by J. S. Carol
‘Walters said ten minutes.’
‘Which means it’ll be closer to fifteen minutes. Okay, go get yourself set up, and I’ll sort everything out at this end.’
‘Will do.’
The line went dead. Seth sighed and took another drag on his cigarette. The revelation about the tumour was already old news. They needed another big exclusive if they were going to keep the story. One thing was for sure, they weren’t going to get it from a goddamn news conference.
11
Alex King sat with his back to the door and turned the key over in his hand. He’d spoken to Brad Carter a couple of minutes ago, and the FBI man had promised they were doing everything humanly possible to get him out. He’d finished up by telling him to sit tight.
The problem was that he’d given him that exact same bullshit line the last time they spoke. And the time before that. As for sitting tight, King had been sitting tight for so long his ass was numb.
The key turned in his hand. Over and over and over. The metal caught the bright halogen lights and sent tiny sparks shooting in all directions. Before he knew what he was doing, he was up on his feet. He pushed the key into the lock and turned it until he felt resistance. It made sense to unlock the door. He couldn’t believe Carter hadn’t suggested this. When things finally got moving, they’d move fast. Every second saved could be crucial. He turned the key a fraction of an inch more. Then stopped.
What if the door was connected to an alarm? Maybe that’s why Carter hadn’t told him to open it. King was ninety-nine per cent sure that opening the door would not set off any alarms. This was based on the fact that no alarms had gone off during any of the hostage handovers. The problem was that one per cent of doubt. No matter what he told himself to the contrary, he couldn’t shake the feeling that bad things would happen if he unlocked the door.
‘Brad, are you there?’
‘Yeah, I’m here buddy.’
‘I want to unlock the door. I think it’ll help speed things up when you finally get around to doing your thing. I’m just worried that I might trip an alarm.’
‘Okay, let me check and get back to you. Just sit tight for a second. Don’t do anything until I tell you, okay?’
The earpiece fell silent. Sit tight. The silence seemed to go on for ever. King could imagine a bunch of FBI experts with their heads together, throwing ideas around. The thing was that they didn’t have a clue. Not really. They had no idea how high the stakes were. How could they? They were out there, while he was trapped in here. There was no way they could understand what he was dealing with, not in a million years.
If the alarm went off they still got to go home and kiss their wives and kids. Their consciences might hassle them, but they’d learn to live with that. Given enough time, they’d learn to live with the fact that they had killed him. Given enough time, you could learn to live with anything. King knew that one from experience.
‘Hey Alex, you’re good to go for unlocking the door. The alarm’s not activated.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
Carter laughed. ‘We’re the FBI. We’ve got gadgets that you film people can only dream about. And, Alex? Good call, by the way.’
‘Thanks.’
The earpiece fell silent again and King stared at the key. Do something or do nothing? The atmosphere in the kitchen had suddenly got heavier. He didn’t have to do this. He could just sit back down and pretend like this was the dumbest idea ever. Before he could talk himself out of it, he turned the key, hoping to God that Carter had called this one right. The lock released like a sigh. There was no click, just a moment of gentle pressure, then a sense of emptiness that felt like a long, slow dive into nothing. King held his breath and waited for the alarm to go off. He was expecting bells and sirens, but all he got was a whole lot of nothing.
The world had moved on by a fraction of a degree, yet everything was exactly as it had been a second ago. The kitchen was still in a state of controlled mess. Maybe too much, maybe not enough. And there was still a lunatic with a bomb strapped to his chest strutting about in the main part of the restaurant. And if he called Brad Carter right now, the FBI guy would no doubt tell him that they were doing everything humanly possible to get him out, and that he should just sit tight.
Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. The door was unlocked, which meant that he was one step closer to being free. Right now the only thing separating him from freedom was the steel grille. He reached for the door handle and started to push down, then realised what he was doing and stepped back as though he’d been electrocuted.
He sank back to the floor and for a moment just sat there staring at his hand like it might not be attached to his body. Unlocking the door was one thing. Opening it was a whole different ball game. He knew the bomber was monitoring the news. What he didn’t know was whether there were any TV cameras currently trained on the doors. If the bomber saw the kitchen door opening, that would be it.
He couldn’t believe how close he’d come to screwing everything up. At the same time, he fully believed it. Up on the big screen, he might be indestructible, but deep in his heart he’d always be just another trailer-trash loser. He fished the small Ziploc bag of coke out and stroked the rough plastic a couple of times. It would be so easy. Too easy. He pushed the bag back into his pocket and found the knife. The sad face was looking at him. He flipped the knife over and forced a smile. A single tear slid down his cheek and dripped onto his jeans, leaving a small, dark wet patch.
A single tear slid down his cheek and dripped onto his jeans, leaving a small, dark wet patch.
12
‘What’s the value of a life?’ Marley asked again. He nodded towards Kevin Donahue’s cooling corpse. ‘According to Kev over there, it’s three million dollars. You know, he lied about how much he could afford to pay. His life was hanging in the balance, and he chose to lie, gave me all that hogwash about having to liquidate assets. He could have afforded four million, easy. Hell, he could probably have managed five. I have a highly tuned bullshit detector. You people might want to bear that in mind.’
