Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(5)

“Personally,” Brubaker said, “I think they set him up with a
sucker phone call sometime this morning, because he took off
right from his sister’s funeral without even going home to
change clothes. But now we’ll never know. Any more than we’ll
ever know what he found out in San Francisco or what they
were afraid he’d found out. That’s the beauty of amateurs
showing the police how to do it. By God, they don’t waste half
their time sitting around on their dead asses making out reports
like a bunch of dumb cops or even bothering to tell anybody
what they’re doing.” Brubaker removed the cigar from his
mouth as if to throw it against the wall but merely cursed again
and reclamped it between his teeth.
“Well, he did give you the letter,” Romstead said. “When did it
come, and specifically what did it say?”
“It came yesterday morning,” Brubaker said. “But you might
as well read it, since it concerns your old man.” He grabbed it
out of the confusion on his desk and passed it over.
It was written with a ball-point pen on a single sheet of cheap
typing paper. Romstead read it.


Dear Jeri,
Man on a Leash — 90
Heres enough for one anyway, its all I can spare the
way it is now. But you could easy get that other like I
told you on the phone, where I stashed it in the old
mans car. For Gods sake dont call here again. If I
have to say wrong number one more time hes going
to guess who it is and if he even thinks I know where
you are he’ll beat it out of me and dont think he
couldend and wouldent.
Debra
Romstead sighed and dropped it back on the desk. “So he
could, and he did.”
Brubaker nodded bleakly. “I’d say so.”
“What did the lab report say? Was the stuff cut?”
“Yes. But she still died of an overdose. She probably didn’t
shoot it herself, though.”
“No,” Romstead said. “Of course not. If the stuff was in the
car, probably behind the seat cushions somewhere, the dresser
was a phony. And in that case, so was the whole thing. They
were waiting for her out there—or he was, whoever the hell he
is— knowing an addict would eventually show up where the junk
was. Did you get the phone number?”

“We occasionally think of things like that,” Brubaker said
wearily. He picked up another sheet of paper. “She came home
on Tuesday of last week, apparently with enough of the stuff to
keep her going for a few days, but by Monday she was climbing
into the light fixtures. Monday evening, after Bonner’d gone to
work, there were five toll calls to this number in San Francisco
at twenty to thirty-minute intervals. Maybe sometimes the man
would answer and she’d just hang up, or Debra would answer
but he was still home, so she’d say wrong number. This, so help
me God, to the home phone of a man who’s apparently trying to
find her so he can kill her. Junk.” He shook his head and went
on. “Anyway, she and Debra must have made connections on the
fifth call, and Debra told her about the deck she’d hidden in
your father’s car and maybe promised to send her enough for a
fix if she could.
“I guess Jeri didn’t think that night she knew how to break
into a house, but another thirty hours of withdrawal symptoms
and she didn’t have any doubt of it at all. She could break into
Fort Knox with a banana. So she went out there sometime after
Man on a Leash — 91
two o’clock Wednesday morning, as soon as Bonner was asleep.
And in the meantime, apparently Debra’d been worked over till
she broke down and told the man about it, so he was waiting.
Obviously he didn’t guess about the letter, though.
“The San Francisco police got the name and address from the
phone company. J. L. Stacey, probably an alias, in a furnished
apartment out near North Beach, but when they got there, the
birds were gone without a trace. Bonner, of course, couldn’t
have got the information, so I guess he was just going it blind,
trying to run down somebody who knew who Debra was.
“And, incidentally, while we’re on the subject of phone calls,
both of those your father made”— Brubaker picked up another
sheet of paper from the litter on his desk—” to Winegaard at
seven A.M. July sixth and to Richter at ten fifteen A.M. July
tenth, were from his home phone. So whatever he was doing out
there at the Van Sickle place, he came home on Monday to
phone and then left again, for God knows where until he showed
up at the bank on the morning of the twelfth.”
“He didn’t go anywhere, from beginning to end,” Romstead
said. “He was taken. He was kidnapped.”
Brubaker got up and began to pace the office. “Jesus Christ,
when I think that I could’ve been a pimp or a geek in a
sideshow, biting the heads off chickens! Look, Romstead, kidnap
is a federal offense, and if we had one single damned shred of
evidence to hang a kidnap case on, we could call in the FBI.
We’d have a whole army of special agents working on it. As a
matter of fact, I’ve talked to them, but after they talked to
Richter, they said forget it. They must have thought I was nuts.
And Richter, believe me, is getting plenty pissed about it. He
says he’s going to make a recording. First there was Sam
Bolling, and then the San Francisco police, and then you, and
then the FBI, and then me.
“So maybe I was wrong about the heroin theory, so I don’t
have the faintest damned idea what he was doing out there at
the old Van Sickle place or what he did with that two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, there is no evidence whatever he was
there, or anywhere else, against his will, and how in hell” —
Brubaker dropped into his chair again and slammed a hand
down on his desk among the papers— “how in hell—you tell me
—could he have been kidnapped if he came into that bank
himself—alone—to get the money?”
