Gus Mason was over in California about ready to address a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors when he took the call from Babs. He had wanted Babs with him on the campaign trail, but she had decided it was too early for her. The truth was she didn’t want to overshadow her husband too much in the early stages of his campaign for the presidency. He realized that her involvement would be limited beyond interviews with the fashion and lifestyle magazines, all trying to build her up into a fashion and beauty icon, while the TV chat shows would also be clamouring for air time with her. Far better, they decided together, for Babs to join her husband when his stock was growing and she could complement it.
He listened carefully as Babs explained what had transpired through Amos’s visit. Gus could feel a sense of foreboding building inside. He turned to his press secretary who was idling away at a laptop beside him and put his hand over the phone.
‘Jack, this is private. Could you give me a couple of minutes?’
His press secretary nodded and left the room immediately. Gus lifted his hand from the phone.
‘Babs, I’ve got half these damn editors eating out of my hand,’ he told her. ‘At the moment they’ll print only the helpful things about me. I’ve got a couple of them in my pocket, no sweat; old friends of Mort Tyler. They’ll back me all the way. But if they get a sniff of that damn cop, they’ll drop me like a ton of bricks.’
‘What do you want us to do?’ Babs asked.
Gus gave it a few moments’ thought. There was only one answer. ‘Get hold of Mort Tyler, tell him what’s happened. He’ll fix it. Tell him nothing physical. Get him to check the cop out, see if we can get anything on him. But tell him we’ve got to stop him.’
He said goodbye and put the phone down, a look of thunder spreading across his face. Then he called his press secretary back in and fixed a smile on his face. Time to talk to the men who could make or break him, but none of them could do more damage than that damn cop back in Newark. He had to be stopped.
Amos had put together a file on the Masons and taken it through to Dubrovski. A couple of hours later the captain had walked through the department to Amos’s office and closed the door behind him. He tossed the file on to Amos’s desk.
‘Dangerous stuff, Amos.’
Amos pulled the file towards him and waited for the captain to sit down. ‘Dangerous for whom, Paul?’
‘It’s pretty sketchy. I can see the links but …’ he hesitated, then shook his head. He had a habit of squeezing his lips tight together when he had a doubt about something. ‘I’d like to see something a little more positive. Circumstantial evidence isn’t going to help anyone.’
Amos agreed. ‘Trouble is I know they’re up to something.’
Dubrovski leaned forward and put his hand flat on the desktop. ‘They are powerful people now, Amos, and they’ve got powerful backing.’ He reached forward and tapped the file with the tip of his finger. ‘They get uncomfortable with this and they’ll hang you out to dry, you know that, don’t you?’
Amos nodded quickly. ‘I know.’ He shrugged. ‘I put some pressure on Mason’s wife; see if I could get a reaction.’
‘And did you?’
‘Threatened me with her lawyer.’
Dubrovski relaxed and sat back. ‘I have something for you,’ he said, smiling.
Amos brightened. ‘Oh, what’s that?’
‘The Demski family are taking an interest in Gus Mason.’
Amos pulled out of the parking lot and slipped into the traffic streaming past the 7th Precinct building. He had a lot on his mind, particularly the revelation from Dubrovski about the Demski family. He shifted down and accelerated into the middle lane, passing a slow truck. It was dark and judging by the amount of traffic on the road he knew he would be late in getting home.
Dubrovski had told Amos a little of his heritage. In a nutshell, the captain was a Jew. His parents hadn’t been involved in the holocaust although they had lost relatives, but because his parents were third generation Americans, they only had a vague notion of what family ties they had in Europe.
But the slaughter had cemented the hearts of the Jewish nation in such a way that no other event, save the second coming of the Messiah could do. People like Dubrovski felt empathy with those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, but little else. Although the young captain wasn’t a member of any Jewish group in New Jersey, he still had associates willing to bring him up to speed with anything that they believed might be of interest. And the Demski family were always of an interest to Dubrovski.
