by Tim Green
There they stood, Sam nervously eyeing the blond man until he heard the high whine of an electric motor and saw the pale form of a golf cart coming at them from the right. The man shone his light on the cart and Sam saw an older, heavyset man driving with a tall thin man sitting beside him. The cart’s brakes squeaked as it pulled to a stop. The thin man raised a hand, filling the night with the jingle of thin metal.
The glow of the light illuminated the face of Murat Lukaj.
81
I DIDN’T HURT ANYTHING,” Jake said, his stomach clenched around the dinner Van Buren had given him. “I called a friend. I knew she was worried about Sam. She was supposed to meet him.”
“What friend?” Slatten asked.
“Just a woman. A friend. Judy Weissman,” Jake said, lifting his voice, attempting nonchalance.
Slatten dipped into the bathroom. “Then I’ll just hit redial and ask her to keep things quiet for now. You won’t mind.”
Slatten held the receiver to his ear and watched the readout on the phone as it dialed.
“She’s in 845 area code?” Slatten said.
“She lives in Kingston,” Jake said, “she was supposed to pick Sam up last night at the train station. I knew if he was gone, she’d be sick. She’s not going to say anything. She’s a friend.”
Slatten glared at Jake and walked into the bathroom, leaving the door open. From where he stood, Jake could hear the rumble of Slatten’s voice, but the words were garbled. After half a minute, he reemerged.
“Don’t do anything stupid like that again,” he said to Jake. “It’s your kid we’re trying to save here.”
“It’s fine?” Van Buren asked.
Slatten hunched over the desk computer and punched in some letters and numbers. Jake edged toward him to try to see what he was doing. When he looked back, he saw Van Buren looking over the two of them as if considering the pieces on a chessboard midway through the game.
After a minute, Slatten nodded, spun around, and said, “Yeah, she’s what he said.”
Jake didn’t speak. He shed his suit coat and pulled on the bulletproof vest over his head, then fished his arms through the windbreaker. He offered Van Buren a sheepish smile and gave him a nod.
Outside, they climbed into Slatten’s truck and drove past the mansion to where a helicopter sat waiting in the floodlights coming from a small, single-story outbuilding. Before they were out of the truck, the copter’s lights blinked on. Its engine sputtered and began to whine. The blades above swung slowly around, spinning faster until they made a steady chop. The night was clear and crisp. Slatten went inside the building and came out with a big black duffel bag across his shoulder. They passed under the blades, Slatten stopping to load the bag into the belly of the copter.
There were four seats in back. Jake got in with his back to the pilot, facing Slatten and Van Buren, who both found headsets and put them on. Jake looked for his, but saw nothing, so he sat watching the two men’s lips move as they were lifted off the ground in the deafening roar, glad for the open window that rousted out some of the congressman’s foul breath. The craft tilted and surged forward into the blanket of stars. Jake saw the big river, extending like a tar spill to the north and south, the glow of Kingston, and the pockets of light from the various boroughs and villages snuggled into the mountain creases.
Whenever he looked over at the other two, their eyes flickered at him and their mouths slowed behind the black buttons of their mouthpieces. The bags under Van Buren’s eyes had deepened and the lines of his face sagged under the weight of a long day. A strand of faded hair hung limp across his wrinkled brow. Slatten’s age and the time of night seemed to have no effect. His eyes darted about, his mouth was set, and the lines in his jaw rippled.
The stars were lost in a bank of clouds. Not much later, the copter banked and Jake caught sight of downtown Syracuse, the white dome standing out like a lesion. They were even with the glass tower of the shopping mall on the end of the lake when they began to drop toward the airport. A Cadillac Seville sat waiting next to their landing pad. The copter bumped to a stop and the blades swung to a lazy halt. They hopped down. Jake’s ears continued to hum as he crossed the blacktop and got into the backseat. Slatten tossed the money bag in the trunk and took the wheel. He talked in his cell phone as he drove.
Jake studied the night sky through his window. The clock on the dashboard glowed. It was 1:28.
