The Gift Shop Page 23

  The old man’s head fell forward. His sons were men, but he could not reach a single one of them. And his little girl—was only a little girl.

  Mei came back, so he braced up, and called the agency.

  “Got her, have they?” this voice said. “Well, we do know where the child was. Dr. Fairchild called in. May pick up some traces, there. We’re on it, sir. Rounding up a …”

  “Wait,” said Paul Fairchild. “Wait. The woman threatened that, if she saw help coming, she’d take it out on my child. And they’ve got Jean Cunliffe, too. So go easy. Will you go easy?”

  “Yes, sir. Very unlikely they’re still at the Julian house. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Police?” said the old man. “There’s a crime, now. Give me the address where she was. I’ll call the police. Everything has to be done … everything. But … easy.”

  So Paul Fairchild dialed, again, to tell the police where his child had been, that she had been kidnapped, that he could not pay the ransom, and to beg them to go easy.

  Down in the depth of what was really only half of the original cellar, Callie was sitting on the hard cold dusty floor, with her hands cuffed together behind her back, and the chain between the bracelets threaded around behind one of the metal stanchions of the washtubs. These were an old-fashioned double set, with three metal supports at the front, each embedded firmly in the cement of the cellar floor. All the little hands, the small soft fingers, had tried and tried to find a way to release her, but there was no way.

  It was almost dark, down here. Only siftings of light came through cracks, here and there, above them. And on the two gas furnaces—one for the upstairs, one for the downstairs, according to Southern California custom—the pilot lights burned and were illumination, of a sort. It was airless down here, empty, unused. On one wall there were the stairs, wooden, without risers. On this wall were the old washtubs, to which she was chained. Over there were the furnaces. And the fourth wall was the new wall. Across the middle of the older cellar, it rose, made of concrete blocks, sheer, windowless, except for a narrow heavily screened slot to let in what air there was. It was tight to the floor above, which it supported. It had no flaw and no exit, and all the old cellar windows were on the other side of it, now.

  But Callie was speaking to her children, very softly. Sound rose through the floor from here, as she knew. Sound came down to them, also. They could hear the dance music.

  So Callie, who had lived here a long time and knew what strangers could not know, said, “You’ve all got to go. We can’t leave anybody here, to get the brunt of it. Because they’ll be pretty mad, I guess.”

  “Mama?”

  “Oh, I’ll be O.K. Anyhow, I can’t go. Even if I could get these things off, I’m too fat for your little old crawly way. But you must all go, every one, and the bigger ones must watch out for the littler ones, and the boys must watch out for the girls, and the girls must watch out for everybody, of course. And you got to be Indians, real, real Indians. Not one scratch. Not one goof, mind.

  “Now you come out under the porch. Well, see, you must be very, very quiet, there. As soon as there is a chance, if you’re sure nobody is going to see or hear you, then you must crawl out where it’s broken, you know? And crawl along, under the shrubbery. And then you must go and wait under the bushes, around the corner, past the store, until Papa comes along.

  “And you’ve got to stop him. Because we don’t want him walking in, not knowing, do we? And after you do that, then we need somebody to help me out of here. But Papa is coming any minute, so …”

  “We’ll stop Papa,” they whispered. “It’s O.K.” “O.K., Mama.” “We know what to do.” “We won’t make one bit of noise.”

  “Mind you don’t shush each other. Now, that’s noise.”

  “We won’t.” “That’s O.K., Mama.” “Papa will come “ “Won’t be very long.”

  The little hands comforted her face, her hair.

  So then she watched them, as best she could, as one by one, they went to the wall where the furnaces stood. They ducked and bent and wiggled through a space, between some pipes, that looked impossibly small. And then, with small mice sounds, not too loud, they went up the wall where there seemed no way to go. And then, flat on a tummy, one by one, each disappeared, between the joists above and the top of the old wall.

  And then they were gone. Free, all her children.

