“No, it’s some stupid 1920s type boopdy-do song. Listen.” She pressed the intercom: Five foot two, eyes of blue, boopdy boopdy-do, has anybody seen my gal? The line disconnected.
“I heard that song earlier and “She’s Not There,” but also that Hall and Oates song, “She’s Gone,” Donna said. “I think we should call the phone company.”
Jay walked out of his office and crossed the secretarial area on his way to Tony’s office.
“Hello ladies. Did the mail come yet? Is Tony free?”
“Jay, we are getting weird calls,” Donna said.
“ Weird? Define weird,” Jay said. “Breathy ones?”
Tony came out of his office. “Mail here yet?”
Jay looked up. “Looking for the contracts, too?”
Donna ignored their asides and said seriously, “We are getting weird calls. Probably about …Cresta, how many did you answer?”
“Seven. I kept track.”
Millie said, “I’ve answered at least five.”
Donna said, “I’ve answered seven also. They are tying up the lines.”
“What type of calls?” Tony asked.
The phone rang, Cresta answered, still on intercom, “Lockout Data Secu …”
Well, let me tell you ’bout the way she looks, the way she acts, and the color of her hair. Her voice is soft and light, her eyes are clear and bright, but she’s not there. …The connection went dead.
Donna said, “There’s three songs they play. “She’s Gone,” “She’s Not There,” and “Has Anybody Seen My Gal.”
Tony and Jay looked at the phone, puzzled.
Tony guessed to Jay, “Could it be someone dropping a hint to you? Doing songs you performed together?”
Jay looked skeptical. “I’ve never been in a band that did “She’s Gone” or “Has Anybody Seen My Gal.” I did do “She’s Not There” with Lilly at the Talkhouse in Amagansett. In what, 1969?”
“I remember,” Tony said. “I’ll call the phone company. Maybe they can trace the calls.”
The phone rang again. Cresta lifted it, still on intercom. “Lockout Data Security.”
“Good morning. May I speak with Mr. della Robbia?”
“May I ask who is calling?”
“This is Mrs. Winslow from the Conrad School. It is very important.”
Tony said, “I’ll take it.” He meant in his office, but Cresta had already handed the phone to him.
“Hello, Mrs. Winslow.”
“Mr. della Robbia? Your daughters were not picked up from school. Kindergarten released at 11:15. Your wife is always so prompt. We are concerned. We called your home, but a young child answered. He was incoherent. He was crying. We are worried.”
Tony interrupted, “I’ll go home and check …and …” he appealed to Jay silently. “Jay Sullivan will pick up the twins. He has two sons who are students there, Andrew and John.”
“That will be fine, Mr. della Robbia.”
Tony ran out the door and around the block to his home’s section of the warehouse. The front door was open, and as Tony loped over the stoop, he saw blood on the threshold.
“Lilly,” he shouted, then he looked around frantically for Lilly and Owen. Owen was huddled under the kitchen table with blood dripping from his swollen, discolored nose.
Tony reached under, forcing himself to speak softly. “Owen, it’s OK. Come here, son.” He lifted Owen, noticing the little boy’s wet pants.
“Where’s Mommy? What happened?”
“The man tooked her.” Owen stared off and spoke almost robotically.
Tony turned and saw that Jay was there.
Jay said, “Hillary is getting the twins. She’ll take them back to my house. His nose is broken, Tony. Call the cops or the FBI.”
Tony nodded, “FBI? He has to go to the hospital Jay. I’ll take him to the hospital. You stay here and wait for Lil. The blood…maybe she had a miscarriage.”
Jay replied, “I’ll take Owen to the hospital and then over to Hillary. The cops can speak to him there. Lilly may have lost a baby, but that wouldn’t explain Owen’s nose.”
Tony was rocking Owen, who repeated, “He tooked Mommy. I didn’t stop it.”
Jay was trying to coax Owen out of Tony’s arms when the police arrived. They entered carefully, not touching anything.
Jay said, “His wife’s gone. All morning our business has been getting phone calls.”
