It was now almost nine; an hour and a half had passed since the three hoods had forced their way into the house. It felt like a century and a half. Mary had become hysterical and Babyface had led her into the downstairs john, seated her on the toilet, and handcuffed her left wrist to the radiator pipe in there. The door was left open a few inches so we could all hear her. They had me in the living room, my right wrist handcuffed to the arm of a heavy desk chair.
In the hour and a half I had phoned Susan Petri and announced that I was not coming in to the office. There was a two-second hesitation on the other end of the line- a pause that I'm sure was noticed by DeLucca, who listened in on the kitchen phone extension. But finally she had said fine and the conversation closed. Had she guessed that something was amiss? I did not think so. Damn.
Through it all I sleepwalked as if in a dream, the trembling and electric buzzing clouding my senses and thinking. What was I happening was happening to someone else, not Charles and Mary Adams.
The men had helped themselves to coffee and eggs. They rifled through the place- for a second time- and took clothes that fit them. Babyface slid outside fast to make sure our dogs were locked in their runs. The men put their tan Chevy in my garage and locked the doors, but only after they backed out our cars and switched their plates. The plates they took out of the big carton that Babyface had carried with him up to our door an hour and a half earlier. They took out the handcuffs first, then the license plates. They were New Jersey issue, and I knew they were what hoodlums call cold plates. Joe had told me cold plates were stolen but not used for several months so that their descriptions would not appear on police hot sheets.
They were going to take our cars someplace. They were on the run.
What about us? If pursuit was immediate, they would take us as hostages. If not, they would leave us tied up in our house and take off, buying themselves probably ten or twelve hours' time. Enough time to get to another big city and take a plane far, far away. Or they could decide not to leave us tied up.
They could instead decide to kill us.
And knowing Carmen DeLucca, who had killed so often he had nothing to lose, I knew this last possibility was real. And I didn't like it. Mary, seated in the semidark john and looking up through the red-print curtains, knew it too, and did not like it either. That's why she was crying and hysterical.
It was not knowing what course they would take, and the complete powerlessness over it, that was so frightening. It was not only scary, it was exhausting. I was scared to death and weak and tired, all at once.
And then DeLucca came into the room where I was handcuffed and asked me what I had done wish the strip of photo negatives.
At quarter to ten I came to and looked down at the wires taped to my left forearm. DeLucca was good with wires and juice; he could set off gas bombs with them and make people unconscious from pain. I smelled singed hair and skin. Mine. And all because I couldn't answer his question.
Then DeLucca and his gang said they were going to work on Mary until they got an answer. I could hear her saying "Don't- please don't," over and over again. I knew if I ever got a chance to kill any one of the three I would do it. They came back and sat down and told me Mary was not injured.
"Marty just got a little fresh with her, didn't you?"
Babyface leered at me. I tried to lunge at him but was now tied into the chair with a strap. I felt like a marionette. I swore at him until he cracked me across the mouth with the back of his list. I didn't mind the pain; it seemed to wake me up.
"Okay," said DeLucca. "So you don't have it and don't know where it is. I didn't think you did, but I hadda make sure." Then he sat on the sofa, hunched over, and clapped his hands slowly together, thinking. He turned to his confederates.
"We got nowhere to go now, except away. We can't go back to Lynn now. We can't go to Andover. The Doc ain't got it; we can't get it. The whole Mob's after us. We can only get lost."
The third man, a tall, thin, and morose lout with pale skin and bad teeth, stood up and paced.
"Don't forget the money, Carmen," he said. "We got the cars; now we need the loot."
Carmen DeLucca looked at me and said they needed five thousand bucks in cash, and it gave me a little hope. Because I knew that as long as I was in the process of getting him the money, Mary and I were safe.
"I can get that for you, but it won't be before this afternoon, even if I started now. We've got very little money in savings and checking accounts; it's mostly tied up in investments and term accounts that take some time to free."
"How soon?"
I shrugged. As used to big money as a guy like DeLucca was, he probably had no experience with or knowledge of the ways in which straight people keep money. A thug gets a bankroll and spends big bills until the roll is gone, then works at getting another.
"There are a lot of papers to sign. I'd have to see two bankers and my tax lawyer to free most, of it. About eighteen hundred you can have in twenty minutes."
"Not enough," said DeLucca. He did not bridle at the fictitious red tape I spewed about bankers and lawyers. There would be penalties for tapping the term accounts, but no red tape. I told him I could furnish the deposit contracts and explain them to show I was telling the truth, but he shook his head. He believed me. He knew only street money and bad checks; anything else was beyond him.
