EMILY RIPPED A FOREHAND crosscourt, aiming for the corner.
“Out!” Mary Anders yelled, pointing at the ball mark she pretended to see just beyond the base line. “We’re at deuce.”
Emily nodded and took her stance to receive the serve. She waited back for her opponent’s looping, topspin serve to bounce up high. Then she pounced on it, drilling a rifle shot that cleared the net by half an inch, bit into the sideline, and ricocheted past Mary.
“Nice shot,” her opponent said, trying to sound casual. She was glad the shot had been away from her where she didn’t have to try for it. If she had reached it, it would have taken the racket right out of her hand. She set up in the add court, tossed the ball, and hit another spinner at Emily’s backhand. Emily slashed at it and sent a whistling return into the alley just outside the singles line. “Out,” Mary yelled and walked back to the deuce court.
Again, she spun her serve to Emily’s backhand. This time Emily blocked a return to center court. They rallied back and forth with easy top spins until Emily decided to put her away, first with a slashing backhand into the right corner that Mary Anders just managed to return, and then with a forehand to the vacated left corner. But her forehand was too strong, whistling past the base line. “Out,” Mary announced. “My advantage.”
Mary switched her serve to Emily’s forehand and Emily tore into it, hitting a rocket that aimed right back down Mary’s throat. For an instant, Mary Anders hesitated like a deer caught in the headlights. But at the last instant she leaped aside, letting the return whiz past her, a foot out of bounds.
“Out!” she screamed triumphantly, raising her racket to the ladies applauding in the gallery. She rushed toward the net with a gushing display of sportsmanship. Emily congratulated her sincerely, smiled at the applause that was her consolation prize, and collapsed onto the bench. She toweled her hands and face and then gulped down her jug of water.
“You threw that one away.”
She looked up at Bill Leary, the club pro, who tossed her a fresh towel.
“She played well,” Emily breathed.
“She played you for an idiot,” Leary said. “All she did was feed the ball back to you and let you kill yourself trying to hit winners. Jesus, she even kept complimenting you just so you’d keep trying to hit the lines.”
“I hit some lines,” Emily said, zipping the cover over her racket.
Leary shook his head. “How many times have I told you? Just keep it in play and let your opponent try for the winners. In the Monday Morning League, no one is good enough to hit the lines consistently.”
“No one ever will be if all we do is keep tapping them back.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why you lost.”
She handed the towel back to him and picked up her sweatjacket. “I’d rather lose trying. It’s better than standing around waiting for someone else to make a play.”
He held her jacket while she backed her arms into the sleeves. His hands lingered on her shoulders an instant longer than necessary. “Well, if you’re going for winners, you’ve got to work harder on your setup,” he told her. “Maybe we ought to pencil in some lessons. I could come up to your place so we can get in some real work.”
She smiled knowingly. “I’m free right now.”
He nodded. “Okay. Give me a minute to freshen up and get my racquet.”
Emily broke out of his embrace. “Forget the racquet.” She walked across the court, throwing a withering glance back over her shoulder. But he didn’t wither. He winked.
Bill Leary had made a quick appearance on the pro tour right after he left college. In two seasons, he had earned $4,500 in prize money and hadn’t been offered a single endorsement, even by local car dealers. He was bright enough to get the message that while he could be a consistent winner in the country club set, he would be a consistent joke on tour. He joined the clubs.
For the past ten years he had worked his way up the country club ladder, advancing from equipment manager at a tennis center to assistant professional at a decent club, and now to professional at a very prestigious club. He had enough photos of himself on the same court with John McEnroe and Mats Willander to satisfy the men and the athletic good looks that appealed to the women. He was ten years younger than most of the ladies in the Monday League, which was the right age gap for stirring memories that their successful husbands had no time to rekindle. With a few flattering words about a woman’s tennis form, a flash of his outdoor smile, and an accidental erogenous touch as he positioned a student’s hip for a better backhand, Bill Leary could pretty much name his game.
Emily had been an obvious target. She was a serious player who welcomed the advice and help of a professional. She had a long, sinewy, athletic body that, if too broad for a runway model, was attractively curved and moved sensually. Her mouth, while severe under stress, looked delicious whenever it spread into her spontaneous smile. Her shoulder-length dark hair seemed never to have been under a dryer, but fell naturally into place. She neither looked nor acted her age. It was a combination that Leary found irresistible and in her dark eyes he saw signals that she was probably available.
They were angry eyes. Clear, narrowed, precisely focused on a point of reality rather than open to vaporous dreams. In his years as a club professional he had seen them often, usually on women who had been given everything they wanted and then at middle age realized they had wanted the wrong things. There was no defeat in them, as in the eyes of a downtrodden house drudge. These were women of accomplishment. No sadness, as in the eyes that had suffered a great loss. The country club ladies were all winners. Just anger. The anger of pride that has been wounded and which is determined to get even.
Leary could see it in Emily’s eyes. She was a woman who had been given a room full of toys to keep her happy by a husband who found his own happiness elsewhere. In his career. With another woman. She knew she was being treated shabbily and was determined to have satisfaction. A tennis pro wasn’t an original way to get even, but Leary had long appreciated that his services could be soothing.
At first, Emily showed no interest, pretending to be unaware of his advances even though she was hurting from displacement and neglect. She didn’t like the big estate with the paddock. She particularly didn’t like being left alone in it under the watchful eye of a security system. She wanted to hurt Walter for tearing her away from her friends just to satisfy his ego. But her need for revenge wasn’t developed enough to stomach the thought of a stud like Billy Leary pulling down her panties.
