ANDREW HOGAN WOKE UP with a start at the sound of his telephone. He looked around, trying to orient himself, and realized that he was at home, in his den, still wearing his shirt and tie. He had dozed off in his recliner chair while staring at some witless late-night movie.
Andrew hadn’t intended to sleep. The Emily Childs kidnapping was coming to a crisis. It was time for that final call offering one last chance to pay a ransom. Nobody walks away from $100 million just because the ransom payment was originally botched, he had assured Walter Childs. And the thug who had been dealing with Walter probably thought his $50,000 was nearly as much as $100 million. He would be even more apt to offer Walter “one more chance” to save his wife. Something should be happening and happening soon.
He keyed the remote to shut off the television and pushed himself out of the chair in the direction of the den telephone. He wasn’t at all surprised when he heard Helen Restivo’s voice. “It’s me! I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Do you care if you woke me?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then you probably have something important to tell me.” Andrew carried the cordless phone with him into the kitchen. He could smell the fresh-brewed coffee that had been turned on by the timer. He thought he might implode if he didn’t get to it quickly.
“Nothing much, except that we may have found our motive,” Helen teased.
“Was I right? Emily knew she was about to get dumped?”
“As much as it pains me to say it, yes, you were right.”
Andrew chuckled. “And she hired herself a lawyer?”
“Not that I can tell. But she did hire herself a detective. And he delivered a large number of telephotos.”
“No shit?” Hogan couldn’t hide his interest. “The usual of the sinful couple acting out the illustrations in a sex manual.”
“Nothing that titillating. I guess Walter and Angela are too discreet to be seen together near the bedroom. But the private investigator did get establishing photos of Walter going in and out of Angela’s building and then shots of Angela arriving and departing. There’s a strong suggestion that Walter was paying frequent visits to his young protégée.”
Andrew nearly scalded himself gulping down a mouthful of jet black Colombian. “Proves nothing. They might have been consulting on interest rates.”
“The PI also showed Mrs. Childs close-ups of Angela on the street, jogging along the FDR, and a few shot through the window of her health club. Believe me, they aren’t discussing interest rates. One look at Miss Hilliard was all the proof that Mrs. Childs needed.”
Andrew sipped thoughtfully. “You saw the photos? The guy made extra sets?”
“Yes, I saw the photos. The one in the health club makes her look very healthy. But no, it wasn’t an extra set. These were the original prints that he showed to Emily Childs.”
“And she didn’t take them home with her?”
“Curious, isn’t it?” Helen responded, answering a question with a question. “The guy said she just set them back down on his desk, took out her checkbook, and paid in full.”
“She didn’t say anything. She didn’t mention a lawyer?”
“What she said, and this is a direct quote from the investigator who claims to be quoting Mrs. Childs, was, ‘That prick! He’ll pay for this.’ According to our man, she didn’t get mad, but she sure looked like she was planning to get even.”
“Nothing more?” Andrew asked.
“Just that the check cleared.”
“Okay,” Hogan concluded. “We have a motive. Emily wasn’t going to go away quietly. Which meant that a settlement was going to cost Walter plenty and the nasty publicity was probably going to keep him out of the bank’s biggest private office. So, he does what … ?” Hogan knew the answer but he wanted to hear it independently from her.
“So, he figures out how to get rid of her. He pays a few thugs to kidnap her and a few other losers to hold her. He runs this charade, winning himself all sorts of sympathy, not to mention the brownie points he’s going to score with the directors. In the end, he calls the people keeping her, tells them the deal has collapsed, and orders them to kill her.” The line went silent as Restivo waited for Hogan’s critique.
“Sounds reasonable,” Andrew finally allowed. “Now here’s one for you. Emily leaves the private investigator’s office, goes straight home, and waits for Walter. She confronts him the minute he walks in the door and Walter reacts the way any red-blooded American husband would act.”
“He kills her,” Helen suggested.
“No, of course not. He drops down to his knees and he grovels. He begs her forgiveness and then he goes back to Miss Hilliard and tells her that they can’t see each other anymore. Isn’t that the way it usually plays out with a mistress?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Helen teased.
“Only this isn’t just your ordinary mistress. Miss Hilliard sees a fortune slipping through her fingers. Even worse, she knows there won’t be much of a future for her at the bank once Mrs. Childs becomes Mrs. Chairman of the Board. So she arranges the kidnapping. And she wins either way. If Walter pays the ransom, she loses a husband but gains more money than the husband has. And if Walter doesn’t pay the ransom, then Emily is killed, Walter becomes a bank hero and is immediately elected president, and they live happily ever after.” He paused to let Helen think it over. “So how does it play?”
“I like it,” she responded. “But I’ll give you another one that is really off the wall. Suppose Mrs. Childs has herself kidnapped.”
Hogan interrupted. “You’re getting desperate, Officer Restivo.”
“Look. The kidnappers dropped her off in a van where someone else was supposed to pick her up and stash her until the ransom is paid. But maybe there was no one else. Mrs. Childs unties herself, starts the van, and drives away. The ransom note is delivered and Walter hesitates. But there are more calls—from Mrs. Childs—threatening terrible things unless Walter pays. He may be willing to leave the woman, but he doesn’t want her gang-raped and then cut to pieces. So he forwards the ransom. His career is ruined and she walks away with a hundred million dollars. Isn’t that the kind of ending she might have had in mind when she said ‘the prick is going to pay for this’?”
“That certainly is a unique interpretation,” Andrew Hogan allowed. “Except for one fatal flaw.”
“Which is?”
“Why in hell would Walter pay the ransom? He’s trying to shed a wife at a cost of maybe ten million dollars in property settlements and alimony. And, quite unexpectedly, someone does him the favor of kidnapping her and threatening to kill her if a hundred million dollars in ransom isn’t paid promptly. If I were Walter Childs, it would seem that the ransom note must have come from Santa Claus. She’s gone; there is no property settlement or alimony. In fact, there may even be an insurance bonus. And his refusal to compromise the bank’s interests, even for the life of his beloved wife, would just about assure him of the presidency. It’s all too good to be true. The very last thing he would do would be to pay, which would leave the lady with absolutely nothing.”
“Still,” Helen argued, “she might know that he would never let her die. At least in the terrible way that’s been threatened, probably by her.”
Andrew thought. “I suppose, if she were absolutely certain …”
Restivo took the comment as Hogan’s agreement. “Look, if it’s true, then Mrs. Childs is the one who was waiting at the airport. She’s sitting on the beach in Grand Cayman right now, composing a ransom note that gives Walter one more chance.”
“You’ve been smoking the drapes,” Andrew said.
“Authorize a few more dollars so that I can hire some people to look around in Grand Cayman. She won’t be hard to find.”
Andrew laughed. “Helen, your fee is already higher than the ransom would have been.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll handle this out of my own pocket. But if I find her down there, you pick up the expenses. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Only don’t spend too much of your money. I’ll bet anything that Mrs. Childs is nowhere near the Cayman Islands.”
Emily listened to the footsteps over her head. Her keepers were up early, moving quickly with an obvious sense of purpose. Something was happening that was changing their routine.
The man had gone out the front door several times, each of his departures immediately followed by the sound of an overhead garage door rumbling open and minutes later, slamming shut. He seemed to be preparing the car for a trip.
Overhead, there was a steady flow of conversation, very different from the moping silence of other mornings. She tried to eavesdrop, but was able to catch only random, meaningless words. “It will work,” she had heard Mike say once in an angry tone that suggested Rita had doubted something he planned. “It’s too risky,” Rita had shouted a few moments later. At another point, her voice had risen above the murmur to demand, “Why are you taking a gun? Stop thinking like a hood and start using your brains. You don’t need that.” And most recently, “No way I’m going with you. If they get the both of us, who’s going to spring you?”
She could feel her heart racing, keeping pace with her rising anxiety. Just the fact that the routine had changed was frightening. Her captivity was probably coming to an end and at this moment the only end she could envision was at the hands of the madman upstairs. In her imagination, the cargo that he was loading into his car consisted of a saw, ax, and shovel.
Get hold of yourself, she thought, trying to rally her courage. There were reasons to be hopeful. By now, Walter should have paid her ransom. If everything were going according to reason, then Rita and her husband should have been ordered to release her. Emily couldn’t remember hearing the telephone ring, but it was possible that all the preparations she was hearing had to do with her release.
Then there was the money that Mike had demanded as part of the threats he made her record. Maybe Walter had paid him off. And maybe Rita and Mike, with their newly found fortune, were planning their own escape. It that case, they might decide to just leave her locked in the basement, planning to phone from some place on the road and tell Walter where she could be found.
Another consoling thought was that the rumble of the garage door had come from the other side of the wall, in the direction where she had seen the daylight between the ceiling rafters. That most likely meant that she would be escaping into a garage where she could easily open a door to the outside.
“Goddammit!” It was his voice, shouting his displeasure at something that had happened above. And then, “Where the fuck is it?” Just the sound of his voice blotted out all reasons for hope. Emily could clearly visualize the egotistical sneer and the depraved eyes that enjoyed the thought of her rape and mutilation. Setting her free would be a disappointment for him. He would much prefer to commit his ghastly crimes and then bury the evidence behind the garage.
Her worst fears returned when she heard footsteps shuffling toward the top of the stairs. The dead bolt flew open and then the footsteps started down.
“Your breakfast!”
Emily sighed with relief at the sight of the tray. “Thank you, I’m hungry.”
Rita set a bowl of dry cereal, already awash with milk, on the folding table. Next to it, she put down a gas station mug of coffee. Wordlessly, she crossed to the bed and unlocked the shackles, not even glancing at the sprung fittings of the headboard.
“I’ll come back in a few minutes,” she said and went toward the stairs. Emily went into the bathroom.
But Rita was still there when she came out, standing at the foot of the steps, a pained expression on her face.
“Is something wrong?” Emily’s antennae immediately picked up danger signals.
“No! Have your breakfast.”
Emily crossed cautiously to the table and sat down at the bowl of cereal. But her eyes kept track of Rita, who wandered back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The frame creaked and the bed wobbled. It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t notice the weakened headboard. But her mind was elsewhere.
“Did he really come on to you?”
Emily’s eyes widened at the suddenness of the question.
“You know what I mean. Was he really under your nightgown?”