Then the tall one called Carmen out of the room for a talk, and I didn't like that at all. They could just decide to put both of us on ice now and get moving. I heard arguing in low voices, both urgent. The men were cornered and scared, and very mean to begin with. That spelled danger. But by the time they came back I had a better idea.
"I know where you can get twenty thousand in small bills. In a sack, ready to go, unmarked. Twenty thou. And I can have it delivered."
It was some time before DeLucca answered. He sensed a trick.
"How soon? And how many people you gotta visit?"
"One phone call and it's on its way. I don't have to see anybody, DeLucca, so you don't have to worry about me blowing it. But the deal is, you get the cash and we go free."
"The deal is like it was planned: we get the dough and Marty and Vince and your wife hole up in a motel room we've rented near here. You and me, we take the red car and drive away. Someplace deserted I let you out of the car and keep going… and you remember that your lovely wife is still in that motel room. They are not to touch her unless I say otherwise or unless the law comes in. Then she dies. But I get where I'm going safe, and I figure you haven't called any law, and if when I call this motel room everything is cool there, then, but only then, they tie your wife inna chair and wrap a hanky around her mouth and turn the TV up loud and leave. Got it?"
I nodded. So this was not a last-minute effort on their part.
They had planned it pretty carefully, perhaps arriving in town the night before and staying in the rented motel room, wherever it was. After I was released it would be perhaps an hour before I could reach a phone. Even then I would know that Mary wouldn't be left alone in the room until DeLucca gave the word to his confederates over the phone from God knows where. And he might not call them until late. In a way the plan made me breathe a little easier; it indicated that they did not want violence, only escape. For this they needed another car and cash- and they knew that I had both.
"Now where's this twenty grand? What bank?"
"No bank. It's at Dependable Messenger Service in Cambridge, in the safe."
"No it ain't. I know it ain't."
"Oh yes it is. When you burned that safe the money was out, sitting inside another strongbox. I had a hunch the place was going to get hit. But there's a new safe there now, and the money's back."
"Let's get to a phone," said Vince, "and see."
Before I went I demanded to see Mary, who looked fine, considering. I didn't know what Marty had done to her and for the time being didn't want to- I was afraid I would lose control and lunge at him and both Mary and I would get shot. They gave me definite instructions for the phone conversation, which I followed to the letter. It was rather brief. I told Sam I had a private problem. Private. He was to tell nobody about it, or else the problem would get a lot bigger immediately.
"You've got to believe me, Sam."
"I believe, Doc- I believe. Come by and get it. I'll have it ready and nobody'll know."
"No. Can you bring it to the Minute Man Park off Route 2A? Bring it alone- to the park at eleven-fifteen. Walk in the park, which should be empty, until you see my red-and-white International Scout. It looks like a jeep. Nobody will be inside but the door will be unlocked. Put the sack inside on the back seat, close the front driver's door so it locks, then go back to the office. Okay?"
"I got it."
"Sain? Don't call anybody after we hang up. It'll go bad for us if you do."
"I won't. I'll do just like you say."
"How much is in the sack?" said DeLucca, who was listening in on the extension.
There was a slight pause, and Sam asked me if he should speak to the strange voice. I told him yes.
"Just about eighteen thousand seven hundred dollars in bills. Nothing larger than fifties."
"It all better be there. And remember what the man said: don't mention this to anyone. Go right back to your office and be cool until the doctor calls you. Got it?"
"I'm hip. Well, I'm startin' now."
In five minutes we were ready too. Vince was to stay behind with Mary while I drove DeLucca in the Audi, and Marty the baby-faced psycho was to drive the Scout. Apparently even DeLucca was anxious about leaving the punk alone with Mary. I don't think she even knew when we left. We went out to the cars. Something was wrong with Marty. I could tell by the way he walked.
We were waiting at Minute Man National Park at eleven. I was sitting at the wheel of the Audi, my left hand cuffed to the rim of the steering wheel, while DeLucca sat in the front passenger seat watching me and the Scout, which was parked way over on the other side of the big lot. There weren't many visitors at the park this early in the year. There were only two other cars and a couple riding ten-speed bikes, who'd stopped to look around and drink from their plastic water bottles. Marty, who'd driven the Scout, was leaning into a public phone alcove up near the park building. From this vantage point he could see everything. DeLucca had instructed him to phone Vince at the first sign of trouble so he could put a bullet into Mary.
My palms were sweaty and my heart was going like a jackhammer.
"Stay cool," purred DeLucca, drawing on a cigarette, "and nobody gets hurt. Keep telling yourself that all we want is the car, the cash, and a head start. You get us those and you're all set."
