by Jason Pinter
Curt said, "They're not just going to give us the room number. I thought about this. We need a way to find out what room the Reeds are in without alerting them to the fact that we're here."
"Oh, man," Amanda said, sighing. "You guys are seriously like troglodytes. Does everything have to depend on me?"
She walked up to the reception desk as Curt and I watched, curious, scared and feeling a little emasculated.
We trailed behind Amanda just enough that we could hear, but far enough behind in case her ruse specifically did not include us.
"Hi," Amanda said, sprawling her arms across the desk.
"Lissen, I need to see my boh-friend. He's staying in your ho-tel. I think he might be with his wife, so I guess this really is a ho-tel."
The receptionist, a guy with acne scars and a badge that read "Clark," who looked like his first day on the job was tomorrow, said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, what can I help you with?"
"My boh-friend," she slurred. "Robert Reed. He's in this ho-tel. I need to know what room he's staying in."
"Ma'am, we're not supposed to give out guests' information. If you'll just…"
Amanda dug into her purse, then slapped something down on the desk. Clark's eyes bugged open. Curt and I leaned in closer. When I saw what it was, I had the exact same reaction as Clark.
"M-Ma'am," Clark said, stammering now. "That's a condom."
"You're damn right. Robert promised me a good time tonight, so if you don't tell me where I can find him, I'm jus' gonna have to find someone else at this ho-tel to do what he can't." She looked around, a lascivious grin on her face. "Do you have a bar in this hotel?"
Clark gulped, then ran some digits into his computer.
He looked at Amanda as though to make sure she hadn't started propositioning guests. She hadn't, though she was licking her lips. I had to close my mouth, look away.
"Mr. Reed is staying in room 602. Now, if you'll please, just go find him. We don't need anyone causing a scene."
"Much obliged," she said, leaning over. "Clark."
Amanda headed for the elevators. We waited a moment before following her. When the doors closed, I said, "You sure you weren't trained at Juilliard?"
"God, you guys could use a set of balls sometimes.
Come on."
The door dinged open. We followed the signs toward room 602. The halls were lined with seashell-shaped lights, and the carpet was a zigzagging pattern of red-andblack squares. A few pieces of standard hotel art hung on the walls. Men fishing off piers. A windmill across a bay.
I had no eye for art. For all I knew these pieces could have secretly been worth millions.
When we came to 602, we stopped in front of it. Curt and Amanda stood to either side of me.
"I'll do the talking," I said. "Curt, if we need you…"
"I have my badge on me, Henry."
As I got ready to knock, I heard the ding of another elevator opening onto the sixth floor.
"Hold on a second," I said. "Just make sure they're going in another direction. Nobody needs to see three people hanging around the hallway."
They didn't respond. The footsteps appeared to be heading our way. No big deal, I thought. Hotel guests going back to their hotel room. Even if they were heading this way, they'd enter their room and be done with it. We'd be talking to the Reeds before anyone had a chance to get suspicious.
I leaned back against the wall, pretended to fiddle with my cell phone. When I saw a shadow appear at the other end of the hall, I turned to look at the guests that were coming.
I nearly dropped the phone when they came into view.
I recognized the first man immediately, and I dove for
Amanda just as Raymond Benjamin pulled a gun from his coat and opened fire.
I heard Amanda scream as bullets smashed into the wall above us. I thought we were safe, but then I heard another, deeper yell, turned to look, and saw Curt Sheffield on the ground, blood pouring from his leg.
"Curt!" I screamed.
I pushed Amanda toward the other end of the hall where an exit door was visible, and by that time Curt had taken the gun from his hip holster. Benjamin was reloading when Sheffield emptied three bullets into the hallway. Ray Benjamin managed to dive for cover, but two of the bullets struck his sidekick square in the chest.
The younger man went toppling backward, his back smacking against the wall, where he slid down, leaving a bloody smear.
Benjamin was gone. I heard footsteps running toward the elevators. He was getting away.
