by Bapsy Jain
“Of course.”
“Then how about dinner tonight when you pick him up?”
Lucky sighed. “I’d better take Sean home and have some time with him. I’m sure he’s missed me. And I could use a little quiet time to de-stress.”
“We could all go out—all of us. He’d like that, too. And what could be less stressful than dinner out?”
Lucky sighed. She didn’t feel like arguing. “Okay then, tonight.”
“Dinner?”
“Okay,” Lucky said. “We can all go out.”
“Great. I’ll see you about…”
“I don’t have my ticket yet. I’ll call you.”
She began packing her things. She finished packing her things. She checked her watch.
A tall, middle-aged woman in a strict blue business dress suit appeared at the door with a stack of documents in her hands. “I heard you were leaving. I’m sorry.” She extended an envelope to Lucky. Inside was a first-class ticket back to New York, scheduled to leave at 12:00 PM.
“Thank you,” Lucky said.
“You should sign these, too.”
“Mr. Coleman doesn’t waste any time, does he?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
Lucky took the papers and looked at the first one. A nondisclosure agreement. “What, did he type these up last week?” she asked. When the woman shrugged but did not answer, Lucky sat down and began to read and sign them, one by one.
When she was done, Lucky picked up her things at the hotel and caught a cab to the airport. She half-expected to run into Amay, although she knew that he had tickets on an earlier flight, and she wanted to be alone. She had just enough time to buy a coffee before she boarded her flight.
Chapter 11
In New York, Lucky waited for her luggage until all the other passengers were gone, watching one lonely little red bag make the circuit over and over again. Eventually the sign changed, indicating that luggage from another flight was about to disgorge, and she was forced to admit defeat. She found the lost items counter, filed a claim for the missing bag. It was annoying, but not the end of the world. The airline promised to call her as soon as the errant bag was located. The baggage agent, a nice young woman with a thick Italian accent, said that because of Lucky’s late airport arrival, the bag was probably bumped to a later flight and the airline just couldn’t get it through security in time. “We’ll call you,” she said. “Don’t worry. It happens. These things almost never get lost. We’ll have it delivered to your home.”
Lucky sighed. She hated unfinished business. Even though there wasn’t much in the bag that she was worried about losing, it would just be nice to go home, have a shower, and be done with it. Some jobs, she thought, just won’t go away, even when you want them to.
As if on cue, her phone rang—Collette. Lucky ignored it, but the phone rang again, an annoying electronic beeping sound not at all like her friendly ring tone. Lucky dug the phone out and saw that Collette had sent her a text message—strange, since she knew Lucky usually ignored them. With some trial and error, Lucky managed to open the file instead of accidentally e-mailing it to all her friends, or—wait, could it be? It could. Gordon Bolton—the creep from the train. The message read, Do you know this guy?
Lucky called. “Where did you get that picture?”
“He’s standing on my front porch,” Collette said.
Lucky almost dropped the phone. “Get out of the house, NOW! Out the back door, run, and don’t look back. Call 911, then call me when you’re safe.”
Lucky jumped the barricade to the front of the line and pushed a passenger out of the way to steal his cab. “Please! An emergency!” Then sitting inside the cab she shouted, “Connecticut,” at the driver. “I need to be there yesterday! I don’t care what it costs—just hit it! If you get a ticket, I’ll pay it.” Screeching down the access road and almost airborne with each speed bump, Lucky called 911 and identified herself as working with the Department of Corrections. “There’s a violent felon at my neighbor’s house,” she said. “Gordon Bolton. He has outstanding warrants for robbery and assault. Six foot, one-eighty. White male, approximately fifty, with scarring on the right side of his face. There’s a teenage girl in the house alone. She said she was going to call you. Did she call?”
