36
Hank," I said, "how about we spare the office politics and concentrate on trying to get out of here alive?"
Cheryl ran a fingernail back and forth in the gap between two floor planks. Ali tried to hide a smile. A couple of the others sneaked glances at me-admiring glances, I thought: no one ever expected me to talk back to Hank Bodine.
I didn't know how he'd react, and at that point I didn't particularly care. But after a few seconds he said: "We don't have a choice but to pay the goddamned ransom."
"I'm not sure that's true," I said. "Cheryl's right: If we give in too easily to Russell's demands, there'll be no reason for him not to keep jacking the price up. If I were in his position, I'd probably do the same thing."
She glanced up at me warily. Her long coral fingernail had dislodged a tiny gray burrow of dust and earth.
What I didn't say, of course, was that I didn't really care how much money Hammond Aerospace paid out in ransom.
"Yet we can't just say no. Because whoever these guys are, you don't carry weapons like that if you're not prepared to use them."
Cheryl arched a quizzical eyebrow. "So what are you suggesting?"
I turned to Slattery. "What's the account number?"
"Which account number?" Slattery said.
"If you want to access our cash management accounts at the bank, you've got to know the account numbers, right? Or at least one of them. You have them all memorized?"
Slattery looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. "Of course not. I keep a list in my office…" His voice trailed off as it dawned on him. "But not here. Yes." He nodded.
"There you go. You need to call in to the office to get those numbers. Right?"
"Excellent," Cheryl said.
"You think he'll let me make a call?" Slattery asked.
"If he wants his money, he will."
"What good does that do us?" Bross said. "That buys us maybe five minutes. That's pathetic."
"It gets him on the phone with one of his assistants or his secretary, Kevin. And then maybe Ron can communicate that everything's not okay here."
"Oh, sure," Bross said. "Right. Russell's going to just stand there while Ron asks his secretary for our bank account numbers, and says, 'Oh, by the way, I've got a gun to my head, so you might want to notify the police.'"
"There's something called a duress code," I said to Bross. I kept my tone calm and reasonable-but condescending, as if explaining to a particularly slow child. "A distress signal. A word or phrase that sounds perfectly normal to Russell but actually alerts whoever he's speaking to that something's wrong. It's like a silent alarm."
"You got a better idea, Bross?" Bodine said.
"Yeah," Bross said. "Keep it simple. These are hicks with guns. All we do is tell him we can't wire money from any computer outside of Hammond headquarters. The way it should be. The way it was supposed to be."
"No," I said. "You don't want to bluff him like that. If he's done his homework, he'll know that's not true."
"Most of us didn't know if we could or not," Barlow said. "Why should he know any better?"
"And what if he has a source inside the company?" I said. "We sure as hell don't want to get caught lying to him. Do we, Ron?"
Slattery didn't reply. He didn't have to.
"Let's not find out the hard way what he knows and what he doesn't," I said.
"Then we just pay it," Bross said.
"And after we pay the ransom," I said quietly, "what makes you think these guys are going to just let us go?"
Bross started to reply, but stopped.
"They're not wearing masks or hoods," I said. "For all I know, they're using their real names. They're not concerned about being identified. Why do you think that might be?"
"Oh, Jesus," said Barlow, realizing.
"There's only one possible reason," I said. "They don't plan to leave any witnesses."
Cheryl's fingernail came to a stop. Lummis exhaled audibly, tremulously.
"I don't have any duress code worked out with my office," Slattery said.
"Just say something unexpected," I said. "Something off. Something that might alert someone who knows you well enough that you're in trouble."
"But what about Grogan and Danziger?" Slattery turned to me. "For all I know, one or both of those guys has our account numbers memorized. They might think they're being helpful and volunteer the information to Russell, then there's no phone call."
I nodded. "We have to get to them, that's all. Make sure they know the plan."
Grogan and Danziger were sitting on the other side of the river-stone fireplace, twenty or thirty feet away. The fireplace jutted out a good six feet. They were so far away that we couldn't even see them.
The only way to speak to them was actually to get up and move around the fireplace to the other side. But the moment one of our kidnappers saw anyone attempting that…
"This is idiotic," Bross said. "All this 'duress code' crap. It'll never work."
"If you have another idea," Slattery said, "let's hear it."
Then the front door banged, and Russell entered.
37
A few months after I got to Glenview, a new boy was admitted to D Unit. He was a scrawny little kid named Raymond Farrentino, in for dealing drugs. He was fifteen but looked twelve, and his voice hadn't even changed yet. He looked like a girl: long eyelashes, a delicate nose. He spoke with a stammer. His laugh sounded like a cartoon woodpecker.
Someone gave him the nickname Pee Wee.
I became his protector, for no reason except that he had no one else, and I felt bad for him. He was easy prey. He couldn't fight. I knew how that used to feel.
But Pee Wee returned the favor many times over. He was smart and clever, and he quickly had the place wired. He figured out how to defeat the electronic door locks on the cells so we could get out at night. He studied the guards' schedules and knew when the halls of D Unit were unwatched, when they went out for a smoke. He devised a method to get drugs inside: He convinced one of the kids to get his brother to stash drugs inside tennis balls and toss them over the fence into the wooded area near the carpentry shop, where they could be retrieved easily. If you wanted to get or hide contraband, like cigarettes or booze, you'd turn to Pee Wee for advice.
