Alex Cross 1 - Along Came A Spider

by Patterson, James

  “Fifty laps, Detective Cross?”

  She smiled, in -a way that revealed a different person from the one I'd seen at work over the past few days. She seemed much more relaxed.

  “Thirty-five. I'm not exactly in your league,” I said to her. “Not even close. I learned my stroke at the downtown Y.”

  “You persevere.” She kept her smile turned on nicely. “You're in good shape.”

  “Whatever my stroke is called, it sure feels good tonight. After all those hours cooped up in that room. Those boxy little windows that don't open.”

  “If they had big windows, all anybody would think about is escaping to the beach. They'd never get any work done anywhere in the state of Florida.”

  “Are we getting any work done?” I asked Jezzie. She laughed. “I had a friend who believed in the 'doing the best you can' theory of police work. I'm doing the best I can. Under impossible circumstances. How about you?”

  “I'm doing the best I can, too,” I said.

  “Praise the Lord.” Jezzie Flanagan raised both her arms joyously. Her exuberance surprised me. It was funny, and it felt good to laugh for a change. Real good Real necessary.

  Under the circumstances, I'm doing the best I can, I added.

  “Under the circumstances, praise the Lord!” Jezzie raised her voice again. She was funny, or it was late, or both of the above.

  “You going to catch a bite?” I asked her. I wanted to hear her thoughts about the case. I hadn't really talked to her before.

  “I'd like to eat something,” she answered. “I've skipped two meals already today. ”

  We agreed to meet up in the hotel's dining room, which was one of those slow-spinning affairs on the top floor.

  She changed in about five minutes, which I found impressive. Baggy tan trousers, a V-necked T-shirt, black Chinese slippers. Her blond hair was still wet. She'd combed it back, and it looked good that way. She didn't wear makeup, and didn't need to. She seemed so different from the way she acted on the job-much looser and at ease.

  “In all honesty and fairness, I have to tell you one thing.” She was laughing.

  “What's the one thing?”

  “Well, you're a strong but really clunky swimmer. On the other hand, you do look good in a bathing suit. ”

  Both of us laughed. Some of the long day's tension began to drain away.

  We were good at drawing each other out over beers and a snack. A lot of that was due to the peculiar circumstances, the stress and pressure of the past few days. It's also part of my job to draw people out, and I like the challenge.

  I got Jezzie Flanagan to admit that she'd once been Miss Washington, D.C., back when she was eighteen. She'd been in a sorority at the University of Virginia, but got kicked out for “inappropriate behavior,” a phrase that I loved.

  As we talked, though, I was surprised that I was telling her much more than I'd expected to. She was easy to talk to.

  Jezzie asked about my early days as a psychologist in Washington. “It was mostly a bad mistake,” I told her, without getting into how angry it had made me, still made me. “A whole lot of people didn't want any part of a black shrink. Too many black people couldn't afford one. There are no liberals on the,psychiatrist's couch. ” She got me to talk about Maria, but only a little bit. She told me how it was to be a woman in the ninety-percent macho-male Secret Service. “They like to test me, oh, about once a day. They call me 'the Man.' ” She also had some entertaining war stories about the White House. She knew the Bushes and the Reagans. All in all, it was a comfortable hour that went by too quickly.

  Actually, more than an hour had passed. More like two hours. Jezzie finally noticed our waitress hovering all by her lonesome near the bar. “Shoot. We are the last ones in this restaurant.” We paid our bill and got on the local elevator down from the spinning-top restaurant. Jezzie's room was on the higher floor. She probably had a view of the ocean, too. From her suite.

  “That was real nice,” I said at her stop. I think that's a snappy line out of a N@l Coward play. “Thanks for the company. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Alex. ” Jezzie smiled. She tucked her blond hair behind her ear, which was a tic of hers I'd noticed before. “That was nice. Unfortunately, tomorrow probably won't be. ”

  Jezzie pecked my cheek, and went off to her room. “I'm going to dream about you in swimsuits,” she said as the elevator doors closed.

