by Bill Sage
When he had it attached, Hank said, “Now, let’s have some fun.”
He called Linda.
The other two guys sat on the bed listening.
When Asher heard Hank ask for $2 million, he wanted to shout out to Linda to use the Irvine maintenance account.
He immediately realized how ridiculous that was.
While Hank was talking to Linda, Asher was thinking how strange it was to be sitting in a room with kidnappers, listening to them demanding a ransom. It was almost as if it was happening to someone else and he was witnessing it from the inside.
What struck him the most about the phone conversation was the disparity in knowledge of the parties. Unlike Linda, Hank knew everything. He knew where they were holding him, what he was doing, how he felt, and what was going to happen next.
All the unknowns were on her side.
4
MEANWHILE, AL AND Linda had been sitting on the couch in the living room, waiting for the kidnappers to call. She was drinking green tea; he had a splash of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch.
As Al glanced over at Linda’s beautiful but sad face, thoughts of making those guys pay raced through his mind.
They’ll do something that’ll give me an opening. Then I’ll jam it up their asses.
“When do you think they’ll call?” Linda asked.
Looking at his watch, Al said, “I expect them to call anytime now.”
“I think I should probably answer, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Al said, shrugging. “But if you want, I can do it.”
Gently placing her hand on his, Linda said, “No, I’ll do it. See how it goes.”
“Okay. Anytime you want…”
Linda nodded, then smiled. After a few moments, she asked, “So, what did Jake say when you talked to him?”
“As you’d expect, he was extremely angry about what they’d done. You know how much he likes your dad.”
“For a guy who kills people for a living, he can really be sweet sometimes.”
“Only when it comes to you, honey,” Al said, smiling.
When the 6:00 PM news program ended, Al got up. “Want me to get you something?”
Shaking her head, Linda said, “I’ll stay with the tea.”
Al poured more Scotch for himself. Sitting down again, he said, “Maybe they’re waiting until they think we’ve finished eating dinner? You know, so they won’t disturb us.”
Picking up on Al’s sarcasm, Linda said, “Yeah, that’d be very considerate of them.”
Al laughed a couple of times. “They gotta call. No call, no money. Should be soon.”
Several minutes later, the phone finally rang. Linda swung around to look at Al. He checked his watch; it was 7:18 PM.
“Go ahead, honey.”
She picked it up.
“Linda?” the caller asked.
She nodded at Al, then asked the kidnapper, “How is he? Can I talk to him?”
“Linda, first I wanna tell you that you’ve been smart. I know you haven’t gone to the police. That’s good…good for your father.”
“We just want to get this over with as quickly as possible. Is he close to the phone?”
“You can’t talk to him now. There’s other things we need to discuss…do first.”
“Okay…”
“We want two million dollars in hundred-dollar bills.”
“I’ll have to see about getting that many hundreds.”
“You got your work cut out for yourself, don’t you?”
“Once we get it together, what’s next?”
“I’ll contact you. Give you further instructions.”
“Okay. When do you—”
“That’s all, Linda. No more talking.” Then the kidnapper hung up.
After putting down the phone, Linda told Al what he’d said. She ended by saying, “It sounded like he was under water.”
“Voice changer,” Al said in a detached voice. He was fixated on something else she’d said.
“Is that common?”
Al didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then: “He told you they knew we hadn’t reported it to the police?”
“Yes, that’s what he said.”
“That’s interesting,” he said in a calculating tone. “If he’s not bullshitting us, that could give us…” He stopped before saying too much.
“What…what are you thinking?”
After taking a breath, Al said, “They could be staking out our house. Seeing who comes in.”
“Do you think they’d do that?”
“Our street is usually loaded with tourists and people going to the beach. They’d blend right in.”
Linda didn’t say anything. Had a concerned look on her face.
“I’m gonna check when I leave tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Okay… But how would you know?”
“A guy sitting in a parked car, looking through binoculars would be a big tip-off,” Al said with a laugh.
Linda smiled.
Al was happy he’d said something that made her smile. It was a start.
Linda said, “I’ll get together with my mother. She’s a signer on all his accounts. She can withdraw the funds.”
Half-listening, Al let some of his inner thoughts slip out. “I need to get something going on seeing…”
Linda gazed at him, a quizzical look on her face. “What are you—”
“You work on the money,” he quickly added. “We still have to wait to find out how and where they want us to deliver it. That’s the big one.”
5
NEXT MORNING, as Roth drove to the courthouse, he scanned both sides of his street but didn’t see any likely stakeout vehicles.
That didn’t surprise him, it was too early. The kidnappers wouldn’t start staking out his house until later in the morning. Or they’d do it around 7:00 PM when they were calling Linda.
As soon as he entered his chambers, Roth reached for the phone and called Carlos Lopez, a retired LAPD sergeant and longtime friend.
“Haven’t talked to you since you and Alondra were over for dinner,” Al said. “What have you been up to?”
“Nothing too much. I’ll tell you one thing. We need to get together without the wives for once. You know, like we used to.”