Then she had found out that Walter was sleeping with one of the bank’s rising starlets. It wasn’t his first infidelity. She had known of a brief fling he had enjoyed with an aspiring model and a liaison in a posh hotel with a lovely representative of a California bank. She had been hurt but not wounded, disappointed but not completely disillusioned. The current affair, however, had been going on for quite some time. More significant, Walter wasn’t rushing home to dote on her, make amends, and purge his conscience. He was staying away and leaving her behind. Her pain turned into anger and the anger roared into rage. If she had grown indifferent to Walter, she now felt active hatred. The next time Billy had raised the subject of private lessons, she had signed up for his first available opening.
He had arrived at her tennis court in the early afternoon, dressed in fresh whites with a bucket full of tennis balls. They had volleyed until the balls were scattered, Emily all the while worrying about what was going to come next rather than concentrating on his stream of helpful suggestions. Then he had detected the fatal flaw in her swing that required him to stand close behind her, his arms around her to help her grasp her racquet properly. He had then led her through a series of maneuvers, turning from forehand to backhand, that could have passed for kinky sex, or at least a new Latin American dance step. His arms were caressing her breasts first from the left and then from the right and all the while his groin was grinding against her rump.
This was the point that separated the serious students from the serious lovers. Women who were worried about their tennis games ordered him back to the other side of the net. Women who were worried about their love lives collapsed panting into his arms. Emily had done neither. Instead, she had started to laugh. A smirk, then a giggle, and then gut-wrenching laughter that caused her to drop the racquet, double over, and stagger away from a bewildered Billy. When she had turned back, there were tears in her eyes.
“Is that your idea of foreplay?” Emily had howled.
Then Billy had started to laugh. “Hey, sometimes it works. It’s hard to be subtle on a tennis court.”
“Well, it’s not working now. I don’t feel hot. I feel ridiculous.” Her words had broken as she choked back laughter.
“How do you think I feel,” Billy had answered. He began picking up the scattered tennis balls. “I’m the one making a complete asshole out of myself just to get things moving. If one of us doesn’t do something, we could be out on this damn tennis court all day.”
Emily had helped him deposit the balls back into the basket and then handed him the leather covers that he zipped over his racquets. “You look like you need a shower,” she had said. “I’ll scrub your back.”
Emily had stopped him when he tried to drag her into her bed. They were both naked and dripping wet and she wanted to pull back the bedspread. Then she had delayed him again while she went to her desk and returned with Walter’s picture. “You don’t mind if I put it here on the night table, do you? I think I’ll get more into it if I know he’s watching.”
It was an hour later when Billy managed to pull out from under her. Involuntarily, his hand went to his heart to keep it from exploding through his chest. He had looked up at Walter’s picture. “You give him that kind of a good night kiss every night?”
“He doesn’t always come home nights. He has pressing business in the city.”
Billy had struggled for breath. “He’s crazy. Poor bastard doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“No, but he seems to like what he’s getting.”
He had looked at her with a touch of genuine caring. “Hey, I’m sorry. You’re a nice lady and you don’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
Somehow, she had known that this was a departure from his usual line. “No, dammit, I don’t. So maybe you can explain why an otherwise considerate human being abandons a loving wife and chases after a younger woman.”
Billy had stumbled out of bed and headed toward his crumpled tennis outfit that was piled on the bathroom floor. “I guess it’s a guy thing … like getting a new car. The old one is running fine, but all of a sudden you can’t live without the latest model.”
“An old car,” Emily had snapped indignantly.
“Well, there are old cars and then there are classic cars. Like you. They just don’t build them like you anymore.”
Emily stood for a moment in the tennis club parking lot, trying to remember where she had left the car. Then she pressed the button on her keys and a Lexus in the next row barked and blinked like a happy puppy dog. She threw her racquets in the backseat, climbed in, made all the adjustments, and finally fixed her seat belt. She didn’t realize she had already started the engine until she turned the key again and heard the starter grinding. “Idiot,” she chided herself. It was typical of the mistakes she had been making lately. Stupid little oversights and absences that she attributed to the pressure she was under. Well, the pressure was going to get worse, and in the days ahead, little mistakes could be more than embarrassing. They could be dangerous. She had to get hold of herself.
Emily drove the car directly into the garage, parking it between Walter’s BMW and his Italian motorcycle. She used the side door into the kitchen, walking past another deactivated alarm panel. At the bar, she poured herself a glass of wine after glancing at her watch to make sure that it was past noon. If I start drinking in the morning, she had promised herself, it will make more sense to simply cut Walter’s throat. She reasoned she would rather live in a jail than disappear into an alcoholic fog.
She carried the wine up the stairs, unbuttoning the warm-up jacket on the way, set the glass on her vanity, and threw the jacket across her bed. She kicked off her tennis shoes, balanced like a stork as she pulled off the sweat socks, and left her tennis skirt in an abstract shape on the floor. She tossed the socks and her sweat-soaked blouse at her laundry hamper as she walked into her bathroom, scoring a near miss. She pulled the athletic bra over her head and dropped it outside the shower tub along with her panties.
In her more reasonable moments, Emily could understand what had happened to her marriage. She and Walter had married young, fresh out of college, filled with romantic notions of family bliss. She had held down a job that kept the refrigerator stocked while Walter had gone through business school and joined InterBank. His starting salary had been more than enough for her to leave her job so they could start a family.
