Shadows Everywhere (5 page)

As the next day dragged by, the waiting began to play on my nerves. Still, there was that feeling of anticipation–a good anticipation–because, unlike so many of my schemes, I was somehow sure the whole thing would work as planned.

Thana's nerves seemed to be wearing thin, too. She paced the large, luxurious living room, absently raising and lowering her handcuffed wrists before her as if completely absorbed in whatever she was thinking. The way she was acting kind of surprised me. I was sure she was convinced I didn't mean to kill her when I had the ransom money. She should have been feeling a pleasant anticipation too, an anticipation of freedom.

I tried to ignore her endless pacing, tried to ignore my own nervousness, and I made a good try at reading the paperback novel I'd bought three nights before, but the words were only words, nothing more. I set the book aside and checked my watch. Five o'clock. I decided it might be a good idea to try to get whatever rest I could before tonight's activity, so I handcuffed Thana to the sofa arm and slouched on the other end of the sofa myself. After what seemed like an hour, I dozed off lightly...

"Who the devil are you?"

"I'm his prisoner! He's kidnapped me and he's holding me prisoner!"

The question, asked in a man's incredulous voice, stirred me from sleep. The answer, screamed in Thana's shrieking voice, made my eyes open with a start.

There were two men, an older man in a well-cut, dark suit, and a short, mustached man in work clothes, carrying some kind of long metal toolbox.

I stood, not really knowing what to do, and I saw that I'd drawn my revolver and was aiming it unsurely at them. They both backed away slowly, then the mustached man suddenly hurled his toolbox at me. I raised my hands but not in time. The heavy box struck me full on the chest and I staggered backward. The gun roared in my ear and I found myself sitting amidst wrenches and lengths of cut pipe, the toolbox open and lying across one of my legs. The two men were gone.

I kicked the toolbox away with a clatter and stood up, trembling, wondering what had happened, how it
could have
happened. Thana was staring up at me from the sofa, her features set in a strange-looking sort of defiance.

As I walked toward her I saw blood on my hand that was still holding the gun. Something had cut my arm badly and the blood was running down in a thick, red current.

"Who were they?" I asked in a shaken voice, but Thana only stared at me with that same rigid look on her features. I backed away from her and went toward the bathroom to wash some of the blood from my arm and try to stop the bleeding.

Halfway down the hall, I knew.

I heard it first, rather than saw it. Then I stopped and looked down at the inch-deep pool of water I was walking in. I sloshed the last ten feet to the bathroom door and went in.

The cold-water tap in the wash basin was barely turned on, the water running silently in a twisting, steady stream that had filled the washbasin and caused it to overflow. As I went to pull the plug I saw that toilet paper had been stuck into the overflow drain at the back of the basin. Thana had engineered this earlier in the evening to signal for help. The water had finally run through to the floors below and was brought to the attention of the hotel management, who had brought it to the attention of a plumber.

Cursing the first time I'd ever seen Thana Norden, I splashed water over my throbbing arm, ripped off my shirt sleeve and made a tourniquet of it that helped slow the flow of blood from the jagged cut near my elbow. I'd known from the beginning there wouldn't be time to descend twenty stories to the street if the police were called, and as I walked back into the living room I could already hear the screams of faraway sirens.

Thana was sitting on the sofa calmly now, staring up at me with certainly more defiance than fear.

"You fool!" I almost screamed at her. "Why did you do it? You knew it was almost over, you were almost free! Why did you mess up the whole thing?"

Her face shone with intensity. "Did you think 1 believed what you told me about not killing me? Believed anything you said?"

"It was true! I thought you knew it was true!"

The sirens were much louder now, and some of them stopped directly below. I ran to switch off the lamp in the corner near the fireplace, and the room was snapped to near total darkness.

The telephone rang. I walked to it, my numbed legs moving jerkily, and untaped and lifted the receiver.

"I advise you not to harm the girl," a slow but tense, deep voice said in my ear. "Have you?"

I waited a long time before speaking, listening to the even breathing on the other end of the line. "No," I said. "She's all right. I was never going to harm her."

"Then you're smart. You should he smart enough to know the only thing for you now is to come down unarmed and turn yourself over to us."

I thought about that while I squeezed the receiver so hard my hand ached. The penalty for kidnapping was death; I could he turning myself over for death.

"The building and the entire block are completely surrounded," the voice said. "There's nothing else for you to do but surrender. It will go easier on you since you haven't harmed Mrs. Norden."

I hung up.

There had to be something I could do.
Something!
Escape down the fire escape would he virtually impossible–but what else was there? One other possibility: I could use Thana as a hostage and make them let me out, make them give me a car and a head start.

Yet I knew that was almost no possibility at all.

Powerful spotlight beams hit the windows then, bathing most of the room in a chalky white light, changing night to fierce day outside the top floors of the Martinaire Hotel. The draperies were opened wide, and I moved along the wall to their edge and stared down, but all I could make out were the incredibly bright lights aimed up at me.

"Your whole idea's turned rotten on you, hasn't it?" Thana said behind me.

The telephone rang again, and I went quickly to answer it.

"I thought you were smart," the voice said. "Do the smart thing now."

"Maybe I'm not as smart as you think," I answered. "And I wouldn't try to come up if I were you. Mrs. Norden might get hurt." I knew that Thana was my only card left to play. If the little fool hadn't blown everything... .just when I'd almost brought it off!

"Hello... It was another voice on the phone, a familiar voice. "Norman Norden?"

"It is," the voice said. "Listen to me before you do anything else. Will you agree to that?"

