by Sean Black
She kept stirring her coffee. Lock reached across and plucked the spoon from her hand. She went to snatch it back but he held it out of reach.
‘I said, look again.’
‘I don’t have to. That looks nothing like him.’
Lock handed her back the spoon and she resumed her stirring.
‘OK, so what did the Cody Parker that Natalya was seeing look like, then? And if you say “not like the picture” I’ll take that spoon from you and wedge it up your ass.’
Tiffany glanced at Ty. ‘Your buddy’s really intense.’
‘I know,’ said Ty, ‘and that’s one of his better qualities.’
‘Let’s start with height,’ said Lock.
‘Like his height,’ she said, indicating a squat Hispanic busboy who was clearing the detritus from a nearby table.
‘Around five eight?’
‘If that’s what that guy is, then yes.’
‘White? Black? Hispanic?’
‘White, but his skin was all messed up. Like he’d had really bad acne when he was younger.’
‘What kind of hair?’
‘Brown with some white. Cut short.’
‘Like mine?’
She put the spoon down on the table, a tiny slick of coffee clinging to its bowl. She looked up at Lock like she’d only just noticed him. ‘Yeah. Kind of.’
‘How old?’
‘Forties. Maybe fifty.’
‘But he said his name was Cody?’
She regarded Lock like a particularly impatient teacher might look at a defiantly obtuse pupil. ‘Yeah.’
‘You stay with her for five minutes,’ Lock said to Ty. ‘Make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.’
‘Why? Where are you going?’
‘To get some more pictures.’
Forty-one
The town car bumped across the rough ground of the abandoned lot. The driver parked, killed the engine, got out and walked away, across the street. He then made two more calls. The first was to Meditech headquarters. The second, a full ten minutes later, was to the FBI.
When he finished the last call he switched off his cell phone. He crossed back to an abandoned building next to the vacant lot. At the back of the building was a previously boarded-up door. He stepped inside and made his way through the garbage which littered the hallway to a set of stairs and began the climb to his observation post. From there he could see the lot with the town car parked in the middle of it.
Fifteen minutes later two hulking GMC Yukons screeched to a halt at the edge of the vacant lot. They sat there, engines ticking over, as if unsure about what to do next.
Brand sat in the front passenger seat of the lead vehicle, the fingertips of his right hand tracing the mini craters on his face. Hizzard sat in the driver’s seat. Brand had chosen him specially when they had got the call barely ten minutes ago.
Richard Hulme sat in the rear. As they came to a halt, he sprang forward, his hands clasping the back of Brand’s seat. ‘What are we waiting for?’
‘It’s not that simple. We verify he’s there first. Then we make the transfer. When that’s validated,then we can get him out.’
‘Why not just grab him?’
‘I already told you why. These people aren’t fooling around here.’
‘Let me go look,’ Richard said.
‘He might get upset if he sees you. Once it’s done you can get him out, I promise you.’
‘What if he’s not even in that car? What if this is some kind of sick joke?’
Brand twisted round to face him. ‘Hizzard, you go.’
Hizzard opened the door, exited the car and jogged over to the town car. When he got within ten feet he slowed and knelt down, taking a long, hard look underneath. Then he crossed to the rear passenger door nearest to him. He touched the handle, took a deep breath and opened the door. There was a little boy inside. He was sitting almost casually, his legs swinging over the edge, a hat pulled down over his face.
‘Hello?’ he said, his voice hoarse, the question tentative.
‘Josh?’
‘Yes.’ The voice was a whisper.
‘I’ve come to take you to your dad. But I need you to be patient for just a little while longer. Can you do that for me?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good. You’re being really brave. Now, I’m going to reach in and take off this hat so you can see.’
‘OK.’
Hizzard reached in and peeled off the hat. Josh stared back at him, recognizable, just, from the pictures he’d seen. They’d cut his hair, and dyed it, but it was definitely him.