  Harry Fairchild had no trouble finding the house. He found the store and turned to his right. Hah—this house was old, had once been white, and looked to be in less than perfect repair. And its back yard must run all the way to the hill. The curb was bare before it. He parked. He looked and listened. He felt as if he had fallen into a pocket of emptiness, a hole in the busy fabric of the city. It was about 6 P.M. The store had closed. Nobody seemed to be around.

  Still, he could hear music, couldn’t he?

  It must be coming from the house. Well then! His spirits rose. He must be here first.

  So he loped eagerly up the overgrown brick path toward the porch. The porch was a low platform and, between its edge and the ground, ran the usual lattice of green painted lathe.

  Seven pairs of eyes watched through the lattice how the brown shoes in the dirt under the oleander bush tilted and those toes dug in. Seven children made no sound, at all. Harry’s foot was on the first step, when those toes pushed, the figure leaped from the oleander, the blow fell on Harry’s head.

  The second man, who had been lying deep in lantana, behind the hibiscus, joined the first man and, with grunts and mutters, they picked up Harry Fairchild and carried him into the house, by the front door.

  So seven children sifted softly through the place where the lattice was broken and skinned along the ground behind the low acacia bushes, deep in the ivy. The big ones helped the little ones, and the boys helped the girls, and the girls, of course, helped everybody.

  It was 6 P.M. The music had given way to a voice selling a pain-killer. Varney, who seemed to carry an inexhaustible supply of handcuffs, pulled limp arms behind the limp body and put the handcuffs on.

  Dorinda looked down and, with the toe of one pretty slipper, she nudged the body as if to put a piece of annoying dust out of her way. Varney glanced at his wristwatch, and the two men who had dragged the body in here watched Dorinda. The voice on the air was talking about “quick relief.”

  Jean Cunliffe was speechless. Even the subvocal procession of interior words had ceased.

  But then Harry opened his eyes.

  The first thing he saw was Jean’s face, smiling radiantly (because it seemed better to her that he was not dead). Then he knew that he was tied up, in fact, handcuffed. And so was she. He narrowed one eye. Help was coming.

  The crack on his head seemed to have made his senses abnormally acute. Now he saw Dorinda and knew why her smile was usually so dainty. She had two little tusks at either side, two little teeth that were too far forward of the rank of the rest. He had never seen a wild pig in his life, but “wild pig” came to his mind. (Something mean and small, ruthless within its power, which was low, low to the ground, but very dangerous down there.)

  He saw Varney, and his aura was as plain as his outline. A killer who didn’t much mind what he did, from now on out. He saw Vance, so inconspicuous, so efficient. He saw the other two men, who were watching the woman and he heard Varney expressing what those two men were thinking.

  “Better not wait, Dorinda. Because how did Harry-baby know just where to come?”

  “Don’t worry about him,” she said. “He got it out of a pig.” She lifted her arrogant head. Her sense of power flowed out of her. She thought she had the world in her hands. Harry seemed to know that Dorinda had lived all her life with a proud and shocking secret, and now the blind world, and all the poor, stupid, timid, law-abiding, trusting people in it, would see what she could do. She was blind with this notion.

  “We’ll take the girls,” she decreed. (Somebody’s feet shifted. It was protest and she di
dn’t like it.) “Four of you?” she raged. “Hit them, if you’re so feeble. We can stack them in the trunk, can’t we? Move the car, Vance. Ready to get out. Wait. If his car is out there, get it out of sight. I’ll listen to this.”

  Voices on the radio were singing a jolly rhyme, the finale of the commercial.

  “Listen in the car,” growled Varney.

  But Dorinda said, “I told you what to do. I want to know what I’ll feel like doing with darling Harry.”

  Harry had not moved. He hadn’t tried anything. What was there to try? Now he didn’t move his eyes when she looked at him. Vance was taking Harry’s car keys out of Harry’s pocket.

  “I suppose,” drawled Dorinda, “that somebody loves him. His daddy, maybe?”

  “The one kid is enough,” said Vance in his mild way, “and less trouble, Dorie.”

  She turned on him. “Then you get it out of Jean-honey, which one is the Fairchild brat!”

  “Vamey’s job.” Vance went away like a piece of smoke.

