Don't Say a Word

by Andrew Klavan

  “What?” he said. “What’s the …”

  “Nathan.” The word barely escaped her lips. “Oh my God … Nathan …”

  Conrad turned. He turned and followed Aggie’s gaze. He looked at the door. “Jesus,” he said.

  The chain lock hung limp. It was in two pieces. It had been cut in half.

  Conrad felt his throat close.

  “Nathan … .” Agatha barely whispered his name again.

  Conrad ran to the door. He put his hand on the knob. The door swung open. Both the other locks had been undone as well. Conrad looked out into the hall. No one. There was no one there. Behind him he heard Aggie call in a wild tremolo:

  “Jessie! Jessie, come out right now, sweetheart! Please, sweetheart! You’re scaring Mommy! Please …”

  Wild-eyed, Conrad turned back to her. One of her hands still clutched her robe. The other now covered her mouth. She stared at him.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jesus, Nathan. My baby. Call the police. Oh, God.”

  Her knees buckled. She reached out quickly. She grabbed hold of the back of a chair.

  Conrad ran back into the room. He ran to the phone on the table beside him.

  “Oh, God,” Aggie said.

  Conrad grabbed the phone. He reached for the buttons. But he stopped. There was no dial tone. Where the hell was the dial tone? Quickly, he started punching the buttons. No sound. What the hell was … ?

  And then there was a sound. There was a voice. On the phone, on his phone. There was a clear, strong voice. It spoke to him wryly, calmly. It was in complete control.

  And all it said was: “Good morning, Dr. Conrad.”

  PART TWO

  Don’t Say a Word

  It had been easy to take the kid. There had been nothing to it at all.

  A little after three A.M., Sport had left the Sinclair apartment. He’d taken the elevator down to the basement. He’d unlocked the door to the courtyard with a duplicate key he’d had made earlier. Outside, he strolled across the courtyard from his building to Conrad’s. It was a nice night, he noticed. Cool air. Clear sky. A strip of dim stars shining between the two buildings; he hummed to himself a little as he glanced up at them.

  The lock to the other building’s courtyard door was the only tough one he hit. The bolt was too heavy. His pick wouldn’t make it turn. He had to use a needle-nose pliers for leverage. He hummed “All or Nothing at All” as he wrestled with the inner latch lever. For Sport’s money, Sinatra had sung the shit out of that song. The lever went back, the bolt lifted. It didn’t take more than sixty seconds.

  He entered the basement and flicked on a small flashlight. He followed the beam to the master phone box. Dolenko, who was handling the electronics, had given him a little transmitter. It was just a black plastic box about the size of his palm. It had two alligator clips attached. Dolenko had explained how to hook them up to Conrad’s line. It turned out to be simple. The clips in the master box were clearly labeled: 5D. The transmitter hooked right on. Easy as that.

  Afterward, Sport just took the stairwell up, avoiding the doorman in the lobby. He climbed quickly toward the fifth floor.

  He was dressed in dark clothing: black slacks and a navy-blue windbreaker. The pockets of the windbreaker bulged and sagged with his tools. He was also carrying a blanket under his arm. All the same, he figured he looked natural enough. If he met someone on the stairs, he would just wave and smile. Of course, there wasn’t much chance of that at three A.M. As it happened, he met up with no one.

  On five, he came out of the stairwell and walked quickly to the Conrads’ door. Now this, he thought, might be a little tricky. Right out in the hall like that, working on the locks. But no, again, it was no trouble at all. The intergrip was well-oiled and snapped back quickly. The latch was a joke. It popped almost the moment he slipped the pick into the hole. He pushed the door open slowly to get at the chain. He had brought heavy fence cutters to take care of that.

  He eased the cutters through the crack in the door. He positioned the jaws carefully between two links. He brought the heels of his palms down hard on the handles. The chain snapped. It was like a rifle shot—surprisingly loud.

  “Shit!” Sport whispered.

  He held his breath. Someone must have heard that. He crouched in the hall. The chain dangled down in two pieces. The Conrad apartment was silent. After a while, Sport gave a soft snort and shrugged. Guess not, he thought. He went inside.