It took him a few months, but he found his place in the hierarchy. He became respected for his expertise. He began to smile from time to time. Even, once in a while, to laugh.
One day, though, he started acting different. He became subdued, withdrawn. I couldn't figure it out. I began to notice long, deep slashes on his face, which he refused to explain. After a while, his face became seamed, crisscrossed with angry red scars.
Finally I confronted him, demanded to know who was doing this to him. I told him I'd take care of whoever it was.
He showed me his bloodstained undershorts, told me that Glover, the chief guard on D Unit, was coming into his room at night. He'd switch off the surveillance camera and do things to him that he couldn't talk about.
He said he was thinking seriously of killing himself, and he knew how to do it. Then he showed me the loose steel coil he'd removed from his mattress and sharpened on the concrete floor of his room. He admitted that he was slashing his own face.
He didn't want to look pretty anymore.
38
Who's been smoking?" Russell said.
He sniffed the air, turned toward the dining table. "Verne, that you?"
"What about it?" Verne said.
"I don't want to be breathing secondhand smoke. You take it outside next time."
"Sorry, Russell. Okay if I go out for a smoke right now?"
I had a feeling he was going to do more than smoke a cigarette.
"Make it fast," Russell said. He clapped his hands. "All right, let's get down to business. Where's my little buddy Ronald?"
He crossed the room to our side of the fireplace. "How're you doing there, little guy?"
Slattery nodded sullenly. "Fine."
Upton Barlow said, "I need to use the bathroom."
Russell ignored him. "You have a family, Ronald?"
Slattery hesitated.
"Three daughters, right?"
Slattery looked up suddenly. "What are you-?"
"Divorced, that right?"
"We're-separated. How do you-?"
"You cheat on your wife, Ronald? Is that what happened?"
"We're separated, I said. Not divorced."
"You cheat on her?"
"I don't have to answer this."
Russell patted his holster. "No, you don't," he said. "You always have a choice."
"No," Slattery said. "I'll-I'll answer. I didn't start seeing anyone until after our marriage pretty much-"
"Ronald," he interrupted, shaking his head and making a tsk-tsk sound. "If a man can't live up to his marital vows, why should anyone trust his word? You love your daughters, Ronald?"
"More than anything in the world," Slattery said. His voice shook, tears flooding his eyes.
"How old are they, your daughters?"
"Sixteen, fourteen, and twelve."
"Aw, that's nice. That's sweet. But girls can be difficult at that age, am I right?"
"Please," Slattery said. "Please don't do this."
"Am I right?"
"I love them with all my heart. Russell, please."
"No doubt you do. But they don't live with you, do they? You're probably too busy to have a houseful of teenage girls."
"No, that's not why. My wife and I agreed the girls should live with their mother."
"So Daddy's free to screw chicks in his bachelor pad, huh?"
"That's not it at all-"
"I'll bet their dad's an important figure in their lives anyway."
"Very," Slattery managed to choke out.
"Gotta be tough on the girls not to have a dad around the house. Especially at such an important time."
"For God's sake," Barlow broke in, "will you let me go to the john?"
"They spend every weekend with me," Slattery said, "and every-"
"That the best you can do, Ron? Weekends? But I guess it's better than nothing, right? Better to have a weekend dad than no dad at all."
"Please," Slattery said, "what do you want?"
"I'm counting on you, Ronald. To make sure everything goes smoothly."
Slattery nodded frantically.
"I need to take a goddamned piss!" Barlow shouted abruptly. "I'm about to explode. You want me to do it right here on the floor?"
"Upton, please. I'm speaking with Ronald."
"This is cruel and inhumane," Barlow said.
Russell smiled. "No, Upton," he said patiently. "If you want to see cruel and inhumane, I'd be happy to demonstrate the difference." He raised his arm, flipped his fingers. "Buck, please escort poor Mr. Barlow to the head."
Buck sauntered over at a leisurely pace.
"You doing okay, there, Hank?"
Bodine stared at him and didn't reply.
Russell grinned. "Upton, sounds to me like you've got an enlarged prostate gland. Guy your age ought to be taking saw palmetto extracts. Pumpkin seeds, too. It's the only body you got. You really should take care of it."
"For Christ's sake," Barlow said.
Buck grabbed Barlow roughly by the arm.
Cheryl said, "I'd like to use the restroom as well. I'm sure others do, too."
"Thank you for the suggestion, Cheryl," said Russell. "Anyone else needs to use the facilities, my team will be happy to assist you, one at a time. Now, Ronald, have we figured out how we're going to make this transaction work? Everything clear?"
Slattery swallowed hard, nodded.
"Look," Bross said, "let me tell you something that everyone else is afraid to tell you. We simply don't have the ability to make a bank transfer from here."
"No?" Russell said.
Bross nodded. "No. Online bank transfer requests can only originate from computers inside Hammond headquarters."