“I’d go for that. Maybe we could go to Balboa Island. Have bacon cheeseburgers and beers at Chewy Brown’s.”
“Sounds good to me,” Lopez responded.
“Meanwhile, I have bad news. It’s about Ash.”
Al told Lopez about the kidnapping.
“Oh, my God, that’s terrible. Anything—”
“Linda’s taking it hard. Can’t do anything…go to work, go out.”
“Jeez, I feel so sorry for her. It’s gotta be driving her nuts.”
“She’s a mess, and I’m not doing that great myself.”
“Newport Beach PD working on it?”
“No, I want to see if we can handle it ourselves.”
Lopez read between the lines. “You got something?”
“All I have is a general idea. I’m waiting for something to happen. Something I can work with. For that, I’ll need you to do a little undercover work.”
“I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“That’s true of everybody in the world.”
Lopez laughed.
“They told Linda they’d know if we went to the police. I’m thinking they could be staking out our house. So, I’ll need you to check it out.”
Lopez was silent for a moment. Then: “I’ll get one of my brother’s landscape trucks. Driving around in that won’t arouse any suspicion. If I have to, I can even stop and get out. Maybe go to the front door of a house like I was soliciting business.”
Laughing, he said, “Cut my grass while you’re out there.”
“You couldn’t afford it.”
A few minutes later, Roth took the bench. He was finishing a jury trial in a burglary case. The attorneys were giving the
ir final arguments.
The DA had been around for a few years, but he never developed a good jury presence. His argument was stiff, and he always looked nervous. And to make things worse, he spoke in a pompous legalese manner, the way some laymen think attorneys are supposed to talk.
But experienced lawyers know the best way to talk to a jury is in the way you’d talk to a friend.
His opponent was the exact opposite. On the heavy side, Floyd Seymour had a close-cropped, white beard and a folksy manner. Sort of looked like Santa Claus. Roth thought he should’ve worn wire-rimmed spectacles even if he didn’t need them.
Never raising his voice or getting angry, Seymour talked to the jury in a friendly manner and smiled a lot. Sometimes, when he walked in front of the jury box, he’d have both hands in his pants pockets.
In his final argument, Seymour did his best to make the defendant sound like a regular guy. One thing he said was, “Sure, he’s made some dumb mistakes in his life. Things none of us would ever do, not even my good-for-nothing grandson. But breaking into the liquor store wasn’t one of them.”
After entertaining the jury with his stories and folksy manner of talking, he wrapped up his argument by saying, “I hear those bells of reasonable doubt ringing in my ears.”
He flashed the jurors a broad smile and sat down.
Then the DA gave his rebuttal argument. He spoke in the same boring manner as before. The only clever thing he said was at the end. “Maybe I’m deaf, but I don’t hear those bells. All I hear is the clanging of jail doors.”
Several jurors smiled, but most were deadpan. Seymour got a kick out of it, though. He roared with laughter.
When the DA sat down, Roth gave his final instructions to the jury and his bailiff Jon led them to the jury room to begin their deliberation.
After breaking for lunch at noon, Roth returned to his chambers. He usually went out for lunch with his friend Judge Mahler, but not today. He wanted to stick around for Lopez’s call.
Sitting at his desk, Al spread open the Times and unwrapped the turkey sandwich he’d made in the morning. Then as he scanned the pages, he ate the sandwich and a bag of potato chips. When he finished eating, he looked through The Daily Journal, the legal newspaper.
Now it was 1:22, and he’d been sitting in his chambers for close to an hour and a half. That was not a good sign. He knew people usually put off conveying bad news until the very last minute.
Since Lopez was a former cop who’d testified hundreds of time, he knew judges started the afternoon session at 1:30 PM. So, Roth expected he’d call a little before then.
Roth was thinking that if Lopez didn’t see any likely stakeout vehicles, he wouldn’t have any other leads. He’d be stuck dealing with the guy on the phone.
Finally, when Roth was dumping his lunch trash into the wastepaper basket, his direct line rang.
“I drove around there a number of times,” Lopez told him. “Last time was a few minutes ago. Didn’t see any vehicles with guys sitting in them.”
“Shit. I was hoping…”
Lopez paused before going on. “I’ll continue checking this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Carlos.”
“I’ll be sure to swing by there around seven when they called last time.”
“Yeah, good.”
“If I see something before five, I’ll call you at the courthouse. Otherwise, I’ll call you tonight.”
They hung up.
If the kidnappers weren’t staking out his house, Al was thinking he may have to give up trying to grab one of them. If that’s the way it turned out, he’d be forced to go with his back-up plan of demanding proof of life and insisting on a simultaneous exchange.
With that thought running through his mind, he buzzed his clerk, Judy and entered the courtroom.
Late in the afternoon, the jury in the burglary case informed Judge Roth they had been unable to come to an agreement. That was a blow to the DA because the case against the defendant was what lawyers called a “dead-bang guilty.” With all the evidence showing the defendant was the guy who broke in, the jury should’ve found him guilty within an hour.
