* * * *
Sitting in the parked car, Sy Barnard smoked his tenth cigarette in the past half hour. Anxiously, he looked at his watch. Then he glanced again at the road. The car was parked in the woods, completely shielded from the road by an old electric-company repair shack. The screening, in all truth, was unnecessary.
Only one car had driven by in the past half hour, and on the day he and Eddie had chosen the site they had clocked only three cars in two and a half hours. The chances of being spotted by a curious motorist were negligible, almost nonexistent. Nor was there much possibility of a police car cruising by. Studying the list of road blocks, Sy knew that the nearest police barricade was at a big intersection some fifteen miles to the west. He had easily avoided it in getting here, and he knew he could easily go around it when driving back to the farmhouse.
Even if King refused to obey orders, even if, for example, a squad car were following the black Cadillac at this moment, the plan was foolproof. And the part of it that made it so beautiful was the fact that no one but King knew where he was going, and even he was getting it in small bits and pieces so that he couldn’t possibly give any meaningful information to a third party. The electric-company shack was just around a curve in the road. If a police car were following King, it would have to maintain a respectable distance or risk being detected. Detection would endanger the boy, and so Sy knew that any following police would stay pretty far behind the lead car. Communicating with King via the telephone, Eddie would know when King was about five miles away from the site. He would tell him to pull over to the side of the road and lower his right-hand window. Then he would tell King to begin driving again. At a point a half mile from the shack, Eddie would tell King that he was approaching a curve in the road. As soon as he rounded that bend, he wanted King to slow down, pull over, stop, and drop the carton of money out the window and into the bushes on the right-hand side of the road. He was to drive away from the spot as quickly as possible then, following the instructions that came to him over the telephone.
And therein lay the beauty of the plan. A following squad car would be nowhere in sight when the drop was made. By the time they approached the electric-company shack, King would have driven off. They would continue to follow, not having witnessed the drop, not even knowing it had taken place. Eddie would continue talking to King. He would lead him out to the very tip of Sands Spit, turn him around at the end of the peninsula, and then lead him back to the city via another route. The following police car, if there was one, would continue tailing the lead car. Eddie would continue talking to King until Sy had picked up the money and driven back to the farmhouse. The moment Sy stepped through the door, Eddie would stop transmitting. King—and the police, if there were any—would then be on their own. They would be free to drive wherever the hell they wanted to. They could even drive back to the electric-company shack if they so chose; Sy would have left there long ago.
The plan, then, was beautiful.
And yet he was nervous.
He could not quell the persistent feeling that something would go wrong.
And yet he couldn’t figure what.
He was not, you see, a Bible-reading man.
He did not know that the meek shall inherit the earth.
* * * *
Studying the street map, Eddie Folsom said, “All right, you’re now approaching the Black Rock Span. There’s a toll booth there, and the toll is a quarter, Mr. King, twenty-five cents. Get the change out of your pocket now, and have it ready. Don’t hand the attendant a hundred-dollar bill or anything like that to attract attention. And don’t say anything to him. It won’t do you any good at all to have police following you. If there are any cops when it comes time to make the drop, we’ll call the whole thing off and kill the boy. Do you hear me, Mr. King?”
“Yes, I hear you,” Carella answered.
“Good,” Eddie said. “Go through the toll booth and onto the bridge. Let me know as you’re driving off the bridge, and I’ll tell you what you do next. It won’t help to say anything to the cop collecting the toll because you still don’t know where you’re going. Any tricks, and we will kill the boy.”
Listening to her husband, Kathy winced at the words.
Kill the boy.
Kill the boy.
My husband, she thought.
My fault.
* * * *
In the automobile, Steve Carella reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He hastily opened it to where his shield was pinned to the leather. He unpinned the shield, took out his notebook, rapidly scribbled:
Call police headquarters. Tell them King contacted by radio transmission to car telephone. Try to get a fix. Hurry!
Detective Steve Carella
He pinned his shield to the note, took a quarter from his pocket, and motioned King to pull over to the booth accepting quarters from the window opposite the driver’s seat.
“You at the booth yet, King?” Eddie asked.
“Just approaching it,” Carella said.
“Have you got the change?”
“Yes, I’ve got a quarter.”
“Good. No funny stuff.”
The car slowed and pulled up alongside the toll booth. Carella handed the uniformed cop on duty a quarter, the note and his police shield. He nodded tersely at the cop as King pulled away and joined the steady stream of traffic moving across the bridge.
“You’re coming off the bridge now, is that right?” Eddie asked.
“That’s right,” Carella answered.
“Okay, bear to your left. I don’t want you going out to Calm’s Point. There’s a big sign reading Mid-Sands Highway. That’s the road I want you to take.”
Standing behind her husband, Kathy began to piece together a clear picture of what the markings on the street maps meant. The spot outlined with the red circle was obviously the Douglas King house, and the route marked in red was the route over which Eddie was leading him. The place marked “Farm” was, of course, the farmhouse, situated on Fairlane Road, about a half mile from Stanberry Road. And the spot marked with the blue star… ?
“Keep driving until you reach Exit Seventeen,” Eddie said. “Have you got that, King?”
“I’ve got it,” Carella said.
The blue star confused Kathy because the red line went directly past it and then continued on out to the end of the peninsula, where it once again turned and headed back for the city. If the drop…
But of course.
The blue star indicated Sy’s hiding place. They would ask King to drop the money and then keep him driving, simply to get him away from the spot or to confuse any followers. Of course. Sy Barnard, then, was lying in wait at…
She studied the map more closely.
… Tantamount Road, just around the curve in Route 127.