82
BELOW, A LONG WAY OFF, Sam heard the slam of a car door. Somewhere in the distance a siren sounded and a helicopter chopped the night air. Murat kept the binoculars tight to his face, studying the area where the car door had closed for several minutes before he spoke.
“Good,” Murat said. “Call them.”
The dowdy old man flipped open his cell phone, dialed, and waited.
“This is Niko,” he said, his words thick with what Sam thought was a Russian accent. “Yes, we have him. I will put on a light and you can see.”
Niko nodded to Murat, who let the glasses drop to his chest, then reached down and yanked Sam upright. Niko shone the beam of a large flashlight onto Sam, blinding him so that he winced and looked away.
“You see?” Niko said into the phone. “Yes, you can talk to him. Here.”
Niko shoved the phone into Sam’s face.
“Your father,” Niko said, “talk to him.”
“Dad?” Sam said, tears filling his eyes.
“I’m coming,” Jake said in a low urgent voice. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Trust me.”
Niko snatched the phone away from Sam’s face and Murat forced him to his knees before taking up his binoculars. Even in the faint light, Sam could see the Albanian’s grin as he turned to Niko.
“He’s coming.”
83
A SUDDEN CHOKING SOUND filled the air, followed by a monstrous hissing before, finally, the sprinkler heads popped out of their bunkers, showering the thick fairway grass with fountains of spray. The smell of stale pond water mingled with the heavy scent of cut grass and mud. A bullfrog let fly with a gut-rending croak, breaking into the chorus of early summer crickets. The frog went quiet, making way for the dull chop of a helicopter blinking along over the city below.
Jake ignored it and searched the shadows, deep and fathomless beneath towering maples and oaks.
He suspected that Slatten’s hidden snipers were a lie to placate him, but worried that the Albanians might have tricks of their own. His senses strained at every sound, smell, and movement. The grassy ground rose steadily toward the plateau of the upper golf tee. Van Buren slipped on the wet grass. Slatten caught him by one arm and tugged him into place, keeping the big bag of money poised on his shoulder all the while. The spray, the slick grass, and Van Buren’s age slowed their ascent. Jake flexed his fingers and held his tongue, stopping every ten feet to look back and check his watch while he waited. A jet of water suddenly cascaded down on him, and he held up his arm as a shield. The water dripping from the end of his nose barely registered.
He wiped the face of his watch clear. Just seven minutes before two. In the distance, beyond the hissing sprinklers, he still heard the beat of the helicopter. He quickly retraced his steps and took Van Buren’s other arm. The congressman shrugged him off and straightened his back, even though his breath came now in short wheezing gasps.
“Almost there,” Jake said, trying to infuse some pep into his words and angle his nose away from Van Buren’s foul breath at the same time.
“You two go,” Van Buren said. They were two-thirds of the way up the fairway. Trees blocked sight of the seventh tee, where Sam and his captors stood waiting.
Slatten glanced up the hill, using the break to set the money down and catch his own breath. “Not without you, sir. They’ve seen us already. If only two come out, it’ll be trouble.”
Van Buren glared at Slatten, then tilted his nose toward the sky over the city. “I hope you told your pilot to stay clear until we’re ready.”
; Slatten squinted in the direction of the distant copter and frowned but didn’t speak. Van Buren gave him a curt nod and a grunt and started back up the fairway on his own. Jake fell in behind him and tried to keep from stepping on his heels. Instead of pushing through the underbrush, they took the long way around the base of the knob where the tee area lay, following the cart path and circumscribing the sixth green.
The path rose sharply, they rounded a bend, and there Sam stood between Lukaj and Niko, hands bound behind his back. Jake’s heart leapt into his throat. He checked himself from running straight to his son.
Jake cleared his throat and kept walking, ignoring his companions. Instead of staying on the path, which circled around the tee area, Jake took three leaping steps up the steep skirt of longer grass to reach the plateau of the carefully manicured tee. When he reached the bench and the ball washer, Murat commanded him to stop. Sam’s pale face shone through the darkness, a mask of terror.