There had been no call. Lucky shivered. She gave the address and asked that they rush a police cruiser to the house. She said she was on the way herself. She called Amay on his cell—voicemail. She called Alec. He promised to meet her at her house as soon as he could get there—in a half hour. Lucky checked her watch. She called Collette. Nothing. She called again. Still nothing. She called Amay—voicemail again. Should she tell him? She hesitated. “Call me,” she said. “It’s urgent.”
It took thirty minutes to reach Collette’s house. There was a single police cruiser parked in the driveway. Lucky threw a hundred at the cabbie and leaped out without asking for change. The lone officer, a woman of sixty or so, got out of the cruiser as Lucky rushed to the porch. “Sergeant Wessex,” the cop said, following Lucky. “I take it you’re the complainant.”
“Lucky Boyce.”
“Nobody’s home,” Wessex said. “The house is locked, we checked all over. Nothing.”
“Did you go in?” Lucky tried the door.
“Locked up tight. Nothing broken, nothing disturbed. No teenager home alone. No probable cause. Just a big old empty house in the ‘burbs.”
“But she called me. She sent a picture of the guy. He was on the porch.”
“So how’d she get the picture?”
“Security camera.” Lucky pointed at the hanging plant. But even as she did she saw that the camera was nowhere to be seen.
Wessex looked at the plant and shrugged. “The alarm company says the house is secure.”
“There was a camera,” Lucky said. “It was there just a few days ago.”
“The alarm company doesn’t have a record of any such device.”
Lucky looked around frantically, but it really did seem that everything was fine. The windows were dark, and the little green light by the door blinked that the alarm system was armed.
“Ma’am, may I ask what your relationship is with this child?”
“We’re friends,” explained Lucky. “Sometimes she babysits my son.”
“And the mother knows you and the daughter are…friends?”
“She does.”
“And does the mother know the child—” she consulted her notes—“Collette, was not in school?”
“I suppose,” Lucky said. Struck by an idea, she went around to the side of the house to try the gate. It was locked from the backyard.
Wessex followed. “We climbed the fence already, Ms. Boyce. Nobody’s home. Nothing looks wrong.”
Lucky called Collette again. No answer.
“May I ask how you know this guy Bolton?”
“It’s a long story.”
Wessex pushed the blue hat up off her forehead. “I bet it is. Can you show me the photo the kid sent you?”
Lucky showed Wessex the photo. In the shade of the porch the photo was practically black and white, taken from an angle above and to Bolton’s left. It looked just like the kind of grainy photo one would get from a security camera. He was wearing a sports coat, his hands thrust into his pockets, no hat, just looking straight ahead. There was nothing—besides it being Bolton—that was alarming about the photo. There was nothing, Lucky realized, that even proved conclusively that it was taken from the front porch.
Officer Wessex seemed to come to the same conclusion. She asked, “Could Collette have gotten the photo from somewhere else? A computer maybe? The Internet?”
Lucky thought about this. “Possible, but not likely.”
Wessex nodded. “We get these kids sometimes —”
“Look!” Lucky said, turning suddenly. “This is not some kid. She’s really smart, a little misunderstood, maybe —”
“A little punky, maybe? Likes computers? Likes game
s? Dresses weird?”
Lucky stood, open-mouthed.
“Ma’am.” Wessex laid a large hand on Lucky’s shoulder. “I know she’s your friend. She’ll turn up in a few hours, a few days at most.” She smiled a tight (and not very friendly) smile. “We called Ms. Kennedy and she seemed more concerned about Collette spending time with you.” She cocked her head. “Something about a little unauthorized trip to DC. Maybe you better cool your friendship with this kid for a while. We take missing person reports seriously, but we also investigate exploited minors.”
Lucky’s blood ran cold, but what could she say? Excuse me, but I’ve been working for the government and I’ve got this secret program on my laptop, and I was just working on this secret project that I’m not supposed to talk about, and this kid might have sent a secret government program to the Bulgarians? That would go over real well. And after only thirty days in the loony bin, they might let me out. “Can you come to my house with me?” she said. “I don’t feel safe going there alone, and this guy, Bolton, may know where I live.”