Her lips moved, but she couldn’t make a sound. If she repeated what he had done, then Rita could explode into rage just as she had the first time that Emily accused Mike of fondling her. But if she denied it, then the woman would think she had made it all up. That would be another reason for her anger to flash.
“Mike sometimes acts like a punk,” Rita went on. “He can be pretty physical with people that give him a hard time. Or even with people that try something with me. At a bar once, some jerk grabbed my ass as I was coming out of the ladies room. Mike threw the guy right through the plate glass window and out into the street.” She smiled at the happy thought of how much he cared for her. “But he’d never attack a woman.” Rita stiffened to show her indignation at even the thought of him being less than chivalrous. “Well, he did slap me around once when I pushed him too hard about being a punk. But a hour later he was crying on my knee, telling me how sorry he was. So I wouldn’t expect him to give you a hard time. Especially when you’re tied up and helpless.”
“Maybe he was just trying to frighten me,” Emily offered. “Just to get my voice on the ransom tape.”
“I’ll bet that’s what it was,” Rita said with feigned enthusiasm, as if she were trying to save face with Emily. “He’s not sure how he should handle all this. Kidnapping isn’t what we bargained for. We were just supposed to mind you. It was easy money and we weren’t going to be hurting anyone.”
“Then let me go,” Emily said. “You could have twice as much money. And I’d be grateful to you. I’d never describe you to the police, or point you out, or testify. You’d have nothing to worry about.”
Rita nodded. “That’s the way I’d play it. Take the money and run. But Mike wants to see this through. I think he feels that this is the kind of thing that he can do better than me. So far we’ve made our way playing my game. Sophisticated scams where people pay for being greedy. This is his kind of game. He likes to feel that he’s in charge.”
“Please,” Emily begged. “Help me.”
Rita jumped up and started for the stairs. “You’ll be all right,’ she promised. “I won’t let anything happen to you. And you don’t have to worry about Mike. He’s a real pussycat.”
She was interrupted by the sound of a car engine grinding and then catching Emily’s face snapped in the direction of the garage. “He’s going out. He’s going to meet your husband and collect the money. Then you’ll have nothing to worry about,” Rita explained. She ran up the steps and bolted the door behind her.
Emily stood slowly. She was alone and she was unchained. How far could she get before Rita came back down. Probably not even into the ceiling. And if she waited until after she came down for the breakfast tray, could she move quickly and silently enough to make her escape before the woman’s next visit? She had to do something more than wait for the sick thug to return. And, yet, if she angered Rita, she would forfeit the only protection she had.
Should she make her move now? Or should she wait until night as she had been planning? Both choices were dangerous. The wrong choice would get her killed.
* * *
Alex watched silently as his father lifted the leather briefcase and laid it conspicuously across the backseat of his car. Then he pushed the tightly wrapped package of cash into the space on the floor behind the driver’s seat.
“I’d like to make sure of the car phone,” he mumbled as he slid in behind the wheel.
“I don’t think you should be doing this,” Alex repeated for the third time since they had sat together, toying with their breakfast.
Walter turned the phone on. “Would you dial it for me?” he asked as if he had never heard his son speak.
Alex went back into the kitchen where he lifted the telephone and keyed in the car phone’s number. He listened to the ringing and then heard the beeping sound coming from the garage. His father’s voice came on the phone. “Thanks. Thanks very much.”
He looked at Amanda, who was still sitting at the breakfast table. “Don’t leave it like this. He’s putting his life on the line for her. He might get himself killed.” Amanda turned her face away. Alex marched back into the garage.
“Dad, please don’t do this. It could be very dangerous. You ought to turn the whole thing over to the police.”
“They want the money,” Walter answered. “They certainly don’t want me.” He started the engine and then pushed the button for the garage door.
Amanda came out from the kitchen. “Please, don’t go. You’ve never done anything like this before.”
He showed a wry smile. “I guess I never had to. But don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”
She put her hands on top of the open window as if she could keep the car from moving. “Dad … last night … I said some terrible things.”
Walter patted his daughter’s hands. “Let me do this now. We’ll have plenty of time to talk everything out once your mother gets home.”
They backed away from the car and watched it ease out of the garage and into the turning circle.
Walter drove slowly, taking meticulous care to observe every traffic regulation he could think of. He had worried all night about the things that might go wrong, and one of them was that he would be pulled over for passing a stop sign and that the policeman would find the money. In his grim scenario, he was sitting at the police station arguing with a desk sergeant while a madman was slitting Emily’s throat.
He pulled onto the interstate that ran west to east, toward Manhattan, and fitted into the light, weekend traffic. Cars eased up on either side of his and he found himself shrinking into his seat as if to escape identification. It was absurd, of course. He had been much more conspicuous driving this route every morning as the lone passenger in the back of a gleaming limousine. But now it seemed that his mission was obvious. It seemed that everyone who passed him would know instantly that he was a man on his way to pay off a ransom.
Walter wasn’t really afraid. Apprehensive, certainly, because he was dealing with a terrible unknown, and careful because the money on the floor behind him seemed like a bomb that could go off at the slightest jar. But it wasn’t concern for his own safety that made him shrink low in the window. It was more that he felt like a criminal about to engage in a despicable act.
He had lived his whole life within the womb of the establishment. Always, it had been us and them. The “us” were the people that the country was truly intended for. Hardworking, dedicated, and fiscally responsible, they created wealth to the benefit of the entire community. They dressed properly, visited the dentist regularly, tried to understand the political issues, and voted in even the off-year elections. You met them at Sunday church services and Ivy League parents’ weekends, at charity functions to benefit the downtrodden and at Republican Party luncheons. The “them” were the takers rather than the givers. Shiftless and unambitious, they counted on tenure, civil service rights, and labor unions to keep them in salaries far higher than their worth. They filled welfare rolls and jammed the lobbies of public clinics. When they gathered, it was generally to protest reductions in their civil rights and they inevitably littered the area. They were often darker in complexion, probably unshaven, and most likely Democrats. The best of them were pain-in-the-ass do-gooders. The worst were cutthroats and purse snatchers.
Walter rarely dealt with “them.” He had, early in his career, developed a distaste for the consumer side of the business that provided home mortgages, auto loans, and other needs of the common people. He had embraced the investment side of the business, which was inevitably run and staffed by “us.” Then he had moved up a class when he entered international monetary movements and found himself dealing with the deities of the business world. They were even more “us” because they had noble titles that proved they had always been “us.”
Now he was moving downward to the level of the criminal class. He was acting like a common burglar, avoiding the police, averting his eyes as though he were standing in a lineup, driving stealthily to a clandestine rendezvous with an unsavory psychopath. He was handling the crudest form of money—cash. The televised murder and mayhem that always seemed so far off would be close enough to touch. During the next few hours, he would clearly be one of “them.” Walter wasn’t so much afraid as degraded. His self-esteem was in greater danger than his physical person.
He swung off the interstate onto the toll parkway and headed north. After a few miles, the road dissected a giant complex of stores that rambled through a mind-boggling panorama of color-coded parking lots. Every day, people got lost in the endless avenues of shops and found themselves searching for the YOU ARE HERE arrows on the backlighted maps. There were dozens of phone calls to security each night from people who couldn’t find their cars and felt certain they had been stolen. At its heart, the mall was a labyrinth, the confusion intended to slow down the progress of shoppers and force them to pass more display windows. For the kidnapper’s purpose, it was the perfect place to pick up a ransom. There were endless avenues of escape.
The car phone chirped and Walter switched it on instantly.
The smooth voice demanded. “Where are you?”
“Heading north on the parkway.”
“Okay. Get off at the first mall exit. Take a left under the parkway and then drive in from the first entrance off the access road.”
“All right. Then what?”
“Then park as close to the side doors as you can get and stay in your car. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
“I want to talk to my wife …” Walter started, but the phone went quiet. Then the connection was broken. “Christ!” He moved to the exit lane. He could see the skyline of the mall ahead and he wanted to be ready for the exit.
The parking lot wasn’t crowded. The marked rows closest to the building were full and there was a steady rush of shoppers around the entrance doors. But there were acres of empty blacktop around the periphery, marked into neatly stenciled parking places. Walter slowed well short of the densely crowded cars and pulled to a stop between two marker lines. He felt conspicuously alone in the center of so much empty space. Hopefully, the exchange would take place in an alley or in the shadow of a building where his crime wouldn’t be so apparent.
Time passed slowly; ten minutes that seemed like an hour. Then the phone rang again.
“Where are you?”
“In the parking lot.”
“What space? Look at the signs. Everythin’ is numbered.”
He looked around in panic. “I don’t see any signs.”
“Look up. You’re right under one.”
Walter was shocked to realize that he was already under observation. He pressed his nose against the glass and saw the sign fastened near the top of one of the lighting poles. “Red lot, row CC,” he said.
“What slot?”
For the first time, Walter saw that all the spaces were numbered. “One twenty-one.”
There was a chuckle and then the slick voice saying, “Real good. You’ve got the system down. Now I want you to drive around the north side of the buildin’, and pull into blue, JJ, one hundred.”
“Fuck the games,” Walter cursed. But he knew the reason. He would be driving out in the open, aimlessly. Anyone who was following him would be immediately visible. He went back to the periphery road, offering an unobstructed view from every angle. Then he circled the mall and navigated himself into the assigned parking area. He could see large glass doors looking out from the building, directly down his aisle. Then he noticed another set of doors, directly behind, that looked out into the red parking area he had just left. His man had to be in that building, where he could keep an eye on both sides. He had watched Walter pull in and then had been able to follow him when he traveled to the new location.
The phone beeped almost immediately. “Very good. Now I want you to keep driving around the building, like a roulette ball rolling around the numbers.”
Walter snapped. “No! No more games. I have the money, I want to see …”
The phone died in his hand. He looked from the receiver toward the glass doors. There was no sign of his caller. He had an instant of panic wondering if his outburst had driven the bastard away. His heart seemed to stop with the realization that he might have blown the deal. But then he figured that the man must have still been watching him. He turned on the engine and began a counterclockwise circle around the enormous central mall.
His anxiety mounted as he completed the first cycle. He had passed all the close-in parking spaces and had received no word. There were signs pointing to auxiliary lots on the other side of the parkway, but he didn’t think he should include them in his search. Emily’s captor was somewhere within the buildings he was circling. He kept moving slowly, glancing every few seconds at the console to make sure that his cell phone was still turned on.
