Cooper turned a notebook page. “The Larchmont cops let me see those motor reports. Some interesting things come out.
“Now, when somebody sees a car, they may not remember much about it, but one thing most of us do remember is the color. Well, those people who reported seeing the motors described eight different colors. So I asked myself: Did the gang really have eight different cars?”
“They could have,” Iris Everly said, “if they were rental cars.”
Cooper shook his head. “Not our lads; they’d be too cagey. They’d know that renting motors means identification—drivers’ licenses, credit cards. Also, rental cars have license plates which can be traced.”
“So you’ve another theory,” Iris prompted. “Right?”
“Right. What I think happened is the snatchers most probably had three motors and resprayed them, say once a week, hoping to lessen the chances of being noticed. Okay, it worked. Only thing was, in the respraying these blokes made a stupid mistake.”
More food had arrived—two heaped platters of Peking duck. The others reached out with chopsticks and ate hungrily while Cooper continued.
“Let’s go back a mo. One of those Larchmont neighbors noticed more than the others about these motors. That’s because he’s in the motor insurance business, knows makes and models.”
Jaeger interrupted. “All this is interesting, my British friend, but if you want any of this delicious duck you’d best dive in before us greedy Yanks finish it.”
“International duck!” Cooper joined with relish in the eating, then resumed.
“Anyway, this insurance geezer noticed the makes and models of the motors and he says he saw three, no more—a Ford Tempo, a Chevy Celebrity and a Plymouth Reliant, all this year’s models, and he remembers some of the colors.”
Partridge asked, “So how do you figure the repainting?”
“This afternoon,” Cooper said, “your mate, Bert Fisher, phoned some car dealers for me. What came out was that some of the colors people say they saw aren’t available for those models. For instance, the insurance geezer, he said he saw a yellow Ford Tempo, but there’s no such color made. Same goes for a blue Plymouth Reliant. Someone else described a green motor, yet not one of those three makes comes in green.”
Owens said thoughtfully, “You may be on to something. It’s possible, of course, that one car could have been in an accident and repainted, but not likely three.”
“Something else about that,” Jaeger put in, “is that when auto body shops repaint cars, they mostly do it in manufacturer’s colors. Unless somebody asks for an offbeat shade.”
“Which wouldn’t be likely,” Iris contributed, “remembering what Teddy said just now about the people we’re looking for being savvy. They’d want to be inconspicuous, not the other way.”
“All of which I agree with, folks,” Cooper said, “and it leads to the thought that the mob we’re looking for did the spray jobs themselves, not giving much thought to current colors, perhaps not even knowing about them.”
Partridge said doubtfully, “That’s moving pretty far into supposition country.”
It was Rita who asked, “But is it? Let me remind you of what Teddy pointed out earlier. That the people we’re talking about practically ran a fleet of vehicles—at least three cars, one truck and maybe two, a Nissan passenger van for the kidnap … Anyway, five we know of. Now, it makes sense that they’d want to keep them together in one place, which would have to be sizable. So isn’t it likely it would be somewhere big enough to include a paint shop?”
“An operating headquarters is what you mean,” Jaeger said. He turned to Teddy; an increasing respect had replaced the older man’s skepticism of the morning. “Isn’t that what you’re talking about? Where you’re leading us?”
“Yep.” Cooper beamed. “Sure am.”
Their meal—eventually to include eight courses—had continued. Now before the group was sautéed lobster with ginger and scallions. They reached for portions thoughtfully, concentrating on what had just been said.
“An operating center,” Rita mused. “Maybe for the people involved, whoever they are, as well as vehicles. We know from the old lady’s description there were either four or five men at the kidnap scene. There could be others offstage. Wouldn’t it make sense for everything to be together?”
“Including the hostages,” Jaeger added.
“If we assume all that,” Partridge said, “and okay, let’s do it for the moment, obviously the next question is where?”
“We don’t know, of course,” Cooper said, “but some hard thinking might suggest the kind of place it could be; also, maybe, how far it was—or is—from Larchmont.”
