Taken (13 page)

“D
on’t get your hopes up,” Shane warns me, shortly after Vargas leaves the room, supposedly to find a “secure location” for his phone call.

“He said he might have something for us,” I remind him. “That was her on the line, wasn’t it?”

Shane shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. He could be messing with us, Mrs. Bickford.”

“But we give him the full five minutes.”

“Sure,” Shane says. “Why not?”

He leans back in the chair, staring at his hands.

“Can I ask you a question?” I say, before he zones out to wherever it is he goes.

“Go ahead.”

“You really carrying a gun?”

He shakes his head. “Were you really going to poke his eyes out?”

“If I thought it would work,” I tell him.

Shane smiles. “You’re a peach, Mrs. Bickford.”

I don’t feel like a peach. I feel like the top of my head is going to spin off. Skin clammy, mouth dry with anticipation. This could be it. A connection to Tommy. Somewhere to start. My rational self knows that Shane is right, I shouldn’t get my hopes up. But my hopes are already up there, Everest high, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Tommy. Have they hurt him? What’s he thinking, what’s he feeling at this precise moment? Can he sense that I’m reaching out to him with every ounce of my being?

The idea of what my son must be going through makes me ache so deeply that I feel capable of making any sacrifice that might lead to his return. Scratch out an attorney’s eyes, throw myself in front of a bus, anything. The chaos of emotions makes me so dizzy that it’s just as well I’m sitting down.

If Shane senses what I’m enduring, he gives no sign of it, and resumes staring at his hands. Not with me, here in this fetid little room, but elsewhere. Planet Shane, where no one sleeps, and dreams come to the wide-awake.

He’s zoning out. Meanwhile I’m fretting, checking my watch every thirty seconds. Thinking it all comes down to this, a crucial phone call. A name. Something to work with. A place to start.

After a century or so, five minutes have passed.

“Shane?”

His tall, rangy body shudders slightly as he awakens from his trance. Blinks his eyes, clears his throat, checks his own watch. “Right. Wait here, I’ll check on Rico.”

“No way. I’m coming with you.”

“Suit yourself. But I expect he’s pulled a Copperfield, made himself vanish.”

The dingy hallways are empty, which seems odd, considering that this is a very busy, vital part of the borough. Even the cheesiest real estate must be expensive, or as Connie likes to say, even the low-end is high-end. But we appear to have the place to ourselves. No sign of Vargas, no sign of anybody.

Shane strides purposefully along, methodically trying doors, finding all of them locked. Nothing furtive about his actions, either. He behaves as if he has a perfect right to try doors, as if he’s been poking into places much like this his whole life and pretty much knows what to expect. Which, in turn, gives me confidence that I’ve latched on to the right person, the man who can help me find my son.

“I’m thinking our new pal Rico has access to another one of these rooms,” he explains. “One for interviewing clients, another for the private stuff. Calling his bookie, checking in with his parole officer or whatever.”

“Parole officer?” I respond, startled. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m kidding. Savalo checked him out for us. Enrico Vargas is a member in good standing of the New York State Bar. But I also made a few inquiries of my own, from different sources. Word is that Vargas has an unsavory reputation for getting deep into the pockets of his lowlife clients. Suspected of passing on jailhouse instructions to criminal enterprises, possible money laundering, and so on. Most of his paying clients are midlevel drug dealers.”

“You think he’s personally involved? That he already knows where they’ve got Tommy?”

“Nah,” says Shane, rattling doorknobs. “I think he’s being played. And I think he’s worried, which should be in our favor. Assuming we can locate the son of a bitch.”

The last door in the hallway is labeled Restroom in both English and Spanish, and there’s no need to rattle the lock because the door is propped open with a wastebasket.

“Must be unisex, huh?” Shane wants to know. “As well as bilingual.”

“I guess.”

“So it doesn’t matter who looks inside.”

“I’ll do it.”

“No, no,” says Shane. “I’m the designated bathroom-looker.”

He shoves aside the waste can and steps inside, letting the door shut behind him. A moment later a muffled curse erupts and I decide to follow him inside.

The bathroom has one plywood stall, well inscribed with graffiti, and a single urinal bolted to the wall. There must be a sink, too, but at the moment I don’t notice one because Enrico Vargas is giving me the evil eye. The pupil of one of his handsome brown eyes is hugely dilated, and somehow fierce, while the other eye appears disinterested. He sits on the floor with his back against the wall, seriously endangering the seat and cuffs of his well-tailored suit. His mouth is open, as if he’s about to say something but can’t quite think of the word.

Before he can speak a tiny drop of blood exits his left nostril and lands,
plink!,
on his crisply pressed shirt collar, and that’s when I know he’ll never think of the word, or anything at all, ever again.

Shane crouches, getting a better angle but keeping physically clear of the body. “I’ll be damned. You can barely see it at the back of his neck, under all that hair. An ice-pick handle.”