  He closed the door silently. Walked quickly to the nursery. He found the kid in her loft bed, asleep. She was lying on her side, facing him. Her mouth was open. She had a pink stuffed animal of some kind under her arm. A pretty kid, Sport thought. Just as snug as a bug in a rug. He smiled. The idea of snatching her while her mama slept only a few yards away was pretty funny.

  He took a jelly jar out of his pocket. There was half an inch of clear liquid in it: chloroform. He took out a washcloth and dampened it at the mouth of the jar. When he put the cloth over her mouth, the kid woke up for a second. Her eyes fluttered open. They gazed at him sleepily. Then she must have felt herself suffocating because her eyes got wide and frightened. Sport grinned and held the cloth in place tightly. Then the kid’s eyes fell closed. Sport felt her go limp under his hand. He laughed silently.

  He unfolded his blanket on the floor. Then he dragged the girl down from the bed and put her on top of the blanket. He put the stuffed animal there next to her. Something to keep her happy and quiet until they could kill her. He wrapped the blanket around her. It covered her from head to foot.

  Then Sport hoisted the kid up over his shoulder. He had decided to leave Maxwell back in the Sinclair apartment. The big man moved about as quietly as a tank battalion. Also, once he got his hands on the little girl, he might get excited and ruin everything. But now he wished he had brought the big guy along. Christ, but the kid was heavy. He might sprain his back if he wasn’t careful.

  He carried her to the door, down the hall. By the time he got back to the stairwell, he was huffing under her weight.

  When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he had to rest for a moment. He was inside the stairwell on the basement level. He sat the kid’s blanketed form against the stairwell wall. He leaned there himself, sweating and gasping for breath. After a few moments, he reached for the stairwell door. As he did, he heard a toilet flush—just in the basement, just outside.

  Sport froze. It was the doorman. He must’ve come downstairs to take a leak. Suddenly Sport’s heart was racing. He stared wide-eyed at the stairwell door. Sweat beaded on his forehead, ran down into his eyes. He heard the doorman’s footsteps just beyond the door. He reached into his right pocket, felt for his switchblade. It was there, tumbling around with the cutters and the pick case. He grasped it, but it only made things worse. It only made him start to tremble.

  Fucking coward, he thought. He thought it in his mother’s voice, that cat’s yowl. Fucking nutless crybaby coward.

  The doorman’s footsteps came closer. Sport imagined plunging the knife into the man’s belly. He imagined how it would feel. The flesh resisting, giving way. The blood. His arm felt weak and rubbery. He couldn’t do it. He knew he couldn’t do it.

  The doorman’s footsteps went by the door. A moment later, Sport heard the elevator doors open out there. He heard them slide closed again. There was silence. Sport took a deep breath. He pushed the door out, peeked through the crack. The basement was empty now.

  Sport grinned. He let go of the knife. Propping the door open with his foot, he hoisted the kid back up onto his shoulder. He carried her out to the courtyard, across it to his own building.

  He was back in the Sinclair apartment—his apartment—seventeen minutes after he’d left. It was that easy.

  There were three of them in the apartment, aside from the kid. There was Sport and Maxwell and Dolenko. The Freak had brought Dolenko in on it. Dolenko had been the Freak’s friend when the Freak was still alive, before Maxwell killed him. Dolenko had met the
Freak in one of those after-hours bars the Freak liked to go to. In the old days, the Freak had taken Sport to those bars. It was just a lot of faggots in leather jackets, as far as Sport could tell. Guys dancing the conga in their jockstraps. Even live sex shows sometimes. Once Sport had seen them gang-bang a girl right on the bar. The girl’s hands were tied and her head was covered by a leather mask. Everybody in the bar applauded. Sport shook his head when he saw it. Fucking faggots, he thought; they’ll do anything. But the Freak liked that kind of stuff.

  After going to the bars, Sport and the Freak would go back to their place in Flushing. The Freak and Sport had shared a house then, just the two of them. They would go back to the house and hang out together, making fun of the faggots they’d seen. They would dance around together in their underwear or even naked, the way the faggots did. It made Sport laugh to imitate them. Sport had a good time hanging around with the Freak.

  But then the Freak had met Dolenko at one of the bars. Dolenko was an electrician with the city’s Department of Transportation. He was thin and muscular. When he took off his shirt, you could see every sinew etched in his skin. It looked as if he were always straining at something. His thin face looked like that too. The short salt-and-pepper hair stood up. The tendons of the neck stood out. His eyes bulged and his mouth twitched and twisted.