He looked at JJ and she met his gaze. There was no point pretending to be invisible anymore. She could see exactly where he was going with this. He was going to call them up two at a time, and he was going to ask them to put a value on their lives, and they were all going to come up with their very best offer. After what had happened to Donahue there was no way anyone would short change him. It looked like it was about the money, after all.
JJ glanced around at the other hostages and estimated that Marley could clear thirty million dollars easy. Ed Richards and DeAndre Alexander alone could probably raise ten million apiece without breaking a sweat. Big money by any standard. What she didn’t get was why. If Marley was dying, what use was thirty million? Or a hundred million? Or a billion?
Unless he was planning on giving it all away to charity. But even that didn’t make sense. Yes, it made for good headlines, but when the dust settled, the lawyers would be queuing up to recover the money for the families. If there was big pot of cash going wanting, the one thing you could guarantee was that the lawyers and relations would be hovering nearby.
‘Okay,’ Marley said. ‘Let’s go back in time to the Forties. Do you know why the Nazis stopped shooting the Jews and started gassing them? It was because they couldn’t justify the cost of the bullets. Basically, it was cheaper and more efficient to gas them. So, for Hitler and his buddies, the cost of a life was less than the cost of a bullet.’ He shook his head and smiled a tight smile. ‘Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s assume the cost of manufacturing a bullet is fifty cents. If you do the math, then Kev’s three million dollars equates to six million lives. Or, to put it another way, we’re talking every man, woman and child who died in the Holocaust. Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?’
He looked over at the hostages.
‘Fifteen million dollars,’ Richards said in a voice that was as quiet as air. ‘I
can have the money wired anywhere you want. I just want to see my wife and children again.’
Marley turned slowly and faced the actor. ‘Interesting. So your life is worth five Holocausts. That’s thirty million people, and thirty million people is a country.’ He turned to JJ. ‘What about you, Jody? How many Holocausts are you worth?’
‘I could only manage a million and a half.’
‘Only a million and a half,’ said Marley. ‘Only. You realise that’s still half a holocaust. You reckon your life is as valuable as three million people?’
‘No. You asked how much I could afford to pay, and that’s what I can afford. My life isn’t worth any more or any less than anyone else’s.’
‘Careful. My bullshit detector is starting to light up.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘No, it’s not, Jody. We all place ourselves slap-bang in the centre of the universe. You, me, everyone.’
Every time he called her Jody, it was like a smack in the face. What’s more, she was sure that he’d worked this out and was doing it on purpose. ‘Don’t ever compare us. We are nothing alike.’
‘Aren’t we? You see something you want, you take it. Just like I’m doing here today. We’ve both lost people we love. Face it, Jody, we’re more alike than you could ever begin to imagine.’
‘I’ve never killed anybody.’
‘Haven’t you? What about poor old Dan over there? What about your husband?’
There was no response to that. What Marley was saying was true. Tom was dead because she’d run out of tomorrows, and Stone was dead because she’d invited him here today.
‘Okay, here’s another question for you. How much was Tricia Marley’s life worth?’
Marley smiled, and JJ felt as though she’d stepped into a trap. It was like her foot had been snagged by a loop of rope and she was now dangling upside down with her stomach left twenty feet below. Despite the fact she no longer knew which way was up, a small part of her brain was still functioning enough to ask one very important question.
Who was Tricia Marley?
13
‘I’ve got something,’ the Asian kid yelled.
Seth stubbed out his cigarette and lit a new one. The thin fog of smoke that hung around his head was stinging his eyes and scratching at his throat. A dozen Marlboros and Mission Control was turning into a proper newsroom. The Asian kid had a telephone cradled in the crook of his neck, and had turned around in his chair so he was facing Seth.
‘I’m listening.’
‘Marley’s just made another donation to LA Abuse. Three million this time.’
‘And you know this how?’
‘Because I asked my contact to call if any more donations were made.’
‘And you promised another donation if they did.’
The kid blushed and looked down at the back of his chair.
‘Relax. You’ve done good. Better than good. And better than your two compadres. Hell, who knows, Pinocchio, maybe one day you’ll turn into a real journalist.’
Seth glanced over at the small monitors on the left. So far, neither Fox nor CNN had made any mention of the donation. On the big screen, Caroline Bradley was reeling off the main headlines. He positioned his mike and whispered, ‘Caroline, be a doll and inform our esteemed viewers that Ted Marley has made another donation to LA Abuse. Three million this time. And make sure you get the word “exclusive” in there somewhere.’
Seth watched Caroline raise a hand to her ear. He watched her eyes light up like she was getting a message from God Almighty Himself. He watched her shoot her most intense expression into the camera. He could have watched her all day.
‘And in another exclusive, we’ve just heard that Ted Marley has made a three-million dollar donation to LA Abuse. That’s the second seven-figure donation that this modern-day Robin Hood has made to the charity, and brings the total up to nine million dollars.’
