In the Night Season (13 page)

“Henry?” she said.

And a man leaned into the open space to look back at her. He had a ruddy, round face, with very thin lips, and small flat ears. He was holding a pistol. “Could you come here please?” he said in a shaking voice.

“Henry?” Gwendolyn said.

“Please do what I told you, lady,” the man said.

She came toward him, slow, watching Henry. She thought of the young man who had asked to use the phone.

“Your friend is out there somewhere,” she said to him.

“No,” Henry said. “You don’t understand, Gwen.”

“I don’t have any friends out this way, ma’am.”

“This is the—the follower,” Henry said.

The man gestured with the pistol for her to move into the room, to Henry’s chair. She did so and put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “What do you want?” she said.

“Well,” he said. “I need to stay here a little while. Might need to look through some of your things. We’ll see.”

“Are we hostages?” Henry asked.

“I wouldn’t say that. I’m not all that sure myself.”

“Excuse me?”

He wiped his mouth with one hand. There was something almost childlike about it. “I got these friends—uh, associates. They’re in
Virginia with your daughter—” He paused, looking like someone trying to remember a name. “It’s eight-thirty in Virginia. So they’ve got her and the boy.”

“What is this?” Henry said.

“Uh—listen—listen and I’ll tell you. They assigned me to come out this way and keep an eye on you all. In case she causes them any trouble. There’s some business.”

“What in the world?” Henry said. He stood.

The other man aimed the pistol at him. “Could you please sit down, sir.”

“I will not.”

“I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I will if I have to.”

“You tell me what this is about,” Henry Spencer said. “Now.”

“Sir, if you don’t sit down, I’m going to have to shoot you.”

“Henry, for God’s sake sit down,” Gwendolyn said.

He did so. It was almost a collapse into the chair. She put her hand on his shoulder, felt the tremble there of what she knew was fury. She patted the shoulder twice and stepped forward. The man retreated a step. It was almost a faltering.

“What, exactly, do you want from us?” she said.

He gave forth a small laugh and seemed relieved. “I almost didn’t do it—when that big kid came to your door. He was scary. I thought he was something I hadn’t counted on. Well, he was, of course. You try to cover all the bases, you know.”

“What do you want?” Gwendolyn said. “Please.”

He took a breath. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. Okay? There’s no need for anybody to get hurt.”

“Do you want money?”

“You bet,” he said, almost laughing. “Tons of it. All there is.”

“We don’t have money.”

Henry stood suddenly. “You punk. If you do anything to hurt my daughter I’ll kill you—”

The stranger held the pistol toward Henry, shaking slightly, but talking: “I don’t want to, I swear, but if I have to I’m gonna blow your brains all over that wall.”

“Henry, please,” Gwendolyn said.

Henry was still standing, half-crouched, as though he might make a rush at the other.

“I mean it. Lady, you tell him I mean it.”

“Henry.” She took his arm and pulled him toward her. “Let’s just use our heads here.”

“You tell me what’s going on—”

“You just better be quiet, man. I mean it.”

Henry straightened. “How much do you want? How much?”

“I don’t want your money. I want you to sit still and I won’t touch a thing of yours if I don’t have to, or hurt you in any way. And nobody you know will get hurt either. Okay? I just need you to sit down, sir. For now. Please sit down.”

“Henry.”

He sat back down slowly.

“That’s better.”

“Now,” Gwendolyn said. “Will you please explain?”

“Well, no,” he said. “We just have to wait a while.”

“You said friends of yours are with our daughter?”

“It’s only until they get something she has. Or find out where it is.”

“Where what is?”

“Has she sent you all any packages in the last year?”

“Of course she has,” Gwendolyn said. “This is a family.”

“What was in the packages?” He looked from one to the other of them, brandishing the gun. Something had excited him.

“What is it that they want from her?” Henry said.

“Tell me what she sent you.”

“A shirt for Henry,” Gwendolyn told him. “Some music for me. A few books.”

“Look, what is this about?” Henry asked him.

The stranger seemed incredulous. “Money,” he said.

