“We’re going to take care of you,” he said. “You’ll be fine. All of you.”
But she didn’t believe him.
The World Weekly Record was a tabloid newspaper, the sort sold at supermarket checkout stands. The paper had a hot line, and each week it paid five hundred dollars to the reader who phoned in the best tip.
A middle-aged reporter named Tim Finnegan was manning the hot line that evening. He chain-smoked as he punched up a story about a famous blond rock star who was afraid she had AIDS. She did not have AIDS as far as Finnegan knew, but every year the Record ran a variation on the story, and it always sold papers. The jealous public, apparently, wanted her to have the disease.
The hot line phone rang, and Finnegan sighed cynically. Half the time the information was neither new nor important, and the other half, the callers were clearly hoaxing.
But there were people out there who had access to dirt, sometimes surprisingly interesting dirt, and they desperately wanted that five hundred dollars.
Finnegan answered the phone in his most bored voice. “World Weekly Record,” he said. “News Hot Line. Tim Finnegan. You got something I should know?”
There was a moment of silence, then a young man spoke. He sounded excited and nervous, as if he had some telephonic form of stage fright.
“This is big,” the caller said shakily. “You know that killing in front of Stephenson Special School today? Well, the police have three secret star witnesses. People that saw it. From the playground.”
Finnegan grew suddenly less bored. He’d heard about the shooting. A Mafia drug lord whacked. Big stuff. It had happened shortly after two, less than six hours ago. “Star witnesses?” he asked. “Three of ’em?”
“Yes,” the caller said in his excited, unsteady voice. “One’s a teacher. Laura Stoner. I think it’s Laura Ann Stoner. The other two are students, twins, boys.”
“So how do you know this?” Finnegan narrowed his eyes against the cigarette smoke.
“Because I’m—I’m a staff member there,” the caller said. “I heard her talkin’ about it—”
“What kind of ‘staff member’?” Finnegan prodded. “How do I know you’re on the up-and-up?”
The caller paused. “I’m the—assistant maintenance engineer, like,” he said at last. “I saw almost the whole thing. Through the window. I heard shots. I saw the blood and everything.”
The janitor, thought Finnegan with dark amusement. I should have known. All the better janitors read our paper.
“You got a name, maintenance engineer?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said the caller, sounding more nervous. “But I don’t wanna say. I could get in trouble.”
“I don’t know who you are, buddy,” Finnegan said. “But what you say sounds interesting. So if this is the Tip of the Week, how do I get the money to you?”
“Look,” the young voice said, sounding reluctant. “I already told you too much. If I win, I’ll come round myself, pick up the money in cash.”
This amused Finnegan, but only slightly. “How’ll I know it’s you?”
The caller hesitated. “I’ll give you a code word—‘Atlantis.’ I’ll say, ‘Stephenson School story,’ then ‘Atlantis.’ You’ll know.”
Atlantis, thought Finnegan. Shit, it’s one of our readers all right.
“Go on,” he said.
“I saw ’em on the playground. It was like a movie or something—all this shootin’. Afterwards, I heard her talk about it, and she said the twins saw everything, a guy’s face and everything. I saw the police take her away. Her and the kids. The head of the school called a meetin’ later. She said they wasn’t comin’ back. Cops came and took the kids’ stuff. The woman’s, too. From her office.”
Finnegan knew about the shooting. The story was already on the Associated Press wire service, and out of idle curiosity he’d checked out the school.
He said, “The students you got there—at Stephenson. These kids don’t play with a full deck. You telling me you got witnesses not playing with a full deck?”
“Well, yeah,” his caller said, sounding defensive. “But it’s not like they’re total morons, see? It’s like that movie Rainman. These kids are geniuses with numbers and things. They got the license number and everything—a whole bunch of stuff. They got photogenic memories.”
“Photographic memories?” Finnegan asked from between his teeth. He was interested in spite of himself.
“Yeah. That’s what I said. The guy that did the shooting. They saw his face. And they never forget anything, man.”
