City of the Dead

»44«

Interminable night. Night of calls. Night of ringing phones. Dialing and waiting for call-backs. Konig’s old friend the Police Commissioner. Very calm, very wise. Sympathetic. Counseling patience. “Yes, the entire force is on it… Key people detailed… Investigation going speedily forward… Very quiet… very discreet. Hang in there, Paul.” Then down to Washington. To the Bureau, and by midnight, back to New York, his friend the Bureau’s district head in New York, whom he’d gotten out of bed. He’d talked to him only a week ago, and now he could sense the edge of impatience in the man’s voice. More than faintly piqued. “Yes, we’ve got some leads. Nothing definite, mind you, but everything is being checked out Followed up. These people are obviously well financed. Techniques fairly sophisticated. Sufficient evidence to indicate that Meacham had been the brains behind several other kidnappings—identical patterns—in recent years. All under different names. Mountain of information. Files. Dossiers. Police reports. All being collated, analyzed. Very definite picture starting to emerge. If he’s made contact with you, certain we’ll have something tangible in the next week or so.”

“Next week or so?” Konig murmurs, letting the phone drop back onto the cradle, cold pockets of sweat at the small of the back, in the armpits. And Lolly—that awful sound still resonating in his head.

Hands trembling, he flips through an address book on his night table. Finding Haggard’s home number, he dials. Gets a wrong number. An irascible voice at the other end. Jarred from sleep and hissing oaths, obscenities, even as Konig apologizes and hangs up. Dials again. This time the quiet, mildly apprehensive voice of a woman unaccustomed to late night calls.

“Oh, yes, Dr. Konig. Frank’s right here.”

Then Konig, breathless, panting, spewing over into the phone. Frantic. Incoherent. Aware he’s making no sense whatever.

“Hold everything,” the detective says. “I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you, Frank. Thank you.” Still saying “thank you” even after he’s hung up.

Then suddenly alone there, the silence of the house closing in upon him. Sitting there, terrified of the silence, not knowing what to do next. Bathed in sweat, body coiled taut as a spring, he sits there, rigid, erect, waiting he cannot say for what. Possibly the phone. Afraid it will ring again. Afraid it won’t.

He goes to the bathroom and takes a pair of Librium, then for the first time that night sees his face in the bathroom mirror and he’s alarmed. Truly alarmed. Gray, haggard, vaguely demented, he looks, with a gash of blood now dried at the corner of his mouth and at the crease of his chin, a line moving downward, coagulated russet on the collar of his shirt. Tentatively now, like a man avoiding pain, he glides his tongue over the jagged edge of broken tooth at the back of his mouth. There is, too, inside his mouth, badly abraded tissue where on impact the tooth bit deep into the soft flesh of the inner cheek. But it is that bluish cast to his lips that really alarms him. That ghastly cyanotic blue.

Konig pads back to the bedroom, still in his clothes, and stretches out full length on the bed, lying there, still panting like a winded, harried animal.

He’s dead tired but lying there is more of an effort than being up. He must be up now, doing things. Out looking for her. She’s somewhere. Somewhere out there. But he can’t go. Haggard is coming. What for, though? To what end? Useless. Utterly useless.

Then suddenly a name, like a melody inexplicably recalled, goes through his head. Ginny—Virginia. Can’t recall the last name. Lived in Riverdale though. Lolly’s best friend. High-school chums; later, college. Thick as flies the past ten years or so. Maybe she knows. Maybe Lolly’s called her from someplace. Looking for help. Contacted her, trying to borrow money. Might know something. Some small thing. A clue of her whereabouts. Anything. Oh, God, what was her last name?

Then back to Lolly’s room. The Fieldston High School yearbook. Flipping hectically through the pages. Girls all listed together with photographs in one section. “Where is she? What the hell was her name?”

Back and forth he goes, several times. Then suddenly, at last, a bright, round, rather cherubic face. Blond hair, laughing eyes.

Konig dashes back to his bedroom, snatches the phone book, flies through the A’s. Alcott, Nathaniel. Oxford Avenue, Riverdale. Only Alcott in Riverdale. Breathless, in a sweat, he dials. Three rings, then the voice of an operator asking him what number he dialed, then informing him the phone’s been changed to the following number in Hartford, Connecticut. Scribbling the number down he breaks the point of his pencil, and in his fury literally carves the number into the pad with the broken stump.

