Off the Chart (22 page)

“I'll get my things,” she said, and walked past Marty out the door.

When she was gone, Vic pushed a sheaf of papers across the desk.

“Forget it. I'm not signing anything without proof she's safe.”

“You sign the papers, you get your proof. That sweet little girl is fine for the moment, but there's no way to know how long she can hold out in her present predicament. You don't want that on your pious conscience, do you, Thorn? The blood and guts of an innocent child?”

Vic took a fountain pen off his desk and uncapped it and was still focused on slipping the cap onto the butt when Thorn made it around the desk.

Not in the script, not even close. But the surge of anger blindsided him and he seized Vic's ears and hammered the man's head back against his mother's silly painting. Once, twice, ripping the canvas, opening a gash halfway across that sandy beach.

Vic managed to twist his head a few degrees to the side and saw the damage and it sent a groaning shudder through his body. He snarled a curse and Thorn felt the fountain pen gouge through his shirt and into his belly and then a second stab, settling deep in the soft tissue lower down.

Thorn slammed a forearm into Vic's left temple and was drawing back for another when Marty Messina grabbed him by the arm and slung him backward across the room into the shelves of books. All that prison muscle finally paying off. Books tumbled down across Thorn's shoulders.

The pen was only buried a half-inch, but it was a half-inch of solid pain. Thorn pushed himself away from the shelves and gripped the pen and wrenched it free, threw it on the rug. Vic was touching the ragged seam in his painting, muttering to himself while Marty stood in the center of the room in a wrestler's crouch, daring Thorn to make another move.

“You're fucked, Thorn,” Marty said.

“Tell me about it.”

He backed out of the room and onto the landing. One of the female servants was coming through the front door. She halted, stared at the blood drenching the waist of his shorts, and dropped the stack of mail in her hand.

Thorn hauled himself upstairs, leaving splatters and smeared footprints on the white maple steps.

As he made it to the top step, Anne was coming out of her room.

“Christ, Thorn. What the hell is this?”

“Pen's mightier than the sword.”

Anne looped an arm through his and towed him into her room, shut the door, and turned the lock. She laid him on her bed and undid his belt and drew aside his shirt. As she drew open his clothes, her eyes seemed to soften, as though she were drifting along with him back to that other time. The loosening of underclothes, the tugging of elastic bands and silk, the urgency to expose and be exposed.

Anne Bonny went into the bathroom and ran the water and brought back a warm washcloth and dabbed at the first puncture. Then she had to roll down the elastic band of his Jockey shorts to get at the lower one. His penis partly revealed, though some of it still hidden by her guarded handling.

“Bleeding's slowing down,” she said. She kept the washcloth pressed hard to the wound. “They don't look that bad.”

“I'll take your word for it.”

“What happened?”

“I lost my cool.”

“Easy to do with Vic. He feasts on that, provoke and conquer.”

“Tore a little gash in that painting your mother drew.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Anything but that.”

She went back to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and retrieved a bottle of peroxide and some small Band-Aids. She sat down again on the edge of the bed, cleaned the wounds, and crisscrossed them with bandages.

When she was done, the throb had eased. With her free hand caressing his chest, his senses were scattered, hard to focus on the ache. A warmth rising in him as he looked up into the shadowy heat of her eyes.

“Old times,” he said.

She nodded. Eyes turning inward for a long moment. Then coming back to his, her mouth crinkling into a restrained smile.

“We were good,” she said. “In a lot of ways.”

“Yeah,” Thorn said. “The physical part, that was special.”

“Takes more than that for things to work.”

“I know,” he said. “But we handled that part well.”

“We did. Damn well.”

She used the washcloth to wipe away the smears of blood on his ribs and at the narrowing of his waist and then scrubbed at the bloody tufts of pubic hair.

“Everything's a trade-off, isn't it?” she said. “No way to have it all in one neat package.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But some packages are neater than others.”

Thorn closed his eyes and fixed his mind on the receding pain. He was here with her, behind a locked door with Marty Messina fully aware of his presence. He was satisfying Jimmy Lee Webster's assignment better than he would have imagined. No further action required. The appearance of intimacy. Tweaking Marty's suspicions. If Webster's theory was correct, then Thorn had accomplished all he needed to do to bring Daniel Salbone out of hiding. He could simply shut down, lie still, wait for half an hour, and walk away from that house forever, having done all he could do to get Janey back.

So it startled him to see his own hand rising like a draft of smoke to graze her cheek, to cup that fine-boned face, hold it in his palm for several seconds while they searched each other's eyes, and then his hand eased her head down slowly without resistance on her part. Until her eyes closed and an involuntary moan escaped her throat and her lips parted to join his, eager and pliable, that blend of force and gentleness that had marked their kissing from the very start.