Walter was once again approaching the red area, which served the center of the complex through the main doors of one of the anchor stores. The phone sounded.
“Turn left in red CC. You got it!”
“Yes. I’m coming up to it. Turn left.”
“Yeah. And then drive toward the front doors. I want you to get as close as you can and park in the first empty space that has parked cars on both sides.”
“What number?” Walter asked as he turned his car into aisle CC.
“The closest empty one. But it has to be a single space with cars on both sides of it. Understood?”
Walter’s temper was close to its boiling point. It would be hard to control when he found himself face-to-face with the sick son of a bitch. Every instinct would drive him toward murder, but he was ready to put up with whatever indignities were fired at him in order to assure Emily’s safety.
He saw a single spot to his left. But was it the one closest to the front door? “Should I take this one?” he yelled toward the phone before realizing that the caller had long since hung up. He hesitated, then decided to try even farther up the aisle. It seemed like a dumb move, when each of the aisles proved to be packed solid. But then, ahead on the right, only a dozen spaces from the door, a small sedan backed out. Walter stopped, let the car pull clear, and then swung into the empty space.
The phone chirped immediately. “Okay, okay. Now get out of the car and take the leather case. Leave the package inside and leave all the doors unlocked.”
“When do I see my wife?”
’Take the briefcase, get out of the car, and come inside the mall.”
“I’m not getting out until I see her …”
“Then you won’t be seein’ her at all. I’m not lettin’ her go until I’m sure I haven’t been followed and I get to count all the money.”
“I have to see her …”
“No way, pal. Either you walk through the front door carryin’ that case within one minute or the deal is off. And the money better be in the car or you’re going to get the first piece of her ass in tomorrow’s mail. It’s your call!” The voice was firm and defiant. Walter didn’t think the man was bluffing. He climbed out, taking the briefcase with him. He did a final check to make sure the doors were unlocked and then he strode off purposefully toward the bank of glass doors.
Walter never noticed Mike, who was exiting from the farthest door just as the glass panel in the center slid open automatically for him. There was no reason to. Mike was just another blank face in the constant stream of shoppers, wearing a bland sweater under a baseball cap. He stayed close to a woman pushing a baby carriage as if he were part of the family.
Once he was inside, Walter’s eyes began darting about, looking for a face that would fit the voice he had come to loathe. He thought he would recognize it the instant it came into view. But all he found was confusion. There were men of every conceivable size and shape, bobbing on a sea of hurrying women. They all looked lost and confused. There was not one menacing expression. He kept moving through the store, toward its back doors, which connected to the interior of the mall. He carried the briefcase out in front of him where he thought it would be more easily seen.
Mike walked up the CC aisle, his head down, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. He kept his eyes centered so that he would seem to be uninterested in anything that was around him. But all his attention was on his peripheral vision. He was looking at each car he passed, checking to be sure that there wasn’t anymore seated inside or crouched between cars. He walked by Walter’s parked car as if it weren’t even there, but in reality he searched very carefully to make sure that no one was loitering anywhere near it. He stopped near the end of the aisle, waited for a cluster of shoppers, and then joined in with them in walking back toward the stores. He took the cap off and slipped it under the edge of the sweater, then stood up tall and let his hands swing freely. The simple changes gave him a very different appearance.
Once again, he ignored the car as he passed, but carefully cased the area. His spirits were rising. No one had followed Walter’s car into the mall or through its parking lot. And no one was near it now. The $50,000 was only a few seconds away.
Mike went back into the store and quickly spotted Walter, who was shifting from foot to foot near the main door, seemingly offering the case to everyone who walked by. Jerk, Mike thought to himself, sneering visibly. He lifted a wind-breaker from a display rack and carried it to a cashier. He had already tried it on, so that he was able to wear it as soon as she had given him his change. A final glance back confirmed that Walter was still waiting to be contacted. He had stepped through the doorway and was looking up and down the inside mall, waiting for someone to approach.
In the new identity that the windbreaker provided, Mike went out into the parking area. He stood for a moment on the edge of the curb, straining to see if there was anyone else watching the aisle of cars. Satisfied that it was safe, he started down the CC aisle.
It should be a very simple pickup. His van was already parked in the aisle, only three spaces from where Walter had finally settled. He would just step to the back door of Walter’s car, pull it open, and reach down for the package of cash. Then, only a few steps later, he would be driving away in his own van.
This time he didn’t try to hide his interest in the parked cars. He looked carefully out over the sea of steel roofs, searching for a face that was looking back. As he neared the parking stall he bent low so that he could look into the windows for someone waiting nearby. There was nothing. Everything seemed normal. It was just as he planned. Walter Childs had been too terrified over what might happen to his wife to even think of involving the police. He had come to market like a little lamb, hoping that the ax stroke wouldn’t hurt too much.
Mike moved past Walter’s car until he was right in front of his own van. Then he turned quickly and strode back, turning into the narrow space between cars. He couldn’t help but smile at the unlocked rear door and when he pulled it open, he saw the paper-wrapped package, exactly as he had imagined. He reached across the seat and had his fingers looped through the string.
“Freeze!”
The word was shouted from behind him.
Mike backed out of the car, leaving the package.
“Stay right there.” The words came from a solid-looking man in a business suit who was approaching from the front of the car. All around him, Mike could hear car doors slamming, footsteps running, and voices shouting. He did an instant pan of the area. Another man was approaching from a car that was parked on the other side of the aisle. And there were two others converging on him, one from the direction of the stores, and the other from the very end of the row of parked cars. They had him surrounded!
He set his feet squarely and grasped the open door firmly as he watched the closest of the men approach from the front, moving between the cars. The instant he came into range, Mike swung the door with all his strength. The quick movement caught the man off guard and the sudden impact sent him sprawling. Mike slammed the door shut and then kicked out viciously, nailing the man squarely in the groin. Then he stepped over him, ducked between the cars, and bolted out into the adjacent parking aisle.
“Stop! Stay where you are!” The screams seemed to be coming from all around him. He raced toward the stores, putting two of the men behind him. The only one who was ahead was the man who had been coming up the aisle from the mall buildings and he would have to cut through two parking rows in order to cut Mike off.
He reached into his pocket as he ran, pulling out the snub-nosed revolver. Then he waved it toward the man who was attempting to intercept him.
“He’s got a gun!” the pursuer screamed, and then he flung himself to the ground in the protected space between parked cars. Mike knew he was going to be the first through the doorway.
The parade of shoppers had been slow to react. Only a few heads had turned at the first order to freeze. Several more had stopped to look around when the shouting began. But women had begun to scream when Mike broke out from among the cars, running at top speed. They began to scatter the instant he had brandished the pistol.
As he ran, the shoppers dove away from him, women clutching their children to save them from the madness. The mob parted like the Red Sea, giving him a clear path to the front doors that slid open automatically. At the same time, the fleeing shoppers created barriers to the men in pursuit. People backing away from Mike collided with those giving chase. One of Helen Restivo’s detectives tripped over a baby stroller and tumbled head over heels along the pavement. Another had to pull up abruptly to keep from running over an ancient woman who was shuffling behind her aluminum walker.
“Halt! Halt or I’ll shoot!”
Mike didn’t even bother looking back over his shoulder. Go ahead, fucker, he laughed to himself. Shoot up a shopping mall. Kill a couple a dozen brats. He was right. No shots followed the threat.
And then he was inside, looking at the terrified faces of shoppers who had heard the commotion outside and turned just in time to see the danger rushing toward them. Again they pulled away, leaving him a zigzag path between the clothing racks and the dummy displays. He ran like a halfback, cutting back and forth, finding the best path to the inside door. Directly ahead of him, Walter was turning back into the store from the mall corridor, still carrying the leather briefcase out in front of him.
Walter never made the connection. With the store exploding in screams and a man rushing toward him, he might have assumed that the commotion was connected to the ransom money he had left in the car. But he was expecting to be approached by Emily’s kidnapper who would want everything kept quiet and inconspicuous. There was no reason why the ransom payment should turn into a riot, or why his contact should be running for his life. His immediate assumption was that he had wandered into a burglary, or that he was in the path of a shoplifter. Walter did what everyone else in the store was doing and dove to safety behind a display of slacks. He didn’t even notice Mike’s face when the man flashed by.
Another man ran through the parking lot door in full pursuit, slowing only to glance around and assure himself that the kidnapper had continued out into the center of the mall. He darted though the same aisle that Mike had created and then out into the main corridor.
The commotion told him instantly which way the fleeing suspect had gone. Heads were turned toward the central plaza of the mall that connected the walkways into the numerous shopping areas and served the escalators that climbed up into the higher floors. Dozens of storefronts surrounded the main plaza and together with the aisles, elevator banks, and ascending stairways they created an enormous bazaar. He charged ahead, yelling at the people he passed, “Where did he go? Where is he?” Faces looked back blankly. Voices called contradictory directions. The kidnapper might be right in front of him, perhaps only twenty paces away, but he had effectively vanished.
Another of Restivo’s men raced out into the central aisle and followed the screamed confusion into the plaza. Together, the two men started down aisles and poked their heads into store after store. Then one of them found the dark blue wind-breaker that Mike had just purchased lying abandoned under a resting bench. Their man had already changed his looks. There was every chance that he had escaped through their fingers.
Walter saw the light when Andrew Hogan and Helen Restivo came through the parking lot door and strolled through the store toward the mall. The man running must have been the kidnapper. The men in pursuit were working for Hogan. Somehow, they had followed him and then made their move to capture his contact. He followed Hogan and the woman toward the plaza where the frantic, troubled expressions of the pursuers confirmed his mounting fear. They had blown it again! The man who had threatened to hack Emily into pieces had made his escape. Now, there was nothing to stop him from making good on his threat.
“You son of a bitch! You bumbling son of a bitch!” Hogan turned to the voice and Walter dropped the briefcase so that he could aim a punch at Hogan’s mouth. Andrew ducked and then wrapped a bear hug around Walter and dragged him out of the aisle.
“Take it easy, Walter. Take it easy,” he consoled.
“You bastard. How did you get here? Why did you come? You’ve fucked up everything. You’ve killed her.”
“He won’t get away, Walter.” Andrew kept repeating. “We’ve got the doors covered. There’s no way he can get out of here.”
Walter calmed enough to get control over his urge to kill Andrew Hogan. “Who told you. Who told you about the meeting?”
