Adrenaline (29 page)

Geoff smoothed her hair. “Honey, do me a favor and get me a couple of those white towels and facecloths, some disinfectant, and maybe you can give this guy a couple of those codeine pills we found.”

She looked confused.

“I’ve got plans for these two, honey. Now just do as I ask.”

Carly did, and came back moments later with what he had requested.

Geoff took her razor from his back pocket and cut Lisa’s arm free from the bed. He made a hobble for her like Lazar’s.

To the girl, he said casually, “Honey, put the gun on Lazar and kill him if he moves.” Without further preamble, he took Lisa by the hair and shook her head hard. He held the razor up to her face. “You clean this cop up and keep him alive, at least until I’m ready to talk to him. And if you ever—ever—touch Carly again, Steve won’t be able to tell you and Lazar apart by the time I finish spreading you both around this room.”

Geoff left Carly with the gun, and then came back about five minutes later and nailed a sliding bolt lock to the outside of the door. The two of them left, without a word, and Lisa heard the bolt slide home.

Lisa rubbed her face quickly, her hands still shaking. She took a deep breath and turned to Lazar. “Let’s see if I can help slow down that bleeding.”

He gritted his teeth as she helped him pull off his sport jacket and shirt. She spread disinfectant on a folded towel and taped it against the big wound on his back and did the same with a small washcloth over the puckered wound just under his collarbone. The towel in back was soaking red already. She gave him codeine and water and had him lie down on his side, keeping the shoulder wound high. She put pillows under his legs, figuring he might be going into shock. His color was tinged gray under the brown of his skin. “I wish I knew what I was doing,” she said.

He grunted. “Me too.” His eyes flickered open and he reached over to squeeze her arm. “Wished I knew what I was doing, I mean.” He grimaced. “I was on my own, no one knows I’m here.”

Tears filled Lisa’s eyes. She didn’t realize until then how much she had been counting on him being the first of the cavalry.

“Tell me what’s been going on,” he said.

Lisa quickly sketched what had happened, from the rock climbing incident onward.

“Jesus,” Lazar groaned. “A fucking nut. Why the hell didn’t your husband come to us? I just left him, for Christ’s sake.”

“Steve’s all right?” she said, eagerly. “I just saw him that second at the house and Geoff was still up there.”

“Oh, yeah. Your husband was on your boat.”

Lisa felt a momentary panic, a brief flash of rage. She closed her eyes and forced herself to think. “No,” she said, firmly. “No, he couldn’t go to the police.” She told Lazar again about the way Geoff had locked her in the freezer, of the tapes she had recorded for Steve. “I’m sure he had Steve convinced that he would kill me if he brought in the police—and he would’ve, too.”

Lazar grunted. “Maybe. So Geoff’s got the money now … why do you think you’re still alive?”

She told him about Carly’s comment that Geoff wanted to get back at another man, that the money he had raised from Steve was just flash money.

“You don’t know who that would be?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t give us any idea why he still needs us.”

“I’ve had lots of time to think about that. From me, he wants an audience. He alternates between treating me terribly and then being considerate. It’s as if he respects you inordinately if you stand up to him, but he’s got to beat you down immediately to show you he’s stronger. He sees himself in competition with Steve. It’s not just revenge, it’s like he’s trying to prove something through us.”

Lazar nodded. “The guy actually complimented me when we were fighting. Like I’d sunk a good hook shot playing basketball.”

The two of them were silent for a moment. As Lazar rested, his eyes closed. Lisa touched her forehead gingerly. Her head still ached abominably.

“You think your husband will make it to you again?” Lazar asked.

“He’ll try.” That Lisa knew. Whether or not she would ever see him again, she didn’t know. This policeman struck her as very hard, very tough. And he hadn’t succeeded. She said, “Steve is very resourceful.”

Lazar’s eyelids were growing heavy. “He better make it sooner rather than later. My guess is Geoff let us have this little talk to loosen me up so I’ll tell the truth as to when I can expect some backup. I wouldn’t tell him before.”

“So what are you going to say?”

Lazar sighed. “The truth, I guess. We’ve got at least two days before anyone will notice I’m gone. Better Mann knows that than to think they will be here tonight. Then he’d just kill me and move you. He’s going to want to keep you alive until he gets whatever he wants from your husband. Proves whatever he has to prove. Me, hell, my ass might be fried already. But I won’t beg him, I won’t give him that. From what you said about him, as soon as I do, he’ll kill me.” Lazar held Lisa’s hand and she squeezed it back, hard. “The longer we stay in his face, the more chances I’ll have to kick his teeth in. The more chances you’ll have to settle back on that nice boat with your husband.”

Chapter 32

Steve had been awake for hours when the phone rang just after seven in the morning. “You’re in for a treat,” a woman’s voice said. “Go to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Boylston Street. There’s a phone out front. Be there in twenty minutes.”

He was there in fifteen. When the phone rang, the woman said, “The corner of West Newton and Columbus. The liquor store. Ten minutes.”

There was a van following him a few cars back, but it took off up Columbus when he reached the liquor store and he never saw the driver. From there, the woman sent him on to two other locations, to a phone booth in front of the
Boston Herald
building, and then back across town to Newbury Street, in front of the big window of a restaurant. The sidewalk cafe was doing a brisk business, but everyone disappeared from Steve’s view when the phone rang and he said hello.

“It’s me,” Lisa said.

“Jesus.” His knees buckled slightly and then he recovered himself. “Where are you?”

She was gone.

The other woman’s voice came on the line. “That kind of question will get her killed. Now shut up and listen.”