He grinned at me as his mouth dribbled smoke. On the seat, cradled in his right hand, was his little pocket auto pistol. The grin was wide but the eyes black and cold. I did not trust him even a little. And like an ice-cold serpent crawling up my spine, a thought that entered my mind dropped the bottom out of any slight hope and optimism I'd allowed myself to have.
The thought was simple, and devastatingly logical. DeLucca and his two sleazy sidekicks had absolutely nothing to lose at this point. With the police of the entire Eastern seaboard, the Mob, and practically everybody else after them for murder and betrayal, they faced certain capture and death if they remained in the area now that word of their presence in Boston was out. As DeLucca had said, they needed a head start. And the longer that head start was, the better their chances. With Mary and me alive there was a ceiling on that lead; with us dead there wasn't.
They might kill us in the house, hide our corpses in the attic or basement, and leave. They might kill us in the motel room, but that seemed unlikely. Today was Friday. If friends saw nobody home and the cars missing, they would assume we'd gone down to the cottage on the Cape for the weekend. Our two sons weren't due back from school for another three days.
They would have plenty of lead time that way. Plenty. Enough to drive the stolen cars with the cold plates clear across the country.
Maybe they wouldn't kill us right away. Perhaps they would begin the plan as DeLucca had outlined it to me. When he and I were far away in the Audi, he would have me pull off the road near some woods or scrub, do me in, and dump me in a green tangle. Then they'd kill Mary and leave her in the motel bed, naked and violated. When the local authorities found her, Brian would proceed with caution, sensing a possible scandal. Or would he? Would he "Hey! Snap out of it!" snarled DeLucca. I turned my attention back to the red-and-white vehicle sitting all alone at the far end of the huge lot. Was Sam going to show? Or was he bringing in help to get us off the hook? An hour ago I would have hoped more than anything he would do what they wanted. But not now. As soon as I realized how much more getaway time they'd have with us on ice, I was sure we were done for. I looked back at DeLucca. The lizard eyes glowed and darted in the wide, dark face.
"Look," he said, and pointed past me with his cigarette, which he held in his bandaged hand.
A red Buick Regal had pulled into the lot and stopped next to the Scout. A man in a gray jumpsuit was getting out. He carried a dark-green canvas bag. It was Sam. He approached the Scout without ever looking up or looking around. He opened the front door, leaned in, flipped the bag into the back seat, stood up, pushed down the door-lock plunger, closed the door, tested it to make sure it was locked, and got back into his car. I could see no sign of the big dog. My heart sank. He was following the instructions to the letter. I couldn't understand the jumpsuit, except that if he felt he was being watched, the jumpsuit would signify his occupation as a messenger. The Regal backed. up, swept around, and was gone.
As per the plan we all waited for ten minutes without moving a muscle. Nothing happened. No battle wagons filled with fuzz roared into the lot. No choppers descended. It was quiet; the plan was working.
DeLucca had me start the car while Marty sauntered down to the Scout. He unlocked the door and got in. We saw him reach back for the moneybag, and seconds later the headlights flashed once. That meant that there was really money in the bag, not paper. We cruised out of the lot with the Scout right behind us.
DeLucca had me go along at a pretty good clip, then turn off 2A onto a small dirt side road for about thirty yards and stop. He took the keys and left me cuffed to the wheel while he went back to see Marty. The kid's face looked funny.
They opened the bag and set it on the hood of the Scout. DeLucca examined the loot while he kept looking over his shoulder toward the highway. He pawed through the satchel, flipping through wads and stacks of bills. He seemed more than satisfied with the haul. If he were an ordinary guy, without a string of grisly murders and betrayals to account for, I might have reason to expect that this fortune I got for them would make him spare us. But more and more I realized he would not. He couldn't.
He now had his hands on enough money to live for months without risking his neck or even showing himself. So the lead time for his escape had become that much more important. They crept down to the highway and watched it for a while to see if there was a tail. There wasn't. DeLucca got back in, handed me the keys, and told me to drive home. As I swung the car around I was hoping we wouldn't get there. Instead of getting the gang off our back, the sack of money was rushing the final act. I should never have called Sam, but now it was too late.
We pulled up the drive and into the turnaround in back. Vince came out the back door and met us on the flagstone terrace. He was scared. He pointed down the slope at the orchard and woods beyond the low stone wall.
"There was shooting there ten minutes ago," he said to DeLucca. "I heard a gun, firing fast."
"Well?" DeLucca asked me. I shrugged.