“The money,” Murat said. He raised the hand that had been resting on Sam’s shoulder, and Jake saw that he held a nickel-plated handgun. The gun caught the city’s orange glow, reflecting it back at Jake.
Jake froze, numb except for the blooming knot of sickness.
“Niko?” came a voice from beside him. Van Buren, breathing hard.
The lawyer’s light flashed on and the beam sprang across the grass before it scaled Van Buren’s and Slatten’s forms. Slatten’s rigid posture bowed under the weight of the money bag. Van Buren braced his hands above his knees, supporting his torso while he sucked air and waved off the light.
Murat grabbed Sam by the hair. Sam’s eyes widened. He struggled against Murat and cursed him. Murat shoved Sam forward and kicked at his legs, sending him face-first onto the grass.
“Lukaj,” Slatten said, standing with his feet planted apart on the opposite edge of the tee. “Leave him. We have the money.”
Murat chortled and toed Sam’s ribs. “Go.”
Sam wriggled upright, his hands still bound, and dashed for Jake, knocking into him and nearly sending him to the ground. Jake wrapped his arms around Sam. Murat held the gun loosely, pointing it in their direction.
“The money,” Murat said, waving his pistol at Slatten.
Slatten slung his bag down and unzipped it, tipping it up so that in the glare of Niko’s light the packets of bills spilled out like the stuffing in a carnival prize. Murat and Niko moved toward the money, kneeling down to examine it. Niko lay his light in the grass and sifted his hands through the stacks. Jake could smell ink and the filth of other people’s greedy sweat.
“Good,” Van Buren said, standing straight. “We both have what we want. There’s just one more thing I need.”
Murat and Niko both grinned up at the congressman.
“I need this to stay completely quiet,” Van Buren said. “I need your word.”
Niko blinked and nodded at Van Buren before returning his attention to the money. Murat grinned so hard that his teeth shone.
“Not really good enough though, is it?” Van Buren said, grinning back at them.
From the corner of his eye, Jake saw Slatten make a quick move with his hands followed by two flashes of orange flame and two snapping metallic sounds.
Niko dropped in a heap.
Murat fell sideways, pawing at his throat, and struggling to get up. His long legs flexed stiffly as if they’d been yanked free from a spider. Slatten stepped closer, put his gun to Murat’s eye, and fired a shot that burst through the back of the Albanian’s skull, spraying dark matter across the grass.
Murat flopped back, dead.
84
SLATTEN WHIPPED OUT A FLASHLIGHT and he directed it over the bodies before he looked back at Jake and Sam.
Jake stepped protectively in front of his son, and Slatten turned his attention to Niko and Murat. Van Buren watched silently as Slatten worked over the bodies with his gloved hands.
Then Van Buren turned his attention to them. He frowned grimly and said, “Your life jacket and matches won’t be enough.”
“What?” Jake asked, wrinkling his face as though he’d tasted something sour.
“The Titanic,” Van Buren said, “sinking. Not as much room in the lifeboat as you thought.”
The sound of the helicopter closed in on them.
Jake stiffened.
Slatten searched the grass. He grunted when he found the gleaming automatic Murat had carried and rose to his feet. He slipped his own gun back into his coat. Then he looked at Van Buren, pointed Murat’s gun at Jake, and waited.
“She was no mother,” Van Buren said, then he angled his chin at Sam, “and I couldn’t have the bastard of that drugged-out hippie inheriting the bulk of the Van Buren fortune. The trust vested in his generation. He would have been the oldest.”
“Everyone will know,” Jake said.
Van Buren laughed.
“Really?” he said, nodding toward the gun in Slatten’s hand. “You’re killed with Murat’s gun and the boy disappears, never to be seen again? It’s very neat.”
Van Buren looked to the sky. The helicopter was much closer now.
“They’ll know,” Jake said.
Slatten leveled the gun at Jake.
“They’ll know!” Jake screamed, the sound of the copter growing louder still.