‘Now, I have to go for a few minutes. But I’ll be back real soon. You have to do one thing for me, OK? You have to stay here until I come back for you. Whatever you do, do not leave this car.’
He closed the door, leaving Josh on his own. He jogged the whole way back and climbed back into the lead Yukon.
Richard grabbed at him as he sat back down. ‘Is it him? Is he OK? Have they hurt him?’ His voice was cracking, the questions stacking on top of each other.
‘It’s him. He’s fine, Dr Hulme.’
Brand hit speed dial on his phone. There was a second’s pause before his call was answered by their assigned lead at the insurance company.
‘This is Brand. We have a positive ID.’
‘I’ll action the transfer now, Mr Brand,’ the woman on the other end of the line replied.
Brand ended the call.
‘What now?’ Richard asked.
‘The insurance company makes the transfer. Once they verify it’s been made, they contact me and we can go get him.’
‘And what if they don’t hold up their end of the deal?’
‘They will,’ said Brand. ‘If they don’t I’ll scour the earth for every last one of them. They know that.’ He flashed a reassuring smile at Richard. ‘It’s all over. We’re gonna get your boy back real soon.’
From his vantage point three floors above, the driver watched as a beat-up ’96 Ford pick-up drew parallel to the lot and parked. The driver switched his cell back on and made another call. He said three words: ‘We got it.’ Then he hung up.
Down below, he watched as all four doors of each Yukon flew open and men rushed towards the town car. The first man to reach it threw open the rear door with such force that he bent it back on its hinges. Then his head and upper torso disappeared inside. He re-emerged with a small bundled figure and raced back towards the Yukons. A man in a sports jacket and chinos he guessed was Richard Hulme grabbed the little boy from the man’s grasp. The other men pulled him, still carrying the boy, back to their vehicles.
Across the street, Cody Parker pulled up just in time to secure a ringside seat for the transfer.
‘Son of a bitch.’
He threw the transmission of the truck into drive just as the first FBI vehicle car swept down on him, its nose cutting across the front of his pick-up. He looked in the rear-view mirror, ready to back up, as another car ploughed into him from the rear.
Up above, the driver waited until the doors of both Yukons were closed and then he made his final call.
Inside the town car, the cell phone stashed under the seat barely got the chance to chirp into life. The car exploded, sending a cone of fire into the sky. The windows shattered, glass fragments spinning out in every direction. The blast wave pushed the main body panels off the car, and they spun up and out, one of them slamming into the nearest of the Yukons. A second later a secondary explosion shot another burst of flame from the rear of the town car as the gas tank ignited.
In the back seat of the lead Yukon, Richard watched the windowless shell of the town car burn as Josh buried his head in his father’s chest. Sobbing with relief, he leaned down and kissed the top of his son’s head, his fingers running quickly through his hair. Across the street, he could see a well-built man with a greasy ponytail being dragged out of a pick-up truck by four men wearing blue windcheaters emblazoned with the letters JTTF. The man mouthed a
stream of obscenities as his arms were wrenched behind his back and he was lifted up to his feet.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Brand said.
Hizzard needed no prompting to press down on the gas and accelerate away from the town car’s smoking carcass.
In the back seat, Richard held on tight to his son. ‘It’s OK, Josh, you’re safe now. You’re safe with me.’
Forty-two
‘In a new twist to the Josh Hulme abduction case, self-styled animal liberator Cody Parker, also known to police as Lone Wolf, will be arraigned Monday on federal kidnapping charges for the alleged abduction of seven-year-old Josh Hulme.’
Carrie stopped, flicked back some hair which had worked its way loose and fallen over her left eye. ‘Sorry, Bob, let me try that again,’ she said to her cameraman, straightening up and setting her face to concerned.
‘In a dramatic twist to the Josh Hulme abduction case, thirty-seven-year-old animal rights activist Cody Parker, also known to the authorities as Lone Wolf, is due to be arraigned Monday on federal kidnapping charges. Parker is also being investigated over the exhumation of the body of seventy-two-year-old Eleanor Van Straten. He is, however, denying any involvement in the Hulme kidnapping.’
