fourteen

I touched the screen in the proper area to activate the speaker function so Ms. Washburn could hear the conversation. “What is it I have of yours?” I asked.

Of course, the obvious answer was the package of cash Ms. Washburn had stored in the glove compartment of the Kia Soul. But there was no point in giving this Kaplan, whomever he actually was, an advantage in what was to come. I would make him state his terms as clearly as possible.

With my mother unreachable, I was determined to conclude this business as swiftly as possible and find the next available flight to Newark Liberty International Airport. The urgency of the situation as I saw it had strengthened my resolve and made me slightly less cautious than usual.

“You know what you have,” the man said.

Ms. Washburn looked slightly alarmed.

“I have a great many things,” I said. “I do not know which one of them is yours, and how I might have acquired it.”

Now Ms. Washburn looked very surprised.

When Kaplan spoke again it was in clipped tones, as if through clenched teeth. He was trying, unsuccessfully, to mask his irritation. “You have a package the idiot at my house gave you and I want it back or you’re going to have trouble. Is that clear enough?”

“You mean the packet of cash in the amount of approximately forty thousand dollars?” I said. If Kaplan thought this line was not secure and that he was compromising his own operation by speaking on it he would be more inclined to come to an agreement quickly. That was my reasoning.

“Yes.” The sound was like the hiss of a rattlesnake, if the recordings found on television programs and in motion pictures are at all accurate. I have not seen a rattlesnake within physical proximity of myself because I would find that very unsettling. Kaplan’s response reminded me of such a noise, but not to the point that I would be especially upset about it. Clearly, a human adult male was speaking and not a rattlesnake. “Now give it back to me.”

It was time for me to, as the expression states, put my cards on the table. I had no cards and there was certainly no table inside the Kia Soul, but in this case the metaphor was appropriate since the conversation was becoming very much like a game of poker and I was about to make my bid.

“I will be happy to give you back your money,” I said. Ms. Washburn looked at my eyes and nodded. “But first you will have to put me in touch with Reuben Hoenig.”

Kaplan made a sound like a balloon slowly losing its air. “This again?”

“I have never asked for anything else,” I pointed out. “I have forty thousand dollars that the young woman in your house gave my associate and me as a gift. You can have it back. But first you must set up a meeting between me and Reuben Hoenig.”

“I can’t do that,” he said.

I looked at Ms. Washburn. She smiled just a bit and nodded.

I disconnected the call.

“That was very rude of me,” I said.

Ms. Washburn chuckled lightly. “Sometimes you have to be rude to get the results you need.”

The iPhone rang almost immediately. I reached for the screen, but Ms. Washburn held her finger up. “Let him wait a few rings,” she said.

I must have cocked an eyebrow, which is an expression I’m told I exhibit when surprised by something. Ms. Washburn put her hand on mine. “It’s okay, Samuel. He’s not going away.”

The phone rang four more times before Ms. Washburn nodded again. “Now.”

I exhaled and pushed the screen to begin the call. “Hello?”

This time the man’s voice was a little higher and sounded less patient. “You hung up on me!” I thought the remark irrational. Did George Kaplan or his surrogate believe that I was not aware I had ended the previous call abruptly? So I said nothing. “What’s wrong with you?”

I am aware that some people believe I suffer from a disorder of the neurological system. Others think I have a mental illness. There are those uninformed individuals who refer to my personality traits as a “disease.” But I felt there was no point in detailing my Asperger’s Syndrome for George Kaplan.

“I am in excellent health, I assure you,” I told him. “Now. When and where will I meet Reuben Hoenig?”

“I’ll find you,” the man countered. “I’ll find you and take back the money and then I will do something. To you or to your girlfriend.”

I looked at Ms. Washburn, who pointed to herself. Then she shook her head in a negative fashion.

“I have no girlfriend,” I assured Kaplan. “But I can guarantee that even if you find my associate and me you will never see a dollar of the money we have in our possession. I have the ability to think of hiding places no one else would ever consider. Even my associate would be unable to recover your cash and I certainly will not tell you where I have secured it, until I have met and spoken with Reuben Hoenig.” This might be the place to disclose that I hold no special talents as a result of Asperger’s Syndrome. But I was fairly certain Kaplan did not know that.

“I can make you tell me.” That was not even a credible threat but it did point to an operation considerably more illicit than either Ms. Washburn or I had imagined. I felt a slight tremor in my digestive system but blinked twice to banish the thought.

“Mr. Kaplan, if that is your real name,” I said, “you are a businessman. Your sole concern is to create a profit. And the best way to do so is to operate efficiently.”

“Yeah. And the most efficient way for me to get that money back is to find you and beat it out of you. So expect that.”

I anticipated Kaplan disconnecting quickly so I spoke immediately. “That is not your best option as a businessman,” I replied. “It is inefficient, largely because I will not tell you where the money is being kept. I will banish the location from my own mind and forget it, making it impossible, no matter how dire the situation becomes, for me to accommodate you.” This, again, was a lie based on the proposition that Kaplan had no idea what Asperger’s Syndrome might entail. I gave him no time to consider the preposterous fiction I was creating. “But if you produce Reuben Hoenig I will be glad to give you back every dollar immediately and you can retrieve your property with no loss of time or efficiency. It is, if I am correct in my terminology, a win-win situation.” I looked toward Ms. Washburn, who was smiling and raising a thumb in approval.