On TV when people come unexpectedly upon a corpse they always seem to throw up. Even TV cops start gagging. But I feel nothing. Nothing in the form of a great, flat numbness, as if my whole body has been injected with Novocaine. Plus, I’m really, really angry at Rico for screwing up. He was going to be my connection, the facilitator of my own personal mother-and-child reunion.

Next thing I know Shane has me around the shoulders and he’s making me face the other wall so I can’t see the dead lawyer and his stupid evil eye, the pupil dilated by an ice pick inserted deep into his brain.

“We have to move fast, so I want you to concentrate and listen to me, okay, Mrs. Bickford?”

“Call me Kate, please.” Now I’m feeling giddy, which is totally inappropriate. What have I got to feel giddy about?

“Huh? Okay, fine. Kate. Kate, you’re going to go down the stairs and out the door and turn left. Go to the end of the block and you’ll see the garage where we parked. Get the rental car and leave the area. Don’t even think about what happened here because you were never here, you never met Rico Vargas.”

“I never met him. Okay.”

“You drove me into the city, dropped me off at a subway stop, and then you drove home.”

“I drove home?” I ask. The numbness makes everything he says seem slightly silly.

“You will. You’ll drive back to Fairfax. Go to the motel and wait for a call, either from me or Maria Savalo. You got that, Mrs. Bickford? Kate?”

“You want me to go back to the motel.”

“Right now. The cops are probably already on the way. You can’t be here.”

“What about you?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Bickford. Leave. Right now. Don’t look back.”

“He doesn’t look dead, does he?” I say. “Except for the funny eye.”

Shane gently but firmly pushes me out the door and guides me to the stairwell.

“We killed him, didn’t we?” I ask. “By coming here, asking him questions?”

Shane shakes his head. His manner is firm, unwavering. “Poor Rico was dead before we got here,” he says. “He just didn’t know it.”

N
ormally, I’m one of those people who can always recall where the car is parked. Normally, I’m focused, oriented. But normal left my world the minute Tommy vanished, and for the life of me I can’t remember where I parked the rental, or even what it looks like, exactly. Ford Taurus, okay, Ford Taurus very reliable, but what color? Silver? Gray? I wasn’t really paying attention when the kid handed me the keys. And I’d been following Shane when we exited the garage, keeping up with his long strides, concentrating on how we’d handle the lawyer.

Right. Handle him to death.

Stairs. I recall coming down a flight of stairs.
Concentrate, Kate, this couldn’t be more important. You need to get out of here before the police arrive. Failure is not an option. Failure means getting locked up, ending any chance of finding Tommy before the unthinkable happens.

Concentrate. You’re getting out of the car, leaving the garage. What do you see?

Right, you came down a flight of stairs. You parked on the first level above the ground. And the rental car is no more than fifty feet from the exit door, you can see it in your mind now, you can retrace the path. Find the car, you’ll be gone in five minutes. Less if you run.

I run up the concrete stairs, burst through the door, lungs heaving, and find myself in the murky half light of the garage. Take just a moment for my eyes to adjust, and then I’m off. Keys in hand, I hit the button and hear the rental car honk, the lights flash, and a spasm of relief floods my body.

I’m almost at the car, hand outstretched for the handle, when a movement catches my attention.

I’m not alone. At the other end of the garage, ten rows away, a man is hurrying for his vehicle as I am hurrying for mine. Can’t make out his face or any individual features in the perpetual twilight, but there’s something about the way he moves. A kind of coiled, athletic grace. He’s got great posture and balance, an inner gyroscope that keeps him precisely vertical.

I know that walk. Saw it up close and personal.

“Hey!” I yell. “Hey!”

Of course I could be wrong. My mind playing tricks, turning every innocent pedestrian into the man in the mask. Not that this man is wearing a mask. A ball cap that casts a shadow over his face, but no mask.

Could be him.

“Stop!” I find myself screaming. “Wait!”

The figure turns, looks in my direction. Freezes for the time it takes my heart to clunk once, and then he slips away so swiftly it’s as if he’s not there.

Slipping like a furtive shadow between the rows of parked cars.

Two options. I can give chase on foot, or get into my car, lock the doors and attempt to follow him. Decide there’s no way to catch up to him on foot, and if I do, then what? Threaten to attack him with a letter opener no longer in my possession?

There’s a third possibility, much more likely. That yelling like an idiot has not only alerted him to my presence, but made me a target of opportunity. That he’s slipping through the shadows right now, heading my way.

Get in the car, Kate. Now
.

Inside the rental, I attempt to lock the doors with the switch and succeed in making the horn sound. Good move, let him know exactly where you are. Reaching over, I slam down all the locks and then the engine is running and I’m screeching backward out of the space, the wheel spinning in my hands.

Never burned rubber in my life. Always a first time. As I jam the brakes and force the transmission into drive, a big silver SUV fishtails around a corner and bears down on me like a fear-seeking missile.

