by Joel Goldman
“Now that you mention it, we didn’t find any. Maybe he was just afraid of the dark.”
“Marty Grisnik stopped by the hospital. Says he saw you at Latrell’s.”
“Yeah. He wasn’t too happy that he was late to the party, but that’s the way Troy is playing it.”
“You bring him up to date on what’s been going on?”
“Sure. Figured that was the best way to get him on our side, but don’t tell Troy.”
“Not a chance. By the way, you say anything to him about Wendy?”
“Yeah. Grisnik asked for her name and a description. Said he wanted his people to help find her. Why? Is that a problem?”
“No. We need all the help we can get.”
“I’ll get back to you on the phone records,” she said and hung up.
The waiting room felt like it was getting smaller. The walls weren’t moving and neither was I. Waiting for Kate to come out of surgery while hoping that my cell phone would ring with good news was a suffocating prospect.
I left my cell phone number with the nurse, who promised to call when I could see Kate. I didn’t know where to look for Wendy, but I was certain that if I could find Colby, I would find her.
If they were being held against their will, I could spend the rest of my life combing the city inch by inch and never find them. If they were hiding, at least one of them would have to come out for food, money, or air. That was likely to be Colby. He wouldn’t go to his house or to Wendy’s apartment because he’d know that the FBI was watching both of those locations, as was anyone else they might be hiding from. Colby would reach out to a friend and I could only think of one person who might qualify.
Chapter Fifty-six
Pete’s Place was not the place to be at midnight on a Friday night. There were only three cars parked anywhere near the door, one of them across the street. It may have been crowded earlier, but it was down to the stragglers. The restaurant next door, Pete’s Other Place, was buttoned down and black. The nearest streetlight was fifty yards to the north, a ball of yellow that splashed on the pavement and quit, leaving the bar buried in the dark, the faint neon glow in the window a pale beacon for anyone looking for a last stop.
The lights inside the bar were milky, the air quilted with smoke. A heavyset man who looked to be in his sixties, his chin on his chest, was passed out in a chair, his head angled against the wall, an empty beer pitcher on the table in front of him. Tanja Andrija was bent over him, patting his face to bring him around.
“C’mon George. Wake up and go home. I’m not running a bed and breakfast.”
George stirred and smiled, trying to grope Tanja. She batted his meaty hand away like he was a child.
“Not tonight, George. You’re too drunk to do me any good and your wife would kill us both, anyway.”
Two other men were seated at the bar. Both had the broad shoulders and over-the-belt-guts of men who’d spent their lives working hard and drinking harder. They lumbered off their stools.
“We’ll get him home, Tanja,” one of them said.
They each slipped an arm around George, hefting him to his feet like he was a sack filled with feathers and air. I sat down at the bar as Tanja opened the door and the trio stumbled into the night.
She closed the door behind them and snapped the dead-bolt, came around to the business side of the bar, and leaned against the far wall framed by bottles of booze, the mirrored wall behind her letting me watch me watch her. She was wearing low-riding jeans that hugged her like they meant it and a deep red T-shirt stretched tight across her breasts. Standing with her elbows on the counter, her ankles crossed, her eyes alive, and her mouth pitched at an inviting angle, she promised trouble. If she were on my calendar, I’d never make it to next month.
Marty Grisnik and Colby Hudson had fallen for her. I could see why. Grisnik was probably not over her all these years later. Colby might not get the chance to forget her.
“You came back,” Tanja said.
“Is that why you locked the door?”
“We’re closed.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do. Like I said, we’re closed.”
“I don’t want to buy a drink.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Colby Hudson.”
She looked around the bar. “I don’t see him.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t know where he is.”
“What did he do? Break curfew?”
“I didn’t say he did anything. I’m just looking for him.”
“He was in here the other day,” she said, turning her back to me. The cash register was next to her. She opened it, removed the cash, and stuffed the money into a bank bag. She zipped it closed, tucked it under her arm, and looked at me in the mirror behind the bar. “Same day you were here. He introduced us. You should remember that.”
“I remember. You told Marty Grisnik not to bring me back.”
“I guess I should have been more specific. I should have told you not to come back. Consider it said.”
“You and I aren’t going to be friends, are we?”
She held the money bag in front of her with both hands like it was a shield. “I don’t think we have enough in common.”
“We have more in common than you think.”
“Name one thing,” she said.
“Colby Hudson. You said he makes you laugh. If you want him to keep doing that, I need to find him.”
“What are you, his mother?”
“Colby tell you what he does for a living?”
She hesitated, put the money bag on the counter, and stuck her hands in her pockets. She rolled her shoulders back, her blond hair swirling around her neck and her posture lifting her breasts. I couldn’t tell whether she was preparing to attack or surrender. “He’s an FBI agent, same as you. Marty told me all about you.”
“And Marty told me all about you. He said the two of you used to go out. He’s a cop and he’s your friend. Colby’s an FBI agent and, from what I saw the other day, he’s your friend, too. So why are you giving me such a hard time when I’m only trying to help Colby?”
