“And they’re as slippery as watermelon seeds. We’ve got to do better than this, Diego.”
“It’s coming along,” Orozco said mildly. “We’ll crack it. You remember that voice on the phone—too much conceit there. When you get an amateur who thinks he knows more about strategy than Clausewitz you got a character who’s going to make mistakes. When he does we’ll have him.”
Oakley took the lid off the boiling water and poured. “Maybe. But I can’t stand sitting around here waiting. Get a man in here to keep an eye on Adams and Louise. I’m going back to that ghost town with you. Maybe we’ll find something they missed yesterday.”
An hour later he was ready to go when the phone rang. He answered it and heard the words he had been waiting for: “Carl? You’ve got your uptick. The market opened with Conniston up.”
“Good. You’ve got your instructions.”
He had to make a dozen phone calls to put the machinery in motion; now that things had begun to stir he found that he had snapped out of his melancholy dirge. It was like the opening rounds of a courtroom battle. After the morose night of stage fright he was at last in the arena of action; it brought him up on his toes, settled his mind into a new clarity of focus, rekindled his confidence and decisiveness. Before, trying to keep control of the whole mess had been like trying to hold onto his hat in a gusty wind. The risks had appeared formidable, the juggling task a formidable one. But now he moved with sure firm steps. He phoned Earle’s doctor, and while they waited for the physician he held a curt briefing session in Earle’s office, instructing Louise and Frankie Adams—in Orozco’s absence—in what they were to tell the doctor. The doctor arrived at ten, acquisitive and tame; the mendacious ritual was attended to and Oakley walked the doctor out to his car: “You’ll receive the—fee—in cash, of course, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t deposit it in any bank accounts. Put it in a lock box and spend it where nobody knows you. It isn’t reported from our end and we won’t want you reporting it as coming from us. You never know when they’ll hit you with a spot-check out of the computer.”
“Of course.” The doctor was urbane, avuncular. “I’ll arrange everything with the funeral director. The embalming will be done here if that’s satisfactory. I presume you’ll want him buried here on the ranch?”
“I believe he wanted cremation. It’s in his will.”
“Excellent,” the doctor said, and added with a frank smile, “We wouldn’t want there to be any possibility of exhumation for autopsy, would we?”
When the doctor had left, Oakley called his office and told his secretary of Conniston’s death. There was a brief exchange of appropriate solicitudes and eulogized phrases after which Oakley gave instructions for the release to the press of the news of Conniston’s death. Then he left instructions with the ranch staff to admit no journalists through the gates or into the main house; he would, he said, issue a formal statement on behalf of the family tomorrow afternoon—in the meantime Conniston’s wife and daughter, he said, were too grieved to meet with the press. Three of Orozco’s men stood guard around the house to insure that no one disturbed the weeping widow and orphan.
By afternoon, he knew, the death of the tycoon would be known on Wall Street. The price of Conniston stock would dive through the floor. Oakley’s dummy-fronts would cover his short sales and use the money from that to buy up the stock again at its crippled price. He estimated it would take him about thirty-six hours to gain control. The key to his scheme was the fact that Earle had not owned a controlling interest in his own business—he had been expanding so fast he had to sell stock to raise capital; and he had made every effort to see that large blocks of stock never accumulated in the hands of possible rivals, even members of his own board of directors. Conniston had held about twenty-three percent of the outstanding common stock in Conniston Industries, the holding conglomerate which owned all the Conniston subsidiaries. That stock would go to Louise and to Terry if she were still alive. Thousands of stockholders owned the remaining seventy-seven percent—mutual funds, private investors, insurance portfolios. Oakley already owned eight percent; he needed forty-three percent of the rest—less than two thirds of the stock which would become available in the impending mini-panic. When the news of Conniston’s death hit the ticker the big funds would be the first to sell, trying to liquidate before the inevitable plunge. Their quick sales of large blocks would further depress the price. Even if the Exchange suspended trading in the stock Oakley’s brokers would pick it up over the counter. The beauty of it was that Oakley was not an officer of Conniston Industries—he had been Conniston’s personal attorney but held no official title—and he owned less than ten percent of the stock; thus, in legal terms, he was not an “insider” and was not required to divulge his activities to the SEC. He had broken no law except to conceal the facts in Conniston’s death; and it was hardly likely anyone would reveal his part in that. All of them had too much to lose.
Luck, he thought, swinging back toward the ecstatic extreme. It was all working out perfectly…. But later, driving back from Soledad with the Rymer file on the Cadillac seat between them, he felt a sudden chill when Orozco said, “My boys could work a lot faster if I told them what we’re really up against. They don’t even know it’s a kidnap caper.”
“Are you suggesting we tell them?”
“No. I imagine by now it’s too late for you ever to reveal the kidnaping to anybody. You’d have to admit how you took advantage of it to get control of Conniston’s business.”
Oakley stiffened. He held his tongue for a long while, thinking fast. The highway two-laned down through the cow-country valley and in spite of the air-conditioning he felt the sudden pressure of the day’s torpid heat. Dark sweat-circles stained the armpits of his shirt. Unnerved, he said, “Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions, Diego.”
“I’m a detective, remember? Maybe I heard some of those phone calls you made this morning.”
“You mean you listened in?”
“I’d rather call it monitoring the conversation.” Orozco turned in the seat and tapped Oakley on the shoulder. “Maybe what really worries you is the possibility Terry’s still alive.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If she’s alive, she knows about the kidnaping. How you going to shut her up?”
Oakley showed his teeth around his unlit cigar. “I’m not that cold-blooded. What do you take me for?”
“I honestly don’ know, Carl. I ain’t got you figured out yet.”
“Let me know when you do,” he said, recklessly vicious.
“I’ll do that.”
The road took them east between yellow-grass rolls of cattle country. Some distance ahead and a bit to the right they could see the gray rise of the Chiricahuas beyond the cliff of Biscuit Mountain. All forest up there, and abandoned old diggings; you could ride forty miles horseback through those mountains and never cross a road, never raise the lights of a human habitation. Oakley, who had room in his soul for a streak of ardent conservationism, knew those mountains from boyhood and felt, once in a while, a keen sadness at the passing of such beasts as the timber wolf and the mountain lion, which had been hunted relentlessly out of the region.
Is it a sign of encroaching old age that the mind starts to wander? He squirmed his buttocks back in the seat, sitting up straighter, scowling.
Orozco said, “How come a character with all Conniston’s money didn’t have a big staff of house servants and all? Mrs. Conniston like to cook? All’s I’ve seen around there is the housekeeper coming in during the day.”
“Earle had a few spartan streaks. He liked to fool with electric wiring and plumbing himself—he did all the repairs around the house, he was a pretty fair Sunday carpenter and painter. They used to have two or three live-in servants but Earle”—he paused, and concluded lamely—”got tired of them.” No point in revealing to Orozco that a few months ago Earle had decided he didn’t trust any of them. Another sign of paranoia he had missed at the time. Storm signals had gone up all over the place, he realized now, but it had taken him the longest time to start recognizing them. Once you formed in your mind a picture of a person it was hard to dislodge it; you were reluctant to change your feelings about him.