Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1)

by Joseph Badal

  “Mommy!” she heard Michael cry. Liz could hear fear in his voice. “Mommy!” he screamed. But she couldn’t see him anywhere.

  Blood pounding in her throat, Liz slammed into the front gate, snapping its metal latch. She looked down the street to the right. A horsedrawn wagon moved quickly away. A young woman wearing bright-colored Gypsy attire briefly looked back in Liz’s direction as she scurried after the wagon. The woman carried a squirming, screaming bundle – Michael. She looked back at the wagon and thrust Michael toward a man standing on a narrow platform at the back of the wagon.

  “Michael!” Liz screamed.

  The man passed Michael to another Gypsy woman standing at the wagon’s curtained doorway. She turned and disappeared with Michael inside the wagon. The woman looked like the one who had come to Liz’s door with the rug.

  Liz chased after them, screeching, “Oh God, Michael!”

  The man on the platform reached down and pulled the running Gypsy woman up by her arms into the wagon. White Dog leaped up after her.

  Liz sprinted as fast as she could, but the wagon, gaining speed, pulled away from her. It turned a corner at the end of the street and disappeared with a receding clatter of horse’s hooves. She heard White Dog’s ferocious barking end with a yelp. By the time she reached the corner, the wagon had vanished and White Dog lay in the gutter, a knife handle protruding from her side, blood painting her snow-white hair a shockingly brilliant red.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Thirty-seventh Detachment, Sergeant Carpenter speaking, sir.”

  “Sergeant Carpenter, it’s Liz Danforth. Please, I need to talk to my husband now!”

  “He’s on the phone with the Colonel, Mrs. Danforth. How about I take a message and have him call you back in a minute?”

  “No . . . No-o-o! I need to talk to Bob NOW!”

  Carpenter carried a scrawled message into Bob’s office: “Mrs. D on line two. Urgent!” He dropped the message in front of Bob and left, closing the door behind him.

  Bob looked at the note, surprised at the interruption. Carpenter knew better than to disturb him when he was talking with Colonel Gray. When he saw the word “Urgent!” he asked the Colonel to hold for a moment. He realized Liz had a habit of reacting to little everyday problems as crises, but he also knew she’d never called before and said it was urgent. He pushed the button for line two.

  “Liz, what’s up? I was on the phone–”

  “They took Michael,” she sobbed. “The Gypsies took our baby!”

  “Liz, what are you talking–?”

  Bob heard Liz’s voice suddenly change, from trembly to a brittle tenor akin to shattering glass. “He’s gone, Bob. Michael’s gone.”

  “Sergeant Carpenter!” Bob shouted loud enough to be heard through the solid oak office door.

  Carpenter ran back into the office. “Yes, sir!”

  “Get my driver. Call the Greek police and tell them to get to my house. My son’s been kidnapped. Inform the security officer at the Embassy. And get on the line and explain to Colonel Gray.”

  Throughout the ride down the narrow, curving road from the nuclear missile site at Katsamidi, Bob begged his driver, Demetrius, to go faster. He tried to keep his imagination from cartwheeling out of control. What could have happened to his son? He’d held him in his arms less than an hour ago, nuzzling him, smelling his sweet baby skin. He’d kissed Liz and Michael and petted the dog and, as he did every morning, said, “Keep your head down.”

  He hadn’t really worried about his family’s safety – Athens was safer than his hometown of Pittsburgh. Their suburb of Kifissia was about as safe a place as anyone could find.

  The pickup screeched around the corner, sliding on the gravel shoulder in front of the house, when Demetrius braked hard. Bob leaped from the truck before it completely stopped, then raced through the front gate. A trail of dark red spots led up the white, mottled terrazzo steps and onto the front porch. Flies buzzed around the spots. A smear of red led to a bone-handled knife with a bloodied six-inch blade lying in one corner of the porch. Bob’s stomach seemed to somersault and the familiar tingling, breath-arresting signs of fear assailed his chest.

  The droplets of blood continued past the threshold and down the marble entryway, back toward the bedrooms.

