“Yeah, but just buying a spread like this coulda wiped out the whole two mil. And how exactly do you figure the ransom money ended up here? With the victim?”
“We’ll talk about that.” Hal had questions of his own. Such as: How much did Archie know? Had Mick bragged to him about his dad’s role in the kidnapping? Hal needed to find out, and fast. As for the location of the two million, the fact was, that money might be here, there, or nowhere. It might be sunk into real estate, like Archie said. The both of them might be on your basic wild-goose chase. He said, “You better split or they’re gonna start wondering.”
“I’ll be in touch.” Archie produced his cell phone. “What’s your number?”
“I’ll call you. What’s yours?”
“That’s okay.” Archie pocketed the phone and began to shuffle toward the parking area. “I’ve got our boy Mick on speed-dial.”
Of course you do, Hal silently fumed. That witless cocksucker. “Hey. Who are you for real?”
“Name’s Joe Silver.” The man never broke stride. “I’m a middle-school guidance counselor.”
Chapter 17
“I APPRECIATE YOU fitting me in like this, Dr. Sullivan.” Frank fidgeted with the tilt of the leather recliner. He couldn’t get comfortable. He never seemed able to get comfortable anymore. “I couldn’t wait till Monday. I could not wait.”
“You sounded quite anxious on the phone.” Dr. Sullivan jotted a note on the legal pad perched on his knee. “Has something happened?”
“Oh, you could say that.” Frank yanked on the chair’s control lever; the chair jerked him upright. “You oughta get this frickin’ thing fixed. Or replace it with a couch. What happened to couches? Why don’t shrinks have those anymore?”
“Did something happen with Anne Marie? With Lucy?”
“Try something happened with Anne Marie and with Lucy. Last week I had two wives. Two families. Today I’ve got nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero.” Frank slammed his head against the headrest. The chair collapsed into its flattest position. “Christ!”
“Did one of them find out about the other?”
“Bravo, Sigmund. You just earned your three hundred bucks.”
“I know you’re stressed, Frank, but sarcasm is not prod—”
“Then tell me what is productive.” Frank struggled to sit up. “Tell me how to get my wives back. Anne Marie has changed the locks. Changed the locks! I sent roses. I sent chocolates. Godiva. She tossed them in the yard for the squirrels. Godiva!”
Dr. Sullivan’s pen scritched across the pad. “How did she find out about Lucy?”
“I told her.”
Dr. Sullivan looked up.
“I didn’t mean to. I thought she knew. I thought she—thought she knew and hired this guy to kidnap Lucy and scare the piss out of her and get her to give me up.”
Dr. Sullivan’s eyes widened. “Someone kidnapped Lucy?”
“Do you mind?” Frank poked his chest. “We’re talking about my problems here?”
Dr. Sullivan tapped his cheek. Frank hated it when he did that. But it really bothered him now. “We’ll get back to that. You’re looking a little . . . well, you’re usually so well put together, Frank. A sudden lapse in grooming can be a sign of emotional distress.”
“You think? Or try this.” Frank groped for purchase, trying to lean toward the man. “My wife kicked me out of the house. Both my wives kicked me out of the house. I’m living in a frickin’ motel, all right? With ants in the carpet and dirty movies on the TV. This is what my life has come to.”
“We discussed just this eventuality, if you’ll recall. We discussed how your present situation—a wife in every port, so to speak—could not last forever.”
“You discussed it.” Frank stabbed his finger toward the shrink. “There was no reason it couldn’t last forever. I had everything in control. Then Lucy had to get herself kidnapped.”
Dr. Sullivan rested the pad on his knee. “Yes, to get back to that—”
“And I tried to do the right thing. I tried to rescue her. And what do I get for my troubles? I’ll tell you what I get. I get ants in the carpet and dirty movies on the TV, that’s what I get.”
The door to the waiting room swung open. Dr. Sullivan turned toward the intruder. “I’m with a patient. Please wait in—”
“It’s okay, we’re family.” Frank’s brother-in-law Richie sauntered into the room, followed by Anne Marie’s two other brothers, Gary and Nick, and her sisters’ husbands, Murray and Lee.
