Bahama Crisis

Eleven

That was on Saturday. Billy stayed to lunch and then departed, saying that he was going to Miami on business for the Cunningham Corporation, and from there to New York. He gave me telephone numbers where I could find him. On Sunday I caught up with paperwork.

Monday was — well, Monday was Monday — one of those days when nothing goes really wrong but nothing goes really right; a day of niggling futilities and a rapidly shortening temper. I suppose we all have days like that.

I dined in the restaurant and went to my room early, after seeing Karen to bed, intending to go to bed myself and to scan some managerial reports before sleeping. I have never known why one is supposed to be vertical while working, and I can read perfectly well while flat on my back. I had just got settled when the telephone rang and a voice said in my ear, as clear as a bell, ‘Mangan? Is that you?’

‘Yes. Who’s speaking?’

‘Jack Cunningham here. Is Debbie there?’

‘No, I thought she was with you. Where are you?’

‘Houston.’ His voice suddenly receded although he was still speaking. I caught a few scattered words and concluded he was consulting with someone else.’...not there... must be right... Billy...’ He came back full strength. ‘Is young Billy there?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He was here on Saturday. He’ll be in Miami if he hasn’t gone on to New York.’

Again he withdrew and I heard incomprehensible bits of a conversation nearly 1000 miles away. ‘...Miami... airplane... both...’ then Jack said loudly, ‘Tom, you pack a bag and be ready to get your ass over here.’

I resented that rasping tone of command. ‘Why? What’s happening?’

‘I’m not going to talk about it now. There’s a satellite up there spraying this conversation all over the goddamn planet.’

‘I don’t see...’

‘Damn it! Do as I say and don’t argue. There’ll be a jet at Freeport International in about two hours. Don’t keep it waiting, and be prepared to stay over awhile.’ The connection broke and silence bored into my ear.

I checked the time. It was 9.30 in the evening.

Much against my will I got out of bed and dressed, impelled by the fizzing urgency in Jack Cunningham’s voice. Then I thought of Karen, asleep in the next room. Damn Jack Cunningham! Damn the whole blasted family! I rang the desk and asked the clerk to find Kitty Symonette and send her up to my suite, then I started to pack a bag.

I was just finishing a letter when Kitty Symonette tapped at the door and I let her in. ‘Sit down, Kitty. I have problems and I want you to help me.’

She looked slightly surprised. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

Kitty was the hotel nurse and I liked her very much, and so did Karen. She was totally unflappable and equally reliable. ‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’

‘No. I was going to have an early night.’

‘Good. I have to go away and I don’t know for how long. Tomorrow I want you to take Karen to stay with my sister on Abaco. I’ve just spoken to Peggy and Karen is expected.’ I scribbled my signature. ‘These are instructions for Bobby Bowen to take you.’

‘No problem there,’ said Kitty.

‘Karen is asleep in that room there. I don’t want her to wake alone so you’d better sleep in my room tonight.’

‘You’re going right away?’

‘This minute. I don’t want to wake Karen now, but you tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can make it.’

Kitty stood up. ‘I’ll collect some things from my room.’

I gave her the key to the suite, picked up my bag, and went to my office where I collected my passport from the office safe. As an afterthought I took the packet of 2000 American dollars which I kept there for an emergency and put them in my wallet.

The wait at the airport was long and boring. I drank coffee until it sickened me, then had a couple of scotches. It was after midnight when the public address speakers said, ‘Will Mr Mangan please go to the enquiry desk?’

I was met by a pretty girl dressed in a yellow uniform trimmed with black and with a badge on her lapel, two letters ‘C’ intertwined in a monogram. The outfit made her look waspish, about as waspish as I was feeling. ‘Mr Mangan?’

‘Yes,’ I said shortly.

‘This way, sir.’ She led the way from the concourse and through a side door. Standing on the apron not very far away was a Lockheed JetStar in gold with black trim; on the tailfin was the Cunningham monogram. Around it was a collection of airport vehicles like workers around a queen bee. I followed her up the gangway and paused as she stopped inside the door to take my bag. ‘Glad to have you with us, Mr Mangan.’

I could not reciprocate her feelings, but I murmured, ‘Thank you,’ and passed on into the main cabin.

