“Yes, this is the right box.” It was taking all of Mike’s willpower to not go crazy.
“Wait here a moment please.” The clerk left, heading across the bank.
Mike could only look into the empty box, his mind swimming with a thousand questions. Carol wouldn’t have been able to have access to this box even if I gave her a key. She’s not a signatory. If something had happened to me, it would have taken weeks for Carol to gain access to this box. That means somebody knows, they’ve known who I am for months, maybe even years, and—f
“Mr. Costello?”
Mike looked up. An overweight balding man with glasses wearing a white shirt, black slacks, and a dark blue tie had approached him. The man bore the official look and demeanor of the branch manager. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yes,” Mike said, holding the empty safe deposit box. “My box is empty and it wasn’t empty last week when I came in to deposit something inside it.”
“I see,” the bank manager said, taking a quick look at the box. “And you don’t have a co-owner or an executor to this—”
“No!” Mike said through gritted teeth.
The bank clerk returned with the sign-in card. The bank manager nodded at Mike. “The sign-in sheet should tell us something. Let’s see.” He ran his finger down a column. Mike placed the empty safe deposit box down on a shelf and joined them. “Ah, here we are. Three days ago.” Mike looked at where the bank manager’s pudgy finger was pointing and his heart leaped in his chest. This can’t be, he thought. This just can’t be.
“It appears you were in three days ago,” the bank manager said, his voice sounding far away. “There’s your signature.”
Mike stared at the sign-in sheet. Sure enough, the signature he used to sign his pseudonym, Matthew Costello, was identical to the one he had used all the other times. This signature was scrawled on a line halfway down the page, with a date of July 13, 1999, three days ago. Box number 1356.
“But that’s impossible,” Mike muttered. “I wasn’t here three days ago. I was back east.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” His mind reeled. Three days ago he was traveling to Philadelphia with Frank and Vince. He’d placed items in the box a day or so before, and sure enough, there was his signature verifying that. But three days ago—
“Sir?”
Mike looked up. The bank manager and the clerk were looking at him with worried, concerned expressions. The bank manager exuded the false concern, business-as-usual. “May I ask what you were storing in your box, sir?”
“No,” Mike said. He turned toward the empty box, his mind spinning crazily. “No, it’s…” They’d been here. They had gotten to his wife, had probably gotten to his family, and then they’d come to the bank and taken all the evidence. He’d thought that by adopting another identity he’d shield his personal life from them. Obviously they were more powerful than he’d thought. If there was any doubt as to the validity of this group now, those doubts were now gone entirely. There was nothing else to do. They had to go to Billy Grecko with what they had now. “…it’s nothing,” he said, as the sudden urge to get out of the bank propelled him out of the vault. He shouldered his way past the startled bank employees and threaded his way through other bank patrons, catching a glimpse of Frank still seated by the bank teller’s desk. Frank looked up with a startled expression on his face as Mike approached. “They’re onto us, we need to get to Billy, I need to find Carol,” he said, repeating the mantra to himself, feeling the blind need to find his family, to find Carol, to find Jimmy and Cathy and baby Kimberly and his other son up in Lake Tahoe. Oh God, suppose they’d gotten to his kids and his granddaughter too—
“Mike!” Firm hands gripping his shoulders. Mike started, looking up into Frank’s worried countenance. “You okay?”
“No,” Mike said, the need to get out of the bank strong. He looked behind his shoulder, saw the bank manager and the clerk looking toward them. “No, I’m not okay,” he turned to Frank. “Let’s get out of here.” And then he started walking toward the double-glass doors that spilled out onto Talbert Avenue.
“Mike!” Frank rushed after him, keeping pace with him. “What the hell is going on?”
“The Children of the Night is not some urban legend,” Mike said, heading to Frank’s car. “They’re very real and we under-estimated them.”
THERE WAS NO clear destination in mind. Frank simply got behind the wheel and drove the hell out of the bank’s parking lot.
Mike seethed beside him, part fury, part fear. “I should have been looking for Carol last night. I should have done something! Why didn’t I see this coming?”
“It’s not your fault,” Frank said, heading down Talbert toward the beach. “Neither of us knew this would’ve happened.”