Man on a Leash — 92
“I don’t know,” Romstead replied. “But I’m going to find out.”
He got up.
“Well, there’s no way I can stop you from trying. But did you
ever hear the old story about the man tracking the tiger through
the jungle?”
Romstead nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“Well, if I were you I’d keep a good lookout behind. That
second set of tiger tracks may be closer than you think.”
He went back to the motel and called Mayo. She grabbed up
the phone on the first ring, and he gave a sigh of relief as he
heard her voice.
“I’ve been worried all day,” she said.
“Not too worried to go out with another man. I tried to call
you around eleven.”
“Oh, hell, of all the rotten luck. That’s when I ducked
downstairs to get the mail. And I wasn’t gone five minutes. Did
you find the place?”
“Yes. But there’s nobody there now and nothing to prove who
they were.” He had no intention of saying anything about
Bonner. “I’ll tell you about it when I get there. I’m not sure yet
what flight I’ll be on, so don’t figure on meeting me at the
airport. Just stay near the phone, and I’ll call as soon as I’m in
town. Should be before ten.”
“Are you leaving for Reno now?”
“Very shortly. Just as soon as I talk to Mrs. Carmody.”
“Hah! Maybe she’s the reason I couldn’t come with you.”
“You’re obsessed with sex. You ought to see somebody about
it.”
“Maybe I would, if you ever got home. But while you’re
visiting your father’s sexpot, keep reminding yourself of the
Oedipal overtones.”
“Hell, just thinking of the comparisons would do it.”
“That’ll be the day.”
After he’d hung up, he debated whether to put through a call
to Murdock. No, that could wait till he’d talked to Paulette
Carmody; he’d call after he was back in San Francisco. He
showered and put on a fresh shirt and a tie and the suit he’d
worn coming up. As he was putting the dusty and sweat-stained
shirt in the bag, he remembered the fragment of brown plastic
Man on a Leash — 93
or cardboard he’d found out in the flat -by the dead burro. He
removed it from the pocket.
What could fd mean? Mfd for manufactured? No, there’d have
to be something after it. Mfd by, or Mfd in— He frowned.
Solder. Radio officer. Check out the simalizer and put a new
frammistat in his KLH. Jeri Bonner had worked for an
electronics supply company, probably where she’d met Tallant.
He grabbed up the telephone directory and flipped through the
thin section of yellow pages. RADIO AND TV, REPAIRS. There
were three, one of them on West Third Street. Well, they
couldn’t lock you up for asking stupid questions. He dropped it
in the pocket of his jacket and finished packing.
He carried the bag out to the car and stopped at the office to
pay for the toll calls and the extra day. The sour-faced man was
behind the desk.
“Have to pay for an extra day,” he said. “Checkout time’s two
P.M. Same’s it has been for years.”
“Right.” Romstead put down the Amex card.
“You’d think someday people’d learn—”
Romstead picked up the card and put down two twenty-dollar
bills. It’d be quicker, and he wouldn’t have to listen to the old
fart.

“Posted right there on the wall, plain as anything.”
Romstead picked up the change, his face suffused with
wonder. “Well, I be dawg; so that’s what that writin’ said? I
thought it meant I could take the towels for keepsakes.”
He went up Aspen and made the turn into Third. The TV
repair shop was near the end of the block with a parking space
a few doors away. It was after five now, and he hoped it wasn’t
closed. It wasn’t, quite. At the counter in front a girl was putting
on lipstick and appraising her hair in a small mirror. In back of
her was an open doorway into the shop.
“Are any of your service men still here?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “Raymond’s back there. We’re about to close,
though.”
“This’ll only take a minute.” He went around the end of the
counter. There were two service benches in the back room with
long fluorescent lights above them, littered with tools and parts
and the denuded carcasses of TV sets and radios. Raymond was
a pleasant long-haired youth wearing a University of Nevada TMan
on a Leash — 94
shirt. He glanced up inquiringly from the writhing green snakes
he was watching on the screen of some kind of test equipment.
“I just wanted to ask you what may be a very dumb question.”
Romstead set the fragment of plastic on the bench. “Is this part
of anything electronic?”
Raymond glanced at it, turned it slightly to look at the
markings. “Sure,” he said. He reached into a bin and brought
out a cylindrical object that reminded Romstead vaguely of a
shotgun shell except that it had a short piece of wire attached to
each end. He set it on the bench. It was imprinted with the
manufacturer’s name, but what instantly caught Romstead’s eye
was the legend, “100 Mfd,” in the center of it. There was a
minus sign at one end and a plus at the other.
“Electrolytic capacitor,” Raymond said. “‘Mfd’ is the
abbreviation for microfarad. They’re used in a number of
different circuits for high capacity at a low-voltage rating. Have
to be installed with the right polarity, though; that’s the reason
for the plus and minus on the case.”
Romstead understood little or nothing of this except that his
stab in the dark had paid off. He smiled at Raymond and put five
dollars on the bench. “Thanks a million,” he said. “I won the
bet.”
