This was a sweet place. One telephone on each floor, in the hall near the elevator, and a pay phone at that. When it rang it was up to anybody who heard it to go answer it and pass the word to whoever it was for. That was the kind of privacy Kengle loved.
Kengle locked his door and walked down the hall to the phone. Maybe it was Smith, checking to see if he was out hustling those books. If so, screw Smith. The voice said, “Jake?”
Kengle recognized it, and a heavy weight seemed to lift off his back. The voice belonged to Ed Dant, who ran a fleabag hotel in Atlanta and who was Kengle’s permanent address. Anybody in the business who wanted to contact him knew to call Ed Dant, who did the same thing for half a dozen other guys. When he’d moved into this place here Kengle had telegraphed Ed the address and phone number right away, because when the break came it would be coming through a call from Ed.
Keeping all trace of excitement out of his voice, Kengle said, “What’s new, pal?”
”Nothing much. Just to say hello, glad to hear you’re out see how you’re doing.”
“Fine. Got a steady job.”
“Glad to hear it. Ran into an old friend of yours the other day. Remember Marty Fusco?”
“Sure. How’s he doing these days?”
“Working here and there. He thought he might drop by and see you tomorrow. I wasn’t sure I had the address right, so I told him I’d call him back.”
Kengle reeled off his address.
They talked a little more, saying nothing, and then ended the conversation. Kengle was grinning from ear to ear when he walked back down the hall and unlocked his way into his room.
One corner of his brain said, What if the set-up’s no good?
Aloud he said, “It’s gotta be better than peddling books.”
He made one concession to good sense. He opened the window before throwing the briefcase into the airshaft.”
9
Maybe I ought to tell the police,” Ellen said. She was hugging herself so hard her arms hurt.
“I don’t think you should,” Dr Godden said carefully. “I think you’re carrying around enough guilt feelings as it is.”
“It’s tonight,” she said. She was shivering, trembling, no matter how hard she hugged herself.
“If Stan had had his way,” Dr Godden reminded her, “it would have been happening right now.”
“Nobody has their way against Parker,” she said. “I hate him.”
“I believe we correctly analyzed Stan on Monday,” Dr Godden said. “He wanted a daylight robbery so that he could not be asked to take an active part in it.”
“If I told the police it was going to happen,” she said, “but didn’t tell them who was going to do it, and then somehow I let Stan know they knew about it—”
“You couldn’t do it,” he told her. “Not without implicating yourself. And then Stan would merely hate you.”
“But there’s no way out! If they get caught, that’s terrible, and if they don’t get caught he’ll want to do it again and that’s terrible.”
“We still can’t be sure he’ll want to do it again,” Dr Godden said, his voice soothing her though she still trembled. “After all, if he didn’t want to take an active part this time it means he’s had some second thoughts already, he’s somewhat afraid now. After the reality of the experience he may decide he never wants to go through anything like that again. We can’t tell one way or the other until he’s actually gone through it.”
”But what if they get caught?”
“Let’s go over the plan,” he said, “and see if we can find any loopholes, anything Parker and the others haven’t thought of. We’ve discussed various parts of the plan from time to time, but we’ve never taken it through from beginning to end. Let’s do that now.”
“All right,” she said. Her voice began to drone.
10
Dr Godden stood in the doorway, watched Ellen Fusco go out through the outer office, and then motioned to the slender young man on the Naugahyde sofa to come in.
The young man, whose face was covered with acne, got to his feet, said nastily, “Ralph’s late again,” and sauntered into the inner office. He sat on the sofa there, spread his legs out, folded his arms and said, “Ralph’s always late.”
Dr Godden shut the door, controlled his impulse to speak harshly, and went over to sit in his accustomed chair at the end of the sofa. “That’s a problem of Ralph’s,” he said. “Perhaps after a while he’ll get over it.”
“Soon everyone will be perfect,” said the young man. He always strove for sarcasm but never attained anything other than petulance.
His name was Roger St Cloud, he was twenty-two years old, militarily unsuitable because of some problem with his inner ear, the only son of well-to-do parents—his father had a controlling interest in Monequois First Savings—and a classic bundle of insecurities and neuroses masked by a juvenile nastiness of manner. The clothing he wore—sneakers without socks, filthy chinos, a ratty turtleneck sweater—was intended to infuriate his parents, and it succeeded. It was the positive relish with which Roger’s parents rose to every bait the boy tossed them that made Dr Godden’s work so much more necessary and at the same time so much more difficult. If he could get the parents in here for regular treatments it might have some good effect on the son, but of course they’d never agree to anything like that.
Well, for the purpose at hand what was needed was not the parents but the son. Dr Godden said, out of the sense of duty that had been troubling him of late, “While we wait for Ralph, is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
Roger shrugged carelessly, which always meant yes, always meant there was something he felt about so strongly that the feeling embarrassed him and therefore had to be denied. “Had another dream,” he said.
“The Dragon?” That was the dream about his mother.
“No, none of the usual. A new one.”
“Ah? What was it?”
“I was walking down a rifle barrel. It was like a tunnel, you know? But it was a rifle barrel, and I was walking toward the bullets. I could look back the other way and see daylight at the hole. It was very realistic, with the shiny metal color and everything. It was cold in there. Then I looked back and there was an eye down at the far end looking at me. It was my father, and he said, ‘You’ll never get away.’ But he was big, he was normal size for the rifle, so he couldn’t get at me. But he kept looking in, his eye there, and I shouted, ‘Get out of the way! You’ll be killed when the gun goes off!’ But he wouldn’t believe me. Then there was a boom, like an explosion. Not like a rifle shot at all. A real explosion. And I looked and there was a bullet coming toward me. It looked like a train in a tunnel, except it filled it all the way around, there wasn’t any place to squeeze in and let it go by. And the front was all fat and squashed. I started running away, but I was slow, it turned slow-motion, you know, the way they do. But the bullet was slow, too, it was just behind me but it couldn’t catch up. And my father’s eye was still up at the other end, he wouldn’t get out of the way. I kept hollering at him, but he wouldn’t get out of the way.”
In the course of telling all this, Roger’s voice had lost its usual whine, his expression had calmed, and he had shown briefly who it was he might have been if things had been different. But now his face twisted back into its usual expression, the whine came into his voice again, and he shrugged negligently, saying, “That’s when I woke up.”
”Not hard to interpret, that dream,” Dr Godden suggested.
“Easy. I’m afraid of getting caught and I’m afraid of getting killed.”
“And you’re also afraid that if you do get caught your disgrace will also ruin your father.” Roger shrugged.