Lethal Measures

by Leonard Goldberg

  Eva followed Joanna’s line of vision.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  Again Kate glanced anxiously at Joanna, silently asking for guidance. Her hold on Jean-Claude tightened even more.

  Jean-Claude squirmed in his mother’s arms.

  “Ma-ma, may I have some water?”

  Eva signaled Rudy, who disappeared into the kitchen. Then she took out her pistol and slowly screwed on a silencer. Her eyes never left

  Joanna. With effort Joanna pushed her panic aside and hurriedly assessed their situation. They were in a residential, middle-class neighborhood that she didn’t recognize. After the shooting they’d been forced to lie on the floor of the van while it drove around for what seemed like hours. When the van finally stopped, Joanna had no idea where they were. She didn’t even know if they were still in Los Angeles. But wherever they were, they were trapped and being held by terrorists who would eventually kill them. Maybe there was some way to bargain with them, Joanna thought desperately. Maybe she could trade information for their lives. But deep down she knew that would never work.

  Rudy returned with a plastic cup of water for Jean-Claude. The little boy gulped it down and said, “Merci.”

  “Right.” Rudy took the cup back, crushed it and dropped it to the floor.

  “Let’s get on with it.”

  “Aunt Joanna, do they have a television?” Jean-Claude asked innocently.

  “I don’t think so,” Joanna said.

  Eva smiled, but there was no warmth to it.

  “We’ll have one for you in a few minutes.”

  “May I go with the lady and watch the television?” Jean Claude inquired.

  Kate looked over at Joanna.

  “What do I do?”

  “Let them take Jean-Claude,” Joanna advised.

  “They won’t hurt him.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Kate asked worriedly.

  “Because it’s me they want, not him,” Joanna said, surprised by the evenness in her voice.

  “And they know if they harm him they’ll get nothing from me.”

  Reluctantly Kate put her son down and patted his back.

  “You must stay with the lady.”

  “Then I can watch television also?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “Yes.”

  Eva opened the door to the cellar, her gaze still on the women.

  “Leave your purses and your watches on the floor before you start down.”

  Rudy came over and quickly searched the women’s jackets for possible weapons. He felt nothing except Kate’s cigarettes, which he pocketed.

  “They’re clean.”

  “Move it!” Eva ordered, nudging Joanna with the barrel of her pistol.

  Joanna led the way down into the darkened cellar. The light was so dim it was hard to see the steps, but she could feel them. They were narrow and made of wood and creaked loudly as weight was placed on them. The railing consisted of a length of metal tubing. It was old and rusty.

  “Hold on to the railing,” Joanna said.

  “And take the steps slowly, one at a time.”

  “It—it’s so dark down here,” Kate whispered.

  “I know.” Joanna was counting the steps. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Now her feet were on the cement floor. She quickly calculated the height of the cellar. There were twelve steps down, each step approximately a foot long. That meant the ceiling was twelve feet off the floor.

  The door locked behind them. They heard the lock slip into place.

  Joanna sensed Kate close by in the darkness. From somewhere near the ceiling she saw a faint glimmer of light. It came and went, then came again, but Joanna couldn’t locate its source. Then it was gone.

  Slowly Joanna moved forward. A cobweb touched her face, and she quickly brushed it away. She tried to orient herself, but it was impossible in the blackness.

  Damn it! They needed light, if only for a moment. From behind her she heard Kate crying softly. Joanna reached back for her sister.

  “Jean-Claude will be fine.”

  “But he’s just a little boy.” Kate sobbed.

  “He has no idea what’s happening.”

  “And that’s good,” Joanna said reassuringly.

  “That way he won’t cause any trouble. The last thing we want is to be gagged and tied up.”

  “What difference does it make?” Kate asked hopelessly.

  Joanna leaned toward Kate and lowered her voice.

  “When we talk about important things, whisper it. They may be listening in. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Joanna moved in closer.

  “The reason it’s important not to be tied is that tied people can’t escape.”

  “There’s no way out of here,” Kate said loudly.

  “This is a damn cellar.”

  “Shhh!” Joanna hushed her sister.

  “Keep it down.”

  “But there’s no way out,” Kate said, whispering.

  “Sure there is,” Joanna whispered back.

  “We just have to find it.”

  “What about Jean Claude “We don’t leave without him,” Joanna said, her voice calm and a thousand times braver than she felt.

  Joanna sighed in the darkness, knowing she was talking nonsense. The only way out was up the steps and through the door, which was locked and probably guarded. And even if they got through the door, they could never reach Jean-Claude, who would be watched by Rudy. Joanna shivered thinking about the male terrorist. He was cold-blooded and had probably enjoyed slicing up Maria Gonzalez. Jake had told Joanna about Rudy’s fingerprints on the razor blade. The sadistic bastard. He had killed the poor woman inch by inch.

  She shivered again, wondering what Rudy might do to her if she didn’t deliver what they wanted.

  “Are you okay?” Kate asked.

