What of Terry Conniston?

Chapter Ten

Carl Oakley turned the playback switch and settled back in Earle’s chair to listen to the tape for the fourth time. In the background he heard Orozco’s muffled voice, talking into the phone. Frankie Adams sat at the back of the room and cleared his throat, hoarse from the fifty cigarettes he had consumed in the last eight hours.

The tape replayed the click of the telephone and the voice — uncannily Earle Conniston’s voice: “Yes?”

“Conniston?”

“Yes.”

“You know who this is.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Hang on a minute.”

The scratch of a small speaker held near the phone; Terry’s voice then, difficult to make out but identifiable: “Daddy? They told me to answer the questions about what I said when you showed me the new pool and what you usually call me — I said, ‘I see you’ve stocked it for me,’ and you call me ‘Baby’ even though I’ve asked you not to. They told me to say they haven’t hurt me and it’s true, they haven’t, but it’s dark and just miserable and please get me out of here. They don’t—”

The tape-machine was heard to click off; the kidnaper’s voice said calmly, “You don’t need to hear the rest of it. It satisfy you she’s alive?”

“Only satisfies me she was alive when you made tape,” the Conniston voice snapped. “Listen to me. Are you aware I’m very rich man? If—”

“I’m very much aware of that, Mr. Conniston.” The chuckling insinuation was infuriating; listening to it for the fourth time, Oakley still found himself snarling.

The Conniston voice — Adams — went on harshly: “I’m prepared to spend every last penny to track you down, see you pay for this. Won’t matter where you go, what you do. My people will find you. No trial, no do-gooder judge. Just you and me — I’ll see you die as slowly and painfully as it can be done.”

“Sure, Mr. Conniston. But that won’t change anything. You pay up and we turn her loose. Otherwise you can kiss her off. Have you got the money?”

There was a pause; it made Oakley smile grimly. Adams had played it just right. He gave it just enough time and then said, with the proper grudging surrender in his baritone, “Yes. Unmarked small bills.”

“That’s just dandy. Now I’ll tell you what you do with it. You pack it up in a small old suitcase — the nondescript kind that won’t attract attention in a bus station. No five-hundred-dollar Vuitton luggage, understand? Borrow it from somebody in the bunkhouse if you have to. Tomorrow morning at six you get in your car and put the suitcase on the seat beside you and drive out to the state highway. Drive down through Sonoita and take the back road past Elgin and Canelo, up to Patagonia. Take the dirt road south from Patagonia toward Harshaw and Washington Camp. You know where that is?”

“I’ve been there a few times.”

“Good. When you get past Harshaw you slow down to fifteen miles an hour and hold that speed all the way to Washington Camp. You’ll have your right-hand window rolled down and the suitcase handy on the seat beside you and when you see a mirror flashing sunlight in your eyes from the trees at the side of the road you’ll toss the suitcase out. Don’t slow down or stop. Don’t speed up. Just keep going down the road at the same speed until you get through Washington Camp. A mile or two the other side of Washington Camp you’ll come to a state picnic ground at the side of the road. There may be people picnicking there and there may not be. Either way, pull into the picnic ground and sit in the car until somebody contacts you. It will either be Terry or somebody who’ll tell you where to find her. Now, here’s the important thing. Time your arrival so that you leave Harshaw on the road to Washington Camp at exactly seven thirty, on the button. If you reach Harshaw early wait there till seven thirty and then start, and keep a steady fifteen miles an hour all the way to the picnic ground. That’ll get you to the picnic ground just before eight o’clock. Have you got it?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of car will you be driving?”

“White Cadillac two-door.”

“What year model?”

“This year.”

“Okay. If anybody’s in the car with you or we spot any official cars or airplanes or choppers you can forget all about Terry.”

“Understood. I haven’t informed police.”

“Smart.”

Beyond the kidnaper’s voice Oakley heard the faint rushing woosh of a jet plane going by, on the tape — a sound like ripping cloth. The kidnaper said, “You may have to wait a little while at the picnic ground. Don’t get nervous. We’ll check out the money and if it’s okay a signal will be passed and somebody will make contact with you. Allow at least two hours before you hit the ceiling. You’ll get your daughter back if you keep your head.”

Click.

Oakley switched the machine off and looked up. Orozco stood by the end of the desk, looming, a big loose brown man who sagged front and back.

Oakley said, “What about the trace?”

“They’re still working on it.”

“It’s taking them long enough.”

“I was fixin’ to call back and find out,” Orozco said. “There’s something funny about it, though.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s no pay phones on this local circuit. And what kind of kidnaper would use a private phone?”

“It could have been long distance. Direct-dial from a pay phone.”

“You’d have heard the coins drop and the operator give him the toll charges.”

Oakley scowled at him. “That’s so. What are you getting at?”

“I dunno,” Orozco said. “But it’s funny, that’s all.”

Oakley reached for the glass by the phone and sipped. Earle’s whiskey was a hundred proof, nine years in bond. He sat back and stuck one of Earle’s H. Upmann cigars in the corner of his mouth and said disagreeably, “I don’t like the feel of this. He didn’t seem to care whether we traced the call or not. He stayed on that phone a hell of a long time and he never even bothered to warn us not to trace it.”

“Yeah.” Orozco’s big fleshy face was thoughtfully creased. “Yeah. Listen, maybe—”

The phone rang. Oakley made a grab for it and barked into it; afterward his expression changed and he handed the receiver to Orozco. Orozco lifted it to his ear and talked and listened. When he hung up he said, “There wasn’t any phone call.”

“What?”

“No record of a call to this number on the computer.”

“They’re nuts. These God damned incompetent computers—”

“No. Wait a minute, Carl. Suppose it came from a wiretap.”