Roth told the jury to keep deliberating and try to come to a unanimous decision. Then his bailiff Jon led them back into the jury room.
When 5:00 finally rolled around, Al was happy to get out of there. It was hard to focus on legal issues when he was worrying about Linda and Asher.
Pulling into his garage, he didn’t notice any vans or cars with occupants in them. After parking, he went inside.
In the den he poured himself a drink of 18-year-old Oban Scotch. Rocks, no water.
Linda wasn’t home. He was glad she’d gotten out of the house and thought of something other than the kidnapping. That would’ve been better than the way she was in the morning.
When he was leaving for court, she came to the door to see him off. Noticing that she seemed despondent, he asked, “You gonna be okay?”
She didn’t answer. Just laid her head on his chest and sighed.
“Honey…”
“All I want to do is stay home, wait by the phone, and hope to hear something.”
“Why don’t you go to your mother’s? She’s all alone. You both need each other now. Or maybe you could meet her for lunch at Fashion Island. That’s just a few blocks away for both of you.”
Linda took a deep breath. “You’re right, I should be with my mom. It’d be good to check in at the office too. I’ll see how I feel. Maybe…”
He worried about Linda; she was everything to him. It hurt to see her so depressed and upset.
6
WAITING FOR LINDA to come home, Roth was thinking that when all this was over, he’d take her on a trip to Houston to visit her college friend Kay. Linda had been talking about doing that for close to a year.
He didn’t mention anything to Linda about the trip because he thought making plans at this stage would bring bad luck. He learned that from Jake, who had a lot of little rules he followed.
“Don’t ever do it, Al,” he’d warned Roth. “It’ll jinx it.”
After a few minutes, Roth started thinking about Asher. Was he in pain? Were they treating him okay?
An image of him tied up and lying on a bed flashed through his mind. He wondered where they had him and how he was holding up.
Even before Roth and Linda married, he and Asher had become friends. Both had grown up in inner-city neighborhoods—Roth in Detroit, Asher in Chicago.
Roth wanted to know all about Asher’s businesses, and Asher peppered him with questions about how it was to be a judge. He was particularly interested in how difficult it was to sentence defendants to death or prison.
Roth told him, “When they deserve it, it’s easy.”
“That’s what I thought. What about being up on the law for making your decisions?”
“The premise of your question is based on a false assumption.”
Asher laughed. “It’s good you don’t take yourself too seriously.”
As their friendship deepened, it was hard for Roth to believe that he and Asher had come from similar backgrounds. With Asher’s white hair, tanned face and easy smile, you’d think he’d been around money his whole life.
Now a wealthy guy, Asher was very generous. When Linda and Al went to dinner with him and Linda’s mother Donna, he’d kill you before he’d let you pick up the check.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he’d say whenever Al reached for the check.
Asher still had an eye for the ladies. Roth liked looking too, but he held his comments in check. Kept reminding himself he was married to Asher’s daughter.
Sometimes on weekends, he and Asher went to Riverside or San Diego Counties, scouting out undeveloped land for real estate deals. Away from Linda and her mother, they drank and swore like sailors. Asher could even out-cuss Roth.
Roth admired Asher. He’d started from nothing and built a string of successful businesses. His principal one was a real estate deve
lopment firm. He also owned office and apartment buildings in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, and Irvine. Asher owned the IT sales distribution company where Linda worked, and he had a flood restoration and construction company in San Juan Capistrano.
When Linda graduated from college, Asher put her in charge of sales at the IT company. She had a master’s degree in business from the Wharton School and was highly regarded by her professors. She’d received many offers from local and national corporations.
During the summers, she worked with management at the IT company and got to know all the employees.
Sure, she understood she wouldn’t have been made the head of sales if she hadn’t been the owner’s daughter. And the management team understood that too, but no one resented her starting at the top. They respected her and knew it was coming.
Last year, when the CEO of the company left to accept another position, Asher appointed her to take his place as the new CEO. Every person who worked there not only welcomed his decision but hoped she’d get the job.
When one of the salesmen heard she’d been made the CEO, he was heard saying, “It makes perfect sense. She’s not only gorgeous but extremely intelligent.”
Roth was still waiting for Linda to come home. He got up and poured another splash of Oban.
Sitting down again, Al went back to thinking about Asher. He smiled as he recalled how Asher’s feelings toward him started changing. At first, it was all about being friends. But as Asher learned more about Roth, it became more like a fascination.
Asher even brought it up on one of their trips. “You keep talking about me, but you’re the one who raised himself up by the bootstraps. Look at what you’ve done. You grew up on the streets, hung out with the Purples. Yet you made it. You’re good-looking, charming, and charismatic.”
“You’re only saying that because I married your daughter.”
When Roth said that, he remembered Asher scoffing and saying, “Instead of you wanting people to like you, they want you to like them. Everyone wants you to be their friend. But all of that is nothing compared to the other thing you have. Something much more impressive.”