Win Some, Lose Some

Chapter 16

DeLuca didn’t get a hell of a lot of sleep. Greco had been told to call him the instant it happened, or the instant it failed to happen. DeLuca kept sitting up in bed to look at the time. He almost wished he had gone along. You couldn’t, though. That was the reason for armies, so the general can live to become president of Lockheed or General Dynamics.

His wife asked if he felt like being rubbed. That was her expression for making love. He said no, too much on his mind. He went to sleep finally. A few minutes later the clock went off, bringing him out of a crazy dream in which Canada lay on top of him with his full weight. He almost skipped his exercises this morning. He had never felt less like push-ups and bends. But for five years he had never missed a day, feeling that if he ever started to take it easy he would go all the way, back to cigarettes, back to the days when he was the humble accountant. So he forced himself to complete the full battery.

Greco called from downstairs while he was drinking his vegetable juice. It was O.K.! It had gone according to plan!

DeLuca took the six thousand he still owed the boys and went downstairs. Greco looked as though he had crawled first through a sewer, then through a blackberry thicket. He broke into a happy smile, which DeLuca returned. Mission accomplished, right? DeLuca passed the money and went back to his apartment. He skipped rope hard for fifteen minutes until he was able to stop grinning.

The first thing he did when he got to the office was call a meeting. He was making a list of things to be covered, when a thought struck him. Greco had described the scene in full detail, but before DeLuca went all the way out, he had better make sure.

He called the sheriff’s office, identified himself as a UPI man, and asked for confirmation. Indeed, he was told, a thirty-foot trailer had caught fire on the Interstate early that morning. Destruction was total. In the ashes the firemen had discovered the blackened remains of an adult male who had apparently been asleep in one of the bedrooms. A bit taller than average. The pickup that had been hauling the trailer was registered to a man named Allan Vaughan, who happened to be in jail at that moment on drug charges. They were figuring that the rig had been stolen.

When the others arrived, DeLuca, his face grave, announced that their friend Larry Canada had disappeared. His badly smashed Cadillac had been discovered at the Homestead construction site, and all in all, it didn’t look good. This might be one of those cases where the body would never be found. DeLuca was sorry to be announcing such bad news because Canada had accomplished a lot and he would be missed. But certain changes, in De Luca’s opinion, were overdue. Instead of waiting on further news, he proposed that the changes be put in effect at once.

Whether the others thought he had arranged this himself or was merely taking advantage of Canada’s absence, they seemed to accept the way he was taking over. His secretary broke in.

“Molly Canada-she says it’s very important. Can you take it?”

“Ask her to hold.”

He adjourned the meeting. As soon as the others were out of the office, he took the call.

“He’s alive!” Mrs. Canada cried into the phone. “They want one million dollars!”

DeLuca smiled, then erased it quickly so it wouldn’t show in his voice. “Now, Molly, somebody’s trying to pull something. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. I should have called earlier, but I was hoping against hope-”

“Lou, my God, what are you saying-”

“Get hold of yourself. You knew from the first minute we had to consider the possibility. You know he had enemies.”

“He’s dead?”

“Molly, I’m afraid so. The information I have, the vehicle he was riding in caught on fire, and well, he didn’t get out. I couldn’t be sorrier. Oh, we had differences, but there was one thing about Larry-nobody could ever accuse him of being anything but totally sincere.”

“Lou, his voice sounded so-”

“Sounded, what do you mean, sounded?”

“I got a tape. Lou, a million dollars!”

DeLuca had a good grip on the phone. A tape-when did those construction guys have a minute to make a tape, if they just happened to luck into the kidnapping when they were in there stealing tools? He’d better get over and take charge of that tape so it wouldn’t confuse things during the changeover.

“And then on the phone-” she was saying.

“The phone!” DeLuca came out of his chair, and only the force of gravity kept him from going further. “He talked to you on the phone? When?”

“Lou, I’m so-”

“Please, Molly. This is very important.”

“Maybe half an hour ago? An hour? He said not to call anybody until I listened to the tape. It was all staticky and there were car noises-It caught fire? Why did it catch fire?”

DeLuca said carefully, “Molly, I’ll be there in ten minutes. Make yourself a cup of tea and put some whiskey in it. I’ll take care of everything.”

He slammed the phone down and left at a run, checking his pace abruptly when he saw that the four men from the meeting were still at the elevator. They rode down together. Two of these men had national connections by kinship and marriage. In theory, they were all Canada’s men. If by some crazy chance Canada was still alive, DeLuca’s imprudent remarks of a moment ago would be reported back. DeLuca had moved boldly and decisively. As far as these men knew, he couldn’t be sure Canada was dead unless he had ordered the killing himself, quite a step for the number man. But to exploit the disappearance without being sure of the death took an equal amount of balls. Either way, DeLuca couldn’t back down. He had announced the revolution. It was stomp or be stomped on.

One of them asked if he was keeping up with his tennis.

“Every day.” He almost succeeded in smiling. “Maybe I’ll have to skip the next couple. Plenty to do!”

They parted on the sidewalk with another round of handshakes and smiles. He drove to the island, and Molly Canada let him in. She had taken his advice about the tea with whiskey in it, omitting the tea. She was shaky on her high heels. She fell toward him and clung. She had a damp Kleenex in her hand, but she might have done that with tap water to make him think she had been crying.

He moved her to the sofa. “Start with the phone call, Molly. You picked up the phone and a voice said, ‘This is Larry.’ Go on from there.”

