Alien Abduction

by Irving Belateche

  The crowd of bystanders around the unconscious woman now obscured my view of Ben. But I still wanted to track what he was doing, because the entire incident didn’t sit right with me, even with the CPR explanation. Maybe it didn’t sit right because Ben had had that penlight with him. And that’s probably what drove me to get out of my car.

  Before I knew it, I was on the sidewalk, walking toward the crowd. I figured I could hang behind the gawkers and go unnoticed by Ben.

  When I stepped up to the bystanders, I saw him scoop the woman up.

  “Please make way, guys,” he said. His voice boasted absolute confidence. He was the man in charge.

  The crowd opened up, and Ben headed toward his car with the woman in his arms.

  “I’m taking her to St. Joseph’s,” he said.

  He got to his BMW and barked an order at the crowd: “Please open the door.”

  A bystander did as he requested, swinging open the passenger door.

  But another bystander—a brunette in her forties, dressed in yoga pants, piped up. “We should wait for the ambulance.” The woman’s tone betrayed doubt about her own suggestion.

  “We don’t have time to wait,” Ben said. He buckled the unconscious woman into the passenger seat and shut the door.

  “You can’t just drive her away,” the brunette said. But there was still too much uncertainty in her voice to sway anyone—and Ben was already rounding the front his car.

  He looked back at the crowd. “If any of you know her, please call her home and tell her family to meet us at St. Joseph’s.”

  The brunette protested again. “The ambulance will be here any minute.”

  Ben pulled a card from his pocket and reached across the top of his car with it. “Please,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m Dr. Straub. You can follow me to St. Joseph’s. But we can’t waste any more time or she’s going to suffer some serious damage.”

  The brunette took the card, glanced at it, then looked back up at Ben.

  He was already in the BMW.

  The engine roared to life.

  I wondered if I should intervene. I knew the brunette’s instincts were right—something terrible was unfolding here on Tujunga.

  Ben pulled away from the curb.

  I hurried back to my car, but kept my eyes on the BMW. It headed down the block and turned right onto Moorpark.

  At least he’s headed toward St. Joseph’s, I thought, because one thing’s for sure: he isn’t Dr. Straub.

  What the hell was Ben Kingsley up to?

  I jumped into my car, pulled out, and raced down the block. When I rounded the corner onto Moorpark, I saw the BMW in the distance.

  It took a right onto Vineland—which meant Ben wasn’t going to St. Joseph’s.

  I sped up, and so did the questions running through my mind. If Ben wasn’t taking this woman to St. Joseph’s, where was he taking her? To another place where she’d receive medical attention—like an urgent care center?

  Or was his plan not to help her at all? Was his plan just the opposite—to hurt her? Was it possible that he’d parked on Tujunga precisely to wait for the opportunity to swoop in and kidnap this woman?

  No, that couldn’t be it. How would he know she was going to pass out? It was more likely that he’d seen an opportunity and seized it. But an opportunity for what?

  I turned onto Vineland and saw that the BMW was stopped at a light a couple blocks up ahead. I slowed down, hoping the light would turn green before I got too close. It did, and the BMW moved forward. I followed, keeping my distance.

  When Ben hit Ventura, he took a right, heading west. Was he headed back to his house? That couldn’t be right. Not with this woman passed out in the passenger seat.

  We hit the heart of Studio City, where the boulevard was very well lit, and I noticed something about Ben’s car—something that had registered before, but which I hadn’t given any thought to. There’d been no reason to.

  The BMW didn’t have a rear license plate. Instead, it just had a plate advertising “Center BMW,” as if Ben had just purchased the car and hadn’t gotten the plates for it yet. But I knew Ben hadn’t just purchased the car. He’d had it since I’d started tutoring Mason.

  It was right then that I realized what I’d seen stuck to the BMW’s windshield: temporary registration papers. The kind you got while you were waiting for your new plates; the kind that exempted you from having plates while you waited. I had no doubt the BMW was also missing its front license plate.