"A lot of kids hunt rabbits down there with four-tens," I said. "It's illegal, but they do it."
"I don't hear nothing," DeLucca said. "Let's get inside."
Vince followed us, but not before glancing back at the woods and apple trees.
I heard Mary crying as soon as we entered the back door. They unlocked the cuff that held her to the radiator and she clung to me. The episode in the Lowell mill yard flashed back into my mind for an instant, and I couldn't believe that what was happening to us was related to that incident, with the stranger picking away at the old factory wall. I gripped her tightly and spoke to her. I told her we only had to wait it out and it would be over and everything would be back to normal. I was lying. I don't think she knew it. They cuffed. us together and had us sit on the couch while Vince got one of Mary's raincoats and some casual shoes. He found a scarf too, and a pair of dark glasses for her to wear. They got a medium-weight jacket for me, saying I'd have a long walk later that night.
Maybe they weren't going to kill us after all, I thought. But I didn't really believe it.
They counted out the money on the coffee table. DeLucca moved fast, looking at his watch. He had trouble with some of the bills owing to his bandaged hand, so he let Vince do it. Marty, the kid, was hopping up and down on the seat, grinning from ear to ear.
"Stop it," said DeLucca.
But the kid kept it up. His eyes were shiny, and I noticed a string of saliva snake down out of his mouth.
"I said stop it."
Marty stopped, and tried to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, which didn't seem to be working right. He quieted, then rocked to and fro on the couch making sucking sounds. DeLucca and Vince looked at each other. Vince scowled, looking at the kid.
"When it rains it pours, eh? Why now?"
"It won't work," said DeLucca softly. The kid didn't hear him.
The money was divided into two equal piles. DeLucca and Vince each took one.
"Where's my- un?" said the kid, who was bouncing again. His teeth were clicking. He took out the four-inch sheath knife and tapped the blade into the table. His tongue was hanging out. He looked at Mary and managed a laugh. Then he looked sideways at the other two men and tried not to. He stood up and wobbled, then hummed.
"Where's mine?"
"Vince's got it, Marty. He'll give it to you when you get to the room. Now come on, Mrs. Adams, time to get your coat on."
They unfastened her cuff, leaving it dangling from my left wrist. Mary put on her coat, shoes, scarf, and dark glasses. They had me put on the jacket and we started toward the back door. Then Marty started to bleat like a sheep. He took out the knife again and Vince grabbed it. DeLucca walked up to him and slapped him across the face. That seemed to straighten him up.
"I promise I won-" he began. "I promise… I prom-ise."
DeLucca hit him again. The kid bounced back against the kitchen wall. He was gurgling, and his face was slack. DeLucca looked at his watch. Vince had the door open. I heard the dogs barking outside. DeLucca told him to shut it and led the two of us back to the hallway, where he passed the chain from my handcuff through the banister railing and fastened Mary to the other end. I would have tried to whang him with one end of the handcuffs if Mary hadn't been there. As it was, Vince stayed three feet away with his pistol pointed right at me.
"Get him down the basement," DeLucca said softly to Vince.
Vince went over to the kid, who was leaning in the corner, and put his long arm over his shoulder, comforting him. He patted him on the back hard, just like old buddies. He led him over to DeLucca, who put his arm around him too. They helped him along. I heard the kid crying. We could just peek around the hall corner and see the three of them standing at the head of the basement stairs. Then Marty realized what was happening. He stared into that black hole and bawled, grabbing the edge of the door frame with hands that didn't work.
"Come on, Marty. Be good. I just want you to sit down on the floor," said DeLucca softly, as one rebukes a child.
They hauled at him but he wouldn't budge. He still had enough strength and control left to hang on and keep from going down that dark stairway.
"We just want you to sit down on the floor and rest," DeLucca repeated softly, tugging at the kid's waist.
"Puuuu-leeeeze!" wailed Marty, his feet pointed out and his knees bowed like a toddler's. His lower half was shaking violently now.
"Mister Deeee-loooo… Deeeee-"
Vince took his pistol and struck Marty's hands, which slid away from the door frame. The two men helped the kid down the stairs. We heard him blubbering and wailing. Then a door slammed shut and everything was quiet. I looked at Mary. Her teeth were clenched tight on her lip. There was a little blood. I kicked at the railings with my feet. and knees with all I had, and finally managed to break two of the oak uprights, which weren't very thick. I yanked them out of their sockets, leaving a wide hole under the banister.
"Hurry, Charlie. Hurry!"