I knelt down by Curt. His hand was pressing down on the wound, hard, but blood was still seeping through his fingers.
"Benjamin," Curt said, the pain evident in his voice.
"Don't let the fucker get away."
Amanda appeared beside us. She'd taken off her fleece, then rolled it up and tied it around Curt's leg. He howled in pain as she pulled the loop together, trying to stem the flow of blood.
I looked at them both. Amanda had taken her cell phone out. She said, "I called 911. Make sure he doesn't hurt anybody else."
I nodded, then sprinted for the exit door. My pulse raced as I looked for the stairwell. A diagram of the floor plan was on the wall; the stairs were just to my left. I ran for them, banged the door open and hurtled down the stairs as fast as I could.
By the time I got to the first floor I was out of breath.
When I shoved open the stairwell door, I could hear panic in the lobby. Several people were screaming, a rolling cart was overturned and an elderly man looked to be unconscious. I ran toward the lobby exit, but then another thunderous gunshot exploded in the night, and I dove behind a marble wall for protection. I waited a minute, unsure of what to do, then took a few quick breaths and ran for the exit.
As I ran into the warm evening air, I heard a car's ignition turn on and a pair of brake lights come on at the other end of the parking lot. I ran for it, saw a dark BMW peeling backward. It backed up into a pool of light cast by a lamp, and I read the license plate numbers, punched them into my cell phone.
I couldn't chase Benjamin's car. The fight was over. I had to see how my friends were.
Just as I ran back into the lobby, the elevator door opened and out came Curt Sheffield, hobbling, leaning on
Amanda for support. The fleece was soaked through with blood. I heard sirens approaching from outside. I ran to
Curt.
"Christ, man, how is it?"
"I'll live," he said through gritted teeth. Then he took one hand from Amanda's shoulder and grabbed my shirt.
"The Reeds," he said. "They're gone."
"But we found this," Amanda said. She pulled a man's leather wallet from her pocket. "It was down at the other end of the hall, through a set of double doors. I thought I heard another noise, like several people running down the stairs. It's Robert Reed's. They must have been approach-274
Jason Pinter ing the room. He was going for his room key, then dropped it when he heard the gunshots. The key is still inside."
"I saw them," Curt said, the pain evident on his face.
"Damn it, if only I could run…"
Amanda helped him sit, kept pressure on his wound.
I took the wallet, opened it. The key card was nestled inside one of the slits inside. I went through the rest of it.
Credit cards. Driver's license. And a small slot for photos.
I opened it up. There was a picture inside that looked awfully familiar.
The shot was of a young boy. It was taken from behind, from a close distance. There was nothing special about the shot. The boy's face was turned away and he was in midstride.
I slipped the photo from the wallet and turned it over.
On the back of the photo was written one word.
Remember.
36
Curt had seen the Reeds approaching from the other end of the hallway. The family looked happy. Curt recognized
Robert from his driver's license photo. And when he saw that Rober
t was with a woman and two children, he knew for sure that this was the family we'd been searching for.
I confirmed with the hotel restaurant that the Reeds had finished a late supper just a few minutes earlier. Then they'd gone upstairs. They must have seen Curt lying outside their room, blood everywhere. That's when they'd run.
On the way to the hospital, Curt said they'd likely seen the body at the other end of the hall, as well. If so, they probably recognized the dead man. If they knew Raymond
Benjamin, chances were they'd met his flunky. And with all that death and blood, they must have known Ray
Benjamin had come for them.
We followed Curt to the Harrisburg hospital, the primary hub for all the medical centers in the Harrisburg area. They'd taken Curt right into surgery. Amanda and I sat in the waiting room as a doctor explained that the bullet had nicked his femoral artery. Luckily the bullet had missed severing the vessel by half a centimeter, other-276
Jason Pinter wise, he said, we'd be having an entirely different conversation.