Walter became a captive of the bank, bringing home larger and larger monthly checks with each passing year. Emily didn’t care much about the house, so she avoided much of the normal domestic involvement. But she did care about their son and daughter, so she joined Cub Scouts and Clover Buds, church groups and PTAs, and dozens of other organizations that existed to benefit her children. As they got older, she worked in Safe Rides, MADD, Sex Education, and the Alliance for a Drug Free Society, all in an effort to keep Amanda and Alex sober, straight, and free from venereal disease. When they finished high school they weren’t particularly interesting people, but at least neither had a prison record. And with Walter’s ability to pay full tuition, they were both recruited by prestigious Eastern colleges.
It was at that point that Emily had been able to take a deep breath and look around. What she found made her angry. Walter had used the years to make himself a Very Important Person, surrounded by other overachievers who also thought of themselves as Very Important. She hadn’t used the years to become anything. Aside from her appendage to Walter, she had no identity at all. So, in her reasonable moments, she could understand why he was no longer kneeling at her feet offering a diamond or panting at the prospect of bedding her down.
But Emily wasn’t having too many reasonable moments of late. Past all the rationalism was a simple, glaring fact. He was leaving her. She had carried him this far, but now he was stepping onto a faster train. How did Billy put it? He was trading her in for the new model. And if he had the right to put his own interests first, then so did she. At least that’s what she had kept telling herself during her tennis lessons.
Bill Leary had proven to be very good for her. Not the solution to all her problems and certainly not a permanent solution to any of her problems. She never forgot that he was a young stud on the make and always paid the bills for tennis lessons she had never taken the day that they arrived in the mail. But he flattered her when she felt tattered, never failed to notice and compliment a new outfit, or hairdo, or even a different shade of lipstick. And when he made love to her, he never failed to convince her that she was the only woman on earth.
Most important, he had praised her ability and her intelligence. He made her feel that losing Walter was incidental and that it was he who was holding her back rather than the other way around. “He lends money, for Christ’s sake,” Billy had reminded her. “He’s just a pawnbroker with an Italian suit. But you can be anything you want to be. You’ve got all kinds of talent.” He even agreed with her about the security alarm. “Damn things go off at the worst possible time,” he had said. “Believe me, I know. Turn if off and leave it off. If it makes you apprehensive, I’ll buy you a gun.”
She didn’t mind that it wasn’t always true. She suspected that Billy might be as much interested in the size of her divorce settlement as in her less fungible assets. But still, she loved the flattery and needed the support. Particularly now, when she would have to stand up to Walter.
She turned the water up to as hot a temperature as she could stand and then leaned back against the sweating tiles. “Relax, Emily,” she told herself. “Keep calm. You’re going to need all your nerve … all your wits.”
She heard the click. Even through the echo of the water, the sound was unmistakable. Someone had opened the door to the bedroom.
She focused her attention toward the sound, but now she heard nothing. She eased her hand toward the pressure faucet and shut the water off. The silence was sudden and complete. No one was there. And yet, the latch had clicked open.
“Billy,” she called. “Is that you … ?”
Emily stood perfectly still, listening to the tap of the water that dripped from her body. There was no answer. No sound of anyone moving about in her bedroom. Slowly, she convinced herself that she must have been mistaken. It must have been some other mechanical sound. A thermostat relay closing to signal for more heat. The alarm system recycling. She turned the water back on, cooled its temperature a bit, and reached for the bar of soap.
She was shocked by the sudden sound of the shower curtain ripping and the rattle of the plastic rings as they bounced against the bar. She turned just it time to catch a glimpse of the curtain falling on top of her and then felt powerful arms wrapped around her like a rope, tying her into the curtain. She screamed into the darkness that suddenly enveloped her, until a hand pressed the curtain over her face. She snapped her head angrily from side to side, trying to free her mouth, but the hand pressed tighter. In terror, she tried to gulp in air, but the curtain sealed her face like a plastic bag. Jesus, she thought, they’re going to suffocate me. She forced her hand up inside the plastic, pushing her attacker’s hand upward so that she could gulp a mouthful of air. Then she bit through the curtain.
“Ahh!” a pained voice screamed in the darkness. Emily dug her nails into her bite marks and ripped a hole through the fabric. There was an explosion of light, suddenly darkened by a woolen ski mask. She could see angry eyes blazing and then felt the snap of a fist that drove the curtain against her temple. Her knees buckled. Her feet were sliding and she couldn’t free her arms to get a handhold. She collapsed in the arms that were holding her prisoner.
“Get her!” the pained voice screamed.
Another man’s voice. “Hold her still, for Christ’s sake!”
The arms crushed around her and she felt herself being dragged over the edge of the tub.
“Shoot her. Stick the damn thing through the curtain!”
“Hold her still, dammit!”
Her head and shoulders were being wrestled down to the bathroom floor. The edge of the tub was digging into her belly, her legs dangling uselessly in space. She screamed again and this time heard the echo of her voice rattling off the walls.
“Do it!”
She felt a sharp pin prick plunge into her thigh and then the pressure of a hypodermic injection.
“Oh, Jesus!” It was more a prayer than a curse. “Oh, Jesus!”
