“Your own son,” I said. “Your own flesh.”
“So simple in the beginning,” he said, “not so terrible … intelligent boy, Gary, no emotional scars …too stable, but it went wrong, there was no way it could go wrong, but it went wrong …”
I thought: Is this the actor worthy of an award, the coldly methodical mercenary, the bitterly vengeful cuckold? Is this the Louis Martinetti of chicanery and deceit and extra-legalities, of the forceful and magnetic personality-this shell, this decaying creature with the zombie eyes?
But I said, “It was the money, wasn’t it, Martinetti? The three hundred thousand dollars of Channing’s money. That’s why you did it.”
“The money,” he said, “oh yes, I had to have the money … the real estate investment closing up and no more assets, no place to turn-Jesus God, it meant millions and Channing was the only one with the kind of cash I needed … Channing, that bastard, that cold bastard, never loaned a cent in his life, never bet on a long shot and so proud of it-well, I gave him something to shake his pride, didn’t I? I gave him a kidnapping, I gave him a goddamn ultimatum-how would the newspapers like to know you refused to save a little boy’s life, Allan? You think about that, you bastard …”
He stopped talking and stood there motionless. I could feel the sweat on my own body, as motionless as his. It was as if we had been frozen, solidified, in the tableau of the room-a scene of horror cast in wax at Madame Tussaud’s. A half-minute passed and I got some saliva through the dry crust inside my mouth and I said, “Lockridge, Martinetti. What was your connection with Lockridge?”
“Lockridge,” he repeated, and he kept standing there, rigid, the gun not moving in his hand. I counted to six before he spoke again, the words like those on a recording tape being played for the millionth time, words which had lost all their human qualities and become the expressions of a machine. “He didn’t have a choice either, I told him that, I said not with your underworld connections there in Ohio-one word from me would have sent him to prison for a long time … oh no, I didn’t have to give him fifty thousand, but it was my safety margin, all planned so carefully …”
Yeah, I thought, you planned it all so carefully. You must have met Lockridge in Ohio, your wife is from there, and maybe you used him in some capacity on your schemes and deals over the years; it figures that way. So when you came up with the kidnapping idea, you brought him out here and briefed him on the situation and told him about the area in the San Bruno hills to be used as a drop point. You told him to treat Gary with kid gloves, to buy some of his favorite books and models so that the boy would be comfortable, and you gave him Gary’s exact clothing sizes, too, so that he wouldn’t have to keep wearing his school uniform. Then you wrote out that kidnap note yourself, on your personal stationery, and signed your name to it; that’s why the headmaster at Sandhurst never questioned the signature: it was authentic.
But you didn’t know where Lockridge was holding Gary. You weren’t acting after Lockridge was killed and I had been stabbed and the money hijacked. Maybe you were supposed to know where the boy was, maybe you thought youdid know. You had to keep up the masquerade of waiting by the phone and so you couldn’t get away to check on the boy until the following afternoon, probably just before you came to see me in the hospital; sure, and maybe you planned to keep Gary from seeing you somehow and then drop some clue to Donleavy or me later on. But then, if I’m guessing right, you discovered that the boy was not where he was supposed to be and you panicked; you weren’t aware of the Hanlon girl-Lockridge had brought her in on his own, for his own reasons- and you thought Gary was alone, locked up somewhere, that he might starve to death if he wasn’t found. Lockridge had pulled a fast one on you, an irony you never expected, either because he wanted some insurance that you kept your part of the bargain you’d made with him, or because he intended to hold you up for a larger percentage of the money. It doesn’t matter now; it just doesn’t matter at all.
The rest of it is simple enough to figure. You brought me into the kidnapping in the beginning because you needed a witness to the money exchange, a corroborator that a kidnapping had taken place, when you went to the police after you had the money and Lockridge was on his way back to Cleveland; Channing would have expected, demanded, that the affair be reported as soon as Gary was returned home. You asked me to keep working for you when the boy was still missing for just the reason you gave me in the hospitaclass="underline" you wanted all the men available looking for Gary. And you asked me to stay on tonight because it would not have seemed proper to dispense with my services after I had been the one to find your son; and perhaps because you wanted to punish your wife-and Proxmire-by having me question them about a possible complicity. That would be the reason, too, why you told me tonight about the affair between them.
All that remains, Martinetti, is the question of Art Shanley. When I talked to you that first afternoon in your study, you went to the drapes and looked out at the rear grounds; you must have seen the gardener-Glen Shanley-out there, and later assumed that he might have overheard something between you and me, or between you and Channing earlier. It’s likely that you didn’t make any connection at all at first, because you were too upset by the hijacking and then too concerned, in spite of it all, for Gary’s safety. But once the District Attorney’s man, Reese, found the phone bug-and once I reported locating Gary-you had time to think and remember seeing the gardener.
But how did you know about Glen Shanley’s brother, Art, here in Half Moon Bay? Glen’s wife would have told me if you had talked to her. Well, maybe Glen mentioned his brother at one time or another, also mentioned that Art dabbled in electronics, and you recalled that, extrapolated it. You couldn’t have known for certain that Art Shanley was the hijacker, but you had a strong suspicion, and that was enough for you to come out here tonight …
I stopped talking mentally to Martinetti, watching him closely now. He seemed to be swaying slightly, like a frail and withered tree in a strong wind. He was no longer looking at me or even through me. He was lookingaround me to where the body of Art Shanley lay in its coagulating blood on the floor.
A sound that was something between a cough and a sob came from deep within him, perhaps from the very core of him. And he began talking again, in that same dead, unhuman voice. “I didn’t want to do this, I didn’t want to do this … I told him I’d give him fifty thousand and forget about what he’d done if he turned the rest of the money over to me, but he laughed, he laughed, he said that if he wasguilty, and he was, I knew it then, oh, I could see it in his eyes, he said he would be a fool to accept that kind of offer. He tried to throw me out, he put his hands on me and we struggled and then I I I I just took the gun out of my pocket and I shot him, I shot him …”
Again he stopped talking. I said softly, “Do you remember what you said to me tonight, at your home, Martinetti? About how any man is capable of murder- and a lot of other things, too-if he’s pushed hard enough, if he’s tempted strongly enough? Well, maybe you were pushed and tempted that hard, just as this real estate thing tempted you into having your own son kidnapped. Maybe you wanted Shanley dead, even though you wouldn’t admit it to yourself, because with him out of the way you were completely safe and you would have eliminated the man who caused you so much anguish, who almost killed your son and your chance to regain a lost fortune. Maybe you did intend to kill him all along. Why else the gun? Why else would you park your car in the trees by the road fork-that’s where it is, isn’t it? — instead of driving directly up to the cottage here? Why else did you shoot him?”