There was a pause on Kaplan’s end of the conversation, and I became confident that the ploy had worked.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get you Hoenig. But you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow.”

Normally I would have considered that capitulation a victory, but with Mother unresponsive and almost three thousand miles between us I had no time for Kaplan’s hesitation. “Why?” I asked.

“I have to locate the guy and convince him to meet with you,” he answered. “I have to set up a place and a time that I can be sure won’t involve … government agencies I want to keep out of the situation. I can’t just make him appear out of the air.”

I looked at my wristwatch. I wear a wristwatch despite having the time displayed on my iPhone because I do not have to push a button to make the correct time appear and because it was my custom long before I began carrying a cellular phone. The time now was 11:56 a.m.

“You have until five p.m. today,” I said. “If I don’t hear back from you before then with a suitable rendezvous arranged before nine p.m. this evening, I will break off all communication between us and disappear with your money. Is that clear?” I knew the statement was simple to understand but I had heard that last phrase uttered many times when people were attempting to make their points emphatically.

This time Kaplan did not argue, although I felt it was against his nature to accept my terms so quickly. That made me suspicious. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call you before five. Make sure you have the money with you.”

If his intention was to find Ms. Washburn and me and force us to give him the forty thousand dollars without an interview with Reuben Hoenig, it was necessary for me to disabuse him of that notion. “The money is in a safe place right now,” I said. “After I have met with Reuben Hoenig I will tell you its location.”

Kaplan disconnected.

“He is no longer there,” I said to Ms. Washburn. “Does that mean he is not accepting my terms?”

“No,” she answered. “It means he knows he can’t argue with you and that makes him angry. Be careful with this guy, Samuel. He’s not the kind who takes losing kindly.”

That struck me as irrelevant. “He is not losing,” I suggested. “He is going to get what he wants. We will give him back the money his employee accidentally gave us.”

“But he has to give you something for it, and he doesn’t like it. Just be careful, okay?” She turned her attention to the dashboard of the Kia Soul. “Where are we going?”

I consulted my watch again. Six minutes had elapsed since I had checked most recently. “Perhaps we should seek out a place to have lunch. Just Nice?”

Unexpectedly, Ms. Washburn shook her head. “I know what you want, Samuel, but we’re not going to eat all our meals in Los Angeles at the same restaurant. And I’m not going to spend the next three days looking for an Applebee’s. You saw that things worked out well at the place I picked the last time, right?”

I had to admit she was being accurate.

“Good. So you’re just going to have to trust me. I saw a little place on the way here this morning. Let’s go.” And before I could suggest otherwise, she had engaged the Drive gear and was navigating the vehicle back into traffic.

When we were settled in a small, redolent delicatessen called Andy’s, I had quelled my rising anxiety with a look at the menu, which indicated there were items served in the establishment that were not foreign to my experience, although many certainly were. Ms. Washburn asked for a hot pastrami sandwich, which I knew I would not want to see while I settled on a turkey sandwich with lettuce and mayonnaise, similar to what I eat for lunch at Mother’s house most days.

That was when I tried Mother’s cellular phone again. The voice mail did not immediately pick up, which meant that she had at least turned on the phone at some time since I had last called. But it was still taking her messages and she was not answering the phone when it rang.

“Maybe I should call the police,” I said to Ms. Washburn.

“They do sometimes check in on seniors,” she said, considering. “Is that something that would make your mother uncomfortable?”

It was a valid question. I thought about the answer for a moment. “I don’t know. I am certain, though, that if she is in some distress I would not be comfortable having ignored the situation because I was concerned she would be inconvenienced. I am going to call the Piscataway police department.”

“I think you’re probably right,” Ms. Washburn said. “I assume you checked your own voice mail to make sure she hasn’t called you? It is odd that she hasn’t looked in on you yet.”

How Mother could see me from New Jersey when I was in Canoga Park, California, eluded my reason. “I haven’t checked,” I admitted. “It hadn’t occurred to me that Mother might call. She knows where she is.”

I looked at the voice mail application on my iPhone and found there was indeed a message from Mother, which made me realize how anxious I had been about it. My stomach loosened itself and I let out a long breath. I activated the playback for Mother’s voice mail message.

“Hello, Samuel,” she had said two hours before, according to the time stamp on the message screen. “This is your mother. Everything’s fine here. I hope you’re doing well in California. Please don’t call for a day or so because my phone is acting very strange and I won’t get your message. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll get a new phone and call you when I have it, but I probably won’t get out until tomorrow at least. I’ll talk to you soon. I miss you, and I don’t mean to make you feel bad, but I look forward to you coming home. But I’m very proud of you for going and hope you find your father soon. See you in a few days. Okay, bye.”

She disconnected after that, and I found that against my expectations, I did not feel better after having heard her message.

Ms. Washburn had clearly seen that emotion in my facial expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I think we should get tickets for a flight home today,” I told her. “My mother is in some very serious danger.”