“Shit.” Frank tried to shrink into the recliner as his wife’s burly menfolk surrounded it.
Dr. Sullivan looked stern. “I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to leave.”
“Don’t worry, we’re going.” Nick pulled on Frank’s arm. “Come on, bro, we have some things to discuss.”
“Don’t let them take me!” Frank clawed at the recliner’s armrests as the men hauled him off of it. “Call nine-one-one!” he shrieked at Dr. Sullivan, who was now on his feet and looking thoroughly panicked. “I’m being kidnapped!”
“Take it easy.” Gary clamped a hand around Frank’s left arm and helped propel him through the waiting room, down a short flight of stairs, and onto the sidewalk outside the Egerton Medical Building, where an icy drizzle now fell. “We ain’t kidnapping you, Frank.”
“Then let me go.”
“We’ll let you go, bro.” Nick, the thirty-year-old baby of the family, shoved Frank’s coat at him. “After we’ve had our little talk.”
They quick-marched him down the street, past the startled gazes of window-shoppers and moms pushing strollers. “Where are you taking me?” Frank bleated.
“We’re just going for a little drink.” Lee, who had hold of the right arm, patted Frank’s shoulder. “A little chat with your bros over drinks. What’s so scary about that?”
“I don’t want a drink.” Frank’s feet barely touched the pavement. Someone’s fist was crushing the back of his suit jacket.
“How can you not want to share a pitcher with your bros, bro?” The suit-crusher was Murray Saperstein, husband of Anne Marie’s sister Cookie and onetime pro wrestler: the Murminator, a.k.a. The Hebrew Hulk. Murray was the biggest and scariest of Frank’s big, scary in-laws. “Hey, what time is it?” the Murminator demanded. “Is it four yet? Happy hour, four to six at Shay’s. Five-dollar pitchers. Free nachos on Tuesdays.”
“It’s Wednesday,” Richie said.
“Bullshit.” The Murminator gave Frank a hard shove through the door of Shay’s Lounge. “It’s Tuesday.”
“Richie’s right,” Gary said. “it’s Wednesday.”
The brothers greeted the only other patron in the place, a regular named Jeff, who abandoned his stool and moved to the end of the bar so the brothers could sit together.
Only two of them, Gary and Lee, actually took seats, positioning themselves on either side of Frank after more or less mashing him onto a barstool. The other three closed ranks behind him.
“Whaddaya say, Frank?” Gary asked. “Is today Tuesday or Wednesday?”
Glumly Frank regarded their reflections in the mirror behind the bar. “Wednesday.”
“Bull! Shit!” The Murminator thumped the heel of his hand between Frank’s shoulder blades, knocking the air from his lungs.
“Hey, Danny,” Nick called to the bartender, who was filling a pitcher with beer. “What’s today, Tuesday or Wednesday?”
“Wednesday.” Danny shoved the pitcher across the bar, along with six glasses. “Chicken wings.”
“All right, all right, whatever,” the Murminator groused, as the others jeered this evidence of senility.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I brought you all together,” Richie said. Everyone laughed except Frank. Nick poured the beer.
They seemed to be in a decent mood, Frank thought. A few beers might help that along. In Frank’s experience, the drunker these guys got, the jollier they got. Of course, under the circumstances, their collective mood could go south at an
y moment.
“Listen.” Frank tried to put starch in his quaking voice. “We have to talk.”
“That’s what we been saying.” Lee thumped him on the back. “Here, drink up.”
Obediently Frank took a sip. “I don’t know how much Anne Marie has told you . . .” He waited. No one seemed eager to fill him in. “I love your sister with all my heart. You guys know that.”
“Of course we do, Frank.” Gary patted his back. “We’re kinda fond of her ourselves.”
“Terrific girl, Anne Marie, am I right?” The Murminator raised his glass, and all followed suit.
Richie placed a beefy hand on Frank’s shoulder. He leaned in close. “That’s why we’re all a little confused about how something like this could happen.”