“We’ve got your phones covered,” Hogan explained, still holding on to his bear hug. “We heard his threats and we were monitoring your car phone.”
“Jesus Christ.” Walter twisted out of Andrew’s grip just as Helen Restivo ran up. “Someone thinks they saw him run out one of the plaza doors. It leads out to the yellow lot. My guys are on it!”
Walter yelled into Helen’s face. “Like they were on it in Grand Cayman, you idiot.” Then he turned back to Hogan. “There are thousands of people out there. You’re never going to pick him out of the crowd.”
“His car is probably parked near Walter’s car,” Hogan said to Helen.
“We got another guy out there,” Helen answered. “There’s a van that fits the description of the one that Emily was dropped into.”
Walter couldn’t keep his rage bottled up. He screamed at Helen, “His car could be anywhere. He could be in it already, driving back to wherever he’s keeping her.” Then he looked fiercely at Andrew. “And you know what he’s planning to do once he gets there.”
“He brought the cops,” Mike kept repeating to himself. “The mother brought the cops.” He had peeled off his jacket as soon as he turned into the center aisle, thrown it under the bench, and then walked into the plaza. Only a few of the people who had seen him run out of the store kept following him. To others, he had suddenly become a faceless part of the crowd. He had walked out one of the plaza doors and into the yellow parking lot just as the witness had described. But he walked along the side of the building and then back in through another door only a few seconds later. Once inside, he had picked a direction opposite from the one from which his pursuers had come, walked into the aisle, and then turned almost immediately into a sporting goods store. He was calmly examining sets of barbells while confusion rippled through the corridor outside.
After several minutes he left the store and continued away from the plaza. At the next bank of elevators, he rode up to the third floor. Then he strolled back past the central plaza and stepped into a music store. He spent half an hour playing records by artists he had never heard of and then took an escalator back into the plaza. As he walked out into the blue parking area, he knew that he had escaped.
Now that he wasn’t afraid of capture, he could give full vent to his rage. The lying little bastard went to the cops, he repeated over and over to himself. He didn’t come to pay the ransom. He came to be a hero! He heard himself say, “I’ll fix his ass so he’ll never forget it.”
As he walked down the aisles of cars, he looked for a discarded clothing hanger and for a specific compact car model that he knew would be easy to steal. Minutes later, he was dropping a hooked wire hanger down beside the driver’s window of a Ford Escort. In another few minutes, he was out on the parkway, headed back to the woman whose husband had taken him for a fool. “You’re gonna pay,” he kept mumbling. “Christ, but I’m going to make you pay.”
* * *
Walter sat across from Andrew in a mall coffee shop. He had calmed down enough so that he could steady the cup if he held it in both hands. But he was still unable to form the words of a complete, logical thought.
“He just … took a car …?” Walter mumbled in an intonation that made it a statement of wonder.
“We don’t know that,” Andrew said patiently. “There are probably a dozen cars stolen out of these lots every day. There’s no reason why this one is connected with our man.” The statistic was close to true, but was irrelevant to their situation. They both knew the instant that the stolen car was reported that Emily’s captor had slipped out of their trap.
Walter’s eyes stared blankly over the rim of his cup. He sipped the coffee without tasting it and heard Andrew Hogan’s voice without understanding it. “Just walked out … and took a car … and drove away,” he allowed. He shook his head slowly.
“Maybe,” Andrew said. “There’s a chance he’s still inside. But I think it’s obvious that Emily is being held somewhere in the area. We’ve alerted all the local police forces with a description of the car. Something is bound to turn up.”
Walter suddenly exploded, hissing his words loudly enough to turn heads all around the coffee shop. “If you just let me pay the money. I wanted to pay the money.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Hogan answered more quietly. “He wouldn’t have turned Emily loose. It isn’t his call to make.”
“You don’t know that. You’re guessing. You’re gambling with her life.”
“Walter, for God’s sake. We know this guy is only minding her. It’s not his operation. He was just trying to shake you down for a little money for himself.”
“It was the only chance that Emily had left You screwed up the major deal in the Caymans. And now you trampled all over this one.”
“You’re right,” Hogan allowed glumly. “I shouldn’t have tried to handle this on my own. I should have gone right to the chairman.”
Walter had no sympathy for Andrew’s misgivings. “She was right,” he said quietly. “It couldn’t have been worse if you wanted to destroy me.” He looked up from his daze and focused clearly on Hogan. “Andrew, I want you to back away from this whole affair. Just leave me alone. If I get another chance, let me do what I think best.”
Hogan thought and then nodded. “I’ll keep looking, Walter. But I won’t interfere with you. On Monday, we’ll go to Hollcroft. I’ll take full responsibility for the delay.”
Helen charged into the coffee shop, looked around, and then darted between the tables until she was standing next to Hogan. “That van out in the parking lot. We ran the registration. It belongs to a woman named …” Helen stopped to consult a slip of paper she had pushed into her jacket pocket “… a woman named Rita Lipton.”
Hogan nodded his approval but with no particular enthusiasm. They were looking for a man, not for a woman. And the van’s only crime was that it had remained parked near the spot where Walter had been ordered to park.
“Here’s what’s interesting,” Helen went on. “The address is only about ten minutes from your house, Walter.”
Hogan’s head snapped up, his grim expression suddenly enlivened. “Screw due process,” he said to Restivo. “Break into the van and see what you can find.”
She smiled. “It won’t be hard. The damn thing isn’t locked.”
“What’s she talking about?” Walter Childs asked, slowly recovering from his stupor.
“There’s a van parked near your car that sort of fits the description of the one that your wife was left in. It’s been there all day. It could be the one that our guy used to get here.”
Walter’s eyes were suddenly alert. “Whose is it? Do we know?”
“A lady named Rita Lipton. Does the name mean anything to you?”
Walter searched his memory, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so. Maybe if I knew more about her.”
Andrew Hogan snatched up the check. “You will in just a few minutes.” Walter followed as Hogan rushed to the cashier.
Walter was sorry he had decided to drive himself. Andrew Hogan had tried to push him into the backseat of Helen Restivo’s car for the journey. But once he realized that the address they were heading toward was only a few minutes from his home, it made sense for him to take his own car. Now he was sitting ramrod erect, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, trying to keep up with Restivo and Hogan as they wove through traffic at better than eighty miles and hour.
He was doing his best to close the space. When Helen darted out to the fast lane, her headlights flashing to scatter the traffic ahead, Walter followed. But then, somewhere up the line, a car refused to give ground. Restivo rocketed into the middle lane, leaving Walter hung up on the outside. Then, well up ahead, Restivo’s car snapped into the slow lane. About the time Walter found an opening and began to gain in the center lane, the car he was trying to follow bolted across the center lane and back into the high speed traffic that Walter had just left. Finally, he decided to take his eyes off Helen Restivo and simply drive as quickly as he could, making whatever lane changes were available. That gave him his best speed and the chances of his racing past Helen and Andrew were too small to even consider.
He understood the urgency. The stolen car had been reported half an hour ago, which meant that, even if they were headed to the right house, the madman had at least half an hour to take out his frustrations on Emily. The thought of Emily suffering even a few minutes of his rage was more than Walter could bear.
But, still, he shouldn’t be driving like this. The past week had overloaded his nervous system to the point where he could feel the connections overheating and flashing into flame. His brain was dealing with pain signals from nearly every corner of his body, creating a current overload that had squeezed his throat shut and set up trembles in his hands and fingers. It took all his concentration just to hold the car in a straight line. The high-G lane changes were pushing him to the edge of his physical endurance.
If it were the right van, then they had the name of the registered owner. But it wasn’t certain that the van was anything more than legal transportation for an all-day shopper. And if the van had been stolen, then they might be racing toward nothing more dramatic than a woman who would be happy to get her car back. But, despite the odds, they had to act. None of them could stand another second of sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for reports from the local police, or the results of credit card checks to confirm that someone named Lipton had actually been shopping at the mall.
Up ahead, Walter saw the car zigzag to the right and then peel off into an exit lane. He checked his own spacing and then followed onto the access road. He knew the area well, his own home being just one exit farther and then a few miles to the north. But as they turned left over the highway and headed south, he was unsure of the immediate surroundings. This was a commercial area, sprinkled with light industry, that was outside the perimeter of his country club set. He had generally driven around it rather than through it.
Helen pulled up to the curb and Walter screeched to a stop behind her. When he walked up close to the two detectives, he was aghast to find each of them checking a pistol. “You wait right here,” Andrew Hogan ordered. Walter nodded. There was nothing in his makeup that yearned for a gunfight.
He watched Helen dart across the street and move briskly down the other side. Andrew waited for a few moments and then began easing along the street on his side. Helen passed the target address, an attached wood-frame house, and then cut back across the street. As she was stepping up on the rotted wooden porch, Andrew was pressed flat against the building, where he could see through the window and spot whoever came to answer the door.
There was the sound of Helen’s knocking and moments later, Walter saw the door open. Helen lingered a moment, apparently in conversation with someone inside. Andrew left his post by the ground floor window and came around to the porch where he joined her. The conversation went on for another minute, with Hogan taking out a pad and writing notes. Then the two detectives came down the steps and walked quickly toward their parked cars.
“We’re late,” Hogan said.
“He got away?” Childs demanded.
“No, moved out two weeks ago. Rita Lipton lived her for a few months. She moved out without saying where she was going.”
“Christ,” Walter cursed.
“Walter, that house belongs to a social services charity, the Urban Shelter. You remember that was the same outfit that your first messenger had worked for.”
Walter tried to remember. The night when he had found the man waiting in his living room seemed a century ago.
“You were on the board of that outfit,” Helen Restivo joined in. “That was the only link we could find between you and the messenger.”
Walter nodded slowly. “That’s right,” he allowed. “Emily did volunteer work for the Urban Shelter. I was more of a figurehead than a worker.”
“I want you to do something for me,” Andrew said to Walter. “I want you to get together with your daughter. She’s been searching through Emily’s papers for the names of everyone connected with that group. Correspondence, membership lists, programs she was involved in. Go over the records with Amanda. Look for anything that rings a bell. Anything!”
Andrew looked incredulous. He thought that Amanda had been going through Emily’s files simply to embarrass him. He had no idea that she was working with Andrew Hogan. “But Amanda isn’t …” he started to argue.