Lisa was put back on. “I’m supposed to make you understand that my life depends upon you telling the truth. That they haven’t put me in the box again like before, but they will if you lie.” Her voice shook as she said this, and Steve pressed the receiver hard against his ear.

“I will get you out of this, Lisa.”

“I love you,” she whispered.

He heard the woman say, “Get off the phone.” Steve closed his eyes and willed the telephone receiver to give up some clue as to where Lisa was being held. But all he heard was the woman telling Lisa to sit on the floor.

The woman came back on the line. “All right, you heard what she said about the truth. Did you dispose of those two packages and clean up like you were told?”

Steve had the sense that she was reading the question. “Yes.”

“Have you talked to the police? At all?”

Steve hesitated, his mind racing. Geoff could have been watching him at any time.

“Answer me!”

“A Detective Lazar came to see me about Geoff. Wouldn’t say why, just that he had some questions.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I haven’t seen him since the rock climbing thing.”

“Did he seem to buy that?”

“Yes.”

“Convince me.”

Steve was at a loss. After a moment, he said, “He was just fishing. When he gave me his phone number he said he might be out for the next couple of days … whatever he wanted Geoff for, it didn’t seem all that urgent.”

“Who else?”

“No one.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not.”

She paused, and he waited. Then she said, “Final question. Are you ready to do what you’re told?”

“Yes.”

He could hear her breathing, and he felt that she was trying to make a decision. He couldn’t think of anything else to say to convince her—and then she said, abruptly, “Stay there.”

She hung up.

Five minutes passed. Steve counted the cars going by, looking for the van. He stood in front of the phone once when a man about his age wanted to use it. The man started to argue, then looked closer at Steve and hurried away.

Steve’s knees shook slightly. Had he passed Geoff’s little test?

He shivered, even though the day was warm.

Had he failed? Had he just spoken to Lisa for the last time?

A waitress came up to him, smiling cautiously. “Sir? I believe that man is trying to get your attention.”

Steve turned. Geoff was inside the restaurant, smiling broadly from a corner table, waving him in. Inviting him to breakfast.

Very good, Steve, the truth shall set Lisa free,” Geoff said, cutting into his omelet. “I didn’t see the police following, so I sent you on to the
Herald
and came on back here. Just think, if my pimp friend, Jammer, had taken the time to chase you around to a few phones, he and Alex might be alive now.”

Geoff was dressed casually in the jeans and an open-neck cotton shirt that he had been wearing the night Alex was killed. But the clothes looked freshly washed, and he was shaved and clear-eyed. There were scabs on his right temple. Burns, maybe. He said, “My friend phoned to say you were forthright about a policeman looking for me. Did this cop say why he wanted me?”

Steve hesitated, then answered. “He just said it was routine.”

“Describe him.”

Steve did, holding back nothing about Lazar’s visit. He spoke slowly and carefully, feeling tightly coiled. Wanting so much to pull the derringer free from his belt and shoot Geoff in the forehead.

Geoff shrugged. “Just a little problem in Roxbury. Has nothing to do with this business of ours.”

“And just what is our business?”

“Later. You’ll take me out for a boat ride, and I’ll give you the specifics.” He looked out the window. “Weather seems perfect. What will that Blue Water of yours do? About thirty-five, forty?”

“About that. You’re having a lot of fun, aren’t you, Geoff?”

“Best rush ever. You could have it too, if you loosen up a little. Better than any rock climbing you’ve ever done, believe it.” He leaned forward and punched Steve on the shoulder, laughing at the way Steve’s face flushed with rage. “Lighten up!”

“Shut up and listen to me, Geoff.” Steve’s voice was quiet. “You give me the job you want done, and I’ll do it for you. Then you owe me one thing—”

“Got it,” Geoff said briskly. Putting across a little impatience and sincerity at the same time. “You do what I want, she goes free.”

“Bullshit.”

That gave Geoff pause. “How’s that?”

Steve leaned forward, his voice low. “We both know you’re lying. So this is the deal: I do whatever it is you want—and then you owe me a fight. One-on-one. No weapons. Lisa’s right there. The winner walks away, the loser dies.”

Geoff put his hand out. “What’s not to like?”

They towed Steve’s dive boat down to Duxtable and left it on the trailer in the town ramp parking lot while Geoff had Steve drive past the gates of Raul’s compound. Geoff told Steve he knew the man had money on his boat without telling about Carly or how Raul had burned him.

Back at the boat, they flipped through Steve’s charts and Geoff pointed out the approximate location of Raul’s mansion before they put the boat in and powered off in search of Raul’s yacht. They found it quickly, the only boat in the mouth of a small cove.

“Take the wheel,” Steve said, circling the location on the chart and noting a red nun buoy nearby. He saved the position on the GPS. “Okay, it’ll be easy to get back here at night.” He took out a pair of binoculars and looked at the yacht. “It’s a big Donzi, about fifty feet.
White Angel.”
He put the binoculars down and turned casually to Geoff. “There’s a couple of guys in a Mako, looking my way. Just stay where you are and I’ll be blocking you from view.”

Geoff opened the throttles up and the twin outboards made the boat fly.

“What’s your plan?” Steve asked.

“Don’t worry about me. All you’ve got to do is drop me on the boat, get me into the cockpit there. Then give me some covering fire—you’ll have your friend’s rifle—while I go down for the money. And then you’ve got to get me off. Simple.”

Steve snorted. “Have you ever done something like this?”

Geoff looked at him blandly. “I’ve been doing all sorts of new things. I’m good on my feet.” He sawed the wheel back and forth, making the boat throw up huge sheets of water. “Sucker handles. You do good solid work.”

“Yes, I do. And if I learned anything along the way it’s that nothing is as simple as it sounds. And that plan of yours doesn’t sound simple.”