“Well, we should’ve,” Mike snapped. He glanced at Frank briefly, then turned back to look out the window. “My adopting a separate identity wasn’t enough, and I thought it would be. They took everything. My files, all the backups I had saved to the zip disks, everything.”
Frank listened. This new development bothered him as much as it did Mike. Hell, it scared him. All the evidence they had was on those zip disks, contained in those manila file folders. All that was remaining was Frank’s laptop, which now resided in a secret compartment in the trunk of Frank’s car. Frank had sent Mike copies of documents via e-mail, and while he still had them on the hard drive, that wasn’t the point. For Mike’s safe deposit box to have been breached meant somebody knew about their investigation and had been following them for months. Maybe they’d known the whole time. Frank gripped the steering wheel, his mind racing. If they’d gotten to Carol, what about Brandy? If he and Mike had been followed this whole time, couldn’t it be possible that—
“I don’t know what else to do,” Mike said, breaking Frank’s thoughts. He was shaking his head, his features crumbling. “Carol’s gone and they’ve got the stuff, they’ve fucking got it! We’ve got to call the police.”
“For all we know the police might be in on this,” Frank responded.
“Well, what else are we going to do?”
Frank sighed. “I don’t know.”
They rode on in silence for a moment. “I’ve got to find Carol,” Mike said. “How…how are we going to do that unless…”
“If the police are in any way involved, the minute you call them they could alert whoever was responsible for abducting Carol,” Frank said, his eyes on the road. “Then they’ll get you. Then me. Then Vince.” He turned to Mike. “Then it really is over.”
“You fucking hypocritical piece of shit,” Mike muttered, his green eyes blazing with anger. “What about your family? Don’t you think they might not have already—”
Frank pulled the car over. They’d just crossed Adams Avenue and even though he pulled the car into a No Parking zone, he didn’t care. He put the car in park and turned to Mike, his own panic and anger rising. “I’ve put in a lot of time and I’ve risked my own life to get to the bottom of this shit. I don’t need you to jeopardize it by—”
“Oh, so now I’m the weak-link, huh?” Mike sputtered, his face red, leaning toward Frank. “You just want us to forget about our families, forget our loved ones and keep going so we can find out what happened over twenty and thirty years ago—”
“It’s not just about that!” Frank thundered, his voice so loud that it even surprised him. Mike stopped, eyes widening. Calm down, Frank told himself. Don’t blow up now, you need him, you need each other if you’re going to get through this, so just calm. The fuck. Down. “We knew what we were getting into when we started this,” he said, his voice straining with anger. “We knew the risks involved in not only our own lives, but our families. We went into this together knowing those risks. It was your choice to keep your wife and kids in the dark.”
“Bullshit!” Mike started again, looking like he wanted to leap out of his seat and throttle him.
“I’ve alrea
dy sacrificed my own life,” Frank said, ignoring him. He tried not to think about this as he continued. “I know I’m never gonna see my wife or kids again. I took measures to protect them. Brandy knows something is going on, but she doesn’t know the specifics. Oh, she suspects, I’m sure she does. But I went out of my way to prepare for the worst. It kills me knowing I’ll never see them. I know that if I go back to my family I’ll be followed and they’ll be at risk and it doesn’t matter how many times I change my name to throw them off my trail. They’ll find me no matter what. They found Vince and his mother and they’ve found others. I don’t want to live like that the rest of my life, knowing they could strike anytime, anywhere, anyplace. That’s why I made the decision myself. That’s why I’m not going back to my family. As much as I want to see my kids again, to hold my wife in my arms…” Frank stopped, trying to control his emotions. He wanted to break down and cry. He wanted to smash something. He felt like he was going to explode. “I can’t go to the police,” he said, reigning his emotions in. “I don’t trust the cops more than I can throw them. If there’s even the slightest chance that even one cop is an insider—”
“Oh, and what are the chances of that?” Mike exclaimed.
“You know as well as I that they’ve infiltrated law enforcement,” Frank said. He heard his voice rising and he fought to control it. “Okay, maybe they’re not everywhere, but we can’t take that chance. Even if you get lucky and get cops that aren’t aware of the Children, they’re not gonna believe you. I mean, what are you gonna tell them?”