When the white glare of the helicopter’s spotlight flooded the tee, Slatten raised an arm up over his eyes and Van Buren staggered, crabbing sideways to get out of the beam.
“Shoot him!” Van Buren yelled.
Jake dug into his pocket and held up the small round makeup case. He tossed it to Slatten. Slatten’s free hand snapped it out of the air instinctively.
“Take some,” Jake said. “You’re on camera.”
Jake glanced up at the helicopter, knowing Judy and her ex-husband had come through. “That’s the Channel Nine news copter! Everything you do. Everyone will see it!”
The copter spiraled quickly down, hovering, and keeping the light trained on them, whipping them with the wind from its blades and deafening them so that it was hard to make out the sound of the coming sirens. Jake could see the camera strapped under the nose of the copter. From the cockpit, Judy’s ex-husband gave Jake a thumbs-up. Van Buren took a few steps into the cone of light and stood with his hands raised as if he were a victim.
“I’m with you, Jake!” Van Buren shouted. The wind whipped thin strands of graying hair across the grinning skull of his face. “Slatten’s been threatening me the whole time. I had no hand in any of this.”
Slatten blinked as if he’d been struck by a board. His mouth sagged open, then it tightened into a frowning sneer.
He let the gun drop to his side, then turned it on the congressman. Van Buren’s eyes grew. He thrust his hands out in front of him for protection.
“Slatten!” Van Buren screamed, turning to run.
“You,” Slatten said, and fired into the back of the congressman’s head.
Van Buren pitched forward.
Slatten tossed the gun to the grass, standing still for a moment in the glare of the light before he came back to life.
He let the disc of makeup drop, then scooped up the bag of money and ran for the trees, spilling ten-thousand-dollar packets like breadcrumbs as he disappeared into the night.
EPILOGUE
JAKE HELD THE DOOR FOR SAM, then followed him down the Llewellyn House front steps. Drizzle drifted down, sheared by the skyscrapers from the bellies of low-hanging clouds. Jake unsnapped the umbrella’s strap and popped it open, sheltering Sam and himself as they walked toward the park. The sidewalk glistened. Taxis hissed by in packs, gleeful and running free on the barren Sunday-morning streets. The fresh smell of rain blanketed the usual city offerings of dust, sewage, and trash.
Neither of them spoke until they reached the low stone wall of Central Park and its canopy of bright green leaves. They took a winding path, passing the hardcore runners who splashed along with faces like grim masks, wires dangling from thei
r ears, headsets held in place by soaked terrycloth sweatbands, until they came to Bethesda Terrace. They descended the steps, feet echoing through the underpass until they stood at the foot of the Angel of the Waters fountain. The surface of the expansive blue stone pool stood still enough to catch the reflection of the bronze angel and her four cherubs below, hiding behind their curtain of droplets. At the balustrade by the pond, half a dozen Japanese tourists clustered like mushrooms beneath bright-colored umbrellas, peering at the far rugged shoreline and jabbering unintelligibly.
Jake removed the newspaper from under his arm and spread it out over a bench seat so they could sit without soaking their pants. Sam planted his elbows on his knees and hunched over, framing his face between both hands. Jake watched a pair of mallards glide lifelessly across the surface of the pond.
“It’s nice that you’re willing to do that,” Jake said, patting Sam’s knee. “Visit Martha, I mean.”
Sam shrugged. “I like to come into the city to watch you do the show anyway.”
Jake shook his head. “I always thought Sunday-morning TV was for old people.”
Sam looked up at him. “You got some white hair going.”
“That’s what kids do to you.”
“The stuff you do is good,” Sam said. “It’s real.”
“Better than movie-star nannies?”
“Hey, it’s network TV,” Sam said. “House on the beach. Häagen-Dazs in the freezer, and all that. Even Ms. Dean watches. Every Monday morning it’s ‘Tell your father I liked his story, Sam.’”
Jake smiled and let that sink in.
“You think it really helps her?” Sam asked. “Me visiting?”
“The doctors say it does,” Jake said. “You can tell she likes to see you.”