  “Yeah,” Joanna said as the glimmer of light flickered once more.

  Joanna looked up and saw a faint streak of light coming from high above.

  Cautiously she moved forward, waving her hand in front of her to detect any obstacles in her path. The light intensified for a moment, and this allowed Joanna to see the outline of a small window. It was up high, at least ten feet.

  She could never reach it. The light faded and the darkness returned.

  Joanna turned back to Kate.

  “Did they take your cigarettes?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about your lighter?”

  “They took that too.” Kate reached down and double-checked. The lighter had slipped through the hole in her pocket again and fallen inside the lining.

  “No,” she said, digging.

  “I’ve still got it.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Kate placed the disposable plastic lighter in Joanna’s hand.

  “I don’t know how much fuel it has left. I’ve had it for a while.”

  “I thought you just started smoking again.”

  “Cigarettes,” Kate told her.

  “I have an occasional joint.”

  “Very nice,” Joanna said sternly.

  “We’ll have to talk about that when we get out of here.”

  “You mean if we. get out of here.”

  Joanna flicked the lighter. The flame was small and illuminated things poorly.

  Joanna quickly surveyed the cellar. It was square, approximately twenty-five by twenty-five feet. The walls were bare and covered with green plaster. In the far corner were a bucket and mop, and next to them a little wooden table. The window was very small and up near the

  ceiling. The flame burnt Joanna’s fingers, and she jerked her hand away. The lighter fell to the cement floor and rattled around.

  “Goddamn it!” Joanna cursed, licking at her fingers.

  “I dropped it.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Kate reminded her.

  “We don’t want them to know we’ve got a lighter.”

  “Right,” Joanna said softly, still l
icking at her thumb and hoping a blister wouldn’t form.

  “Stay put while I try to find it.”

  Joanna knelt down and searched the floor around her. It was cold and dirty and in places had what felt like slicks of oil. Her hand came to a balled-up rag.

  The lighter was atop it.

  “Found it,” she said and got to her feet. The light flickered in through the window again, and Joanna thought she saw a lightbulb above her. Then the cellar went dark again.

  “Did you see a lightbulb on the ceiling?”

  “It was a light fixture,” Kate said.

  “And it’s too high for us to reach.”

  “The switch wouldn’t be near the fixture. It would be on the wall somewhere.”

  “Or in the hall outside the cellar door.”

  “Or maybe on the wall inside the door,” Joanna said, hoping against hope. The light was crucial. There was no chance of escape without it.

  “When they let us go upstairs, check the walls for the light switch.”

  “Why do you think they’ll let us upstairs?”

  “To use the bathroom and to pacify Jean-Claude,” Joanna told her.

  “Eventually he’ll get cranky and demand to see you. The last thing the terrorists want is a baby crying loudly. That could draw attention from the outside.”

  “But what if he keeps crying?” Kate asked, alarmed.

  “They won’t hurt him, will they?”

  Joanna reached for Kate’s hand.

  “He’ll stop crying the moment he sees you, and I can guarantee they won’t hurt him.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because they know if something happens to Jean-Claude, they won’t get anything from us.”

  Kate began sobbing again.

  “They’re going to kill us and then they’re going to kill my baby.”

  “Only if we let them,” Joanna said, trying to keep her voice firm but feeling every bit as helpless as her sister.

  “Now dry those tears. I can’t think with you crying.” Kate sniffed back her tears and swallowed audibly.

  “My God! What a way to end up. We’re going to die in a cellar. They’ll never even find our bodies.”

  “Don’t think about dying,” Joanna said quietly.

  “Think about getting out.”

  Kate shivered.

  “This place is like a tomb. The darkness almost swallows you up.

  It makes you want to scream.”

  “I know,” Joanna said, remembering how she had screamed and yelled and cried when she was buried in a large drainage pipe beneath six feet of earth. Jake and a bloodhound named Sniff had found her. She envisioned Jake now working around the clock to find her, pushing himself and Farelli to exhaustion and beyond. But there were no clues left behind, nothing for him to follow. It would take a miracle for Jake to locate them, but he was their only hope for survival.

  “Sis,” Kate said softly, breaking the silence, “did I ever tell you how much I love you?”

  “A lot of times.”

  “You did so much for all of us,” Kate went on.

  “You always put the family first.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  “It was really hard for you, but you did it so well,” Kate said.

  “And even when I was older I was always the little sister you had to look out for. That made me love you even more.”

  Joanna thought back to her father’s death. Kate had been only eight years old and had no grasp of what had happened and how drastically their lives would be changed. Joanna tried to envision her mother and father, but their faces were indistinct. Now Joanna could see their headstones. And she knew that soon she and Kate and Jean-Claude would follow them into the grave. The Blalock line was about to be wiped out by a bunch of terrorists.

  “We’ve got to find a way out of this damn place.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “First, you’ve got to push your fear aside.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for Jean Claude

  Kate took a deep breath.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  Joanna lowered her voice even further.