  “Liz!” Bob called while he rushed toward the back of the house. No answer. He found her in Michael’s room, kneeling next to White Dog, in the middle of a pure-white flokati rug, her arms, jeans, and tank top spotted, smeared with still-damp blotches of blood. A chill hit Bob’s spine and nausea rose in his throat.

  Liz looked up at him, her blue eyes glistening with tears, with an open-eyed, childlike expression. “She’s dead, Bob. They took our baby and killed White Dog.”

  Bob dropped to his knees and pressed a hand against the dog’s chest. Nothing. No pulse, no movement, no sound. He bent closer and leaned his head against White Dog’s chest. He thought he heard a heartbeat but it could have been his imagination. No, there it was again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In a flurry of movement, Bob wrapped White Dog in the rug, carried her out to the pickup truck, and ordered his driver to take the dog to the veterinarian, three blocks away on Levidou Street. He then raced back into the house, back to Liz. He found her in the same spot, an open suitcase on the floor beside her, packing some of Michael’s clothes.

  “What happened?” Bob asked, forcing himself to remain calm. “Tell me what happened to Michael.”

  The look in Liz’s eyes momentarily took Bob’s breath away. They were dull, lifeless. “The Gypsies,” she said. “They took my baby.”

  This made no sense to Bob. Gypsies kidnapped children only in old wives’ tales. He’d never heard of Gypsies stealing children in Greece. He would have known about such crimes from the weekly intelligence briefings he received. Bob tried to get Liz to talk, but she appeared almost catatonic. He reached down for her and pulled her to her feet. He used a hand to brush her hair away from her face.

  “Come on, sweetheart; let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, trying to keep the terror out of his voice while he moved her toward the bathroom.

  She moved sluggishly and leaned heavily against him. Then, as though she’d suddenly been charged with electricity, she lashed out at him, beating his chest with her fists, screaming. “You weren’t here, you weren’t here! We needed you, but you weren’t here!”

  Then, just as suddenly as she had turned on him, she seemed to deflate, sagging into him.

  Bob wrapped an arm around her waist and continued toward the bathroom.

  “I carried White Dog home,” she said in a little girl voice.

  “I know, Liz.” Bob felt as though his heart had been diced into a thousand pieces. Her words had penetrated his very soul. We needed you, but you weren’t here.

  Bob gently moved Liz to the shower. He removed her blood-saturated clothes, tossed them on the shower floor, and turned on the water. The pan ran red, then pink with blood. After shutting off the water and toweling Liz dry, he took her bathrobe off a hook on the back of the door and helped her to put it on.

  He tried again to get her to talk. “What happened, honey?” he rasped. “Tell me what happened. Tell me about the Gypsies,” he pleaded.

  “We have to get Michael’s clothes to him, Bob,” she said, her voice barely audible, droning as though she were drugged. “What’s he going to do without his clothes?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bob jumped at the sound of the doorbell. He patted Liz’s shoulder, rose from the couch, bent over, and kissed the top of her head. No reaction. He now understood what it meant to have a heavy heart. Liz just continued sitting there. She seemed to be lost in some emotional black hole. Bob sighed and walked to the front door.

  A short, thin man who looked like an undertaker in his all-black outfit stood on the porch. Two average-sized, uniformed Greek police officers bracketed him, emphasizing just how short the man actually was. At six-feet-two-inches, Bob towered o
ver the man.

  “Inspector Petros Zavitsanos,” the man said, offering his hand. Bob noticed there was no emotion on the Inspector’s face. His features seemed to be made of stone, his eyes black marbles.

  Bob took Zavitsanos’ hand. “Bob Danforth. Please come in,” he said. “Have you heard anything? Have you found Michael?”

  The Inspector’s face appeared to sag for a moment, then recovered its granite-like composure.

  Zavitsanos shook his head. “Nothing yet, Captain Danforth.” Then he turned toward one of the policemen and made a waving motion of his hand. In Greek, he ordered, “Look around the grounds, check with the neighbors, the school next door. Maybe someone saw or heard something.”

