“There’ll be an uptick,” Oakley said curtly.
“Then you’re reconfirming the order?”
“Of course I am.”
“Fine—fine. It’s just that I felt a duty to make sure you understood that—”
“I understand everything,” Oakley said. “Good-bye.” He dropped the receiver onto the phone with a racket and muttered an oath.
Orozco was watching him with guileless blandness. Oakley picked up the phone and dialed a Los Angeles number; went through a switchboard and a secretary and finally got to the man he wanted. “Phil, I want you to place an order with the floor specialist for five thousand shares of Conniston Industries. I want it done in such a way that the market is aware that I’m the one placing the order. Can do?”
“It can be done—but why? Didn’t you just sell a hundred thousand shares short through our office?”
“I did. I trust you’re keeping that under your hat.”
“Your name hasn’t been mentioned. Oh—I see. You want to force an uptick to get out from under the short sales.”
“Will you do it?”
A pause; then, in a more cautious tone, “Why not? I get a commission, don’t I?”
“Thank you,” Oakley said. When he hung up his face was less taut.
Orozco said, “The market assumes that if a close insider like you buys a block of stock like that, it must be going up. So you get your uptick and then you announce Earle Conniston’s death and the price of the stock dives to the floor and you make a few million bucks on your short sales. Cute.”
“I didn’t know you followed the market.”
“I’d have to be pretty thick in the head not to follow what you’re up to,” Orozco said. “It ain’t no skin off my nose, except I won’t feel so bad about socking you with a king-size bill for the job I been doing here.”
“I won’t haggle over it,” Oakley said, and exchanged a guarded glance with the fat man in which there was the gleam of shrewd mutual understanding. Oakley leaned back in the expensive leather chair and put a cigar in his mouth and smiled. It was quite some time before he realized, not without dismay, that he hadn’t even thought about Terry Conniston once in the past hour.
C H A P T E R Thirteen
Mitch’s right hand was swollen; clumsy and jumpy, he had pushed the red sports car out of the barn to get more light on the work but still the shadows beneath the dash conspired against him. He lay on his back like a contortionist, both legs hanging out the open door, the small of his back painfully braced against the ridge of the doorsill. His arms, lifted above his head, kept tiring quickly and he had to lower them to his chest and rest them. He had positioned the car so that by raising his head he could look past his knees at the porch of the abandoned store across the street; thus, at quick intervals, he kept surveillance on both the girls. He had let Terry keep the knife; it seemed to discourage Billie Jean from thoughts of assault.
He didn’t know what he wanted to do. Vague plans, half-formed, flitted through his mind. Maybe slip into some half-sized town in the Pacific Northwest, pick a common sort of name, slowly accumulate documentation for it and keep out of trouble so they wouldn’t have cause to fingerprint him.
Sudden agony bolted him out of the car. Terry came off the porch and walked toward him. He watched her: every move she made was vital and alive. Laced with hurts, he arched his back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got a goddamn charley horse.”
“I’m sorry—can I do anything?”
He straightened slowly and stared at her. “Look, I’m the kidnaper, you’re the kidnapee remember?”
She said, “I don’t think I’m afraid of you any more. If I ever was. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“You’ll take the car and run, of course. Leave me here. But I don’t want to be left here with her.” She gave Billie Jean, across the street pouting, a slantwise look.
“Okay, maybe I’ll take her with me a ways, put her off the bus someplace else.”
“That wouldn’t be too smart, would it?”
“Why not?”
“She’ll be found if you leave her alone on some desert road. She’ll be arrested and she hasn’t got the brains to keep quiet. She’ll tell them everything.”
“I guess so. What choice have I got? Kill her?”
“Could you?”
“No,” he said, not even hesitating. He made a face and got back down under the steering wheel and poked his knife up among the wires. Sooner or later he would have to hit the right combination; there were only so many wires leading into the ignition switch. He had cut them all, stripped the insulation with the pocket knife and twisted wires together until they began to break with metal fatigue. Sweat was sticky in the small of his back, in his palms, in his crotch, on his lips and throat. He talked in exasperated bursts while he worked. “I keep feeling Floyd like a weight on me. A goddamn ghost or something. I knew he wouldn’t come back—as soon as Georgie died I knew it but I didn’t have the guts to do anything. The bastard can’t live unless he makes everything dead around him.”
He lowered his arms to rest and lifted his head. She was still there when he twisted his face to locate her. It was no good: his muscles were cramping again, he had to stand up. He sat up on the doorsill and tugged up his baggy socks and got to his feet. “I don’t feel too great about leaving you here, either.”
A piece of a smile shaped her mouth. “I’m sorry. You sort of got stuck with me, didn’t you? Like a blind date.”
Mitch was sweat-drenched; he felt greenish and sick. “Floyd figured it out real good. I can’t even turn myself in to the cops. The cops believe facts—and the facts about this are as phony as a three-dollar bill. Two people dead and a kidnaping and a missing half million dollars. They’d throw me in hock and throw away the key.”
“You talk like somebody jumping out a window. It’s not the end of the world, Mitch. Don’t throw in the towel.”
“All suggestions,” he said acidly, “gratefully welcomed.” He got in the car on his back and reached for the wires again. His fingers trembled wildly. The merciless orange sun beat down vengefully.
Terry’s smoky voice came down to him, low but hard. “Let’s not just mope around and bleed about it, Mitch. What’s important is to keep a grip on yourself. Look—the thing to do is go after Floyd and get the money away from him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
He sat up, banging his head on the steering column; he emerged and stared. “What are you talking about?”
“Go after him, Mitch. You know where he went, don’t you?”
“Floyd? He’s a barracuda—he’d swallow me whole.”
“I’ll go with you. I’ll help.”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll go with you. Let me go with you.”
He gaped at her.
Her face hardened; she lowered her eyes. “I want my father to go on thinking I’m dead, for a little while at least.”
He blinked at her, dumbfounded; she said earnestly, “I can’t explain it all in a sentence, Mitch. But I want to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget. I want to punish him for—for a lot of things, I suppose. If you were a psychiatrist you could find all kinds of names for it. Maybe it’s bitchy and mean and neurotic and sick. But I want him to think I’m dead. I want him to cry!”
She turned away from him until he couldn’t see her face. He took a step forward but her back registered his advance; he stopped and opened his mouth, and closed it.