36
Clint knew they were nearing La Cantina Restaurant and was worried about overshooting it. With narrowed eyes, he anxiously scanned the right side of the parkway. He had spotted the state trooper patrol car and dropped back to make sure the cop didn’t get the idea he was following Lucas. Now Lucas was out of sight.
Angie was sitting beside him, rocking the sick kid in her arms. Since the minute they set foot in the van, she’d been singing the same “Two Little Girls in Blue” song over and over and over again. “ ‘But . . . we . . . have . . . drifted . . . apart,’ ” she crooned now, drawing out the last line.
Was that Lucas’s car up ahead? Clint wondered. No it wasn’t.
“ ‘Two little girls in blue, lad,’ ” Angie began again.
“Angie, I wish you’d quit that damn singing,” Clint snapped.
“Kathy likes me to sing to her,” Angie retorted, her voice steely.
Clint glanced nervously at her. There was something strange about Angie tonight. She was in one of her crazy moods. When they’d gone into the bedroom to get the kids, he had seen that one of them was sleeping with a sock tied around her mouth. When he started to take it off, Angie had grabbed his hand. “I don’t need her hollering in the van.” Then Angie insisted that he put that kid on the floor of the backseat and cover her with an open newspaper.
His protest that she might suffocate had set Angie off. “She’s not going to suffocate, and if by any chance we hit some kind of roadblock, we don’t need to have the cops looking at identical twins.”
The other kid, the one Angie was holding, was kind of restless and whimpering. It was a good thing that she’d be back with the parents soon. You didn’t have to be a doctor to see that she was pretty sick.
That building had to be the restaurant, Clint decided as he peered ahead. He edged the car into the right lane. He could feel perspiration begin to drip from all over his body. It was always like this at a crisis point in a job. He drove past the restaurant and turned right into the driveway beside it, then made another right into the parking lot behind. He could see that Lucas had stopped close to the building, so he pulled up directly behind him.
“ ‘They were sisters . . . ’ ” Angie sang, her voice suddenly louder.
In her arms, Kathy stirred and began to cry. From the floor of the backseat, Kelly’s muffled whimper echoed her sister’s tired protest at being awakened.
“Shut up!” Clint pleaded. “If Lucas opens the door and hears you making noise, there’s no telling what he’ll do to you.”
Abruptly, she stopped singing. “I’m not afraid of him. Here, hold her.” With a swift movement she thrust Kathy into his arms, opened the door, ran up to the driver’s door of the stolen car, and rapped on the window.
As Clint watched, Lucas rolled down the window, and Angie leaned inside the car. An instant later, a loud bang that could only be caused by a gunshot echoed through the deserted parking lot.
Angie ran back to the van, opened the back door, and grabbed Kelly.
Still too numb to move or speak, Clint saw her deposit Kelly in the backseat of the stolen car and get in the front seat on the passenger side. When she came back she was holding both of Lucas’s cell phones and a ring of keys. “When the Pied Piper calls, we have to be able to answer,” she told him, her voice warm and bubbly.
“You killed Lucas!” Clint said numbly, his arms still around Kathy, whose crying had again dissolved into a coughing fit.
Angie took Kathy from him. “He left a note. It’s typed on the same typewriter as the ransom note. It says that he didn’t mean to kill Kathy. She was crying so much he put his hand over her mouth and when he realized she was dead he put her in a box and flew out over the ocean and dumped it. Wasn’t that a good idea? I had to make it look like he committed suicide. Now we have the whole million dollars, and I have my baby. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Suddenly panicking, Clint turned on the engine and floored the gas.
“Slow up, you stupid jerk,” Angie snapped, the bubbly tone vanishing from her tone. “Just drive your family home, nice and easy.”
As he turned back onto the highway, Angie began to sing again, this time sotto voce: “ ‘They were sisters . . . but they have drifted apart.’ ”
37
The lights had been burning all night in the executive offices of the C.F.G.&Y. building on Park Avenue. Some of the members of the board of directors had kept the vigil, wanting to be part of the triumphant return of the Frawley twins to the arms of their parents.