She held her expression for a count of three. ‘How was that?’
‘Great, if that’s what actually happened,’ Lock said, skirting round the fountain outside Federal Plaza.
They hadn’t spoken since dinner at her apartment. For Lock, it had been a night spent with Paul, Carrie’s new squeeze, gloating at him from the sideboard. Even Angel the rescue dog had deserted him for the plusher confines of Carrie’s bedroom, where she’d nestled herself into the pillows and steadfastly refused to budge. Between then and now, Carrie had been busy trying to keep up as the Josh Hulme story unravelled at breakneck speed, while Lock too had been doing more digging. They’d played phone tag a few times but Lock wasn’t willing to trust anything he’d discovered to voicemail.
As her cameraman broke down his equipment, Carrie joined Lock at the fountain. ‘So what did happen?’
‘I don’t have all the pieces yet, but I can tell you one thing: Cody Parker didn’t have anything to do with the kidnap of Josh Hulme.’
‘The FBI don’t agree. They seem to think they have a pretty strong case. He’s lucky New York State doesn’t have the death penalty, if you ask me.’
‘New York doesn’t have it because of cases like this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What gets someone strapped into old Sparky, or a big syringe of potassium chloride these days?’
‘How come I feel I’m about to be on the receiving end of one of your little lectures?’
‘Humour me.’
‘OK. A crime which horrifies. Child murder, abduction.’
‘And in cases like that there’s one hell of an amount of pressure on the authorities to bring someone before the courts.’
‘Hey, it’s not like they picked Cody Parker from the phone book. They’ve got some pretty strong evidence.’
‘And I’d bet all of it is circumstantial.’
‘I can’t believe you’re standing up for this guy! You heard what I said a moment ago. He’s sure as hell guilty of digging up a little old lady and dumping her body in the middle of Times Square.’
‘And he should go to jail for that. For a long time. But what they’re doing,’ Lock said, glancing over at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, ‘is railroading him for the kidnap.’
‘So if Cody Parker didn’t do it, who did?’
‘Meditech.’
She burst out laughing. Lock held her gaze.
‘Oh my God, you’re being serious.’
‘OK, it wasn’t a collective effort. I’m guessing very few people even knew about it. I’m not even sure Nicholas Van Straten knew.’
‘But he’s the CEO.’
‘Precisely. Look, Carrie, the reason people think you’re nuts when you mention something like this is that they have a picture in their mind of some big boardroom meeting with Van Straten sitting in a high-backed chair stroking a white cat. Shit like this doesn’t go down like that. The company needed Richard Hulme back at work for them.’
‘So why not offer him, I dunno, ten million bucks?’
‘Because someone like Richard is every company’s worst nightmare.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘A guy with principles who can’t be compromised by a big set of zeros.’
‘So they kidnap his child?’
‘In my opinion, yes. Hulme was a problem to be solved. Someone did some out-of-the-box thinking.’
‘Don’t you mean out-of-the-stratosphere?’
‘The cover was already there. The kid goes missing, everyone’s going to be looking at the animal rights people. After everything that had gone on, who wouldn’t believe they’d be involved? Especially after their beloved leader got smoked right on the front steps of the company.’
‘And Meditech did that too?’
‘You’re looking at it the wrong way. You think Nicholas Van Straten ordered Gray Stokes’ assassination.’
‘Isn’t that what you’re suggesting?’ Carrie said.
Lock sighed. The truth was that it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him either. Yet neither did the official version. In fact, that made even less sense.