He hadn’t been able to enlarge on the small piece of information he had, but he told Amos that he understood that Isaac Demski had met with leaders of the mob and discussed Gus Mason and his bid for the presidency.
Amos waited for the lights at the intersection to change, digesting the supposition that any extreme right wing group in power would be inimical to Jewish interests. It didn’t matter whether the Jews were right wing themselves or not, Amos knew it was simply a question of them against the Nazis. And history says there would only be one winner.
So what was Demski up to?
He swung right as the lights changed and put his foot down. He had promised to take his wife and daughter to the movies, and he was already running late. He had phoned his wife as he was about to leave the precinct but there was no reply. He decided she was probably at their neighbour’s place and put the thought from his mind.
Amos always had a warm feeling come over him as he drove into the avenue leading up to his home. It was where he could let the tension of the day melt away as he settled into the company of the two people he loved most in the world; his wife and daughter.
The headlights of the car swept across the front lawn as he turned into the drive, picking out Holly’s pink bicycle lying on the grass. He smiled to himself thinking about the number of times he had asked his little girl to always bring her bike indoors when she had finished playing outside.
He stopped in front of the garage door and killed the engine. The headlamp beams faded away as he opened the door and levered his bulky frame out of the car. He noticed that the side gate was open, but he thought no more of it.
He picked up Holly’s bike and took it through to the back garden, closing the side gate on his way through. There were no lights on in the house which was unusual. Then he noticed that the back door was open.
Without any more thought, he dropped Holly’s bicycle and ran into the house, calling out as he burst into the kitchen. There was no response to his calls; the house was completely silent.
He ran into the lounge, then tore upstairs and ran through all the bedrooms, calling out, each time his voice pitching up louder and stronger. He could feel sweat breaking out all over his body. He knew there was nobody in the house, and somehow he knew that his wife and daughter were not in with a neighbour. They had been promised a trip to the movies and would have been waiting indoors for him.
He ran back downstairs as the phone started ringing in the kitchen. He let out a yell and picked up the phone.
‘Hallo honey, where are you?’ His heart was pounding and his chest was heaving as he fought for breath.
‘Is that Lieutenant Amos?’ a voice asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ he snapped. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Sir, this is the county hospital. Your wife has been admitted as a result of an RTA.’ Amos knew this meant a road traffic accident. ‘She’s in emergency at this moment.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’ He was shaking his head.
‘Sir, you are Lieutenant Amos, are you not?’
‘Yes, dammit!’
‘And your wife’s name is Judith Amos?’
‘Shit, yes! Oh my God, what’s happened?’
‘I’ve just explained, sir,’ the voice droned on. ‘Your wife has been seriously injured in a traffic accident. She is in emergency right now.’
‘My daughter, is she there?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. Your daught
er?’
‘My daughter, for God’s sake. Is she there? She’s only thirteen. She would have been with her mother.’
‘I’m sorry sir, there was no one else involved in the accident. Your daughter wasn’t in the car. Your wife was on her own.’
THIRTEEN
THE YOUNG WRITER put her pen down and looked across the cell towards Babs Mason, an overwhelming feeling of revulsion towards her. But she could see defeat in the woman’s body language. Babs had reached that point in her confession where it was evident that the plan was beginning to unravel.
‘It all went wrong from there, didn’t it?’
Babs Mason allowed herself a wry smile and continued fiddling with the material in her skirt. Her features were etched in shadowy lines as the trauma of reliving the consequences of the audacious gamble began to backfire.
‘It shouldn’t have happened,’ she admitted. ‘But they knew that if they had simply shot Lieutenant Amos, the police would never have allowed any inquiry to fall off the rails. It would have been an abrogation if they had let the investigation become contaminated by the influence they held in the Precinct.’ She shook her head slowly, studying the cell floor at her feet.