He drove on out West Third Street in the sunset, wondering if
he hadn’t merely made the whole thing worse; certainly you
could go crazy trying to figure out what all these different parts
had to do with each other or with his father’s inexplicable trip to
the bank. Lost in thought, he almost went past Paulette
Carmody’s drive and had to slam on his brakes to make the
turn. He parked in front of the walk on the circular blacktop
drive and went up to ring the bell, thinking now that it was too
late, that he should have called first. She’d probably heard
about Bonner by now and might not feel like talking to anybody.
She came to the door herself, and he suspected she’d been
crying, though she’d done a good job of covering the effects
with makeup. He started to apologize, but she interrupted.
“No,” she said. “I’m glad you came; I wanted to talk to you.”
She led the way down the short vestibule into the living room.
“Come on into the kitchen,” she said, “while I fix the drinks. It’s
Carmelita’s day off.”
The kitchen was in front, on the opposite side of the living
room, with a separate dining room in back of it. There was a
Man on a Leash — 95
door at the far end of it, probably to the garage. She opened the
refrigerator for ice cubes. “Martini, vodka and tonic, scotch?”
“Vodka and tonic would be fine,” he said.
She began assembling the drinks, the old ebullience and
blatant sexiness subdued now, though the simple sheath she
wore was still overpowered by the figure that nothing would
ever quite restrain. Her legs were bare, as usual.
“I’m sorry about Bonner,” he said.
“He made a lot of enemies,” she replied, “but I liked him. He
was hard-nosed, bullheaded, and horny, and always in a brawl
or trouble of some kind, but in most ways he was a
simplehearted and generous kind of guy and a good friend. And
lousy husband, naturally.”
“Then he’d been married?”
“Oh, yes, for about six years. But his wife finally gave up.
Poker, and cheating on her all the time. Men. I’ll swear to
Christ.”
They carried their drinks into the living room. Dusk was
thickening in the patio beyond the wall of glass, and the pool
was a shimmering blue with its underwater lights. She had
heard very little of how it had happened, so he told her, playing
down the gory aspects of it as much as possible.
“Then Brubaker thinks Jeri was killed, too?” she asked. “And
Lew had an idea who did it?”
“Or at least they were afraid he did.”
“You realize you could have been shot, too?”
“I guess he wasn’t worried about me,” Romstead replied. That
was no answer, he knew, but he didn’t have any better. “But
about that radio officer on the Fairisle, was his name Tallant?”
“No,” she said. “Kessler. Harry Kessler.”
That wasn’t conclusive, Romstead thought; he could have
changed it, unless he was on parole. “You knew him about four
years ago?”
“That’s right. Actually, it was five years ago, of course, when
your father picked us up out there, but I hardly noticed him
then. Jeri did, though. She thought he was cute.”
“He’d have been in his late twenties? Medium height, slender,
dark complexion, brown eyes, black hair?”
Man on a Leash — 96
“Oh, no. The age and the build would be about right, but he
was as blond as you are. Blue eyes.”
Romstead glumly shook his head. So much for that
brainstorm. But then how did Tallant get into the picture?
“Anyway,” Paulette went on, “it seems to me he’d still be in
prison. I don’t know how long a sentence he got, but it’s only
been a little over three years.”
“Do you know where he was sent?”
She shook her head. “No, except that it must have been a
federal prison. This happened at sea, so I don’t think any state
would have had jurisdiction.”
“How’d the old man get wise to him anyway?”
She set her drink on the coffee table and lighted a cigarette.
“Your father could read code, and Kessler didn’t know it. You
see, when he was a young man and still sailing as mate on
Norwegian ships—”
“Yes, I know about that,” Romstead interrupted. “He used to
have both licenses and doubled as radio operator sometimes.
Winegaard told me about it.”
“That’s right. And I gather that reading code is something you
never entirely forget. You may get a little rusty, but you can
always do it, like swimming or riding a bicycle. But I’d better
start at the beginning.
“It was in 1968, when I made the first trip as passenger on the
Fairisle, that I got to know this kook. I guess from what
everybody said he was close to being an authentic genius—in
electronics, anyway—but he didn’t have an engineering degree
for some reason; maybe he’d been too poor to go to college or
he’d been kicked out or something. Otherwise, he’d probably
have been drawing a big salary in one of those fur-brain outfits
doing research and making Buck Rogers stuff for satellites and
moon shots and so on. He was always inventing things and
experimenting and lashing up nutty pieces of electronic
spaghetti so he could stare into the screen of an oscilloscope
like somebody watching a dirty movie, and the radio room
looked like a mad scientist’s nightmare. There was no doubt he
had a brilliant mind; but he could be pretty contemptuous and
snotty, and he had a sadistic sense of humor. I didn’t much like
him, though he could be charming when he wanted to be.