“What do you think I’m gonna tell them? I’m gonna tell them somebody broke into my house and kidnapped my wife!”
“Sure,” Frank said, on a roll now. “And you won’t say anything about us, right?”
“I’m not going to say anything about us.”
“And what’s going to happen if they get a detective that’s got half a brain, they’re eventually going to connect you with me and that’s going to lead them to what happened in Pennsylvania. And then what are you going to tell them?”
“I’ll figure that out if it happens,” Mike said. He slumped back in his seat, wearing a mask of defeat.
“Bullshit,” Frank said, leaning forward. “You’re gonna think about this now. You’re gonna come up with something more solid than that, because you are not gonna implicate me in this at all.”
Mike turned to him, the spark of anger still in his eyes. “Changing your mind then?”
“No. I don’t want you to go to the cops, but I can’t stop you, either.” Truth was, the more Frank talked and bluffed, the more he was putting himself in Mike’s shoes. If it were Brandy and his kids that had come up missing, he would want to call the police too. “If you go to the cops you don’t know me, and we’ve never met each other. You go to the cops and I am fucking out of here, you got me? I’ve not only never seen you, I’m not only over-the-hills-and-far-away, I don’t even fucking exist.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be too hard to fake,” Mike said. “They’ve got everything. There’s nothing at the house that’s going to lead to you, and even phone records aren’t going to turn anything up. I was careful of that.”
Frank regarded Mike for a moment, his demeanor cracking. The more he thought about it, the better calling the police was starting to sound. Worst-case scenario: even if they were caught for the fiasco in Lititz, maybe they could plead self-defense and expose these bastards. In the meantime, while Mike was contacting the police, Frank could contact Billy Grecko and turn what was left of their investigation over to him. Hopefully it would be enough for Billy to go to his FBI contact with.
That wouldn’t be enough, though. In fact, their best plan of action was to avoid the police. And Frank had to convince Mike that avoiding the police was the best course of action.
“You’re still going to need some kind of alibi,” Frank said, thinking out loud. “The police are going to want to know why you waited until today to call them.”
Mike glanced at him, looking wary. “Yeah, I suppose they are.”
“Let’s think about this a minute,” Frank said, forcing himself to stay calm and focused on the matter at hand. “If you’re going to contact the police, we still need each other. We also need to move the investigation into Billy’s hands. You got me?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah.”
“Here’s why going to the police would be a bad idea,” Frank said. “If you had booked our tickets under your name we could have come up with an excuse for you being out there pretty easily. Because we can’t do that, every other excuse you give them, like deciding you wanted to go camping or you took a drive out into the desert, are going to be suspect. How often do your kids drop in to see you or call?”
“Sometimes we can go a whole week without hearing from my son Jimmy,” Mike said. “My other son, Brad, lives up in Lake Tahoe. He calls about once a week. He usually calls on weekends.”
“When is the last time you saw Jimmy?” Frank asked.
Mike shrugged. “Four, maybe five days ago.”
“If Jimmy had decided to call or drop by between then and now, the cops would already be trying to get a hold of you. In fact, it’s very likely they would consider you a suspect in your wife’s disappearance should your kids get the police involved. Had the police shown up at your house before you got home, you’d probably be in an interrogation room now being grilled as a suspect in your wife’s disappearance and probable murder.”
Mike gasped at this obvious realization. Frank pressed on. “But your kids haven’t been in touch recently. Therefore, it’s possible we have anywhere from a few hours to a few more days before they do decide to call or drop by. We need to make the most of it.”
“But how?” Mike moaned. He buried his face in his hands, the frustration painfully obvious to Frank.
“That depends on where we want to go with this,” Frank said. “They’ve made their move, but they don’t hold all the cards. At least not yet. We have documents on my hard drive. My suggestion is we deliver my laptop to your friend Billy pronto and have him turn it over to his FBI contact.”
“But what if Carol is still alive? What if they’re holding her somewhere?
“Do you really think they would keep her alive?”
