Ransom Game Read Online Free Page B

of parole hearings, a journalistic flurry of agitation about the fact that the Grantham kidnappers were serving a bigger part of their sentences than some kidnappers from Toronto in another case, and finally reports of who got released when.
    On my way out, I dug into a pile of recent Beacons for the account of Warren’s death. I found it six weeks down in the stack. It told how the millionaire financier had drowned in his heated pool at home. He was 72 and in the habit of taking a morning swim. He’d been discovered at the bottom of the pool by a servant who’d brought him his morning coffee and paper. And it continued for a dozen more paragraphs telling about his estimated wealth—in excess of thirteen million a year—and the funeral arrangements. It gave another recapitulation of the kidnapping, and some speculation about the effect of his death on Archon Corporation. It ended with a bit of news I’d missed:
    Warren is survived by his daughter, Gloria, Mrs. Robert H. Jarman.
    That fellow Jarman knew a good thing when he saw it, no mistake about that. I thought that maybe I’d pay a call on the couple. Since I was trying to locate Johnny Rosa, I felt practically one of the family.

THREE
    I was surfing a few hundred yards from shore, just coming up beautifully on the crest of a wave that peeled away under me, when I heard a sharp warning from a big cabin cruiser trying for the same stretch of ocean. It hooted at me about fifty times, without changing course. It came toward me like a shark only a hundred times bigger. I shouted at the top of my voice, but it overwhelmed me and everything went blue. And then I was sitting up in sweaty pajamas with the phone in my hand and the bedclothes tangled about my knees.
    â€œHello?” I asked, wondering whether it was a complaint from the cockpit of the cruiser.
    â€œYou Cooperman?” a voice asked.
    â€œYeah. Who is this?”
    â€œIt’s me, Binny. The word is out you want to talk to me.”
    â€œBinny, hold on a second.” I reached into my jacket pocket for my cigarettes. When I was lit, and my hands had stopped shaking, I reached for the phone again. “Hello, Binny, what do you know, what do you say?”
    â€œLittle of this, little of that. You want to chat, ask me about my old man, and I should ask you are you getting much, Benny, or what do you want from my young life, eh?”
    â€œBinny, have you seen Johnny Rosa since he got out?” I could hear the line hum between my hotel room and Papertown, like somebody was hanging up his shorts on the wire.
    â€œCooperman, not you too? Everybody’s looking for Johnny. You think he’s going to walk into the poolroom? He’d never walk out alive. I mean, if you can’t buy a piece of half a million, you could grab a piece of Johnny.”
    â€œYou know Muriel Falkirk?”
    â€œWhat’s to know? She used to be Eddie Milano’s girl. I hear that she and Johnny had been keeping house in a quiet way since he got out. She’s a good-looking broad, what do you want me to say?”
    â€œIs she straight?”
    â€œWhat am I, a philosopher? What’s straight, for crying out loud? She’s been around, she’s seen a lot. A lot of people know her. She thinks she knows everybody.”
    â€œWhat are the odds on Johnny being around next Christmas?”
    Binny thought a moment, then: “Same odds as the Second Coming. Cooperman, what are you mixed up in?”
    I could see the end of my cigarette in the mirror across the room. I couldn’t see much more, although the neon light from the hotel sign was turning the pillow blue then pink. “Don’t ask me, pal. I get roped into these things. If you hear anything about Johnny, I’d appreciate, you know.”
    â€œSure, Benny. See you.” And he was gone. I looked at the illuminated dial of my watch. It was nearly three in the morning. I knew that I wasn’t going to