“Pull up over there,” I said to Bettina, pointing to a section of empty curb on Central Park South.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“I thought you wanted to get back to the Bistro,” she said, maneuvering the hybrid into the parking space.
“Cassandra’s on duty,” I said. “Could you use that phone gadget of yours to Google dog parks and kennels in the city?”
Instead of replying, she took out her phone and began tapping at it.
I looked past her to a couple of horse-drawn carriages clopping along to the park. It was a nice sunny Sunday. Great day for a carriage ride. Or jogging in the park. Or strolling along. Or thinking about absent kidnapped friends.
“Google says there are over four thousand kennels in New York City.”
“That may be more than we can handle today,” I said. “Let’s limit our search to Manhattan. The sections of the city near water.”
“Why water?” Bettina asked.
“Gin mentioned champagne. I assume she was telling us she’s in a wine cellar. An old wine cellar, judging by the wall behind her, and one that’s permanently cold and damp. A lot of the city’s old mansions that were constructed near water had wine cellars dug deep to take advantage of the natural cooling.”
The limitations left us with eightysomething dog hostels.
We spent a little under an hour driving to the first twenty locations. Then we stopped for food, or what they pretended was food at a Bettina choice, Café Carrot on the Upper West Side. Another hour to cruise the second twenty canine conclaves, and for my stomach to digest roasted seitan, grilled onions, and soy cheese. We were in the beginning of the third group of listings when I asked her to park the car again.
To our right was the Dawn of the Dog Hotel and Spa, where a collection of overpampered pups was resting quietly in a gated pen where once a lovely lawn and garden grew.
“Well?” Bettina said. “We have dogs, but they make no noise. So?”
I looked at my watch. “Let’s wait a bit.”
“Is there something special about these dogs?”
“To paraphrase the great Sherlock Holmes,” I said, “the thing that makes them special is that they are not special.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Wait for it … wait … right … about … now.”
Church bells began to ring in the hour. Could have been St. Bartholomew’s or St. Peter’s Lutheran over on Lex. The dogs were now singing along at full bark.
“Two out of three on our city-sounds list,” I said.
“But I still don’t know why you thought—”
“At the end of the block,” I said. “The abandoned stone-and-brick monstrosity we drove past.”
She looked back. “Chain fence,” she said. “Three-story with boarded windows. Totally overgrown with bushes and vines. What about it?”
“It’s the Vosburgh mansion,” I said. “A classic city eyesore. Built back at the tail end of the nineteenth century by an old crook named Joe Vosburgh, who still holds the record for the number of times he sold the Brooklyn Bridge. The mansion cost nearly half a million dollars, which was a whole lot of ill-gotten loot back in those days.”
“I appreciate the history lesson,” Bettina said. “Is there a point to it?”
“You tell me. A year ago, Gin and I did a segment covering more than a dozen of the city’s old mansions that are so tied up in legal red tape they just sit there gathering greenery gone wild and dust and rodents. The Vosburgh was on our list. The thing that added to its uniqueness is that the old con artist spent a hunk of that half-million digging a double cellar so deep in the ground that because of the proximity of the East River, the temperature was a natural forty-five degrees. That’s where he kept a gazillion bottles of French champagne that he bought when he saw that Prohibition was soon to become the law of the land. While everybody else was swilling bathtub rotgut, Vosburgh’s friends and clients were enjoying vin extraordinaire.”
Bettina frowned. “So you think that when Ms. McCauley was talking about freezing champagne, she was telling you she was being held at the Vosburgh mansion?”
“I’m jus’ sayin’.”
Bettina nodded. “Logical. We should see.”
She reached for the door handle.
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s not smart. Could be a dozen guys inside. With Uzis.”
“You watch too much television,” she said. “Besides, I have a gun.”
“One thing I learned from TV, the cop who goes in without calling for backup ends up in trouble. You have a phone. Use it to call the troops.”
“Your friends could be in there at great risk,” she said. “Waiting for more agents may be the proper procedure. But this is a situation that demands … flexibility.” She handed me her cellular. “I will enter the building and you call A.W. Press button three.”
“Let’s go in together,” I said. “I’ve been in there before.”
“No. You are under my protection.”
“Wait …” I began. But I was talking to myself.
She moved down the block at a swift pace. I fired up the phone, and A.W. answered on the second ring.