Man on a Leash — 97

“Anyway, at the end of the next trip, when I met your father in
San Francisco, he said he was going to be tied up part of the
time making depositions and affidavits and so on, and it turns
out it was about this screwball Kessler. He told me what had
happened. Maybe I should have told you first that for two or
three trips the Customs men had really been shaking down the
Fairisle when she came in from the Far East, going over her
with a fine-tooth comb as if they’d had a tip there was
contraband aboard, but they never found anything.
“Well, this trip, about ten P.M. the last night out from San
Francisco, your father was down in the passengers’ lounge
playing bridge. There was a radio in the lounge, turned on and
getting music from some station ashore, and all of a sudden the
music began to be covered up with dots and dashes—code, that
is. Your father explained to me why it was. It seems if a
transmitter’s antenna and a receiver’s antenna are right close
together, the way they’d be aboard a ship, the receiver would
pick up what was being sent by the transmitter even though
they might be tuned to different wavelengths. It sort of spills
over into it or something.
“It was perfectly normal, of course, and happened every time
Kessler was using the ship’s transnfitting apparatus, but your
father began reading it just automatically while he went on
playing bridge, and in a minute he realized there was something
damned screwy about what Kessler was sending. It wasn’t any
message he’d given him to send, in the first place, and he wasn’t
using any of the standard procedure or the ship’s call letters or
identification of any kind. But it was a sort of ETA—estimated
time of arrivals—only it wasn’t seven A.M., when the Fairisle
was due to arrive off the Golden Gate, but four A.M., when she’d
still be over fifty miles at sea. So it had to be a rendezvous with
a boat of some kind.
“Your father said nothing about it to the passengers, of
course, and went ahead and finished the card game. When he
went back up to his cabin, he phoned the bridge and left orders
to be called at three A.M. He went up to the bridge at that time
and switched on the radar. There were three or four ships
showing on the screen, and in a few minutes he began to pick
up another, much smaller target, which was probably a small
boat. It was ahead of the Fairisle, more or less stationary, and
he could see they were going to pass it less than a mile off.
Man on a Leash — 98
“He went down and woke up the chief officer. He wanted a
witness, for one thing, and the chief officer’s cabin was in the
same passageway as Kessler’s. They watched with the door on a
crack, and in a few minutes Kessler looked out of his cabin to be
sure the coast was clear and then started down the passageway
toward the deck, carrying what looked like just a bunch of junk
he wanted to heave over the side.
“Your father stepped out and collared him. Kessler began
cursing and trying to fight him off, so your father slugged him.
He had a fist like a twelve pound frozen ham, so Kessler’d had
all the fight knocked out of him by the time he was able to stand
up again. Your father had him locked up, and he and the chief
officer checked over this thing he’d been carrying. It was a big
jagged piece of styrofoam that’d been stained brown so it’d look
like an old chunk of wood. There was a thin wire sticking up
through it and the thing was ballasted on the bottom so the wire
would stay upright. Inside the styrofoam was a real tiny radio
transmitter—it turned out to be when the narcs got hold of it—
using the wire for an antenna. And attached to the bottom with
stainless-steel wire was a watertight plastic container with
nearly a half kilo of heroin in it.
“Well, Kessler never would identify the people on the boat, but
he did cop out to the extent of explaining how it worked, which
the narcs knew anyway. He’d built the little transmitter, of
course, and on the boat there was a small radio direction-finder
he’d also built. It was tuned to the same frequency as the
transmitter, so all the boat people had to do was home in on the
signal until they could pick up the float in their searchlight.
They’d pulled it off twice before and got away with it.
“Your father had to take part of a trip off to testify at the trial,
about ten months later, I think. He left the ship in San Francisco
and rejoined it in Honolulu. Kessler was convicted, but I never
did know what sentence he got.”
Paulette fell silent and took a sip of her drink.
“He didn’t make any threats of any kind against the old man?”
Romstead asked.
She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
Revenge could have been a motive, of course, along with the
quarter million dollars, and he was thinking of that lactose
poured in his father’s mouth, in conjunction with another thing
she’d said.
Man on a Leash — 99
“You said he had a sadistic sense of humor. How was that?”
“Oh, nutty practical jokes, things like that, with the
electronics junk he was always experimenting with. Real tiny
bugging devices almost as far out as the old gag about the
bugged martini olive. Wiring a girl’s room in a cathouse was a
big laugh. And then the creepy things he remote-controlled by
radio—”
“Remote control?” Romstead interrupted. He frowned.
“Sure, you know. Like those model airplanes people fly with
little transmitters that make ‘em bank and turn and loop-theloop.
Of course, he didn’t invent the idea; it’s been around for
years, but he added his own touches. He was a little hipped on
the whole subject, as a matter of fact, and used to brag he could
radio-control anything if you paid him enough.
“For example, he bought a couple of battery-operated toy cars
and tore them down and rebuilt them with radio controls for
starting and stopping and turning. Then he paid a kid in Manila
to kill him two of those big gruesome rats on the docks there—I
mean, they’re something else. Any tomcat crazy enough to
tackle one of ‘em, I’d give you the tomcat and eight points. He
tanned the skins and built foam-rubber bodies for the cars and
sewed the skins over them. Talk about freezing your blood, to
see those two things coming at you in formation. He used to
take them ashore with him; they say he could empty a
whorehouse in ten seconds.”