"If you talk fast," I said.

"Fast and to the point," Norden answered. There was a decisiveness in the aged voice that hadn't been there in our earlier conversations. "We both know your situation is almost hopeless; your only chance of escape is to use Thana as a hostage, and that would he a slim chance. A deal is what I offer. I have money, power, influence–you have my wife. If you bring Thana down, unharmed, and release her, I'll see that you get a car and four hours of immunity from the law."

I tried to consider the angles to that sort of offer, but my arm was bleeding again and I felt faint. It was hard for me to concentrate on anything.

"I can offer something else," Norden said, taking my hesitation for consideration. "If you are apprehended later, I'll pull every string to see that you get off lightly."

"Why would you do that?"

"Why shouldn't I? I'm considered by some to be a mercenary man. In my youth I was even more mercenary. I can understand what you did and why you did it, so I bear you no personal animosity. And I've never broken my word on a business deal. My only concern is for my wife, can't you understand that? Please bring her down safely and I'll see that you're given a car, four hours, a chance! Please!"

"Can you really do it?"

"Of course I can. Thana's safety is the prime concern of the police, too. If I effect a deal to get her back unharmed, they'll go along with me."

I was sitting on the floor now, looking at Thana and thinking more clearly. "1 want something else."

"Something else...? All right, yes, you have it. I intended giving it to you for Thana in the first place. It was the hotel manager who recognized Thana and called in the police. The money will be in the car."

"Along with an electronic device so the police can trace me."

Anger and frustration welled up in Norden's voice when he answered. "Isn't there anything I can do to get you to
believe
me?"

I was surprised myself to find that I did believe him, that I trusted his word. I believed he'd do anything for Thana, and he and I both knew that what he offered was my only real chance.

"How soon can the car be here?" I asked.

"It's already here and waiting for you. The money will take half an hour."

"We have a deal," I said, and hung up. I made it to my feet and said to Thana, "I wish I had your kind of luck."

"What does that mean?" She was sitting very straight, glaring at me contemptuously.

"It means you're part of a trade. Your safety for mine. Your husband's down below worrying about you."

Thana didn't bother to answer, just stared at me for a long moment, then turned her head to watch the slight play of the bright spotlight beams over the wide windows.

I went into the bathroom again, found some gauze and bandaged the cut on my arm. Then I washed my face and hands in cool water and fixed my rumpled and bloodstained clothes so they looked almost passable. Then I waited for everything to develop.

A half hour hadn't passed when the telephone rang again. I got assurances from everyone: Norden, the hotel manager, the police captain in charge of operations below. A gray car with its motor idling would he parked directly outside the lobby entrance.

I told them I was coming down, and went to get Thana.

"Come on," I said, unlocking her handcuffs and holding her by the wrist. "We're going downstairs." As I pulled her to her feet her face was impassive, her body tense.

"Do you really think I believe you're turning me free?" she said. She gazed out the windows again at the brilliant white light sent up from the scene of excitement and turmoil below. As I saw the glazed shine in her dark eyes I knew for the first time that in a way she was enjoying being the center of it all.

Suddenly, with more strength than I thought she had, she jerked her wrist loose and was free of me. She snatched up a long-necked glass vase from a coffee table and backed away.

"Listen," I pleaded, "there's no reason for this now. What I told you is true. You can talk to your husband on the phone if you like." "It's a lie! It's all a lie!"

"Don't be crazy." I moved toward her, not understanding why she wouldn't believe me. "It's over. You're safe. You're going home."

She slashed the air with the long vase and I stepped back. We were near the windows now, and I had to shield my eyes from the light. I could hear Thana's breath hissing through her teeth. Then, when I saw the glinting, half-secret grin on her face, I realized that she
did
believe me.

I drew the gun from my belt. "No games now," I said, waving the barrel at her. "There isn't any reason to be afraid. All I want to do is take you downstairs. Now walk to the elevator." I motioned with the gun toward the entrance to the private elevator, but Thana moved the other way.

I lunged then and grabbed at her wrist, grasped it for a moment. She lashed down at me with the vase and I raised my other arm in defense. The vase glanced off my shoulder, and at the same time Thana twisted, twirled from my grip. I grabbed at her waist, felt the smooth material of her dress slip painfully from my fingers as she hurled herself out into the blinding light beyond the glass that had shattered behind her.

After the sound of splintering glass came her scream, a long, shrieking scream, a scream of terror to others who might have heard it. From where I stood paralyzed, however, the sound was different: it was a high, triumphant scream, a scream of deliverance.

In the echo of that scream I suddenly understood about Thana, about the reckless way she lived. I understood her fast and dangerous driving, her relentless drinking, her long nighttime walks looking out to sea. Yet here, twenty stories high and the focal point of concern, excitement, a thousand upturned eyes and dozens of brilliant, probing spotlights, I was the instrument she'd chosen.

I meant her no harm at all; I'd have done anything to save her and myself. That's the way it's been all my life. They say you learn from experience, but sometimes the trouble with that is, by the time you've learned, the experience is over and it's too late.

The arrest, the trial, the sentence–I went through the whole formality in a kind of detached haze. The upright citizens of the state would execute me a dozen times if they could. Murder, kidnapping, and the wrath of Norman Norden–I had about as much chance of surviving as Thana Norden did after flying through that plate of glass into the sultry Miami night sky. So the electric chair's waiting for me, and I'm waiting for it. I'll have to agree with the judge that in the penthouse that night a murder was committed, only there's some confusion in my mind as to who was the victim.