Frank nodded vigorously. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? There are times I can hardly believe it myself.” He tried to smile, but his reflection in the bar mirror could more accurately be described as a rictus of terror.
“Twenty years, Anne Marie said.” Nick sounded impressed. “Twenty years you been married to someone else.”
“Holy crap.” Danny looked over from the snack bowls he was filling. Jeff, at the end of the bar, simply tsked into his whiskey.
“Lucy,” the Murminator said, and all agreed, yes, that was the name their sister had mentioned. “She nice, this Lucy?”
Frank swallowed hard. “She’s okay.”
“Just okay?” Lee emitted a bark of laughter. “That all you got to say after twenty years?”
“You two have a kid, right?” Richie said. “How old is he?”
“Uh, nineteen.”
“Nineteen. Almost grown. Does he know he’s got five brothers and sisters? And number six on the way?”
Frank shook his head.
Nick shook his head, too. “That ain’t right.” No, the others solemnly agreed, that ain’t right at all. “In the end, family’s all you got.”
“That’s it. That’s it exactly.” Frank grasped at this straw. “It’s all about family. Keeping the family intact. You all know how important that is to me.”
“Gee, Frank.” Gary sounded sad and perplexed. “We thought we knew. Now we ain’t so sure.”
“When I met Anne Marie, I was blown away,” Frank said. “It was love at first sight. I thought, here’s my soul mate. Here’s the girl I waited my whole life for.”
“Except you were already married,” the Murminator pointed out. “For . . .” His face scrunched as he struggled with the numbers.
“Seven years,” Danny, the math whiz, offered.
“So why didn’t ya get a divorce?” Richie asked. “That’s what people do when they meet their soul mate and they already got a wife.”
“That’s what I did,” Lee said. “I divorced Jean, then I married Terry. In that order.”
A couple of the brothers gestured toward Lee as if to say, See? That’s the way you’re supposed to do it. Frank mumbled his response. They pressed in around him. “What’s that, Frank?”
“I said, I don’t believe in divorce.”
The brothers nodded gravely. They could respect that. “We ain’t crazy about it, either,” Gary said.
Lee raised his hand. “Even me.”
“Thing is . . .” The Murminator wrapped one gigantic hand around the back of Frank’s neck. And squeezed, in a friendly sort of way. “We like bigamy even less. That means having two wives at the same time,” he added helpfully.
“It’s illegal.” Nick was also being helpful.
“I know that, I know.” Frank nodded his head, now drooping between his shoulders.
“You got a picture of your Lucy?” Richie asked.
“Sure.” Frank slid a snapshot out of his wallet.
The brothers crowded in for a closer look. They handed the photo to Danny, who passed it to Jeff, nursing his double whiskey at the end of the bar. All expressed polite approval of Frank’s pretty first wife. Richie slipped the photo into his own pocket. What he needed the picture for, Frank chose not to contemplate. Likewise, when his brother-in-law asked where on Long Island Lucy lived, Frank rattled off the address without hesitation.
Gary asked, “Does Lucy know about Anne Marie?”
“Yes. No, I guess . . . Oh hell, I don’t know anymore.” He cradled his head in his hands.
“You know what you gotta do, bro.” Gary slid a comradely arm around his shoulders. “You gotta choose.”
“I have chosen.” He lifted his head and attempted to make eye contact with each brother in turn in the bar mirror. “I need to be with Anne Marie. There’s no question about that. If she’ll still have me.”
“And not Lucy.” Richie felt the need to put a fine point on it.
“And definitely not Lucy,” Frank agreed, meaning it. “No way.”
Lee riffled through his wallet and produced a business card. “I got a great divorce lawyer.”
“Divorce . . .” Frank groaned.
“Oh, now, don’t start that again.” The Murminator gave the back of Frank’s head a jocular tap. It felt like a wrecking ball.
“What will Mother and Father say?”
“Your priorities seem to be a little off base, Frank.” Richie squeezed his shoulder. “Your biggest worry right now ain’t Mommy and Daddy.”
No, the brothers agreed. Heads shook all around.
Richie’s genial tone never faltered. “You divorce Lucy pronto or we’ll kill you, bro.”