Finnegan stayed on the offensive, grilling him. “Twins? They got the license number? They saw a face? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yeah,” the caller said, sounding happier. He probably already felt the five hundred dollars in his hand. “That’s right. This teacher, Laura Stoner—and these Rainman twins—they saw it all. The cops took ’em away and then come back for their things. They got ’em in protective custody, I bet. Like on TV shows. That’s what they call it. Protective custody.”
Finnegan let a beat of silence pass, weighing, calculating. “What’s the woman look like?” he asked. “Would you say she’s pretty?”
The voice sounded almost resentful. “Yeah. You could say that. I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eatin’ crackers.”
Finnegan let the silence stretch as far as suspense allowed. Then he asked, “Could you get pictures?”
The caller sounded more confident. “Sure,” he said. “She’s got a bulletin board. All kinds of pictures. I could get you pictures. Easy.”
“Okay,” Finnegan said. “Okay. Now you and I, we’ll need to talk again. Is there a phone number I can get you at?”
The caller went momentarily silent again. “I’ll call you, instead,” he said.
“Okay,” Finnegan said, all business. “But talk to me, nobody else. I’ll give you my hours. I’ll give you my home phone. Got a pencil? Take it down.”
The caller agreed, sounding conspiratorial and eager. Finnegan could hear the happy greed trembling in his voice.
When Finnegan hung up, he lit another cigarette and frowned. He studied the spiral notebook on which he’d scribbled his notes. The caller had sounded like a flake to him, a smug, stupid, hyper flake.
But something about his story rang true, and it jibed with the trickle of information coming over the wires.
The kicker, for Finnegan, was that the twins were “idiot savants.” He dealt in the bizarre for a living, and he understood the twins’ affliction. Retarded as hell, they could crunch numbers like computers, and their memories were infallible.
And the woman, the caller had said, was pretty, maybe even very pretty. Pretty women were always good copy, and Finnegan knew it. His reporter’s instincts were starting to clamor, Go for it.
Shit, Finnegan thought, dragging on his cigarette. The cops or even the feds could come down hard on the paper for printing this—if it were true.
But that’s what the first amendment was for. And the paper retained a flock of overpaid attorneys to block any legal backlash over a story. The lawyers, shysters to a man, were good, very good. They kept penalties light.
Finnegan cocked his head meditatively. At the worst, he’d alert the world that there were some witnesses hiding away out there. So? It wasn’t his job to protect them. That was the law’s. Finnegan’s job was to get the news out. News, the more grotesque the better, sold papers.
The longer he weighed it, the more he knew this was a story the paper couldn’t afford to resist. He wanted to see a picture of the woman, especially if she was pretty. The kids, too.
He could already see the headline: AMAZING RAINMAN TWINS SEE MOB DEATH! The subhead could be “Twins and Beautiful Young Teacher Fear for Lives!”
It’d sell a lot of papers. The devil take the consequences. The devil usually did, but Finnegan had trained himself not to care.
In the meantime, he supposed he’d fork over the five hundred bucks to t
he shaky-voiced kid who wanted to call himself “Atlantis.”
Happy blood money, kid, thought Finnegan. And he marveled for the thousandth time at how cheaply human beings sold out their fellows.
The air of the safe house smelled stale and oily, redolent of years of cooking grease from the luncheonette downstairs.
The Ghost of French Fries Past, Laura thought, wrinkling her nose. She held each twin by the hand, and she could feel the tension rising in them as they faced yet another unfamiliar territory.
The apartment’s living room was dark and joyless, its furniture worn, its overhead light fixture dimmed with grime. Montana seemed to have taken charge of her and the twins. She decided she didn’t like this; she was a woman who preferred being in charge of herself.
“It’s not much,” Montana said, nodding in the direction of the hall. “But it’s got three bedrooms. You and the boys take the biggest.”
