‘All my life, someone else has decided things for me,’ Orlando said, in a voice bitter-edged with sullen. ‘My father wanted a boy – had this name all picked out. When I turned out to be a girl, they couldn’t be bothered to think of another.’ She paused, pleating the belt of her coat with nervous fingers. ‘I just wanted some control over my own destiny for a change.’
I stared at her. ‘And how exactly do you achieve that by putting yourself completely at the mercy of a stranger?’
‘You just don’t get it,’ she snapped. ‘I was in control, deep down. I knew I was safe. Even when I was locked up, tied up, I knew they wouldn’t do anything I didn’t want them to.’
‘You put a hell of a lot of trust in someone you knew slightly from college.’
Her turn to stare. ‘But I was paying him,’ she said blankly, like that was enough to ensure anyone’s loyalty.
‘How much?’
She shrugged, as if it were vulgar to discuss it. ‘Fifty grand,’ she said at last. She might as well have said fifty bucks, for all it meant to her. ‘I don’t know how much of that he gave to the other guy, Ross.’
I wondered if she had any concept of what that amount of money would mean to the average college kid, or what they’d be prepared to do in order to get it.
‘How did you get in touch with Lennon if he’s always changing his cellphone number?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, when he played a part, he really played it,’ she said frowning. ‘If the one I had for him was dead, I had to go sit in a coffee shop down near the boardwalk on Coney Island, around ten in the morning.’ She gave me the name of the place and I filed it away.
‘And … what? He met you there?’
‘No, but he must have been able to see me or something, because he’d take that as a signal to call my cell, and then I’d have his new number.’
Lennon must work or live nearby, or have a trusted contact at the coffee shop itself. It wasn’t much, but it was a lead.
‘You know I’m going to have to pass this on to the FBI, don’t you?’ I asked, and saw something like relief flicker through her face. ‘Was that why you called me, Orlando – to do your dirty work for you, so you can keep your distance?’
‘No!’ The denial came too quick, too easily. Her eyes filled, but I wasn’t completely convinced she couldn’t do that at will. She had, after all, taken acting classes with Lennon. ‘Everything’s gone so wrong! Supposing they come after me again – I mean, for real this time? I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Well, going to the cops as soon as Torquil turned up dead would have been a bloody good start,’ I muttered, and watched her head hang.
‘It was supposed to be a game,’ she repeated stubbornly.
I sighed. How did you deal with someone who was so far removed from everyday real life, it was like they were from another planet? ‘So, did it live up to your expectations – being kidnapped?’
Another shrug. ‘I guess,’ she said, but I’d caught the quick smile, the satisfaction that came and went in her face, quickly masked. Maybe it had given her the control she craved. Or maybe it had simply got the attention of her parents – both of them – for the first time in her life. I wanted to shake her.
‘So then Manda wanted out from under the family thumb, too, and you offered to do another deal with Lennon?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
I glanced at the bodyguard, Vincent, sitting motionless in the front of the car. His slightly crooked face was professionally impassive, but there was something disdainful in his eyes.
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I said to him. ‘How could you not?’
‘Of course,’ he said, almost a sneer. ‘You think a couple of punks like that could get away with snatching my principal from right under my nose otherwise? How incompetent d’you think we are?’
‘So, it stands to reason, in that case,’ I added with slow realisation, ‘that her parents knew, also?’
I heard a disbelieving gasp from Orlando, but kept my eyes on Vincent. His gaze flickered across to her, then back to meet mine. ‘Yeah, course I told ’em,’ he said. ‘Why d’you think no cops?’
‘But … ?’ Orlando’s voice trailed off into misery. ‘They paid,’ she whispered. ‘Why did they pay the ransom, if they knew … ?’
‘Maybe they were indulging your little fantasy,’ I suggested. After all, in a twisted way it was only like going to a dude ranch and pretending to be a cowboy for the weekend. And what’s half a million dollars if there’s plenty more where that came from? I waited for her to absorb that one, then turned back to Vincent. ‘What about the others? Did they know, too?’