“Do it, Walter. This is too much of a coincidence for me to swallow. First, the guy with the ransom note worked there. Then, the two guys who took her out of the shower were defended by the shelter. And now the one who comes to pick up the ransom was living in housing paid for by the shelter. That has to be the connection.
“Okay … okay,” Walter agreed.
“Helen and I are going down to their offices to get someone to let us in. We want to see if anyone knows Rita Lipton. Maybe her new address is on file.”
“That could take hours,” Walter protested. “Isn’t there some faster way to find her?”
“We’ll try everything we can think of,” Hogan assured. “And you do everything you can to find those records.”
Mike stepped off the bus just a few streets from Rita’s old house, the one that the agency had provided while she was working on his release from an assault charge, but he turned in the opposite direction to begin walking to his new address. They had moved the day that the down payment for “minding the lady” had appeared in his mailbox. Rita had known that the old house wouldn’t work. They had needed a place with a sealed-off section if they were going to make the lady comfortable and still be damn sure that she wasn’t going to get away. He had never figured that the more remote location would be a problem. They had Rita’s van, which had been her home from time to time, and there was plenty of money for gasoline.
But now the van was gone, all because that son of a bitch had brought the cops back again. And he was walking because he didn’t want to ditch the stolen car anywhere near his new home. His temper flared with each step he took. Instead of picking up the $50,000 he had been counting on, he had lost the van that he and Rita needed. He had to take the bus with all the damn deadbeats and now he had to walk like some kind of fucking drifter. It was all that bastard’s fault. He had warned him not to call the cops. He had told him exactly what was going to happen to his wife’s ass if he tried any of his dumb tricks.
Mike stumbled on pavement that was heaved up six inches above the curb level. “Son of a bitch,” he snapped. His shoes were scuffed and covered with dust. His teeth began to grind and his fists tightened in a spasm of rage. He’d take a belt to the bitch. And he’d make a recording so that Walter Childs would hear every lash and the screams that would follow. Maybe he’d never see his wife again, but he’d know exactly how she died. He’d spend the rest of his life wishing he’d done what he was told. This was going to be one tape that the smart-ass son of a bitch was never goin’ to be able to forget.
Walter stepped wearily into the kitchen where he found Amanda and Alex waiting anxiously. He simply shook his head slowly, his defeated expression all the information they needed. Amanda put her arms around him and hugged him. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered in his ear.
Over her shoulder, Walter spotted the courier package resting on the end table in the family room. He broke free from his daughter. “When did this come in?”
“This morning. It was in the mailbox,” Alex answered.
Walter began ripping the tab. “You should have opened it,” he said.
“But it was just something from your office,” Amanda responded.
He paused for an instant. She was right. The sender’s address was his own office. His was the name that had authorized the delivery. He pulled the envelope open and took out a sheet of paper. His dark expression brightened as he read:
Now you know what it feels like to screw up the one chance you had to rescue your wife. Her blood, and there will be blood, is on your hands.
Her death agony starts Monday morning at 9:00 A.M. your time unless our courier leaves the Fassen Bank, in Zurich, with $100 million at 9:00 A.M. Zurich time. If the money is safe in our hands at noon, Zurich, your wife will be set free at 9:00 A.M. New York time.
We are very close to you, and will know instantly if you inform your security officer or notify the police.
The note was signed with a routing number and bank account number.
Walter smiled as he read it and passed it to Alex. Amanda stepped close so that she could read over Alex’s shoulder.
“These are the people who are behind your mother’s kidnapping,” Walter told his children. “These are the ones who have the power to order her set free.”
“What about the people you were dealing with today?” Alex asked.
Walter remembered that the man who was actually holding Emily had fled from the shopping mall without his money. He could only hope that his threats of cutting her to pieces hadn’t been real and that he could still save his wife. He had been given another chance. Despite all of Andrew Hogan’s screw-ups, he still might come out ahead.
“Can you do this? Can you do what they’re asking?” Amanda wanted to know.
Walter knew that there was still a chance that Hogan and his lady detective might be able to rescue Emily. “If I have to, I can do it,” he answered.
Emily could feel her heart begin to pound the instant that Mike slammed the upstairs door. “We’ve been fucked over!” he screamed to Rita and then followed his greeting with a stream of obscenities. Emily could hear Rita trying to calm him down, reminding him that he had gotten away, and that he obviously hadn’t been followed. Their voices dropped to a conversational level and Emily couldn’t make out the words. But suddenly Rita became agitated.
“You left the car?” she asked in disbelief. “You left it right there in the mall?”
“I had no choice. That’s where the police were staked out. I couldn’t go back there.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jesus.”
Mike snapped at her. “Will you knock it off! It’s only a car. I can get us another one tonight.”
“Damm it, Mike! You and I are all over that car. Our prints are on the wheel and the door handles. My registration is in the glove compartment. Your court papers are probably still under the seat. Don’t you understand? If they find that car, they find us.”
There was a moment of silence and then Mike asked in a chastened voice, “Okay, so what do we do now?”
“We get our asses out of here.”
“What about the bitch downstairs? What are we going to do with her?”
“Leave her where she is,” Rita answered. “The best thing we can do is put a couple of time zones between her and us.”
“No fucking way.” Mike roared. “She can identify us.”
Rita’s response was sarcastically logical. “Honey, if they already have our fingerprints, my registration, and your court papers, how much do you think anything she tells them is going to add. They know who we are.”
“Yeah, but none of that stuff counts as much as an eyewitness. And besides, I owe her. Her and her double-crossing husband. I promised him a piece of her and I always keep my promises.”
“Don’t be such a thug! Use your head! We’ve got things we have to do!”
“I’m not leaving her to pick me out of a lineup.”
“Okay, okay! But first we’ve got to pick up a car and get ourselves some plane tickets.” Their voices dropped off to a conspiratorial level.
Emily shuddered. She had played it wrong from the beginning. Now she realized that she should have broken out as soon as she had her chance. She had been too careful in working the headboard. It had taken much longer than it should. She had tried to handicap the risks, deciding to wait out the day and make her move when they were both asleep. But now they wouldn’t be sleeping.
If they just left her behind, she could break free at her leisure. But she knew that before they left, she would have to face one more meeting with Mike. She could picture him standing over her, his eyes dancing with delight and his mouth pulled into a mocking sneer. There would be no point in begging. That was what the sadistic son of a bitch wanted. She began to plan how she was going to struggle with her arms chained above her head.
Bill Leary turned off the court lights and sauntered down the tiled hallway to the men’s locker room, wiping his face with a sweat-soaked towel. The last of the club members had left and the day’s schedule of lessons was over. Now came the demeaning part of his job when he was more janitor than tennis professional, responsible for shutting down the air conditioning, locking all the doors, and turning out all the lights.
He pushed the swinging door open and stopped short when he found the room in darkness. His hand slid along the inside wall feeling for the light switch. At that instant, a fist fired out of the darkness and exploded against the side of his face. Leary pitched sideways, crashing against one of the metal lockers and setting it vibrating like a snare drum. Then he dropped to the floor.
He never lost consciousness, so he felt the stabbing pain in his cheek and the rush of blood that flooded across his face. He was blinded by the flash when the lights were turned back on and took him a second to fill in the features of the shape that was standing above him. It was a young man in his mid-twenties, about Billy’s size, and probably a gym rat judging by the oversize proportions of his arms and shoulders. He was wearing tan slacks and a striped dress shirt with the collar open and the sleeves turned up.
“What the fuck?” was the best he could manage. The side of his face was swelling already.
“Emily Childs sends her regards,” the young man said, and then he aimed a soccer kick between Billy’s splayed-out legs, directly into his groin. The pain sent streaks of color through his already clouded vision. He wanted to scream, but there was no air in his lungs. Billy rolled onto his side like a doomed ship getting ready to sink. It was a full minute before he could manage a sound. “Who are you?”
“Alex Childs. You’ve been blackmailing my mother.”
It would be another minute before he could speak the words that would deny the charge. Instead, he shook his head.
Alex sat down comfortably on the bench above the writhing form. “I need some answers,” he said, as if he were addressing a business meeting. He planted his foot firmly on Billy’s neck. “I’m going to break some bones if I don’t get them.” He waited patiently until the pain dimmed a bit in the tennis coach’s eyes. Then he asked, “Why was my mother paying you a thousand a week?”
“A week? Nothing like that,” he answered between gasps.
“My sister went through my mother’s papers. There’s a check to you every week. Most of them are for a thousand dollars. What was she paying you for?”
“Tennis lessons,” Billy said, each word dripping with pain.
Alex’s foot got heavier. “Ten thousand dollars worth of tennis lessons? She’d have won Wimbledon.” His voice became more threatening. “What did you have on her?”
“I swear. We were working a couple of hours every day.”
“You’re lying,” Alex said. He began to stand up slowly. Leary could feel his tongue being squeezed. He waved his arm in surrender and Alex eased back on the pressure.
“Christ, let me talk,” he said.
“That’s why I’m here,” Alex answered. “Just don’t talk about a thousand dollars a week for tennis lessons.”
Billy got a hand under his body and slowly raised himself to a sitting position. He picked up the towel and blotted the blood on his cheek. He tried to stand.
“Stay right there,” Alex threatened.
“Christ, you broke my jaw. I have to get to the hospital.”
“After we talk. After you tell me where my mother is?”
“I told the police. I have no idea. I was shocked when they told me she had been kidnapped.”
“You were in her bedroom when she was taken.”
“No! After! After she was taken. The place was a mess. She was already gone.”
“What were you doing in her bedroom?”
Billy hesitated. He didn’t want to say anything to anger his attacker. “We had … an appointment. She had just lost a match she should have won. She …”
“You’re not going to say ‘tennis lesson,’ ” Alex threatened. Leary’s eyes rolled hopelessly. “She wanted to win … she couldn’t stand losing.”
He looked suspicious, but he didn’t react violently, so the tennis pro went on. “I got to the house and nobody was there. So I waited at the tennis court. When she didn’t show up I thought something might have happened to her. I called into the house and when I didn’t get an answer, I began looking around.”
“In her bedroom?”
“Just upstairs. Her bedroom door was open and I could see there had been some kind of a struggle. I thought someone might have hurt her. But I couldn’t find her. There was just blood and the place was in shambles.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I don’t know. I guess I panicked. I thought I’d better get the hell out of there.”