With amusement, Iris queried, “Hard thinking you’ve already done?”
“Well,” Cooper said, “since you ask …”
“Quit showing off, Teddy,” Partridge said sharply. “Get to the point.”
Cooper responded, unperturbed, “I tried to think the way a snatcher would plan. So I asked the question: After the snatch, when I’d grabbed what I wanted, what would I want next?”
“How’s this for an answer?” Rita said. “To be safe from pursuit; therefore go like hell and get under cover quickly.”
Cooper smacked his palms together. “Bleedin’ right! And where better to be under cover than at that HQ hangout?”
Owens asked, “Am I reading you right? You’re suggesting the HQ wasn’t far away?”
“Here’s how I see it,” Cooper said. “First off, it needs to be well clear of Larchmont; staying anywhere in the area would be too risky. But, second, it shouldn’t be too far. The snatchers would know that in the shortest time, maybe minutes, there’d be an alarm and police crawling all over the place. Therefore they’d have calculated how much time they’d got.”
Rita asked, “If you’re still inside their minds, how much time?”
“Guessing, I’d say half an hour. Even that long would be a bit iffy, but they’d have to chance it to get far enough away.”
Owens said slowly, “Translating that to miles … remembering the area … I’d say twenty-five.”
“Just what I figured.” Cooper produced a folded New York area map and opened it. On the map, taking Larchmont as the center, he had drawn a crayon circle. He prodded within the circle with a finger. “Twenty-five-mile radius. I reckon the headquarters is somewhere inside here.”
8
At 8:40 P.M. on Friday evening, while the CBA News group was still dining at Shun Lee West, a buzzer sounded in the mid-Manhattan apartment of the Peruvian diplomat, José Antonio Salaverry. It signaled a visitor.
The apartment, on Forty-eighth Street near Park Avenue, was part of a twenty-floor complex. Although a doorman was stationed on the main floor, visitors used an outside intercom system to announce their arrival, then were admitted directly by the building’s tenants.
Salaverry had been edgy since his meeting with Miguel that morning at United Nations headquarters and was anxious to hear that the Medellín/Sendero Luminoso group was safely out of the country. Their departure, he thought, would end his own association with the frightening matter that had filled his mind since yesterday.
He and his banker friend, Helga Efferen, had been drinking vodka-tonics in front of a fireplace for more than an hour, neither of them feeling inclined to go to the kitchen to prepare food or to telephone and order it sent in. While the liquor had relaxed them physically, it had removed none of their anxiety.
They were an oddly matched pair—Salaverry, small and weasely; Helga, whom the single word “ample” best described. She was big-boned, abundantly fleshed, with cornucopian breasts, and a natural blonde. Nature, however, had stopped short of making her beautiful; there was a harshness to her face and an acidic manner that repelled some men, though not Salaverry. From their first meeting in the bank he had been drawn to Helga, perhaps seeing in her a reflection of himself and sensing, too, her hidden but strong sexuality.
If so, he had b
een right on both counts. They shared the same points of view, which were based mainly on pragmatism, selfishness and avarice. As to sex, during their frequent fornicating an aroused Helga became a frenzied whale to José Antonio’s Jonah, surrounding and almost swallowing him. He loved it. Helga was also given to crying out loudly, sometimes screaming, at her climax, which made him feel macho and—in every way—bigger than he was.
A rare exception to this erogenous enjoyment had occurred earlier that evening. They had begun copulating, hoping to erase, even temporarily, their great worry. But it didn’t happen and after a while they both realized that they didn’t have their hearts in the enterprise and gave up.
The mental empathy, though, remained intact and was typified by their attitude to the Sloane family kidnapping.
Both were aware that they possessed important knowledge about a sensational crime which dominated the news and whose victims and perpetrators were being sought by almost every law enforcement agency in the country. Worse, they had aided and abetted the financing of the kidnap gang.
