might as well be dead. That’s what I am. I make no apologies for it. And maybe I’ve been rotten, yes, maybe I have. And maybe I’ve hurt men. But I’ve never gone out to get anybody without a damn good reason, and that’s what I am, and I make no apologies. It’s taken me a long time to get where I am today, Mr. Carella.”
“Where are you today, Mr. King?”
“In a car, waiting for instructions from a thief.” King smiled thinly. “You know what I mean. It’s taken me a long time to get the things I always felt I needed. A man doesn’t change, Mr. Carella. Diane doesn’t know what poverty is. How would she know? She’s had money all her life. Not me, Mr. Carella. I was dirt-poor. I was hungry. You don’t forget poverty, and you don’t forget hunger. I started working for Granger when I was sixteen. In the stockroom. I worked harder than the others. I stacked more damn shoes, and I carried more damn shoes, and I took pride in what was the cruddiest part of the plant because I knew that someday I was going to own that company. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Ambition never sounds crazy.”
“Well, maybe not. I learned that factory inside out and backward. Every operation, every phase, every person. I learned shoes. I learned shoes because this was going to be my company. It was going to be the only thing I ever knew or ever wanted. By the time I met Diane…”
“Where’d you meet her, Mr. King?”
“I picked her up. The war was still on. World War Two, I mean.”
“Was there any other war?” Carella asked.
“I was in on furlough, a sergeant, a T-five. Were you in the Army?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t have to explain how lonely your own home town can seem when you’re home on furlough. I picked up Diane at the U.S.O. She was one of those rich girls doing their bit for the enlisted man. We danced together a few times. We clicked. Just like that. The rich girl from Stewart City had met the poor boy from Kelly’s Corners and—Do you know the city well, Mr. Carella?”
“Fairly.”
“Then you know the part familiarly referred to as Stewart City, hugging the river on the south of Isola, very fancy, doormen, penthouses, air conditioning. And you know where Kelly’s Corners is, we used to call it Smelly Corners when I was a kid. We met, Mr. Carella. Never the twain, but we met. And we clicked. And she married me. I went back to Granger after I was discharged. I was earning about sixty dollars a week for the first year of our marriage. That wasn’t enough. Not enough for Diane, and not enough for me. So I began doing what had to be done. I began solidifying my position in that factory, and I stamped on anyone who got in my way because nothing had changed. I was still going to own it. I was going to make Diane Kessler’s father eat his words. I was going to trudge up to his Stewart City apartment with the air conditioning and the mile-high carpeting and make him apologize to me for ever referring to me as a ‘worthless nobody.’ As a matter of fact, I never tasted that particular revenge. The old man died before I really got a toehold. And he died without asking for his daughter and never having spoken to her since that day we broke the news to him. I never had my revenge.”