The building turned out to be a sprawling, ranch-style complex with a covered gallery bisecting it into two wings, and a solid rear section. There was a big lacquered redwood sign hung between two gnarled posts next to the entrance drive; the words San Mateo Professional Center were neatly wood-burned across the top, and below them were wide strips of brass lettered in white in two rows of six each. I saw that the building’s offices were occupied by several doctors and dentists, a certified public accountant, a lawyer; Channing’s name, with the wordsFinancial Consultantbelow it, was next to the bottom on the right-hand row-Number 9.
I parked my car in the diagonally striped lot to one side and walked around to the gallery. The various offices opened off of that, and it was cool and aromatic in there; multishaped wooden planters set into the stone floor were filled with trimmed cypress and laurel and red-and-white fuchsia and a half-dozen other plants and flowers. The center portion of the rear wall was comprised of a rough-stone waterfall-and-fountain, with pieces of colored tile forming a square mosaic pond for the water trickling down from a mossy, cavelike opening in the rock. Channing’s office was next to that, on the right; a plaque identical to the one on the sign by the drive-a little larger-was fitted to the door at eye level. I turned the knob and went inside.
I stood in a reception room like a hundred other reception rooms: thick saffron-colored rug on the floor, inoffensive outdoor prints on the walls, a settee and three chairs made of walnut and fitted with tweed cushions, three end tables and a low glass-topped table in front of the settee, with copies of Timeand Newsweek and Fortune and the Wall Street Journal neatly arranged on it, and a small functional metal desk occupying one corner.
Behind the desk, fingers flying over the keys of a small typewriter, was a thin, angular henna-haired woman in her mid-forties, wearing a mannish gray suit and a couple of ounces of lavender perfume. She had pinched cheeks and hazel eyes that looked as if they had seldom, if ever, shone with the heat of passion. Channing was apparently a no-nonsense boy when it came to business.
The woman finished what she was typing, let the automatic return flip the carriage back, and looked up at me with professional aloofness. Her smile was as manufactured as the color of her hair. “Yes, may I help you?”
I gave her my name, and said that Mr. Channing was expecting me. She nodded crisply and went primly through one of the two doors to the right of her desk, both of which were marked Private. I stood on the thick carpet with my hat in my hands, waiting. I tried not to think how badly I wanted a cigarette. A minute or so passed, and then the secretary came out and held the door and told me I could go in.
It was by no means a sumptuous office; it was a place where the sober task of making money was performed, and that told me a little more about what kind of man Allan Channing was.
He was standing by the windows that comprised the upper half of the wall behind his desk, wearing an olive-green tailor-made suit and a white shirt with French cuffs and gold links with a black onyx “C” on each of them. Sunlight slanted in through Venetian blinds partially closed over the windows, casting thinly pale bars across his face, and I could see deep purplish circles beneath the innocent eyes. He looked as if he had not slept very much the night before.
He came away from the windows as I entered, and we shook hands. He asked gravely how I was, indicated one of the two visitors’ chairs, and then went behind the desk and sank wearily into his swivel chair. He pressed the balls of his thumbs against his closed eyelids, held them there for a time, sighed, and looked up and across at me.
“The reason I asked you to stop by,” he said, “is a more or less confidential one. I’d appreciate it if whatever is said here this morning goes no further.”
“All right.”
“Thank you.” He got his lower lip between his teeth and worried it, as if he was not quite sure how to begin. Then, abruptly, he said, “I’d like your opinion.”
“On what, Mr. Channing?”
“This thing with Lou’s son. You seem to know about these matters.”
“Not much,” I said.
“Well,” Channing said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “What I’d like to know-what usually happens? I mean, after the ransom money is paid, is the victim usually allowed to go free?”
I frowned slightly. “There’s no way of predicting that,” I told him. “It takes a certain kind of person to carry off a kidnapping, and you never know in advance what he’s going to do.”
“Would you say the chances were likely?”
“I wouldn’t say.”
“Yes, but there must be statistics …”
“Statistics don’t mean anything at all in an individual kidnapping,” I said. “Any police officer would tell you that.”
“You think Lou should have called the police, don’t you? Instead of flatly agreeing to pay the ransom.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But you didn’t try to convince him of that yesterday.”
“No, and not because it would have negated my fee if I’d been successful, either.”
“I didn’t mean to intimate that,” Channing said quickly.
“Martinetti’s mind was made up, and no amount of talking I could have done would have convinced him otherwise. Besides, it wasn’t and isn’t my place. This involves his son, not mine or anyone else’s, and he’s got the right to make whatever decision he thinks is best.”
“Of course, of course.”
I watched him take a cellophane-wrapped Havana Partagas cigar from a walnut-and-bronze humidor on his desk; he had some connections, all right, to have gotten a brand like that into this country. He unwrapped it slowly, and used a silver trimmer from his desk to snip off the end. He rolled the cigar around in his fingers, and looked at me again. “What are the odds on the police catching the kidnapper?” he asked. “After the ransom is paid?”
Christ, what was the point of all this? My nerves were frayed this morning, and his bandying about was not helping matters any. He had something on his mind, but he was taking a hell of a long time putting voice to it.
I said, “Sometimes they catch them, and sometimes they don’t. It depends to a large degree on circumstance. Again, it’s not something you can predict.”
“I see,” Channing said. He used a bronze lighter on the cigar, rolling it in studied half-turns through the flame. The smoke was fragrant and whitish-gray, and I watched it with a kind of hunger. My hands were tight on my knees.
Channing leaned back in the chair and looked at the cigar, and his guileless eyes were troubled. He said, “I … suppose I should be frank with you.”
“That would be nice.”
“I’m in an uncomfortable position,” he said slowly. “I have always been a very cautious man when it came to money, you see. That is how I managed to attain the position of wealth and stability which I command today.”
I waited, not speaking.
“Lou Martinetti isn’t like that. He takes gambles, foolish gambles. In the past few months he has made some extremely ill-advised investments, and consequently has lost a considerable amount of money.”
I kept on waiting.
“Last night he and I made a careful check of his negotiable assets,” Channing said. “He doesn’t have three hundred thousand dollars. He couldn’t begin to raise even half that much, not in one week or one month. To put it simply, Lou Martinetti is not too far removed from bankruptcy.”
I had not expected that, but I was not as surprised as I might have been; the kind of businessman Martinetti had a reputation of being, the state of his finances at various times in the past, made such a revelation something less than startling. But I thought I saw the motivation for Channing’s earlier questions; the point of all this was becoming very clear.