I'd given the license plate number to the Harrisburg chief of police, a burly man named Hawley who had a look on his face that said as soon as they found Benjamin, the three of us would have hell to pay. An APB was put out on a dark BMW with New York plates, but an hour later the license plate was found abandoned in a gas station in
Bethlehem. Raymond Benjamin was gone.
Curt would be laid up for several days. Amanda and I slept in the hospital that night, occasionally shifted positions in the waiting room. Amanda waking up on top of me, then moving; me waking up leaning on her shoulder, not wanting to move.
When morning came and the doctors confirmed that
Curt was out of danger, we went in to see him.
Our friend was heavily sedated. His leg was swathed in bandages. We approached his bed, cautious, unsure if he could hear us or understand what happened.
As I got closer, I heard Curt whisper, "Henry."
"I'm here, buddy." I took Curt's hand in mine. Amanda stood beside me. I noticed her absently rubbing her hands on her jeans.
"The Reeds," he said. Curt swallowed, with some difficulty. Then he licked his lips. "The Reeds, man. They recognized Benjamin. They were scared."
I nodded, squeezed his hand.
"Find them," he said. "Now, get out of here before somebody else shoots me instead of you."
Amanda and I walked out of the hospital like two zombies who hadn't slept in weeks. Her eyes were bloodshot, her tank top caked with sweat and dirt. Her blouse was in some medical waste bin. Now she wore a gray sweatshirt, two sizes too large. The only thing that had survived the night physically and emotionally intact was our car.
We began the drive back to New York in silence.
Amanda turned on the radio. Found some talk station that neither of us listened to, but it at least punctured the quiet. When we saw a rest stop, we pulled in and got a few fast-food burgers for the road. We ate without talking, arrived in New York three hours later barely having said a word.
When we pulled onto the Harlem River Drive in Manhattan, I turned to Amanda.
"Where does Darcy live again?" I asked.
Amanda shook her head. "Just take me home."
"Where do you mean…" I began to say, but when
Amanda looked at me I realized what she meant.
I parked the car on the street, then walked back to my apartment, finding Amanda's arm intertwined with mine.
I found an old pair of shorts that were too small for me, and a Cornell T-shirt. Amanda put both on. The T-shirt fit like a nightgown, drooping down to her knees. I turned off all the lights and climbed into bed.
Amanda lay down next to me. I could hear her breathing, could feel my heart beating next to hers.
She turned onto her side, nuzzling her head into the nook between my head and shoulder. Her arm wrapped around my waist. And there she lay, soon drifting into sleep. I watched Amanda for as long as I could, staring at that face, knowing how hard it would be to spend one more minute without it next to mine at night. I thought about Curt and prayed he'd recover completely, thanked whoever it was that watched over us that we'd escaped with his life.
I prayed that Caroline Twomey was still alive and healthy, and that we would find her soon. I thought about all of that, and then my muscles quit on me and I drifted to sleep.
37
I woke at seven-fifteen, like I did most mornings. My alarm was set every day to go off at seven-thirty on the dot, but my internal alarm had a wicked sense of humor, always screwing me out of fifteen minutes of shut-eye a day.
Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I leaned over to see
Amanda rolled up in my comforter like a pig in a blanket, only if the pig were a beautiful woman and… I decided to just stop that train of thought before I accidentally said it to Amanda and wound up with my head shoved up my ass.
She was still wrapped in my clothes, her eyes shut, snoring lightly. I leaned over and shut off the alarm clock, then rolled out of bed, picked some clean clothes out of my dresser, went into the living room and got dressed there so as not to wake her.
I left the apartment, picked up two Egg McMuffins and two large cups of coffee, and was setting up breakfast on my meager dining room table when Amanda appeared in the doorway.
"Morning," she said, rubbing her eyes. She looked at her finger-likely identifying a smudge of eye gunk-then flicked it away. She offered a goofy smile and noticed the setup. "You got breakfast?"
"Straight from the kitchen at Mickey D's."
