The Stand-In (8 page)

She could only stare at the pen, because he took it away from her. “Do you call them Coral and Bran?”

With her mouth hanging open, she shook her head. No modern first-name stuff in that family! He'd better begin the letter. First he had to get the pen into a writing position, because she held it funny. Her hand was very cold, so he rubbed it and she smiled at him. “Now write ‘I'.”

She stuck out her lower lip, licked it, then the tip of her tongue came out and the “I” took so long that he shortened the letter to:
I'm fine. Do like they say so I can see you
.

After each letter she gave a deep sigh and wanted to sit back and appreciate her art work, as if she was Picasso. Then she did the “K” for Kitten backwards and before he could stop her, scratched it out so hard she almost went through the paper. She tried again and did “K” backwards again, but this time he took the pen away. If she always did it that way, the backwards “K” was great for a signature.

The address took even longer because the post office had to be able to read it. Halfway through the address she said she didn't like this game, could she stop playing, but after one look at his face when he said no, she went on. She was a smart little cookie.

Then he told her to get on the bed again and tucked in the cape so she knew he was going to leave her alone. She said, “Isn't it the party yet?”

“Soon.”

She stuck her thumb back in her mouth. Desmond told himself to save his pity for kids who needed it. This one knew when to throw a fit and when not, just like her old man had known exactly how much he could get away with. After all, Bran had never gone so far that he, the lousy stand-in, the stunt boy, might have been given the part, and Kitten, he told himself, was a chip off the old block. Oh, she made big sad eyes and kept them on him, but she was a smart little cookie.

He wrapped the envelope in his handkerchief. Although he had itched to guide the pen and hurry her, he hadn't. Any fingerprints on the letter and envelope would be hers.

The big master bedroom was a different kettle of fish from the servant's room the kid was in. Here the wash-stand was mahogany and the basin was porcelain. There was no toilet in the bathroom; Ronnie's ancestors used the chamber pot in its mahogany case. They didn't have to empty it.
(His
ancestors probably emptied it.) It pleased him that Ronnie, who had always flopped down on Desmond's bed with his shoes on whenever he visited, had not dared to tonight but was still sitting where he had been told, on the folding mahogany steps covered with carpeting on which Ronnie's ancestors had climbed up into the high brass bed.

Desmond showed Ronnie the handkerchief with the letter in it and asked him for his car keys, telling him that he was going to mail the letter and make the second phone call. He waved away Ronnie's questions about what he was going to say. What he wanted Ronnie to do, while he was out, was to come up with a place for Coral Reid to meet him tomorrow with the ransom money.

He was going to tell her to meet him alone in her red Ferrari. He could recognize it a mile off, and there wasn't room enough on the floor for a cop to hide, or room in the trunk, either. He wanted Coral Reid to come alone in her sable coat (why?) with the money in a flight bag in small bills. That was all settled, but Ronnie knew London, so he wanted him to come up with a quiet street with as little traffic as possible where he could be certain she had come alone and wasn't being followed.

He wanted this street at right angles to a busy one with an Underground station. He'd have the kid with him and, after he was sure Reid was alone and after he got the money, he was going to tell her the kid was wherever she would be—in a hallway, down an areaway. Better decide that after he'd seen the street. “Just a street corner at a certain time is better than anything more complicated,” he told Ronnie. “The more complications, the more ways things can get fouled up. All she's going to want is her kid, and while the two of them are having a reunion, I'll be on my way.”

“But—”

“If you're thinking they can plant cops in the Underground or anywhere else, we're not going to give them time. Because we're not going to tell her the meeting place until just before she's due to leave. You just make sure you come up with a good spot.”

Ronnie said, “You certainly have it worked out.”