“A what?”

“A phone they hooked up to the wire someplace. Usually when you tap a wire you just connect an earphone because you don’t want to talk, you just want to listen in. But it’s easy enough to connect a two-way phone to a line anyplace along the wire. Linemen do it all the time when they repair a break and then call in to the central office to check out the line. You can call any number from a lineman’s phone but it doesn’t get recorded on the computer because the lineman doesn’t have a phone number. Get it?”

From the back of the room Frankie Adams said dryly, “That’s great. You’ve made a discovery that deserves three Eurekas and an Edison light bulb. Now all you need to do is follow every phone wire in the southwest from one end to the other until you find one that’s got holes in the insulation where they spliced into it. Give that man a great big hand, folks.”

Without dignifying Adams’ raucous commentary by replying, Orozco rewound the tape and switched it on again. He said, “What time did the call come in?”

“Twelve thirty-eight,” Oakley said. “I wrote it down.”

The tape scratched. “Yes?” “Conniston?” “Yes.” “You know who this is?” It droned on. Orozco was holding his wrist as if taking his own pulse, his stare fixed on his watch. No one stirred until, near the end of the recorded dialogue, Orozco let go of his wrist and turned off the recorder. “Six minutes. That means it went over about twelve forty-four.”

Oakley’s eyes widened; he said softly, “Sure. The jet.”

Adams complained, “What the hell are you talkin’ about now?”

“Of course,” Orozco observed, “it might have been a private jet or a commercial air liner, but probably it was one of them Air Force trainers from Davis Monthan up at Tucson. I don’t expect they’d give out flight-plan information to just anybody but I know somebody on the Tucson police force that owes me a favor. They’ll give the information to him.”

“Then get at it,” Oakley said. His glass was empty; he went out into the corridor. Frankie Adams trailed him to the bar. “How about explaining it to me?”

“Easy. A jet plane flew over the kidnaper at just about exactly twelve forty-four. If we can find out what planes were in the air at that time and precisely where they were, we’ve narrowed down the place where the phone call came from.”

“That’s a pretty flimsy clue.”

“It’s the only one we’ve got. When all you’ve got is a long shot, you shoot it.”

“How about putting men on that road where they want you to make the ransom drop?”

Oakley poured a drink and said, “And suppose they were spotted?”

“Use a plane, then. A helicopter. A balloon. Hell, it shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Why do you think they picked that particular road? It’s a narrow dirt road that snakes through the woods like a slalom course. You can’t spot it from overhead at all — the trees mask it out. And you’d have to post an army in the woods if you wanted to cover the whole road from the ground — there isn’t a straight stretch of more than a hundred yards anywhere along it. It’s up and down through canyons and hills all the way.”

“You’ve got to give them credit,” Adams said.

Oakley grunted and carried his drink back to the office. Orozco said, “They’ll call back. I just talked to a guy in Nogales about a suitcase.”

“Why go that far? We can use one of our own.”

“Sometimes this new electronic stuff comes in handy. It won’t hurt to have a bleeper in the suitcase.”

“Bleeper?”

Orozco grinned without mirth. “One of them Mission Impossible gadgets. Small enough so you can hide it in the hinges of the suitcase. It gives off a radio signal. You use a direction-finder to pick up the signal, and you can keep tabs on the suitcase. After we get Terry back we can maybe catch up with them by radio.”

“It’s worth a try. But whoever they are these characters seem pretty hip.”

“Sure. They may ditch the suitcase first thing. But I figure to take the chance. Can’t lose much except the price of the gadget. It’ll get here tonight. I told him to get amove on.”

The phone rang; Orozco answered it. The conversation was brief. When he hung up he said gloomily, “Focking Air Force.”

“They won’t disclose the flight plans,” Oakley said.

“It’s classified information,” Orozco said with a straight face. “Nobody knows where their planes are except them. And of course anybody who happens to be looking up at the time when they fly over. Security, you know?” He shook his head in dumbfounded exasperation. “Shit. If we had more clout we could probably force it out of them but we can’t push it too hard unless we let them know what’s happening.”

“Which we can’t do.”

“Earle Conniston picked a fine time to die,” Orozco agreed.

“I know a general or two in Washington. Maybe I can exercise some leverage.” Oakley sat down at the phone and began to make calls. It took him twenty minutes, at the end of which time he sat back in disgust. “They’re both gone for the day. They’ll call back in the morning.”

“Long time to wait,” Orozco said.

Adams, in the doorway, said uncertainly, “On the tape he played over the phone. Terry complained about how it was dark and miserable. Dark, she said. You think that means she’s blindfolded?”

“I hope to God it does,” Oakley murmured. Unsatisfied, Adams drifted out of the room, his thin nostrils dilating, his fists contracting.

Oakley got up and stared out the window at a seventy-dollar cow wandering past the corral fence. Behind him Orozco said, “With Conniston dead, what’s going to happen about the chicano land claims?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Oakley said absently.

“They ain’t going to give up their demands just because he’s dead. In fact, time his will comes up for probate, they may just challenge the whole thing in court.”

“Let them. It’s not my problem.”

“You’re the executor, ain’t you?”

Oakley turned with a snap of his shoulders; irritable, he said, “Leave it be, Diego. Let’s get this thing ended first.”

Under the padding of flesh Orozco’s blunt jaw was set. “There’s people starving, Carl.”

“They’ll just have to go on starving until we get Terry back.”

“And suppose we don’t get her back? Alive, I mean.”

“I told you. We’ll discuss it afterwards. Now drop it.”

Orozco’s shrewd eyes studied him. “Okay, Carl,” he murmured. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”