As the heat deepened and spread through his chest and the kiss grew more serious and probing, some circuit tripped in his libido and Thorn simply shut down.

With the hand cupping her cheek, he exerted the slightest pressure on her jaw and edged her away.

The question was in her eyes. Thorn drew a deep breath and studied her lips and eyes and the taut coppery skin. An exotic beauty who
stirred him still, in fact, even more, now that he understood something of the horrors she'd been struggling to free herself from.

“What is it?” she said.

Thorn considered it for a moment, breathing her breath, her foreign scent that was still so familiar, so richly seasoned with memories.

“I can't,” he said. “There's other people now.”

“Other people?”

“Yes.”

It was more than he could explain. For it wasn't Alexandra alone, though she was most of it. There was also Lawton and Sugarman and Janey, too. There was even the damn dog.

It had been so long since he'd been a part of a family, he'd forgotten the sensation, the sense of duty and mutual respect—those deeper pleasures than simple self-indulgence.

Anne Bonny drew back and settled herself upright on the bed beside him.

“It's always something.” No bitterness, just a faint trace of regret.

“Yeah,” Thorn said. “Always something.”

She lay down beside him.

“Is this all right?” she asked as she nudged closer.

Thorn swallowed. Over it now, though the heat of the kiss still lingered.

“Sure,” he said. “Sure.”

And they huddled close, her head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder, Thorn closing his eyes, willing himself to relax, following his breath in and out until it slowed, until finally he drifted off into a restless, guilty nap.

 

Maybe it was an hour later, maybe more, when he felt himself rising through the smoky layers of dream, feeling hands fumble at his opened clothes, tug his crotch, careful fingers working to separate his parts. In that slow, groggy resurfacing, he was aware of the heat and tightening in his penis, and he groaned and reached down to nudge Anne's fingers away and felt instead the sudden cold sting of steel against his scrotum and a strong and hairy hand holding him firm.

He tensed and came instantly awake. And looked down to see Vic
Joy perched on the edge of the bed. A hunting knife in one hand, Thorn's balls gripped in the other. The blade of the knife was touching the tender wrinkled skin at the base of the sack.

Anne sat up beside him.

“Vic!”

“Tell him, Annie. Tell him how hard our mother worked on that goddamn painting. What it meant to her. How much of her heart is in those trees and sand and water.”

“Put the knife down, Vic. Put it down.” Annie rose from the bed and raked a strand of hair from her face.

Thorn swallowed and strained to stay still.

Vic said, “Some men would be squeamish to touch another man's genitals. But not me. When I was a boy I castrated hogs. Tell him, Annie. Tell him about the hogs and that stray dog that kept coming into our yard bothering us. Tell him about the animals from the woods. Tell him, so he'll know.”

“Vic, you can't do this. It's not right.”

“A man comes into my house and mocks me, he tears a gash in my birthright. Tell him about the Woodsons. Tell him about the collection you saw.”

She went slowly around the end of the bed. Quiet footfalls as if to keep from waking a sleeper.

“You're not such a cocky bastard now, are you? Where's the smart mouth, asshole? Come on, say something clever.”

Vic tightened his hold and adjusted the blade so a half-inch thrust would do the job. Thorn closed his eyes, holding back the howl that was storming in his chest. Lights flickered behind his eyes as Vic twisted his grip a half-turn.

“I've held bigger balls,” Vic said. “And I've cut them loose.”

Anne stood beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder and Vic looked up at her, but his grip did not relax a fraction.

“There's Woodsons who've done less to piss me off than this man has, and those boys are walking around without their sex.”

“I know,” she said. “Thorn was wrong to do what he did. But listen, Vic: Our mother, she wouldn't want this. She wouldn't want you to cut a man like this, not in her own house, her sanctuary. There was never violence, Vic, not at home.”

Vic's eyes were glassy and vague as he looked up at his sister. Years melting away, his features smoothing.

“Mother's dead and gone. She's not here to speak for herself.”

“Vic,” Anne said. “Give me the knife. Give it to me.”

“She'd forgive me, no matter what I did. She'd find it in her heart. She always forgave me. That woman was a fucking saint.”

Anne reached down and touched the back of his knife hand, and the contact registered with a keen bite against Thorn's flesh.

“Give it to me, Vic. It's going to be all right. We'll get the painting repaired. Anything can be fixed, Vic. You know that. It can be patched as good as new. Right?”

“I'm going to kill this fucker. It'll never be the way it was. Never.”

“You need him alive, Vic. You need him to sign the papers for his land.”

“I can forge his goddamn signature. I got people working for me that'll take care of it. Fuck him.”

“You need him alive, Vic. Don't you? Think about it.”

Thorn could feel Vic's grip relax by some tiny measure.

“All right,” he said. “For you. All right.”