She expected to feel her body going limp as darkness closed across her mind. But nothing happened. She was still aware of the sting of the needle and more aware of the pain that the edge of the tub was causing across her hips. She started to scream again, but once more the tattered curtain was pressed against her face. Then she found a foothold against the wall behind the tub and pushed herself furiously at the body that was holding her. She felt the man in the mask topple backward and crash against the vanity cabinet.
“Fuck!” he yelled. “Grab hold of her legs.”
She kicked and felt her heel score hard into someone’s body. The second voice yelped in pain. “Damn you!” A fist struck through the curtain into her side, driving the air out of her body.
“Just hold her! Don’t kill her.”
“She kicked me in the face.”
“She can’t kick you if you hold her.”
Emily tried to kick again, but was amazed to find that her legs didn’t work. The pain across her midsection had gone away. And she really didn’t mind the strong hand that was pressing the shower curtain over her mouth. She could hear the water still running, falling on the curtain like rain on a roof. I hope they remember to turn the water off, she thought. And then she lapsed into blissful sleep.
When they knew the drug had taken its effect, the two men loosened their grip. One turned off the shower while the other twisted his face out of the ski mask.
Carefully they dragged the curtain out into the bedroom where they had more room to work. They straightened the crumpled edges and then rerolled her into a neat package. One of the men took the top half, locking his arms under Emily’s elbows. The other lifted the backs of her knees. Carefully, they carried her out into the hallway and then past the guest suites to the back stairs.
“Set her down for a minute,” said the one who was at her head. He took a deep breath. “Some tough broad.” He looked at the bleeding bite mark in his hand. “Damn near took off my thumb …”
“We should have brained her,” said the other, touching the clot of blood that filled one of his nostrils.
“You should have gotten the needle into her faster.”
“If you held her still.”
They grunted as they lifted her again and moved slowly down the stairs. One freed his hand long enough to pick up the Lexus keys and open the door to the garage. They kept it open with their knees as they carried her out to the car and set her down on the paved floor. One fitted the trunk key and then they lifted the package, still dripping wet, over the bumper and onto the trunk carpet. Seconds later, the big tires were popping over the Belgian bricks out toward the gate. Then the car swung onto the country road and moved slowly away.
Walter left his office promptly at 3:00 P.M. and used the fire stairs to dash down one flight to the senior executive fitness center, a dead-serious health club reserved for the chairman and the senior vice presidents. The center was equipped as a gymnasium, with motorized treadmills, stationary bicycles, land-locked rowing machines, and enough hydraulic stair-climbers to make the elevators to the fifty-second floor unnecessary. Recognizing the irreplaceable skills of the senior line and staff executives, and alarmed at the statistics on heart attacks, the board had voted $4.1 million to turn the fifty-first floor into a fitness center with the best gym equipment, a three-tiered sauna, steam room, Jacuzzi, and a locker room with individual stall showers. Then, realizing that they were an equal-opportunity employer with no glass ceilings, they had spent another million adding a women’s locker room, sauna, steam room, and Jacuzzi that, as far as anyone knew, had still never been used.
But despite the cardiovascular machines and the bodybuilding stations, the fitness center functioned more as a conference room. At midafternoon, when the New York markets closed, the senior executives changed into athletic togs and jogged side by side on treadmills while they discussed the morning’s impact on the bank’s activities. Occasional glances at flickering monitors kept them up to date on the Chicago banks and markets, the West Coast, and the Far East business news, which were updated continuously. And should some piece of information gathered either from a fellow jogger or from the electronic ticker tape require action, there was a telephone mounted on every piece of gym equipment.
Because of his physical appearance, Walter thought of himself as young rather than middle-aged, and when pushed, as middle-aged rather than as well beyond the halfway point. Visually, he was in better shape than most of the other men, which he reasoned was probably an indication of superior mental assets, as well.
He offered a greeting to the whole room rather than any one in particular, started his treadmill, and stepped aboard. Within a few minutes he had finished his warm-ups and was jogging at a steady pace up a five-degree incline.
He glanced to his left and saw that he was running away from two of the top executives. Karl Eider managed foreign subsidiaries in thirty countries and was clearly the officer with the most international experience. But trips abroad to the Michelin-rated restaurants of Paris, Vienna, Brussels, and Milan had given him a portly shape and triple chins. While mentioned out of courtesy, he wasn’t really a candidate for the top job and certainly didn’t want it if it would interfere with his travel.
Laboring next to Elder was Henry Martin, the bank’s expert in investments. Basically, he was a trader with all the gambler’s instincts required to turn hefty profits out of most of his bets. “A money machine,” he was frequently called, and he was proud of the title. But while gamblers were essential in the back room, no bank wanted them out front where they might run into a big depositor. Henry wasn’t really a rival for the top spot.
Walter had to look in the other direction to spot the one man who could beat him to the chair when the music stopped, Mitchell Price. He was standing near the free weights, leveraging another railroad wheel on each end of the bar in preparation for his regimen of bench presses. At thirty-nine, he was the youngest of the senior officers, the leanest, and probably the most fit. Mitchell was the bank’s expert in the electronic systems that had replaced currency and paper as the arbiters of global wealth. His work was distinctly different from that of any of the other officers and it just might be that Jack Hollcroft, sensing that the future belonged to the computer literate, would nod toward Mitchell Price.