5

Nubar Ossian was an efficient man and didn't waste a minute of the drive back to London wondering why Coral needed to see him so urgently that he must leave a party at nine. He used the time to consider several changes in tomorrow's shooting. He had left Julian, his secretary, at the party because Bran said to come by himself, so he couldn't dictate the changes, but what the hell, he never forgot anything anyhow. Then he tried to work out a cheaper way to arrange to have Titmore Street clear of traffic and made a mental note to check with Props about the amount of straw to be laid in front of one of the houses the way they used to do when someone was sick. (Lucky Victorians! Wonder how much it would cost in New York City today to keep a block quiet?)

When the door to Coral's suite was opened after one knock he went inside, quietly took in his star's swollen eyes and reddened nose, caught the smell of genuine terror which had offended Bran but only alerted him, and sat and waited to be told. Bran did all the talking. Coral's beautiful swollen eyes spoke for her. Then Bran suddenly went dumb, so Coral told him they didn't expect fifty thousand pounds for nothing.

“Bran and I are signing over the rights to
Wind.”

Nubar Ossian said, “Can do. Okay. It will wipe out the operating expense account, but once this is over, I can fix that. Can do as soon as the bank opens.” He said to Bran, “I'm not paying any fifty thousand pounds for those film rights, you understand. If I wanted to go that high, you wouldn't have had them in the first place.”

Bran's face turned pasty white; then his ears got red. “I have news for you, Nube! The author didn't want you to direct, how do you like that? You could have gone to sixty and Rorty wouldn't have signed!”

“Bran!”

“It's true, Coral, and you know it!”

“Stop that, Bran! I only know they have my baby. How can you think about who wants who to direct what now?”

“My fault, darling,” Nube said. “I shouldn't have brought that up. Excuse, please. Listen—I want both of you to listen to me now. Listen, Coral!”

She had jumped up and was going toward the door.

“Darling, I know you want me out of here in case they've got someone watching, but if you listen this will only take a few minutes.

“Yours isn't the first kid kidnapped. Pay attention! Kidnappers always tell the parents not to contact the cops because cops are the only ones they're scared of. Cops know exactly how to handle these matters, and I am advising you to call them in and cooperate with them.”

“We can't call. For all we know, the operator is in on it!”

“Could be. Anything could be. So let me call, how's that? I'm going to the Turkish bath and I'll call from a public booth on the way. You know I walk there. Everybody knows that Nube walks to the Turkish bath almost every night.” (He sometimes believed this.) “That I should stop on the way to call—in case they tail me—well, I've done it a hundred times. Walking gives me ideas and everyone knows that when Nube gets an idea, day or night, he gets on the phone and starts the action. How's that?”

“No.”

“Bran?”

“You mean not pay them off?”

“I mean do what the cops tell you to.”

“No, Nube, absolutely not!” She came toward him with her fists up. “Nube—if you do anything—one thing! If you tell one person!”

Nube took her fists and kissed them. “Who can be sensible about his kid's life? I'd do the same if it was one of mine. Okay, doll, you go along with them and I'll have the money ready for you.”

“Don't forget, Bran! When he calls again you take it.” Coral had said this many times since Nube had left.

“Okay. Did you hear that shit?” He had said this many times.
“‘If I wanted to go that high you wouldn't have had it in the first place.'
I wish I'd told him to contact Rorty's agent, then he'd believe that when the agent told Rorty my ideas he got instructions that the rights were mine if I'd go up to fifty. Rorty
wants
me to direct. It's not a question of where he could get the best price. I don't mean he'd throw the rights away, but if I could meet the price.”

“Tell him we'll do anything. Anything.”

