As to Jed, she was standing alone without her jewellery at the edge of the dance floor, her body made jagged by the tension, her hands spread on her thighs, as if to stop herself from running to Daniel.
"If it's money you want, you can have it," Jonathan heard Roper say, calmly. "Want a hundred thousand dollars? Have it in cash, got it on the boat, just give me the boy. Shan't send the police after you. Leave you completely alone. Long as I've got the boy. Do you understand what I'm saying? Speak English? Corky, try 'em in Spanish, will you?"
Then Corkoran's voice, obediently passing on the same message in decent Spanish.
Jonathan glanced at the cash desk. Miss Amelia's till stood open. Half-counted piles of money lay strewn across the counter. He stared down the zigzag path that led from the dance floor to the kitchen. It was steep and crudely paved. Only a lunatic would try to push a loaded perambulator up it. It was also floodlit, which meant that anyone stepping into the darkened kitchen would be unsighted. Jonathan slipped the carving knife under his waistband and wiped his sweated palm on the seat of his shorts.
The raiding party was starting up the path. The way in which the captor held his hostage was a matter of crucial interest to Jonathan, because his plan of action depended on it: what Burr had called his plan of plausibility.
They had made the first leg of the path. Below them the motionless crowd, their faces brilliant under the arc lights, stared after them, not a movement among them, Jed still apart from them, her hair copper in the glow. He was beginning not to know himself again. Bad images of his childhood flooded his vision. Answered insults, unanswered prayers.
First came the bagman, then twenty yards behind him his accomplice, dragging Daniel up the path by his arm. Daniel wasn't joking anymore. The bagman was striding out hungrily, the stuffed briefcase hanging at his side. But Daniel's kidnapper moved in awkward, twisted strides, his upper body turning repeatedly while he menaced the crowd, then the boy, with his automatic pistol. Right-handed, Jonathan recorded, bare-armed. The safety catch at "
"Don't you want to negotiate with me?" Roper was shouting up at them from the dance floor. "I'm his father. Why won't you talk to me? Let's do a deal."
Jed's voice, frightened but defiant, with a note of the equestrienne's command: "Why don't you take an adult? You bloody bullies. Take one of us. Take me if you like." And then, much louder, as her fear and anger joined, "Bring him back, you bastards!"
Hearing Jed's challenge, Daniel's captor yanked Daniel round to face her, while he held the pistol to his temple and did the baddy's lines in a sawing Bronx snarl:
"Anybody comes after us, anybody comes up the path, anybody tries to cut us off, I kill the kid, okay? Then I kill whoever. I don't give a shit. I'll kill anybody. So stay down there and shut up."
The blood was pulsing in Jonathan's hands; they were out in front of him, each fingertip throbbing. Sometimes his hands wanted to do the job on their own and pull him after them. Busy footsteps thumped across the wooden deck of the balcony. The kitchen door burst open, a man's fist groped for the light switch and flicked it, to no effect. A hoarse voice panted, "The
"Anyone in here? Who's in here? Where's the fucking light, for fuck's sake? The
Bronx, Jonathan recorded again, flattened behind the door to the balcony. A genuine Bronx accent, even when he's out of earshot. The man advanced again, holding the bag out in front of him while he groped with his other hand.
"Anyone in here, get the fuck out, hear me? That's a warning. We got the kid. Anyone makes trouble, the kid gets fucked. Don't mess with us."
But by now he had found the piles of bank notes and was sweeping them into the briefcase. When he had finished he went back to the doorway, and with only the opened door to separate him from Jonathan, he shouted down to his accomplice.