No place to go. I’m unable to turn in any direction without putting myself directly in the approaching vehicle’s path. Backing up will only force me into a parking slot, pinned on both sides. I’m trapped, frozen like Bambi in the headlights.

As the SUV draws even, a strange thing happens. The tinted side window slides down. From the dark interior an arm slowly extends. For one horrifying instant it looks like the arm is holding a gun, cocking a trigger. Shooting me between the eyes. But the hand is empty, the barrel of the “gun” is an index finger firing icy slugs of terror into my brain.

The SUV glides away, accelerates around a corner, and is gone.

Total duration, no more than a few seconds on the clock. An eternity in my heart.

Cutter merges the stolen Explorer into the traffic on Queens Boulevard for a few blocks before finding his way to a less congested parallel street. If an alert goes out for a silver Ford Explorer, good luck, he’s counted ten similar vehicles in three blocks. Besides, any responding cops are likely to assume a fleeing perpetrator would use one of the Long Island expressways. Whereas he has an appointment in Manhattan and will proceed in that direction at a leisurely pace.

Tooling along with his left arm in the window, catching the summer air, he reflects upon his encounter with Mrs. Bickford. She had caught him by surprise. He’d not expected her back in the garage so soon, and certainly had not anticipated being recognized. What was it that gave him away? His profile? General size and weight? Something about the way he moved? Whatever, it hadn’t been his face. He’d never been unmasked in her presence, and she could no more have made out features than he could. Indeed, at first he hadn’t realized who was hailing him. Thought it might be a woman looking for help—dead battery or whatever. Not that he could have stopped to render assistance at that particular time.

’Scuse me, miss, I’d help you but I just killed a man and have to make a getaway.
Cutter smiles to himself. Amazing how effective an ice pick can be as a means of execution. Quiet and effective, but particularly useful when it comes to eliminating the splatter effect. Slice a target’s throat and you get covered with DNA markers. Whereas an ice pick to the brain stem is remarkably clean, if considerably more difficult to execute correctly. In that sense, mission accomplished. Not that Cutter had taken any pleasure or satisfaction in executing the lawyer. It was a thing that had to be done, to keep the plan on track. Vargas hadn’t known all that much, no more than a suspicion that the custody petition was somehow bogus, and the ability to identify Cutter by face, if not by name. That was enough to seal his fate. Mrs. Bickford’s actions simply made the inevitable happen sooner rather than later.

Good old Mom. Still in there swinging. In the end, all she’ll accomplish is digging herself deeper and deeper into his trap, until the authorities have no choice but to charge her, even if some of the planted evidence looks, well, planted. By then it will be too late—his mission will have been accomplished. Still, you have to admire her nerve. First thing she does when she gets out of the clink is hire a freelance heavy to put the screws on witnesses. Tall, rangy-looking dude with a cool, confident way of moving that gives Cutter pause, but not so much that he’s prepared to alter his plan. No need at the moment. If they get close, ice picks are available at any hardware store. Not that he’ll need to make an additional purchase, since he already has another just like it in his possession.

Always be prepared—he learned that in Boy Scouts. Except he wasn’t prepared to silence Mrs. Bickford, not yet. Not while she’s useful. Tells himself there’s no sentimentality involved, it just makes sense to keep her front and center as a suspect. And yet, to be truthful, there’s something admirable about the woman. She’s braver than she thinks she is, frightened but still able to function, which is the battlefield definition of courage. Also, he’s grateful that she’s done such a fine job of keeping her adopted son in good health. Sickly boy would have been no use to him. Tomas will need his strength for what comes next.

We’ll all need our strength,
Cutter thinks.
Me, Lyla, the boy.
Very soon the next phase of the operation will be put into motion, and that’s when things are likely to get a little dicey, a little edgy. No way to predict exactly what will happen next. He does know the ultimate goal—it burns in his brain like a hot gold disk—but how exactly he’ll get there has yet to be determined. At this stage it’s crucial that he remain flexible, not get locked into any particular scenarios or details.

All of his training has taught him the importance of flexibility, of being able to think rationally in irrational, unthinkable situations. What he has in mind is not so far removed from war, after all. In a battle the only thing certain is uncertainty. You have to accept that—accept that things will change, that events may spiral out of control—and go with the flow, always keeping your goal in mind.

Cutter’s goal is simple enough. He wants his family back.

Considering what has transpired, the tragic events that have clouded poor Lyla’s already delicate mind, the task of reassembling his little family is more than merely daunting. Some might conclude it impossible. Not Cutter, though. He doesn’t know the meaning of impossible. He’s incapable of accepting defeat. He’ll win at all cost.

Hooah
and all that clichéd, chest-pounding shit. The point is, he’ll never give up.

That’s what Cutter learned in the Boy Scouts, and later in service to his country. No matter what crap the world heaps on you, never, ever give up.

That’s what he keeps telling himself now, in this desperate hour. And at the core, in the animal parts of his brain, in the marrow of his bones, in the muscles of his heart, he believes it.