  And more importantly, I had no doubt that the temporary registration stuck to the windshield was fake. If a concerned citizen back there on Tujunga, like that brunette, had wanted to take down Dr. Straub’s license plate number, they couldn’t have.

  With that revelation, what I had just witnessed started to make more sense. Ben had been prepared for the opportunity to kidnap that woman. He was not only prepared with a car that had no plates, but he’d also been prepared with his spiel, with his performance, with his penlight, and with his card—Dr. Straub’s card.

  So how had he known the woman was going to pass out?

  Ben took a left onto Coldwater and began to drive up into the hills that overlooked the Valley. As I followed him, the gravity of his crime started to hit me. I had to wonder if Dr. Straub was headed up to Mulholland with the intention of pulling into one of the many secluded wooded areas nestled in the canyons.

  What the hell had I stumbled onto? Should I intervene right now and call the police?

  Whatever Ben was up to had nothing to do with the original purpose of my stakeout. This wasn’t about Ben’s job at all. Was I watching a sociopath? A serial rapist in action?

  I made a decision. Not a tough one. I’d intervene if Ben pulled off into the woods. I’d help that poor woman. I didn’t see myself as a hero. Anyone—even someone with a barely working moral compass—would do the same. But shouldn’t I have called the police as soon as I saw Ben buckle the unconscious woman into his car?

  When Ben reached the top of Coldwater, he turned west on Mulholland. Then, less than a mile later, he took a left. He was headed down the Beverly Hills side of the canyons. The houses down this way were intermingled with swatches of woods, which meant he could still be headed to a secluded patch of land.

  I followed, but it was much tougher to keep his car in sight here because the hillside roads were winding, narrow affairs, snaking up and down in convoluted paths, and I didn’t want to get too close, or he’d see that someone was following him. So every time he disappeared from view, I risked losing him for good.

  Finally, Ben turned onto yet another narrow road, and when I got to it, I saw a “No Outlet” sign. Maybe this road dead-ended in a wooded area, and I had arrived at the end game. I fished my cell phone out, ready to call the police.

  I drove past old Beverly Hills homes. These weren’t the modern hillside homes and McMansions that had sprung up much later in Beverly Hills’s history; these were grand, surrounded by generous patches of forested land. Even under the pale moonlight, they shone brightly with the glory of Hollywood’s golden age.

  Up ahead, Ben was driving fast, and considering that this was a narrow, unlit road, that told me he was familiar with this street, that he’d driven this way many times before.

  I hung back. There was no outlet, so there was no risk of losing him.

  He slowed down near a stretch of woods to his right, and I thought this was where he’d pull over.

  He didn’t. He continued another hundred feet or so before his headlights swooped to the left, illuminating a large wrought-iron gate. He stopped in front of that gate.

  I immediately pulled over and cut my lights and engine. Then I grabbed my binoculars from the glove compartment—finally, they’d get some use—and I lifted them to my eyes just in time to see the iron gate swing open.

  The BMW drove through, and I slid over to get a better view of the property behind the gate. A grand Neoclassical home rose from the forested grounds.

&
nbsp; What was Ben doing? Making a delivery? Was the woman he’d kidnapped going to be used as a party favor? Was she going to be turned into a sex slave for a bunch of sick perverts waiting in that grand home? Was this how Ben earned a living?

  Through the binoculars, I watched the BMW pull up to a three-car garage attached to the west side of the house. The garage door slid open, and Ben drove inside.

  While some things made sense, others just didn’t add up. If Ben was collecting sex slaves, wouldn’t he kidnap at-risk women? Women whose disappearances wouldn’t cause any sort of outcry? As a reporter, I knew that some lives were unjustly deemed more “worthy” than others, and that the news media was complicit in this. The kidnapping of a woman from a well-to-do neighborhood in Studio City rose to the level of “worthiness” that would result in news coverage. The kind of coverage rich men seeking sex slaves would avoid like the plague.