While giving him the situation, including our location, I watched Bettina find a loose section of the chain-link fence that surrounded the Vosburgh. She pulled it back and squeezed past it onto the property.
“Sit tight,” A.W. instructed me. “I’ll be there with backup in ten minutes.”
Ten minutes, I thought, as I put the phone away. Too much could happen in ten minutes. I felt like a jerk just sitting there. But Bettina was a trained professional. She was armed. I was a guy who ran a restaurant and talked to people on TV.
Then I heard popping noises coming from the mansion. Two, then silence.
With great reluctance, I got out of the car.
Another pop.
I did not take my time getting to the weak link in the fence. It wasn’t as easy for me to squeeze through as it had been for Bettina. My jacket pocket ripped and a pant leg caught, tumbling me onto my knees in a jungle garden of overgrown shrubs and bushes, some of them with thorns.
Our crew had cut a path through the jungle a year ago. Somebody—the kidnappers probably—had removed whatever growth there had been since then. I had no problem moving past the branches and brambles.
At the rear of the mansion, the greenery had really taken over.
I suddenly froze, staring at a pale hand poking through the shrubbery. There were people hiding among the weeds and vines and plants. No, not people, I remembered with relief. Ivy-covered statues of Greek gods and goddesses that the old con man had imported to give his estate a “classic look.”
A broken brick path led me to a slightly ajar basement door.
I’m not a particularly brave man, and I really didn’t want to go through the door. Not empty-handed. I looked around for something that even remotely resembled a weapon. A hoe, a rusted hammer. Even a big rock. Nothing.
With pounding heart, I entered the building.
To my right was a short stairwell that, as I recalled, headed up to a dayroom in the main house. To my left was a much longer set of creaking, partially dry-rotted stairs leading to the deep basement.
With a sinking feeling, I turned to the basement stairs. I had no weapon. I had no flashlight. And I had even less courage.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on sounds from down below. All I heard was my own panicked breathing.
There was enough reflective light from the open back door for me to see the first several stairs. A dim glow down below indicated that I’d be able to see the bottom steps. But in between … darkness.
Well, hell. I’d come this far.
I descended cautiously. The wooden stairs were old and weak. And very noisy. I probably sounded like a golem stomping down. Halfway, the temperature dropped and there was a dampness to the air that couldn’t quite mask the unmistakable firecracker-plus odor of gun-smoke. There was another aroma, too, almost as pungent. Gasoline. Not good.
I could see that the faint illumination came from a round, battery-powered Stick ’em light lying on the ground just past the bottom step. Somebody had probably tried to adhere it to the moist wall and it had fallen and rolled downstairs. Instead of concentrating on it, I should have noticed the sponginess of the stair under my left foot.
The rotted wood gave way and I tumbled forward, banging my left elbow against the wall, hitting the stairs on my right shoulder, and sliding to the cement floor on my back, totally disoriented.
A jolt of pain from my elbow helped to clear my head. As I reached to comfort that aching joint, my shoulder reminded me that it, too, had taken a hit. I lay there on the cold cement, feeling very sorry for myself, until I heard someone moving around in the basement.
The Stick ’em light was only a foot away from my face. I reached out to press the little button that turned it off. My elbow stopped me halfway. It wasn’t broken, I didn’t think, but it definitely didn’t like sudden movement. Breathing heavily, I eased the arm out and turned off the light.
With just the faint glow from the top of the stairs, I was in nearly total darkness. I rolled over and crawled painfully into the pitch-black basement.
Another rustle.
I had to assume that whoever was moving around had gotten a good look at me when I stumbled into the Stick ’em spotlight. That they hadn’t shot me was a good sign. But if it was Bettina scurrying around in the darkness, she probably would have identified herself. So the best I could do was stay quiet and still and wait for A.W. to arrive with the cavalry.
My left ankle was hurting now, too. What fun. I lay on my back and tried to mentally catalog my injuries. I got as far as the elbow that wasn’t broken and the shoulder that was definitely bruised.
Then the shooting started.
There was a tiny flash of light and a bullet smashed into the wall near me. About where my head would have been if I’d been sitting up. I quickly rolled farther away from the stairwell. Another bullet. Another roll.
I was about as panicked as a man can be without peeing his pants … or worse.