  “When they come down for us, do everything very slowly. The longer it takes them to get what they want, the better chance we have to survive.”

  “What do you think they want?” “Information,” Joanna whispered.

  “It’s something they need to know.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t be sure. My guess is I know something they need badly for their plans on April nineteenth.” Joanna tried to swallow away the dryness in her throat.

  “I’ll have to play it by ear and try not to give them what they want. Perhaps I can alter things just enough to keep them confused.”

  “That could be dangerous, Joanna. Remember, they’ve got my little Jean Claude

  “How could I forget?”

  “The Ten Righteous,” Kate said disgustedly.

  “They probably believe that God approves of their kidnapping women and children.”

  “They don’t believe in anything other than their own cause. To them, God and the Bible are just convenient excuses.”

  A glimmer of light came through the window again. It flickered and dimmed but didn’t disappear. Carefully Joanna walked forward in the hazy darkness, her hand stretched out in front of her. She reached the far wall and felt around for the wooden table. She had to ignite the lighter briefly to find it. Quietly she slid the table across the floor until it was directly under the small window. She climbed up on the table and, standing on her tiptoes, looked out.

  The window was very small and covered with a thick layer of dirt, both inside and out. There were heavy metal bars across it. In front of the window was a pile of leaves or trash or maybe a thick bush. Joanna couldn’t be sure, but whatever it was it seemed to sway with the breeze.

  Joanna tried to wipe away the dirt and grime on the window with her sleeve.

  Outside it looked like early evening with shadows everywhere. For a moment Joanna thought she saw something move. Was it a person? An animal? She strained for a better look.

  The door to the cellar suddenly opened, and light flooded in from above.

  Something bounced down the steps and hit the floor with a dull thud.

  Joanna and Kate stared into the dimness and, holding their breaths, listened for the sound of a baby’s cry.

  The door above them slammed shut, and the darkness returned. Friday, April 16, 11=58 a.m.

  I feel like a vulture waiting around to see if this guy is still alive,” Farelli said.

  “He’d better be,” Jake said gruffly.

  “He’s the only chance we’ve got to identify that van.”

  They were pacing the floor outside the surgical I.C.U. It was almost noon and Sol Fischer, the owner of the ice cream shop, had just returned from his second operation in the past twenty-four hours. The first surgery was to remove a bullet as well as the spleen and a large segment of intestines it had ripped apart. The second surgery was needed to find the source of Fischer’s internal bleeding and stem it before he hemorrhaged to death.

  “How old is this guy?” Jake asked.

  Farelli referred to his notepad.

  “Seventy-two.”

  “Shit.”

  “But the doc said his general health was pretty good.”

  “Seventy-two is still seventy-two,” Jake said hoarsely.

  “And he caught one right in the gut.”

  “Yeah.”

  They continued pacing, both looking haggard and fighting the deep fatigue that came from working through the night without sleep. Despite their efforts, they still had no information on the van. A careful check of all the vehicles recently stolen in the Los Angeles area listed sixteen vans. Six of these were dark-colored, and all had been recovered before the shooting at the ice cream shop. The witnesses to the crime had been thorough
ly re questioned Nobody remembered the van.

  The door to the I.C.U opened, and a middle-aged nurse walked out. The

  front of her scrub suit was splattered with blood. Jake hurried over and showed his shield.

  “How is Mr. Fischer doing?”

  “He’s still with us,” the nurse said wearily. She sighed deeply and shook her head.

  “Do you know how long Sol Fischer has had that ice cream parlor?”

  “A long time, huh?”

  “Try forty years,” the nurse said sadly.

  “Everybody from Memorial goes there and takes their children so Sol can dote on the kids and give them extra sprinkles for their ice cream and make them smile and laugh. He’s a wonderful, generous man, and look what they’ve done to him.” She shook her head again and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  “The world is really fucked up.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jake said and watched the nurse head for a nearby lounge.

  His eyes went to the wall clock overhead. It was noon. April nineteenth was sixty hours away.

  Turning to Farelli, Jake said, “It sounds like the guy is barely holding on.”

  Farelli nodded.

  “We need to get lucky here and real soon. We’d better hope somebody sees the pictures of the terrorists on television and remembers seeing those bastards somewhere.”

  “That won’t happen,” Jake said.

  “They’ll go underground now until Monday.”

  “Sometimes it’s not so easy hiding two women and a kid.”

  “Sure it is. Just tie them up and pull the drapes.”

  And kill them after they’ve served their purpose, Farelli thought grimly.

  “Maybe somebody will spot the van somewhere it shouldn’t be.”

  “Chances are it’s in a garage,” Jake said, hoping against hope that their ongoing search of new house rentals on the Westside might turn up something. The terrorists had to have established a new base of operations after the West Hollywood bomb destroyed their old one. But there were so many houses. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  “We must be missing something,” Farelli grumbled.

  “They can’t be this good.”

  “Oh, yes, they can,” Jake said frankly.