Looking for Rachel Wallace

“Should the press be in on this?” Ticknor said.

“I don’t think it does much harm,” I said. “And I don’t think you could keep them out of here if Cronin has any say. This sounds like an organization that wants publicity. They said nothing about keeping it from the press, just as they said nothing about keeping the police out.”

“I agree,” Belson said. “Most kidnapings have something about ‘don’t go to the police,’ but these political or social or whatever-the-hell-they-are kidnapings usually are after publicity. And anyway Cronin has already told the press so the question is—what? What word am I after?”

Ticknor said, “Academic. Hypothetical. Aimless. Too late. Merely conjectural.”

“Okay, any of those,” Belson said.

“So what do we do?” Ticknor said.

“Nothing much,” Belson said. “We sit. We wait. Some of us ask around on the street. We check with the FBI to see if they have anything on RAM. We have the paper analyzed and the ink, and learn nothing from either. In a while somebody will get in touch and tell us what they want.”

“That’s all?” Ticknor was offended. He looked at me.

“I don’t like it either,” I said. “But that’s about all. Mostly we have to wait for contact. The more contact the better. The more in touch they are, the more we have to work on, the better chance we have to find them. And her.”

“But how can we be sure they’ll make contact?”

Belson answered. “You can’t. But you figure they will. They said they would. They did this for a reason. They want something. One of the things you can count on is that everybody wants something.” The cigar had burned down far enough now so that Belson had to tilt his head slightly to keep the smoke from getting in his eyes.

“But in the meantime—what about Rachel? My God, think how she must feel. Suppose they abuse her? We can’t just sit here and wait.”

Belson looked at me. I said, “We haven’t got anything else to do. There’s no profit in thinking about alternatives when you don’t have any. She’s a tough woman. She’ll do as well as anyone.”

“But alone,” Ticknor said, “with these maniacs … ”

“Think about something else,” Belson said. “Have you any idea who this group might be?”

Ticknor shook his head briskly, as if he had a fly in his ear. “No,” he said. “No. No idea at all. What do they call themselves? RAM?”

Belson nodded. “Anyone in the publishing community that you know of that has any hostility toward Ms. Wallace?”

“No, well, I mean, not like this. Rachel is abrasive and difficult, and she advocates things not everyone likes, but nothing that would cause a kidnaping.”

“Let us decide that. You just give me a list of everybody you can think of that didn’t like her, that argued with her, that disagreed with her.”

“My God, man, that would include half the reviewers in the country.”

“Take your time,” Belson said. He had a notebook out and leaned back in his chair.

“But, my God, Sergeant, I can’t just start listing names indiscriminately. I mean, I’ll be involving these people in the investigation of a capital crime.”

“Aren’t you the one was worried about how poor Rachel must be feeling?” Belson said.

I knew the conversation. I’d heard variations on it too many times. I said, “I’m going to go out and look for Rachel. Let me know when you hear from them.”

“I’m not authorized to employ you on this, Spenser,” Ticknor said.

Belson said, “Me either.” His thin face had the look of internal laughter.

“All part of the service,” I said.

I went out of Ticknor’s office, past two detectives questioning a secretary, into the elevator down to the street, and out to start looking.

16

The Boston Globe is in a building on Morrissey Boulevard which looks like the offspring of a warehouse and a suburban junior high school. It used to be on Washington Street in the middle of the city and looked like a newspaper building should. But that was back when the Post was still with us, and the Daily Record. Only yesterday. When the world was young.

It was the day after they took Rachel and snowing again. I was talking to Wayne Cosgrove in the city room about right-wing politics, on which he’d done a series three years earlier.

“I never heard of RAM,” he said. Cosgrove was thirty-five, with a blond beard. He had on wide-wale corduroy pants and a gray woolen shirt and a brown tweed jacket. His feet were up on the desk. On them he wore leather boots with rubber bottoms and yellow laces. A blue down parka with a hood hung on the back of his chair.

“God you look slick, Wayne,” I said. “You must have been a Nieman Fellow some time.”

“A year at Harvard,” he said, “picks up your taste like a bastard.” He’d grown up in Newport News, Virginia, and still had the sound of it when he talked.

“I can see that,” I said. “Why don’t you look in your files and see if you have anything on RAM?”