Tony made the connection, releasing Owen to Jay. “My God. She’s been kidnapped.”
“I’ll take him to Saint Vincent’s and then to my house.”
The responding police were joined by two detectives.
Tony called Mike McGrath in California and left a message on the machine. “Mike, it’s Tony. Lilly’s been kidnapped.”
Tony and the detectives stayed at his home reviewing every detail of their private life while additional phone lines were installed.
Dennis Kelly rushed over in the afternoon. The detectives regarded him warily.
He said to Tony, “A man called Lockout. He’ll call back.”
Tony said, “Of course. That’s where all the phone calls came earlier.”
“They never stopped all day,” Dennis said. “The last one, an electronically altered voice, came on after the song and said ‘della Robbia.’ We said you weren’t there. It said ‘get him’ and hung up.”
The FBI arrived as they were leaving to go around the block. Tony sensed tension between the two agencies. One FBI agent explained their presence. “I was called by Mike McGrath. He’ll be here later tonight.” Tony immediately accepted them.
The various detectives decided it was wiser to leave the already installed phone lines in place and install new ones at Lockout.
The next step was waiting. The employees were interviewed and sent home. Catherine stayed after the interview, but Ravi left. Catherine went for take-out food when night fell.
After Nick drove Isabel to pick up clothing and toys for the children, he joined the watch at Lockout. Jay drove Isabel and the children back to Della Robbia Central and picked up Hillary. They left their own sons with their housekeeper and joined the watch.
Catherine returned. She left a large bag of take-out in the secretaries’ area and brought another into Tony’s office.
Catherine unpacked the boxes, saying harshly, “This gets me …uptown, where I’m from, people are offed all the time. They’re just gone. When I got through school, I thought, this is my ticket out from it, but you can’t get away from it.”
Jay said to no one, “He’s been through it before. It’s not fair.”
Hillary said, “What about her? She’s already afraid of her own shadow. She’s been too afraid to even check her own house. She’s sure there is a rapist with a wrench in every closet. What about that guy? He was really dead wasn’t he?”
“Wayne Durling? I shot him dead,” Nick answered.
Dennis said, “I’ve never heard the whole story. Bridget lied to me. Now Bridget won’t even admit she had a daughter named Lilly, and Lilly won’t discuss the O’Dwyers.”
Nick gave a brief description of the events of fifteen years ago, excluding any mention of Hillary’s attack. Jay and Hillary gave more personalized accounts, with Jay recounting how Hillary was assaulted. Dennis told about Lilly’s trip to and flight from New Orleans.
It was almost midnight when the kidnapper called.
The caller’s voice was again altered. “della Robbia?”
Tony answered, “Yes?”
“Get money.”
“My money is tied up in the company. There isn’t anything.”
“Liquidate.” The phone disconnected.
“Wait, Lilly? I have to speak to her?”
Tony saw the detectives shaking their heads, conveying how useless it was to speak to a dead phone.
Lockout’s corporate attorney, James Levitt, said, “Tony, we have to talk. I’ve gone over your finances. Even if we could go public, it would take months.”
Tony
lashed out, “I know, I know. All my money is here and in those buildings in Wallkill. I don’t …”
Hillary approached Tony. “Tony, I have it. My father’s trust fund. My portion has a value of over twenty-four million dollars. I can’t get it all, but I’m sure I could get as much as they would probably ask for.”
“I had no idea.” Tony said, “That’s generous, but …”
“Lilly is my sister,” Hillary said.
Tony was silent.
“James is here. He can make it legal. We can buy some of your share of the business if you’ll accept it no other way. I know you couldn’t pay it back,” Jay said.
Tony said to Jay, “This involves Dennis too. He owns one third, I own two thirds.”
Dennis said, “Of course. She’s my niece.”
“We’ll have to do it legally, James?” Tony asked.
“Let me review the original contract between you and Dennis. I’ll use Dennis’s office.”
