Be just dandy if he’s making his rounds today …
Now she knows where she is. Anxious about the draining of time she vectors to the left across an open meadow and guns the Jeep to reckless speed.
At the top of the meadow she slaloms amid tree trunks, some of them jagged and blackened. Must be almost there now. Got to be …
Wheels spinning, engine whining, she bursts out of a tangled thicket into the rutted pioneer road. The front wheels plunge down and the Jeep nearly stalls.
Hitting the clutch, gathering breath, she remembers when they bulldozed the road through from the house to the landing strip: a rough pioneer track, unsurfaced, barely graded but sufficient for the Bronco.
Twigs and branches lie askew in the ruts now, some of them crushed. There are a lot of puddles. She sees dark grease stains on the bent weeds that make a spine along the hump of the middle of the track.
It’s been used fairly recently, then.
Of course that doesn’t prove they’re still using the airstrip. It doesn’t prove they haven’t rolled up the steel mesh and taken it away.
If they have-suppose the strip has become boggy from yesterday’s rain: too overgrown for Charlie’s airplane to land?
The worst thing is there’s no time to find out.
She cranks the wheel sharp right and fits the tires into the deep tracks and drives the short distance to the back gate. It is a simple reinforced steel contraption that lacks the formality of the curlicued iron gate at the front entrance but makes up for it in solidity: the gauge of its mesh is such that no wirecutter short of an acetylene torch could breach it.
Holding it shut are two enormous padlocks, top and bottom, their hasps at least half an inch thick.
They gleam in the sunlight-the glint of new metal.
Her keys don’t fit.
49
She switches off the ignition and stands beside the Jeep staring dismally at the padlocked gate. In the abrupt silence there are sharp pinging sounds-heat contractions in the engine.
Her watch: it’s noon. She feels the terrible pressure of time. Charlie will land at precisely one o’clock but how long will he dare to wait for her if she’s not there to meet him?
Charlie with his simplistic images of Mafiosi and his limp jokes about gun molls: what if he’s not as brave as he pretends to be?
The padlocks are hopeless. You’d need a bazooka to break them open. She examines the other side of the gate. The hinges are thick steel straps belted around the upright steel pole. Bolted together and the nuts welded in place to prevent anyone from unscrewing them.
It would take something a lot heavier than this Jeep to bust through that gate.
But she’s remembering an odd snatch of conversation. It was Jack Sertic, wasn’t it? Up here at the cabin one rainy afternoon; half a dozen of them sitting around the huge living room in boots and hunting shirts waiting with their rifles for the rain to quit so they could go out and prove their courage against a hapless fenced-in herd of deer.
They were talking about crime in the city: street crime and burglaries. They didn’t think of their own activities as crime-not in that same sense. (She remembers confronting Bert with it; one of the last conversations they had; she was accusing him in a tight quavering voice barely under control and he replied arrogantly: Jesus, the way you talk you’d think we were some kind of thugs-I don’t pull out a knife and ambush people on dark streets-I don’t threaten innocent people with a gun-I don’t break into anybody’s home and steal things-I’m just a businessman, honey, so it’s against the law, so’s jaywalking, I just sell things to people who want to buy them.)
Jack Sertic that day was talking about a friend of his who lived in a penthouse on Riverside Drive, one of the postwar buildings with greenhouse balconies and interior fire escapes. The friend’s penthouse had been burgled so many times that finally he’d invested a fortune installing a solid steel front door and doorframe with inch-thick deadbolt locks. The most burglarproof door money could buy.
“So the next time he’s out of town for the weekend”-she even remembers the chuckle in Jack’s high-pitched voice-“the burglars come back and they take one look at that bombproof door of his and they just laugh and pick up a sledgehammer and smash their way right through the wall next to the door. These buildings, Sheetrock wallboard, you can go through the walls like butter.”
She still can hear the bray of his laughter and see Bert’s scowl of disapproval. Muggers and burglars aren’t amusing to Bert. He can be very righteous.
Recalling that day she thinks of Jack and Diane together and of her phone call to Diane a few days ago. Suppose Diane decided to go ahead and tell Jack about the phone call from the south? Or suppose she told Bert about it? Suppose Bert figured out what it meant-suppose he’s taken Ellen back to the protection of the apartment in the city?
It’s no good speculating. You’ve got to base your actions on your latest and best knowledge-and to the best of your knowledge Ellen is still here.
She walks off the road and moves close to the fence to examine it.
The top and bottom rails of the fence are pipes. The chain link mesh is attached on all four sides but each panel is at least ten feet wide. Designed to keep people and animals out; but what about Jeeps?
You may as well assume it can be done. Because you haven’t got any choice. It’s the only way out of here. Either you break through it or you’re trapped inside this beastly fence.
But that comes later. Can’t risk the noise now.
All right. No more time to dawdle. Leave the Jeep here. Take the ring of keys. Let’s go get Ellen.
She walks back along the road: heading for the house. Alone and unarmed.
50
The house sits high on two acres of cleared ground. The lawn around three sides has taken hold this year: it looks rich and thick.
The helicopter like an engorged insect perches on its pad halfway between the side of the house and the edge of the timber. It’s still white and blue. Still exactly the same. Funny; she feels she’s been away so long that everything ought to have changed.
She remembers when he first bought the helicopter. They weren’t yet married then. “Sick and tired of airport congestion,” he growled in that perpetually hoarse voice that she’d thought so attractive.
For months the chopper was his favorite toy. He had to show it off to all his friends: take them for rides.
He hired and fired four pilots before he found one he liked-George Talmy, the freckled redhead who looked like a truant schoolboy with his twinkling eyes and snub nose. One night when everyone had a bit too much to drink she learned the boyish George had earned medals for flying gunships in Nam and had been arrested ’steen times for smuggling anything you’d care to name across virtually any border in the world.
She wonders if George is still around or if Bert has found himself a new chopper jockey.
She turns off the road into the woods and ducks under branches, placing her feet with care to avoid the worst of the mud puddles; angling to approach the house from the back corner where birches and evergreens crowd up within a few yards of the sloped padlocked Bilko door that gives access to the basement.
There are only two small high windows on the ground floor at this corner-the laundry room and the mud room porch. It’s the only corner of the house you can approach with a fair likelihood of not being seen from inside.
Four wooden steps lead up to the back door. This is the old part of the house, still unpretentious; simple 2? 6 boards for steps and rails. She stands at the foot of the steps looking up at the door and picking among the keys on the ring.