“Of course we'll do anything.” He knelt on the floor and pulled her down trying to make her rest against him, remembering the night in the hospital when they had said,
“Here's your daughter, Mr. Collier
.” Ugly as hell. All new ones ugly. His mother said he was beautiful from birth, but his mother wasn't exactly unprejudiced. The pains began while they were having dinner at his mother's place. (That first year Coral used to go with him.) He had driven Coral to the hospital alone, but his mother came after him and waited with him. Then when she saw Cornie, when they brought Cornie into Coral's room, his mother didn't exactly say she was ugly, but Coral got sore because she kept saying how beautiful Bran had been from birth. Then Coral had seen the basket lunch his mother had packed him with roast beef sandwiches with mayonnaise, thick the way he liked them, and she'd had hysterics. Coral said it took his mother to know it was the expectant father who needed care! For Christ's sake, his mother needed time to break the habit of taking care of him. It was only natural. He became a father before his mother even had time to get used to his being a husband. God knows she hadn't had a chance to adjust to that! (Coral said she never would, in one month, one year, or one century.) She was too hard on his mother, who naturally enjoyed talking about him, why not? Naturally his mother got sick hearing about Coral's fan mail and offers and this and that.
(Mr. Reid
, he thought.) Coral was talking.

“I'd take the call, Bran. He'll be expecting to talk to me, but I've worked up this
thing
about it. I keep thinking when he says where we have to meet him with the money I'll forget where he said. I've worked up such a thing about it, waiting, it will go in one ear and out the other, and then when we don't show in the right place—”

She wouldn't lean against him. Her spine was made of steel. When his mother set herself against something, she was made of steel. His agent had once tried to change his mother's mind about the part Nube had offered him back in '52, but she had this prejudice against Armenians. Well, that had finished him with Nube, and then Nube got bigger and bigger in the business.

“That's why I want you to take the call. They just tell you
once
, you know that, Bran, because they don't want to give you a chance to have the call traced. I just can't stop thinking about that: I say we'll get the money. All arranged. He says where to bring it and it goes in one ear and out the other. I ask him to tell me again and he figures this is to let them trace the call and he says,
‘You heard me! You heard me
!' and hangs up. And if he figures we're having the calls traced, that means the cops and then—Oh, my God, my God!”

“You go on like this and we'll have to get a doctor and then the news will get out for sure.”

“I won't. I won't. Once they call and you write down where to bring the money, I'll be better.”

Minority groups always had thin skins but memories like elephants. Armenians were a minority group. He ran his finger down Coral's steel spine. “Coral, did it occur to you, why
our
child? I mean, we're not exactly Burton and Taylor. You know as well as I do Nube is dying to get
Wind
. Well, now he's got it.”

She turned her head to see him.

Her eyes were steel. “Look, Coral, it's better for you if we change the subject. I said Nube's got the book now, hasn't he?”

She scrambled off the floor away from him and blinked her eyes as if she couldn't see well. “If you mean what I think you mean, I think you're nuts. You are nuts! Nube goes pretty far, but kidnapping?”

“Not really kidnapping her, but making us think so, so he could get the rights. You know Nube, he can con himself into thinking that it's for your good. Nube could justify murdering his own mother, you know that. It's what he's best at, so a little thing like a fake kidnap—”

“A little thing! A little thing!” She heard her voice and pulled it in; she saw how her hands were clenched and made them loosen. “She's kidnapped, Bran. Maybe you're coming up with such a crackpot idea to help me, but it doesn't, so stop. I know and you know this has nothing to do with Nube and your damned picture rights except that when the kidnappers read about the fifty thousand pounds they figured maybe we
are
Burton and Taylor, that's the only connection.”

“Okay.”

“Bran, I'm sorry. I'm the one who's nuts. I'm out of my mind. Suppose they don't call? Suppose they don't call?”

“Of course they'll call. What do you think they took her for?”

“Suppose this is a sex maniac? I read a book. Someone asks a detective how they can rape a little girl—how they
can
do it. He says, like a split chicken. Like a butcher does—like in a butcher shop, Bran. Bran! Call,” she said to the phone.
“Call, call, call!”

He tried to explain that it wasn't a sex maniac. Cornie hadn't been grabbed when she was alone and dragged into the bushes. This had been carefully planned, he tried to tell her, they knew that much. It involved the nurse and at least one man, probably more. Sex criminals worked alone. He tried, but she didn't hear.

She kept seeing the butcher's chicken slit open front to back so a man could do it.