Romstead felt the hair stabbing the back of his neck. His mind
was racing now as all the bits and pieces began to fall into
place. He thought of the terrified little burro fleeing out across
the flat with its clattering beer cans, and then exploding ... “The
subhuman son of a bitch,” he said.
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until Paulette looked at
him blankly and said, “What?”
“Don’t you see? That’s what nobody’s ever been able to figure
out—how the old man could be forced to go into the bank alone
and cash that check. You’ve just told me.”
“Eric, darling,” she said, “you’re farther around the bend than
Kessler. You don’t remote-control a man, and certainly not that
one.”
“Oh, yes, you can,” he replied, “if the threat is right. Tell me,
didn’t Kessler wear glasses?”
Man on a Leash — 100
“Yes. He was myopic, I think. How’d you guess?”
“The color of his eyes has changed. He’s wearing tinted
contacts.” Dying the hair was routine, of course, and there were
drugs that would darken the skin. He must be out on parole, so
he’d violated it and skipped from wherever he was supposed to
be, which meant he’d been up to something criminal all along.
He’d run into Jeri at that electronics supply place where she
worked, and even if she hadn’t recognized him, he remembered
her—
Romstead’s thoughts broke off as he realized Paulette was
asking him something over and over.
“Eric, for God’s sake, what do you mean, if the threat is
right?”
“A radio-detonated explosive device on him somewhere,
probably in the crotch. Having somebody by the balls is not just
an expression.”
“But why couldn’t he tell somebody?”
“You just told me that too. He was bugged. Whatever he said
to anybody or anybody said to him was being piped right into
the ear of the bastard with the control transmitter. Kessler. Got
up as a hippie with hair down to his shoulders to hide the plug
in his ear. I’ve got to call Brubaker.”
The chief deputy might be home by now, but he could try the
office first. He flipped the directory open to the emergency
numbers and picked up the receiver. Before he could start to
dial, the tone went off. He jiggled the switch. Nothing.
“Your phone’s gone dead,” he said.
Paulette Carmody looked up in surprise. “That’s funny. It was
all right a half hour ago.” She put down her drink. “I’ll try the
bedroom extension.”
She went through the foyer toward the bedroom wing and
came back in a moment, shaking her head. “Dead as Kelsey’s
jewels.”
The lights went out all over the house, and then those in the
pool. The faint humming of the air conditioner stopped. In
blackness and total silence he thought he heard a door open
somewhere and at the same time the sharp indrawn breath of
an incipient outcry from Paulette. He reached for her, got a
hand over her mouth, and pushed her down to the floor beside
the sofa.
Man on a Leash — 101
9
He placed his lips against her ear and whispered, “Stay down.”
Feeling her head move as she nodded, he pushed away from her
and stood up, trying to remember the dimensions of the room
and the placement of all its furniture. He didn’t know which
door it was he’d heard, but it was most likely the one at the
other end of the kitchen; the electric panel with its switches and
circuit breakers would probably be in the garage.
His eyes hadn’t had time to adjust yet, and the blackness was
still impenetrable as he began to feel his ,way toward the wall
by the kitchen doorway. He stopped to listen. He was on carpet,
but if somebody were traversing the tile floor of the kitchen he
should make some sound. The silence was unbroken. He
stepped forward again, his hands groping for contact with the
wall. Then the light burst in his face. Paulette screamed behind
him.

It was white, focused, and blinding for an instant, the beam of
a six-cell flashlight, and just below it and extending slightly into
the beam were the ugly twin tubes of a sawed-off shotgun. He
froze where he was, a good six feet from the ends of the barrels,
and he could make out a little of the shadowy form behind the
light. The man was clad in a black jump suit and black
hangman’s hood. He’d made no sound on the kitchen floor
because he was wearing only socks. They were black, too.
Paulette screamed again. There must be another one behind
him.
Man on a Leash — 102
“Well,” the man with the shotgun said, “if you want to carry
the big son of a bitch—”
Romstead started to turn his head. A fiery blossom of pain
exploded inside it. The light in front of his eyes receded to some
great distance and then went out.
* * *
He opened his eyes, winced, and closed them again as he fought
off waves of nausea. In a moment he tried once more. It
appeared to be daylight wherever he was—faint daylight, to be
sure, but at least he could see. He was lying fully clothed except
for coat and tie on a narrow and too-short bed covered with a
blue chenille spread, looking up at what appeared to be a
varnished knotty-pine ceiling. He was a light drinker, and only a
very few times in his life had he consumed enough to have a
hangover; but he was conscious of some woolly and unfocused
impression that this must be the distilled essence of all the
hangovers in history. His mind was beginning to function a little
now, however, and he remembered the man with the shotgun
and Paulette Carmody’s warning cry. He put a hand up to his
head. There was a painful lump at the back of it, and his hair
was matted with dried blood.
