Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

She heard the same two voices she had heard before. One was assuring the other that everything would go right on schedule, that they couldn’t miss. “Seventy-five thou,” he said several times. “Wait another hour, let him sweat a little. Then call him and tell him it’ll cost him seventy-five thou to see his darling daughter again. That’s all we tell him, just that we got her, and the price. Then we let him stew in it for another two hours.”

“Why drag it out?”

“Because it has to drag until morning anyway. He’s not going to have that kind of bread around the house. He’ll have to go on the send for it, and that means nine o’clock when the banks open. Give him the whole message right away and he’ll have too much time to get nervous and call copper. But space it out just right and we’ll have him on the string until morning, and then he can go straight to the bank and get the money ready.”

Carole opened her eyes slowly, carefully. The one who was doing most of the talking was the same tall thin man who had asked her the time. He was less than beautiful, she noticed. His nose was lopsided, angling off to the left as though it had been broken and improperly reset. His chin was scarcely there at all. He ought to wear a goatee, she thought. He would still be no thing of beauty, but it might help.

The other one was shorter, heavier, and younger, no more than ten years older than Carole. He had wide shoulders, close-set eyes, and a generally stupid face, but he wasn’t altogether bad-looking. Not bad at all she told herself. Between the two of them, they seemed to have kidnapped her. She wanted to laugh out loud.

“Better cool it,” the younger one said. “Looks like she’s coming out of it.”

She picked up her cue, making a great show of blinking her eyes vacantly and yawning and stretching. Stretching was difficult, as she seemed to be tied to a chair. It was an odd sensation. She had never been tied up before, and she didn’t care for it.

“Hey,” she said, “where am I?”

She could have answered the question herself. She was, to judge from appearances, in an especially squalid shack. The shack itself was fairly close to a highway, judging from the traffic noises. If she had to guess, she would place the location somewhere below the southern edge of the city, probably a few hundred yards off Highway 130 near the river. There were plenty of empty fishing shacks there, she remembered, and it was a fair bet that this was one of them.

“Now just take it easy, Carole,” the thin man said. “You take it easy and nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“You just take it easy and—”

She squealed with joy. “This is too much! You’ve actually kidnapped me. Oh, this is wild! Did you call my old man yet?”

“No.”

“Will you let me listen when you do?” She started to giggle. “I’d give anything to see his face when you tell him. He’ll split. He’ll just fall apart.”

They were both staring at her, open-mouthed. The younger man said, “You sound happy about it.”

“Happy? Of course I’m happy. This is the most exciting thing that ever happened to me!”

“But your father—”

“I hope you gouge him good,” she went on. “He’s the cheapest old man on earth. He wouldn’t pay a nickel to see a man go over the Falls. How much are you going to ask?”

“Never mind,” the thin man said.

“I just hope it’s enough. He can afford plenty.”

The thin man grinned. “How does seventy-five thousand dollars strike you?”

“Not enough. He can afford more than that,” she said. “He’s very rich, but you wouldn’t know it the way he hangs onto his money.”

“Seventy-five thou is pretty rich.”

She shook her head. “Not for him. He could afford plenty more.”

“It’s not what he can afford, it’s what he can raise in a hurry. We don’t want to drag this out for days. We want it over by morning.”

She thought for a minute. “Well, it’s your funeral,” she said pertly.

The shorter man approached her. “What do you mean by that?”

“Forget it, Ray,” his partner said.

“No, I want to find out. What did you mean by that, honey?”

She looked up at them. “Well, I don’t want to tell you your business,” she said slowly. “I mean, you’re the kidnappers. You’re the ones who are taking all the chances. I mean, if you get caught they can really give you a hard time, can’t they?”

“The chair,” the thin man said.

“That’s what I thought, so I don’t want to tell you how to do all this, but there was something that occurred to me.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well, first of all, I don’t think it’s a good idea to wait for morning. You wouldn’t know it, of course, but he doesn’t have to wait until the banks open. He’s a doctor, and I know he gets paid in cash a lot of the time — cash that never goes to the bank, never gets entered in the books. It goes straight into the safe in the basement and stays there.”

“Taxes—”

“Something like that. Anyway, I heard him telling somebody that he never has less than a hundred thousand dollars in that safe. So you wouldn’t have to wait until the banks open, and you wouldn’t have to settle for seventy-five thousand either. You could ask for an even hundred thousand and get it easy.”

The two kidnappers looked at her, at each other, then at her again.

“I mean,” she said, “I’m only trying to be helpful.”

“You must hate him something awful, kid.”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“Doesn’t he treat you right?”

“All his money,” she said, “and I don’t even get my own car. I had to take the bus tonight; otherwise you wouldn’t have got me the way you did, so it’s his fault I was kidnapped. Why shouldn’t he pay a bundle?”

“This is some kid, Howie,” the younger man said.

Howie nodded. “You sure about the hundred thousand?”

“He’ll probably try to stall, tell us he needs time to raise the dough.”

“So tell him you know about the safe.”

“Maybe he—”

“And that way he won’t call the police,” she went on. “Because of not paying taxes on the money and all that. He won’t want that to come out into the open, so he’ll pay.”

“It’s like you planned this job yourself, baby,” Ray said.

“I almost did.”

“Huh?”

“I used to think what a gas it would be if I got kidnapped. What a fit the old man would throw and everything.” She giggled. “But I never really thought it would happen. It’s too perfect.”

“I think I’ll make that call now,” Howie said. “I’ll be back in maybe half an hour. Ray here’ll take good care of you, kitten.” He nodded and was gone.

She had expected that Howie would make the call and was glad it had turned out that way. Ray seemed to be the easier of the two to get along with. It wasn’t just that he was younger and better-looking. He was also, as far as she could tell, more good-natured and a whole lot less intelligent.

“Who would have figured it?” he said now. “I mean, you go and pull a snatch, you don’t expect anybody to be so cooperative.”

“Have you ever done this before, Ray?”

“No.”

“It must be scary.”

“Aw, I guess it’s easy enough. More money than a bank job and a whole lot less risk. The only hard part is when the mark — your old man, that is — delivers the money. You have to get the dough without being spotted. Outside of that, it’s no sweat at all.”

“And afterward?”

“Huh?”

The palms of her hands were moist with sweat. She said, “What happens afterward? Will you let me go, Ray?”