A
GRAY SLOW STILLNESS HAD SETTLED
over everything.

Nora lay on her side in the pile of newspapers and rags. Her hands tingled badly from lack of circulation, and her back felt as if the bones had come loose in her spine. She looked at what she could see of the room—empty walls, curtainless windows with the manufacturer’s stamp still on them. This was a new building. One of Jack’s unfinished sites? She was fairly certain that they had driven only a few miles from the house. There was something about the number of turns they had taken, as if the men were driving around to confuse her. The room smelled of plaster and, oddly, of garlic. She remained silent, watching the incremental arrival of light at the window. Across from her, Jason’s face was twisted into a grimace of pain. Finally he opened his eyes. He seemed startled to find himself tied and then the clarity of his memory came back to him; she saw it in his eyes. “Mom?”

“Shhh.”

Below them, there was movement. A car pulled up outside, a small-sounding motor. She heard the door and then slow footsteps.

“Help!” she yelled. “Up here!”

Someone started up the stairs. A head became visible at the level of the floor. Neither Travis nor the fat man, but someone else. She saw dark, arched brows, a heavy sensual mouth, flaring nostrils. The hair was parted in the middle and combed carefully back on either side of the head. It was an oddly familiar face. She had a moment of feeling as though she knew it, had seen it before.

“Help us,” she said. “Please!”

“Morning, lady and gentleman. It’s almost five o’clock
A.M.
DO you know where your abductors are?” He laughed at his own joke.

Nora said, “What do you want with us?” Then: “Let my son go.”

“Can’t do that, I’m afraid.” He smiled. He had an accent that Nora couldn’t quite place. “No one is up here with you?”

She said, “What do you people want from me?”

“You were alone here for a while. Did you know that? You might’ve escaped, and then where would we be?”

“Are you the Virginia Front?” she said.

“Perhaps when Travis and his amazingly stupid brother return, they’ll be able to tell me what you’re talking about.”

She thought about the brothers. Something must have shown in her features.

“That’s correct,” the stranger said. “Brothers.”

She was silent. German? Swedish? She had seen him before.

“Well, this will all be over before very long.”

“Look,” she said. “We don’t have anything. We don’t have any money. You understand? My husband died and left us with nothing.”

He smiled, then dipped slowly below the level of the floor.

“Untie us,” Nora shouted. “You goddam fucking son of a bitch!”

Silence.

She looked over at Jason. “I’m sorry, honey.”

He said nothing. The muscles of his face pulled down.

Perhaps an hour later—it could have been less, or more, they had no way of knowing; it felt like a long time—they heard another car, her car, she could tell by the tapping of the rocker arms, the sound it made when it needed oil. Again there were the voices downstairs, another argument, this time in much quieter tones. After another
wait (fifteen minutes?), she heard them coming up. First was the one who called himself Travis. He walked over and stooped down to look into her face. “That’s got to be uncomfortable,” he said to her.

“Please,” she said. “Can’t you understand? You’ve got the wrong people.”

“I’m gonna untie you now,” Travis said. “Okay?” He did so. She came to a sitting position painfully, slowly, almost crying out from the stiffness in her arms and back and the cramps in her legs. Travis had moved to untie Jason’s ankles, but he left the hands tied. Nora saw this, and she and the boy exchanged a look. Jason had come to his knees and remained there.

“Okay,” the man with the accent said. “Let’s introduce ourselves, hmm? I’ll go first, since I’m the teacher.”

Nora noticed that the fat one stood in a corner of the room, looking at the others with a sulking frown, chewing the fingernails of one stubby hand.

“Untie my son,” she said.

“Don’t interrupt,” said the one with the accent. “It’s time for our little lecture.”

“If you don’t untie my son you’ll get no cooperation from me.”

“Cooperation.” He walked to the other side of the room and turned. “What a wonderful word.” He paused and stared at the fat man, then shook his head, coming back a little.

Nora stood and held her hands across her body.

“We’re going to be very disciplined from now on, hmm?” His face was impassive. “Let’s be calm, please.”