He looked at his watch. When he could get the face of it to
swim into focus he saw it was ten minutes of nine, A.M.? he
wondered. But it had to be; it was daylight. How in hell could he
have been unconscious for—what was it—fifteen hours?
He gave up on that and turned his head, accepting the stab of
pain he knew this was going to cost. Just beyond him was
another narrow bed, the other of the set of twins and similarly
covered with a blue chenille spread. Paulette Carmody lay on it,
asleep, blond hair tousled and the wrinkled dress halfway up
her thighs. Beyond her, at the end of a room which appeared to
be all varnished pine, was the window from which the light was
coming, what there was of it. It was barred. A small air
conditioner was set in the bottom of it, and outside it the
louvered shutters were closed.
Barred? He turned his head to the right. There was a door at
that end of the room, armored with a thin plate of steel bolted at
all four corners. Just to the right of it were two chests of
drawers set side by side. Atop one of them was an intercom, and
above the other a wall-mounted mirror and what looked like a
Man on a Leash — 103
sliding panel or pass-through below it. The panel was closed.
But there was another door in the wall opposite the foot of the
bed. It was ajar.
He swung his feet to the floor and sat up. Pain clamped its
viselike grip on his head again, and he was assailed by vertigo.
He tried to stand but fell back on the side of the bed. There was
no feeling in his feet at all and no control over the muscles in his
ankles. Apparently he’d been lying for a long time with his feet
extending over the end of the bed, their own weight and that of
the heavy brogues cutting off most of the circulation. He leaned
down, managed to worry the shoes off, and began to massage
them. They were swollen and as devoid of sensation as blocks of
wood at first, but in a minute he could feel the pinpricks of
returning circulation.
He could stand now. He swayed once and then lurched
drunkenly over to the door that was ajar. It was a bathroom.
There was a small window at the back of it, but it was covered
with two vertical strips of two-by-two angle iron bolted at top
and bottom. He stared at it numbly for a moment and then went
over to the steel-faced door at the front of the room. He tried
the knob. It was locked. And probably bolted on the outside, too,
he thought. There was a faint humming sound from the air
conditioner in the other window, but otherwise, the silence was
total.
He went back to the window and examined it. They weren’t
bars, as he’d thought at first, but lengths of two-by-two angle
iron the same as those across the bathroom window. Only here,
in order to clear the air-conditioner controls, they’d bolted
horizontal lengths to the wall at top and bottom and then
welded three vertical strips to them. The bolts were half-inch,
he thought, the steel was quarter-inch stock, and the welds
looked solid. He caught one of the vertical strips, put a foot
against the wall, and heaved back. Nothing happened except
that it made his head pound. You couldn’t budge it with a
crowbar, he thought.
He held a hand in front of the air-conditioner grille. It was
only the fan that was turned on, for ventilation. He put his face
between two of the vertical angle irons, as near the window as
he could get, and looked downward with the slope of the louvers
outside. At first all he saw was the top of the external portion of
the air conditioner. There was sunlight on it. The surface was
weather-stained, and he could see dust on it and several pine
Man on a Leash — 104
needles. He moved over to the edge of the window, looked
slantingly downward past the air-conditioner box, and saw a few
feet of stony ground, the half-exposed root of a tree, and more
pine needles.
Wherever they were, he thought, it wasn’t in the desert. Pines
didn’t grow there, at least not at low altitudes. He turned back
to the room. When Paulette Carmody woke up, maybe she could
tell him what had happened and where they were. They surely
hadn’t slugged her, too. She had turned again in her sleep, and
the dress was now up around her hips. He pulled the spread off
the other bed and covered her legs with it. She was going to
have enough to cope with when she woke up, without being
embarrassed on top of it.
He went back into the bathroom. The floor was badly worn
linoleum but seemed to be clean. There was a commode and a
washbasin with rust streaks under the spigots. Above the basin
was a cloudy mirror. An old-fashioned tub with claw feet stood
in a rear corner next to the window. There was a louvered
shutter outside the window, the same as the one in the
bedroom, so it was scarcely twilight inside the room. He flicked
a switch, and a light came on above the mirror. A rack held a
supply of towels, and there was a wrapped bar of soap on the
side of the basin. He turned on the cold-water tap and washed
his face. It made him feel a little better. The water was icy,
which seemed further evidence they must be in the Sierra or at
least in the foothills. And the place must be completely isolated,
far from any traveled road. He hadn’t heard a car yet.
But how could he have been unconscious for that long? He’d
been knocked out several times in his life but never for more
than a few minutes, and he’d never heard of fifteen hours or
longer except in cases of severe concussion and coma. He must
have been drugged with something. His coat had been removed,
and his tie, and he noticed now that the cuff of his left shirt
sleeve was unbuttoned. He pulled the sleeve up and saw them
immediately, two small blue puncture marks and a drop of dried
blood. They’d used the tie for a tourniquet. And some junkie’s
dirty needle, he thought, and then wondered if he were entirely
rational even yet if he didn’t have any more to worry about
under the circumstances than serum hepatitis.