“Why, if you were just there to give her a tennis lesson?”
“You know. I mean, how would it look? Me in her bedroom?”
Alex’s fist tightened. “It would look as if you came to pick up your blackmail check and she told you she wasn’t going to be paying you anymore.”
Billy was frantic. “What in hell would I be blackmailing her with?”
“I think you conned her into sleeping with you. Isn’t that it?”
Leary thought quickly. Emily’s son had put it into words. Maybe he wasn’t totally offended by the idea. And he had to say something credible. Alex’s knuckles were showing like cast iron through his skin. Billy nodded. “Yeah,” he admitted. “We had a … relationship.”
“And you were charging her a thousand a week to keep it quiet,” Alex added instantly. “She knew if she didn’t pay, you’d tell my father.”
Billy shook his head. “Jesus, no. Nothing like that …”
“What did you have? Pictures? A recording?” Alex went on with his accusation as if Leary had never denied it. “She wanted them back and you had a fight?”
“She wasn’t hiding it from your father,” Billy suddenly shouted. “She was doing it to get even with your father.” He cowered from the new round of blows that he had every right to expect. But it was Alex who seemed to have been suddenly punched in the gut. He took a step backward and settled slowly onto the bench like a balloon that was leaking air.
The tennis bum was telling the truth. Amanda had already shown him the proof that their father was cheating. He had read the detective’s report and his father had not denied the evidence when they had confronted him. His eyes settled slowly on Leary. “And she was paying you …” There was loathing in his voice.
“It’s not the way it sounds,” Billy protested. “I was spending a lot of time on her tennis game. The other thing was something she just … wanted to happen.” He could see that Alex was skeptical. “I guess she was paying me for more than just … tennis. I suppose I was good for her ego. She was being thrown over by her husband. She felt awful. Maybe she wanted to hear that she was still young and still beautiful.” And then, as an afterthought, “She was young and beautiful. And spirited. I really liked her. I think I was good for her.”
Alex was only half hearing. His father had another woman. But his mother wasn’t going to step aside quietly. Christ, she was sleeping with a tennis player. She was going to get really ugly and make him look like a fool and he knew that was one thing that his father would never be able to tolerate. He would part with his money, but not with his self-image of being frilly in control. He would never allow himself to be mocked. The only question was how far would he go to preserve his demanding self-respect. As far as getting rid of his own wife?
Walter sat at the home computer, checking through Emily’s files and printing out all references and correspondence that had anything to do with the Urban Shelter. He read, with growing amazement, how deeply she was involved with the shelter’s work for the indigent. She managed the legal defense fund that paid for investigators and lawyers to help poor people defend their legal rights. She was involved in soliciting contributions from supermarket chains for half a dozen soup kitchens and from building contractors for a habitat program that rehabilitated old homes. She ran a real estate service that found low-cost and subsidized housing for homeless families. He had assumed that the shelter was a conscience-soothing diversion for the wealthy ladies of the riding and golfing set. He had never realized that Emily didn’t mind getting her hands dirty.
Amanda was going through printed records and files, sifting for the same type of evidence. But she was lingering over the investigative services that her mother had employed, remembering that one of them had taken on the private assignment of following her father. Walter brought her some new files that he had printed out and was annoyed to see her poring over the evidence of his infidelity. He pulled the file out of her hand. “I don’t think we have time for that right now!”
“How could you,” Amanda snapped.
Walter made a show of summoning up all his patience. “When your mother gets home, she and I will have a long talk. And then, if it seems pertinent, one of us will try to explain to you how these things happen.”
He was back to the computer when she answered, “These things? Is that what you call betraying her?”
He wheeled. “Damn you! I don’t owe you any explanations. You lost your right to give morals lectures a long time ago.”
“So did you,” Amanda fired back. “But that didn’t stop you from lecturing me. How in hell could you look down your nose at my lifestyle when you were humping some slut in the secretarial pool.”
His hand flashed across her face. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you dare say that.”
Her eyes flared angrily. Her fingertips went up and touched the red print on her cheek. “You pig!” she cursed.
His hand closed in a fist, but he was able to stop it in midair. He stood helplessly in front of her, his body trembling in rage. “I didn’t care what you were doing,” he said. “What I couldn’t stand was the one you were doing it with.”
“You didn’t bother to know him. You just decided for yourself that he was no good.”
Walter’s hand fell to his side, but his fingers were still squeezed together. “What is he? A lowlife photographer?”
“He’s an artist, and a damn fine one.”
He relaxed into mocking laughter. “Oh, Jesus, an artist? Is that what they call shiftless womanizers these days? Maybe you mean a con artist. He’s unemployed and living off you.”
“You never came to his shows. You never once even looked at his work.”
“I know all about his work, or I should say his lack of work.”
The doorbell chimed. Amanda’s response stayed on her lips. Walter was suddenly terribly embarrassed by his tirade. They looked at each other with apologies forming in their eyes. The bell chimed again. Walter walked silently around his daughter and went to the door, opening it in front of Andrew Hogan.
He carried a carton of records that he and Helen had taken out of the offices of the Urban Shelter, and began laying them out on the dining room table. “These are the pieces,” he announced, “and they all fit together.” He nodded to Amanda as she entered from the den, but kept arranging the files.
“Here’s Thomas Beaty, who brought you the ransom note. He worked in the office a few days a week so he probably knew Emily by sight. Chances are he thought of her as just one of the volunteers and she probably didn’t pay any particular attention to him. But someone knew both of them.”
“Who?” Amanda interrupted.
Hogan opened some other files on the table. “Probably someone who also knew these two characters. They’re the ones who carried your mother out of the house. What’s significant is that Beaty filed a motion for these two creeps when they were arrested for a burglary not half a mile from here. So it looks as if someone knew all these people as well as Emily.”
Walter and Amanda stared at the mug shots of the two minor felons. Walter shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen either of them,” Amanda said.
“How about these two?” Hogan asked. He dropped two grainy black-and-white photo prints on the table, one of a woman with straight black hair, the other of a man with closely cut black hair and a nicely trimmed moustache. “The lady is a small-time confidence hustler. One of her names, Rita Lipton, was on the van registration. She used the registration as her identification when she rented a subsidized house through the Urban Shelter. She needed an interview and a caseworker report. Mrs. Childs was the interviewer. The caseworker is a professional social worker who lives in Newark. We’ve got people looking for her right now.”
Walter was concentrating on the image. “I’ve seen her. Where in hell have I seen her?”
“The bank?” Hogan asked.
Walter shook his head. “No, not the bank. But recently. Maybe not this woman but someone very much like her.”
“Who’s the man?” Amanda asked.
“A guy named Micklcievski. He skipped bail on an assault charge. The lady, here, guaranteed his bail. The bondsman is looking for both of them.”
“The bar,” Walter suddenly remembered. He jabbed his finger at Rita’s picture. “She was the woman who was talking to your two men. I thought she might be working for you and that the two guys were my ransom contacts. The van belonged to her?”
Hogan nodded. “Yeah. And she was living in the house we went to. It looks like these are the two who are holding her. Obviously, they tried to make a little money on the side for themselves.”
“Where are they?” Amanda demanded.
“Probably not too far from the house she was renting. The car that was stolen from the mall turned up only a mile from there. Helen Restivo is making photoprints of the two of them. Her guys will be on the street, looking for these two all over the neighborhood.”
“And when we find them, we find my mother,” Amanda realized in an optimistic voice.
“Right,” Hogan answered. He exchanged a knowing glance with Walter Childs. Both of them knew that the longer it took, the less the chance of them finding Emily alive and in one piece.
Mike watched the Nissan SUV swing into the suburban parking lot and pick a space close to the platform entrance. The lot had been thinning out with the arrivals of trainloads of commuters and now the reverse flow of people headed for an evening in the city was in progress. Several cars had pulled in and been abandoned by couples who were now at the edge of the platform, leaning out in hope of finding the approaching train. A young couple jumped out of the sports utility vehicle, aimed their keys at the car, heard the reassuring chirp as the locks clicked, and then ran to the train platform. They were just in time to catch the last car of the city-bound express.
That was the car he wanted, but he waited to be sure that no latecomers came racing into the lot. Then he stepped casually out of the waiting room and walked to the van. He took an electronic device from his pocket, keyed it, and then let it swing in his hand. The device scrolled through the six-digit combinations available to keyless entry devices, broadcasting the signal for each numerical combination. In less than a minute, the SUV signaled, blinked its lights, and snapped up its door locks. Mike took a last glance around and opened the door.
The same number combination had simultaneously connected the car’s engine control computer. All Mike had to do was release the hood latch, find the ignition wires, and make the same kind of connection that would have started any car before the advent of antitheft systems. He was driving the car out of the lot less than ten minutes after the train had pulled away from the station.
He allowed himself a single sigh of satisfaction, but it was instantly choked by the anger that was still gagging in his throat. The bastards had gotten the better of him. He had been way ahead when he set up the roadhouse for the meeting. It had been a dumb place for a payoff because it was easily watched and there was no convenient escape. But it had been a perfect place to find out if his mark had brought in the cops. His recording, he figured, had scared the lady’s husband shitless. He would have bet anything that he would have come to the second rendezvous alone and ready to pay.
Even then he had everything figured out. He was going to make the exchange without ever being seen. And he had a hundred escape routes if anything went wrong. It was all perfect, except for the car. There had been an army of them and there had been no way to turn back. So now, instead of pocketing fifty thousand, he was involved in another brainless car heist. Instead of being on the top of the world, he and Rita were on the run.
He seethed when he thought of the self-satisfied son of a bitch who had cared more about his money than about his wife. Maybe he didn’t believe the threats. Or maybe he had figured that he was smarter than anyone involved in a kidnapping and that he could get the bitch back, catch the kidnapper, and save himself fifty big ones in the process.
Well the smart-ass bastard had gambled and lost. He put up his lady as a bet that he was smarter than Mike. He had his moment when Mike was running for his life through mobs of screaming shoppers. But now it was his turn to pick up the chips. The lady was his and when he was through with her, the double-crossing little prick was going to know that he had lost big-time.
He turned onto the industrial street that their rented house shared with a row of light assembly factories, warehouses, and a few other run-down wood-frame boxes that were the last remnants of a residential neighborhood. He pulled past his overgrown driveway so that he could back the SUV up to the garage door. Then he lifted the door, backed the car under cover, and went around the house and in the front door.