She tried to think where she had seen the face.

“Our friend Travis here has explained to me the significance of the so-called Virginia Front. I’m afraid we can’t take credit for such a fine organization; perhaps we’ll be able to use them to our advantage.” He paused. Apparently, he was pleased with himself. “Now. A little history. If you’ll pay attention, perhaps you’ll learn the answer to all your questions.”

“You’ve made a mistake,” Nora told him.

He seemed to consider this, then nodded, moving to one side a step and then coming back. He had a slight smile at the corners of
his mouth. “It seems that once there was a man who ran his own business for himself and his family, hmm? A contracting business, with a little computer wholesaling on the side.”

She felt the chill rising at the back of her neck.

“Well, for one reason or another, this man ran into some financial difficulty. He couldn’t pay his bills. So, like a lot of people in similar circumstances he borrowed money to pay them, hoping things would get better. But things got worse, and there were more bills to pay, and he couldn’t borrow any more money. No one would lend him any more money. Do you see the situation he was in?”

“Will you please untie my son and let him go?”

The man with the accent walked toward her. He paused a few seconds, then said, “You’re trying to decide where you’ve seen me.”

She waited.

“You’ve seen me—” he paused. “On a street corner.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. She was speaking to all of them.

“You’ve seen me when you walked from your little car into the nuns, or perhaps in the grocery store, or crossing the parking lot where your son goes to school.” He held his arms out, as if he expected her to walk into them. “It’s me,” he said, with a scary kind of glee. “The devil.” Then he reached into his pocket and brought out a small snuffbox, opened it, took some of the powder there and licked it from his finger. He put the snuffbox back. “It was me walking by you in the street.”

“Please,” she said.

“I’ve been watching you for some time now.”

She could only repeat, in an exhausted murmur, “If my husband borrowed something from you, I’m sorry.”

“He didn’t borrow from us.”

She waited.

“There’s another matter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nora said.

He put one finger to his lips. “Shhh.”

She heard the fat man’s ugly laugh.

The one with the accent continued, addressing her in that soft
voice. “Shall I tell you what will happen if I don’t get cooperation? Hmm? Shall I?”

She said nothing, but held her ground, looking straight back at him. In an absurd little turn of her mind she noted that he was almost exactly her height. She had a brief image of herself trying to describe this to someone else. A policeman.

“Yes, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Let’s see, what was it? Oh, yes.” He walked casually across the room and stood over Jason, smiling back at her. Then he reached into his coat pocket and brought out a revolver and held the barrel of it against the boy’s temple.

Nora screamed.

He stood back, then put the gun in his coat again.

“Oh, Christ,” Nora said, crying. “Please, no. Please.”

“Shall I finish with the little history lecture?”

She stood there.

“Travis, give the woman her dress.”

Travis went out and was on the stairs.

“Shall I continue?”

She nodded, crying. She was only faintly aware that she had responded at all.

“Well, this—as I was saying—this businessman was in a lot of trouble, and as luck would have it, he happened to run into an old acquaintance—someone he knew in the army, you see. All those years ago. And this friend is—shall we say this acquaintance—this acquaintance was in business for himself, of a slightly less than legal nature. Are you listening?”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with my son and me.”

“Ah—but, now, let me finish.”

“No,” she said. “You let
me
finish. My husband never arranged with anybody to harm my son or me. That pig over there—” She shuddered. “Your pig—that slab of—filth—” She couldn’t finish.

The man turned and observed Bags for a moment. “Yes, Billy—or Bags, as we call him. Well, Bags is just a picture of human possibility, isn’t he? I confiscated his weapon this morning, because of a little matter of some cows he felt like slaughtering. Did he rape you?”

A sound came from Jason’s throat.

“No,” Nora said. “He—he put his hands on me.”

“Sorry for the bluntness of the question.”

“Just keep him away from us.”

Travis had come back up the stairs, and he handed the dress to her. She stepped into it and then couldn’t reach the zipper. Yesterday morning, putting it on, she had called to Jason, who had come from his room to zip her up. As he did so, she’d had an unwelcome memory of Jack, pausing as he performed this small courtesy, to kiss the nape of her neck.