  This was partly because Dolenko was a cokehead. He was always buzzed, always hyper. But the Freak had taken a liking to him. And pretty soon, the Freak and Dolenko were hanging together almost all the time. The Freak hardly came home to Sport anymore at all.

  “What’re you, some kind of faggot?” Sport had asked the Freak. “Hanging with him all the time.”

  But the Freak gave one of those indifferent tosses of his thick red hair and said, “Fuck you. He’s a sketch. I like him.” And that was that.

  That was partly why Sport had taken up with Maxwell in the first place: to get back at the Freak for hanging with Dolenko. After Maxwell had come to Rikers, Sport had gone out of his way to befriend the new prisoner. Maxwell hated the Island: the bars, the ceaseless noise, the hard stares of the men. He was like a frightened animal in a cage and he was glad to have a correction officer show him some kindness. Sport told Maxwell to look him up whenever he got free. And that was exactly what Maxwell had done. So, while the Freak and Dolenko were hanging together, Sport had started hanging out with Maxwell.

  “Look at this guy,” Freak had said when he saw Max. “He’s a fucking monster, Sport. He’s Frankenstein’s fucking monster, man. You’re hanging around with Boris Karloff.”

  “I like him,” Sport had answered, smiling. “He’s a sketch. See what I mean?”

  Things had been tense among the four of them at first. But it all smoothed itself out after a while. One day, Sport told the Freak about what Maxwell liked to do to cats. The Freak thought that was hilarious. He bought Max a kitten and made Sport and Dolenko sit around the breakfast table while Maxwell killed it. Maxwell cut out the kitten’s tongue so it couldn’t yowl, then broke its legs one by one, then strangled it. But the real joke was, the Freak got him to do it without his pants on. Then, when Max got real excited, the Freak grabbed hold of Max’s short, thick dick and jerked him until Max cried out and spurted all over the place.

  “You faggots,” Sport had shouted at them. But he’d been laughing too. And the Freak had laughed and laughed until he was weak.

  After that, they all got to be pretty good friends.

  Now there were only the three of them left. Sport was sorry about that. He missed the Freak. He was sorry Maxwell had had to cut his throat. It never would’ve happened, he thought, if the Freak hadn’t started hanging out with Dolenko.

  When Sport returned from Conrad’s, he put the kid in the bedroom. He hadn’t gotten much furniture for the Sinclair apartment, but there was a mattress in the bedroom and a TV. There were heavy curtains covering the windows. There was a small lamp on the floor. It threw long shadows over the white walls.

  He lay the kid on the mattress and unwrapped her. She lay motionless on her side. She was wearing a long flannel nightgown. It had red ribbons at the throat and there were valentines all over it. The nightgown had ridden up over her waist. She was naked underneath. The sight of her nakedness made Sport queasy. He tugged the nightgown down. He shook his head. He lay the pink stuffed animal next to her.

  All the while, Maxwell stood behind him and watched. Dolenko was not there. He had gone out to fix things at Conrad’s office and had not come back yet. Maxwell stood looking over Sport’s shoulder. His eyes were bright. His great grizzly-bear arms swung restlessly at his sides. He had that strange look on his face, that dreamy smile. Sport didn’t like that. Once Maxwell got really excited there would be no stopping him.

  So, when he was done with the kid, Sport turned to him. “Listen, Max,” he said. He had to crane his neck to look at him. He pointed a finger up at that small, baby face with its sunken eyes and pouting lips. “You have to leave her alone for now, all right? You can’t do her yet. That would ruin everything. Understand?”

  Maxwell massaged his palm. He stared down at the child on the bed. He looked embarrassed. “I could touch her,” he said. “That wouldn’t ruin it.”

  “No,” Sport said firmly. It was like talking to a dog. “You can’t touch her. You’d just get excited and then you’d lose control. It would be all over before you even knew it. Now you know I’m right, don’t you? Don’t you?”

  For a moment, Maxwell’s eyes shifted from the girl to him. It made the hair stand up on the back of Sport’s neck. He thought about the Freak kicking and shivering and bleeding to death on the floor as Maxwell looked on. Maxwell and his hard-on.