‘I think this was really when I began to change my feelings towards everything my husband and his unholy gang stood for. Gus murdered his father, there was no doubt about that, and I think it made me realize that Gus had known for a long time who his real father was. This knowledge gave him power; it was like an aphrodisiac.’
She looked up at the young woman. ‘There were two unstoppable forces now: my husband and Mort Tyler. Gus was on his way to the White House and nothing was going to stop him. Mort Tyler was getting too big for his boots, and was beginning to use force without the subtlety it needed. And when I heard about the accident, I began to change.’
‘In what way?’
Babs smiled. ‘You will see.’
Amos stood at his wife’s bedside looking down at her swollen face. Apart from a heart monitor beside the bed, the only sound in the room he could hear was her coarse breathing. He held her hand, which felt cold, and massaged it gently in his own. A saline drip was connected to her arm on one side. On the other was another drip. Although he could see her face, she was practically unrecognizable. He didn’t know if she was aware that he was there because she was in a coma.
Amos was trembling inside with a combination of anger and fear. He was angry because Mason’s thugs, and that was the only way he would think of them now, had violated his family. He was afraid too, because he knew why they had done this and he knew what his duty was as a serving police officer. But to carry out his duty would be to put a death sentence on his wife and daughter.
He had been in the hospital for three hours now, waiting until the surgeons had finished operating on his wife. During that time he had only spoken to one police officer; Captain Paul Dubrovski. The captain had arrived at the hospital within twenty minutes of receiving a phone call from the hospital switchboard; one that Amos had asked them to put out. It took the captain less than a few minutes to assess the situation and put into operation a massive hunt for Amos’s little girl.
Dubrovski was standing in the room now. He had just walked in, closing the door quietly behind him. Amos hadn’t heard, absorbed as he was by his wife’s condition. The captain walked across the room and stood on the opposite side of the bed. Amos glanced over and nodded.
‘Got a minute, Amos?’ he asked softly.
Amos was reluctant to leave his wife’s side, but he knew he would have to speak to Dubrovski. He let go of his wife’s hand and followed the captain out of the room. A police office was sitting on a chair in the corridor. He stood up as the two men appeared. Dubrovski ignored him and steered Amos towards the end of the corridor.
‘We’ve spoken to all your immediate neighbours. From what we can make of it, Holly was snatched from the house. Your wife must have fought with them because she came running from the house and went after them in her car.’
‘Any ID?’
Dubrovski shook his head. ‘No. Usual thing; no one really saw anything. Your wife’s screams attracted the neighbours’ attention. Someone saw a black BMW shoot off down the road. Your wife must have been a couple of minutes behind.’ He put his hand on Amos’s elbow and faced him, edging a little closer.
‘The press will have a field day with this, Amos. I’ll try to hold them off, but it’s going to be difficult. There’s nothing you can do, so why don’t you look after your wife until we get your little girl back.’
‘Her name’s Holly.’
Dubrovski nodded a couple of times. ‘Yeah, sorry, Amos. We’ll find Holly for you.’
He patted Amos on the shoulder and watched him as he walked forlornly back to his wife’s room knowing that the cards were stacked against them; he genuinely feared for Holly’s life.
Jack Demski had been rebuffed by Babs Mason. His attempt at getting a meeting with her had been turned down with the uncompromising statement that she had no wish to associate herself with the family. Demski wasn’t surprised, but he knew he would have to talk to her whether she was willing or not.
Babs finished the work her husband had asked her to do that day and took the elevator down to the underground car park. Jack Demski was sitting in a black Mercedes between two other high powered cars, waiting for Babs Mason to appear. As soon as Babs pulled clear of the car park exit, Demski’s driver gunned the motor in to life and pulled out into the traffic ahead of her. The other two cars followed.
Babs had been assigned a bodyguard, but she had insisted he would always use another car. She had no intention of letting a stranger control her life. The bodyguard followed Babs out of the car park, unaware at that moment that there were two cars following behind.