He pulled open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet.
Inside were two new toothbrushes in plastic tubes, some
toothpaste, a bottle of aspirin, and a water tumbler. He shook
Man on a Leash — 105

out four of the aspirin and examined them. They bore the wellknown
brand name and appeared to be genuine. He swallowed
them, broke open one of the toothbrushes, and scrubbed
vigorously at his teeth.
He came back out into the room. A curtained alcove to the left
of the bathroom proved to be a closet. Several wire coat
hangers dangled from a rod, and his suitcase, Paulette
Carmody’s handbag, and a small overnight case were on the
floor. His coat and tie were tossed across his bag. He let the
curtain fall back into place and went over to the two chests of
drawers against the front wall.
The intercom would be open, of course, and no doubt there
was another bug somewhere in the room, or perhaps two, so
after they’d muffled the intercom with a pillow and found the
obvious bug, the plant, and pulled its teeth, there’d still be
another recording everything they said. The mirror was
obviously phony; on the other side of its dark and imperfect
reflection it was a window through which they could be watched
as long as the light intensity was higher on this side than on the
other. He looked up. In the ceiling was a light fixture with what
appeared to be a 200-watt bulb in it. It wasn’t turned on at the
moment, but it would be at night. He could smash it, of course,
but to what point? The spooks would simply come in with that
sawed-off shotgun and tie them up.
Did the crazy bastard think he could get away with it again? It
was obvious, now that it was too late, what Kessler had been
looking for in his apartment; he’d even told Mayo, without
realizing it. Bank statements. The hundred and seventy-two
thousand dollars on deposit at the Southland Trust in San Diego,
everything he had in the world except for the few hundred in
the checking account in San Francisco. And now he was being
programmed to go in and draw it out with a fatal third testicle
of plastic explosive in a jockstrap or a stick of dynamite taped to
the inside of his leg. This would be inside three or four pairs of
panty hose, probably sewn to the bottom of a T-shirt, and finally
covered by trousers with the belt and fly zipper jammed in some
way. In ten minutes you could work your way out of it, and in
one second or less you could be mutilated and dying. But what
about the radio circuits and the other wires connecting them to
the detonator? They must have been inside the old man’s coat
somewhere, so why hadn’t he been able to get at them and
disable the apparatus? His hands had been free. No doubt he’d
Man on a Leash — 106
find out, but at the moment there appeared to be no answer
except that you never made any sudden and impulsive moves
when somebody had you by the jewels.
But why had they kidnapped Paulette Carmody? Why, for that
matter, had they gone to the trouble to bug her telephone and
then close in on him while he was at her place? There didn’t
seem to be any answer to these questions either. Then, for the
first time, the absolute silence of the place was broken; from the
other side of the wall against which the beds were placed there
came a low murmur of voices and the creaking of a bed. He
turned and looked at Paulette Carmody. Her eyes were open.
She stared blankly at him for a moment and then put a hand up
to her head, and said, “Good God!”
“They didn’t slug you too, did they?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It must be that crap they shot into my arm.
Battery solution or varnish remover.”
“I’m sorry about it,” he said.
“About what?”
“Getting you involved. I don’t know why they grabbed you
too.”
“Money,” she said. She sat up with a grimace of pain and
grabbed her head again, felt the disarray of her hair, and
shuddered. He wanted to ask her what money and how they
expected to get it, but it could wait. He brought her purse and
the small overnight case from the closet and set them beside
her. “There’s a bathroom,” he said. “And a toothbrush and some
aspirin. Can you make it?”
She nodded. She pushed aside the bedspread he’d put over
her, swung bare legs off the bed, and stood up. When she
swayed drunkenly, he took her by the arm and helped her to the
door of the bathroom and then passed in her purse. The
creaking of the bed in the other room was increasing now, and
he could hear the voices again. One of them was feminine.
There began a series of little moans and gasping outcries. He
cursed and hoped they’d get it over with before Paulette came
out of the bathroom. They didn’t. When she emerged a few
minutes later, wearing lipstick now and still running a comb
through her hair, she walked right into it. There was a sudden
crescendo of the lunging of the bed, its headboard banging
against a wall apparently as sound-transparent as paper, and
then a ragged and strangely hoarse but unmistakably feminine
Man on a Leash — 107
voice cried out, “Now, now, now! Oh, Jesus Christ, oh, God!”
They looked away from each other in embarrassment as this
ended in one final chaotic shriek and silence descended.
Paulette sat on the side of the bed and fished a cigarette out
of her purse. “Well, at least they didn’t put it on closed-circuit
TV and make us watch. Though I wouldn’t put it past the creepy
dingaling.”
He gestured toward the intercom. “The room’s bugged.”
“So let him listen. What difference does it make?” she asked.
“None, now.” If her telephone had been tapped, Kessler
already knew they had figured out his identity and they were
doomed from the start, in spite of the window dressing of the
hoods and masks.
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I blew it from every angle. If I hadn’t
shot off my mouth—”
“Will you stop it? None of it is your fault. I was the primary
target all along. From the little I overheard, you’re just going to
pick up the ransom.”