However, it was not the safety of the kidnap victims that troubled José Antonio and Helga. It was their own. Salaverry knew that if his involvement were exposed, not even his diplomatic immunity would save him from exceedingly unpleasant consequences, including expulsion from the UN and the United States, the extinction of his career and, more than probably, the vengeance of Sendero Luminoso back in Peru. Helga, with no diplomatic protection, could be sent to prison for criminally withholding information and also, perhaps, for accepting bribes to channel funds secretly in the bank she worked for.
Those thoughts were running through her mind when the buzzer sounded and her paramour jumped up, hurrying to the wall-mounted intercom connected with the main floor entrance. Pressing a button, he queried, “Yes?”
A voice, made metallic by the system, announced, “This is Plato.”
With relief, Salaverry informed Helga, “It’s him.” Then into the intercom, “Come up, please.” He pressed a button which would release an entrance lock downstairs.
Seventeen floors below, the man who had been speaking with Salaverry entered the apartment building through a heavy plate-glass door. He was of average build, thin-faced and swarthy, with deep-set, brooding eyes and glossy dark hair. His age could have been anywhere from thirty-eight to fifty-five. He wore a trench coat, unbuttoned at the front, over an unremarkable brown suit. He had come in wearing lightweight gloves and despite the building’s warmth did not remove them.
A uniformed doorman who had seen the man arrive and use the intercom waved him to an elevator. Three other people already waiting in the lobby entered the elevator too. The man in the trench coat ignored them. After pressing a button for the eighteenth floor, he stood expressionless, looking straight ahead. By the time the elevator reached his floor, the other occupants had left.
He followed an arrow to the apartment he sought, carefully noting there were three other apartments on the floor and an emergency stairway to the right. He did not expect to use the information, but memorizing escape routes was a habit. At the apartment doorway he pressed a button and heard a soft chime inside. Almost at once the door opened.
The man asked, “Mr. Salaverry?” His voice was soft, with a Latin accent.
“Yes, yes. Come in. Let me take your coat?”
“No. I will not be staying.” The visitor looked swiftly around. Seeing Helga, he inquired, “This woman is the banker?”
It seemed an ungracious way of putting it, but Salaverry answered, “Yes, Miss Efferen. And your name?”
“Plato will do.” Nodding to the area in front of the fire, “Can we go there?”
“Of course.” Salaverry noticed that the man kept his gloves on. Maybe, he thought, it was a personal fetish or perhaps the fellow had a deformity.
They were now in front of the fireplace. After the slightest of nods to Helga, the man asked, “Is anyone else here?”
Salaverry shook his head. “We are alone. You may speak freely.”
“I have a message,” the man said, reaching into his trench coat. When his hand emerged, it was holding a nine-millimeter Browning pistol with a silencer on the muzzle.
The liquor he had drunk slowed Salaverry’s reactions, though even had they been normal it was unlikely he could have done anything to change what happened next. While the Peruvian froze in amazement, and before he could move, the man put the gun against Salaverry’s forehead and squeezed the trigger. In his last brief moment of life the victim’s mouth hung open in surprise and disbelief.
The wound was small where the bullet entered—a neat red circle surrounded by a powder burn. But the exit wound at the rear of the head was large and messy as bone fragments, brain tissue and blood splattered out. In an instant before the body fell, the man in the raincoat had time to notice the powder burn, an effect he had intended. Then he turned to the woman.
Helga, too, had been riveted by shock. By now, however, surprise had turned to terror. She began to scream, and at the same time attempted to run.
In both efforts she was too late. The man, an accurate marksman, put one bullet through her heart. She fell and died, her blood pouring onto the rug where she had fallen.
The hit man, who was Miguel’s paid assassin dispatched from Little Colombia, paused to listen carefully. The silencer on the Browning had effectively muffled the sound of both shots, but he took no chances, waiting for possible intervention from outside. If there had been any noise from neighbors or other signs of curiosity, he would have left immediately. As it was, the silence continued and he proceeded, swiftly and efficiently, with the remaining things he had been instructed to do.
