“Right. What I wanted to ask you is whether you have found anyone on the list who doesn’t match the profile.”
“Well, this Ton…Joey, for one. He doesn’t live in Atlanta.”
“No, I was thinking more of someone who did live in Atlanta.”
The woman stuck out her tongue again. Harry noticed that she wore bright pink lipstick, she’d shaved her eyebrows, and she had some sort of nubby thing penetrating her tongue. What was left of her eyebrows was tastefully painted on in orange to match her hair.
“Possibly,” Rendon said. “There was an older man who worked at Stone—” He stopped himself and looked around nervously. “I’d have to check, and I’m not sure that I could release that information.”
“If you could check, I’d appreciate it. The man may be involved in a corporate piracy case.”
“Corporate—”
“It’s connected with this somehow, Doctor. Just how, we don’t know yet, but you solve one, you get the other,” Harry said.
“I will check.”
“Then let me know if there is such a case even if you won’t give me the name.”
The doctor left. The woman gave Harry a long smile while he walked up to pay for his coffee. She licked her lips. He ignored her.
It was nine thirty by Harry’s watch when he reached his apartment and called Ferenzi and Andrews. Ferenzi’s phone was an answering machine. Harry slammed the phone down in the cradle. Every minute Ree stayed in captivity was torture to him. Would they kill her?
Andrews’s number turned out to be a motel. Nobody answered in Andrews’s room. Harry left messages at both numbers, got in his car, and headed for the motel where Andrews was registered.
Twenty
Ree lay on the hard mattress, her mind alternately racked by terror and then engorged with rage. Her body felt as if all the energy had been sucked from it. Her throat ached and was parched from thirst. There had been no food or water. She had no idea how long she had been a captive in the room. Her clothes were soiled.
The room smelled of excrement and worse, like the outhouse in a bar of horrors. She stank. Her tunic had been ripped, and she was cold. She remembered that. She pulled the cloth back up over her shoulder, covering herself, and raised herself up on her elbows at the sound of someone opening the door. It was a man. Medium height and build, his face looked familiar, but where? He had light-colored hair. She knew she’d seen him somewhere. Was he one of the men who had kidnaped her from Savannah? She couldn’t decide. Her memory was a haze of confused images, the drugs still distorting her memory into fragments of scenes real and unreal. She couldn’t tell the difference.
The man carried a glass of water in one hand and a gun in the other. He shoved the glass into her face.
“Drink.” He stepped back from her.
She took the glass and sipped at the water, rolling it around her mouth. Then she drank it slowly, a small mouthful at a time. The thought struck her: she no longer had a blindfold on her eyes. She would be able to identify this criminal.
That notion eased her rage for a moment until the next thought turned her cold. Why would they allow her to recognize them? Could it be they didn’t care because they were going to drug her again and she wouldn’t remember, or was it they didn’t care because she wouldn’t be alive to tell?
Between sips of water, she studied the man. Under the gray two-piece suit were muscles that filled the material. He backed away when he caught her gaze. He moved smoothly, like a man trained in fighting. His glance did not stray from her. He looked as if he were waiting for one wrong move.
It didn’t matter, she decided. She would have to get away. She was thinking of how to do that when he motioned her to get up and walk. She stood and then, at his signal, walked around him, giving the gun a wide berth.
They went out of the room, and he followed her down a wide corridor. The floor was littered with pieces of wood, piles of sawdust, stray nails, and snippets of wire. The lighting was dim, with long, bare fluorescent bulbs scattered at uneven distances. It looked like a warehouse. Ahead was a door and another corridor that bent off to the right.
They reached an area of shadow. Ree tripped herself on a piece of wood, fell hard to the floor, grabbed a handful of sawdust, and as she stood, threw it in her guard’s face. His hands went up in defense. She slapped at the gun, failed to dislodge it, and ran for the intersecting hallway.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” the guard yelled.
She looked over her shoulder and saw him, two-handed, pointing the gun at her. The corner was mere feet away. They were going to kill her anyway. She ran, planning to dive around the corner.
The door in front of her opened. She collided with another man. He shoved her back. She screamed, her recognition a blaze of hatred.
The man stood still, his arms raised in surprise. In one move, an attack she had learned as a child, she whirled and kicked. His arm came up as he dodged, and spinning to the side, his own foot slammed against her ribs, throwing her into the wall with a crash. Her head hit the sheetrock. Pain lanced through her as she collapsed on a pile of boards and sawdust.
“Take her; get her cleaned up and in the new clothes,” she heard her torturer say.
The tall man with the dark hair—the white man who had been with the terrorists all those years ago—went back into the room and closed the door. Ree clutched her side and gasped from the pain that exploded inside her. She would kill him.
She didn’t know how or when, but she would kill the butcher.
The other man dragged her up by the back of her tunic. It ripped a little further.
Harry stopped at a gas station and tried to place a call to his answering machine. The machine ate the thirty-five cents. He had to wait until another man got off the other phone. Finally he placed his call and got through. There was a message from a Ferenzi. The message included a phone number. Harry started to dial, stopped, hung up, and retrieved his quarter.