Demski’s driver kept to the nearside lane, driving at a relatively sedate pace until Babs moved up alongside them, unaware that she was the object of their attention. The three cars followed her out on to the Beltway and kept a discreet distance behind her. Babs kept within the speed limit for a while, but soon began to exceed it. She wasn’t worried about speeding fines because of her connections.
The first of the three cars pulled ahead of Babs while Demski’s car pulled alongside. The third car moved up behind her which meant Babs was now separated from the bodyguard and part of a moving trap. At first she didn’t connect the movement of the cars with herself, assuming they were making their own way up the Beltway and would soon move off.
But then she realized that the three cars were slowly boxing her in. She hit the horn button and gestured wildly at Demski’s car. There was no response. Babs sounded the horn again but could see there was to be no let-up in the provocative way in which the cars were hemming her in.
Checking her rear view mirror, Babs decided to slow up and force the car behind her to drop back, but what happened was so unexpected, she began to panic. The car did not slow up and Babs felt the two of them touch.
She lurched forward and almost hit the car in front. Demski’s car kept station alongside her giving her no chance to move away. On her unprotected side was the Armco safety barrier, which meant there was no way out for her. She hit the horn button again, hoping that other motorists would see what was going on and maybe do something about it. But it was obvious that other drivers only had one thing on their minds and that was to mind their own business.
Up ahead Babs could see the junction exit and wondered if she could swerve off the road at that point, leaving the three idiots behind. But as the thought came into her mind, so did the realization that the others were coming with her. As she slowed they continued to slow with her and edge her towards the exit ramp. Babs had no option but to turn the wheel and continue along the exit road with her unwanted escorts alongside.
At the bottom of the ramp was a pull-off into a gas station. The three cars manoeuvred Babs into the forecourt and behind the main shop into the parking area. All four cars came to a halt. The driver of the third car,
the one behind Babs, immediately leapt out of his vehicle and ran to the car being driven by the perplexed bodyguard. He tapped on the driver’s window and pointed a gun at the man’s face.
Babs waited, her hands trembling on the rim of the steering wheel. She couldn’t see any of the occupants of the cars because of the blackened windows, so she waited. There was no choice for her; if she thought she could run from them, she had nowhere she could go and had no doubts that whoever was in those cars would soon catch her.
Eventually a figure climbed out of the car that had pulled up alongside her. He came round to the passenger window and waited for Babs to open it. As the window dropped, a man who she didn’t recognize leaned in and spoke to her.
‘Babs Mason?’ She nodded but said nothing. ‘This is a piece of friendly advice to you and your husband. Pull out of the campaign.’
Babs almost burst out laughing at the absurdity of the so-called friendly advice.
‘I don’t know who you are,’ she snapped. ‘Some bloody crank, no doubt, if you think my husband is going to pull out of the campaign.’ She stopped. Who was this guy? she thought. ‘Piss off before I call for the police.’
He smiled. It was quite disarming. ‘We know the truth about your husband’s birth right and your crazy little Nazi games. You’ve got one week. If your husband doesn’t declare his intention to pull out, we’ll go to the press.’
Babs sneered at him. ‘You’re out of your mind, whoever you are. And you’re way out of your league. Now leave me alone.’
‘One week. After that, if there’s been no statement, we’ll be back.’
Suddenly Babs realized who he was. ‘You’re Jack Demski.’ She sounded surprised and relieved. ‘You little shit; we’ll have you for breakfast. Now out of my fucking way.’
She pushed the gear stick into ‘Drive’ and released the handbrake. Demski stood back from the car and waved the others away. He watched as she roared out of the car park and into the main stream of traffic. He felt satisfied for now. He hadn’t expected anything other than what he had got, but now he had sown the seed of doubt in her mind and wanted to see some reaction from her and her hateful bunch of Nazis.
The Boy from Berlin Page 17