“No,” she said firmly. “It’d be too different for them. I want their room the way it is at school, as much as possible. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“There’s no need for that,” Montana told her. “We’ll arrange something—”
Laura cut him off. “I’ll sleep on the couch,” she said with finality. She felt as if these men had seized control of her life. She could not resist trying to wrest it back, bit by bit, in any small ways she could.
She studied the gloomy living room and wished her heart didn’t hammer so madly.
Rickie tried to free his hand from hers. “Don’t like it here,” he muttered pettishly. “Stinky. Stinks.”
Trace scowled and scratched his Band-Aid. “Stinky. Stinks,” he repeated. “Laura—home. Go school, go home.”
She tried to make her voice sound sure and cheerful. “Don’t pick the Band-Aid, Trace. We’ll stay here a while. We’ll all have fun together, Rickie and Trace and Laura.”
“Want home,” Rickie insisted, trying harder to twist away from her. She knew both boys were tired, confused, and ready to burst into tears.
“Look,” she said brightly. “A television and a VCR! You can watch cartoons. For two whole hours.”
“Two hours,” Rickie murmured, seeming to weigh this. “Two hours.”
But Trace glowered at the television’s dark, dusty screen. His lower lip jutted out. “No,” he said. “No, no, no. Watch television at home.”
“For a while, this is home,” she said in the same falsely hearty tone. “You’ll see. And everything’s fine. Laura’s here.”
Trace took a deep, shaky breath, and she knew that he was on the edge of tears. If he cried, Rickie would, too.
“We’ll have a party tonight,” she promised, trying to ease their dismay. “A popcorn party. All big boys like popcorn parties. Cartoons and cocoa and popcorn. And bedtime books.”
Slowly Trace let out his breath. His chin quivered, but he didn’t cry. Not for now, anyway. “All big boys,” he said dubiously.
“Yes,” she answered, squeezing his hand. “All big boys like popcorn parties. Trace and Rickie are big boys.”
“Big boys,” Trace echoed wanly.
“Yes,” she said. “Laura’s big boys.”
Her nerves prickled as she realized that Montana was watching her, almost as if he was measuring her ability to handle the situation. She felt another twinge of resentment toward him and his vague, easy answers. She cast him an accusing sidelong look.
What are you doing to these children? Do you know what you’re putting them through? she wanted to demand. What’s to become of them? Of me?
If he read her thoughts, he ignored them, and his face told her nothing.
The boys’ possessions, packed in boxes, stood stacked against the bedroom’s bleak wall. Laura had been adamant with Valentine, saying the boys needed everything: sheets, bedspreads, books, toys, even the decorations off the walls. He’d gone off to get them himself, along with Oliphant, and had grumbled about it.
She set about unpacking the boxes and trying to recreate their room at school. Montana, who seemed intent on winning her trust, helped her.
The boys loved Looney Tunes cartoons. Even as she worked, they sat in the living room, watching their treasured videocassettes. Laura could hear Daffy Duck singing an opera aria, lisping wildly.
Silently she and Montana made the beds, hung the curtains. The boys’ curtains and sheets and pillow slips were bright with pictures of cartoon characters. Rickie’s bedspread was red, and Trace’s was blue.
The rug that went between the beds depicted Wile E. Coyote chasing the ever-elusive Road Runner. Montana hammered nails into the walls so she could hang the plastic plaques of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, the Tasmanian Devil, and Sylvester the Cat.
The twins had a Marvin the Martian clock they insisted sit in the exact center of the dresser top, and a Bugs Bunny lamp that had to be on a table between the beds. For reasons that Laura couldn’t fathom, Bugs had to face the wall.
Any illusion she’d had of Montana as a comforting, homey sort vanished when he stripped off his suit jacket and hung it over the desk chair. He wore a shoulder holster, and the gun in it was large, heavy, and lethal-looking.
Laura couldn’t help staring, slightly horrified. He’d knelt to unpack a box of books. When he glanced up and saw where her gaze rested, he studied her face a moment.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It’s okay. I’m trained to use it.”
“I thought you were a lawyer,” she said.
“I used to be with the police force.”