  “Yeah, but she’s some kind of kook,” said Varney sullenly. “Take the four of them. No problem. But take them quick, is all I say.”

  “Shut up,” said Dorinda.

  Harry, hearing his brother’s name spoken on the air, and knowing, now, what she was waiting for, began to wonder where there were any children here. His ears had this heightened keenness. He could hear everything, the radio, the voices in the room, a plane going over, a car outside, a bird in a tree, but he could not hear the sound of children.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Governor,” the voice was saying, “there is some kind of rumor going around, to do with a child? And … uh … Max Kootz? Would you care to comment on that?”

  Tom said, “I am here to comment on that. Nationwide. There is good reason to believe that a criminal group is planning to kidnap a child. They threaten harm to this child in order to force me to postpone the legally appointed execution date of a convicted and a condemned murderer.

  “But I was elected to govern my state, at the polls, by the people. If I were to yield to such a threat, then no child would be safe. I am responsible to all the children, as well as to all the mothers and fathers. The execution date will not be changed by me, under any such pressure.

  “If they take the child, harm the child, then they commit a crime, for which they will be accountable to the law. But another crime will have no effect, whatsoever, on the fate of Maximilian Kootz.

  “I have considered clemency, as is my power and sometimes my duty, long ago, and found it not appropriate in this case. No crime will change that decision. Only the law can. Criminal force, criminal blackmail, do not govern my state. By the authority delegated to their lawful representative, its people govern my state.”

  Very good, Tom, thought his brother Harry. Very noble! Pious and clear—and bound to be misunderstood. He turned his heightened senses on things here.

  It was hard to remember Dorinda’s beauty, the raging frustrated will had so corrupted the lines of her face.

  “Jake, get outside.” Even her voice was ugly. “What are you doing in here? Cole, help Vic get those four brats ready to go. They’ve asked for it.”

  Cole said, “Sure. Sure, Dorinda.”

  But he wasn’t so sure, as Harry could tell.

  “And kick these two down cellar,” Dorinda commanded. So Varney, and the man called Cole, took Harry by his ankles and began to drag him. At first he wiggled and threshed, but it did no good—it was essentially self-punishment and stupid—so he soon desisted and concentrated on keeping his violently aching head from being banged again on each step of the descent into the cellar.

  They dragged him over to the washtubs and then he was chained to a stanchion. There was a woman, already chained there She said nothing.

  Harry had scarcely adjusted to the gloom when the men came down again, half carrying Jean Cunliffe, who did not struggle at all. They chained her to the middle stanchion.

  There they were, three monkeys in a row. A zoo in reverse. The animals were chaining the humans.

  “Very odd,” said Harry aloud, absurdly. Then he saw that Jean had her teeth over her lower lip, not in terror, but as if she knew a wonderful secret. She sparkled at him and he said, outraged, “What now?”

  Vamey, huffing from exertion, gave him a hard look and then, standing still, he looked all around.

  The man Cole sidled to Varney. “Say, Vic …”

  “Where are the kids?” said Varney.

  “Wha …” Cole now looked around, much startled. “My God, she’ll blow her top!” he said. “Jake took a walk, already. And this does it.”

  “They couldn’t get out,” said Varney, plaintively.

  “They got out, they got to somebody. Ah, ah, not me. Max has had it, right?”

  “It’s impossible,” said Varney, as if he might cry.

  But Cole went up the steps, two at a time.

  Varney kept looking around and around. Upstairs, through the floor, they heard Dorinda yelling, “Cole! Where are you going?”

  Then she was a fury at the top of the cellar steps. “Vic. Bring up those—” She waxed profane.

  Varney went to the bottom of the steps to look up, his face almost comical. “Come and see if you can see them.”

  “See what? See what?”

  “The kids. I don’t see them, Dorinda.”

  “Are you out of your …” She came down four steps. She stood over the deep place, black against the light, like a hovering raven.

  “Beater get going,” said Varney heavily. “All the kids got away.”

  There was silence.

  “Why, then, Harry will have to do,” said Dorinda in a high hard voice. “Won’t he? Daddy’s little man.”

