most people, and if he wanted her to hurry, she was perfectly willing to hurry. Her clothes had come off here and there, and she had to move around nimbly picking them up and putting them on. Weinberger pulled on the loose shirt he had been wearing when she came, and put his feet into sandals. He had recovered some of his coolness. She remembered hearing it said once, admiringly, that he was a good man to stay on the right side of. Even in the silly shirt, he looked tough and competent. It was a style she liked.
He put a cigar in his mouth. One of the gunmen slapped it away.
That made their point. Lillian’s young man kept trembling his gun barrel at her, and she tried to move fast without showing everybody how frightened she was. She was wearing a violet pants suit, a little too tight, not the costume she would have picked to go to a kidnapping. She wondered suddenly about Weinberger’s wife. He had never said anything on the subject. There was going to be publicity here, and how would Mrs. Weinberger take it?
They didn’t let her do anything about her face. Having recently made love, there were small repairs she needed to make. Her hair was all right; she wore it tousled anyway. Weinberger saw what was in her mind. He said in an unexcited voice, “Lillian, I don’t think I told you before. You look terrific.”
One of the young men had a small suitcase for his gun. The other put his inside his jacket. It was too big to be carried that way, but he already looked strange and dangerous without the bulge.
They were herded along the corridor to a room on the same floor. This was a big corner room, the sitting room of a $100-a-day suite, and it was jammed with people.
No one was talking. That was the worrying thing-the silence. This became more and more weird. From the glances that were exchanged when they came in, she picked up that everybody there knew Weinberger. Wives were with them, a few teenagers, several frightened children. She counted guns. Including the two she already knew about, she saw six, with a young man accompanying each, all in the same dismal kind of clothes. With that many weapons showing, with the atmosphere of terror so thick that you could have eaten it with a spoon, it was surprising to Lillian that there was room for any other feeling. But she saw the looks pass. Each group had been rounded up from a bedroom, and instead of coming in with Mrs. Weinberger, Weinberger had come in with Lillian, and they had both obviously just been rousted out of the same bed. Which was too goddamn bad!
She knew two other men there, the hotel manager, Manny something, Manny Farber, and an older man, retired now, named Solomon. He was the one, in fact, who had recommended her to Weinberger. She thought at first that he wouldn’t admit knowing her, but he nodded and said quietly, “Lil. A hell of a thing.”
Weinberger said, “Has anybody said yet what it’s all about?”
Solomon lifted his hands. “Only too obvious.”
A little girl started to cry. Her mother pulled her close.
One of their abductors, a tick older than the others with guns, said harshly, “Stop that crying. We do not harm children.”
The child’s mother whispered something and the noise stopped. The gunman looked around slowly, pleased by all that had happened so far. Lillian didn’t care for this one’s looks. He wasn’t a man who often enjoyed himself. The others seemed to be telling themselves continually that fierceness was called for, but he had probably looked fierce for years, long enough so it had become habitual to him. He was far gone in something, possibly patriotism.
“We are waiting for one more,” he said. “I am Rashid Abd El-Din, a Palestinian. I am of the Black September, of which you have read. I have been locked up in a bug-infested Israeli prison for two years, and for cause, I assure you! I and the others are here to achieve certain ends. If we have time later we can debate the pros and cons and practical aspects of terrorism. Is this the best way to secure justice? We have decided, we in this room, that it is our way. Henceforth we conduct all arguments with guns. Palestine is an Arab land, torn from us by the Jews of the West, most of all by the Jews of the United States. You have raised billions to sustain the robber state. You are of high political standing. You direct your gold to Republicans and Democrats alike, so whatever candidate is elected, he is a pro-Israeli. That posturing puppet of a country would collapse in a week without support from here, without American dollars, American airplanes. And this we intend to make plain for the world to see.”
His audience-a captive audience if there ever was one-listened quietly, though there were signs of restlessness among his fellow Arabs. No doubt they had heard it before, and wanted to move along to the next stage. Which would be what? This was a collection of very rich men, and they and their families-and Lillian LaCroix thrown in for laughs-would fetch a pretty ransom.
“It is not a hospital you raise money for,” the Arab said, “or the battle against cancer. It is a nation of murderers, who bomb little children. After today it may not be so easy to raise those rivers of money. We have made a declaration of war against you. You realize that we are serious, we will back what we say with guns, with our lives. And if we die, you others will die with us.”
He lifted his narrow head, with a quick enlargement of the nostrils. It was a pose, but an effective one. He had brought a party of armed men across the Atlantic, into the enemy’s stronghold. But Lillian had always distrusted people who were that pleased with themselves. In the sack, they had little imagination and expected nothing but service. Her knees felt weak. For her to be included in this was really ridiculous. She had never decided what she thought about that whole Middle Eastern mess, who was right and who was wrong.
Another Arab came in, carrying his gun in a book bag. He gave Rashid a head-shake.
The leader said, “The seventh man cannot be found. We will settle for six.”
“What ransom are you asking?” Weinberger said.
“One million dollars per committeeman. An airplane to take us out of the country. We leave here now. I want you to look happy and careless, like vacationers. These are American guns, we are sure they will function well. Will everybody please listen intently for another minute. You understand that we have no intention of being captured. But there has been no warfare on American soil for one hundred years, and you are all of you civilians, possibly you have never seen a bloody death. I am assured that kidnapping is a bad crime in your country. Not as bad as some others, however. You,” he said, pointing with his gun.
Lillian’s stomach clenched. What she wanted most was not to be noticed. The crowd parted in front of the leader. He stopped, facing her.
“What is your name?”
“Mrs. LaCroix.”
“You were taken in the bedroom of the Jew Weinberger.” He flicked his fingernails across her breast. “Are you Jewish?”
“About one-tenth.”
“A perfumed whore.” he said, pronouncing the w. “Not Jewish, I have no reason to hate you.”
For a fraction of an instant, she thought he was about to tell her to go. When she saw from a change in his eyes what he really intended, she tried to seize the barrel of the gun as it rotated toward her. A three-round burst shattered her forearm and tore into her body.
11
“Something’s wrong with their switchboard,” Shayne’s operator reported after re-dialing the St. Albans. “I get a funny buzz.”
Shayne rattled his fingers on the steering wheel. “Get me the Fontainebleau, and keep trying those police numbers. What the hell are they doing up there, calling each other?”
The Fontainebleau security officer was an experienced, reliable man who had often worked with Shayne. He listened without interrupting, and wasted no time asking Shayne if he was fooling or drunk.
“From their standpoint it makes more sense than that kidnapping at the Olympics,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll get right on it.”
Shayne released his operator, but told her to watch for his signal. His forehead was creased. Ordinarily, in a case like this that was bristling with unanswered questions, he would have broken in on the action and hoped that his presence would provoke some kind of counter-move that would tell him something. But he was thirty miles from Miami. He knew that timing was vital. Sitting absolutely still, seeing none of the movement about him on the street, he imagined a plot-line for Murray Gold, taking him to Israel, in and out of prison, back to Miami. The guns. What