  The garage door slid shut, and I admitted to myself that I had believed all along that the bricks of cash lay at the end of this tainted yellow brick road. That was why I hadn’t called the police. That was why I’d told myself I’d “intervene” at the last minute. It had been a cowardly choice, born from the possibility that there was money to be had. Big money.

  But if I wanted to redeem myself, now was my last chance. This was the last minute.

  So why wasn’t I punching numbers into my cell phone and calling the police?

  Because that big money was going to save my family. It was going to give Jenny hope and peace of mind, and it was going to give my kids the college experience they’d earned.

  But I wasn’t going to start kidnapping women, regardless of the money.

  So why hadn’t I called the police? What was I still doing here?

  Blackmail. That’s what I was doing here. I wasn’t going to kidnap women, but I was going to blackmail Ben Kingsley.

  Fifteen minutes or so went by before the garage door slid open. I’d like to believe that I was mired in a moral quagmire during those fifteen minutes, with desperation barely trumping doing the right thing, but I can’t say for sure that this was true. All I know is that I waited without calling the police. Instead, I thought about the one question above all others that I couldn’t find an answer to: If Ben’s job was kidnapping women and delivering them to wealthy clients, how did he know in advance that tonight’s unlucky victim was going to pass out on that sidewalk in Tujunga?

  The BMW pulled out of the garage.

  Through the binoculars, I saw that the woman was back in the passenger seat, her eyes closed, as if she was still unconscious. But what about those fifteen minutes when she wasn’t in the passenger seat? What had happened in that house? Rape? All of sudden this didn’t seem likely. The fact that Ben’s visit to this grand old home had been so brief didn’t fit in with my sex slave theory. But I damn well knew that it didn’t rule out some sort of deviant behavior on the homeowner’s part.

  It was time for me to take off, but as I jammed my binoculars into the glove compartment, I realized I’d waited too long to turn my car around. I hadn’t planned an exit strategy. Ben’s headlights were already on the iron gate, waiting for it to open.

  For the second time tonight, a U-turn was a risk. On this narrow street, the maneuver would be slow—a three-point turn—and Ben’s car would be on me while I was still executing it.

  So as soon as the BMW’s headlights swung onto the road, and right before they headed toward me, I ducked. That’s what it had come down to. Amateur hour. Now the risk was whether or not Ben would recognize my car as he drove by. Again, Camrys were as ubiquitous as air, so I had that working for me. Also, Ben was probably more focused on the unconscious woman in his passenger seat than on parked cars.

  I heard his car drive by—and it didn’t slow down, which was a good sign. Twenty seconds later, I sat back up, glanced back, and saw his taillights winding toward the mouth of the dead-end street. I realized that I’d already lost him. By the time I pulled the U-turn, he’d be long gone, and I’d never find him in the maze of hillside streets.

  So I made my time-consuming three-point U-turn, and I went with the only plan available to me: I’d head up toward Mulholland and hope that Ben was doing the same. If I could catch him before he got there, and see whether he turned east or west on Mulholland, I’d be able to continue trailing him. But if he headed down toward Beverly Hills, or to visit another nearby wealthy client, then for me the night was over.

  I drove fast and recklessly up the winding roads, and I got lucky. I caught glimpses of the BMW up above me in the hills. Ben’s car swept into curves, then disappeared into the dark again, winding its way up to Mulholland.

  But my luck ran out at the crucial intersection. When the BMW reached Mulholland, I was in a spot far below, where I didn’t have a clear line of sight. So I didn’t see whether Ben went east or west.

  I had to make a calculated guess. My bet was that he wouldn’t go back to the scene of the crime. That he wouldn’t head east toward Coldwater.

  So when I reached Mulholland, I turned west and floored it.