Mike’s face brimmed with tears. “What if they go after one of my kids…or my granddaughter…”
“Gimme their numbers,” Frank said. “I can check into that quite easily.”
“How?”
“Leave it to me.” Frank pulled a scrap of paper and a pen from the compartment between the front bucket seats. Mike rattled off two sets of phone numbers for his adult children, both work and home. Frank jotted them down. “Do either of them have Caller ID?”
“I don’t know,” Mike said. He looked haunted. Defeated. “Maybe.”
Frank’s mind was racing. “Let’s find a phone booth. It’ll be better if I place those calls from someplace anonymous. Once I can verify they’re safe, we need to deliver my laptop to Billy and then you and I really need to disappear.”
“Yeah.” Mike’s face was worn. It looked like he’d aged ten years.
Without another word, Frank waited until it was safe, then he pulled back onto the road and headed for a convenience store in search of a phone booth to place the calls.
“DID YOU TALK to them? Are they safe?”
Those were the first words out of Mike when Frank returned to the car. He climbed in and shut the door. Mike immediately began to pepper him with more questions. “You talked to them, right? What did you say? How did you—”
Frank cut him off. “I called Jimmy and your daughter-in-law at work and got their voice mails. I was able to zero out and get a secretary, who told me they were in meetings. So they’re safe.”
“What about Kimberly?” Kimberly was Mike’s granddaughter.
“I called the day care. Cathy dropped Kimberly off this morning. I assume Kimberly, Jimmy, and you and Carol are the only ones who have the a
uthority to pick her up?”
“Yes!” Mike nodded. At the news that Cathy had dropped Kimberly off this morning, Mike looked visibly relieved. “What about Brad?”
“I was able to talk to him,” Frank said. “The minute I verified it was him, I told him I was a telemarketer trying to sell him insurance and he hung up on me.”
Mike rubbed his face. He still looked worried, still appeared scared, but hearing the news that his sons and granddaughter were safe had taken the bulk of the worry out of his mind. “So what do we do now?”
“I tried calling Jimmy and Cathy on their cell phones but my calls went straight to voice mail. Cathy must have a busy schedule. Her secretary said she had a meeting, then had to leave early to take Kimberly to a pediatrician appointment at ten o’clock. She must have left early for that because when I called the day care, they told me Cathy had already picked her up.”
“At least she’s safe,” Mike said. He looked at Frank. “I’m tired and I’m hungry. I know this sounds horrible, but I need something in my stomach. I’m fucking starving.”
Frank started the car. “Let’s grab a quick bite to eat and some coffee. We can lay out a plan over breakfast.”
Five minutes later, shortly after ten o’clock in the morning, they entered a Coco’s restaurant on Talbert Avenue and were escorted by a twenty-something female hostess to a table where they refueled.
And made plans.
Chapter Nineteen
“THE PARTY YOU have called has turned their phone off or is not in the service area. Please try again—”
Goddamn! Frank hit the disconnect button on his cell phone and shot a look at Mike. “Let me try again,” he said.
“What’s the matter?” Mike asked. He was standing near the doorway of the cramped motel room, waiting for Frank to finish collecting his things.
“Vince isn’t answering his goddamn cell phone,” Frank said.
Mike frowned. It was a quarter till one in the afternoon. They’d spent an hour at Coco’s eating breakfast, drinking coffee, and talking in low tones. Mike had called Billy Grecko and given him the Cliff Note’s version of what was happening and made plans to meet at his office at 1:30. Once Mike had a cup of coffee in him and put away half his breakfast—scrambled eggs, hash browns, and pancakes—he became more rational, more level-headed. He agreed with Frank that they couldn’t call the police even though his emotions begged him to simply drop everything and do so. Frank had taken his laptop in the restaurant for safe-keeping and it sat between them in the corner booth he’d requested. Mike had mostly listened as Frank quickly outlined a hasty plan: the first step was to get the laptop to Billy Grecko; the second step was to contact Vince and make coordinated steps to disappear again; the third was subject for debate. Frank needed to gather his things, then make like a leaf and blow. He suggested Mike disappear too. Mike insisted on being dropped off at his home first. “I’ve got to get a few things—”
They Page 36