Two Little Girls in Blue (14 page)

“You're talking too fast,” Bailey protested.

“Listen carefully if you want the Frawleys to see their children again. In front of Cohen Fashion Optical, you will see a pile of trash bags waiting to be picked up. Open the door of your sedan, take out the trash bags with the money, and place them on top of the other trash bags, making sure that your neckties are clearly visible. Then immediately get back in the car and instruct your driver to continue driving east. I will call you back.”

It was 10:06.

*   *   *

“Bert, this is the Pied Piper. Proceed immediately through the passageway. The trash bags are being dropped now.”

Lucas had taken off his chauffeur's cap and pulled on a hooded rain slicker and dark glasses that covered half his face. He leaped out of the car, opened his large umbrella, and followed Clint, who was similarly
dressed and also carrying an umbrella, down the corridor. The rain was still so heavy that Lucas was certain that the few other people going back and forth nearby were oblivious to them.

From the protection of the umbrella shielding his face, he saw Franklin Bailey climbing into a car. He held back as Clint grabbed the trash bags with the ties and ran back across the sidewalk to the corridor. Lucas waited until Bailey's car pulled away and he was certain he could not be seen before joining Clint and grabbing one of the bags.

In seconds, they were back on Fifty-sixth Street. Clint pushed the trunk button of the stolen Toyota but it would not open. Swearing under his breath, he yanked at the back door nearest the curb, but it, too, was locked.

Lucas knew they had only seconds to spare. He flipped open the trunk of the limo. “Throw them in there,” he snarled as he looked frantically at the corridor, then up and down the street. The people who had passed the corridor as they were running through it were already almost out of sight.

He was back behind the driver's seat, the rain slicker rolled under the front seat, his uniform cap on, when men he was sure must be FBI agents came running through the corridor and from both ends of the block. His nerves racing, but his demeanor calm, Lucas responded to the sharp rap on his window. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Did you see a man carrying or dragging trash bags
coming out of this passageway not more than a minute ago?” Agent Sommers demanded.

“Yes. They were parked right here.” Lucas pointed to the spot Clint had just vacated.

“They? You mean there were two of them?”

“Yes. One was stocky, the other a tall, thin guy. I didn't see their faces.”

Sommers had been too far back to see the drop because their car had gotten boxed in at the light on Sixth Avenue. They arrived in time to glimpse the Excel car pulling away from the curb in front of the optical store. Seeing no sign of the suitcases on the piles of trash there, they had continued to follow the car to Fifth Avenue.

Alerted to their mistake by a call from another agent, they parked and ran back. A pedestrian who had stopped to answer his cell phone told them he had seen a stocky man drag two just-abandoned trash bags into the corridor. They'd arrived here to find Bailey's limo and driver waiting for him.

“Describe the car you saw,” Sommers ordered Lucas.

“Dark blue or black. Late model, four-door Lexus.”

“The two men got in it?”

“Yes, sir.”

His hands clammy, Lucas managed to answer questions in the obsequious voice he used when he addressed Franklin Bailey. In the next minutes, still nervous but secretly amused, he watched as the street swarmed with agents. By now they probably have every
cop in New York looking for the Lexus, he thought. The car Clint had stolen was an older, black Toyota.

A few more minutes passed, and the Excel car carrying Franklin Bailey pulled up behind him. Bailey, now on the verge of collapse, was helped into the limo. Accompanied by two agents, and followed by others, Lucas drove back to Ridgefield, listening as they queried Bailey on the instructions he had received from the Pied Piper. He was gratified to hear Bailey say, “I had asked Lucas to remain in the vicinity of Columbus Circle. At about ten o'clock, I was instructed to tell Lucas to wait for me at that spot on Fifty-sixth Street. My final order as we drove east after throwing out the trash bags was to meet him at that place. The Pied Piper said he didn't want me to get wet.”

At quarter past twelve, Lucas pulled up in front of Bailey's home. One agent assisted Bailey inside. The other waited to thank Lucas and to tell him that he had been very helpful. With the ransom money still in the trunk, Lucas drove to his garage, switched the money from the limo to his old car, and drove to the cottage where a jubilant Clint and a strangely quiet Angie were waiting for him.

T
he ransom drop had been completed, but the agents had lost the people who picked up the money. Now they could only wait. Steve and Margaret and Dr. Harris sat quietly, silently praying that the phone would ring, that someone, maybe another neighbor, would say, “I just had a phone call telling me where the twins are.” But there was only silence.

Where would they leave them? Margaret agonized. Maybe they'll find an empty house and put them in it. They couldn't walk into a public place like a bus station or a train station without being noticed. Everyone looks at the twins when I'm out with them. My two little girls in blue. That's what the papers call them.