Everyone was keenly aware that the Pied Piper had promised that once the cash ransom had been successfully paid, he would make contact around midnight. As the hours after midnight wore on, the anticipation of generous press coverage and a huge public relations boost for the firm changed to worry and doubt.
Robinson Geisler knew that a number of newspapers had editorialized that paying a ransom was playing into the hands of kidnappers, thus making everyone vulnerable to becoming victims of copycat criminals.
Ransom, the Glenn Ford film in which the father sits in a television studio at a table piled with stacks of bills and warns the kidnappers that he will not pay the ransom, but instead will use that money to track them down, was being played on a number of TV channels. The happy ending in that movie was that the child was released unharmed. Would there be a happy ending to this story?
At five A.M. Geisler went into his private bathroom, showered and shaved, and changed his clothes. He remembered that the late Bennett Cerf, whom he had enjoyed watching on television, always looked as if he had stepped out of a bandbox. Cerf often wore a bow tie. Would it be too much to wear a bow tie when they film me with the twins? he wondered.
Of course it would. But a red tie always suggested optimism, even victory. He chose one from his closet.
He went back to his desk and rehearsed aloud the victory speech he would give to the media. “Paying the ransom may seem to some to be cooperating with criminals. Talk to any FBI agent and they will tell you that their first concern is always to get the victims back. Only then can they relentlessly pursue the criminals. The example these criminals will set is not that they received ransom money, but that they never got a chance to spend it.”
Let Gregg Stanford top that, he thought with a thin smile.
38
“The first thing we’ve gotta do is get rid of his car,” Angie said matter-of-factly as they drove into Danbury. “First we get his share of the money out of the trunk of his car, then you drive it back and park it in front of his apartment. I’ll be right behind you.”
“We’re not going to get away with this, Angie. You can’t hide the kid forever.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Somebody might connect Lucas to us. Once they take his fingerprints, they’ll figure out that the real Lucas Wohl’s been dead for twenty years, and this guy’s real name was Jimmy Nelson, and he was in prison. And I was his cellmate.”
“So your real name isn’t Clint Downes. But who else knows that? The only time you and Lucas were together was when you met for a job. The only times he came to the house were these past few weeks at night.”
“He came yesterday afternoon when he picked up all that stuff.”
“Even if somebody saw his car turn into the service road of the club, do you think they thought, ‘Hey, there goes Lucas in his old brown Ford that looks like every other old brown Ford on the road’? It might be different if he came over in the limo. We know he never called you on the special phone, and now I’ve got it.”
“I still think . . .”
“I still think we’ve got a million bucks, and I’ve got the baby I want, and that creep who always treated us like dirt is out of the way with his head on the steering wheel, so shut up.”
At five after five, the special phone the Pied Piper had given Lucas began to ring. They had just pulled into the driveway at the cottage. Clint looked at the phone. “What are you going to tell him?”
> “We’re not going to answer,” Angie said with a smirk. “Let him think we’re still on the highway and maybe talking to a cop.” She tossed him a set of keys. “These are his. Let’s get rid of his car.”
At five twenty, Clint parked Lucas’s car in front of the hardware store. On the second floor a faint glow showed through the shaded window. Lucas had left a light on for himself.
Clint got out of the car and scrambled back to the van. His cherubic face dripping with perspiration, he got behind the wheel. The cell phone the Pied Piper had given to Lucas was ringing again. “He must be scared stiff,” Angie chortled. “Okay, let’s go home. My baby is waking up again.”
“Mommy, Mommy . . .” Kathy was stirring and reaching out her hand.
“She’s trying to touch her twin,” Angie said. “Isn’t that cute?” She tried to entwine her own fingers with Kathy’s, but Kathy pulled away. “Kelly, I want my Kelly,” she said, her voice hoarse but distinct. “I don’t want Mona. I want Kelly.”