Mike McGrath arrived at four a. m. Jay, Hillary, James, and Dennis had gone home. Tony was asleep on the floor, leaning on Donna’s desk. A New York detective was reading files. Nick was watching him. Mike introduced himself. Nick told him the FBI were already there and had left an hour earlier.
Nick took Mike for a walk to the della Robbia residence. “Something stinks to high heaven about this case.”
“What do you mean, Tony wouldn’t …”
“No, not Tony, but listen to the facts.” He told Mike about the phone teasers that had gone on all day. “No pro would do that. Shit! And there was none of the ‘no cops’ shit! He never gave a money amount. He didn’t put her on the phone, crying and pleading. He never mentioned her. It’s not about Lilly. It’s not about money.”
“What do you think?” Mike asked.
“It’s personal. I don’t know more than that. Owen would have recognized someone they knew though. Maybe someone Tony knew in California. Tony is in denial. It’s like he’d thinking through a cloud.”
“Their baby son was there?”
“Owen’s three now. The bastard broke his nose. And look at all this blood. Lilly is pregnant. Owen keeps saying the give-box man. NYPD isn’t telling me anything. I asked if there was a box. They shot a look between them.”
They walked back to Lockout. Tony was awake, sitting in his office with spreadsheets on his desk.
Mike walked in, “I got your message.”
“Mike thanks for coming. Have you worked on kidnappings before?”
“No. I haven’t. I’m on emergency leave. I do law enforcement through math. I look for laundered money.”
“Mike, do they all do head games? What kind of people beat up babies? And Lilly, you should see all the blood. Don’t kidnappers want you to think their victims are all right?”
Mike turned to Nick, “Nick, tell him what you told me. He’s ready to hear it now.”
Nick reviewed what he had told Mike.
Tony said, “Who? Lilly doesn’t have a history of boyfriends. We don’t have any disgruntled employees. We’ve never fired anyone. Wait, maybe Gary?”
Nick said, “I thought of him. He’d go after my wife, not yours. Anyway, he was in a car accident. He’s in the hospital.”
Mike sat opposite Tony on the desk. “I think it’s someone you’ve known a long time, someone who knows about the attack on Lilly and how much it …changed you. This guy is after you, but he’s got tunnel vision. If he’s got to kill Lilly, it won’t affect him.”
Tony stood to protest, then sat down.
“Tony we have to figure this out. One of your old roommates? Someone from basketball? Was there anyone cut when you made the team? Someone from Greeley?” Mike said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to break the company down into shares. It’s tough since I own the building, and Dennis and I both own the business. We also have a new building and a common land deal. When I get a money demand, I’ll get the money from Hillary by selling shares to her.”
The NYPD detectives, along with the FBI agents, returned and walked into Tony’s office. Mike introduced himself. They accepted him in the same cool way they had accepted Nick.
The senior NYPD detective said to Tony, “Do you remember a man named Vincent Halibeg?”
“Vincent?” Tony repeated and explained. “We were going to go into business together, but he became a cocaine addict. Mike it fits. I knew him then. Halibeg, I haven’t seen him in years. He lost his job. It was an ugly scene. I couldn’t believe he could piss his life away with cocaine.”
The detective continued, “He worked for a delivery service over the Christmas peak season. He kept a uniform. Today he knocked on your door with a box in his hands. He said money was owed on it, only a little, so your wife wouldn’t question it. They stepped inside so she could get her wallet. She took the package and while her hands were full, he overpowered her.
“How do you know that?” Mike asked.
“A passerby heard him ask for $1.08. He knew that was not the way the delivery service did business because he used to work for them. Then about a block later, he realized he had not seen a truck. He headed back, but by then Halibeg was stuffing your wife into a rental car’s trunk. The passerby went to a precinct and by the time he made his report you had already called in.”
They stopped speaking for a minute, giving Tony time to absorb the information.
The detective started again. “Now we have to find him. He spent over a year in an institution after he beat up a woman for a parking space. The institution did not seem to have helped him. He was angry with the company that fired him in 1978 so about a year ago, he set fire to an elevator shaft at five o’clock. Four people had smoke injuries, but a disaster was averted because the sprinkler system had an override. He thought he had cut it. He was angry with his mother, his sister, and you. His mother was found dead in her vegetable garden last October. She had been turning it over with a shovel, and she was bludgeoned by that shovel.”