Billy Cunningham said explosively, ‘Now, will you, for Christ’s sweet sake, tell me what’s going on?’

From Freeport to Houston is about 1000 miles across the Gulf of Mexico. We droned across the Gulf at 500 miles an hour and Billy was morose — sore because he had been yanked out of Miami as unceremoniously as I had from Freeport — and he was irritated when he found I could tell him nothing. ‘What bugs me,’ he said, ‘is that for the first time in my life I’m going somewhere in an airplane and I don’t know why. What the hell’s got into Jack?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly. ‘I think it’s something to do with Debbie.’

‘Debbie! How come?’

‘The first thing Jack asked was if she was with me — in Freeport.’

‘He knew she wasn’t,’ said Billy. ‘She was in Houston.’

I shrugged. ‘Air travel is wonderful. A girl can get around fast.’

‘You think she’s taken off again?’ He snorted. ‘That girl wants her ass spanked — and if you won’t do it, then I will. It’s time she settled down and learned how to behave.’

There was nothing more to say so we did not say it.

There was a car waiting at Houston airport and an hour later I was at the start of a Cunningham conference. At least it was the start for me; the others had evidently been arguing the toss for a long time — and it showed. Jack Cunningham was at the head of the table, his silver hair making him look senatorially handsome as usual, and Billy One sat next to him. Debbie’s brother, Frank, eyed me with arrogant and ill-concealed hostility. As background there were half a dozen other collateral Cunninghams, most of whom I did not know, ready to take their cue from the powerful tribal bosses. This was the Cunningham clan in full deliberation and, predictably, there was not a woman in sight.

Our arrival brought instant silence which did not last long. Billy flipped a hand at his father, surveyed the gathering, and drawled, ‘Morning, y’all.’ Uproar broke out, everybody talking at once and I could not distinguish a word until Jack hammered the long table with a whisky bottle and yelled, ‘Quiet!’

It could have been the traditional smoke-filled room but for the air-conditioning and, indeed, they did look like a crowd of old-time political bosses carving up next year’s taxes. Most had their jackets off and had loosened their neckties and the room smelled of good cigars. Only Jack had kept on his coat, and his tie was securely knotted at his neck. Even so he looked decidedly frayed around the edges, and there was a persistent twitch in his left cheek.

He said, ‘Tom, do you know what’s happened to Debbie?’

The question could have had two meanings — he really wanted to know if I knew, or it was rhetorical — and there was no way of knowing from the inflection of his voice. I said, ‘How would I know? She left me.’

‘He admits it,’ said Frank.

‘Admit! I admit nothing — I’m telling you, if she hasn’t told you already. She’s her own woman and she ran away.’

‘Ran away from what? That’s what I’d like to know.’

Billy casually walked up to the table and picked up a whisky bottle. ‘Any clean glasses around?’ Then he swung on Frank. ‘Button up your mouth.’

‘You can’t...’

‘Shut it,’ said Billy quietly, but there was a cutting edge to his voice. ‘Your sister’s a brat. Everything she ever wanted she got, but she wouldn’t know a man when she saw one, not a real man. When she found she couldn’t handle him she picked up her marbles and wouldn’t play any more.’ He looked at Jack. ‘Nobody’s going to hold a kangaroo court on Tom. Hear?’

Billy One stirred. ‘Quiet, boy.’

‘Sure,’ said Billy easily. ‘I’ve said the core of it, y’all know that.’ He dropped into a chair. ‘Come sit here, Tom; you look as though you need a drink.’

I suppose I did; we both did. And it was half past three in the morning. I took the chair he offered and accepted the drink, then I said, ‘If you want to know what happened to Debbie why don’t you ask her?’

I was now facing Billy One across the table. He laid his hands flat. ‘That’s just it, son. She’s not around to be asked.’

‘Jesus!’ said Billy, and stared at Jack. ‘Your little girl runs away again, and you jerk me from making the sweetest deal you ever saw?’

The tic convulsed Jack’s cheek; he looked defeated. ‘Tell him, Billy One,’ he said in an old man’s voice.

Billy One stared at the back of his hands. He said slowly, ‘We weren’t sure at first, not really, not even this afternoon when...’ He looked up at me. ‘Now you’re here we’re pretty sure Debbie’s been kidnapped.’