  Varney didn’t find this amusing. “Damn it, Dorinda. Who’s outside now, for all we know?”

  “Just a minute.” She ran up the four steps. Varney put a heavy foot on the lowest step. He looked as if he had seen ghosts, had been shaken out of his conception of what the world was all about. But he had begun to work a handgun out of some hidden place in his clothing, as if, helplessly, all he knew how to do was to kill somebody.

  Dorinda came back with a candelabra. Seven candles. And they were lighted. She set this down carefully, on the second wooden step. “If you kick loose the gas connections,” she said, “what will happen, Vic? It rises, does it?”

  “Sure. Accumulates. It’ll blow.”

  “Very nice,” said Dorinda. “Fire, do you think?”

  “House’ll go. Old. Dry. Wood.”

  “Very nice,” said Dorinda. “And no oxygen for them, right?”

  “Right. Like a fire storm.”

  “So they can wait. While I call his daddy back, and we’ll see! We’ll call from the car, Vic, far, far away.”

  Varney sighed, turned, and went to the gas furnaces. He examined them. He lifted his foot and did some hard kicking. Almost immediately the oniony smell of gas came to Harry’s supersensitive nostrils.

  But what was the use of talking? Speech was a human attribute.

  “And if those damned brats,” said Dorinda, “are hiding in a crack somewhere, they can go, too.”

  Varney shrugged. He went up the steps. Dorinda let him by. She looked down at Harry in his chains. “Is the darling governor fond of you, I wonder? If not, goodbye.” Then she was through the door at the top with a flash of legs and pretty ankles. The door closed. It slammed. It locked.

  They could hear Dorinda’s voice, high and excited. “We’ll see what he’ll do” Feet crossed the floor above. The tap of her heels. Varney’s tread. Then silence. Except for a very soft whispering, a hissing.

  Harry was thinking of his daddy having to take this, when he heard Jean saying, as if she were at a tea, “Oh, I’m sorry. Mrs. Julian, this is George Fairchild. But they call him Harry.”

  “I’m Callie,” said the woman, heartily, beaming friendliness. “Listen, it won’t blow. See, the kids went to stop their papa. Then
they were all going to get us help. So don’t worry. They probably did, already.”

  And Harry said, in a voice he tried to make bright and hopeful, “Hey, that’s good!” (How could he tell this woman that the children couldn’t have stopped their papa? He wasn’t coming. Rex Julian was in St. Bart’s, with a broken head.)

  Jean said, “Oh, it won’t have time to blow. Dorinda called your daddy, already, Harry. He will have called somebody. Of course, they wouldn’t let me tell him where.” Then she seemed to know what worried him. “If she calls him now, he just won’t believe this,’ said Jean Cunliffe. “I don’t even believe it, myself. Do you?”

  “No. No,” said Harry. “It won’t blow. Dick knows where we are. He called help long ago.”

  “Oh, good.” Jean said. “It won’t blow, then.”

  But in fact, it might blow.

  * * *

  Out on the street, in front, Varney said, “Oh, oh.” Vance had the Continental waiting for them across the road. But Varney had just seen another car, hesitating at the intersection. He was deeply depressed. “We’ve had it.”

  But Dorinda clutched his arm, fiercely. “Go, get in with Vance. Tell him to move when I say so. And wait a block down. Down, mind you. I’ll fix this.”

  Her power was great. Varney ambled across, in a gait faster than it looked, and got into the back of the car. The other car had stopped and two men were getting out of it, looking this way. Dorinda waved to them and began to run, the tripping run of the female in high heels, attracting their attention, firmly, and crying, “Oh, please. Oh, please.”

  They hurried to meet her. She said, “Oh, please. Are you after the little Fairchild girl?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” They were giving her hard stares.

  “Oh, all the children have run away! They’re somewhere on the streets. We’re all out looking for them. Please help us?”

  “Who are you, ma’am?”

  “Oh. Oh, my name is Jean Cunliffe.”

  “I see.” Both faces accepted this. “What happened to the Kootz gang?”