As he turned on the ignition key, Clint looked nervously at Angie. She didn’t like rejection, in fact, couldn’t tolerate it. He knew she’d be sick of the kid before the week was up. What then? he wondered. She was off the deep end now. He had seen her vicious streak before. He had seen it again tonight. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought, out of this town, out of Connecticut.
The street was quiet. Trying not to show how panicked he was becoming, he drove with the headlights off until they reached Route 7. It wasn’t until they had gone through the service gate of the country club that he was able to draw a deep breath.
“After you drop me off, put the van in the garage,” Angie told him. “Just in case that drunk, Gus, gets a notion to drive by in the morning, it makes it look like you’re not here.”
“He never just drops over,” Clint said, knowing it was useless to protest.
“He called last night, didn’t he? He’s dying to get together with his old buddy.” Angie did not add that even though he had been drunk when he called, Gus might have heard both girls crying.
Kathy was crying again: “Kelly . . . Kelly . . .” Clint stopped at the front door of the cottage and hurried to open it. Kathy in her arms, Angie went inside, walked straight to the bedroom, and dropped the little girl in the crib. “Get over it, baby doll,” she said, as she turned and walked back to the living room.
Clint was still standing at the front door. “I told you to put the van away,” she ordered.
Before Clint could obey, the special phone rang. This time Angie picked it up. “Hello, Mr. Pied Piper,” she said then listened. “We know Lucas hasn’t been answering his cell phone. There was an accident on the parkway and it was teeming with cops. There’s such a thing as a law against talking on a cell phone when you’re driving, you know. Everything went fine. Lucas had a hunch that the feds might decide to talk with him again and he didn’t want to be carrying this around. Yeah. Yeah. Everything went real smooth. Tell somebody where to pick up the Two Little Girls in Blue. I hope we never talk to you again. Good luck to you.”
39
At five forty-five on Thursday morning the answering service for St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Ridgefield received a phone call. “I’m desperate. I need to talk to a priest,” a husky voice said.
Rita Schless, the telephone operator who took the call, was sure that whoever it was was trying to disguise his voice. Not that nonsense again, she thought. Last year some smart-aleck high school senior had phoned and begged to speak to a priest, claiming a terrible emergency was taking place in his home. She had awakened Monsignor Romney at four in the morning, and when he got on the phone, the kid, to the accompaniment of background laughter, had said, “We’re dying, Father. We’ve run out of beer.”
This call was not on the level either, Rita decided. “Are you injured or sick?” she asked crisply.
“Put me through to a priest immediately. This is a matter of life and death.”
“Hold on, sir,” Rita said. I don’t believe him for one minute, she thought, but I can’t take a chance. Reluctantly she rang seventy-five-year-old Monsignor Romney, who had told her to direct all middle-of-the night calls to him. “I’m an insomniac, Rita,” he had explained. “Try me first.”
“I don’t think this guy’s on the level,” Rita explained now. “I swear he’s trying to disguise his voice.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” the Reverend Monsignor Joseph Romney said wryly, as he sat up and swung his legs over the bed. Unconsciously he rubbed the right knee that always ached when he changed position. As he reached for his glasses, he heard the click of the call being transferred. “Monsignor Romney,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“Monsignor, you heard about the twins who were kidnapped?”
“Yes, of course. The Frawleys are new members of our parish. We’ve been offering a daily Mass for their safe return.” Rita is right, he acknowledged. Whoever this is, he’s trying to disguise his voice.
“Kathy and Kelly are safe. They can be found in a locked car behind the old La Cantina Restaurant on the north side of the Saw Mill River Parkway near Elmsford.”
Joseph Romney felt his heart begin to pound. “Is this a joke?” he demanded.
“It is not a joke, Monsignor Romney. I am the Pied Piper. The ransom has been paid, and I have chosen you to bring a message of joy to the Frawleys. The north side of the Saw Mill, behind the old La Cantina Restaurant near Elmsford. Have you got that straight?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Then I suggest you hurry to notify the authorities. It is an inclement night. The girls have been there for several hours, and Kathy has a heavy cold.”