  But then Maxwell turned away. “I’m just watching anyway,” he said.

  “Attaboy,” said Sport. He slapped Max on his thick shoulder. “You can keep watch on her for me, okay? But leave the door open. I’m gonna try and catch an hour of sleep.”

  Maxwell nodded gratefully. He placed a chair against the wall and sat down on it. With his shoulders hunched, his heavy hands dangling between his legs, he leaned forward and watched the girl. Sport went out to the living room. He left the connecting door open. All the same, he decided to wait for Dolenko to get back before he went to sleep.

  In the living room, there were two sofas, a coffee table, and three director’s chairs. There were also a couple of standing lamps. Other than that, the broad expanse of parquet floor was bare. All of Lucia Sinclair’s furniture was gone. The lordly chairs and impressive bookcases. The rosewood showcases with their porcelain knickknacks. Lucia Sinclair’s grandson had taken care of them. He had flown in from San Francisco for the funeral and stayed to deal with the furniture. The same day the police took down the yellow crime-scene tape, he had cleared the apartment out. Just ten days after the old lady died, her fancy apartment was empty. One day after that, Sport, Maxwell, and Dolenko had moved in.

  When Dolenko returned from Conrad’s office, Sport lay down on one of the sofas. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He imagined himself singing in a nightclub. That was the way he relaxed his mind. He imagined himself in a tuxedo, smoking a cigarette and singing “All or Nothing at All.” Women sat at their tables and sighed. Their men looked on with grudging admiration. After a while, Sport’s thoughts got confused. He was still trying to sing in the nightclub; but he kept farting loudly. It was awful. It sounded like a trumpet. The audience was laughing at him. The women covered their red mouths with white hands. The men slapped the tables and guffawed. He couldn’t stop. Then Dolenko jogged his shoulder.

  “She’s waking up, Sporty,” Dolenko said. He gave Sport another shake.

  Sport opened his eyes and sat up suddenly. “What?”

  “She’s waking up, man.”

  “Oh. Okay. Okay.”

  Sport rubbed his face with both hands. He looked up dazedly at Dolenko. Dolenko was standing above him, bouncing on his toes. He was nodding rapidly for no reason. He was chewing gum fast. T
he muscles in his jaws stood out, working hard. His coked-up eyes shifted back and forth quickly.

  “Thanks, Dolenko. Thanks,” Sport said. He looked at his watch. It was five-fifteen.

  He got up and went into the bedroom.

  The kid was stirring on the bed. She had rolled over onto her back and was rubbing her eyes with her hand. Maxwell was standing in front of his chair. He looked down at her with big eyes. Sport could hear him breathing.

  The girl opened her eyes and looked around her. She blinked. “Mommy?” she said. Then she turned and saw Sport and Maxwell. “Where’s Mommy? Mommy.” She started to sit up. “Ow!” she said. She held on to her head with one hand. She looked up at the two men. Her lip began to quiver. Her cheeks turned red.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” Sport said. His youthful face crinkled with humor and kindness.

  “Where’s my mommy?” said the little girl.

  Sport gave her one of his sparkling smiles. “Listen, sweetheart, your mommy can’t be here right now, okay? But we’re gonna take good care of you. We’ve got a TV here and everything. It’s gonna be great.”

  “I want my mommy. Please.” The girl began to cry. “Where is she?”

  Shit, Sport thought. He kept smiling. “Now, don’t cry. We’re gonna take good care of you,” he said. “Here, why don’t we turn on the TV and …”

  But the girl began to cry harder. She sucked in her breath hard. She cried out, “Mommy! Mommy!”

  “Aw, shit,” Sport muttered.

  Quickly, he went into the other room to get the chloroform. He could hear the kid bawling behind him. She was sobbing so hard she could hardly get the word out: “Mommy! Mommy!” She just kept saying that.

  Sport dampened the washcloth and brought it back to the bedroom. When he got there, Maxwell was standing close to the bed. He had his hands lifted in front of him. He was breathing hard; it made a funny sound in his throat. The child was cowering against the wall, clutching her pink stuffed animal in her arms. She was staring up at Maxwell and she was crying so hard she couldn’t talk at all. When Sport hurried back in, she turned to him and just managed to sob out, “Please. Please. I just want my mommy.”