Ransom Beach (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 2)

by Lawrence Kelter

  "We did it," she howled. "We actually fucking did it. Holy shit! Holy fucking shit!"

  One late straggler was heading toward his car, holding a Snapple in his hand. Moira ducked down until he passed by and got into his BMW.

  "Go on in that piece of shit you're driving. I can buy a better fucking car than that. I can buy a fucking Rolls Royce. You hear that, world? Moira Ryan can buy a fucking Rolls Royce." She gave the BMW driver the finger as he drove past her.

  She checked her watch—only fifteen minutes until her train's scheduled departure. Reaching under the seat, she retrieved the black canvas bag she had stowed days before. Five stacks at a time, she transferred the money from the Louis Vuitton to her backpack—twenty arms-length transactions. She searched the inside of the Louis Vuitton visually and then felt around the inside for good measure to make sure nothing had been left behind.

  Ten minutes to go. She rolled the soft-sided Louis Vuitton into a ball and placed it inside a black plastic trash bag.

  Eight minutes to go. Moira stepped from the car wearing her backpack. She was holding the trash bag under her arm. She had timed the walk—almost four minutes to exit the parking lot and walk the short distance to the train platform.

  She heard a train whistle in the distance and got nervous, thinking that her watch was off. She wanted to be off Long Island in the safety of her apartment before the police put two and two together and found the old car.

  At the base of the train station, a display indicated that the westbound train to Flatbush Avenue was on time. She stuffed the black garbage bag into the trash pail and took the escalator to the elevated railroad platform.

  She never looked back.

  She didn't see the vagrant reach into the trash pail and remove the black garbage bag.

  She didn't see him take the steps two at a time, slipping into the train just as the doors were closing.

  She never saw it coming.

  Forty—IN THE NAME OF GOD

  Ambler reached into his breast pocket and retrieved his PDA. Lido and I looked over his shoulder, waiting for the unit to boot. He had it programmed in a few seconds—a GPS grid appeared on the small screen. Our location was easy to find—we were on the beige strip bordering the winding blue strip, otherwise known as the Long Island Sound. A black pulsing square on the grid marked our location. What we were looking for was a pulsing red dot to show us the position of the Q-logger, the tracking device, we had cut into one of the bundles of cash—nothing.

  "What gives?" I asked.

  Ambler's face looked as if he were fit to be tied. Lido's too. I had clumps of pancake makeup smeared across mine, camouflaging my level of unhappiness, making it hard to see, but it was there all the same.

  "Not sure," Ambler replied.

  "I thought you checked the batteries."

  "I did."

  "Guess you didn't use Energizers. You know, the ones that keep going and going and going and—"

  "They were fresh, Stephanie," Ambler snapped. "It's not the batteries."

  "What then?" Lido asked.

  "Range maybe—the Q-logger's good for about two miles. We lost a lot of time when the van totaled the building. They're likely too far away for this unit to pick them up."

  It was true. No one had anticipated a diversion large enough to rate a measurement on the Richter scale. Still, the bottom line was that we had come up empty all around—no Manny and no cash. Not exactly cause for celebration. "Plan B?"

  Ambler rubbed his cheek while he thought about alternatives. "Fortunately, the Q-logger's transmitting frequency is programmable. We can set up a grid at two mile intervals throughout the area."

  "Sit around and hope that we pick up a signal? Lots of luck—how long will that take?"

  Ambler shrugged. "Won't be quick."

  "Gives the kidnappers plenty of time to go through the cash and dump the transmitter. I don't like our chances."

  "You have another idea?" Ambler asked.

  That minimizing bra I was wearing had really become uncomfortable. It felt like I was bound like a mummy. I wanted to rip the damn thing off so that I could breathe. I'm sure that would have been okay with Lido. Ambler too, probably—way cool. Now, however, was not the time to consider my creature comforts. "Where did they take Dr. Zaius?"

  The boys looked at me as if I were crazy.

  "The gorilla I wounded."

  They both said, "Oh," in unison.

  "North Shore Hospital," Lido said. "What's your point?"