Wessex nodded. She called in that she was checking another house in the neighborhood and drove Lucky home. Alec was waiting on the porch.
Wessex looked at Lucky’s expression of relief and failed to hold back a smirk. “I take it this is not the man you were worried about?”
Alec looked from Lucky to Wessex and back. “Everything looks okay,” he said.
Lucky glared at Wessex, who tipped her hat and left.
“What’s going on?” Alec asked.
Inside, Lucky told Alec the whole story—Bolton, Coleman, Washington, Collette, everything. It was only interrupted once, when she’d gotten up to going to Washington, by Amay calling Lucky back.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You on your way over?”
Lucky hesitated. “I’m okay,” she said. “Only I… I… I lost my bag at the airport. It was upsetting, that’s all. And I had to run home for a little while.”
“But you’re coming, right?”
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Let me catch my breath.”
Lucky hung up and continued onward, explaining the most recent events. By the end, Alec was looking deeply skeptical.
“What?” asked Lucky.
“It’s just…” He paused. “This is so much, and it’s all happened so fast. One day you were doing your usual thing, then you were in Washington, then you quit, and now you’re possibly being pursued by a felon.”
Lucky was a bit disturbed. “Don’t you believe me?”
“It’s not that,” said Alec. “When you got home, you fully expected to be seeing a dangerous criminal on your doorstep, and yet when your boyfriend called, you told him all that was wrong was a missing bag.”
Lucky shrugged. “If I’d told him, he would have made too much of a fuss. He would have hired a security guard to stand in front of my door. He’s done it before.”
“It sounds like a security guard wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” Alec pointed out. “So why not just tell him?”
“I just don’t want to deal with all that. Not after having to deal with everything else. It would just be too exhausting. Every time we talk about problems I have, I have to end up comforting him. I mean, I love him, but I just can’t tell him everything right now.”
Alec just kept looking at her, with a sobering, quiet frown.
His silence bothered Lucky more than what he might have said. “I’ll tell him,” she said, “later. You want some tea?”
“You’ve been under a lot of stress,” Alec said. “Maybe you’re working too hard.”
“Right,” Lucky said.
Alec checked his watch. “I’ll pass on the tea,” he said.
“You’re not leaving, are you?”
“I have an appointment, unless you really need me.”
Lucky shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m okay. Please keep your appointment.”
Alec hesitated at the front door. “Call if you need me.”
When he was gone Lucky changed into a T-shirt and loose cotton pants, then threw her yoga mat on the kitchen floor, sat down in lotus pose, and tried to clear her mind. Breathe, she thought, but her mind was racing and she couldn’t get into a rhythm. First there was all the confusion about Coleman—and that happened so fast. And then there was the lost bag, and the call from Collette, and now she didn’t know what to think. And the throbbing in her lower back got worse and not better until she finally shifted into child’s pose, and then downward dog. From there she inched her way back until she was standing with her palms flat on the floor, and that helped. She wiggled her butt ever so slightly and felt the vertebrae align with a satisfying crack.
The doorbell rang. Collette! Lucky rushed to the front hall and threw the door open, ready to give the girl a well-earned tongue-lashing. Instead, she found the world’s shortest cabbie, a rumpled little man in what must have been the world’s oldest (and ugliest) suit—a lime-green herringbone tweed that might have dated from the 1940s. Lucky looked incredulously at the driver, and then at the cab idling in the driveway, just to make sure. It was a plain blue Toyota with white sign on top. Tip Top Taxi. The driver wore ridiculously oversized, black, plastic-framed glasses. On his head was a grey and white tweed wool golf cap. His hair was white and hung down over his ears. Lucky was about to ask what he was doing there, but finally spotted her suitcase standing on the ground by his right leg. “Thank you,” Lucky said, “Do I owe you anything?”