‘The thing is that a big company like Meditech doesn’t operate like the army. The way the army is, every task gets broken down into tiny little steps. That makes it idiot-proof, but it also means that no one can just go off and do their own thing. In a private company it’s different. They don’t give a shit about how something is achieved, all they care about is the bottom line. That’s how you get guys with security companies out in Iraq smoking civilians left and right. They’re all former soldiers but all of a sudden they don’t have a command structure, no one to stick their ass in a sling if they do the right thing the wrong way.’ He paused, rubbing at his stitches. ‘Suppose Meditech has someone blackmailing them, and the wrong person gets hold of that information, and they decide to solve the problem directly. And as soon as that line’s been crossed once . . .’
‘So who was it who took Josh Hulme?’ Carrie asked.
Lock looked straight at her. ‘Someone with boardroom backing from Stafford. More than likely Brand.’
‘Are you sure? You and he never saw eye to eye.’
‘That’s true, but that’s not why I think he’s involved.’
‘Then why do you?’
‘Because Brand was sleeping with Natalya Verovsky. But he told her his name was Cody Parker.’
Forty-three
Josh Hulme sat huddled next to his father as the cruiser surged its way towards the dock, churning foam in its wake. Ahead of them lay the old Brooklyn Naval Yard, home to Meditech’s new research facility.
Richard gazed up at the hulking compound. A twenty-foot wall ran to the edges of his peripheral vision. Atop the wall, a solitary Stars and Stripes snapped tight in the wind. Beneath the flag two guards prowled a walkway. Both of them armed.
Richard pulled Josh in closer and kissed the top of his son’s head. ‘You OK, sport?’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out a packet of Scopace tablets. ‘If you’re feeling seasick, I can give you one of these.’
Josh waved him away. ‘Dad, when can we go home?’
‘Daddy has some work to finish up first.’
‘Today?’
‘Maybe in a week or so.’
‘But it’s almost New Year.’
‘I know, big guy, I know, but Daddy made a promise.’
In truth, Richard hated himself. Josh needed him. Needed him now more than ever. But without the undertaking he’d given Meditech, Josh wouldn’t be here, might not even be alive, so what could he do?
Stafford clambered down into the cabin of the cruiser. ‘Bit choppy out there.’ He settled on the bench seat next to Richard, tousled Josh’s hair. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be there in
a minute or two.’
Josh stiffened and pushed away his hand.
‘Listen, can I borrow your dad for a second there, sport?’
Richard followed Stafford out on to the deck as the boat ploughed onwards.
‘Eighty million dollars. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
All Richard could see was a blank wall which ran maybe a thousand feet along a parcel of land facing the dock. The only notable thing was its height. A solid twenty feet. Maybe more.
Stafford slapped Richard on the back. ‘He’ll be OK.’
‘He’s not your son. You can’t possibly imagine what this has been like for us.’
‘That’s true. But the main thing is, he’s safe now.’
Richard stared straight ahead.
Stafford looked at the wall too. ‘Don’t think we’ll have too many whackos coming out here to protest, somehow.’
‘You don’t think all this security’s overkill?’
‘Jeez, Richard, I know you academic types sometimes don’t see the big picture, but for crying out loud. We’re going to be dealing with Level 4, Category A here. You could take out half the country with what we’ll have inside.’
‘But no animals?’
‘Nothing with a tail, paws or fur. You made your case, Richard. And I for one agree with you. What we were doing was bad science. Which made it bad business.’
The boat pulled in at one of the piers and tied up. Stafford clambered off. He stretched out a hand to Richard, who in turn helped Josh on to dry land.
They followed Stafford along a walkway and up on to a concrete apron, Josh struggling to keep up with Stafford’s long strides. They then walked along to the very end of the wall and turned left.
Stafford glanced over his shoulder at Richard. ‘Not far to go now. I thought the river approach was a better idea. Give you more of an idea of the size of the place.’
Four hundred yards further up, the wall was split by a driveway big enough to accommodate trucks passing either side with a metal drop-in booth manned by a middle-aged African American man dressed in a Meditech security uniform. They stopped at the booth and Stafford presented his laminated Meditech card. Richard followed suit. The guard checked them without saying a word, then matched their name against the visitors list.