Bill Pronzini: The Snatch

I said to Martinetti, “What about your secretary?”

He looked to where Proxmire was sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace. An odd, bitter little smile touched the corners of his mouth, and then disappeared as quickly as it had come. “I’m afraid not,” he said.

“One of your other friends or business associates?”

“To be perfectly frank, there is no one I would care to trust with that kind of money.”

“You’re apparently prepared to trust me with it.”

“You have a reputation for honesty, integrity and discretion in your profession. I made several reference calls before I telephoned you personally.”

I did not say anything.

Martinetti said, “Will you do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll pay you a thousand dollars.”

“Listen, Mr. Martinetti …”

“Fifteen hundred, goddamn it! We’re talking about my son’s life here!”

I got up out of the chair and went over to the fireplace and threw my cigarette on the cordwood stacked in there. I dusted the ash off my hands, thinking that I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it at all. A kidnapping is a terrifying kind of thing-a cold, amoral, unnatural act-and in addition to leaving a bad taste in your mouth, the circumstances surrounding a crime of that nature are volatile enough so that you can never be sure what’s going to happen next.

The police should have been notified immediately, in spite of the kidnapper’s standard threat to the contrary; but I could understand Martinetti’s hesitancy, and I did not blame him for wanting to keep the whole affair quiet- especially since he was a prominent enough figure in the area to rate considerable newspaper coverage if the story leaked out to the press. If I had been the father of an abducted child, I might have done things the same way. In any case, it was not my place ro argue the propriety of paying a kidnap ransom demand, and certainly not the wisdom of it.

He had put me in a very uncomfortable position. If he had asked me to investigate the snatch of his son, I could have backed out without any qualms at all. And yet, all he had asked me to do was make the drop for him-just that, nothing else. With his mind made up to pay the three hundred thousand, somebody had to carry out the delivery; and the fewer people who knew about it, the better the boy’s chances.

Fifteen hundred dollars. I had not had a client in five weeks, and fifteen hundred dollars was a considerable amount of money in my present state of affairs. But suppose I made a mistake? Suppose I fouled things up in some nebulous, unpredictable way, and something happened to Gary Martinetti? Suppose-?

Well, Jesus, suppose a hundred things, a thousand things. I got another cigarette out and lighted it, and then behind me Martinetti said in a voice stripped of all its normal power and magnetism, words that must have come very hard for a man like him, “Please. For God’s sake- please.”

I turned slowly. “All right,” I said. “All right, Mr. Martinetti, I’ll deliver the money for you.”

* * * *

Martinetti looked at me for perhaps five seconds, his face expressionless, and then he said, “Thank you, I- thank you,” in a low voice and went over to the drapes and parted them and stood staring out broodingly.

I returned to my chair and sat down, conscious of the gazes of both Proxmire and Channing. I took a long drag on my cigarette, and one of the damned coughing attacks came on with no warning, violent and racking. By the time I got it under control, with the handkerchief to catch the phlegm, Martinetti was back at his desk. He was looking at me oddly.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Just a little chest cold,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t. I did not want to talk about it. I went to the fireplace again and got rid of the butt and came back. Briefly, I wondered what the three of them in there were thinking about me; but it really was not important, and I put it out of my mind.

I said to Martinetti, “I’d like to know a few of the particulars of what happened today. I don’t want to go into this completely cold.”

He nodded. “What do you want to know?”

“To begin with, how many people know about the abduction?”

“The four of us in this room. My wife, Karyn, of course. I would imagine the maid, since she was about when the call came. And Young, the headmaster at Sandhurst.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said. “How old is your son?”

“Nine.”

“Bright?”

“Yes, very.”

That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, in circumstances such as these. Bright kids are generally perceptive of details, and a kidnapper would not want details related that might perhaps lead the authorities to him at some future time. I did not tell Martinetti that.

I said, “Are you in the habit of summoning him from school with a note, or by your lawyer?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Didn’t this Young try to confirm the note with you?”

“He didn’t feel it was necessary,” Martinetti said. “It was written on my personal stationery, as I said before, and the signature seemed all right to him.”

“Did you get the note?”

“Yes. Do you want to see it?”

“If I could.”

He took a sheet of bond stationery, folded twice, business-fashion, from the center drawer of the desk and slid it across to me. I unfolded it, read the text-three sentences neatly typed, with no typographical or grammatical errors-and then looked at the signature. It was bold and flowing, with loops instead of dots above the I’S.

“How good a forgery is the signature?” I asked Martinetti.

“Good enough to have been taken as mine.”

“Do many people have access to papers you’ve signed? To your personal stationery?”

His lips pulled into a tight, bloodless line, and the irises of his eyes had a peculiar light in them. “Are you intimating that someone I’m acquainted with is responsible?”

“I’m not intimating anything,” I said. “I’m only asking some questions. If you’d rather not answer them, that’s your prerogative.”

The muscles circling his mouth relaxed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m on edge; my nerves are rubbed raw.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Mr. Martinetti.”

“Oh Christ,” he said wearily, and ran a heavy hand through his hair. “That same damned possibility has occurred to me more than once in the past couple of hours. That someone I know or once knew is connected with this … this theft of my son. But I can’t conceive of even one person who would do a thing like this.”

“How many people now have or have had access to your papers?”

“Quite a few, I suppose. I only keep one girl at my office in Redwood City, for instance, and almost anyone could simply walk in when she’s in the rest room or getting coffee from the machine downstairs.”

I nodded. There was no purpose in pressing this subject; I could see that it was painful for Martinetti, and I was not supposed to be conducting an investigation or an interrogation anyway. I had to keep reminding myself of my limitations every now and then, because I had been a cop for fifteen years before I went out on my own, and when you’ve been conditioned to certain methods for that length of time, you find them difficult to break.

I asked, “What did Young tell you about theman?”

“That he was a smooth character, authoritative and well-mannered.”

“When you received this call earlier in the afternoon, did he threaten or intimidate you in any way beyond the warning to meet his demands or suffer the consequences?”

“No. He was very amiable, in fact.”

“You were unfamiliar with his voice, I take it?”