Walter Childs moved vast sums of money from country to country to protect InterBank’s position in foreign currencies. His claim to the brass ring was that his skills most nearly fitted the bank’s unique role. He had salvaged hundreds of millions of dollars by taking a quick exit from the peso before Mexico’s economic woes had cut the value of the currency in half. Then he had made hundreds of millions by mounting a rescue operation at usurious rates. At age fifty, he was a bit too old to be a boy wonder, but old enough so that no one would question his experience. While he ran mile after mile on a fast-moving treadmill, Walter tried to present the calm demeanor that was essential for the top man in times of crisis. So while he kept his eyes fixed on the monitors, he showed little surprise with any of the information and rarely used the telephone.
He returned to his desk just as the evidence of a new dollar-yen crisis was appearing. When the yen fell, every Western bank got nervous realizing that local industries would once again be buried under boatloads of cheap Japanese imports. Walter spent the early evening organizing an orderly buy of yen through all the branches and affiliates. The price rose and the momentary crisis was over even before most European banks were aware of it. It was seven o’clock when he summoned his limousine for the long journey home.
He snapped on the courtesy lamp so that he could continue working in the backseat of the car, setting his briefcase on the seat beside him and spreading the papers across his lap. He found himself wishing that he were meeting with Angela instead of heading home. Angela would appreciate the victory he had just achieved in supporting the Japanese currency. She would understand instantly the crisis that had been avoided and would know that he was one of perhaps only a dozen men in the world who could have pulled it off. Emily wouldn’t fully grasp his importance to the situation. She would respond with something unappreciative like, “I’m happy for you, dear.”
When they turned into the driveway, the headlights showed the open garage door with Emily’s car missing. Walter was momentarily alarmed because the garage light was out.
“Looks as if you’ve been abandoned,” Omar chided from the front seat.
“Probably just the last rubber of bridge running long,” Walter answered cheerfully as he gathered his papers. But he was uneasy. It didn’t make sense that the garage door would be left open.
He thanked Omar, initialed the limousine log, and then let himself in through the kitchen door. He wasn’t surprised to find that the security system was unarmed. He flicked on the kitchen light and started into the living room, then pulled up short when he saw the outline of a person seated on his sofa.
“Emily?”
“No Mr. Childs, it isn’t Emily.” The voice was harshly masculine.
Walter stared at the dark form while he fumbled for the dimmer switch. The track lights over the fireplace came up like theater lights, slowly illuminating his visitor. He was looking at a rather ordinary man in a conventional business suit. The only thing that was extraordinary was the small, automatic pistol that was aimed directly into his face.
“Please sit down … there … right across from me.” The man was pointing with his free hand toward the soft chair on the other side of the fireplace, separated from the sofa by a four-foot-square coffee table.
“Who are you? Where the hell is my wife?”
This time the man gestured toward the chair with the muzzle of the pistol. “Please … sit down. Then I’ll answer questions.”
He was probably about Walter’s age, but a fat neck and sagging shoulders made him look older. His soft appearance, together with his clear voice and precise pronunciation, made the pistol incongruous. The man looked as if he would be more comfortable handling a pencil. Walter sat in the place indicated, keeping his eyes focused on the other eyes.
“Who the fuck are you … and what are you doing in my house?” He was on the edge of the cushion, his weight still on his feet.
“I’m a messenger, sent to tell you that your wife is fine.”
Walter inched forward. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. And that’s the important thing that you have to believe. I don’t know where she is, and I don’t know who’s holding her.”
“Holding her?” Walter was halfway to his feet when the gun was raised directly into his eyes. He sat back slowly.
“Your wife has been kidnapped by someone who wants you to do something. But I don’t know who he is. I don’t know who kidnapped her and I don’t know who’s holding her. All I know is that you’re the only one who can save her.”
“You don’t know? Then what are you doing here?”
“Mr. Childs, please listen to me carefully. Once you understand that I’m no threat to you … that I’m completely useless to you … I’ll be able to put away this gun.”
Walter stared into the worried eyes. “I’m listening,” he said.
The man leaned forward. “I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know you and I don’t know Mrs. Childs. I’m simply bringing you information. I got a phone call a week ago, asking me if I wanted to make ten thousand dollars for simply delivering a message. I asked if what I would be doing was legal and the voice answered that if it were legal, they’d use Western Union.”
“What voice?”
“A voice speaking through some sort of computer. High-pitched. Flat. I couldn’t tell if it was anyone I knew. I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. But I said I’d like to know more. Things haven’t been going well for me. I can use the money.”
“I can pay you twice that much,” Walter interrupted.
The man shook his head. “It wouldn’t do you any good because there’s nothing I can do to help you. What I agreed to do was wait for a call telling me that I was hired and deliver a message that I would find here, in your house. I came here, found the instructions on the mail table in the foyer along with this envelope …”
“How’d you get in?”
“I was told that the garage would be open and the door into the house unlocked. That’s the way I found things.”
Walter thought and then nodded for his visitor to continue.
“Thank you,” the man said, as if Walter were the one holding the pistol. “Now, if you’d look down between the cushions, that’s where I put the envelope.”
Walter kept his eyes locked in confrontation across the table while he ran his fingers between the seat cushion and the padded frame of his chair. He retrieved a thin business envelope with no markings on the outside.
“The point that’s essential is that I have no idea who sent me to deliver this message. I don’t know who did the kidnapping. My instructions said that the kidnappers know nothing about me. And none of us knows who’s holding your wife, or where. So you see, memorizing my face, or catching me and holding me for the police, will do you no good. I can’t say anything that will help your wife because I know nothing about her. I’m not a kidnapper, Mr. Childs. I’ve thought a lot about this and I think that I’m just a good citizen reporting a crime. Does that make sense to you?”
