Floyd slammed the door. “All right, don’t go ape.”
Theodore looked up drowsily. “Ain’t she a pistol?”
Floyd said, “We’ve got business to discuss.”
“You want to see us do it? Right here standing up against the wall?”
“I wouldn’t buy a ticket,” Floyd said. “Now cut it out, both of you. I don’t want to have to repeat myself again.”
Billie Jean pushed her lips out and withdrew her hand. Aroused, Theodore reached for her but Billie Jean twisted away; she said, “Not now.”
“To hell with him,” Theodore growled.
Floyd moved two steps into the room. Billie Jean looked quickly, anxiously at him. She said, “Not now, Theodore. Don’t you remember how Floyd beat up on that trucker in Amarillo? He was twice your size and he must’ve been laid up for a month.”
Theodore dropped his arms to his sides, sucking air like a grounded fish. Floyd said mildly, “Go sit down and breathe through your nose.”
Theodore moved grudgingly, sat down on the edge of the bed and put a finger in his nose. Georgie on the bed was slowly uncoiling from his curled-up reverie. Sprawling as if boneless, he blinked pale-eyed in sulky silence.
“All right,” Floyd said. “Gentlemen, I solicit your attention. Theodore, stop picking your nose. Wipe that vacant bewildered look off your face and pay attention.”
“Me pay attention? What about the hophead? What about Georgie?”
Hearing his name, Georgie lifted his head. “Time is it now?”
Theodore snapped, “That’s the howmanyest time you’ve asked me that?”
Georgie rubbed his face. “Okay, go ahead, I’m listening.”
Floyd moved his glance deliberately from face to face. Mitch glared at him. Floyd said, “Prosperity is just around the corner, boys. It’s time we change our station in life before we end up with holes in our shoes like my benighted old man, God rot his memory.”
“Our old man,” said Georgie.
“I stand corrected; your point is well taken.” Floyd’s glance whipped down the room to him and there was something remote and vicious in it. “Georgie and I,” he murmured, “do not intend to end up like our old man.”
Theodore said, “You got us a job, huh?”
“In a manner of speaking. A very large job. What we’re going to do is pull off a little extra-legal caper—a statutory offense if you will. We’re going to borrow a rich man’s daughter for a little while and the rich man’s going to pay us to get her back.”
Mitch stared at him, not believing. Billie Jean said, “You talking about kidnaping somebody?”
Theodore’s head swiveled. “Kidnap? Is that what you said?”
Floyd observed, “Theodore, you’re incredibly adept at grasping the obvious as soon as someone spells it out for you.”
Mitch said, “Aagh,” in disgust and backed up against the wall, hooking his hands in his pockets. “You’re putting us on.”
“I’m putting you onto a fat share of a half million dollars,” Floyd answered. It was a quiet snarl and he let it fall into the room and lie among them, stirring sluggishly.
It was a while before anyone spoke.
“A half million dollars?” Georgie said. “Five hundred thousand dollars?”
Theodore said, “Who do we have to grab for that kind of money? Who’s got that kind of money?”
“Earle Conniston. As in Conniston Oil, Conniston Construction, and Conniston Aerospace Industries. He lives on a secluded estate he pleases to call a ranch about forty miles south of here. He has a daughter who’s very dear to his heart because his only son was killed last year and she’s all he’s got left.”
Billie Jean was rubbing her palms on her hips. “That’s a lot of money, Floyd.”
Mitch shook his head in exasperation and heard Theodore say, “Yeah, she’s right. Nobody’s got that much cash lying around and you can’t exactly ask the man for a check.”
“Theodore, you hear the words but you don’t hear the music, do you? Earle Conniston’s a very rich man. Taking half a million from him is like taking dimes from a man who makes dollars. He’ll never miss it—not a tenth as much as he’ll miss his daughter.”
A broken interval of silent time stretched by. In the end, excited, Theodore bounced to his feet. “Sure. Why don’t we? Hell, all that money? Man, Floyd, you are something else.”
Georgie sat up on the bed, drew his knees up and wrapped his thin arms around them. “I don’t know, Floyd, I mean, kidnaping—”
“And just how do you expect to pay for that habit of yours?”
“Habit?” Georgie’s eyes wandered weakly away. “I took the cure, Floyd, I can take the stuff or leave it—Christ sake, I’m not a junkie or something. And if I like a jolt now and then it don’t take any half million dollars—I mean, you go out and kidnap somebody, they lock you up for keeps.”
“Not if they never find out who you are,” Floyd said. His voice clacked abruptly: “All right, you’ve all had your say, now I’ll put in my fifty-one percent worth. We abduct the girl tomorrow night and then we arrange to collect the money from Daddy Warbucks. I’ve got everything laid out—”
“Wait a minute.” Mitch, finding his tongue, stepped forward. “Wait just a minute. You can’t expect us to go along with a crazy thing like that. Even Georgie knows better—lock you up for keeps is exactly what they’ll do. Anyhow what do you need all that money for?”
“I’m going to paper my living room walls with it,” Floyd said darkly. “What do you think I’m going to do with it? Are you trying to tell me you can’t use a hundred thousand dollars, Mitch?”
“Not in jail. Not in the gas chamber. They still have capital punishment in Arizona.”
“Nobody gets arrested. The way I have it planned nobody will even see our faces. They’ll never find us out. It’s perfect. It can’t miss. The girl drives home the same route every night from school. She leaves the freeway at Mountain View and takes State Highway Eighty-three south to her daddy’s ranch. It’s a twenty-mile stretch of the loneliest mountain road in the world. We pick her up there tomorrow night and we take her to a place I’ve already reconnoitered—plenty of room to hide her and us and the cars. They won’t find us even if they use X-rays. It’s one of those old ghost towns, nobody ever comes around the place in the summer. Fifteen miles from the nearest paved road. You can see a long way from the rooftops—we can spot cars or helicopters before they get within ten miles of us.”
Floyd went on, talking smoothly. It was the hypnotic confidence of his baritone voice more than the words themselves that always made it hard to dispute him. He had an oracular air of sincerity and omniscience; he made any thought of argument against him seem foolish and demeaning.
He said, “Tomorrow morning we’ll sell the Pontiac and steal a car that can’t be traced to us. I’ve already fixed us up with a lineman’s telephone rig—there’s a phone line at the main road fifteen miles north of Soledad and we can splice right into the cross-country line. We’ll use electronic whistle codes to dial Conniston’s phone direct, through the automatic switchboard—it’ll take the phone company months to figure out where we were calling from. They can’t trace calls to a phone that doesn’t exist. We’ll only hook it in when we’re using it—we disconnect after each call. Now, we’ll stock up on food and water tomorrow afternoon….”