  "Let's set up the grid as fast as we can. While we're waiting, let's lean on the gorilla—see if he gives up something, anything, a morsel that we can use for a warrant to take down The Faith. I say we come down on them now—we come down hard and heavy."

  I heard the wail of a fire truck approaching. They were on the way to pry open the white van, the metallic coffin Carl was entombed within.

  "Good," Ambler said. "I'll lean on the wounded guy while the two of you hightail it back to the city. I'll call you if I'm lucky enough to squeeze anything out of him."

  "If?" I said, narrowing my eyes at the aging Fed.

  "Bad choice of words," Ambler said. "I mean when."

  "You've got to. We've got to get a fix on the kidnappers now, at this moment. Once they make it back to their hideout, they can cool out indefinitely. They've got Thorne's five mil to lean on, and all the time in the world. It might be years before they attempt to extort more money. All they have to do is feed Manny and keep him healthy."

  A sad thought crossed my mind. I'm sure Lido and Ambler picked up on it immediately. The kidnappers could perpetuate future ransom demands with or without Manny. Manny had likely penned dozens of his quatrains or would in short order. They had photos of him, hair, etc. They could stockpile everything they needed and dispose of Manny when it was convenient. Their plan was secure as long as the body never surfaced. "Scratch that," I said. I didn't have to fill in the blanks: the boys had already arrived at the same conclusion.

  Lido puffed out his cheeks. "We're wasting time."

  "I'll catch a ride with Smith." Ambler reached into his coat pocket and pulled out another PDA. He handed it to me. "Backup unit," he said. "It's already programmed. Just turn it on and it'll boot directly to the GPS tracking screen."

  At this point the tracking thing wasn't looking too good, but I wasn't going to argue with Ambler. "Thanks," I said. "Off you go."

  Ambler turned immediately. He hustled over to Ken Smith. He put his arm around Smith's shoulder while he filled him in. Smith nodded, barked instructions to his next in command, and followed Ambler out of the building.

  "Let's go," Lido said.

  Lido and I began walking away when the fire engine's strobe light distracted me. The beam was flashing into the building through the ruptured outer wall. I heard the firemen deploying off the truck. I don't know why I needed to look, but something inside said it was the thing to do. "One second, Gus." Lido caught my body language and followed me.

  The Oyster Bay Volunteer Fire Department was hard at it. The rain became heavy as they enabled the Jaws of Life and set it on the driver's door. The fireman working the device was a real pro. I didn't want to think about the reason why. Oyster Bay was an affluent town, lots of money everywhere, which meant fast cars, good times, teen drivers, alcohol and drugs, fire and plague, etc. The fireman was adept at his task for all the wrong reasons, terrible reasons. I shook my head woefully—my mind just didn't want to go there.

  The door made a sound like a wounded t-rex roaring as it came off its hinges. I've seen bodies extricated from vehicles before. If the driver wasn't wearing a seatbelt, it was not uncommon to see the body slump and fall out the door but that didn't happen to Carl. He was wedged firmly in place, but his cell phone was not. It clattered out of the truck and fell into a puddle. I swooped in and picked it up before it became waterlogged. The display was dark. I powered it up. The display came on momentarily. It flashed low battery, and then shut down.

  I loo
ked at Carl one last time, frozen behind the van's wheel. I don't usually believe in poetic justice but it seemed that he had received his just comeuppance. He had engineered the abduction of a helpless child and had paid with his life. He, like millions before him, had placed a religious quest before morality. It always pained me to think about how much had been lost over the centuries; people doing terrible things for what they were convinced were the right reasons. Carl was just one additional statistic to be added to the balance sheet of the holy wars.

  Lido tapped me on the shoulder. There wasn't a moment to lose. We raced back to the car with Carl's phone in hand. I hoped the crime lab would be able to extract vital information from it, information that would put me onto Manny's kidnappers, Helen Gillette's murderer—they were, I believed, one and the same.

  Forty-one—DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

  Moira had taken the Long Island Railroad to Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and from there the subway into Manhattan. It had taken every ounce of self-restraint for her to keep her hands out of her backpack. Dirty laundry, she told herself, a bag of soiled shorts. The pads on her fingertips actually tingled with the desire to reach into the backpack and touch the money. The grin refused to stay washed from her face. She had to stay in control, couldn't let on. The railroad was one thing but the subway was something else entirely. Her life wouldn't be worth five cents if a subway thug picked up on the attention she was showing the backpack.