The blue velvet dresses . . . 

Suppose we don't hear from the kidnappers? They have the money. Suppose they got away.

Waiting does not seem long once it has been accomplished.

The blue velvet dresses . . . 

“T
he king was in the counting house, counting up his money,” Clint chortled. “I can't believe you drove the money home with the FBI guys in the car.”

The piles of bills were on the floor of the living room in the cottage, mostly fifties, the remainder in twenties. As directed, the bills were not new. A hasty, random check showed that they were not in sequence.

“Believe it,” Lucas snapped. “Start throwing your half in one of the bags. I'll take mine in the other one.” Even though he was sitting here with the money in front of him, Lucas was still certain that something would go wrong. That airhead, Clint, had been too dumb to test the trunk of the car he'd stolen to make sure he could open it. If I hadn't been there with the limo, he'd have been caught red-handed, Lucas thought. Now they were waiting for a call from the Pied Piper to tell them where to drop the kids.

Wherever it was, it would be just like Angie to want to stop and buy them an ice cream. He took some comfort in knowing that they couldn't find a Dairy Queen open in the middle of the night. Lucas felt as though his guts were twisted into knots.
Why hadn't the Pied Piper called?

At 3:05
A.M.
, the sharp crack of the cottage phone made them all jump. Angie scrambled up from the floor and ran to answer it, muttering, “It better not be that creepy Gus.”

It was the Pied Piper. “Put Bert on,” he ordered.

“It's him,” Angie gasped nervously.

Lucas got up, taking his time to cross the room and take the receiver from her. “I was wondering when you'd get around to us,” he snarled.

“You don't sound like a man who's staring at a million dollars. Listen to me carefully. You are to drive in the borrowed car to the parking lot of La Cantina, a restaurant on the northbound Saw Mill River Parkway in Elmsford. The restaurant is near the entrance to the Great Hunger Memorial in V. E. Macy Park. It has been closed for many years.”

“I know where it is.”

“Then you must also know that the parking lot is behind the building, and out of sight of the parkway. Harry and Mona are to follow you in Harry's van, bringing the twins. They must transfer their charges to the borrowed car and lock them in it. The three of you will return to the cottage in the van. I will call by five
A.M
. to confirm that you have followed instructions. I will then take the final step. After that, none of you will hear from me again.”

At three fifteen they began the trip. From behind the wheel of the stolen car, Lucas watched as Angie and Clint carried out the sleeping twins. If they get a flat tire in that old rattletrap; if we come across a road check; if
some drunk slams into one of us . . . The range of possibilities for disaster leaped into his head as he started the engine, then noted with alarm that there was less than a quarter of a tank of gas in the car.

It's enough, he tried to reassure himself.

The rain was still falling but not with the same force as it had been earlier. Lucas tried to take that as a good sign. As he drove through Danbury heading west, he made himself think about La Cantina Restaurant. Years ago he had stopped there for dinner after having completed a spectacularly successful heist in Larchmont. The family had been outside at the pool, and he'd slipped in through the unlocked side door, then went straight up to the master bedroom. Talk about luck! The wife of the hotel big shot had left the door to the safe open—not just unlocked, but
open!
After I fenced the jewelry, I spent three weeks in Vegas, Lucas thought. Lost most of it, but had a good time.

With
this
half million, he was going to be more careful. No gambling it away. My luck is bound to run out, he thought. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a prison cell. That was another worry. He wouldn't put it past Angie to call attention to herself by going on another shopping spree.

He was turning onto the Saw Mill River Parkway. Another ten minutes and he'd be there. There was not much traffic on the road. His blood froze as he spotted a state trooper's car. He glanced at the speedometer—he was going sixty in a fifty-five-mile zone. That was okay. He was in the right-hand lane, not darting back and
forth. Clint was far enough behind that no one would even think he was following him.

The state trooper turned off at the next exit. So far, so good, he thought. Lucas wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. Less than five minutes, he thought. Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes.

The aging structure that had been La Cantina Restaurant was coming up on the right. There was no car in sight on either side of the Saw Mill. With a quick flip of the switch on the panel, Lucas turned off the headlights, turned right onto the road that passed the restaurant, and drove to the parking lot behind it. There he turned off the ignition and sat and waited until the sound of an approaching car told him that the final phase of the plan was about to be completed.

“I
t takes a long time to count one million dollars by hand,” Walter Carlson said, hoping that he sounded reassuring.

“The money was transferred at a little after ten,” Steve replied. “That was five hours ago.” He glanced down, but Margaret did not open her eyes.

She was curled on the couch, her head in his lap. Occasionally, her even breathing told him that she had dozed off, but almost immediately afterward, there would be a quick gasp and her eyes would fly open.