Vic was still looking at his sister as she pried the knife from his hand. Then she took it across the room and set it on the dresser. Vic released Thorn's scrotum and stood up and rubbed his palms hard against his pants. His face was a ghastly gray and his mouth quivered like a child about to break into a wail.

“Okay,” he said. “Now get the fuck out of my sight, the both of you. When you decide you want that little girl to live, then you come back here ready to sign those papers. But believe me, Thorn, the next time I see you, you better be down on your motherfucking knees.”

Drenched in sweat from the two long hikes across the parking lot to his car, Sugarman slammed the back door of his old Ford and turned and trotted back for the third and what he hoped was the final trip to the checkout desk of the Key Largo Library.

But as he approached the desk, just as Jill and he had feared, the head librarian, Ruth Mercer, materialized from her office to see who this man was who was raiding their natural history section.

“It's a project I'm working on,” Sugarman told her as he began to pile the remaining books into his arms.

“We have checkout limits, Mr. Sugarman. Didn't Jill tell you?”

“I waived the limits, Ruth,” Jill Johnson said. “It's a very important case.”

“A detective case, I suppose?”

“That's right,” Sugar said, and added two more to the pile that was propped against his chest and came nearly to his chin.

Ruth Mercer brought her glasses down from her hair and locked
them into place against her nose and studied the titles of his books, then shook her head.

Jill came around from behind the desk and said, “It's about what happened on the yacht. Andrew Markham, the transmigration man.”

“I see,” the librarian said. “So on that basis you waived our ten-book limit?”

“I'll have them back by the end of the week.”

“Why don't you just back your car up to the front door, Mr. Sugarman, bring your wheelbarrow in, and help yourself?”

“Oh, Ruth, really. Some of these books haven't been checked out in years.”

Sugarman settled the final one under his chin and turned and headed for the door. Ruth Mercer shadowed him across the library.

“All right,” she said. “But never again. Ten is the limit. Is that clear?”

“Clear,” Sugar said.

She sighed and turned and marched back to her forlorn station in the rear of that big quiet room.

 

Sitting in his car in the Kmart parking lot, Sugar used his cell phone to call Jackson Means. He got lucky and found him home on Saturday afternoon, watching what sounded like a baseball game. Probably tilted back in his lounge chair with a beer and chips. Wife and three kids off somewhere.

Sugar got the preliminaries out of the way in five seconds, explained what he needed to know, and answered Jackson's question with, “Because you're the only guy I know in telecommunications.”

“Christ, I'm a lineman, Sugar. I climb the poles. If you want to give that a bunch of syllables, okay. But basically I'm an electrician.”

“But you know somebody I can call.”

He thought about it while baseball fans cheered in the background. Not a home run, but more than a single.

“Claudia Shelley.” His voice was strained. “She's up in Miami, used to be a district manager for BellSouth security operations. Now she's gone private. Try her.”

“Use your name?”

“I don't know,” Jackson said. Then quiet for a long moment. “We had a thing, but it was a while ago. She might remember. I'd be interested to know if she does.”

From memory Jackson gave him the woman's home number and Sugar thanked him and hung up and called and a woman snapped it up on the second ring with a curt, “What is it?”

Music in the background. Classical piano.

Sugarman watched a family he knew coming out of the Kmart with arms full of shopping bags, two young boys. The father nodded at Sugar. Five or six years back the guy had spent six months in jail for blacking both his wife's eyes, knocking out two front teeth. Sugar had put him there. Things looked okay now, but you never knew.

“Claudia Shelley?”

“If this is a sales call, I don't take them at home.”

Tough voice. A woman doing work on the weekend, don't bother.

“My little girl's been kidnapped.” Then in a rush he explained the situation. Video camera, satellite phone. A jungle maybe a thousand miles away. He wanted to do a call trace. How hard was it?

Claudia paused, turned down the piano music, came back, and said, “Do I know you?”

Sugarman gave her Jackson's name and she was silent.

“Look, this is urgent,” Sugar said. “I've got to know if this can be done. Technically, I mean. First if it's possible, and if it is, who to call. I thought it'd be quicker to talk to somebody in the private sector than go through cop channels. I used to be in law enforcement and I know things can get bogged down. Even emergencies.”

“Your daughter is kidnapped and you haven't notified the police?”

“It's complicated,” he said.

“Complicated?”

Sugarman was getting impatient, the woman wanting too much information, but he hit her with it anyway, to get her back on track, show her the seriousness.

“A branch of government might be involved in holding her.”

“Oh, come now. I very much doubt that, Mr. Sugarman.”

“Listen, Ms. Shelley, I just want some facts, if it can be done. Who to call.”

“This is not what I do, Mr. Sugarman. We're a security firm. We wire computer networks, build firewalls, write antivirus code.”

“I guess I was misinformed.”

A man dressed as a clown was standing outside of the Kmart handing out red balloons. Jingling a pot for donations.