  There were a couple of cars up ahead of me, but the BMW wasn’t one of them. Then, less than a half mile later, I caught one of those broad views of Mulholland Drive, and I knew I’d blown it. There were no cars along the stretch ahead of me.

  Ben had turned east.

  I pulled onto a turnout, and ignoring the view of the Valley below, I swung around and raced east to Coldwater.

  But the distance was too great. I didn’t catch up to him. And by the time I got to Coldwater and headed down into the Valley, I knew I was done for the night.

  I’d lost him.

  My first instinct was to head home. I was close by, anyway. But when I reached Ventura, I had a change of heart. Who knew how many times Ben ventured out into the night and kidnapped women? If I was going to follow through with any kind of blackmail, I should strike while the iron was hot. I had to strike while that transformative energy, inspiring and action producing, was coursing through my body.

  Though I didn’t know what Ben would do with the woman next, I knew he’d eventually return home. I decided to head to Beverly Glen and stake out Tiffany Circle Road.

  When Ben returned home, I’d be waiting there for him.

  *

  I parked down the block from the Tiffany Circle intersection and waited. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long.

  Ben showed up thirty minutes later, and I followed him to his McMansion.

  He pulled into his driveway and parked.

  I pulled up to the curb as he stepped out of his BMW. He was carrying the expensive leather satchel, the one I’d seen that very first night at his house. The one from which he had pulled out the money. And I had no doubt that that’s what was in there now. The money he’d just earned by kidnapping that woman.

  Before I stepped out of my car, Ben spotted me and picked up his pace. He moved quickly toward his front door.

  I slid out of my car and hurried toward him. “Ben,” I said.

  He didn’t stop, and he didn’t slow down. He was closing in on the front door.

  “Ben—we need to talk,” I said, loudly and firmly, enough so that he felt he had to respond.

  “I told you: we’re taking a break from the tutoring,” he said. He selected a key from his key fob and reached for the front door.

  “This isn’t about tutoring.”

  He glanced back at me. His face didn’t betray fear. Instead, his eyes were narrowed in anger. “Listen—we don’t have anything to talk about,” he said.

  “Yes, we do.”

  He unlocked the front door. “You have a good night,” he said, curtly.

  “Let’s talk about your job.”

  “We talked about it,” he said, as he opened the door.

  “You said we could talk about it again—some other time.”

  “Not now.”

  “My guess is not ever. Right?”

  “Go home,” he said.

&
nbsp; “Not until you tell me why you kidnapped that woman.”

  That got his attention. He shook his head and closed the door without entering the house. Then he turned to face me. “You followed me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Forget what you saw,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  “You do not want to get involved.”

  “I don’t want to, but I have to.”

  Ben’s lips were pursed and his eyes were no longer narrowed. He looked far more worried than angry. “Go home,” he said again.

  “Tell me what I saw tonight.”

  He didn’t respond. He just shook his head again.

  I pressed him. “I saw you on the job. I know why you don’t want to talk about the job.”

  He took in a deep breath and let it out. “Forget what you saw. I’ll pay you to forget. Enough to make it worth your while.”

  So just like that, my blackmail plan had worked. It seemed ridiculously easy. I hadn’t even had to bring it up myself. Operating under the influence of the transformative energy—which was still coursing through me—had paid off.

  And maybe it was that same energy that dictated my next move. I suddenly wanted more. Much more.

  “I don’t want you to pay me off,” I said. “I want to know what you do and how it works. And I want to be added to the roster of employees.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I wasn’t. I wanted the same job he had, and access to the same amount of money.

  “Forget about it,” he said. “Take what I give you and run.”

  “No,” I responded, without so much as a second thought. Whatever money he was going to give me would never cover all of Jenny’s treatments or the kids’ college tuition. And I no longer cared about the blackmail—I wanted the job.

  He stared at me, but I couldn’t tell if I saw confusion in his eyes, or resignation, or regret. I held his stare without backing down.