Until You Are Dead (25 page)

I looked up at her as I was untying the rope around her ankles.

"That
is
where you went, isn't it? To telephone your demand for ransom?"

I nodded, unwinding the rope and standing. "Your husband's worried about you, and he didn't seem to think a quarter of a million was too high a price to get you back."

"Just the way you planned, hmm?"

"Just," I said, untying her arms, then handcuffing her right wrist to the sofa arm in such a way that she could stretch out and sleep.

"Don't think I'm not aware of what else you plan." She was glaring up at me with a dark, almost-a-dare defiance in her eyes, and I realized what she meant. "After all," she said, "rape carries the same penalty as kidnapping."

"Maybe you're flattering yourself," I told her.

"I know better!" she spat out at me. It was almost as if she were trying to argue me into it to prove she was right.

I stood looking down at her and she met my gaze without blinking. "You're a means of making a quarter of a million dollars," I said. "You don't have to worry about being molested by me — if you
are
worried."

I walked to the other side of the room where slanted morning light was beginning to edge in around the heavy draperies. When it was light enough out, they could be opened. That shouldn't be noticeable or remarkable from twenty stories below in the street, and I was beginning to feel like a prisoner in the apartment myself. Thana had been right to an extent. Desire for her would intrude itself into any man's mind after a while. However, one of the main reasons I never actually considered touching her was that I knew if I did, Norman Norden would never rest, would never let himself die, unless I'd preceded him. The money he could spare and forget, but I knew he had to have his wife back "as was."

I stretched out in one of the bedrooms and slept for a few hours. Afterward, I arranged things in the apartment so Thana would have a little necessary freedom of movement. First I closed and locked the kitchen and bedroom doors, then I checked in the hall bathroom and removed anything she might use for a weapon, then broke the lock on the polished gold doorknob. The telephone was my big worry; Thana had only to lift the receiver from its cradle to indicate to the hotel below that someone was in the penthouse.

The phone was on a very long cord, though, so I set it high up on the top wall bookshelf where she couldn't reach it. I fastened the receiver down with adhesive tape so that even if Thana pulled the phone down by the cord it would hold firm. She thanked me when I freed her from the sofa and let her walk about with her wrists handcuffed before her.

Most of the day she just roamed around the apartment, sitting now and then to read part of the paperback detective novel I'd bought. I watched her try and fail to concentrate on the book.

"You have lousy taste in literature," she said at last, giving up and throwing the novel across the room.

"I bought it for you," I said, getting up and walking to the long window overlooking the street. The draperies were open more than halfway and the view of the city was impressive. Below me I could see the ant-like cars feeling their way through heavy traffic to the stop sign at the intersection, where they paused and seemed to consider which way to go next before moving on straight or turning.

"This is intolerable," Thana said behind me.

"Be quiet and I'll fix supper," I told her without moving.

"Fix what for supper?"

"Bologna sandwiches."

"That was lunch."

"It'll be breakfast too," I said, and it was.

I listened to Thana complain the rest of the next day, then late that night I bound her to the sofa again and went out to make my second telephone call.

Norden had already received the wedding ring in the mail.

"I want this to be over with," he said in a shaky voice. "I have the money ready in small bills. I took the liberty of assuming you'd want it that way."

"And the police?"

"I swear I haven't talked to them, to anyone!"

"Tomorrow night," I told him, getting to the point to shorten the call, "send your chauffeur in your blue limousine, carrying the money packed in one suitcase. Have him turn north on Route Seven from Highway Y at exactly eleven o'clock, and tell him to drive at exactly forty miles an hour. When he sees the flash of a blue light, he's to pull to the side of the road immediately, dump the suitcase and drive on. Understood?"

"Understood," Norden said "What about Thana? Is she -"

"She's fine," I said, "and if everything goes right she'll be back to you in no time.
If
everything goes right."

"You can trust me," Norden said. "I swear it. But you mustn't harm her."

"I don't want to, Mr. Norden," I said and hung up.

Of course it was true, I didn't want to harm Thana; and for some reason I believed I
could
trust Norman Norden not
to bring in the police at this point. The old man, in my brief but tense conversations with him, had shown an admirable self-control and concern for the safety of his wife. I guess you'd say, a certain class.

I got back to the penthouse and untied, then handcuffed Thana to the sofa so she could sleep, and so I could sleep without worrying about her getting to the telephone or hurling something through a window at this stage of the game.

"I think our worries are about over," I told her. "Your husband's going to pay off tomorrow night."

She sneered up at me. "Did you think he might not pay to have me back?"

"Not for a second. I'm beginning to think I should have asked for more."

"You underestimated my value."

"Or Norden overestimates it."

She spat at me then, but I moved back and she missed.

"How's it feel to be set up for life with millions of dollars?" I asked.

"It feels great! It's a feeling you'll never know."

"You sound like you're trying to convince both of us."

She laughed, a quick humorless laugh that was more a reflex from a touched nerve than anything else. The swiftness of her mood changes was startling, though for some reason the changes seemed to be only on the surface.

"You're partly right." She lay back and rested her head on the sofa arm. "It gets boring after a while . . . like anything else. You might find that out. You're the same unhappy you, with or without money."

"But it beats starving," I said.

Thana shrugged. "I guess anything beats that. Except maybe sleeping stiff as a board on this damned couch."

"One more night," I said, "and you can be free to recuperate on your yacht."

I turned my back on her and went into the bedroom where I began going over the way I had things planned for the next night's pickup. I'd turn north onto Route Seven two minutes after Norden's chauffeur had entered it and drive the legal limit of sixty. Route Seven wasn't heavily traveled at that time of night, and if I did pass any cars between us I could look them over to make sure they weren't police. Our respective speeds would bring the cars together at the right spot. Then I would accelerate close to the limousine, blink my blue-lensed flashlight through the windshield and drop back to wait for the chauffeur to pull to the side and dump the suitcase. I'd park well back of him with my headlights on, and when the limousine drove off I would speed forward, pick up the money, and a third of a mile down the road turn onto the cloverleaf and maze of roads at the heavily traveled state highway. A quarter of a mile from that cloverleaf was another one. If anyone were trying to trace me he'd have to reckon on the possibility of me traveling in any of eight directions, and Norden's chauffeur wouldn't even be able to identify my car. I wouldn't return to the penthouse. I'd check the money, then phone Norden and tell him where to find Thana. It seemed foolproof; as foolproof as you can make something like that.

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 I 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 be 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 head ached. The penalty for kidnapping was death; I could be turning myself over for death.