First, he removed the silencer from the pistol and pocketed it. He put the pistol down temporarily near Salaverry’s body. Then, from another pocket of his coat, he produced a small can of spray paint. Crossing to a wall of the apartment, he sprayed across it in large black letters the word CORNUDO.
Returning to Salaverry, he allowed some of the black paint to drip onto the dead man’s right hand, then wrapped the limp fingers around the can and pressed them, so Salaverry’s fingerprints were on the can. The hit man stood the can on a nearby table, then picked up the gun and placed it in the dead man’s hand, again squeezing the fingers so that Salaverry’s prints were on the gun. He arranged the gun and the hand so it would appear Salaverry had shot himself, then fallen to the floor.
The hit man did nothing to the woman’s body, leaving it where it had fallen.
Next, the intruder took a folded sheet of stationery from his pocket on which were typed words. They read:
So you would not believe me when I told you she is a nymphomaniac whore, unworthy of you. You think she loves you when all she feels for you is contempt. You trusted her, gave her a key to your apartment. What she did with it was take other men there for vile sexual acts. Here are photographs to prove it. She brought the man and allowed his photographer friend to take pictures. Her nymphomania extends to collecting such pictures for herself. Surely, her use of your home so monstrously is the ultimate insult to a machismo man such as you.
—Your Former (and True) Friend
Moving from the living room, the hit man entered what obviously had been Salaverry’s bedroom. He crumpled the typed sheet into a ball and threw it into a wastebasket. When the apartment was searched by police, as it would be, the paper was certain to be found. The probability was strong that it would be regarded as a semianonymous letter, the authorship known only to Salaverry when he was alive.
A final touch was an envelope, also produced by the hit man, containing some fragments of black-and-white glossy photos, each fragment burned at the edges. Entering a bathroom that adjoined the bedroom, he emptied the envelope’s contents into the toilet bowl, leaving the pieces floating.
The pieces were too small to be identified. However, a reasonable assumption would be that Salaverry, after receiving the accusatory letter, had burned the accompanying photos and flushed th
e ashes down the toilet, though a few unburned portions still remained. Then, having learned of his apparent betrayal by his beloved Helga, in a jealous rage he shot and killed her.
Salaverry would then have sprayed the single word on the wall, a pathetic message describing what he felt himself to be. (If the investigating police officers did not speak Spanish, someone would quickly enlighten them that the English version of the word was “cuckold.”)
There was even a touch of artistry in that crudely printed parting cry. While not, perhaps, the kind of thing an Anglo-Saxon or native American might do, it bespoke the volatile frenzy of a Latin lover.
A final assumption: In despair, unwilling to face the consequences of his act, Salaverry killed himself, the powder burn on his forehead being typical of a self-inflicted head wound.
As the experienced planners of the scene well knew, in New York City where unsolved homicides were commonplace and the police detective force severely overburdened, little time and effort would be spent investigating a crime where the circumstances and solution were so plainly in view.
The hit man surveyed the apartment living room, making a final check, then quietly left. When he walked out of the building unhindered, he had been inside less than fifteen minutes. A few blocks away, he peeled off his gloves and threw them into a sidewalk trash can.
9
Norman Jaeger asked, “Do you think Teddy Cooper will come up with something?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Partridge said. “He has before.”
It was after 10:30 and they were walking south on Broadway, near Central Park. The dinner meeting at Shun Lee West had broken up a quarter of an hour earlier, shortly after Cooper’s declared opinion that the kidnap gang’s headquarters was within a twenty-five-mile radius of Larchmont. He had followed the first opinion with a second.
The kidnappers and their victims, he believed, were at that operating center now, the gang members lying low until the initial searching eased up and police roadblocks were decreased or abandoned—both of which would inevitably happen soon. Then the gang and prisoners would move to some more distant location, perhaps in the United States, possibly elsewhere.