“Revenge isn’t sweet,” Carella said. “It’s only boring.”
“Sure, but I would have liked it. I know I would have. Five years later, I was ready to spit in his eye, but he was six feet underground, and you don’t go to a man’s grave to dance on it. Five years later, I bought the house in Smoke Rise. I wasn’t quite ready for the house yet, but I knew the house would be important to me. And it was. A house is a wonderful bargaining tool, Mr. Carella. You’d be surprised how many people in this world are impressed by the accouterments of everyday living, the houses, the silverware, the cars—the window dressing. And now… here I am. I’ve still got the house, and I own or am about to own enough stock to make me president of Granger. My son goes to a private school, and I’ve got a cook, and a chauffeur, and a gardener, and a housemaid, and a sports car for my wife, and a Cadillac for me and enough money to get whatever I want, Mr. Carella. Whatever I want.”
“Then why are you here?” Carella asked. “Why are you driving your own car waiting for contact from men who may turn out to be worse than murderers?”
“I don’t know. Or, yes, I do know. I can’t give those men the money they want. I can’t because it would kill me. If that makes me rotten, then all right, I’m rotten. But I can’t change the way I am, Mr. Carella. That’s for the fairy tales. The mean witch who turns into a lovely princess, the toad who turns into a prince, the rotten louse who suddenly sees the error of his ways and vows to do good for the rest of his life, fairy tales, pap for the television viewers of America. I’ll never change. I know it, and Diane knows it, and she’ll come back to me, Mr. Carella, because she loves me. I’ll never change. And if I’m rotten, I’m rotten. But I’ve fought all my life, and if I can’t give those men the money they want, I can fight them this way, by going along, by doing something.”
He shook his head.
“I know none of this makes any sense. For the first six months of my married life, we lived in an apartment that had cockroaches the size of flying bats. I never want that again, Mr. Carella. I want my house in Smoke Rise, and I want my servants, and I want a Cadillac with a telephone hanging from the dashboard, and I want…”
And in that instant, the telephone hanging from the dashboard rang.
It had been a simple matter to learn the frequency band within which all automobile telephones in the vicinity operated. Once this had been learned, it was equally simple to steal the necessary equipment: the 600-volt oscillator and the 1600-volt oscillator, the transmitter and the various relays and switches, and lastly the batteries. It was a little more difficult to come across the dial which Kathy had thought seemed alien to a radio set—and only because it was alien. The dial was a telephone dial hooked to the battery and the relay, so that it could key the telephone in King’s car and cause it to ring. Once King picked up the telephone, Eddie could speak to him over the microphone attached to his transmitter. King’s automobile telephone number, quite naturally, had been obtained from the telephone company. Eddie Folsom’s preliminary sketches from the setup had looked like this:
The setup was now a reality before him. He had dialed King’s number nervously. He waited now, one hand trembling around the microphone, the receiver tuned to pick up King’s voice, the transmitter ready to relay Eddie’s instructions.
Pick up the phone, he thought.
Pick it up!
“Wh—?” King said.
“What’s—?” Carella said from the back seat.
“The telephone! The telephone’s ringing.”
“Holy God, that’s how—Answer it! Go ahead, answer it!”
King lifted the receiver from where it hung on the dash. “Hello?” he said.
“All right, Mr. King, this is it,” Eddie said. “You listen carefully, because you’ll be receiving your instructions over this telephone for however long it takes you to get where we want you to go. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m listening.”
“Nobody’s going to help you now, Mr. King, because this conversation can’t possibly be traced. I’m using a radio transmitter and not a telephone. So get that out of your mind in case you had any idea of stopping and telling anyone about this. We know exactly how long it should take you to get where you’re going, so no tricks, please. Now. Where are you?”
“I’m… I don’t know.”
“All right, keep that phone in your hand. You are not to hang up until this trip is over. Keep it in your hand, and as you pass the next cross street, tell me where you are.”
“All right.”
“What is it?” Carella whispered. He was kneeling close to the back of his seat, his mouth alongside King’s ear. King shook his head and pointed to the telephone.
“You think he’ll hear us?” Carella whispered.
King nodded.
“I’m coming up front. I’ll talk to him from now on. The reception on these damn things isn’t hi-fi, that’s for sure. We’ll have to hope he doesn’t recognize the change of voice. What does he want?”
“Cross street,” King whispered as Carella climbed over the seat and took the phone from King’s hand. He looked through the windshield and then brought the receiver to his mouth.
“I’m approaching North Thirty-ninth and Culver,” he said into the phone.
Apparently, Eddie did not detect the difference in the voices. His own voice level and calm, he said, “Turn left on North Fortieth. Continue in a southerly direction until you reach Grover Avenue, then turn left again. Go uptown until Forty-eighth, where you will see a crosstown entrance into the park. Take that entrance and continue driving. When you reach Hall Avenue, let me know. Have you got that?”
“Left on North Fortieth,” Carella repeated. “South until Grover, then left again. Uptown to forty-eighth, and then into the park. Right.”
He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Have you got that, King?”
“Yes,” King said.
“He’s giving it to us piecemeal so we can’t alert the nearest traffic cop as to just where we’re heading. These are shrewd bastards, Mr. King.” Carella’s brow furrowed. “I wish I knew how to stop them. I just wish I knew.”