Seth tuned Caroline out. The feeling that he’d missed something was nagging like an itch he couldn’t reach. Why had Marley singled out LA Abuse? What was that all about? Nine million bucks was a serious amount of money. At face value it was a noble gesture. With a cash injection like that the charity would be able help thousands of people. Chances were, they wouldn’t need to do any fundraising for the next century.
Ultimately, though, the gesture was a futile one. LA Abuse dealt with the homeless, the destitute, junkies and prostitutes. Most of the people it helped were back on the streets and using as soon as their programs were finished. But nobody did anything without a good reason, particularly something as massive as this. Seth reckoned that nine million bucks might even have pacified his ex-wives.
‘Okay, people, listen up,’ he shouted. ‘I want to know what the connection is between Ted Marley and LA Abuse. You don’t give nine million bucks to a no-account charity working out of a single office in an LA back street unless there’s a very, very good reason. I want to know what that reason is, and I want to know now.’
14
Was, thought JJ. Marley had asked how much she thought Tricia Marley’s life was worth? Was, as in the past tense. This thought was quickly followed by another that was equally as disturbing. Not good.
‘Let me tell you about Tricia,’ Marley said. ‘Tricia was an angel sent down from Heaven above. She was the happiest kid you’d ever wish to meet. Always smiling, always laughing. She was one of those kids who could light up a room just by walking into it.’
Marley pulled up a chair and positioned it opposite JJ and Ed Richards. For once, he wasn’t grinning. Instead, he had a broad smile on his face. Whatever memories he was lost in, they were good ones.
‘And she was so bright, too. A real crackerjack. She could have been anything she wanted. A doctor, a scientist, anything. Hell, if she’d set her mind to it she could have been the president or cured cancer.’ Marley’s smile was replaced by a frown. His eyebrows crept closer together. The heart on his watch flashed faster. ‘All that potential, and do you know what she wanted to be?’
He stared at JJ, stared at Ed Richards. The other hostages had ceased to exist. It was just three of them. JJ stared back and kept her mouth shut. The question was rhetorical.
‘She wanted to be an actress.’ The last word was spat out like acting was on a par with being a serial killer. ‘Tricia won a scholarship to UCLA to study Law. The first year she finished in the top one per cent of her class. That’s how bright she was. I can’t even begin to tell you how proud I was. It was during her second year that things started to unravel. She quit college and moved into a small apartment with her boyfriend. She’d decided that being a lawyer was too much like hard work. Instead, she was going to be a movie star. “I’m going to be as big as Angelina Jolie,” she told me. I told her she was crazy, that she was throwing her life away. She told me she was old enough to make her own decisions and that I could go to hell. We went back and forth like that for a while and then she hung up.’
Marley shook his head, then smiled one of the saddest smiles JJ had ever seen.
‘That was the last time I spoke to her. I don’t have many regrets, but I do regret that. Every single day I regret it. My wife always said I was too proud, and she was right. I am too proud, and that pride contributed to the death of my daughter. I am absolutely convinced of that. If I’d been able to pick up the phone and call her, if I’d been able to say sorry, then she’d probably still be alive today.’
Marley wasn’t looking at JJ anymore. Or Ed Richards. He wasn’t talking to them, either. He was staring at a point in the distance with a faraway look on his face. JJ wondered if he was seeing his daughter standing there. If so, which version? The idealised child? The college kid? The wannabe actress?
‘I used to tell myself that we’d make up one day. She’d eventually come to her senses and realise what a huge mistake she’d made, and I’d be there to help her pick up the pieces, because that’s what fathers do. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.’
&
nbsp; Marley looked at JJ. ‘I have no problem with the fact that I’m going to die here today. Everyone’s got to die, this just happens to be my time. It’s strange, though, every tour I did, I didn’t think I’d come home. I was convinced my destiny was to die on some dusty street, blown up by a bomb that some asshole had built in their kitchen. I came close. That’s how I got this scar. But the good Lord must have been looking down on me that day. If I’d been standing a couple of feet to the left, I wouldn’t be here now. As it was, I caught some shrapnel in my face and got a Purple Heart to pin on my chest for my troubles. A couple of my buddies weren’t so lucky. They didn’t come home. The thing I could never work out was what made me so special. Why should they die while I carried on living? It all seemed so arbitrary.’
Marley nodded towards the corner of the room where Kevin Donahue’s body was piled up on top of Dan Stone’s and Frank’s. ‘But death is arbitrary. It can strike at any time and any place, and that’s the truth. A car wreck, a plane crash, a brain tumour. A drug overdose.’
JJ waited for more, but there wasn’t any more. Marley had his head down and was staring at his boots. He sat like that for an eternity. Completely still, not moving a muscle. As suddenly as he’d tuned out, he tuned back in again. He looked up at JJ and Richards.
‘So, the name Patricia Marley means nothing to you?’
It was another rhetorical question, but this time JJ answered with a slow shake of her head. Marley fixed her with his intense grey eyes.
‘What about Sabrina? I’ll bet that name rings a bell or two.’
15
‘Marley’s got a daughter,’ the black kid shouted out.
Seth glared down at him. The kid’s smile was broad and filled with bright white teeth. If he’d had a tail he would have been wagging it.