“Got it,” he told Rita. “A big four-wheeler.”
“Gas?” she answered.
“Yeah, gas! What do you think?”
She was seated at the kitchen table, dressed in a smart, tailored suit, with straight dark hair hanging to her shoulders. There were a dozen credit cards spread out in front of her and a stack of driver’s license forms. Mike stood behind her, glanced over her shoulder, and studied her work.
“What do you think?” Rita asked.
He whistled. “Great stuff. The guys I used to work for would want to keep you full-time. I don’t know why you do anythin’ else.”
“Because I don’t want to do anything full-time,” she said without looking up from her work.
“Where are we goin’?” He asked.
“I thought maybe the West Coast. I’ll go out to the airport as soon as I’m finished and book whatever I can get seats on. Whatever takes us the farthest away from here.”
Mike couldn’t hide his smile. He was going to be alone with the lady downstairs for a couple of hours. At least he’d get something for his trouble. And he’d make a recording that would tell her husband exactly how she had paid off his gambling debt.
“Get all our stuff together so we can pack the car as soon as I get back,” Rita said.
“We leavin’ tonight?” He was disappointed that he might not have time for his revenge.
“No, I won’t be able to get us on anything until sometime tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon. But we want to be ready to pull out of here on a minute’s notice. There’s no way of knowing how close to us they’re getting.”
“Sure,” he answered.
Rita picked up one of the credit cards and the matching driver’s license she had just forged. “And for God’s sake, Mike, forget about the lady downstairs. It’s not her fault that we didn’t get the money.”
“We’re not even goin’ to get the second payment for holdin’ her,” he reminded Rita. “We’ll be gone before we have a chance to collect.”
She was walking toward the front door when she told him, “That’s not her fault, either. The way you stay ahead in this game is by knowing when to cut your losses. Believe me, this is the time to cut. Nothing that happens to her is going to make us any richer.”
Andrew Hogan’s name carried weight with the State Troopers, but not enough to hold down Lieutenant Borelli’s temper. “You’re saying that a lady around here was kidnapped a week ago,” the lieutenant said, “and you’re just getting around to telling us about it.”
“We had no choice,” Helen Restivo explained. “We could have gotten her killed and maybe caused serious problems for a very important bank.”
“So the former police commissioner of New York turns to you and your half-assed amateurs instead of the police. And then you guys run an investigation in my area without bothering to let me know.”
“Don’t you see. If this had gotten out …”
“Oh, that’s it,” the lieutenant interrupted. “Hogan figured a bunch of idiots breaking into office buildings, grabbing files without a court order, and interrogating innocent citizens would be more secure than a professional police force.”
“I didn’t mean that!” Helen snapped.
“I don’t give a damn what you meant,” Borelli screamed, “because you have to be too stupid to worry about. It’s Andrew Hogan that pisses me off. He’s a pro and he ought to know better. All I’m going to do with you is toss you in the lockup and then wait for Hogan to come and claim you.”
“Dammit, do whatever you want with me.” Helen was on her feet leaning across the desk. “But get your people out on the street. This lady is only a couple of blocks from here and she’s going to get killed unless we find her.”
Borelli’s eyes blazed into hers and then dropped slowly to Helen’s hands, which were resting on his desk. He noticed the space where two of her fingers used to be. Helen followed the state trooper’s focus and instinctively pulled back the wounded hand. “I lost them making an arrest,” she said as she settled back into her chair. “I used to be a cop.”
His expression changed from anger to a curious respect. ‘Tell me again about this lady,” he said.
Helen had been making slow, workmanlike progress. She had gotten the photographs—license-type mug shots—from friends in the New York City Police Department who had processed the fingerprints from the van. She had made photocopies, which were even less detailed that the originals, and had her people show them around the neighborhood of the house they had visited. She had gone to the local police to enlist their help.
Her problems had begun when the local police, who were ill equipped to investigate anything more than a lost dog, contacted the troopers for help. Borelli didn’t like learning about felonies a week after they had been committed. Next, the business manager of the Urban Shelter had called the police to ask who authorized the search of his records. No one that Borelli could tell him about! Then, minutes later, one of her people had buttonholed a derelict in a doorway and shown him the photo of Rita. The derelict turned out to be a trooper who was on a surveillance assignment. Now Helen was about to be jailed in the local state police barracks and troopers were combing the neighborhood looking for the rest of her operatives.
“You should have come to me right from the start. Day one! The first time you heard about a kidnapping. Then we could have given you a hand. Now what am I supposed to do? Give you a hand breaking into some other offices? You want my help in hassling a few more private citizens?”
“There were very important reasons why we couldn’t involve police …”
“More important than doing things legally,” Borelli interrupted.
Helen slumped down in defeat. Lieutenant Borelli had all the questions and she didn’t have any decent answers. Of course they should have gone to the police. Certainly they should have gotten search warrants. There was no acceptable explanation for apprehending citizens and trampling all over their rights.
“Lieutenant,” she said softly, “take all the time you want to kick my ass around here. But we probably have only a few hours to save this lady … if she’s not dead already.”
For the first time since she had been brought into his office, the trooper seemed sympathetic.
“Those two photos,” Helen continued, pointing to the copies that the troopers had taken from her, “are the people who are holding her. The lady owns the van that the victim was dumped into. The man is the one who drove it to the mall to pick up the ransom. They used to live three streets from here. We figure they’re still in the neighborhood.”
Borelli lifted the pictures from his desk. “These aren’t very good.
“They’re not even accurate,” she told him. “The guy we chased through the parking lot didn’t have a moustache. And the lady is a con artist. She probably has as many looks as she has names.” Then she added, “The problem is that they’re all we have.”
Borelli picked up his phone and dialed an extension. “Get in touch with the photo lab,” he ordered. “We’re going to need a rush job. Super rush.”
“My people?” Helen mouthed softly.
He nodded and then said into the phone, “And tell our cars to leave the freelancers alone for the time being. We can use all the help we can get.”
He disconnected and then dialed another number. “Where’s my call to Andrew Hogan?” he barked. Then his lips curled in disgust. “Of course he’s not in his office. It’s Saturday. Maybe you ought to try his house.” There was another pause and then Borelli’s eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Well now, you ought to be able to find his address. You’re a detective, aren’t you.” He slammed the phone down, embarrassed that a fellow officer had witnessed the exchange.
Helen stood up long enough to write Andrew’s cell phone number on Borelli’s desk pad. “You can get him here,” she said, and then added, “thanks for giving me another chance.”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “But it’s the lady’s chances that I’m worried about.”
“Payback time!” Mike announced from the top of the stairs. He closed the door behind him and came down the basement steps slowly. “Your old man decided to keep his money and give you away instead. So, I guess you owe me fifty thousand big ones. How are you figurin’ on working it off?” He was chuckling in anticipation of the terrified eyes that would greet him.
“No problem,” Emily’s voice fired back. “It’ll only take a few seconds to give you all you can handle.”
He stopped in midstride. The sneer disappeared from his curled lips. He bent down so that he could see into the room and make certain that she was still shackled to the bed. “Saucy little bitch,” he said, striving to recapture his usual bravado. “I’m goin’ to take my time with you.”
Emily laughed. “Take your time? Little boys like you don’t know how to take their time. You better hurry before you lose it all down your leg.”
His contemptuous cool melted in a blaze of anger. “Keep up the lip, lady. You’re gonna get it good!”
“You’re all talk, sonny. You haven’t got anything!”
His face went red, his eyes narrowing to slits. “You shut your fuckin’ mouth.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it over already? I hope it was good for you.”
Mike screamed like a soldier leaping out of a trench. He flung himself on Emily, one hand on her throat, the other ripping at the top of her nightgown. His teeth flashed like sabers as they went for her breast.
Emily pulled a wooden rung out of the sprung headboard and whipped it like a forehand smash across the back of his head.
“Ahhh!” Mike’s face came up from her body just in time to see Emily’s two-handed backhand. It hit him squarely under the right eye. He tumbled backward from on top of her and had to grab the corner of the mattress to keep from rolling onto the floor.
Emily pulled her knees up and fired a kick into his throat, launching him over the back of the bed. She jumped up, part of the headboard still chained between her hands. Mike was still rolling on the floor, trying to get his balance while at the same instant trying to stem the flow of blood from his face. She raised her arms and shattered the headboard remnants across his back. Her swing had been awkward and she had not struck solidly. But it was enough to knock him flat on the floor. Emily ran around him and bolted for the stairs.
“You’re dead meat,” his agonized voice screamed behind her. She stole a glance back as she reached the steps. Mike had recovered to all fours and had already begun stumbling after her. When she was at the middle of the stairs, she heard him reach the first step. He was gaining, but that didn’t matter. All she had to do was reach the door and close it in his face. Then she would have all the head start she needed.
Her hand was on the knob, twisting and pushing. But the door was heavy; a metal-covered fire door mandated by an obsolete building code. It moved slowly. Emily threw her weight against it and began squeezing through the opening as it widened. She was halfway through when Mike’s hand caught the hem of her gown.
For an instant, they hung in balance. One more step and she would be able to throw her weight against the back of the door. Then, if she could just close the bolt, she could leave him holding the gown from the other side. But Emily couldn’t plant the one more step that she needed. She was still in the space between the door and the jamb, and a fraction of an inch at a time she was being pulled backward.
She turned abruptly and punched with her fist, smashing her fingers against the top of his head. She slashed with the chain that hung from her wrist. She tried to kick, but the twisted gown bound her legs. And then Mike’s other hand got a grip on her hair. Her fingers slipped off the doorknob.
She spun around and saw the rage in Mike’s bloody face. And then she was flying. She was lifted off her feet and tossed like a rag doll down the well of the stairs. She hit two steps from the bottom and then she flipped forward, crashing against the painted cement floor.
“I’ll kill you,” Mike screamed as he charged down the stairs toward her. He twisted his fingers through her hair and dragged her to her feet. Emily slashed her fingernails across his face. He howled and then cracked a short, tight punch to the point of her chin. She felt her body go limp and tasted the nausea that she vaguely remembered from the drug. Then her world went black and vanished.