Walter glared daggers at the man. He tore open the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper, computer-printed on one side.
Mr. Childs.
The man seated across from you is telling the truth. He knows that Emily has been kidnapped, but has no idea why, or where she is being held. The kidnappers know nothing more than that they left your wife, under sedation, in a parked van. The van driver knows nothing, other than that he has picked up a valuable person, and is to hold her incommunicado until advised.
I am the only one who knows all the players and all the locations. That means that none of them, nor any combination of them, can lead you or the police to your wife.
My terms are simple. On Friday, at exactly 4:00 p.m., you will wire $100 million to a numbered account at Banco Folonari, the Cayman Island branch. You, of course, know the routing number and authentication code. The money will be converted into Banco Folonari bearer bonds and will be delivered to a courier, who will call for the proceeds using the appropriate authentication code. You must make no attempt to follow or intercept the courier. The courier will use legitimate financial channels to deliver the money to me. I will have it Monday morning and will immediately cause your wife to be released. If the funds fail to reach me for any reason, you will never hear from either your wife nor me again.
If you understand these plans, please inform the courier. His actions will tell me whether or not the message has been delivered.
If you contact the police, the FBI, Interpol, or any other law enforcement agency, you can be certain that I will know about it. There will be no further correspondence from your wife or me.
Her life is entirely in your hands.
If you agree to meet these terms, please make a reservation tomorrow for a single table in the window at Casper’s. Walk there and have lunch between noon and 2:00 p.m. I will then order that your wife be kept comfortable until Monday. If you choose not to meet my demands, simply neglect the lunch, or else make contact with the police or other authorities. In that case, I will pay the people holding Emily to kill her and bury the body. You will hear nothing further from any source.
Walter looked up from the note at the man seated opposite him. “Do you know what this says?”
The man looked sympathetic. “I’ve guessed that it’s about a ransom. I don’t know for sure. But I’ve been told that if you understand the terms, I’m to stay with my present rental car. If you don’t know what’s being asked, I’m to change to another rental car company. So I don’t need to know anything about the … arrangements. All I need to know is whether you understand the …” He gestured toward the letter that dangled from Walter’s fingers “… the document,” he concluded.
Walter nodded slowly, indicating that he understood. He folded the letter carefully and slipped it back inside its envelope.
The visitor raised the automatic pistol. “Then I won’t be needing this anymore.”
“No,” Walter agreed. “You can put it away.”
The man released the ammunition magazine and pulled the slide to show an empty chamber. “It wasn’t loaded. But I thought you might attack me before you understood that I’m in no way involved. I mean, I would never hurt your wife. I have no idea what they’re asking of you. Like I said, all I’m really doing is reporting a crime. That doesn’t make me a criminal, does it?”
He stood slowly, slipping the pistol into the side pocket of his suit jacket. “I really hope that everything works out well for you.”
Walter glared back, about to spring toward the man’s throat.
“Oh, just one more thing. My instructions said that they had left something for you in your mailbox.”
Walter rushed past the man and out the front door. He was tearing the package open as he ran back up the driveway from the mailbox. In the dim light of the foyer, he recognized the contents: Emily’s wedding and engagement rings rolled together in tissue. He looked up into the living room, wondering if his messenger knew what had been left as proof that his wife had been taken. But the man was gone.
He squeezed the rings in his hands as he pumped up the stairs. Their bedroom was in disarray, with Emily’s tennis things scattered on the floor. He turned into the bathroom and saw the broken curtain rings on the carpet before he realized that the shower curtain was missing. Then he noticed the bra and pants next to the laundry hamper. It was obvious that they had caught her while she was changing from her morning tennis game, probably while she was in the shower. With the curtain ripped away, the rings broken, and the carpeting soaked, he guessed that she had put up a straggle. “Oh, Jesus …” There was a small red stain surrounding the drain, where bloody water had run out.
He went back into the bedroom and walked around in an aimless circle as he tried to imagine the scene. The more he thought about it, the more violent the image became until he bolted out of the room to keep from becoming sick. He took the back stairs down to the kitchen, pausing to notice the water stains at the top step. This was how they took her out, he thought, still soaking wet from her shower. He picked up the kitchen telephone and dialed.
Angela picked up on the third ring.
“I’ve got to see you in the morning, early,” he said in an angry staccato.
“What’s wrong?”
“Emily … she’s been kidnapped …”
He could hear the air escaping from Angela’s lungs. Then a gasp, which was all she seemed able to manage.
“Did you hear me? She’s been kidnapped. I’ve got a ransom note. Jesus, I was coming home to tell her … about us … and someone had taken her.”
Angela’s voice was soft and calm. “Did you call the police?”
“I can’t. They’ll kill her.”
“Oh my God … dear God! You’ve got to get her back. Do whatever they ask … anything … you’ve got to get her back.”
Emily had just plunged the pruning shears into Walter’s chest and was taking great satisfaction in the bewildered expression that had flashed across his face. “Emily, this isn’t like you. You’re not a violent person. You’re supposed to forgive me,” Walter was saying as his knees slowly buckled.
“Oh,” Emily taunted, “did you expect me to just go quietly? Without a scene?”