Sugarman heard Claudia Shelley sigh. He was half a second from hanging up on her when she said, “Satellite phone transmissions are actually fairly easy to monitor, compared to wireless. Communications satellites track users' locations by tracing their SIM, their subscriber identity module, every time they turn on their phone.”

“So it can be done, it's easy.”

“Not so fast,” she said. “No satellite phone company is going to open up its accounts for a private citizen. They'll listen to law enforcement, consider requests, but unless they already have a working relationship with the FBI, they'll probably require a subpoena. So you need to get somebody official involved. And I can tell you firsthand, any federal help is going to be hard. Oversight on domestic telecom issues is with the FBI, and they have the equipment to triangulate cell phone towers and home in on a particular user.

“But if it's international then it becomes a CIA issue. Their intel people are set up to analyze, cross-reference, or listen to transmissions. They can access Echelon; it's a system nobody wants to talk about it, but it's there. A way of intercepting data or voice, tower to tower, microwave links, phone cables, Internet backbone networks. It's operated by the NSA. Spies, counterintelligence. Tracking drug guys and terrorists. Then they got black box data sifters they use to tap into e-mail, or video chats, like you're describing.”

“Listen, I'm sorry,” Sugarman said. “I don't really need an education on this, just yes or no, can it be done?”

“Like I said, yeah, it can be done, but only if you can clear the legal hurdles. And if the agency has the budgetary flexibility to work on a domestic abduction case. First you got to make your case, get somebody jazzed enough to take the time. But yeah, they can intercept satellite phone transmissions, pinpoint locations. Put a cruise missile on the goddamn spot if they want to.”

Sugarman was quiet, holding back the sudden swell of anger.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “That came out wrong.”

“It's okay.”

When she spoke again her voice had softened, but it was still a technical problem for her, not getting emotionally hooked.

“Do you play golf with a U.S. Senator by any chance?”

“Not lately.”

“Then it could take weeks,” she said. “That's been my experience, just to get in the front door.”

She paused, this time for several seconds. When she spoke again there was an undertone of sadness, but she was trying to hide it by shifting into professional mode.

“Your situation certainly warrants a strong, immediate response from the authorities, Mr. Sugarman. The proper action on your part is to call the local FBI and let them respond. But if it were my child, to be absolutely frank, and knowing what I do about the legal difficulties, I'd pursue other avenues. Pay the ransom, hire a private investigator. I could give you the names of people in the field.”

“I am one,” Sugarman said. “A private investigator.”

“You are?”

He said yes, yes, he was.

“Well, then there's your answer. Given our present geopolitical situation and the huge demands on tracking systems, call tracing on this level would require substantial influence. I doubt they'd pick it up as a priority, move it to the top of the stack.”

“They could do it, but they wouldn't, not for a little guy.”

“They couldn't refuse. You're a citizen; it's a serious crime. They'd put a man on it, maybe two. I'm sorry. That's just my opinion. You should go on, call the FBI field office, prove me wrong.”

One of the balloons had escaped the grasp of a young boy. It bobbled into the sky, then was scooped up by a current of air and sailed off to the west. The boy began to wail.

Sugarman thanked her for her time. She was quiet for a second, then in a different voice, her real one probably, she said, “Please tell Jackson hello for me. And that I'm sorry. He'll understand.”

 

One more quick call to Frank Sheffield at home. He came on with a brisk, “Okay, okay, I'm out the door.”

“Frank? Frank Sheffield?”

Sugar told him who it was, gave him the three-sentence version.

“That thing in Key Largo? The yacht with the con man psychic?”

“Right.”

“I thought everybody went overboard.”

“I've been talking to her, Frank. She's alive.”

Sheffield was quiet for so long, Sugarman was about to ask if he was still there when he said, “Look, I'm on my way out of town, Sugar. Got two weeks in Alaska with my fiancée and her son, combination cruise and fishing trip. Plane's leaving tonight at eight. We got to run around, do a few things before we go.”

Sugar said okay, he understood.

“You actually talked to her?”

“Video cam. I talked to her, saw her, too.”

“Goddamn.” Frank thought about it a minute, figuring. “She's going to call back when?”

“Six,” Sugar said. “That's what we agreed on.”

“Give me your address. I remember the mile marker but not the street.”

Sugarman gave him the address, a couple of landmarks on the highway.

“What about your cruise?”

“I'll be at your place at six, plenty of time to get back to MIA before the plane. Hannah will understand.”

“Maybe you should pass this on to somebody else,” Sugarman said. “You're in a hurry.”

“I got a kid in my group who's up on all the latest gizmos. I'll give him a call, see if he'll ride along. We'll take a look, see if there's something to do.”

“It's a satellite phone,” Sugar said. “It could be difficult.”

“Be there at six.” And he hung up.