This Ferenzi might be the one who had Ree, or he might be someone who could help. All Harry knew was that Ferenzi had contacted the CDC about the virus.
Harry got in his car and turned on the heater. It was cold. The back window had not been replaced yet, and the wind blew through it. Harry tugged his coat closer together. He had to call Ferenzi. Perhaps the best tack was to say that he was a reporter covering the story.
Zipping up the coat, Harry went back to the phone booth, deposited his quarter, and dialed the number. The voice that answered was deep and hard sounding.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Ferenzi,” Harry said.
“Yes,” came the reply, “this is he.”
“Mr. Ferenzi, my name is Harry Adams, and I work for the Stone Mountain Village. I’m doing a background story on the virus that’s killing athletes. One of my sources gave me your name as a person with information.”
“Harry Adams, yes.” There was a long pause as if the man was thinking. “Mr. Adams, I don’t know why anyone would have told you to call me on this issue.”
“They said you were investigating the spread of the virus.”
The man on the other end of the line laughed. “You have good sources, Mr. Adams. No one is supposed to know what I’m doing. But, yes, I am being paid to keep terrorists from attacking the games, and we have looked into the virus, at least briefly. We thought it might have been the first step in a terrorist plot.”
Harry decided to dive in, facts or no. The worst that could happen was that he would be wrong and the man would deny it. If Harry was right, he might learn quite a bit. It was a reporter’s gambit. “I’ve heard that you’ve decided that terrorists are the cause of the virus.”
There was another long silence. A truck roared by the telephone booth. Harry squeezed his ear against the phone to hear the man’s next words.
“What is it that you want, Mr. Adams?”
“I have informati
on I’ve found in my research that might be helpful to you. Perhaps you have information that might help me in writing my story. A trade of information might be mutually beneficial. Could we meet for lunch?”
“Yes, yes, I think that would be good.”
The man’s words suddenly came quicker. Harry pressed the phone to his ear again, now trying to listen for other clues. He wished he were there and able to watch the reactions on Ferenzi’s face. A widening of the eyes or pupils, a sudden glance in the other direction—either expression could mean much toward understanding what was really going on in the man’s mind. Still, just listening carefully could give him some of the clues he needed.
“Where would be convenient for you, Mr. Adams?” said Ferenzi.
Harry felt his heart pounding. There was something here; he could feel it. The man had paused just a little too much at the beginning of the conversation, as if deciding something. Now the decision was made; the man’s speech had sped up. Harry kept the excitement masked from his voice. “How about the Woolworth’s over at Ansley Mall on the corner of Piedmont and Monroe. They’ve got a real good lunch counter, and it’s cheap. What about around eleven thirty?”
“OK, that’s fine. How will I recognize you?”
Harry surveyed his clothes. “I’ve got a brown leather jacket on and blue jeans. I’ll be sitting as near to the cash register as possible.”
“I’ve got on a gray suit. I’ll see you there.”
Harry listened to the dial tone a minute and then hung the phone back on the hook. One success. That much closer to finding Ree. He drove rapidly, twisting and winding through the tree-lined back roads of Atlanta until he reached Peachtree Street. Taking a right, the motel where the agency man was registered was no more than a block. He pulled into the parking lot in front of the office and under a sheet-metal awning. Not locking the car, he got out and went inside.
The place looked like a hole, much like one of the places he and Ree had stayed at on their quick tour of South Georgia. A sudden ache struck the pit of his stomach. He wanted her back, now. Harry walked past a coffee table full of magazines with torn covers and empty coffee cups. The scene in front of him would have been comic if he hadn’t been in a hurry. Now it made him impatient.
The man behind the registration desk looked Indian, the kind from India. He had a dark complexion and short, black, curly hair. Short in stature, his frame was slight. Berating him and hanging over the desk was an equally short, blond woman who wore a black leather jacket, a bright red miniskirt, and dark, fishnet stockings with a run that was so large and long as to qualify as a hole.
“What can I do for you, sir?” The man tried to turn away from his verbal assailant.
“Don’t you try to ignore me, you son of a bitch,” the woman screamed, interrupting the clerk. “I told you I left something important in that room, and I want you to let me inside right now, so I can get it back.” She shoved herself between Harry and the motel desk clerk. Harry stepped back and away from the line of attack.
“Madam, I told you,” said the clerk. “We’ve already registered someone else in that room, and I can’t let you go inside. The maid went in first and cleaned the room. I have asked her, and she said that she found nothing. I told you this on the phone at least five times.”
“Thieving woman—that’s what that maid is. You let me go talk—”
The phone rang and the woman stopped as the clerk picked up the receiver. “Yes, Mr. Andrews. There have been several other messages, and I’m sorry that the phone has been tied up, and you have called so many times to receive a busy signal, but we’ve had a slight proble—”
The woman grabbed the phone from the clerk, yanking it out of his hand. “Listen here, you scrawny little rat,” she yelled at the clerk. “I left some money in that room, and that ain’t no little problem.”
Harry looked at the woman and the phone. The clerk had said, “Mr. Andrews.” Could it be the same one?
