“Depends on who I’m talking to.”
Neither clean-shaven nor bearded, neither a Beau Brummell nor a hobo, the man closed the distance between us. “A chameleon, huh? Well, so am I, I guess.” He halted about five feet away, his outfit that of a pulpwood worker: khaki pants, blue work shirt, rope-soled shoes, and a ball cap with a perforated crown.
“I’m Special Agent Neil Hammond. Can we go inside?”
These words lifted a weight. I shook Hammond’s hand and led him inside through the narrow front foyer. We found Adam sitting on the stairs with a shoeshine kit applying cordovan polish to the hand-tooled leather boots (with elevator heels) he’d worn to the West Bank in December. In his slacks and T-shirt, in his dedication to the simple task, Adam reminded me of an elderly black man who had shined shoes at the Ralston Hotel in Columbus in the early 1960s. Sitting halfway up the stairs, he nodded at Hammond and me without ceasing to rub polish into the toes and heels of his boots. There was an air of melancholy to his expertise, but a melancholy devoid of self-pity. Hammond and I watched him work. Adam finished applying the wax, tugged his left boot on, grasped a shoeshine brush with his bare right foot, and buffed the instep of the boot with an easy rocking motion that made a whispery noise in the stairwell. This sound was strangely soothing. Adam brought the left boot to a high cordovan shine, then removed it and duplicated the procedure in reverse, wearing the right boot and brushing it with his left foot. Hammond and I stood there beneath him in the stairwell, entranced.
“Done,” Adam said. He positioned the polished pair of boots on the step so that the toes were even with its outer edge. They shone. They smelled good.
Then Special Agent Hammond began to speak. He had just arrived from Atlanta with a photocopy of the letter addressed to the Montarazes by the kidnappers. On Saturday, the GBI had received federal authorization to fetch the letter from the U.S. Postal Service in advance of its scheduled Monday delivery. That was how he had managed to bring the message to Adam so early in the day. For the past month, Hammond explained, he’d been doing undercover investigation for the Bureau’s drug unit in Hothlepoya County. Yesterday morning, he’d been summoned back to Atlanta to assume the role of message runner for this particular case. He was living in a mobile home between Beulah Fork and Tocqueville, frequenting grubby roadhouses every evening to see if any dope deals were going down, and periodically staking out the Muscadine Gardens private airport to determine if any of the aircraft coming into it were pot planes. Although it might be wise if Adam and I kept our contacts with him to an absolute minimum, Niedrach wanted us to know that Hammond was our official liaison in Hothlepoya County.
“The letter,” Adam croaked.
Hammond went up the steps with the photocopy. I climbed to a spot behind Adam so I could read it over his shoulder. It was a tight fit for the three of us—but we arranged ourselves cozily enough, and Adam shook out the photocopy.
“Fingerprints on the envelope have already conclusively identified the author as Craig Puddicombe,” Hammond said.
The letter consisted of an introductory paragraph, a list of the ten organizations to receive donations from the Montarazes, and a final paragraph directing them to post the “genuine canceled chex” in a glass case at the interior entrance to Rich’s department store in Lenox Square Mall. The “genuine canceled chex” had to be posted by the second Monday in August, two weeks away, so that thousands upon thousands of mall patrons could view them as they entered Rich’s. The well-known signatures on these checks, and the surprising fringe organizations on their PAY TO THE ORDER OF lines, would surely stimulate a flood of copy-cat contributions. Also, nearly every young person who glanced at the canceled-check display would become a suspect in the kidnapping—assuming, of course, that either the FBI or the GBI set up continuous video surveillance of the store’s entrance.
“Which we will,” Hammond said. “This isn’t as clever a ploy as Puddicombe thinks. It’ll be very easy to fake the canceled checks.”
I tapped the photocopy. “He says he’ll ask the organizations in question if the contributions have really been made.”
“A bluff, Mr. Loyd. Why have the canceled checks posted in a public place if they already know what posting the check is supposed to prove?”
“For publicity’s sake,” I said. “To humiliate RuthClaire and Adam.”
Adam looked up. “Would these organizations actually take our forced donations, Mr. Hammond?” His most fluid speech yet.
“Some are outfits of dubious probity. They might. It seems to be this character’s idea that we’re to keep the kidnapping hidden from the general public—at least for now. That being the case, the outfits receiving the checks would have no reason to suppose you’d sent them under duress.”
“Couldn’t they tell their directors in private?” I asked.
“Of course. But that would entail a certain risk. If Puddicombe has an informant in just one of them, he’d figure out damned fast we’re using the same line of approach with all the other organizations. The danger to the kidnap victim is clear.”
“Say nothing to any of them, then,” Adam directed. “We will send only genuine cashable checks.”
“After Paulie’s recovered, Mr. Montaraz, there are steps we can take to recover the money, too. It’s possible a few of these outfits, understanding the full situation, would hand it over willingly—but it’s also likely that a couple of them, maybe more, wouldn’t mind profiting from your ill fortune. We’d go after them via the state attorney general’s office, but it could prove a messy set-to. Even a loud public outcry against one of these goofy bunches—Shock Troops of the Resurrected Confederacy—might not make them relent. It might even strengthen their will to take on our mainstream legal apparatus.”
“About the money I have no care,” Adam said. “Let it go.”
Looking over his shoulder, I studied the list. In addition to Congressman Aubrey O’Seamons, the Klairvoyant Empire of KuKlos Klandom, and the Shock Troops of the Resurrected Confederacy (STORC), Craig had specified an odd array of praiseworthy, semirespectable, and doubtful groups. The Methodist Children’s Home in Atlanta was cheek by jowl with the National Rifle Association and the Rugged White Survivalists of America. Neither Adam nor I could help noting that the last organization on the list was Dwight McElroy’s Greater Christian Constituency. Ever helpful, Craig had provided up-to-date mailing addresses for each and every one of these organizations.
“You give twenty-three thousand to the Methodist Children’s Home,” I advised Adam. “Three thousand each to the other nine groups.”
Adam said, “We lack so much money in our bank account, Mr. Hammond.”
“If you’re sure you want to handle this by writing the checks,” he said, “we’ll deposit the amount needed to cover them—to fortify our case in seeking reimbursement from any really hard-nosed ransom recipient. Remember, though, that if you’d let us, our documents division could easily fake the canceled checks.”
“Craig Puddicombe would find out,” Adam objected.
“That’s a very real possibility.”
“Then I must ask the aid of state in making up the total fifty thousand dollars.”
“All right,” Hammond said.
For a time, we sat in silence in the narrow chute of the stairwell, stymied by the harsh reality of the letter in Adam’s hands. Is every vice a corrupted virtue, every evil a perverted good? I don’t know, but the anguish and pain that Craig Puddicombe, a mere boy, was inflicting on the Montarazes—and on me by my willing involvement in their predicament—stemmed entirely from his pursuit of a variety of justice that was not only blind but tone-deaf and unfeeling. Further, he had implicated Nancy Teavers in his militant passion for left-handed justice. How, I wondered, could one misguided person trigger such ever-widening chaos?