Actually, I don’t. But I know someone who does.
Withers set his water down on the glass-topped table and stood up.
“Thank you for your time and the water,” he said. “I’ll take my offer elsewhere. I think Ms. Paget would be quite charming in bunny ears.”
Speaking of speaking in an authoritative voice.
“Wait,” Scarpelli said quickly. “Sit down, please.”
“Please,” Ms. Haber echoed.
Withers sat down. He pulled his old Dunhill cigarette case from his jacket pocket. Ms. Haber quickly produced a lighter and an ashtray.
“I’ll pay her half a million dollars,” Scarpelli said.
Withers held out the case. Scarpelli shook his head and Ms. Haber leaned forward to light his cigarette.
“I will require a ten percent finder’s fee,” Withers said. “Plus expenses.”
“Where is she?” Scarpelli asked.
As if I would tell you, Withers thought. As if I knew.
“And I will need some up-front cash for her,” Withers continued, ignoring the question.
“I’ll give you a cashier’s check.”
Withers shook his head.
“No?” Scarpelli asked.
“No,” Withers answered. “Women like Ms. Paget are childlike. They lack the patience for delayed gratification. They understand cash.”
As does Sammy Black. The last time I tried to give him a check, he made me eat it and tell him what rubber tasted like.
“Let me get this straight,” Scarpelli said. “You want me to give you a bundle of cash to carry around in case you find Polly Paget? Is that it?”
“That’s it. Fifty thousand would probably get her attention.”
Maybe thirty would, too. Minus the vig.
“Fifty thousand dollars in cash,” Scarpelli said. “What do I look like to you?”
Here it is, Withers thought. The job on the line, right here.
“A good businessman, Mr. Scarpelli,” he said.
Scarpelli smiled. Ms. Haber smiled. Withers smiled.
Scarpelli got up from behind his big glass top desk and opened the door to a walk-in closet that had about fifty suits hanging in it, twenty or thirty pairs of shoes-treed and on racks, and a few dozen shirts on wire-rack shelves. He pushed aside a gray silk double-breasted, flipped open a panel on the wall, and dialed the combination. A minute later, he came out with five packets of cash, which he tossed on Withers’s lap.
“Call me Ron,” Scarpelli said.
Call me a cab, Withers thought.
“Where is she?” Peter Hathaway asked with the air of a man about to be let in on a wonderful practical joke.
Ed Levine turned to Ethan Kitteredge, who almost imperceptibly shook his head.
“Do you really need to know?” Ed asked Hathaway.
Peter Hathaway kept the smile on his face but it tightened up a little. Peter Hathaway was used to getting answers, and they were usually the answers he wanted. That was one of the reasons he owned a significant portion of a television network at the age of thirty-seven. One of the other reasons was his family’s wealth, and their connections. All of which had helped to bring him to this very private office in the back of an old bank in Providence, Rhode Island.
Hathaway decided to use a metaphor to make himself clear. He’d learned about meta-level communication while getting his MBA at Brown and he used it successfully with his own colleagues and associates. Metalevel communications avoided the ugliness of head-on confrontation.
So Hathaway broadened his smile, looked around the wood-paneled office with its mahogany bookcases, wooden model sailing ships, and dingy nineteenth-century nautical paintings and said, “You know, Ethan, you could stand to get some light in this office.”
Ed saw Ethan Kitteredge wince at Hathaway’s use of his first name and wondered just what the hell this yuppie Hathaway was talking about. Sitting there in his preppy little black sports jacket and green cord trousers, with his shiny new Haliburton briefcase at his moccasined feet, wasting Kitteredge’s time when he should be out playing tennis or lacrosse or some other kid’s game.
Ethan Kitteredge sat back in his chair, touched the tips of his fingers together, and smiled at Hathaway.
“This is a bank, Mr. Hathaway,” Kitteredge said. “We handle people’s money. In this particular office in this bank, we handle people’s problems. There is nothing… light… about it.”
Hathaway acknowledged the gaffe of calling Kitteredge by his first name but still felt some gratification that the bank president had picked up his metaphor. Once your co-communicator has picked up your metaphor, you have won the communication.
“That’s true, Mr. Kitteredge,” he said. “But you are keeping me in the dark.”
“Yes,” Kitteredge agreed.
Hathaway’s smile was sincere. He liked winning.
“So where is she?” he asked again.
“Safely in our hands,” Kitteredge answered.
Peter Hathaway dropped the metalevel.
“I’m the client, right?” he asked petulantly, brushing a shock of black hair from his forehead. “I want to know.”
Kitteredge looked to Ed.
“It’s like this,” Ed explained. “If you knew where Polly Paget was, you might inadvertently say or do something that might lead to her discovery.”
John Culver, sitting in the back of a van parked on the street outside, chuckled at the truth of this statement.
“I’m not a child! I’m not stupid!” Hathaway yelled.
Keep your voice down, Culver thought as he eased the headset away from his ears.
“Nobody said you were,” Ed said. We were just thinking it, he added to himself. “It’s just that you’re not a professional at this kind of thing, and we are, so why don’t you let us handle it?”
Kitteredge added, “We are continuing our investigation of Mr. Landis. When that inquiry has… matured… and Miss Paget has progressed to a point where we feel she can successfully negotiate the media and the legal process, we will contact you.
Hathaway sank back into his chair and sulked.
I’m a professional, he thought. All right, the rape was sheer luck, but I was professional enough to contact Paget, bring her into our orbit, create a media sensation… and now this nineteenth-century throwback and his pet bear refuse to tell me where she is!
“I gave her to you!” Hathaway argued.
“Would you like her back?” Kitteredge asked.
No, Hathaway admitted to himself. I wouldn’t know what to do with her. The slut is a disaster. If she opens her mouth in public one more time, Jack Landis will have the world thinking that she raped him.
“Excuse me,” Peter said. “I have to visit the little boys’ room.”
Please, Culver thought, leave the briefcase here. I didn’t go to all the trouble of breaking into your office and planting a bug in your new Haliburton for the dubious pleasure of listening to you urinate-at best.
Hathaway went into the lavatory to relieve himself and do a couple of lines. Cocaine gave him a competitive edge.
“Have you heard from Mr. Graham?” Kitteredge asked.
Ed nodded. “He got her safely to Austin, no problem.”
Now why, Culver pondered, would they take her to Austin, a mere sixty miles from San Antonio?
“And do we think Ms. Paget will remain willingly in the wilds of Nevada?” asked Kitteredge.
Nevada? Austin, Nevada, Culver thought. Is there such a place?