“Let me,” Travis said.

“Get away from me,” she said. She got it halfway, reached over her shoulder and finished the job, then stood with her back to the wall again.

“So,” the man with the accent said. “As I was saying. It just so happens that these two old acquaintances agree to take part in a little scheme. A scheme that promises to bring them both a great deal of money. Almost two million dollars, hmm? They agree, they establish contact with other parties, you see. And they make a deal. They take possession of some—well, let us call it merchandise. It’s portable, this kind of merchandise, it’s small. Valuable—oh, very valuable—and it’s untraceable. As yet. Which, of course should make it relatively easy to—well, shall we say, resell?”

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“Maybe she’s not in on it, Reuther.”

The one called Reuther spoke calmly. “Please refrain from speaking, Travis.”

“I don’t think they know a fucking thing,” said the fat man.

Reuther crossed the room again, stood before the fat man, then came back, shaking his head. The fat man’s eyes were full of hatred, staring from his corner. Nora saw this and felt herself marking it inwardly as something she might use later. Reuther turned and indicated him. “It seems I hurt poor Bags’s feelings this morning. Poor boy doesn’t like being disciplined.” He looked back at him. “Stay there until I tell you to come out.”

“You don’t tell me,” Bags said, stepping out of the corner.

“Bags,” said Travis. “Cool it.”

The fat man moved back to the other side of the room, sulking.

Reuther moved to the boy’s side. “Everyone calm down,” he said. He leaned down to gaze at Jason, then straightened and paced the room again. “What’s next in this little lecture is really quite inspiring. It seems that the businessman, the one in all the financial trouble—let us call him Mr. Citizen—it seems that Mr. Citizen starts feeling bad about his new business partners, and as the merchandise comes to him, he puts it in a safe place. His business partners—some of them—are a little stupid and disorganized, and they get in trouble for something else. All of this happens while the man responsible for bringing the—the merchandise—the one who arranged to have it brought into the country…let us say this person is in Europe, working to provide ways of shipping even more of the merchandise. And let us say that things are somewhat in flux—because interested parties have begun to bid for this particular merchandise. Two different groups with lots of money. But the fact is that the people who manufacture the merchandise are already making even newer and different merchandise, merchandise that will become available for sale very soon now and will seriously devalue the merchandise in hand, shall we say. And they’re also finding ways to increase security—it’s a matter of time before they develop a way of labeling the newer merchandise, which will make it identifiable and traceable. And so what does he have to do? This person? He has to stop everything and make plans to come to the States and straighten things out, because the merchandise is changing, hmm? And because the companies that make the merchandise are acting to make it harder to resell, this creates a situation where the merchandise already stolen—er, procured—is even now almost a third less valuable than it was at the beginning. But just as the details might be worked out for a quick sale in the United States, the one who is in possession of the merchandise meets with an unfortunate accident.” Reuther stopped in front of Nora and put his hands on his hips, waiting.

“You’re talking about my husband.”

“What do they say here in the States? Bingo.”

“There’s some mistake.”

He kept smiling at her.

“I mean it. I don’t. We—Jack and I—” She glanced at Jason. “We—we weren’t very close the—the last year.” Jason’s face showed nothing.

Reuther turned to Travis with a pleased expression, as if he had accomplished something. “She is a very smart lady.” He waited a moment, studying her. “Well, everything’s been complicated a little by our stupid friend in the corner.”

“Travis, are you gonna let him talk to me like that—”

“Shut up, Billy,” Travis said.

Reuther had not taken his eyes from Nora. “There is one slight advantage gained by what’s happened,” he said. “Fatso there made a problem for us with your neighbor. I’m sure there will be police all over that house very soon. The business, shall we say, of the neighbor is a problem we’ll have to contend with. But the fact of it can be useful, hmm? Because now you know what we’re capable of. So perhaps you can save us some trouble by telling us right now where they are.”