“Here’s hoping you call when you get in,” Dan said. “I’m stuck at the precinct till late tonight and have early starts all week, but from Friday evening I’m off for forty-eight hours. A whole weekend. I was wondering if you had any plans or if the two of us could think of something.”
I didn’t waste any time dialing the precinct and Dan picked up promptly. We dickered amiably about what to do on the weekend, finally leaving it open at starting with a meal somewhere and going from there. Exciting not to know. So far, I was enjoying his company. No need to blow it up beyond that.
By mid-week, I hadn’t heard from Matt Wahr. No point contacting his wife again. Either she was a good actress or she genuinely didn’t have a clue if Kralle was involved with Matt in shady financial doings. I’d managed to avoid mentioning my visit to Sylvia Wahr to Dan and I ignored the feeling that I was being downright sneaky.
The week back at the college was hectic, the weather a long string of sunny days. Dan and I chatted a few times, mostly swopping stories of how busy we were at work. Evenings I often stayed at my desk until after seven. I’d pick up something for dinner on the way home and be in bed early. Finally, the end of the week arrived. Dan met me outside SUNY on Friday at six sharp.
“It’s too nice to be indoors for a meal,” he said. “Why don’t we get take-out and go to the roof garden at my place, it’s got plants, flowers, chairs, the works.”
“That sounds great. Where do you live?”
“I’m apartment-sitting in a small coop building next to P.S. 41, the Greenwich Village School on Eleventh Street, off Sixth. One of the guys at the precinct told me about this place. The owner’s a professor at NYU, she’s off in Italy on sabbatical and the rent’s reasonable because she wanted someone reliable here. I’ll have to move out when she comes back but she’s away for a year, could be longer.”
“What a deal.”
“So, take-out and maybe a video?”
“Sure, I love roof gardens. We’re not allowed on the roof in my building. It’s covered in tar that gets sticky when it’s hot.”
The part of the roof that had been transformed into a garden was larger than I’d expected, a shady green oasis of flowers and bushes. A vine-covered awning stretched over tables and chairs. We spread out the containers of Chinese food and settled down. No one came up while we were there and it was like a private garden. The building was six floors high and in the middle of the block and traffic noise from Sixth and Seventh Avenues floated up faintly, a background reminder of the busy city.
“This is great but not as classy as Gramercy Park,” Dan said.
“Better,” I said. “If you’re in that park, people on the sidewalk ask you to open the gate and let them in. When you say that only people who live in buildings around the park have keys, they get mad. Sometimes they yell.”
Dan laughed. “That’s embarrassing.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s the first course. There’s ice cream in the freezer. Oh, I forgot to pick up a video. Want to look over what there is the apartment and see if anything interests you?”
“What, no etchings?”
“No false pretences. Ice cream without etchings.”
Dan reached across the picnic table and took my hand. He kissed my palm lightly.
“You cops sure know how to have a good time,” I mocked but I curled my fingers into my palm, holding them against the place where it tingled from his lips.
We gathered up the empty containers and took the elevator down to the third floor where Dan gave me a quick tour. The front door opened onto a long hall that had rooms off it, more convenient than railway apartments like mine where you walk through one room to reach the next. Each room overlooked neighboring gardens. A small kitchen fronted by a dining room was at one end of the hall, at the other end a pleasant living room. In between were two bedrooms and a bathroom.
“Grab a seat while I check on the video stock,” Dan said, waving at the couch. He rattled off an eclectic selection, Hitchcock, Monty Python and Woody Allen.
“How about a real oldie? Do you like the Thin Man series, William Powell and Mary Astor?”
“I love them and Asta, their little dog.”
We’d both seen the movie before. Just as well because the first time William Powell made loving eye contact with Mary Astor, Dan and I smiled at each other. As easily as we’d smiled, our lips met. Our arms slid around each other and we pulled close. The kisses sent hungry excitement through me. When we came up for air, we stood. Words weren’t necessary. Dan led the way down the hall to the first bedroom.
In the interest of scientific reporting, I can verify we didn’t make it to the kitchen for ice cream. Why interrupt our delicious distractions for something fattening like ice cream?
Twelve
Who ever said love’s a rollercoaster ride had it right. Four days after our blissful weekend, Dan called me at SUNY and what he said knocked me splat off Cloud Nine. He was tentative with small talk and eventually came to the point.
“Yoko, I don’t know how to say this.”
“So say it, Dan, be a man,” I prompted.
“My ex-wife came in from Seattle last week,” Dan said. “She’s visiting her brother in Philadelphia and keeps calling me. Wants me to go down, stay a few days, see if we can make a fresh start.”
I mumbled something that sounded like, “I see,” though I was thinking, What the hell?
Dan hesitated. “I’m taking time off to drive to Philly to face her. I don’t think anything’s changed between us.”
He waited. I didn’t know what to say.
“I had to tell you,” Dan said. “I don’t want to go behind your back. I owe you an explanation.”
I couldn’t bring myself to wish him good luck but I did manage to tell him to drive safely and sound as though I meant it. By six that night, I’d had it with work. I started to walk home, thinking about Dan’s call, remembering what he’d said to me in the late night telephone call the night before. Before he’d decided to visit his ex.