She had no sense of lost time. There was just his voice, which seemed to be echoing from the distance, screaming obscenities. But he couldn’t be at a distance. She could feel his body pressing down on hers. His fingers were locked around her jaw, shaking her face from side to side. Light began to come back into her eyes and there was his face, soft and out of focus, yet distorted and grotesque.
She tried to push him off, but her arms wouldn’t respond. She knew he was on top of her, his weight pinning her down. But that wasn’t what suddenly terrified her. It was that her arms and shoulders had no feeling. They seemed disconnected from her brain. She thought she was paralyzed. “Oh God,” she managed to gasp.
“You like it, don’t ya! Tell me how much you like it, bitch.”
Feeling was coming back into her body. She could feel a tingling in her fingertips.
He shook her face violently. “Tell me you like it!”
Then she realized what was happening. She was in the bed, her legs splayed apart, and he was pressing down between them. The nightgown was bunched up under her chin. She was being raped. “You love it, don’t ya, bitch. It’s what you’ve been wanting since you laid eyes on me.”
Emily began to laugh.
He was ridiculous, trying to look suave when his eye was black and the side of his face was a smear of clown’s rouge. His bouncing made him look more like some sort of dashboard ornament than like a lover writhing in passion.
He stopped moving when he heard laughter. “Tell me you like it!” he screamed into her face.
“I can do better by myself,” Emily taunted.
His eyes went insane. “Oh yeah!” He bounded off her and nearly tripped over the trousers that were down across his knees. She was still laughing at the comedy he was creating as he pulled up his pants. “I’ll take that fuckin’ smile off your face.”
When he turned back to her, Emily saw the flash of the blade that sprung out of his hand. Then he was behind her, twisting her face to one side. He pressed down on her temple with the heel of his hand, driving her head into the mattress. There was an instant when the blade felt ice cold. And then, miraculously, it turned white hot. A warm ooze flooded across her cheek and into the corner of her mouth. She tasted her own blood.
“Let’s see you do that by yourself,” he hissed. “Let’s see what your old man thinks when he gets this in the mail.”
Her hand moved. She reached up to touch her face and realized she couldn’t find the top of her ear. The overpowering sickness came back and she drifted back into the peaceful blackness.
Angela bent over the wash basin, combing the brunette coloring through her blonde hair. Then she stood up straight and laughed out loud at the image peering through the steamed-up mirror. Even she couldn’t be sure who she was.
As soon as Walter had left, she had gone into action. She spent a good part of the afternoon erasing all her computer records, reformatting her disks over the files, and then erasing every record from her hard drive. Next she cleaned her file drawers, feeding the pages into a portable shredder and then dumping the shreds into a garbage bag.
She packed carefully, selecting only essential clothes that would fit into one small overnight travel bag along with her jewelry box. The designer knockoffs and fashionable casuals that hung in her closet got only a brief, nostalgic glance. She could replace them with designer originals if she wanted.
Next, she had taken the scissors to her hair, raising the length up from her shoulders to her ears and thinning out the top. And then she had applied the hair coloring, working it down to the roots and rinsing it until the water in the wash basin ran clear. The results were hysterical. Her perfect face seemed suddenly too wide and the color of her eyes no longer seemed appropriate. Nothing worked with the wild hair that stood out from her scalp like fire-scorched grass.
Angela attacked with a curling brush and her hair dryer until she had a neat, if casually offbeat coiffeur. The new color, combined with an entirely different makeup palette, gave her a vastly different appearance. Walter could pass her in the bank lobby and would probably walk on for a few more steps before he made the connection. Andrew Hogan’s Keystone Kops, who had met her only briefly, wouldn’t recognize her at all.
The next step was the picture. She put her Polaroid camera on the edge of the kitchen counter, set the timer for ten seconds, and then ran around to look into the lens. By trial and error she finally got a photo of herself where her head was about the size of a postage stamp. She held the photo against the window, ruled the back, and then cut out a passport-size photo of the young brunette with short hair. This fit perfectly onto the first page of a Canadian passport just above the name Susan Schwartz. Angela slipped the passport into the outside pocket of her travel bag.
She gathered up her trash—the stained cloths, the empty hair coloring bottle and package, the paper towels that had wiped the basin, the film boxes and wrappers—and stuffed them into a paper bag. She added this to the sack of shredded files and carried them out to the incinerator drop chute.
The apartment had to have a lived-in look. Certainly, the full wardrobe of clothes, the cosmetics and toiletries still in the medicine cabinet, and the clothes in the hamper combined to give the impression that she was still living there, and would be back shortly. Now Angela added other touches. She filled two pots with soapy water and left them in the sink. In the refrigerator, she uncapped the milk jug and left a half stick of butter on a desert plate. She spread the Times, with the pages opened to the crossword puzzle, across her unmade bed When she looked around for her final survey, she could hardly believe herself that this was the last time she would ever see the apartment.
Finally, she slipped on a denim jacket, added a colorful scarf at the neck, and threw the strap of her travel bag over her shoulder. She locked the door behind her and took the elevator down to the first floor. There, she shifted over to the fire stairs and let herself out the back door.
Angela went around the building, crossed the street, and walked past the front of her apartment building on the opposite side of the street. Helen Restivo’s man was behind the wheel of a parked car directly across from her doorway. In the light of a streetlamp, she noticed him raise his glance as she approached, and run his eyes appreciatively over her full length. Then, as she reached the car, he turned away, resuming his vigil of the front door. The woman he was waiting for would never appear.
She walked to Park Avenue, crossed to the downtown side, and signaled to a passing taxi. “Kennedy Airport. International departures,” she told the driver. He dropped the flag on his meter.
Walter’s living room was like a funeral parlor, with the deceased there in spirit if not in person. He sat hunched on the edge of a soft chair, his head sunk down between his shoulders and his eyes fixed on the pattern in the oriental carpet. Amanda sat back into the cushions of the sofa, her attention focused on the blank surface of the ceiling. Alex had turned a straight-back chair around so that he could straddle the chair back and lean his folded arms across the top. His attention was fixed on the telephone, willing it to ring.
Their conversation consisted of random phrases, unrelated to one another, but all concerned with their wife and mother. “They’ve got their pictures,” Walter had announced. “Somebody must be able to recognize them.” Then, after a ten-minute silence, Amanda had contributed, “Mother is a very strong person. She’ll come through this all right.” Five more minutes had passed and then Alex had commented, “There must be some way they could keep us posted on their progress.”
But while the conversation was sparse, the atmosphere was burdened with guilt. Walter could feel his son’s moral indignation that his mother had been treated so shabbily by his father. Alex, who had been the reasonable arbitrator between Walter and Amanda, had returned from the tennis club firmly on Amanda’s side. He hadn’t questioned his mother’s affair with the tennis pro. Rather, he had demanded of his father, “How could you have driven her into the arms of that creep?” His voice had been filled with censure and his eyes heavy with disgust.
Amanda could hardly bear the sight of him. She was immersed in the hypocrisy of her upbringing. Bad enough that her entire adult life had been condemned as shabby, purposeless, and immoral. Now she knew that the stinging, hurtful words had come from a figure of righteousness whose sins were far blacker than her own. Her father didn’t disapprove of her sleeping around, he just wanted her to sleep with someone of his own class. To him, Wayne was a greater disgrace than either fornication or adultery. Her judgment was more offensive than her morals.
Walter was trying to keep his problems separated. He clung to Angela’s words that their affair wasn’t the cause of Emily’s kidnapping. Even if that weren’t true, his marital infidelity certainly couldn’t be blamed for the gross threats of the madman who was holding her. When he had decided to go along with Hogan’s plans for catching the kidnappers, he had assumed that Emily would be kept safe. How could he have known that a deranged felon would be willing to mutilate her for what he regarded as pocket change? Walter could almost believe that he wasn’t responsible for his wife’s predicament.
The exposure of his moral failings was another problem. He would have preferred to explain the changes in his life to his children positively and in good time. He knew how devastating it must be for them to have their father’s philandering thrown into their faces, particularly at a time when their mother was in grave danger. But eventually he would have told them, and he had already taken their disappointment into account.
His status at the bank was still a different concern and one that had slipped beyond his control. If Hogan and his lady detective were able to find Emily within the next few hours, then his adherence to bank policy and his refusal to pay the ransom would be seen as extreme devotion to duty. He could order the brass plate with his name for the door of the chairman’s suite. If Hogan didn’t find her, then he would pay the bank’s funds as ransom and leave with Angela for the life of a well-heeled exile from the banking industry.
But as he sat brooding under the watchful eyes of his children, it was difficult for him to keep the problems separate. It seemed that his whole world had come crashing down on his head; his wife brutalized, his children traumatized, and his self-worth minimized. His adulterous affair was the root cause of all his problems. He couldn’t help wondering if Angela was suffering as much for their love as he was.
In all his self-loathing and self-pity he had completely forgotten that they were gathered for Emily’s wake rather than his own. And then the telephone rang.
Alex was the first to the receiver, where he exchanged little more than a grunt with Andrew Hogan and handed the phone to his father. Walter nodded gravely as he listened, nodding encouragement to Amanda and Alex who were hanging on his half of the conversation. “I see … I understand … let’s hope so …” Then he asked Hogan to hang on for a second while he told them, “A convenience store clerk recognized them. He thinks he knows the area where they live. And a car was reported stolen from the train station. The owner thinks the man was waiting at the station. Andrew says they could find them at any moment.”
“Sure,” Amanda said sarcastically, turning away from her father. “Andrew couldn’t find them when they were sitting in a bar that he had under surveillance.” Alex went back to his straight-back chair.
“Andrew,” Walter said. “I need you to pull your people off me.” He listened for a few moments, his expression showing his displeasure. “I know what your responsibilities are. I also know that they don’t include snooping into the affairs of senior bank officers.” He listened for a full minute. Then he said, “No, it can’t wait until Monday. On Monday, you can do whatever you want. I need your investigators out of my life now.”
His angry voice had gotten Amanda and Alex’s attention. They suddenly understood that their father was a suspect in their mother’s kidnapping. They exchanged wide-eyed glances.
Walter’s next remark was as much for their benefit as to persuade the bank’s security officer. “Andrew, you have no idea what it’s like to make a mistake with a woman you love and know you’re going to live to regret it. If you can muster up an ounce of human feeling, I want a free hand for the next twenty-four hours.”
He listened, nodded, and then said, “Thank you.” When he turned back to his children he thought he saw a faint flickering of respect.