I lay there, listening to my own breathing. Waiting for the bullet that would find its mark.
Instead there was the sound of rushed motion. Footsteps heading toward me, then past me, and moving quickly to the stairwell and up.
I prayed that whoever it was would hit that rotten stair and get trapped there, screaming in pain. But like so many of my prayers, it went unanswered.
When I’d heard the shooter’s footsteps moving up and away, I sat up and turned on the Stick ’em light. I used the nearby wall to stand. My ankle hurt but took its share of my weight without giving way.
I aimed the light at the rest of the basement. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to see Bettina, lying on her back on the cement floor.
I hobbled to her.
She was alive. Unconscious, shivering, but with a strong pulse. Blood glistened in the dark hair above her left ear. A bullet wound, I assumed. How serious, I had no idea.
I was afraid to move her, even if my damaged limbs would have allowed it.
I struggled out of my coat and tucked it around her. Not much help, but all I could do for the moment.
I scanned the room again. Where the hell were Gin and Ted?
Bettina’s gun was several feet from her right leg. I picked it up and, using the Stick ’em light as a lantern, limped into the darker section of the basement. The gasoline smell was stronger.
That’s when I saw the other body. A big white guy, pitched forward on his face. Very dead. His left hand seemed to be reaching out in Bettina’s direction. I was reminded of Lee Marvin’s famous death scene in the remake of The Killers. He’d been shot before he could draw his gun, but, with his last breath, he made a kid’s imitation gun with his thumb and index finger and pointed it at the person who did him in.
I held the Stick ’em light close to the dead man and saw that a bullet had entered the back of his head. I had no interest in turning him over to see the exit wound. But there was something … Yes, along with the cordite and the gasoline, there was a faint, familiar odor. I moved the Stick ’em light down his body to a pair of brown shoes I’d seen before.
Hello, Clove Boy.
Staring at his corpse, I wish I could say I felt sorrow or even revulsion, but I was too concerned with the fate of my friends, and what he’d done to them, to give a damn.
His gun lay on the floor a few yards away. I hesitated about picking it up. I’d probably screwed up the crime scene evidence already by taking Bettina’s weapon. I left this one where it had fallen.
Thanks to the Stick ’em, which was rapidly becoming my favorite infomercial product, I saw the spotted wall that had served as a backdrop for Gin’s video. The Sunday New York Times was still where she’d dropped it and, though no camera was in evidence, the portable generator that had been used to power the video light rested on the cement floor. It was the source of the gasoline smell.
The Stick ’em helped me find another stairwell, this one short and made of stone, leading down to a lower, colder second level. This was clearly where old Joe Vosburgh had kept his imported bubbly. To my left were empty wine racks and a faded and flaked painting of a bevy of cancan girls popping out of a giant champagne bottle labeled VOSBURGH’S CRISTAL.
The House of Roederer had created Cristal for Russia’s Czar Alexander II, but, just as the United States was about to lower the boom on booze, the keepers of the House decided that the rest of the world should also get a taste of the classic champagne. And Vosburgh, the old pirate, had somehow got his hooks on the first cases of the stuff. God, a case of that Cristal today would go for—
An impatient squeal drew my attention to a very female figure lying on the cold concrete about ten yards away. A blackout mask had been duct-taped over her eyes. More duct tape had been used on her body—to seal her lips, to secure her wrists behind her back, and to hold her ankles together.
Ted Parkhurst was lying against the far wall, similarly bound, blinded, and gagged.
“Gin. It’s me, Billy,” I said, as I painfully hunkered beside her.
She made a series of “umm-umm” noises while I placed the gun and Stick ’em light on the floor. I got out my trusty Swiss Army Knife and sliced through her wrist tape.
“I’m gonna let you do the rest,” I said, “while I help Ted.”
The knife did its job there, too.
I was amused to see that no sooner had Ted torn the mask from his eyes and the duct tape from his mouth than his unruly hair flopped onto his forehead.
“Is that it? Are we free?” he asked me, unconsciously pushing back his hair.
“Like the birds in the trees,” I told him.
“Are you okay, baby?” he called over to Gin.
“Yeah, sweetie,” she said, working on her ankles. “We’re all okay.”
Except for the big white guy in the other room, who was about as far from okay as you can get.
And poor Bettina.