Then dialing again, that same mad, furious haste, making his fingers fly across the dial, jamming them into the holes.

A man answers. A gruff, coarse, but not uneducated voice. At that hour he, too, like Mrs. Haggard before him, is wary.

“Ginny? Christ. Do you know what time it is?”

Konig, frantic, thinks to himself, Good God, he thinks I’m a suitor. Apologizes. Tries to explain, realizing he’s made a botch of it. Sounds demented. “Dr. Konig,” he says once more. “Lauren Konig’s father.”

“Lauren’s father?” A significant pause.

“Yes—must talk to your daughter.”

Another pause, this one in which Konig can almost hear the consternation and puzzlement in the man. Then the sound of a woman’s voice in the background and the muffled whispers of them both. The man has evidently covered the receiver with his hand.

“One moment, Doctor. My wife will be right with you.” Another pause while Konig’s heart slugs unevenly in his chest. Then the woman.

“Yes, Dr. Konig. Remember you very well. Anything wrong?”

“Lauren—missing—Yes, almost six months. Yes—I’m afraid so. Yes. Mrs. Konig passed away. Oh, you heard?

Yes—over a year ago. Yes.”

He tries frantically to explain about Lolly. Once again it’s all garbled. Incoherent. “Thought possibly Virginia might know something. Might’ve heard something. Closest friend, you know.”

“Yes, of course. But I don’t think they’ve seen each other in a few years. Not since graduation anyway. Ginny’s in St. Louis now. Married. Baby coming.”

Konig tries to say something apposite. All he wants, needs though, is her number.

“Do you think I might call her?”

“Now?”

“Yes. Please.”

“It’s very late, Doctor. I hate to alarm her.”

“It’s sort of—an emergency.”

She can almost hear him pleading.

“Yes, of course,” she says finally, reluctance overcome and a little frightened herself. “Just one moment. I’ll get you the number.”

Then, once again, in a feverish sweat, dialing. The wires singing a third of the way across the continent. The voices of operators and the intermittent chatter of distant strangers caught momentarily in crossed wires. Then a rather flat, curious buzzing sound denoting a phone ringing almost one thousand miles away. At last, the startled, rather anxious voice of a young lady he knew as a child, a little girl in his kitchen, in his backyard, hanging upside down on a Jungle-gym. Watched her, along with his own child, graduate high school, college, now mother-to-be.

“Virginia? Hello, Virginia.” Struggling to contain the tremor in his voice, he sounds almost cheerful. “Virginia Alcott?”

“Yes, this is she.”

“This is Paul Konig.”

“Who?”

“Lauren’s father.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Laughter. Relief. But apprehension is still there. “Dr. Konig. How are you?”

“I’m fine… Virginia, don’t be alarmed,” he says gently, recalling the hour and the girl’s condition, then realizing his very efforts to calm her have evidently alarmed her even more.

“Is anything wrong?”

“That’s why I’m calling. You see, Lauren—”

“Lauren?”

“Yes—I’m afraid she’s missing.”

“Missing? Oh, my God.”

He struggles to tell it sanely this time, present the details in meaningful sequence, and he can hear it registering clearly with the girl.

“She hasn’t tried to contact you? You haven’t had a call or a letter? Anything at all?”

“No. I haven’t spoken with her in about two years. And she was still living at home then.”

“Yes, of course,” he murmurs, crushed, the disappointment so heavy in him, although he never really believed for a moment that he would get anything at all out of the girl in the way of useful information. For a moment he considers telling her about the other thing… the Meacham business… the screams on the phone. Spilling it all. Sharing the load with someone else. But he cannot inflict that on this girl now. Especially since he can hear distress in her voice already.

“I just can’t believe she’s run off like that,” the girl goes on agitatedly. “Without a letter. An explanation. So unlike her. Have you notified the police?”

“Yes, of course. Well…” His voice trails off. “Thank you, Virginia.”

“Nothing I can do?”

“No. Afraid not. Just pray,” he says, and is surprised at himself for saying it.