  “Wouldn’t the neighbors have said something if they’d seen my son kidnapped?” Bob said in Greek.

  “Oh, you speak my language,” Zavitsanos said. While Bob nodded, the Inspector added, “Yes, they probably would have already come forward. But you never know.”

  Bob stepped aside and allowed Zavitsanos to enter the foyer. He watched the two policemen step around the blood spots on the porch.

  He turned and led the Inspector to the living room. Bob tipped his head in Liz’s direction and grimaced. “She’s been like this since I got home an hour ago.”

  Liz sat on the couch with their son’s yellow-headed Playskool hammer in her hands, staring vacantly across the room. Bob thought her skin looked gray, her eyes disconnected from the present.

  Bob turned to Zavitsanos and shrugged. “I don’t think she’s going to be able to help you.”

  Zavitsanos walked over to a bookcase and pointed at a framed photograph.

  “This is your son Michael?” the Inspector said.

  Bob nodded.

  Zavitsanos took the picture to the couch and sat next to Liz. “Your son is very handsome, Mrs. Danforth. Can you tell me something about him?” He held the photo in front of her face.

  Liz grabbed it from him and clutched it to her breast. “Michael’s not here,” she said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Stefan Radko sat behind the wheel of the gray Mercedes parked on an Athens residential street. He shifted his six-foot, four-inch frame, trying to release the tension in his back and legs. Vanja, his Bulgarian mistress, sat beside him. She was complaining in a high-pitched, fingernails-on-a-blackboard voice, but Stefan wasn’t paying attention to what she said. He twisted one end of his thick, black mustache while he concentrated on his current predicament. He’d been the leader, the bulibasha, of both his clan and a great band of families – a kumpania. But now the members of his old kumpania considered him mahrime – unclean, polluted. Having a mistress was considered “illicit.” Especially a gadja – a non-Gypsy. But he knew his people ostracized him for another reason. They believed he had secret wealth; that he was holding out on his clan. They weren’t wrong.

  Now he led only a five-member team composed of a few blood relatives and Vanja. His little group had also become pariahs to the Gypsy community – the Rom – because they’d found a way to make real the gadjo myth that Gypsies steal children. Kidnapping babies, for profit or otherwise, was abhorrent to the Gypsy community. But it didn’t bother Stefan Radko and his crew. Even when the puri daj, the old matriarch, “gave him the eye,” cursing him and his followers – Te bisterdon tumare anava (May your names be forgotten) – he had just laughed.

  Radko felt a rush of adrenaline each time he snatched a child. But this one was different. This one was American. He tried to consider all the implications. Would he still be paid? Should he just dump the kid? He needed to think this through, but Vanja wasn’t helping. He looked at her. No matter how mad she made him, he still felt a stirring in his loins. Twenty years his junior, blond and blue-eyed, voluptuous; she was the best looking woman he’d ever fucked. But he had to teach her who was boss.

  “Shut up, woman,” he yelled, shooting her an icy-blue-eyed, venomous look. “I can’t think with you complaining in my ear!”

  “I told you not to send that imbecile, Rumiah. Didn’t I say she’d cause trouble?” Vanja shouted. “But, oh no, just because she’s your sister. I’ll put a curse on–”

  He busted her lip with the back of his hand.

  Silence.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bob sat with Liz until the drugs the doctor gave her kicked in. Then he helped her to their bed and left her long enough to call the veterinarian to check on White Dog. He wasn’t surprised but his heart still felt leaden when the vet told him he shouldn’t get his hopes up. Bob looked across the room at White Dog’s bed. “You were here,” he whispered. “You tried to save Michael. That’s more than I did.”

  Even after the sedatives knocked her out, Liz moaned in the bed, her arms and legs twitching spasmodically. She tossed her head from side to side. Bob paced. He passed the telephone a hundred times, each time silently praying for it to ring with news about his son. But the doorbell rang instead.

  He couldn’t keep disappointment from his face when he saw his commander, Colonel Geoffrey Gray, and Gray’s wife, Susan, on his front porch.