She looked into his eyes, and uneasiness rippled up her spine. She had a sudden intuition that beneath his seeming compassion, he was the hardest and most dangerous of the four men.
Quickly looking away from him, she concentrated on hanging the twins’ clothes in the closet. Routine, routine, she thought. I’ve got to make all this seem ordinary, safe, secure.
She’d gotten the boys to settle down in front of the television set, clutching their favorite toys, little plastic lizards in bright primary colors. The boys never actually played with the lizards, but they liked to carry them, finger them, stuff them into their pockets, keep them near.
The boys and their cartoons and their lizards, she mused; that should seem normal enough. But not when three men as large as football players sat in the kitchen in their shirtsleeves, their holsters in plain sight.
She’d heard snatches of the men’s conversation. It was shop talk, and the wares of their shop were drugs, death, crime, and punishment.
“Where does this go?” Montana asked. He held a photograph in a gold frame.
“Oh.” She moved to his side and took it from him, staring down at it.
The photo showed a handsome, sandy-haired man, a pretty blue-eyed woman, and the twins as toddlers. The couple sat posed stiffly, each holding a child. The man’s cheerful expression seemed forced, the woman’s smile tense.
The boys were only three in this picture, but already their faces hinted at their emotional distance. Neither looked at the camera or at their parents. Both had their eyes focused on some otherwordly point that only they could see.
She put the photograph on the dresser beside the Marvin the Martian lamp. “Their father and mother?” he asked, nodding at it.
“Yes,” Laura said. “She died. Two years ago. It hurt her to put them in the school. But she knew it had to be done.”
“And him?” Montana asked, tapping the man’s picture. “What about him?”
“Him?” she said, her jaw tightening. “Ever since she died, he’s been hiding in a bottle. He doesn’t come see the twins any more. He travels a lot. He sends postcards. That’s it. He pays the bills, and he sends postcards.”
“Too bad,” Montana said.
“When are you going to find him?” she asked. “It’s wrong, all this happening, and him not knowing.”
“We’re working on it,” he said.
“He should be here, not me,” she said. Then she sighed philosophically. “Maybe some good will come out
of this. Maybe this will make him stop running from things and face them instead.”
“Maybe it will,” said Montana.
He opened another carton and started unpacking books. He asked no more questions about the Fletchers, for which Laura was grateful.
The silence seemed to weigh on the room. At last Montana said, “We brought a computer. It can pull up mug shots of everybody we have on record who’s connected to the Colombians. We want the boys to look. When can we start?”
“Not before tomorrow,” she said. “They’re tired. They’ve been through too much for one day.”
“Whatever you say.” Once again he gazed at the picture of Burton Fletcher and his late wife.
She swallowed. “You said Colombians. How can you be sure?”
He shrugged casually. “We can’t. It’s a hunch. If it fails, we try other mug shots.”
“What if they identify someone?”
“We’ve got a video camera,” he said. “We’ll make a tape of the ID for the record. If the court accepts a tape as a deposition, we’ll make another video, have their faces and voices electronically masked. The public never has to know who they are.”
“And how long do we have to stay here?” she persisted. “In this—place? It’s like being held prisoner. How long do I have to stay? Until Burton Fletcher gets here, I suppose. I mean, I didn’t really see anything.”
“Later we’ll sit down and talk about it,” he said, and opened another carton. “After the kids are asleep.”
We’ll talk. After the kids are asleep. How innocent, how normal, how wholesome it sounded. But the words seemed an ominous parody of real family life.
Montana turned to her, and gave her the companionable smile that she was learning to mistrust.
His arm was full of children’s books, but his holstered gun gleamed in the soft light that fell from the Bugs Bunny lamp. The gun seemed to dominate the room, making everything else insubstantial, meaningless.
In New York, the winter night was black and cold, and the sleet had turned to stinging snow.
But on the island of Bora Bora in French Polynesia, it was early afternoon. Clear blue waves sparkled and danced, mirroring the flawless sky.
See How They Run Page 5