“I can’t wait for our next get-together.”
He was right, our time at his apartment had been undiluted satisfaction. We’d spent most of it indoors or in the roof garden, only leaving his place once to walk over to my apartment and give the cats fresh bowls of water and food and clean the litter box.
“How about a cup of miso?” I suggested when we’d finished those chores. “We could sit for a bit, keep the cats company.”
“Sure,” Dan said and I made us two cups of South River’s hearty barley miso.
“This is different from soup in Japanese restaurants,” Dan said, as he sipped.
“Usually, restaurants serve suimono,” I explained. “That’s a stock made from steeping dried tuna flakes and kelp in water. They strain it then add a dash of sake and some soy sauce. Miso is different. It’s based on soy beans and different things are added, even dandelions and leeks. This one has barley, soy beans and sea veggies.”
‘I could get used to this,” he told me and smiled in a way that gave me goose bumps.
I savored the memory of that weekend as I walked home but then I forced myself to face the miserable truth that Dan and I might have had our one and only get-together. The fact that he’d had the guts to tell me what was going on, cared enough to be honest and open was comforting. I had no choice but to wait and deal with his decision, whatever it was, after he’d visited his ex. My stomach gurgled, reminding me that my day had been long and hectic and my lunch skimpy, only two veggie rolls because I hadn’t felt very hungry after Dan called.
I was a few blocks from home and considering the merit of rib-sticking, dumpling-thick soup versus chicken pot pie from KK, the Polish restaurant next to my place, which does a fine job with both. Just as I reached the decision to choose my food when I got to the restaurant, two men hurried up, one to my left, one to my right. They gripped my arms tight, crowding me so we’d look like a cozy trio if anyone glanced at us. One def
tly flung a large scarf over my head so it covered my face and concealed the large gloved hand he clamped over my mouth. In the seconds before my eyes were covered, I saw that both men wore woolen caps pulled down to their eyebrows and coats with collars pulled up around their ears.
The three of us moved sideways in a bizarre, shuffling dance. I shook my head violently, trying to dislodge the hand over my mouth so I could yell. The guys chatted and laughed loudly to cover the muffled sounds I made. My head-tossing helped the scarf slip a fraction from my eyes and I saw we were headed for a dirty black BMW at the curb. I was maneuvered into the car and we took off with a jerk that snapped my head back.
No one ever tells you how fear floods the body and numbs the spirit. A divorce, 9/11, the sudden death of my parents within months of each other, somehow through those traumas, part of me stayed free to hope. Not now. I’d been abducted, snatched off the street by two men, spirited away in minutes in the early evening, passersby were oblivious to my predicament. Why? was a mystery. Exxon executives, the Israeli Olympic Team, these were kidnappings for ransom or political change. Who would think they could get a ransom for me? As for political change, I vote, that’s it. That left terrorists, but this was Manhattan, not Baghdad. I was terrified and a really big part of it was that I knew it might be days before my absence was noticed.
Dan was away and for all I knew he was out of my life for good. He’d said he’d call when he got back, but that would be three or four days from now, maybe more. As for my family, Auntie Ai didn’t expect me to check in regularly now that I had my own place. Lars and Lanny were visiting friends upstate for a few days. Lars might call, he’d leave a message and not think anything about it if I didn’t get back to him promptly. Elliott Forrest, my boss, was on vacation for two weeks. That about covered it. People at the college would have no reason to think there was a problem if I wasn’t in my office.
One of the men muttered something and the hand over my mouth was removed while the man to my right adjusted the scarf, pulling it tight so the sliver of light disappeared and I couldn’t see. When I protested, the guy wedged on my other side elbowed me in the ribs.
“Shut it,” he growled.
I can take a hint. Time for introductions later.
We drove for about twenty minutes, maybe a bit longer. Perhaps we were below Chinatown. Had we’d gone cross-town or headed up to the Bronx? Traffic was light and we moved without delays. I was positive we hadn’t left Manhattan. From the sounds I heard and the feel of the road under the car as we drove, I didn’t think we’d gone through the Lincoln or Holland tunnels or across the Verrazano or George Washington bridges out of New York. It felt as if we’d stayed on Manhattan’s potholed streets. Logistics aside, the big question was why would anyone highjack me?
Who were they? What did they want? I started to ask but one of the heavy shoulders pressed hard against mine. Point taken. I “shut it” again and listened to the sounds of traffic, trying to gauge where we were. Finally we stopped. I was hauled out of the car and frog-marched over an uneven sidewalk.
“Goin’ up steps.” It was the one who’d growled at me in the car.
Keys jangled, and a door was unlocked. We entered a building where the air was still and dank. I was hustled up more stairs, not straight flights like those in my apartment building but a gently curving series of steps. Another wait to the sound of a second door being unlocked then we tramped across bare boards, me stumbling on debris underfoot that I couldn’t see.