Walter’s knees hit the floor. “A scene, of course. But this?” He gestured to the round handles that were sticking out of his chest. Slowly he rolled over onto his side. His efforts to talk became a gurgle. Emily smiled as she watched him writhe in agony, sick from the taste of his own blood, his strength ebbing away. But as she began to feel her own consciousness, she realized that she was the one who felt sick to her stomach and whose strength had deserted her. She couldn’t move her arms or even raise her head. When she opened her eyes, she was blinded by a white glow. Only by squinting could she make out the pattern of perfect squares coming through the white background.
She was on her back, looking up at a ceiling of sound-deadening tiles. There was a ceiling just like it in the finished basement of the first house she and Walter had owned. She struggled to raise her head and was able to see the tops of the walls, light fake wood panels, framed out with rough furring strips. When she tried to sit up, she found out why her arms felt so heavy. Her wrists were handcuffed around the wooden crossbar of the headboard. She was chained onto a bed. She glanced down and saw that she was on a plain mattress with no bedding and was wearing a heavy, plaid nightgown that she had never seen before.
“Oh, you’re awake.” It was a woman’s voice, neither rude nor pleasant but simply stating a fact. Emily turned her head trying to locate the sound, but she was suddenly engulfed in a wave of nausea.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“No, you won’t. That’s just the drug. It takes a while to wear off.” The woman stepped into view, leaning over the bed. She had a long, thin face with narrow eyes and a prominent Roman nose. Her hair was jet black and cut off abruptly just below her ears. The part, which showed traces of gray, was as straight as a laser beam, and the narrow lips were colored to a dark maroon that was nearly black. She was in her forties, fitted out to look twenty and achieving midthirties. She seemed very competent, projecting all the authority of a top executive’s private secretary.
She took Emily’s face in her hand and turned it slowly from side to side. “They probably used Demerol. That shit can give you a nasty hangover. Sodium pentathol is faster, and there aren’t any aftereffects.”
“Where am I?” Emily managed.
“That’s not important,” the woman answered. “What’s important is that you’re alive and well. And you’ll stay that way as long as you do as you’re told.”
Emily lifted her head a bit higher. “A basement? Am I in a basement?”
“It’s a cellar in a house. An old dump in the middle of nowhere. There’s no way out except those stairs …” she nodded to Emily’s left “… and there’s a gentleman up there you really don’t want to meet.”
Emily followed the direction of the gesture. There was a flight of steps, covered with a faded carpet, that led to a closed door. “How did I get here?”
The woman laughed. “In a shower curtain. You’ve been shipped around like a sack of mail.”
“You drugged me … you kidnapped me.”
“Hell, no. Kidnapping is a little out of my line. All I’m getting paid for is keeping you off the streets and that’s all I’m doing. This is someone else’s scam. Someone told me you were coming and the same person is going to tell me when you’re going. In the meantime, you and I have to do our best not to get on each other’s nerves.”
Emily wiggled on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position. “Please. Can you free my hands. My arms are hurting.”
“Sure! If you promise not to try anything silly.”
Emily nodded. The woman immediately went around behind the bed and snapped the shackles off one wrist, then the other. Slowly, Emily was able to drag her hands down and begin massaging her wrists. “God,” she sighed blissfully.
“There’s a toilet over there,” the woman said, pointing to the stall formed by a framed-out wall. Emily looked. There was no door, just the most basic kind of enclosure. “And there’s a table for your meals.” Emily followed her eyes in the other direction. A folding metal chair was positioned next to an aluminum camping table. “I’m not a chef and the guy upstairs can’t even boil water, so you won’t be getting a menu. But you won’t starve.”
“Please, can I have some water …”
“There’s a sink in the bathroom.” The woman had already started toward the stairs. Emily saw a floral blouse over designer jeans and flats. “I’ll bring down some paper cups.”
There was a brief flash of light as she opened the door and then darkness at the top of the stairs when she closed it behind her.
Emily vaguely recognized her. Not the woman who had just left her, but a blonde-headed version who had appeared in the paperwork of the Urban Center. A grifter who had swindled twelve thousand dollars and then claimed that she needed a public defender. The center had provided one and the lawyer had gotten the woman off on a technicality. Her name was Rita. Rita Lipton, followed on the rap sheet with a string of ethnic aliases that announced everyplace from Park Avenue to Calcutta. Emily remembered laughing at her gifted imagination. She wondered what name she was signing to her bad checks now. And the change in her appearance was equally creative, but Emily guessed that hair dye and cosmetics were tools of her trade.
She sat up and was immediately dizzy. Her head felt heavy and the bed began to bob like a small boat. She clutched at the edge of the mattress and then swung her feet one at a time onto the floor. It was icy cold; a plain cement floor that had been painted a light gray. There were scuff marks along the walls where furniture or other heavy objects had been dragged. Electric outlets poked through the paneling, along with switches that controlled the lights buried translucent panels in the ceiling.
She could see what had been done. A basement—maybe even a garage—had been finished off with a drop ceiling and wall panels. The bathroom had been started but never completed. Judging by the scuff marks, the space had probably been used for storage and then emptied out in anticipation of her arrival. “Home, sweet home,” she managed wryly.
She pushed herself to her feet, wobbled, and then held onto the headboard to steady herself. It was a heavy wooden bed, probably out of an institution, with vertical rungs connected to a slightly curved crosspiece to form a headboard. It sat in the center of the room, completely out of place, as were the camping table and chair and the single wooden Adirondack lawn chair with a green canvas cushion. A place to eat, a place to sit down, and a place to sleep, she thought. All the essentials.