“I no turn down tip,” the cabbie said, “But truth is, airline fare pay.” His accent was such a thick mixture of Bronx and Eastern Europe that Lucky barely understood him.
Lucky reached for the bag, but the cabbie held up a clipboard. “I need sign dis,” he said.
Lucky reached for the clipboard but the cabbie pulled it away. “Firss I need open bag and make sure evree ting A-okay.”
“You need me to look in the bag?”
The cabbie nodded. “It’s so dey no t’ink I don’ took nutt’in’.”
Lucky took the bag and turned to the living room.
“I need you to open fronna me.” He shrugged. “I no make rules, lady. Dey jus’ wanna you make sure I no take.”
Lucky looked at the cabbie. Then she laid the bag down and opened it. Her things were just as she had left them. Not neat, not messy, just packed in a hurry. The pictures and papers from her office were laid on top. Glad I packed my undies underneath it all, Lucky thought. Just as she was about to stand up, she noticed something about the cabbie. He wore a pair of cherry colored Doc Martens high boots. Then it struck her….. could this be the little woman on the train with Gordon Bolton? Could it be? Or was her head spinning?
She looked up at the cabbie, who was now pointing to the side of the bag.
Now what! She looked, and found a box in the bulging side zipper.
Lucky opened the box and was amazed to see a syringe filled with what looked like blood.
The note inside was typed with a part of a Sun Tzu quote, “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Below that it read: Remember your duty to mankind. Remember Bloodhound. You will never be free.
The cabbie looked at Lucky and said, “Boss also says you to go India. Boss say get the job done. Boss say, you may get disease one day. Who know?”
Lucky stared at him, open-mouthed. “Are you threatening me?”
“Boss wants an answer. When you go?”
He then folded his hands and stood, refusing to budge.
Lucky shut her mouth and considered the man carefully. “Who is your boss?”
“And boss says you must do your job not only for yourself but for good of all.”
“Tell your boss I will let him know.”
“My boss says till he knows, I not to leave.”
A black limo pulled up in the driveway behind the cabbie. In the front seat were two men in suits and dark glasses.
Lucky decided that now would be a good time to panic.
“Tell your boss —” She stopped abruptly.
“Okay, I will go… but on my own terms. I will make my own arrangements. Do you understand? ”
“Boss make arrangements.”
“No. Tell your boss I will go on my own terms. If and when I need help, I will let him know. Now leave.”
The cabbie kicked at the ground and seemed to be mulling things over. Then he walked away and made a phone call, although he never took his eyes off Lucky.
He then walked back, picked out the syringe from the box, squirted the red liquid all over Lucky’s face, and said, “Leave tomorrow, Boss says …you may be sick, you need the mushroom now. Boss says…get it fast. Nothing but the mushroom can help ya!” He laughed and picked up the box, put the syringe inside, turned and headed for his cab. As he opened the door, the black limo pulled out and drove away. The cabbie followed.
Lucky stood there for a long time in stunned silence, before getting a towel. The liquid looked and smelled like paint as she wiped herself clean.
And then Collette appeared, turning the corner from the side of the house. Lucky ran to her and threw her arms around her, which was how Amay found them when he pulled up in his Mercedez.
Amay got out and looked at Lucky. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay!”
“This is not what okay looks like. You look like hell!”
“Can we just get out of here, please, before they come back?” Lucky said.
“Who are they?”
“The guys in the limo!”
“I didn’t see a limo.” Amay looked back, as though it might still be there. “What’s going on?”
“I need to get out of here. Let’s go,” Lucky said. She rushed to Amay’s car.
Collette jumped out of the way as Amay opened the door. Lucky climbed in the car. “Before who comes back?” he asked.
“The cab driver and the government guys.”
“The cab driver?” Amay looked at the cab, now starting to move and then took out his cell phone. “I’ll call the police,” he said.
“NO!” Lucky and Collette shouted at the same time.
Amay let his hands fall to his side and asked, “Why not?”