  “How’s Liz?” Gray asked.

  “Out cold,” Bob said. “The doctor said she’d sleep until morning.”

  Gray shook his head. “And how are you doing?”

  “Jeez, Geoffrey, how do you think he’s doing?” Susan snapped at her husband.

  Gray shot his wife a look. “Why don’t you check on Liz?” he suggested between clenched teeth.

  Susan stomped toward the bedroom.

  “It’s been over fourteen hours, and not a word,” Bob said, his voice breaking. “I don’t have a clue where to look for him. I’m a soldier, Colonel. I know how to fight. But who do I fight? I’ve never felt more lost in my life.”

  Gray put a hand on Bob’s shoulder.

  “I pulled some strings over at the Hellenic army headquarters,” he said. “They’re sending someone from the police to escort you to a roadblock up north on the National Highway. They can always use another set of eyes and ears. And who better than you when it comes to identifying Michael? I think–”

  The doorbell interrupted Gray. He walked to the front door and opened it. “Yes, what is it?” Gray growled.

  “Inspector Petros Zavitsanos,” the man said, displaying an identification card.

  “We’ve been waiting for someone from the police,” Gray said. “But I didn’t expect an inspector to be sent on escort duty.”

  “Just part of the job, Colonel,” Zavitsanos said. “Especially when the Minister of Security orders it.” There was a hint of reprimand in his tone, as though he knew it was Gray who had called the Minister. Zavitsanos looked at Bob. “Are you ready?” he asked. “We are going to a highway checkpoint.”

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “But give me a minute.” He left the room and tiptoed back to the bedroom. The buzz of heavy breathing came to him when he opened the door. Susan Gray sat in a chair next to the bed. She held Liz’s hand.

  “Thanks for coming,” Bob whispered. Then he stepped to the opposite side of the bed and bent over, putting his mouth next to Liz’s ear. “I’m going out to try to find Michael, Liz. You’ve got to get better. I need you.”

  Liz’s breathing skipped a beat, then subsided into a regular pattern again. Bob kissed her cheek and straightened up.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Susan Gray said. “I’ll stay with her. You go find your son.”

  Zavitsanos led Bob down the front steps to the blue and white police cruiser parked in front of the house. They entered the vehicle and Zavitsanos drove away, north toward the entrance to the National Highway.

  “There are two routes from Athens to the northern border– the old road going through villages and towns, and the highway, bypassing them all,” Zavitsanos explained. “If the people who kidnapped your son took the old road, they’ll ultimately probably go through Thiva. We’re stopping all traffic just this side of Thiva. Wagons are not permitted on the National Highway, so we assume the Gypsies are on the
old road, unless they transferred your son to a car.”

  “Why are you focusing to the north?” Bob asked.

  “Because my instincts tell me the Gypsies who took your son will follow their normal, traditional route north into the Balkans.”

  “What if the kidnappers passed Thiva before the roadblocks were set?”

  “We also alerted the guards all along our northern border,” Zavitsanos said.

  “But kidnappers could hide out in any one of a thousand villages, until the government gets tired of operating roadblocks.”

  Zavitsanos nodded. “Yes, that is possible.”

  The drive to Thiva took an hour. They approached the roadblock just shy of midnight. The flashing lights of a dozen police vehicles illuminated the night sky.

  Zavitsanos flipped a dashboard switch to turn on his own roof flashers and drove on the shoulder of the road to bypass the line of more than two hundred cars and trucks waiting to get through.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zavitsanos said a silent prayer that they would find the little boy. But the more time that passed, the more discouraged he became. He knew the odds were already in favor of the kidnappers.

  “We’ve been here more than three hours, Captain Danforth,” Zavitsanos said, tapping his watch. “Maybe I should take you home. You look like you need some rest.”

  “No, no. I’m fine,” Bob responded. “Just a little while longer. Okay?”

  Zavitsanos shrugged and walked over to a policeman pouring thick café turkiko from a thermos into a tin cup.