“She was always so good, so kind,” the girl says, unconsciously slipping into the past tense. “Could always talk to Lauren. Like a sister to me. Are you sure I can’t help?” He is touched by the sudden unashamed swamp of her emotion.

“No—nothing,” Konig says, struggling with his own voice. “Nothing to do. Nothing to do.”

“She’ll come back. I know she will.”

“Yes—I think so too,” he says.

The girl is now crying openly. And suddenly, so is he. The two of them together on the phone. The removal of great distance making it easier for them both. Sharing their grief.

“So good. So kind. Like a sister to me.”

“Didn’t mean to upset you like this.”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sorry I can’t—”

“Heard about the baby. Congratulations.” He laughs idiotically. “Go back to bed now. Need your rest.”

“Yes—sorry. Sorry.”

“Go to bed.”

He can still hear her crying when he hangs up the phone.

At 2 a.m. Haggard arrives. Dirty raincoat over his pajama tops. Trousers pulled on hastily. Fedora sitting absurdly on the back of his head. He swings past Konig into the library.

“Good Christ. What an hour. You got a drink?”

Not speaking a word, they sit there for the first few minutes drinking large shots of undiluted Scotch. Konig has three in rapid-fire succession, trying to deaden pain as one does for a massive toothache.

“Tell me what he said,” Haggard finally says, seeing the Scotch take hold in the slackening of tension around Konig’s jaws.

“Didn’t say anything.”

“Nothing? No money? No ransom?”

“Nothing. Just the screaming.”

Emanating from partial shadows, Konig’s voice sounds distant.

“Have another drink.” The detective tilts the bottle and splashes another massive shot into Konig’s glass. “Didn’t stay on long enough for that tracing device to work, did he?”

“No more than a minute or so.” Konig gulps down his Scotch with a shudder. “Called twice.”

“Twice?”

“I hung up once.”

“You hung up?”

“Couldn’t take that screaming. That goddamned screaming. Couldn’t take that.” Konig gulps deeply and reaches for the bottle, this time pouring his own drink. Haggard, sitting there looking ludicrous in fedora and pajama tops, studies him closely.

“That screaming—”

“What about it?” Konig grumbles, his voice and manner growing more vague, diffuse.

“Could be a phony, too, you know.”

“A phony?” The word jolts Konig out of his daze.

“Sure. One of the girl friends screaming into the phone on cue. Just an act. Make you think it’s her. Just to soften you up.”

“Oh, yeah?” Konig laughs harshly, a bit of the old truculence coming back in him. “Well, I’m softened. I’ll pay. Just let ’em tell me what they want and where. I’ll pay. Christ—I’ll pay anything. I’ll be there with bells on.”

“Okay.” Haggard stands. “Whyn’t you go up to bed now?”

“Bed? What the hell do I want with a bed? My kid’s out there and—” Konig’s voice cracks and he turns sideways, back into the shadows. “Hurting her like that. Sons of bitches. No need—no need—”

Embarrassed, the detective turns away and saunters up the length of the library, eyes riveted upward at the shelves of books, pausing every now and then, pretending to study titles, pretending not to hear the sad noises coming out of the shadows.

“Come on,” he says after a moment “Go on up to bed. You look awful. What the hell did you do to your mouth? Looks like somebody smacked you in the chops. Go on now. I’m gonna sit right down here and drink Scotch. I don’t get such good Scotch at home.” He starts around the desk where Konig sits and reaches for the slumped, slightly stuporous figure. “Come on. I’ll take you up.”

“Take your goddamned hands off me. I’m not going to bed.”

“Come on. Come on.” Haggard laughs and hauls the hefty, lumpen figure to its feet.

“Lay offa me. Lay offa me. I’m not going to bed, I tell you.”

The detective laughs louder, taking the great, stumbling hulk of the man hard against his hip.

“You son of a bitch,” Konig bawls as he’s dragged gently to the stairway, then up. “Take your hands offa me. Take your goddamned hands offa me, I tell you.”

“’Atta boy, Tiger.” Haggard’s hearty Irish laughter roars upward through the gloomy silence of the house. “That’s my boy talking now.”