“You’re not like Marty and Colby. You’re full of self-righteous bullshit, the way you judged Colby and me. What’s between us is nobody’s business but ours.”
I’d never seen Colby look at Wendy the way I’d seen him look at Tanja. I thought again of Joy and Kate. Each time I was ready to condemn someone else, I painted myself with the same brush.
“You’re right. It’s none of my business, but I still need to find him.”
“If Colby wants you to find him, you will.”
“Why wouldn’t he want me to find him?”
She looked at me straight on, her blank face set in stone. “I don’t know. I run a bar. That’s all.”
I stood. “You hear from Colby, tell him to find me.”
“Sure. Next time I see him,” she said.
“You do that. Is there another way out of here besides the front door?”
“Why?”
Her eyes widened and her brow arched upward in a?ash. In the next instant her face was smooth. If I had blinked, I would have missed her micro expression. Kate would have labeled it a classic expression of fear. It was the kind of fear that could come from hiding Colby in the back of the bar.
“Because you’re closed and the front door is locked. I’ll just go out the back.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said, recovering quickly as she smoothed her T-shirt, tugging on the bottom edge. “I’ll let you out the front.”
I followed her to the door. The breeze stirred her hair. She brushed it away from her eyes. We were inches apart. She was a magnet.
“Remember what I said,” I told her.
“You do the same. Don’t come back.”
Chapter Fifty-seven
I sat in Kate’s car on the northbound side of Fifth Street and started the engine. The night had turned cool, the drop in temperature coatin
g the windows with a layer of dew. Tanja was standing inside the bar, peering out over the neon sign promising free beer tomorrow and waiting for me to drive away.
I pulled away from the curb, wondering whether Colby Hudson was standing in the shadows behind her, watching me over her shoulder. Petar and Maja Andrija’s house was a few blocks to the north, dark and silent as the rest of Strawberry Hill as I glided past. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I saw a burst of light suddenly?are from their open front door, the porch light blinking on and framing Colby as he?ew down the stairs and bolted into the protective darkness surrounding the house next door.
He’d been at Tanja’s parents’ house, not at the bar. She could have called him by now but, if she had, she would have told him to sit tight until she was certain I was gone. His departure looked more like a jailbreak than a careful getaway. Either he wasn’t supposed to be there or he wasn’t supposed to have left.
I stayed off the brakes, not wanting him to think that I’d seen him, knowing that he wouldn’t recognize Kate’s car and that he’d wait until I was out of sight before he started moving. Advantage mine.
I crested the hill at the intersection of Fifth and Ann in front of St. Ann’s Church, which sat on the southwest corner of the intersection, the church and the street named after the same saint. A playground stretched from the east side of the church to the curb. This was where Marty Grisnik and Tanja had gone to school, Marty probably stealing a kiss, getting whacked on the back of his head by a nun for his trouble.
I turned left onto Ann, then right into an alley, where I parked the car. I popped open the dome light and unscrewed the bulb, not wanting to give the edge back to Colby when I got out of the car.
He could have gone in any direction. I was counting on him choosing the only one that gave me a chance. I found a doorway recessed a couple of feet into the damp, limestone wall of the church facing the playground. Standing in the doorway was like nesting in a cave. It was so dark that Colby could have spit on my shoe and not known it. I held my gun at my side, and waited, steady as the rock that surrounded me.
My eyes adjusted to the dark, the shapes of the playground equipment coming into focus. Thinking of the playground as a clock, I was at twelve o’clock, Fifth Street was at six, a swing set in the center. Ann Street was at three o’clock and the jungle gym was at nine. The playground covered half a block and was surrounded by a chain-link fence meant to keep kids and balls in, not meant to keep rogue FBI agents out. If Colby were headed this way, he’d stay close to the church and away from any passing headlights.
Sound travels farther late at night, undiluted by kids playing ball or cars grinding their gears. The jingle jangle sound that chain-link fence makes when someone climbs over it would have been lost in the mix of daytime background noise. In the still of the night, it sounded like an out-of-tune wind chime.
Colby slipped by my doorway, his head down, less than two feet from where I stood. I waited until he’d gone ten feet past me and then stepped onto the playground, my gun aimed at him, calling his name.
He stopped, his back to me. He was wearing jeans and a light jacket. He raised his head, his right shoulder turning in as he reached in to his jacket. I knew he preferred a shoulder harness to a holster stuck in his pants or clipped to his belt.
“You won’t need that,” I told him.
“Why, Jack? Because you’re unarmed or because you’re not going to shoot me?”
“Because I won’t shoot you if I can help it but I will shoot you if I have to. You pull your gun and there’s a lot better chance that will happen. Turn around real slow, keep your hands where I can see them, and talk to me.”
He turned around and said, “You don’t have to do this.”
“Then I apologize in advance. Unzip your jacket, use two fingers to lift your gun out, and put it on the ground. Use three fingers and I’ll shoot one of them off. Then kick it over to me.”