"Yum. Just like Mom used to make."
"Your mom worked the fry-o-lator."
"All right, enough out of you, smart guy. What do you have?"
I unwrapped the sandwiches, opened the coffees. I had ketchup waiting for her, knowing she liked to slather her eggs with the stuff. She took a seat, her eyes still red, and began to pick at the food.
"How'd you sleep?" I asked.
"Better than you'd think after a day like yesterday," she said. "Guess your brain trumps all, tells you you're too tired to stay up all night thinking about things. Like Curt lying on the floor bleeding everywhere."
"Yeah," I said.
"That's all you can say?" Amanda said, looking at me as if I'd just committed to invading Iran by myself.
"Don't know what else to say. It's just overwhelming. You know, seeing Curt injured like that. Seeing Jack in the hospital the other day. Two of my best friends have nearly died over the past week. I'm sorry if I'm not as articulate as usual."
"I didn't mean to suggest you didn't care," Amanda said. "But…do you wonder, ever, if it's worth it? I mean
I'm not a reporter, I haven't spent a lot of time in the
'field'…but unless you're in Afghanistan, I've never heard of any journalist being subjected to this much violence in such a short period of time. So either you happen to chase down these stories that inevitably lead to ruin, or…"
"Or what?" I said.
"Or you go looking for them on purpose."
"You know that's not true. Wallace assigned me to this story. He set me up to interview Daniel Linwood."
"And so you interviewed him. You wrote a terrific story about it. Then what?"
"That wasn't the end of it," I said. "Once I knew something was being hidden, I had to go deeper. It's what I do.
If it leads to this, it leads to this, but I never want anybody to get hurt. Fact of the matter is, I don't want you coming along with me. I didn't want you to come last night."
Amanda looked hurt, confused. "So why did you let me come, then?"
"Because the last time I made a decision for you, it was the worst decision of my life."
Amanda took the bottle of ketchup, unscrewed the lid and peered inside.
"What are you doing?"
"Just making sure I'm comfortable with the amount of congealed tomato paste in here." She screwed it back on, squirted a dollop onto her sandwich. "Doesn't look too bad."
She took a bite, munched, then put it down. Looked me in the eye.
"So, what, you've grown over the past few months? All of a sudden things are clear?"
I didn't know how to respond to that. I felt my feelings for her were clearer than they'd ever been, and I'd been worse at hiding it than a silverback gorilla playing hideand-seek. "Yes. Sort of. I mean, personally things are clear."
"Really," she said, in a manner that stated she didn't believe me.
"We were good together," I said.
Amanda chewed. "So that's your great introspection?
As far as I know, we didn't break up because things were going badly. We broke up for other reasons. Do those not matter now?"
"They matter, but I know that this…thing…it's a twoperson thing."
"Eloquent."
"What I'm saying is, I shouldn't have made the decision for you. And I understand how it would put you in a position where you'd be afraid to get hurt again."
"Hurt?" she said incredulously. "You're worried about me? Henry, you've cornered the market on that front. I'm not saying this to be funny, but when things happen like yesterday, I worry that you're not going to live to thirty. So you can worry about me being hurt emotionally, while I'm going to be the one at night wondering if you'll be coming home.
Or if I'm going to get a call from Curt one day, and I'll hang up before he can say a word because I'll just know."
"I'm trying," I said. "I swear. But this Linwood story,
I have to see it through. Especially now. One of my friends could have died yesterday. I have to find out what Ray
Benjamin, Petrovsky and the Reed family are involved in.
I need to know what Benjamin is going through all this trouble for. He strikes me as a career thug. The kind of guy you hire for muscle. Not the kind of guy who orchestrates a series of kidnappings spanning a decade."
"What's he been doing since he got out of prison?"
Amanda asked.
"That's a good question."
"Ya think?" she said, taking another bite.
"I mean, he's had a massive house in his name, a minivan in his name. Where's his income coming from?"