“How much?”
“Two million.”
He whistled. “How do they expect to get it?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t discuss it much, except one of them
suggested they avail themselves of the facilities while they had
me there alone with you drugged and knocked out. The other
one told him to shut up and attend to business. That’s when the
two million was mentioned. You could be swimming in it, he
said, in that bracket. Wall-to-wall tail is the elegant way he put
it.”
“Then there were just two of them?”
“That’s all I saw.”
“Was one of them Kessler? Or would you be able to recognize
his voice?”

“I might. But they were both too big, six feet or over. One had
a hush-puppy accent, Texas, I think.”
“So there are three of them, at least.”
She gestured toward the wall. “Plus Hotpants.”
“Did you get a look at their car?”
Man on a Leash — 108
“No. I think it must have been down the hill in back, at your
father’s place. After they slugged you and injected that stuff in
your arm, they held me and gave me a shot of it, too. Then the
one who seemed to be in charge sent Tex off to get the wheels.
Tex was the one who was smitten by my desirability. Or maybe
availability is the word. Anyway, the stuff didn’t take effect right
away, and I was still with it to some extent when I heard the car
pull up in front; but by the time they’d lugged you out there and
then come back for me. I was out. I have some kind of vague
impression of about half-way waking up somewhere along the
line and the two of us were lying on a mattress in the back of
what might have been a panel truck. We were stopped, and they
seemed to be giving you the needle again. But the whole thing
might have been a dream.”
“No. There are two punctures.”
“But why the drugs at all? They could have just tied us up.”
“So we wouldn’t be able even to make a guess which direction
we were driven or for how long. We could be twenty miles west
of Coleville or four hundred miles south. I think we’re in the
Sierra or the foothills, for what that’s worth, which is nothing.”
“Do you suppose they’re going to do the same thing again,
send you into the bank for the money the way they did your
father?”
“Apparently. It worked the other time, so maybe they think
they can get away with it again.”
“But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. His hands were
free, of course, so why couldn’t he—”
“Time,” he said. He explained. “He’d have been blown up
before he could even start to get out of it.”
“But, Eric, part of the junk must have been somewhere else on
him. In his coat, maybe, so there’d have to be interconnection
wires he could yank loose.”
“Yeah, I “know—” he began, but at that moment the intercom
came to life.
“Of course he could have pulled the circuits apart,” a voice
said. “But that was the last thing on earth he wanted. Believe
me.”
They looked at each other. The question was obvious in
Romstead’s eyes. She shrugged. It could be Kessler, but she
wasn’t sure.
Man on a Leash — 109
Romstead turned toward the intercom. “Why?”
“You know anything about electrical circuits or electronics?”
the voice asked.
“Very little,” Romstead said bleakly.
“Well, your old man did. He got it right away when I showed
him the circuit.”
“You want me to ask, is that it?”
“I don’t care if you do or not, but I think you ought to
understand what you’re up against. The detonator was on the
back contact of the relay. Failsafe in reverse.”
“All right, whatever that means.”
“It means, quite simply, that the thing wasn’t intended to be
detonated by the radio signal. It was the radio signal that kept it
from detonating, if you’re still with me. He was on a leash.”
Romstead got it then, the full horror of it and the helplessness
his father must have felt. He couldn’t run, because if he went
beyond the range of the transmitter he’d blow up automatically.
If the police grabbed Kessler, or if he himself got close enough
to grab him or knock him out, the same thing would happen.
“The spark supply was self-contained,” the voice went on. “A
bank of charged capacitors. Perfectly harmless as long as the
detonating circuit was open, but if the radio circuit failed for
any reason, the relay fell open and completed the detonating
circuit through the back contact. Neat device.”
Egomaniac, Romstead thought. He was capable of talking
himself into the gas chamber just to prove how brilliant he was.
But that was of little help here.
“Now we’re all agreed you’re a genius,” Romstead said, “do
we have to have the burro?”
“No, we haven’t got another burro. We’ve got some good
sixteen millimeter footage of that one, though, if you need
convincing.”
Romstead said nothing. The bed was beginning to creak again
on the other side of the wall. The voice went on, “Not necessary,
anyway. You don’t think we’re stupid enough to try the same
thing again in the same way, do you? This is a whole new
operation with a different approach. Do you want some
breakfast?”
Man on a Leash — 110
“Oh, God,” the girl said on the other side of the wall.
Romstead looked at Paulette Carmody. She shook her head and
looked away.
“We appreciate it,” Romstead said, “but not with the present
entertainment.”
There was a chuckle from the intercom. “Boy, have you got
hangups. Well, we’re going to bring you out in a little while for
the pictures we have to have.”
The headboard of the other bed was beginning to bump the
wall once more. “Fast turnaround; no down time at all,” Paulette
Carmody said. “Or she’s taking them in relays.” She went into
the bathroom and closed the door. He heard her flush the toilet
and turn on the water in the basin. After the final shriek she
came out again.