Emily walked slowly toward the bathroom. A toilet with a cracked seat cover. A roll of paper hanging from a wire coat hanger that had been nailed to one of the exposed studs. A basin bolted between a pair of studs with a single cold water tap. All the essentials.
The nightgown was tight on her and seemed a better fit for the extra slim figure of the woman. The plaid pattern was unflattering. But then Emily realized that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. She had been attacked in the shower and wrapped in the shower curtain. That was probably how she had been carried from the house, passed around “like a sack of mail” and transported to the cellar. The ill-fitting nightgown, she saw, was a gesture of kindness. The woman could just as easily have left her in the shower curtain, or even worse, stark naked.
Slowly, Emily circled the walls, looking for a door in the paneling that might lead into another room. Maybe a furnace room or a workshop with a tool bench. But there was none. In fact, the barrenness of the area made it a perfect prison cell. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon. No window or opening that might be used to escape, or even to signal to the outside world. Nothing but blank walls. She looked up at the ceiling and remembered that, in her first house, the tiles had pushed up into the space between the drop ceiling and the wooden rafters that the ceiling was hung from. Maybe there was an escape route above the ceiling tiles. She had to find a way out in case her situation became desperate.
Emily tested the steadiness of the folding chair and then used it to climb up next to the table. Again, the room began to roll, and she pressed her palms against the walls to steady herself. The simple exertion of climbing up one step had brought back the drug-induced dizziness. Slowly, she raised one hand and pushed against the tile that was directly overhead. It lifted easily.
She gripped the edge of the opening and climbed from the chair to the table, raising her head into the darkness above the ceiling. She was looking down a channel between two rafters, dimly lit by leaks in the lighting fixtures. The metal framing that supported the ceiling hung down a foot, so there might be enough space for her to crawl up into the narrow area between rafters. But she didn’t know whether the framing would support her weight. And the channel appeared to lead nowhere, dead-ending against the concrete foundation behind the wall.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her ankle and began pulling her leg off the table.
“Now aren’t you a curious little bitch.” It was a man’s voice, dripping in smart-ass sarcasm. “What I can see of you looks sweet as candy. Let’s get you down here where I can get a look at the other end.”
Emily spun awkwardly on one foot and lost her already precarious balance. She felt herself falling and clutched onto the ceiling framing. For an instant, she was hanging by her fingertips, being dragged down by the hands, which were now locked around both ankles. Then her fingers broke free and she began to fall.
She crashed into the table, which toppled under her, spinning her sidewise toward the hard, concrete floor. An arm caught her under her shoulders and then another under her legs. She found herself looking into a dark, swarthy face with a leering smile.
“Very nice. Very nice indeed. Top and bottom.”
She struggled to get out of his grasp and get her feet on the floor, but he held her tightly. “Now what the fuck were you doing up there? Tryin’ to get away? That would make us very angry. Besides, there’s nothin’ up there for you. Just termites and cockroaches.” He carried her toward the bed. “Now down here, there’s me. And I can do lots of nice things for you.” He dropped her from a height so that she bounced on the mattress. “No reason why you should be lonely while you’re stayin’ here.”
His hair was dark and wavy, held precisely in place by a light dab of hair cream. The shadow of a black beard showed through closely shaved skin. He was dressed in a colorful, open-collar sport shirt, with enough chains around his neck and dangling into curly chest hair to anchor a good-size freighter. His slacks were dark with pin stripes and his shoes buffed to a mirror finish. He was handsome, maybe even exciting to the kind of woman who finds violence exciting.
The menace oozed from his eyes, which were enjoying the fear that must be obvious in her eyes. It radiated from a smile that found it hard to contain its delight in her helpless predicament. This was a man who enjoyed pain, particularly when he was inflicting it. He seemed perfectly at ease in a situation where he was towering over a helpless victim.
He reached down and began undoing the top button of her gown.
Emily shuddered. “Get away from me.”
“Just a little feel … for starters.” He was leaning closer, the smile narrowing into a leer.
“Get away!” She kicked out, driving her bare foot against his leg and sending him toppling away. He regained his balance and started back to her, his hand raised in a massive fist.
“Mike!” the woman’s voice came from the floor above. “What’s going on down there?”
“Nothin’!” he snapped in a voice that sounded like a shotgun blast. His fist slowly dropped and he looked up toward the door at the head of the stairs. “Just bringin’ her the paper cups.”
When he turned back to Emily, his mouth was a tight line of anger. But he let it relax into a beatific smile. “You really ought to be nice to me, lady. In a coupla days, after these guys—whoever they are—get their money, we’ll get a call tellin’ us to get rid of you. That’s the way it always is. Smart guys don’t send the one they kidnapped back to pick ’em out of a lineup and these guys are smart. Damn smart. So when that call comes, I’m goin’ to be the only thing between you and a burned-out hole where your brains used to be. You’ll be throwin’ yourself at me, begging me to do anything to you except stick a gun in your mouth.”
The woman called down again. “Mike, what’s keeping you?”
Emily’s terrified eyes followed him up the steps and lingered after he had closed the door behind him. “Oh, Christ,” she prayed out loud. “Who is he? How does he fit into this?” She pulled herself to her feet, smoothing out the nightgown as if he might still be watching. She saw the stack of paper cups that he had apparently been told by the woman to bring down to her. “God, please. Don’t let her send him on her errands.” She picked up the cups and carried them into the bathroom. Her tongue was like glue from her fright. She was desperate for a sip of water.