Frank whipped his head around, seeking help from Danny, who never paused in his lime-cutting as he said, “Count me in.”
Jeff, his nose in his whiskey, raised his hand in a me-too gesture.
“You’re—you’re threatening my life!” Frank spluttered.
“We’ll make sure it hurts, too,” Nick added, and the others nodded as if to say, Nice touch.
Lee slapped the lawyer’s business card and his cell phone on the bar in front of Frank. “No time like the present.”
Chapter 18
I’VE GONE TOO far this time.
Ethel was supposed to have been contacted Wednesday morning—over thirty hours ago. That was when the fake kidnapper was going to release Lucy, assuming she hadn’t sprung herself early by saying the magic word. Ethel rehashed all this in her mind as she steered her PT Cruiser up Lucy’s driveway. She’d waited all day yesterday for Will Kitchen’s call telling her where to find her sister. Nothing. And no response to her increasingly anxious phone messages and e-mails to both of them.
She braked at a sloppy angle in the parking area at the side of the house. Lucy’s Volvo was nowhere to be seen. Well, it could be in the garage. She hurried toward the door to the kitchen.
She’d definitely gone too far this time. She’d turned over her sister—her flesh and blood, her identical twin, her genetic clone!—to a complete stranger. Why? Because he had an intriguing Web site.
What had she done? And how would she explain it to the police?
Forget the police. How would she explain it to Lucy’s son?
Be home, Ethel silently pleaded with her sister. Please, please be home. Privately she vowed to abandon the practical jokes, even to concede defeat in this decades-old competition of theirs, if she could just get out of this without having screwed up in some horrible, irreversible way.
She started rummaging in her shoulder bag for the key to Lucy’s house before remembering she’d given it to Will Kitchen during her client interview. She’d just bang on the door, then. If Lucy wasn’t home, she’d camp out on the stoop and wait for her.
“I’ve been having a look around.”
Ethel stifled a yelp of surprise. The unfamiliar voice belonged to a tall, youngish woman with wavy chestnut hair, now strolling into view from behind the house. She stopped a few feet from Ethel and pressed a hand to the small of her back. Her plump belly strained the buttons of a wool maternity coat that looked like it had seen better days.
“Can I help you?” Ethel asked.
“Will
you look at this place?” The woman shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Ethel glanced over her shoulder at the glossy shrine to conspicuous consumption she liked to call “Barbie’s Dream House,” just to tweak her sister. Not that Lucy had had much to do with purchasing this nouveau riche manse; that had been Frank’s decision. Ethel’s brother-in-law kept a tenacious grip on the purse strings. “It’s something, isn’t it?” she agreed.
The other woman didn’t share her wry smile. Her expression couldn’t even be called cordial. At first Ethel had assumed this was some friend or neighbor of her sister’s, but now she wasn’t so sure. The visitor’s hard gaze lingered on the house before settling on Ethel. “How much does a house like this go for around here, with all this land? Close to a million, I bet.”
Try three million. Before she could decide how to respond, the woman continued, “My kids’d never believe one family could have a pool like that.” She nodded toward the back of the property, still not cracking a smile. “They’re always after me to take them to the rec center.”
“Excuse me,” Ethel said, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“You want to know what’s funny?” The woman moved closer, her eyes glittering with a dangerous mixture of betrayal, rage, and incredulity. Ethel resisted the urge to back up. “My house? My house is a dump. A lousy dump, only I didn’t know it was a lousy dump until I set eyes on this place.”
“Are you, uh, looking for the Realtor’s open house?” Ethel gestured vaguely westward. “Because I think that’s the next property over.”
“‘It’s the biggest place we can afford, sweet pea.’ That’s what he said, and I believed him. I thought, he’s got such a good job, such an important job, how come he’s not making more? But I didn’t say anything. Why? Because I trusted him. Because I didn’t want to embarrass him. Is that funny or what?”
“Okay, I have to go.” Ethel produced her keys, but the other woman planted herself between Ethel and her car.
She searched Ethel’s face. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Sure I do, Ethel thought. You’re some wacko who lives in a dump.
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