But she couldn’t do it like that. She had to do the full scene, with more Kleenex. He finally extracted the information that the phone conversation had included questions and answers and thus couldn’t have been taped in advance. It was definitely her husband’s voice, not some clever mimic imitating a dead man. In Greco’s version-and what DeLuca was going to do to that kid! — Canada had gone up in flames between two-thirty and three in the morning. Nevertheless, it now seemed, he had been alive at nine, ordering his wife to stay home because a package was going to be delivered and he didn’t want her to be off at the beauty parlor. As she said this, Mrs. Canada’s hand flew to her hair. What else? That he was the prisoner of some determined and dedicated people who were not to be fooled with.

“And he said one particularly cruel thing,” she said with an upward look. “He has all his personal cash in a place nobody can find it, and if anything happens to him, all I’ll have is the house, not a single other penny. It was Larry, all right. That was a Larry touch, completely uncalled for.”

“Now let’s hear the tape,” DeLuca said grimly.

The kidnappers had provided not only a cassette, but a tape recorder to play it on. She had trouble with the controls and pressed the erase button by mistake. DeLuca caught it in time.

Canada’s voice sounded tired and a little forced, as though he were reading a statement prepared for him by someone else. “I have been kidnapped. I am in serious danger. These are serious people. I have been treated O.K. so far. Do not under any circumstances inform the police. Do not attempt to cut corners or depart from instructions unless you would like to be a widow. Tell Lou DeLuca, nobody else. They want one million dollars. I suggest half from the construction company, half from friends. Fifty-and hundred-dollar bills. Do not try to bait the bills or record serial numbers. Lou has one assignment from me. Get the money together, and don’t try any fancy stuff, there is no way it can be done. At four-thirty exactly, four-thirty on the dot, Lou will come out of our house with the money in a suitcase. Alone. Drive slowly to the south parking lot of Miami High School. There he will find a red pickup. It will be equipped with a citizen-band radio. Do not change channels, Lou. Turn it on. Drive west on 395 at exactly forty miles per hour. You will receive further instructions by radio. If anybody does anything foolish, like being a half hour late or a couple of thousand short, three things will happen. I will be shot. You will be shot, Molly. And Lou will be shot. That’s what they promise, and I believe them. If there aren’t any snags, I’ll be home for supper. Make something good.”

“I think chicken crepes,” she said. “He loves them. Chocolate cake.”

The chimes sounded while DeLuca was rewinding the tape. This was a special-delivery letter, which Molly signed for and tore open breathlessly. It contained stale news. Her man had been kidnapped and the price was a million. The one interesting thing was that the note was almost a copy of the Eddie Maye one-same ink, same style. It was out of sequence, it should have arrived before the phone call. But that was the post office for you.

DeLuca had to rush if he wanted to meet the deadline. And having heard that his name was number three on the kill list, he was no longer thinking about sabotaging the collection. Canada himself had probably contributed that suggestion-quick thinking, Larry. DeLuca would have to hand over the full sum. If he had anything to say about what happened after that, however, Canada wouldn’t be alive to eat supper.

He gave Molly a quick, sympathetic hug and told her he would keep in touch. Flushed and excited, a little drunk, she was much more attractive today than he had ever seen her. He took both the tape and the recorder because he was going to be pitching to some very suspicious people. Cash was the problem. There would be notes to arrange, signatures to get. DeLuca himself, to maintain his new status, would have to contribute a tenth.

His first stop was the Doral. After the busy night, Greco had decided to stay over. A girl in unbuttoned pajamas came to the door to see who was being so insistent. Greco was all but asleep, smiling blissfully while another girl chewed at him. Nick didn’t seem to be home, though that bed had been slept in. DeLuca picked a gun off the carpet and used it to drive the girls into the hall, throwing their clothes after them. Greco was up on his elbows.

“Hey, man-”

DeLuca swung, and he dodged back. “I don’t see why-” he whined.

“What gave you the funny idea Canada was in that trailer? Did you see him?”

“Not with my own eyes, no, but those other guys, one of them, looked in and saw him. If he said it once, he said it a couple of times. I wouldn’t shit you! Would I still be here? I’d be in Mexico.”

“Where’s your tall friend?”

“Well, Nick-he got shot and I had to put him in the fire.”

DeLuca nodded. “Not as heavy as Canada, but about the same height.”

Greco, paling, went even deeper into the pillow. He looked at the gun in DeLuca’s hand and began to babble. “I didn’t, honest-”

He ended up in a fetal coil. DeLuca, disgusted, ordered him into a cold shower. In a pillow case, where Greco had hidden them from the girls, he found the six big ones he had paid for the job. Becoming impatient almost at once, he rolled up his sleeve, went in, and dragged Greco out of the shower. The big question was, who were the three people who had driven off with the trailer? All Greco knew was that they had definitely been after Canada. The name of Canada had been mentioned over and over. He would swear to that.

To bring his anger under control, DeLuca forced himself to unwrap a stick of gum slowly and deliberately and chew it down.

“Well, you blew it,” he told the boy, shivering in the chill blast of the air-conditioning. “This has been embarrassing for me, and if that slob comes home, it could be a lot more than embarrassing. I feel like blasting you, I really do, and start over with somebody else.”

“Please-”

In fact, DeLuca was strongly tempted. The trouble was, the recruiting and briefing would all take time, and he shouldn’t even be here, he should be out accumulating the ransom.

“I’m going to give you one more crack. Better not fuck up twice. Stay here. No women. Be awake and dressed and straight by three-thirty.”