40
At dawn, unable any longer to watch the deepening misery on the faces of Margaret and Steve Frawley, Walter Carlson sat at the dining room table beside the phone. When it rang at five minutes of six, he steeled himself for bad news as he grabbed the receiver.
It was Marty Martinson calling from the police station. “Walt, Monsignor Romney of St. Mary’s got a call from someone claiming to be the Pied Piper. He told the Monsignor that the twins are in a locked car behind an old restaurant on the Saw Mill River Parkway. We called the state police. They’ll be there in less than five minutes.”
Carlson heard the sound of the Frawleys and Dr. Harris as they rushed into the dining room. Obviously they had heard the phone ring. He turned and looked up at them. The look of hope on their faces was almost as upsetting to see as the earlier misery. “Hold on, Marty,” he told Captain Martinson. There was nothing he could offer the parents and Dr. Harris other than the simple truth. “We will know in a few minutes if a call Monsignor Romney received at the rectory is a hoax,” he told them quietly.
“Was it from the Pied Piper?” Margaret gasped.
“Did he say where they are?” Steve demanded.
Carlson did not answer. “Marty,” he said, speaking into the phone, “are the state troopers getting back to you?”
“Yes. I’ll call you as soon as I hear from them.”
“If it’s for real, our guys need to do the forensics on the car.”
“The troopers know that,” Martinson said. “They’re calling your Westchester office.”
Carlson hung up the phone.
“Tell us what’s going on,” Steve insisted. “We have a right to know.”
“We will ascertain in a few minutes whether or not the call Monsignor Romney received is real. If it is, the twins have been left, unharmed, in a locked car just off the Saw Mill River Parkway near Elmsford,” Carlson told them. “The state troopers are on the way there now.”
“The Pied Piper kept his word,” Margaret cried. “My babies are coming home. My babies are coming home!” She threw her arms around Steve. “Steve, they’re coming home!”
“Margaret, it may be a hoax,” Dr. Harris cautioned, as her exterior calm broke, and she began to clasp and unclasp her hands.
“God wouldn’t do that to us,” Margaret said emphatic
ally, as Steve, unable to speak, buried his face in her hair.
When fifteen minutes went by without another call, Carlson was sure something was terribly wrong. If it had been some nut phoning, we’d have been told by now, he thought. Then, when the doorbell rang, he knew it had to be bad news. Even if the twins were safe, it would have taken at least forty minutes to drive them home from Elmsford.
He was sure that the same thought was in the minds of Steve and Margaret and the doctor as they followed him to the foyer. Carlson opened the door. Monsignor Romney and Marty Martinson were standing on the porch.
The priest went to Margaret and Steve and, in a voice trembling with compassion, said, “God has sent you back one of your little girls. Kelly is safe. Kathy has been taken to Him.”
41
The news that one of the twins was dead triggered an avalanche of national sympathy. The few pictures the media were able to get of Kelly as her distraught parents carried her from the hospital in Elmsford where she had been taken to be examined were distinct enough to show the difference from the way she had appeared in her birthday picture of only a week ago. Her eyes were wide and frightened now, and there seemed to be a bruise on her face. In all the pictures, her one arm was around her mother’s neck, while the other was stretched out, the fingers moving as though to grasp another hand.
The state trooper who was first to arrive at La Cantina Restaurant described the scene: “The car was locked. I could see the man slumped over the wheel. There was only one little girl there. She was curled up on the floor of the backseat. The car was cold. She was wearing only pajamas, and she was shivering. Then I saw that she had a gag on. It was so tight, it’s a wonder she didn’t choke. When I untied it, she started whimpering like a hurt puppy. I took my coat off and wrapped it around her, then carried her back to the squad car to warm her up. Right after that the other troopers and the FBI arrived, and found the suicide note on the front seat.”