‘Dempseys, yeah. We let their security know – professional courtesy, y’know? I think they were kinda relieved that kid was going after herself instead of her old man for a change. Benellis were told, and I think maybe they decided enough was enough and refused to go along with it. But after the kid lost a finger, well, I guess they convinced themselves it was for real after all.’
I remembered the screeching of Benedict’s mother, the quiet seething of his father, and realised there had been more to it than simple surprise. Neither of them liked being taken for fools, but they’d been prepared to ignore it, until that wasn’t possible any longer. So, part of their anger was directed at themselves.
I shook my head, looked at Orlando’s dejected figure slumped in the corner of the luxurious leather upholstery. Above us, the rain hammered on the roof and bounced up into an ankle-deep layer of mist across the ground outside.
I glanced at Vincent’s indifferent face. ‘You didn’t feel it was worth extending the same professional courtesy to me, then, when I started looking after Dina?’
The bodyguard shrugged. ‘It was on a need-to-know basis, and Mrs Willner isn’t in the same league as the others,’ he said, dismissive. ‘The threat wasn’t taken seriously.’
And neither were you. He didn’t need to say it, I saw it in his eyes, his face, and wondered if I was going to be butting my head against this same misogynist attitude for the rest of my career.
‘Yeah, and look how well that turned out,’ I said, turning back to Orlando without waiting for his response. ‘First thing tomorrow morning,’ I told her, ‘you’re going to go back to that bloody coffee shop, and you’re going to sit there until Lennon calls you.’
‘What if he doesn’t?’
‘He may not,’ I agreed. He may have been working for her at the beginning, but clearly he was taking his orders elsewhere now, and that was who I wanted. ‘Torquil’s dead because of things you set in motion, Orlando. Dina is missing, injured, and they’re asking ten million dollars for her release. Right now, I’d make you parade up and down Union Square naked if I thought it might help.’
A hopeful thought struck her. ‘But I don’t have my cell. He won’t be able to call me.’
‘So get it,’ I said bluntly. ‘I’m sure if you explain to your father what’s at stake, he’ll give it back, don’t you?’
She nodded, gave a pathetic smile. ‘I never should have told my parents. Hunt told me not to, but after Tor … I felt so guilty. If I’d known they already knew …’
Confessing all, I realised, had simply meant they couldn’t pretend ignorance any longer, nothing more. I ignored the plea for a sympathetic response, reached for the door handle. ‘You’ll call me if and when you hear from Lennon?’
It was Vincent who nodded. ‘It’s my cell,’ he said. ‘I’ll call, don’t sweat it.’
He was the one who had obtained my cellphone number, I realised. Being in the industry, it wouldn’t have been hard.
As I cracked the door and waited for a brief lull in the rain, I said over my shoulder to Orlando, ‘Hunt sends his love, by the way. Says he misses you.’
‘Huh,’ she scoffed. ‘Yeah, I bet.’
But there was more than just ordinary sulkiness in her voice. I pulled the door to and looked back at her. ‘What does that mean?’
She flushed. ‘We’ve been going out together for ages, and we’ve never … well, you know. Made love,’ she said, wriggling with embarrassment in her seat.
Vincent, I saw, had quickly reverted to his stone-faced demeanour in the face of these girlie confidences. One of those macho guys who would happily discuss any amount of blood, unless it was menstrual.
‘Perhaps he’s just straight-laced,’ I suggested. ‘Doesn’t believe in sex before marriage.’
Yeah, and perhaps I’m in the running for Homecoming Queen …
She hunched a mournful shoulder. ‘At first I thought maybe he was, y’know, gay, and in denial or something,’ she said, with the assurance of someone who’s been through therapy and picked up all the right words. ‘I thought he was maybe trying to hide it, but then when we were at the party on the yacht, Tor played me a tape – of Hunt and Manda, in the cabin together, and—’ She broke off, choked back a sob. ‘He was all over her.’
‘Ah, I’m sorry, Orlando,’ I said, and meant it. ‘Sometimes it happens, when a group of you spend time together—’
‘But it wasn’t like that,’ she burst out, face crumpling. ‘He and Manda knew each other long before. She was the one who introduced us. Manda’s my friend. So, why would they do that?’