Russell looked at him curiously for a moment, tipped his head to one side. "Tell me your name again."
"Kevin Bross."
"Bross," repeated Russell. "Bross balls, huh? Well, Bross Balls, maybe you can explain that to me a little more." He was speaking in that fake-innocent way I'd begun to recognize. I waited for the sting in the tail. "Use small words, please."
"See, every computer has what's called an IP address," Bross said. "And the bank's computers won't talk to another computer unless it has the right IP address."
"Really?" Russell said. "Gosh, that's bad news."
Bross nodded. "I'm sorry to break it to you, but that's just the way it works. Believe me, if we could do it, we would. So if there's some other arrangement we can make-"
"This is interesting," Russell said. He reached into his pocket, and we all froze.
He pulled out a small gray plastic object a few inches long and held it up. At its round end was the bright green logo of our bank; at the narrow end was a digital LCD readout.
"Because when I called your bank about setting up a corporate account, they said I could initiate a wire transfer from anywhere in the world, no problem. Any of your corporate customers can do that, they said. Just a wild guess, Bross Balls, but I'm thinking this here might be an RSA SecurID authenticator."
Bross licked his lips. "Right, but Hammond Aerospace has a whole system of security protocols in place, Russell-"
"I thought you were just telling me how the bank's computers won't recognize an unauthorized IP address, Bross," Russell said softly. "We weren't talking about your internal security procedures, were we?"
Bross faltered for a few seconds. "I'm telling you everything I know, to the very best of my knowledge-"
"You know something, Bross? I'm disappointed in you. But I guess I should have expected you'd try to pull a fast one. Executive Vice President of Sales and all-you probably think you're good at the sell. So now we're gonna have a change in plans. I'm going to have a little talk with each one of you separately. One on one. You're each gonna tell me privately everything you know about how to transfer money out of Hammond. That way I'll know if anyone's trying to pull a fast one on me. See if there's any contradictions. Anyone lies to me, we're gonna have some immediate layoffs. A little downsizing, you might say. Oh, and one more thing. The price just went up. Teach you kids a lesson. It's five hundred million now. Half a billion."
I turned to look at Ali, but all at once the lights went out, and we were plunged into darkness.
39
A shaft of sunlight neatly bisected the office of the Assistant Clinical Director of the Glenview Residential Center, Dr. Jerome Marcus. Dust motes hung suspended in the air. The room was surprisingly small, not much larger than a broom closet, choked with stacks of paper. Something in Dr. Marcus's face hinted at a secret resentment that a man so important would occupy an office so small. The corners of his small oak desk-a child's desk, I thought-were splintered.
"This is highly unusual," he said. He had a gentle voice, a kindly expression. "It's not the standard grievance procedure."
I nodded, swallowed, told him about Pee Wee Farrentino.
Dr. Marcus was a tall, round-shouldered man with a large, prominent forehead, neatly parted gray hair, rimless glasses that sometimes seemed to disappear. His blue button-down shirt was heavily starched and perfectly pressed.
He listened with growing dismay, fingers steepled. He asked me a lot of questions, took notes for a report. He said it was an outrage, that behavior like that must never be tolerated.
As he spoke, I examined the books on the shelf behind him. Titles like Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior and Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice and the Physician's Desk Reference. Thin blue loose-leaf binders whose browned labels curled out from their spines.
The bad wolf was urging me to go after Glover, choke the life out of him. The good wolf kept reminding me that if I did, I'd be sent to the hole for months on end. Or worse: Though I couldn
't imagine what could be worse.
"You've done a brave thing," he said. He thanked me for coming to see him. His bottom lip, I noticed, was chapped.
Late that night the door to my room opened, and Glover and two other guards came in with batons.
"I know what you're doing to Pee Wee," I said.
"Don't leave any marks," Glover told the others.
40
Where's the manager?" Russell called out.
"Over here." A voice from the other side of the fireplace.
The clear night sky was filled with stars, and the moon was full. The room was bathed in pale gray-blue light. My eyes quickly adjusted. Russell went to the other side of the fireplace.
"What the hell's wrong with your power?"
"I don't-I don't know," the manager said. "Must be the generator."
"Well, who does know? Who fixes stuff around here?"
"Peter Daut," the manager said. "He's my handyman."
"All right, Peter Daut," Russell said. "Identify yourself."
"Right here." A muffled voice.
"What's the problem?"
More muffled voices. The handyman seemed to be talking to the manager, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Then I heard the manager say, "Yes, Peter, please."
"You want to cooperate, Peter," Russell said. "No power means the satellite modem won't work, which means I don't get what I want. Which means I start eliminating hostages one by one until I do."
"The generator blew."
Peter the handyman, I assumed.
"Water in the fuel filter. Happens a lot. The diesel's always absorbing water out here, and I can't drain the tanks, so I just keep changing out the filters. I was gonna do that in the middle of the night tonight, because I have to shut down the generator engines while I-"
"Where's the remote start switch?" Russell said. "I know there's one inside here."
"That won't do it," the handyman replied. "The fuel filter needs to be changed, out at the shed."
"Wayne?" Russell said.
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