He had given close attention to the note, just like any terrified father, and read it over to himself, reveling in its simple wording as keynote of the entire scheme:
DELIVER 200 THOUSAND DOLLARS TO ME IN SMALL UNMARKED BILLS AT THE DOWNTOWN ENTRANCE OF THE 79TH ST IRT SUBWAY BY NOON TOMORROW OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR UTTLE GIRL ALIVE AGAIN. DO NOT CONTACT THE COPS OR SHE WILL DIE. WE WILL KNOW IF YOU CONTACT THEM.
He had called Bob immediately, reaching him at the brokerage. All the relatives had shown up an hour later, all terrified, all anxious to help, an anxious to kick in their share of the two hundred thousand dollars to get their darling little Penny back again.
Felice had had to be put under a sedative, and for a time Roger worried only about Bob’s suspicions nature. He knew the question would come up of why Penny had been singled out for kidnapping, but he pretended too much anguish to worry about trivial details, and the question passed unnoticed. So did all the others — how the kidnapper had gotten in, how he had left, what would happen if they did see the police — and finally, Bob and Ralph and Madge and Harold had called their lawyers for the money.
Two hours later the money arrived, and Roger was adamant about carrying the payoff. “After all, she is my little girl, even if she is my step-daughter!”
Three years in high school dramatics paid off handsomely. They believed him. He had the money.
The next day at noon, he took the envelopes of bills — which, under the pretense of being the distraught father, he had checked to insure against markings — and went to the subway, making certain he was not followed.
He left the money wedged behind the big candy machine bolted to the wall in the subway, and came home, describing a pock-faced man with hat pulled low who had disappeared into the subway immediately after telling him to go home and wait and to tell no one what had happened.
They believed him.
What else could they do.
He cried so damned convincingly.
The night was not moonless, but the overcast clouds blotted it so effectively, it might well have been. He drove to Red Bank with a light heart. He would wait an appropriate length of time before using the money he had retrieved from behind the candy machine. The money that nestled under the rubber matting of the car’s trunk. He would use small amounts to make token payments to all his creditors, to forestall them, and in a year he would have it all paid off, with enough capital to expand a bit.
Roger whistled merrily as he drove the endless night to the abandoned farm house.
Penny had worked steadily at the ropes. They were tight, but a nine-year-old girl’s fingers are small, and fingernails are sharp, and two days struggling, though producing bloody hands, could work wonders. It was night again. She could tell, because the owl in the tree somewhere outside to the left was hooting again in that frightening way.
Then, suddenly, the bonds were loose, and her numbed hands slipped free. She struggled with the tape over her eyes, ripping it off painfully. Then the tape from her mouth, and she spat out the gag with a strangled cough. It was so, so, so dark from behind the tape; she could see nothing. Then, as she fumbled with the ropes that bound her feet, the tool shed came into focus a bit.
She heard a car drive up outside, and stop. Then the crunch of footsteps approaching. Was he coming back? What would he do to her now?
Vague, formless terrors of childhood surrounded her: the devil, the bogey-man, the twitchee that Daddy said would eat her alive if she whined, all of them back to haunt her at once. Two days of terror mounted in her throat, and she turned like a caged animal, a small animal, seeking some way out. The door was the only way, and now she could hear the steps approaching the door.
She saw a flicker of lighter something in the dirt by the wall, and reached for it.
A pitchfork, broken off three-quarters of the way up the handle.
She hefted it, feeling the bits of dirt clinging to the wood. The rusty pitchfork felt terribly heavy in her tired arms, but she stood trembling, ready at least to scream and fight!
The footsteps began to hurry, almost run, as though the man was in a rush to do what he had come to do.
Then the door burst open, and a gigantic black shape was there, and Penny lunged heavily at it. The combined speed of the running man and the lunging child drove the rusty pitchfork deep, deep, deep into the black shadow, and the man screamed high and whining, the sound bubbling up in his throat.
Penny screamed, and shouted at the shadow, “You let me alone, let me alone! I want my Daddy, I want my Daddy!”
The shadow bubbled again, then fell.
The night was silent once more, save the hoot of the owl in the tree, and the soft moan of the little girl as she cried, over and over, “I want my Daddy …”
Twelve: Two Inches in Tomorrow’s Column
Benny kicked the electric blanket off his naked feet, patted Bonnie on her naked stomach, and placed the telephone receiver to his naked ear. Three chuckles of ringing and abruptly, on the other end, a cricket was rubbing its hind legs together. It was Candy, Orson Heller’s right-hand boy.
“Mistuh Helluh’s office,” the cricket chirruped.
“Candy baby!” Benny was not smiling. “Like to talk to Mr. Heller. This is Benny.” Bonnie had lit a filter; now she handed it across, and Benny puffed deeply.
“Jus’a’minnit, Mr. Mogelson. Mr. Helluh’ll be right whichah.” There was the soggy sound of a hand coming across the mouthpiece, a faraway voice, and the phone changed owners.
Orson Heller — who, for seventeen years, had been in charge of the Combine’s hit system, i.e., its assassination branch — cleared his throat. As befitted the new owner of the Sunset Strip’s poshest dining club. “Benny. How’s my PR man?”
“Orson, I’m a hero.”
“That so?”
The public relations man straightened in Bonnie’s bed, and flicked ashes unceremoniously onto the white pile rug. “So. Very much so. Remember I told you I’d make you a star? Well, by this time tomorrow, The Barbary Coast and its new owner — the celebrated Mr. Orson Heller — will be the hottest properties in Hollywood.”
“You talk a lot, Benny.”
Heller had not quite lost the thug tones he bad employed for seventeen years. Or perhaps the weight of sixty-four men’s souls — shot, stabbed, doused with acid, embedded in concrete, and fed to the fishes — rested heavily on the vocal cords as well as the spirit.
“What I’m trying to build you up for, Orson sweetie, is —”
“Don’t call me those names, Benny.”
“— uh, yessir, yessir, well, what I’m trying to tell you is that you get two inches in tomorrow’s paper. And are you sitting down? Are you planted firmly? Are you ready for this? Ta-ra-ta-t aaaa! You, oh employer of mine, will be two inches in Bonnie Prentiss’ column.”
The smirk came unbidden to Benny Mogelson’s publicly related face.
The gasp was tiny, but audible, at the other end. “Bonnie Prentiss? Saaaaaay …” Heller drew the word out with awe and pleasure. “Benny boy, you are a winner. An authentic winner. How did you manage that? ”
Benny’s hand strayed absently to Bonnie’s full breasts. Firm and still warm from the recent encounter. “Oh, just a little schmachling — a little butter — Orson. Miss Prentiss and I are old friends.”