We came to a stop and I was pushed onto a hard seat and the scarf unwound from my head. Dry-mouthed, I stared at the two men. The woolen hats were really ski masks, now these were pulled down to cover their faces. They didn’t want me to recognize them. Good. That meant they weren’t planning on killing me, didn’t it? One was tall, about six foot, the other was a head shorter. Both were thickset. The tall guy pulled a neatly folded piece of paper out of a pocket. He waved it at the shorter man, who extracted a small tape recorder from his coat pocket and set it on the dusty bench next to me. What the hell? I risked a quick glance around. We were in a cavernous space more like an auditorium than a room. The short man’s pudgy fingers hovered indecisively over the controls of the tape recorder. Eventually, he stabbed at a button and nodded at the tall guy.
“Tell us about the equipment Anders developed,” the tall guy said, reading carefully from the slip of paper in his hand.
For this I was blindfolded and dragged off? On the other hand, it finally proved what I’d suspected. Someone wanted the prototypes. The why was obvious. Take your pick: power, control, cool hard cash. The who was the puzzler––who was the mastermind? But why bother with me, why not go to where the prototypes were being manufactured? Something was definitely out of wack.
“Dr. Anders? But he’s…you know he’s dead?”
My question was ignored. Thug One shuffled impatiently. His sidekick glared at me. Uh oh, hostile body language. Talking couldn’t hurt.
“I wasn’t involved in the actual development of the prototypes, you know, the physical creation of them. All of that was the work of Dr. Anders. Mostly, I was helping him write his paper, really just taking his handwritten notes and putting them on the computer.”
I hoped I sounded convincing. I did have a rough idea of the other uses the prototypes could be used for, nothing to do with vision therapy, but I was not about to share that with the two thugs. If the equipment was that valuable, I had to try to stop it falling into the wrong hands.
“I did a lot of research on current equipment to compare the efficiency of the prototypes.”
“What equipment?”
“Some is for myopia reduction, you know, when people are near-sighted. There’s a lot of different vision therapy equipment for that already but Dr. Anders was taking the science one step further. A lot of steps further.”
I stopped my explanation and waited.
Thug One said, “Go on. What about the, um, scalar microscope?”
“Let’s see. Dr. Anders was improving on the scalar hand-held microscope, the type of unit that’s self-contained. It’s like a digital camera. You download the pictures to a computer and can put them on a disk. You can have a micro-lens attachment so it’s capable of recording near-infrared light. This unit can be used to see through people’s cloudy corneas and even some fabrics or different inks. It’s infrared reflectography with conventional IR film. Dr. Anders was increasing the range of what can be examined.”
“Keep talking––what about the schedule?”
“When I was at the conference in England, I heard from Bernell, the manufacturer, that the new units are almost built. They were running into delays because there’s no one to answer questions now Dr. Anders is dead. Even when they’re complete, they have to be tested.”
The two stared at me, their eyes more puzzled than angry. I’d bet good money they’d been called delinquents when they were juveniles. Somehow, I had to persuade them that now Fred was dead, the manufacturer knew more than anyone. That really was the truth. Thug One looked at his slip of paper again. Someone knew he needed a crib sheet.
“You’re the one who had his notes. Talk about the changes.”
That was a sticky point, I really didn’t have much of a handle on the changes Fred had thrown into the mix at the last moment. But beyond that, it was obvious that whoever had these two grab me off the street had something to do with the college. The logical choice was Matt Wahr. His wife had obviously told him of my visit. He must have known I’d make the connection from his cousin, Lou Kralle, to him. This was industrial espionage, corporate America or a foreign faction. One of the men fidgeted. God, time to focus. I thought about the struggle I’d had trying to grasp where Fred Anders was headed with his innovations.
“It’ll be a while before anyone understands fully,” I began cautiously. “Dr. Anders had been working on these projects for some time but I didn’t start right when he did, I began much later. A lot of what I did was on comparisons.
The changes were very technical, reductions or increases in measurements.”
The silence was scary. The nasty look on Thug One’s face was even scarier.
“I transferred his handwritten notes to the computer but that doesn’t mean I fully understood the work,” I repeated hastily, hoping I sounded convincing. It was almost true. “Dr. Anders was a genius, I’m not.”
“What’s the schedule for finishing the prototypes? Why are there delays?”
“I told you, I don’t know. The manufacturer’s rep said the units were almost done.”
My answer was taken for stonewalling.
Thug One shook his head at my stupidity. He grabbed my left arm and jerked my thumb back. Searing heat like knife blades scraped up my arm into my neck. He halted judiciously short of breakpoint, content with a series of parting twists to my hand that sent Technicolor flashes behind my tightly shut eyelids.
“Hey,” Thug Two said. “We were told no rough play.”
Thug One laughed spitefully. I bent over my hand, nursing the pain, feeling a physical spurt of anger but also a sense of relief. I’d learned I wasn’t supposed to be hurt.
“I’m not trying to avoid answering,” I said, surprised at how unwilling I still was to appease them. “The truth is I don’t know anything about the schedule. I don’t think even Bernell does.”
Maybe if I repeated the manufacturer’s name enough, that would distract the brutes.
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