“Listen, Jack.”
“Don’t say a word until I tell you. Just get rid of your gun.”
Colby did as he was told and I kicked his gun toward the jungle gym, steel skidding hard on the asphalt. I pointed my gun at him.
“You can lay down on your stomach, I can cuff you, and search you for your backup gun, or you can save me the trouble and put it on the ground along with any other toys you’re carrying.”
“Give me a break, Jack. You don’t even have your fucking badge. I’ll keep my hands where you can see them, but that’s all. You don’t like it, you can shoot me, or you can come over here and search me.”
I had made a stupid bluff, the kind that always made the other guy bold when he called it and I had to fold. Backing down wasn’t an option. That would turn our power struggle on its head.
“Don’t push me, Colby. Be a good boy and lay down.”
“No,” he said, taking a step toward me.
“Don’t make me shoot you.”
“You won’t. In the first place, I’m unarmed and I haven’t threatened or attacked you. In the second place, you haven’t told me that I’m under arrest. In the third place, if you shoot me you won’t get what you really want.”
He was right on all counts. My right hand began to quiver. I squeezed the butt of my gun to steady myself but it didn’t help. My belly broke out in minitremors. I could feel them but I hoped Colby couldn’t see them.
“Where’s Wendy?”
“She’s not at the Andrijas’ house.”
“That’s what you were doing there? Looking for her? Then where is she?”
“That’s not the way this is going to work. You put your gun down and kick it over to me. Then we’ll talk.”
“She loves you. Now you’re using her as a bargaining chip?”
“You’re the one pointing a gun at me. Doesn’t leave me a lot of choice.”
I reached in my pocket with my left hand, removed my cell phone, and?ipped it open. “I make one call, we’ll have company. Or you can tell me where I can find Wendy and walk away.”
“Go ahead. Make the call. That will be worse than shooting me. Troy and the rest of the gang will show up. I won’t talk until I get a lawyer and the lawyer won’t let me say a word. Besides, they’ve got nothing to charge me with. By the time I walk out the door, it won’t matter where Wendy is. It will be too late.”
My heart slammed into my throat. “She’s alive?”
“Last time I saw her.”
“When was that?”
“Last night.”
“Where?”
“Her place. We were having dinner. I left. When I came back, she was gone.”
“How can you do this to her?”
Colby ran his hands through his scraggly hair, his eyes hard but not hard enough to hide a pained wince, too?eeting to be fake. Kate had been a better teacher than she gave me credit for. I was seeing things I would have missed.
“I’m not the one doing it.”
His question matched his involuntary confession. He was worried about Wendy, too.
“Then let me help you get her back.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said, looking away.
And then I understood. “So you’re willing to sacrifice her to save your own ass. Just like you did Thomas Rice.”
Colby took a deep breath as if he was about to launch a denial and then dropped his hands in surrender. “Rice was different.”
“Different because you weren’t sleeping with him?”
“Different because you think you know what you’re talking about but you don’t. Wendy’s a big girl. She made her choices, just like me.”
He was baiting me, implicating Wendy as an accomplice, something I wouldn’t buy. “When you didn’t show for your polygraph, Troy sent a couple of agents to your house. They found enough drugs and cash to put you away for a long time. If anything happens to Wendy, that won’t matter because I’ll kill you before you serve a day.”
“The way my luck is running, you’ll have to get in line.”
“I guess that’s a better story than the one I told.”
“You have a good story for the money and dope that was found in your house?”
“Yeah, and this one is irresistible. I’m not that stupid. I know how the game is played. I was set up.”
“Why?”
“To discredit me if I came in and told what I know.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I needed an exit strategy. The drug business is like every other business, Jack. Everyone always wants a bigger slice of the pie. I took mine and used it to buy the house and car. People I do business with didn’t like it.”
“Who are they?”
“Sorry, Jack. I’m not making that deal with you or anyone else anytime soon.”
“There’s a big difference between the drug business and every other business,” I told him. “You steal from GM, they send you to jail. You steal from drug dealers, they kill you.”
“Except I’ve got an insurance policy. Anything happens to me, they go down. Long as they don’t find it, I’ve got leverage. They must have snatched Wendy, figuring she gives them leverage against me.”
“Except you’re willing to let her die!”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s an ugly world, Jack. You arrest me, they’ll think I gave them up and they’ll kill Wendy. You kill me and they’ll kill her because they won’t need her and can’t risk letting her go. Now put your gun down.”
Colby took two more steps toward me. I raised my gun at his chest, but my arm began to wobble and then I began to shake. My eyes clamped shut as the fog wrapped around my brain. I twisted and folded in half at the same instant, slammed with contractions that took my breath away. I tried to straighten, but the contractions pulled me to my knees and held me there like chains.
I felt Colby next to me, felt him take the gun from my hand. I opened my eyes. He was standing over me.
I forced my words into a choppy stutter. “What happened to you?”