I pulled Mary underneath the banister. We were still fastened together. I ran down to the front door and yanked. No go. I flipped the bolt; it still wouldn't open. It had been deadbolted. As we went back down the hall and into the kitchen we heard a sound beneath us. A muffled explosion. Then fast feet on the stairway, coming up.
I had the back door open now and we went through it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Vince in the kitchen raising his arm. His hand held a pistol.
We were running across the terrace when I saw a piece of the brick wall fly away. I jumped over the wall and yanked Mary after me. She was making little high sounds. Vince was raising the pistol again when I pulled Mary off to the right and began to circle the house. I knew we'd never make it across the open meadow to the woods.
But around the first corner we stopped dead, looking right down the muzzle of DeLucca's automatic. His meaty chest and shoulders were heaving as he panted. He'd"gone around the other way and cut us off. We heard Vince coming up behind us. I grabbed Mary tight and shut my eyes, waiting.
I felt a rap on the head and opened my eyes. I was half-stunned. I looked up and saw Vince grab the chain that held us together. DeLucca, panting loudly, was behind us, pushing the gun muzzle into our backs.
"You blew it, shithead," he growled. "Now you're gonna have to go down the cellar."
Again I felt tingling around my head and mouth. The ground shook under my feet. I was afraid to look at Mary.
"Let her go. Have Vince take her to the motel."
"Too late," he said, smacking the back of my head with the barrel. I felt a warm trickle down the left side of my neck from the previous blow. We were back around to the terrace again. The kitchen doorway was only twenty feet away. Once they had us through that door we'd never get out again. I decided to shout for help at the top of my lungs before all hope was gone, and had just taken the biggest lungful of air I could manage when I heard a gigantic roar. Instantaneously I felt a stinging on my right cheek, and the arm tugging the handcuffs went slack.
Next to us, Vince was falling. His head had come apart into a big red wet cloud. And part of that cloud was stuck all over my face, stinging it.
DeLucca had his pistol up. He was pointing it at a huge dark shape that was flying at his head. The thing hit him with a deep rumbling snarl and threw him to the ground. Popeye had him by the upper arm, right near the shoulder. He had his big steam-shovel mouth wrapped around DeLucca's upper torso and was shaking it, tearing it. DeLucca couldn't hold the gun; nobody could have. Then the dog was off him and waiting by in a crouch. DeLucca sat up for a second, then lunged for the pistol and I brought it up. But before he could fire the roar came again and he was flung backward, spinning around like a top. He lay on his stomach and didn't move. There was motion in the yew trees, and Sam Bowman came walking toward us, the big silver revolver held up in his hand. He came up and looked down at Carmen DeLucca, who was now moaning and flipping his left arm on the grass like a seal pup. The big soft-nosed slug had left his back just below the left shoulder blade. A lot of his back was gone. I peered down at him and could see a shiny pink balloon sliding around in the gore beneath his splintered ribs. It was his lung.
Sam shoved his big piece back into its shoulder holster and zipped up his Windbreaker. He was no longer wearing the jumpsuit. He reached down and laid his large coffee-colored hand on Mary's cheek.
"How ya doin'?" he asked. And she began to bawl.
I was certain DeLucca was dying. I thought he knew it too. Sam went through the pockets of the former Vince and retrieved the keys to the cuffs; he had us free in a wink. I crawled over to DeLucca and looked at his face. The lizard eyes fluttered, then opened. Carmen DeLucca stared at the blades of grass inches from his eyes and the terrace wall behind them. The big wound in his back began to bubble and sputter.
"Carmen. It's Doc Adams. Remember?"
A nod.
"You don't have very long. Tell me what the negatives showed. Hear me, Carmen? What did the pictures show?"
A faint shake of the head.
"You don't know?"
Headshake.
"Who hired you to get them? It wasn't Paul Tescione, was it?"
Headshake.
"Then who was it, Carmen? Who?"
I heard a thin rasp of expelled air. I bent over and put my ear close to his mouth. He said a name in a barely audible voice. Then there was a long sigh. When I next looked at the cruel black eyes they were open and staring. I watched them and the face for a minute. There was no motion, no change, nothing. Carmen DeLucca was dead. But not before he had told me who it was who'd hired him to snatch the Sacco-Vanzetti papers. I looked up from the corpses and turned my head around. Mary and Sam were sitting quietly on the terrace chairs while Popeye sat looking up at Mary and whining. I had been alone with DeLucca when death overtook him. Nobody had overheard him tell me the name. That was awkward.
It was especially awkward because it was no ordinary name. I knew if I mentioned that name nobody, not even Mary, would ever believe me. Ever.