  She was the student today, in glasses and a baseball cap. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that extended through the sizing space at the back of the cap. She was wearing jeans and a trendy nylon jacket that she had fleeced from The Gap. The cell phone that dangled from her shoulder bag was switched off.

  Moira noticed a male college student sitting down the bench from her. He was attending New York University—at least the emblem on his nylon briefcase said so. The briefcase was sitting on his lap with the emblem prominently on display—a status symbol, not unlike the crocodile on a Lacoste polo shirt. He was stealing peeks at her, surreptitious glances. Moira sized him up immediately, assessing from his curly brown hair and rounded nose that he was not exactly a hottie, but more of a bookworm who would give his left nut for a date with a hot girl.

  Her instinct was to toy with him, lead him on a little bit, perhaps throw him a mercy fuck if there was enough about him to turn her on. Of course she'd steal his identity and score a major purchase on his credit card before he knew what happened. It was so much more exciting than just asking for cash—being a thief was ever so much cooler than being called a whore.

  There would be no games today, not with a fortune sitting in her backpack. It was past rush hour and the subway's population had changed from commuters to locals, students, working class poor who couldn't afford to take a cab, and worse, the street crowd, some innocent, some not. They could do her a world of hurt. She'd been pistol whipped before and was not anxious to repeat the experience. She could have taken a cab from Flatbush, but she knew that cab rides can be traced. The police would surely think to check the pickups from the railroad stations. The subway seemed a better choice. But sitting there she had become nervous. There was a gun in her pocket for protection, a gun she couldn't use in front of a subway car full of witnesses. It was there only if her survival depended on it, if there was no other way out.

  They were between stations when the connecting doors at the far end slid open and trouble walked in from the adjoining car. Moira's heart rate quickened and the grip around her gun tightened. She knew his kind at first glance, a crackhead, desperate, aching for a hit, the type that would do anything, the kind whose world had fallen apart, shattered by the rock. She had been in that position herself—nothing to lose.

  He looked about twenty. He was wearing rags and his stench hit her the moment he came through the door. She picked up on his twitching leg and the way he clawed at his neck to stifle the itch that would never go away. He looked up and down the subway car with his red, watery eyes, scratching and twitching. He needed it bad and was not getting off the subway without someone's wallet.

  The NYU student had yet to become alarmed.

  Moira made the first move. She slid next to him on the bench, giving the appearance that they were a couple. Safety in numbers, she thought.

  He turned immediately, his eyes meeting hers, hopeful.

  "Please don't ask me to move," she whispered. She glanced at the addict. "I don't like the look of him. Please."

  The NYU student glanced up in an attempt to determine whether the man she had brought to his attention was truly a threat. He took a moment too long to make the determination.

  Moira put her hand on his, drawing him back into her spell. "Please," she said, making an impassioned plea. "My name is Helen, Helen Gillette." She didn't so much as flinch as she made the name her own. Her eyes were soft and vulnerable.

  "I'm Eric," he replied.

  Moira smiled sweetly and rested her head on his shoulder. "Thank you."

  "He won't bother us," Eric said.

  Moira nuzzled him gently, caressing the hollow of his neck. "I hope not. I was attacked once."

  "It'll be alright."

  "You're nice," she said, as she vigilantly monitored the crackhead's position and attitude. "You go to NYU?"

  "Uh huh, school of dramatic arts."

  "You're gonna be an actor."

  Eric shrugged as the train pulled into the next station. "A director if I'm lucky."

  "That's way cool."

  Moira checked the station stop. Two stops to go. She wouldn't have to keep the act up much longer. The crackhead had yet to make a move. She hoped he would get off before she did. "I'm starting at Columbia in January," she said.

  Eric nodded. "Columbia, that's impressive."

  "I'm new in town, looking for an apartment. Maybe you'll give me your phone number."

  "Sure."

  Moira tensed as two of New York's finest stepped aboard. They showed only mild interest in the crackhead but their presence put an end to his plans. They stayed on and the crackhead jumped off at the next stop.