Suddenly it all did not seem real. My head swam for a moment as a host of questions crowded in. I picked the first at random. ‘Who by?’

‘Who the hell knows?’ said Frank disgustedly. ‘Kidnappers don’t hand out business cards.’

He was right; it was a stupid question. Billy said, ‘When?’

‘Saturday, we think; maybe Sunday early.’ And today was late Monday or, rather, very early Tuesday. Billy One nodded down the table. ‘Last one of us to see her was Joe’s wife.’

‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘Linda and Debbie went shopping Saturday morning — Sakowitz and Nieman-Marcus. They lunched together.’

‘Then what?’ asked Billy.

Joe shrugged. ‘Then nothing. Linda came home.’

‘Did she say what Debbie was going to do Saturday afternoon?’

‘Debbie didn’t tell her.’

This did not seem to be getting anywhere. I cleared my throat, and said, ‘How do you know she’s been kidnapped? Billy, here, jumped to the conclusion that she’d taken off again. So did I. So how do you know?’

‘Because the goddamn kidnappers told us,’ said Frank.

Billy One said, ‘We got a letter this... last afternoon — least, Jack did. Tell the truth I don’t think we believed it at first, neither of us. Thought it was some kind of hoax until we discovered she really wasn’t around.’

‘Where was Debbie staying?’

‘At my place,’ said Jack. He looked at me reproachfully. ‘My girl was very unhappy.’

‘She was last seen by the family at midday on Saturday and it took you until Monday to find out she’d disappeared?’ I looked at Jack. ‘Wasn’t her bed slept in?’

‘Take it easy, Tom,’ said Billy One. ‘We thought she’d gone back to you.’

‘She’d have left word,’ I said. ‘She may be irresponsible, but she’s not that irresponsible. When she left me she at least had the decency to leave a note telling me where she’d gone, if not why. What about her clothes? Didn’t you check to see if any were missing? Or, more to the point, not missing?’

‘Oh, Christ!’ said Frank. ‘She’d been living away. Who knew what clothes she had?’ He waved an impatient hand. ‘This is wasting time.’

‘I agree,’ I said emphatically. ‘Have you notified the police?’

There was silence around the table and Jack evaded my eye. Finally Billy One said quietly, ‘Kidnapping is a federal offence.’

I knew that; it had been a federal offence ever since the stink caused by the Lindbergh kidnapping. ‘So?’

He tented his fingers. ‘If it was just a matter for the State Police we’d be able to keep control — we draw a lot of water here in Texas. But once the Federal Government gets into the act — and that means the FBI — then anything could happen. Since Watergate every Government department has been as leaky as a goddamn sieve, and that damn fool, Carter, calls it open government.’ In his voice was the contempt of the old-line Republican for a Democratic administration. ‘The FBI is no exception, and if the newspapers get hold of this I wouldn’t give a bent nickel for our chances of getting Debbie back safely.‘

‘We can control our press down here, but those newspapers back east would really screw things up,’ said Frank.

‘To say nothing of the professional bleeding hearts on TV,’ Joe commented.

‘So you haven’t told the police,’ I said bleakly.

‘Not yet,’ said Billy One.

‘Hell, we can pay,’ said Billy. He grinned sardonically. ‘And stop it out of Debbie’s allowance when we get her back.’

‘If we get her back,’ said Jack. There was agony in his voice. ‘You know what kidnappers are like.’

‘Right,’ said Billy. ‘But if you don’t call the cops you don’t get her back unless you pay — so let’s start opening the coffers.’

‘It’s not as easy as that,’ said Billy One. ‘Not by a long shot. There are... difficulties.’

‘What difficulties? These guys want dough, we want Debbie. We give them how many dollars they want and we get Debbie.’ Billy’s voice turned savage. ‘Then we go hunting and we get the money back and maybe some scalps. But I don’t see any difficulty.’

‘You brought one with you,’ said Frank.

‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

‘I mean that this son of a bitch...’

‘Shut up!’ said Billy One. He sighed. ‘These guys don’t want money, Billy. They want him.’ He was pointing at me. ‘He’s the ransom.’