In bed, after turning off the light, Werner said abruptly, “In plain English. You’re leaving?”
“I really am,” she said quietly. They were lying on their backs under the sheet, watching headlights move across the ceiling. “I bought the ticket on the way home. I haven’t been brooding about it exactly. It just struck me all at once that I can’t live this way.”
“It’s been nine months. Would you consider rounding out the year?”
“Darling, I can’t. That would include my twenty-fourth birthday, and I take birthdays seriously. You don’t really want to kidnap anybody, do you?”
“I guess I really don’t. The martinis were talking.”
“I keep thinking about those people who kidnapped the bookie. They weren’t professionals. Professionals would go for higher stakes. They were people like us, Werner! People who needed a specific sum and couldn’t get it any other way. They’ll never do it again. It took a certain amount of planning, but a hell of a lot less than goes into designing a house. We’d want to research it carefully to be sure of picking the right person. That’s why I think Downey’s such a marvelous idea. He must have a list of every loan shark in town.”
The lifting effect of the gin was completely gone, and the headache was closing in. “How much do you think we’d have to pay him?”
“A full third.”
“The whole idea is to keep it small. Finish in twenty-four hours. Pam, seriously-can you see yourself putting a gun in somebody’s ribs and telling him to keep quiet and he won’t be hurt?”
“Not yet. It makes me sort of shivery. But if you really want some honesty, I feel shivery about New York, too.”
“Then don’t go, stupid.”
“Werner, I have to. Either that or give up.”
“We’ve spent some nice Sunday mornings in this bed.”
Her hand gripped his under the sheet. “You know I’m not going to turn into one of those dumb wives.”
“Les is pretty bossy with women. You’d have to admire his taste in wines.”
“Did I say I’m going back to Les? He was trying to change at the end, but God knows he had a long way to go. I prefer it with you. You know that. But not the way it is now.”
“We’d have to rent another house under another name. A different car. Steal one maybe. Think of some clever way to collect the ransom.”
“But not too clever. And wear masks.”
They were testing each other. Pam was the one who would have to approach Downey. That was the delicate part because of the real possibility that he might pretend to play along, fattening them up for the table-a standard police technique, as they both knew. It would be necessary to feel him out over a number of meetings. Meanwhile she would be postponing her departure, and Werner had a faint hope that even if the thing with Downey didn’t work out, she would change her mind about leaving.
They had a spaghetti party. Pam called Downey and told him her friends wouldn’t believe she knew a real flesh-and-blood detective, and would he drop in and prove it? Werner had reconciled himself to the fact that they couldn’t be sure of Downey-and even then they wouldn’t be altogether sure-until Pam had been to bed with him a few times. He didn’t like it, but he liked her New York idea even less. He managed to be away the next weekend, looking for work in Tampa. There was as little work in his field in Tampa as there was in Miami. On Monday, Pam reported that Downey had a pragmatic attitude to the matter of under-the-table income. He didn’t make regular collections, like many cops. The whole idea of being paid off by those vermin was repugnant to him. He took occasionally, but they didn’t pay him. He took. He didn’t want to co-exist. He wanted to wipe them out. That was his motivation. And in spite of the Nice Nellies and their regulations, he had wiped out a few! He had pulled his twenty-five years, and he could retire any time. But he wanted to make one clean score before he went, to supplement the pension. And loan sharks, it turned out, were high on his list, just below heroin pushers.
Chapter 3
Downey logged a few hundred miles following Eddie Maye and learning his schedule. They decided on a price of $125,000. Eddie wouldn’t have that much lying around probably, but he had been part of Larry Canada’s organization a long time, and there would be no problem about raising it. Maye lived normally, taking no unusual precautions. He had been picked up several times for one infraction or another, and he had never been caught carrying a gun. Werner liked hearing that. Eddie did things at regular times. He had an easy disposition and never yelled or jumped up and down at the races. Never angry, never in a hurry, he would give them no trouble.
Every Tuesday night, regularly, he visited a woman in Miami Springs. The set-up there was ideal, an attached two-car garage nearly as wide as the house itself, on a narrow lot. One of the garage doors would be left open for Maye’s VW, a weather-beaten red beetle with a joke bumper sticker: “Mafia Staff Car, Keep Ya Mitts Off.” Some sense of humor! Eddie followed an unvarying procedure. He drove in, closed the garage door, entered the house through the kitchen, stayed about an hour and a half, and went home. They decided to be in the garage waiting, Werner and Pam-with Downey in reserve in case anything went wrong and they needed a lift getting away. But what could go wrong?
On the Tuesday night they had fixed for the action, Downey was behind Eddie as usual. All of a sudden, the VW turned off abruptly without making a signal, darted into the exit from a shopping-center parking lot, ran through a stop sign on the way out, and was gone by the time Downey recovered. Downey drove straight to the Springs, parked at the curb four spaces down from the woman’s house, and waited to see if Eddie would keep his usual Tuesday night date. The garage door was up. The night before, cruising past very late, Downey had shot out the streetlight. In this sort of neighborhood, the sidewalks were never used. He slid low in the seat and started a cigarette.
Inside the garage, Pam and Werner were leaning against the second car, a medium-priced Chevy. They wore loose-fitting sweat shirts and hockey goalkeepers masks, very spooky, with slitted eyes and savage faces. Werner’s long hair, like Pam’s, was tucked up in a stocking cap. The props were ready. This was going to be quiet and painless. They had told each other that so often that they nearly believed it.
The TV was running in the house. In the garage, they could hear only an occasional gunshot and the scream of tires. Werner reached out, and his fingers grazed an unfamiliar object: she had wrapped strips of a torn sheet around her chest to alter her silhouette.
“Pretty soon now,” he whispered.
“It better be soon.”
He followed her arm upward and stopped with his thumb on the pulse in her throat. It was quicker than usual. She shook off his hand as a pair of headlights turned into the driveway.
They ducked out of sight. Werner shook chloroform onto the pad in his hand. The little car entered the garage, flooding the wall with light. The motor went off, then the lights.
Werner moved to the front of the Chevy. They had rehearsed these moves while they were alone. Any small noises would be covered by the sounds made by Maye getting out of the car. But Maye held up after opening the door. Werner’s receptors were quivering, and he heard a slight clicking sound from Pam. Her teeth had come together.
“Oh, God,” Maye said heavily from the VW, “I don’t think I can make it.”
He came out. Werner moved, and the garage door slammed down.
The plan was for Pam to throw the light switch, and while Eddie was immobilized by the sight of her terrifying mask, Werner would come in from behind and clap the chloroformed cloth over his mouth. But when the light flashed on, Maye was coming back in the space between the two cars, and that little change threw them completely off.