  One to go. Moira took a pen out of her bag and handed it to Eric. "I get off at the next stop."

  Eric smiled and took the pen. He fished in his pocket for a scrap of paper.

  Moira eyed the cops. Assholes! She had no use for them now that they had served their purpose.

  Eric handed over his information just as the train pulled into Moira's stop. She kissed him sweetly on the cheek, one final touch in a flawless performance. "Is this really your number?" God, she was good.

  Eric nodded. "Yes."

  "It's okay if I call?"

  Eric nodded again.

  Moira waved as she got off the train. She felt as if she was capable of anything.

  Her apartment was a short distance from the subway entrance. She walked quickly through the rain, disappearing up the steps to her apartment building. She was growing giddy with anticipation, hoping Daniel was waiting for her naked.

  A few minutes passed before another pair of policemen came up the subway stairs. They spoke for a moment, debating Quiznos or McDonalds for their dinner break. They barely noticed the homeless man approaching them, carrying a black trash bag.

  "Can I help you?" One of them said.

  The homeless man opened the garbage bag so that the policemen could see the expensive leather bag inside. He handed one of them a business card.

  "What's this?" the cop said, looking over the card.

  "Call now," the man said. "Call right now."

  He turned and began walking down the street.

  "Hey, what's this about?"

  The man didn't look back. He disappeared into the shadows halfway down the block.

  The policemen looked at one another and shrugged. Then one reached for his cell phone and made the call.

  Forty-two—MAKE A WISH

  I couldn't stop myself from jabbing my finger at Ambler's PDA. I was just plain frustrated. We came out of the
Queens Midtown Tunnel and emerged into the darkness of New York City. It was still raining, a cold and dreary night. The red indicator on the PDA never flashed, not even once, so much for technology.

  We turned onto Second Avenue and headed downtown. Someone had vandalized one of Thorne's ad posters, which adorned a bus stop. This one featured Tyra Banks. An adolescent male, at least I was guessing an adolescent male, had drawn thick black arrows pointing at Tyra's head and chest, to wit he had insightfully scribed: Nice hair. Nice pair. I'm feeling very T/horny. Why beat around the bush? It was an accurate commentary about the emotion the ad was meant to elicit—you couldn't blame someone for saying it. I pointed to the poster as we waited for traffic to clear in front of us. "Wait 'til she hears."

  Lido glanced at the poster. “Thorne? You tell her.” Lido was no coward, but I knew exactly how he felt. In this case, no one wanted to be the bearer of bad news.

  We were headed to the crime lab in an attempt to resuscitate Carl's phone—alas poor Carl would not be as fortunate. Perhaps there, stored in the memory of his phone, was the name and phone number of Manny's kidnappers.

  God, I was aching for a break. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the money had disappeared. It was there one minute and gone the next. Yes, there had been some sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors or more accurately put, cinderblock and plaster dust—someone had obviously raced by and snatched the cash while I was dodging the van and the crumbling wall. Be that as it may, I saw no one, nothing, not a flash of light streaking by, not so much as a peripheral glimpse of anything—go figure.

  But gone it was.

  As you may have noticed, I have real trouble dealing with failure. Forget about breaking the news to Thorne. Hi Celia, Manny and the money, they're both gone—better luck next time. Manny was still in the hands of his captors, lowlifes that attached no value to human life. They saw Manny as a meal ticket and nothing more—they'd lose him the moment they realized they could do it without him and from where I stood, that wouldn't take very long. It would be so much easier with him out of the picture. They wouldn't have to hide, feed, or care for him. All they needed to do was disappear. The woman that had acted in Manny's abduction had already proven herself an able chameleon. She had impersonated Helen Gillette at the hospital. Ernie, the Washington Heights street kid, said that she was dressed punk, or Goth. Finally, the report we had gotten from the bartender and waiter at the Red Bird Grill described her as a chic blonde. It set my mind to working. What did she look like today and more importantly, what would she look like tomorrow? Was she the one that had taken a shot at me in the basement of The Cove? I was still jabbing at the PDA. Almost put my finger through the screen.