I was out and running.

"Peter! Peter!"

I caught up with him. He turned. He said, "Hey— Ron, was it? How's it shakin', good buddy?"

"Hi. Hi, there. Hi, Gordon."

It was the Greco lookalike I'd picked up in the Green Room and spent twenty-six minutes with the night before. For sure.

He said, "Let's you and me get together again sometime, whaddaya say, Ron? But I can't right now. Sorry. Gotta visit my grandmother in the hospital."

"Oh. Too bad. What's she in for, herpes?"

He glared, then began to look a little worried, as if I might be someone not to be trusted, the Irving Street Toucher or something. He turned and walked quickly away, glancing back once to see if I was coming after him.

I wasn't.

8

The ransom note was discovered just after

eleven.

Timmy had arranged for a tow truck to haul McWhirter's Fiat out to Dot's place until a locksmith could open it and the Fiat dealer could produce a new set of keys. The note, inside a plain white envelope, had been stuck under the Fiat's windshield wiper. The tow truck operator hadn't noticed it, but Timmy, always on the lookout for out-of-place objects, spotted it as the tow truck pulled in at Dot's. The envelope, which had not been on the Fiat at five in the morning when Timmy and I first discovered the empty and abandoned car, was addressed to Dorothy Fisher.

I heard about it from Timmy when I checked in at Dot's from the Price Chopper pay phone two blocks from

Tad Purcell's house. I bought a bag of ice and sucked on a cube while I drove straight out to Moon Road. The sun was brutal in a blinding white sky, and a puddle formed on the car floor where the ice bag leaked.

At Dot's I read and reread the note, which was handwritten in an inelegant, almost childish script that none of us had seen before. It definitely was not the same handwriting as in Friday's threatening letter to Dot.

The note said, "Pay one hundred thousand dollars if you want Pete to live, we will contact you Mrs. Fisher."

McWhirter was dazed. He paced back and forth across Dot's kitchen looking enervated, helpless, alone. As the rest of us moved about the room we had to bob and weave awkwardly to keep out of McWhirter's path.

I phoned the Spruce Valley Country Club and had Bowman paged from the locker room.

"Greco's been kidnapped. Dot Fisher received the ransom note. They want a hundred grand."

"You're making this up, Strachey. You'll go to jail for this."

"No. It's the truth."

"Kee-rist. On a Saturday. All right, all right, I'll be there in twenty minutes. This had just better be for real, Strachey, or you are up shit creek with me, you get that?"

'"Up shit creek with Ned if not for real.' Noted."

I reached Crane Trefusis at Marlene Compton's apartment at Heritage Village. "One of Dot Fisher's house-guests has been kidnapped," I said. "There's a ransom note. They're asking a hundred. Do you know anything about this, Crane?"

"Did you say kidnapped?"

"Uh-huh."

A silence. Then: "I know nothing about this, no, of course not. Have the police been notified?"

"They have."

"Who is the victim?"

"His name is Peter Greco. A friend of Dot's who happened to be staying with her for a few days. Maybe you'd like to put up the hundred, Crane, to get Peter back. Dot hasn't got a hundred grand. All she's got is a schoolteacher's pension and Social Security. Plus, of course, a house and eight acres."

A pause while the wheels turned again. Then, calmly, he said, "No. You are mistaken."

"Mistaken about what?"

"That Millpond has anything to do with this."

"Uh-huh."

"We have our limits, Strachey."

"Right. We are not a crook."

Another silence. Then: "I—I'll go so far as to put up a reward for the safe return of this young man. From my personal accounts."

"How much?"

"Five."

"This is a human life we're talking about, Crane."

"Of course. Seventy-five hundred."

"You're paying me ten to catch somebody who wrote on the side of a barn."

"Eight."

"Ten, at least."

"All right, ten." He sighed. "You're an extremely hard-nosed man, Strachey. You'll go far in this business, I'm sure." This business? "You know as well as I do that you are the man who's probably going to bring about an arrest and collect the reward. You play all the angles, don't you? My sources were correct in their assessment of your abilities. I'm impressed."

I'd been playing games with him over the reward money and hadn't, in fact, thought ahead to who might collect it. But the idea of an additional "ten" dropping my

way for a particular purpose did not fill me with repugnance. It seemed, as I thought about it, that the ten could become useful, even necessary. The thing that scared me was the thought that the reward money would not be collected at all.

"I'll donate the money to charity if I'm the one to collect it," I lied. "Meanwhile, Crane, one question: Is Bill Wilson working for you in any capacity?"

"William Wilson of Moon Road?"

"Right. Kay's hubby."

"No."

"Kay told me you said you were keeping your eye out for the right spot for Bill."

"Yes, well. Regrettably the position of vice president for community relations at Millpond is occupied at the moment. But I'm certainly keeping Mr. Wilson in mind. Why do you ask about Wilson?"

"He was on your list of suspects, remember?"

"That was for the vandalism, not the kidnapping. Do you think the two are connected?"

"Could be. The motive for both appears to be forcing Dot Fisher to sell out to you, Crane."

He said nothing.

"Crane? Are you there?"

"I was just thinking."

"What did you think?"

"I was thinking, Strachey, that you and Mrs. Fisher and her friends might be—how shall I put it?—engaged in an unethical act? Is that possible? An act calculated to elicit public sympathy and bring pressure to bear on Millpond to increase its offer to Mrs. Fisher? Of course, it was just a thought."

"Think again, Crane. I work for you, don't I? I'm doing that because our interests have happened to overlap in a limited way, and of course I'm thrilled to be able to

make off with your 'ten.' At the point where our interests diverge and I can't work for you anymore I'll let you know fast. Meanwhile, be assured that I will not plot against you. And I'm confident that your thinking vis-a-vis me is likewise. Am I right?"

"Of course," he said emphatically, hollowly. "What kind of man do you think I am?"

"Swell. I'll expect the ten-grand reward to be announced as soon as the news of the kidnapping is made public. For now, I think that the police, if they know what they're doing, will want to keep it quiet. But your offer, if I understand you, is in effect immediately. Agreed?"

"Agreed. And . . . meanwhile, you can inform Mrs. Fisher that Millpond is willing to raise its offer for her property by another ten percent."

"I'll pass along your timely point of information, Crane."

"Thank you."

A sweetheart.

I dialed the number on outer Delaware Avenue of a man whose family conducted games of chance in a well-organized way throughout the capital district. We'd enjoyed a couple of personal encounters seven years earlier, but broke it off over a conflict stemming from the disapproval each of us strongly felt over the other's way of looking at the human race. Vinnie and I still kept in touch from time to time, though, and exchanged confidences.