“Do you have an address on him?” Tony asked.
“He isn’t going by Halibeg. He’s smart. We think he took a name from an obituary, wrote to Albany for his lost driver’s license. Must have used a computer to track down the social security number. He has an apartment in Queens.
“He planned it out on paper, step by step. At first he was going to ruin your company. He would disrupt your client’s accounts and subtly lead it back to you. He didn’t want to implicate your partner, Dennis Kelly. Halibeg had Kelly as a professor and admired him. He followed you home. You returned from a business trip, an extended one, and went right home. You never went to the office for over a day. It was then he decided maybe your wife was the most important thing in your life.”
“He didn’t even know Lilly. I only knew him from school. He is brilliant. He met Lilly once and that was at least twelve years ago. She referred to him as the egghead with the cracked shell.”
“That’s why she didn’t recognize him with the package,” Mike interjected.
“Now what?” Tony asked. “I keep thinking about those stupid songs. Could there be a message in them? Or in his plans, could he have left some hidden clue?” He added, “He wouldn’t really hurt her would he? He’s letting me know I’m vulnerable.”
Mike and Nick exchanged quizzical looks.
The NYPD man spoke first. “He doesn’t know we have his identity. If he plays out the kidnapping, he’ll call here bright and early with a money amount.”
Nick said, “It’s morning now. Be ready for head games.”
Jay and Dennis came to the office early, calling off Catherine, Ravi, and Millie. They asked Donna and Cresta to come in to field calls and give the appearance of business as usual.
Vincent called shortly after the start of business hours. He used the same disguised voice. He questioned whether Tony had been gathering money.
“Yes, but I have to know my wife is all right. She’s pregnant,” Tony demanded, “How do I know you still have her?”
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Vincent hung up the phone without answering.
A bicycle delivery person arrived at Lockout an hour later with a package for Tony. Inside was Lilly’s clothing. Her shirt had a large U-shaped bloodstain about nine inches in length and at the widest part about four inches across. Tony sat on his heels as he held the shirt, no longer able to doubt Vincent’s willingness to injure Lilly.”
The next call was more direct. Vincent’s voice was no longer disguised. “Tony, long time.”
“Where’s Lilly? Why Lilly? How could you hurt her? How do I even know she’s alive? Vincent you have a problem with me …with me, not my wife. We have little children.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Vincent said wildly and then hung up.
Tony paced. He stamped angrily, and then stopped, filled with remorse.
Vincent used another delivery service to bring a videotape to Lockout late that afternoon. Jay and Dennis stayed at the office while Mike and Nick accompanied the various detectives around the block to see the tape on Tony’s VCR.
The image did not appear at the beginning of the tape, unnerving everyone. They feared somehow the tape had been damaged. The snow stopped after the counter had reached twenty. Lilly was seated on a hard-backed oak armchair, wearing only a bra and panties. The left side of her mouth was discolored. Her eyes were swollen and the skin across her nose was so shiny and tight. She was holding that day’s edition of the New York Times.
An angry voice in the background said, “Read it, read it.”
Lilly reacted slowly. Her speech was slurred. She had difficulty speaking at first.
“Tony, I’m fine. He wants you to know this is retribution. He said he is deciding a dollar amount. Tell the kids I’m OK and will be home …”
Vincent’s voice shouted off camera, “Read it, Read it! You haven’t read anything I wrote.”
Lilly looked off to the side. “I can’t read it. It’s so sloppy.” She reacted to something and said in a stony voice, “Tony, I’m fine. You have to be punished for your …your apion? Sell the company, Lockup.”
Lilly looked at the camera again, acknowledging Vincent’s mix-up. “Be prepared to pay what is rightfully mine.” This time when she looked at the camera, she lifted one eyebrow. “Mine,” she repeated and looked off to the side.
A Yonkers Kinda Girl Page 49