“You certainly are right, dear,” Harry said smoothly to the enraged hooker. “They should let you go in and check that room and talk to that maid, too. Now, if you would let me have that phone, that’s the call I was expecting.”
The woman narrowed her eyes. Ignoring the protestations of the clerk, she stared at Harry and then finally handed him the receiver. The wire drew straight and taut over the rough edge of the desk. The clerk tried to reach and grab the phone, but the hooker blocked his way and began again to harangue the man at full pitch.
Harry put one hand over his ear. “Mr. Andrews?” he said into the phone.
“Yes, who is this?”
The voice sounded guarded. “Harry Adams. I’m a reporter with the —”
“I know who you are, Mr. Adams,” Andrews said, interrupting, “and I know that you’ve been fired from the Stone Mountain paper. What do you want?”
Harry shook his head. This was not going well. “I’m doing a freelance article on the virus that’s been striking athletes in Atlanta, the one that’s being called the ‘Strippers Death,’ and I was wondering if you might—”
“There’s no need to go on any further, Mr. Adams. I don’t believe you’re doing any story for anybody. I know nothing that would be of value to you even if you were. Please give me back to the desk clerk. I need to complete checking out at the motel.”
“Hold on, Mr. Agency. I’m a citizen of the United States, and I am asking a government employee a question about a case that I know he has information on.”
“Save it for the lawyers, Adams. I work for the agency—that much is true. But I am not currently involved in the case you’re asking about. I suggest you call the agency in Washington, and they may give you information, if it is not classified. If it is, you can file under the Freedom of Information Act. I could give a flying damn. Now give me the damn desk clerk.”
Harry felt his neck go rigid and the blood rush to his face. He took a deep breath in hopes of calming himself. “I’m trying to save the life of a young woman who has done nothing at all to deserve what is happening to her. All I’m asking is that you tell me what you know that could be helpful. Is that so much to ask?”
The woman started to scream even louder at the desk clerk, and Harry turned away, so he could be heard over the din.
“Adams, I have nothing to say to you. If there is a woman or anyone else in trouble, I suggest you contact the local police at once, instead of trying to play vigilante.”
“Listen, you fatuous asshole,” Harry bellowed into the receiver, “Ree Andrews is about to get killed, and if she is hurt, and I ever find out that you knew anything that could have helped me to find her, I’m going to hire every lawyer in Atlanta and string you and the agency out on a rope so long you’ll never return.” Harry took the phone and slammed it down on the counter.
The woman and the clerk broke off their altercation and stared as, cursing loudly, Harry stormed out the door.
William Andrews sat on the bed with the phone still in his hand. A moment later, there was a dial tone and then a message from the taped operator. “Please hang u—” He pressed the button to disconnect.
He opened the phone book and paged through it until he found the motel’s number again and then punched it into the phone. The same man with the Indian accent answered. “No, the man who had been on the phone to you left the motel in a hurry. He is not being here at this time.”
Andrews balled his hands into fists and then relaxed them again. He told the desk clerk to check him out of the motel using the presigned credit slip. The clerk seemed distracted and had to be told everything twice. Andrews wondered if he spoke English competently. There was a screeching in the background. Maybe that was the problem. Irate customer—fleas in the bed, perhaps a domestic dispute. The place had hourly rates.
He hung up the phone and stretched his legs in front of him. All he had to do was relax for another hour and then take a
taxi to the airport. Then he’d be gone, out of this mess. Maybe he would retire.
He couldn’t relax. He couldn’t get Adams’s words out of his mind. “Ree Andrews,” the man had said. Each time Andrews thought that name, he felt a familiar pain grab at his stomach. It did now.
He got up, pulled the drapes open, and looked out the window. All the information he had indicated that his niece was dead a number of years back. She’d disappeared. She’d been on the streets—drugs, prostitution, who knows what. No, no body had been found, but bodies rarely were found in those types of cases.
He’d given up all those years back. She was dead—gone. Maybe someone had stolen her ID when she died and then sold the ID. That happened frequently. She would have been an unidentified corpse, buried in some potter’s field. No way he could have known.
He closed the drapes, went back to the chair, and stared at the phone. Five minutes later, he called Adams’s phone. The answering machine came on. He was going to leave a message but hung up instead.
The plane left in just a few hours. It would take at least forty-five minutes to get to the airport. He would be gone before Adams could call back to him. That was saying that he even wanted to talk to Adams.
“Ree” was the name her father had called Kara-Lee. He’d never heard of another Ree. It had been a nickname of affection: “little Ree,” “princess Ree.” How many Ree Andrews could there be?
He pulled his airline ticket out his pocket. Two-thirty departure for San Diego. He thought of the soft warmth of the West Coast, the flowers blooming all the way up the sides of the freeway.
For years, he’d checked the obituaries, run computer scans of unidentified bodies that had been found, provided dental records on Ree to investigating forensic teams in major cities across the East Coast.
At the same time, he’d searched every mechanism for tracing a person possible.
If Ree were alive, he’d have found her. She had to work. The money had to be filed with the IRS.
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