The Road To Ruin

50

MARK TOLD HIMSELF THERE was no point in having the jitters, not now, not when it was all over. Or at least this part was all over. Monroe Hall had been successfully extricated from his compound—with butler, but never mind—and the two of them, freed of their blindfolds and ropes, were now snugly tucked into separate locked upstairs bedrooms with sheets of plywood over the windows. Mark and Os and the union men were gathered in the main living room, removing dustsheets from the sofas and chairs, making cozy. Os had already filled the refrigerator with beer, some of which had been brought out for a victory toast. So there was no reason any more, if there had ever been, for Mark to have the jitters. And yet, he did.

This feeling of edginess, of nerves unstrung, had started just before the kidnapping. He’d been fine on the trip to borrow the horse and its carrier; he’d been fine getting into the carrier with the others to leave the driving to Mac; he’d even been fine when they’d made it past the guardshack.

When it had started, the butterflies, the twitchiness, the body-out-of-control feeling, was when he put on the ski mask. That awful hot wool against his face had been a kind of shock, a reality check.

This is real! he told himself. We aren’t just talking about this, we’re doing this. Looking around at the others, clustered in the swaying carrier in the semidark, looking at the ridiculous ways they’d chosen to conceal their faces, he’d suddenly thought, We’re crazy. People don’t do this sort of thing. Why don’t we just forget Monroe Hall? Why don’t we get over it, get on with our lives?

Well, that was a hell of a moment to come up with such an idea, while driving from the guardshack to Monroe Hall’s home. Looking around the interior of the carrier, it had seemed to Mark that everybody else was calm, assured, confident, ready, knowing exactly the dangers and their own skills, like paratroopers clustered at the open doorway of the airplane.

It was only when they’d dashed out of the carrier and laid hands on Hall himself—and the butler, but never mind—and the others had all started shouting like madmen, yelling orders at one another and so on, that he’d realized they were all having the jitters, too. It was not just him. And that knowledge, plus the success of the operation, had calmed him considerably, until Monroe Hall recognized his voice.

That was the moment. That was the moment his mouth opened, his throat closed, his eyes bulged, his heart contracted, and his hands began to shake like fringe on a cowgirl. He had been a wreck ever since, silent except when he had to whisper something to Buddy to say to Hall, and not even Hall’s current residence in a locked room nor the presence in his own hand of a full and frosty beer had done much to make him calm.

Recognized my voice!

“Well,” Mac said, dropping into a sofa like a relief package without quite spilling beer, then drinking beer, “that was one hell of a drive.”

“You did it great,” Buddy assured him.

“We acted, I would say,” Os informed them all, very nearly smiling, “in the finest traditions of Mission: Impossible.”

Mark had things he felt he could say at that moment, but somehow the words didn’t come. Somehow, his mouth didn’t open.

Recognized my voice!

Buddy said, “What’s the program now?”

“We let Hall go without dinner,” Os said. “It’s four-thirty now. We’ll have our own dinner—”

Ace said, “What about the butler?”

Everybody looked at him. Os said, “What about the butler?”

“Does he go without dinner, too?”

“Oh. No, no,” Os said, “we’ll feed him. Soups and things, with plastic spoons and things, so he can’t get any ideas.”

“He didn’t strike me,” Buddy said, “as a guy who’d get a lot of ideas.”

“True,” Os said. “But one can never be too careful.”

“Sure,” Buddy said. “But after we’ve had our dinner and the butler’s had his dinner and Hall hasn’t had his dinner, then what?”

“At around, say, eleven tonight,” Os said, “we’ll go in, all of us properly masked, and we’ll lay out the situation to Hall—I’m afraid you’ll have to go on doing the talking, Buddy.”

“Make me out a speech. Write it down.”

“Mark will do that,” Os said. “Won’t you, Mark?”

Mark nodded, a bit afraid the gesture would make his head roll off. It didn’t, and he stopped nodding.

Os said to the others, “My expectation is, Hall will refuse tonight. So we’ll switch off the electricity to that room and let him think it over in pitch black darkness for tonight. Tomorrow morning, we’ll bring up a big breakfast, full of good things to see and smell, like bacon and waffles and maple syrup and orange juice and coffee, and we’ll ask him if he’s ready to cooperate. My guess is, he’ll say no, so we’ll take the breakfast away again.”

“Good,” Ace said.

“I’ve got a problem here,” Mac said.

They all gave him their attention. Mildly, Os said, “Yes, Mac?”

“I got a home and a family,” Mac said.

“That’s right,” Buddy said, as though surprised at the reminder.

“In the first place,” Mac said, “nobody except us in this room knows we’re the ones doing what we’re doing.”

“As it should be,” Os said, and Mark nodded.

“So we gotta live normal lives,” Mac pointed out. “We can’t be here twenty-four hours a day.”

“I see your point,” Os said. “I do think it important we make a show of strength tonight. Could you three phone your families and make excuses, why you won’t be home till midnight?”

“Eleven,” Ace said. “Henrietta will go along with bowling or whatever, but the curfew’s eleven.”

“Me, too,” Buddy said.

Os said, “Then we merely move the schedule forward, talk to Hall at nine, then come back tomorrow. No one needs to stay here overnight, though actually I will. Mark and I will return horse and trailer, then I’ll come back here. In fact, I do have a right to be here, and I can keep watch.”

Buddy said, “The idea was, Mark was gonna write out the demands for me to read, because Hall recognized his voice, right?”

“Exactly,” Os said, and Mark shuddered.

Mac said, “What? Hall knows it’s Mark?”

“No,” Os said. “He knows he knows the voice, that’s all. That’s why he won’t hear Mark any more, and probably shouldn’t hear me, either.”

Buddy said, “My idea is, why don’t we just hand him the piece of paper, and he doesn’t hear anybody’s voice? That’d be scarier, wouldn’t it?”

Mac grinned. “Silent masked men,” he said, “with a note.”

They all liked that. “I’ll get some more beer,” Ace said, getting to his feet. “Then make my call.”