Oakley’s legs were not working well. They tramped to the front room but it was empty; one light burned in a lonely corner. “Gone to bed,” Conniston judged, and heaved himself around. With sudden alarm Oakley hurried after him.

To Oakley’s dismay Conniston didn’t knock when he reached his wife’s bedroom; he palmed the knob and pushed the door open without hesitation. Oakley wheeled inside in his wake, bitterly certain of what they would find.

Faint light splashed past them into the room from the open doorway and revealed the two figures naked on the bed. Louise’s head was lifted, rigid with alarm; her tawny hair glistened faintly. The room smelled of cold cream and shampoo. Oakley was strangely, oppressively aware of the odor; as he was of the frozen tableau on the bed before Frankie Adams rolled over, his feral face turning vividly scarlet. Adams said with absurd aplomb, “Jesus Christ—look who’s here. Listen, Earle, don’t get sore—even the government frowns on monopoly, hey?” He uttered a hysterical shriek of laughter that beat strident echoes around the room. Louise’s lips upturned in a cowardly apologetic half-smile; then, when Conniston moved, her face went flat and lifeless with horror.

Oakley reached out to stop Conniston but he was not fast enough. Conniston leaped for the bed with an inarticulate roar, batted Louise aside and snapped both hands around Adams’ chicken-thin throat. Oakley rammed forward and tried to grab him but the two men rolled off the far side of the bed, locked together; Oakley tripped on bedclothes tangled in discard on the floor and fell across Louise, hearing her brief whimpering grunts of panic. Thunder roared in Oakley’s ears. He kicked his feet free of the entangling sheets and hurled himself off the bed in a violent somersault, striking the wall with one shoe, coming down on one knee and both hands. He reached for a thrashing ankle—Adams’—but the foot whipped around against his wrist, stunning him up to the shoulder. Someone was crying out. He threw himself forward but a hard thing whipped out of the darkness—elbow or knee—bash against his temple.

His head rocked back; he fell over on his side, half under the bed. Numbed and throbbing, he reached sluggishly, squirming out from under, rolling his head to seek the others. He rolled over on his back and then he saw them above him, outlined against the open door.

They had got their feet under them somehow: Adam’s thin naked arms whipped up and broke Conniston’s hold on his throat; Conniston bawled a shrieking cry and swung an open-handed blow that sounded like the flat of a cleaver striking a side of beef.

It knocked Adams off the wall. Startlingly resilient, the comedian bounced acrobatically and drop-kicked the big man, both bare feet into Conniston’s belly. Conniston pitched back, lost his balance, toppled back toward the brass bedposts at the foot of the bed. The back of his head struck the brass globe with a dull, sickening sound. Bones jerking, he flopped down and slid to the floor.

Oakley got his legs under him. His knees trembled when he rushed past the foot of the bed and pinned Adams against the wall with a stiff arm. “All right,” he panted. “Stop it!”

Louise lay on her elbows, looking down over the foot of the bed. She made retching sounds in her throat. Adams said with stifled alarm, “Okay, okay, get off me.”

Conniston was crumpled, not moving. Oakley turned the comedian loose and dropped to the floor beside Conniston. He slipped a hand under Conniston’s head to support it—felt a wet pulpy cavity, removed his hand to see a dark smear across it. Swallowing spasmically he reached for Conniston’s wrist. The pulse stopped beating under his hand.

Adams’ voice reached him dimly through the thudding in his ears: “Call the doctor. Quick!”

“No,” Oakley heard himself say. “Don’t call anybody.” Later he would remember that and ask himself why he had said it.

He dragged himself to his feet. Adams whispered, “Dead?” And when no one answered him, he said, “Sweet, sweet Jesus.”

In that moment Oakley glanced suddenly at Louise and caught on her features in that unguarded instant a look of savage joyful satisfaction. It was gone so swiftly he might have imagined it.

“He’s dead.” He pronounced the fact with harsh clarity. “He’s dead.”

C H A P T E R Eight

Oakley sat in Conniston’s huge office chair, rocking, withdrawn deep in himself, watching the others’ faces change as they listened to the playback of the tape-recorded phone call from the kidnaper. He saw the different grip fear took on each of their faces: Louise—placid, wooden, blindly stunned, staring sightless at the slow-spinning tape reels; Frankie Adams—tremble-lipped, white, ghastly, eyes brimming with despair, ready to burst into tears; Diego Orozco—big-rumped and tub-bellied, sitting on a straight chair with both hands on his knees, staring at the floor with intense concentration.

The muscles of Oakley’s arms and back still throbbed from the limp deadweight of Earle Conniston’s corpse: he had carried it, undressed and wrapped in a tarp, to the deep-freeze, with great care—Odd how gently we treat people after they’re dead. He felt slightly anesthetized, as if the tactile nerve-endings of his extremities had lost their sensitivity: dreamlike. Yet his mind worked with heightened clarity, as it. sometimes did when he was overtired; often inspirations had struck him late at night on the point of falling asleep—this hour was like that, his mind racing, uninhibited by ordinary daytime commonplaces, running fast and smooth like an engine disengaged from its load.

He let the tape play through to its finish. There followed Diego Orozco’s short grunt. No one else spoke until Oakley stirred and heard his own voice issue from his chest with cool precision: “That’s why we can’t let it be known outside this room that Earle’s dead. If the kidnaper finds out I wouldn’t give two cents for Terry’s chances. Diego?”

“Sure. You’re dead right.”

Cataleptic immobility was Louise Conniston’s only response. She wore a nylon negligee, carelessly fastened; it clung electrically to her thrusting breasts. Her hair was in disarray, her face chalky. For the first time in Oakley’s memory she was indifferent to her appearance. Sensitive to the others’ eyes on her, she turned in her chair with a lurch, almost upsetting herself. Her face moved back and forth like some sort of wind-up toy—mechanically. It took Oakley a minute to realize she was shaking her head, rhythmically denying to herself that any of this had happened, that it could have happened. Oakley said in a harsh, cross voice intended to break past the barrier of her shock, “Quit rending your garments. Snap out of it.”

Her face filled with venom. “Shut up.”

“I need to have you lucid. You’ve got to pay attention.”

“You need,” she muttered with icy scorn.

Frankie Adams stood up like an old man and pulled tight the cloth belt of his dressing gown. “A drink would help.”

“All right,” Oakley said. “But nurse it.”

Louise said, “Can’t you shut up?”

“Don’t shout,” Oakley said. “I’m not deaf.” His words had a dry rustle. Orozco went to Louise and picked up her hand and began to rub it and pat it between his big brown hams. Louise neither responded nor withdrew. Oakley left his chair and went out of the room with Frankie Adams, taking him down the hall to the dining room and standing in the doorway to watch Adams pour a shaky drink at the side bar. Adams said, “Want one?”

“No.” He wanted a clear head.

Adams said, “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup,” and sat down on a dining chair as though genuflecting. He looked up at Oakley and added morosely, “Check, please.” His grin was a spasm of clenched teeth and drawn lips. Unable to hold Oakley’s glance he shifted his eyes away and demolished half his drink. Oakley tipped his shoulder against the doorjamb and folded his arms, his eyes half-shuttered.