  I went down four more floors, where I took my Christcold shower, alone in my Christmas hotel room. I thought about Jezzie Flanagan. Dumb fantasies in a lonely Miami Beach hotel room. We sure weren't going anywhere together, but I liked her. I kind of felt that I could talk to her about anything. I read some more about Styron's bout with depression, until I could sleep. I had some dreams of my own.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 21

  I now, Gary boy. the fat woman out of the left eye. He watched the blubbery blob the way a lizard watches an insect-just before mealtime. She had no idea that he was studying her.

  She was a policewoman, so to speak, as well as a toll I collector, at exit 12 on the turnpike. She slowly counted out his change. She was enormous, black as the night, completely out of it. Asleep at the switch. Soneii thought she looked like Aretha Franklin would have, if Aretha couldn't sing a note and she had to make it in the real, workaday world.

  She didn't have a clue as to who was riding by in the monotonous stream of holiday traffic. Even though she and all her cohorts were supposed to be desperately searching for him. So much for “massive police dragnets” and your basic “nationwide manhunt.” What a fucking letdown and disappointment. How could they

  T possibly expect to catch him with people like this in the hunt. At least they could try to keep it interesting for him. Sometimes, especially at times like this, Gary Soneji wanted to proclaim the inescapable truth of the universe.

  Proclaim. Listen, you slovenly bimbo bitch cop! Don't you know who I am? Some paltry nothing disguise have you buffaloed? I'm the one 'you've been seeing in every news story for the past three days. You and half the world, Aretha, baby.

  Proclaim. I planned and executed the Crime of the Century so perfectly. I'm already bigger than John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Juan Corona. Everything went right until the rich little blue boy got sick on me. Proclaim. Look real close. Take a good look at me. Be a goddamn hero for once in your life. Be something besides a fat black zero on the Freeway of Love. Look at me, will you! Look at me!

  She handed back his change. "Merry Christmas, sir.

  Gary Soneji shrugged. “Merry Christmas back at you, ” he said.

  As he pulled away from the blinking lights of the tollbooth, he imagined the policewoman with one of those smiling, have-a-nice-day heads on her. He mind pictured a whole country full of those smiley balloon faces. It was happening, too. It was getting worse than The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, actually. Drove him cra-azy if he thought about it, which he tried not to do. Country of smiling Balloonheads. He loved Stephen King, identified with His Weirdness, and wished The King would write about all the Smiley fools in America. He could see the dust jacket for King's masterpiece-Balloonheads.

  Forty minutes later, Soneji pulled the trusty Saab off Route 413, in Crisfield, Maryland. He accelerated down the rutted dirt road to the old farmhouse. He had to smile, had to laugh at this point. He had them so completely fooled and bamboozled. Completely turned in side out.

  So far, they didn't know which way was up, down, or sideways. He already had the Lindbergh thing topped, didn't he? Now it was time to pull the mat out from under all the Balloonheads again.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 22

  T WAS DEFINITELY SHOWTIME! A Federal Express courier had arrived at the FBI offices just before tenthirty on the morning of the twenty-sixth of December. He'd delivered the new message from the Son of Lindbergh. We were called back to the crisis room on the second floor. The whole FBI staff seemed to be in there. This was
it, and everybody knew it.

  Moments later, Special Agent Bill Thompson, from Miami, rushed in. He brandished one of those familiar looking delivery-service envelopes. Thompson carefully opened the orange-and-blue envelope in front of the entire group.

  "He's going to let us see the message. Only he's not going to read it to us, II Jeb Klepner from the Secret Service cracked under his breath. Sampson and I were standing there with Klepner and Jezzie Flanagan.

  “Oh, he doesn't want all the heat on this one,” Jezzie -predicted. “ He'll share with us this time.”

  Thompson was ready, up at the front.

  “I have a message from Gary Soneji. It goes as follows. ”There's the number one," Thompson read the message.

  “Then, spelled out in letters, ten million. On the next line, the number two. Then the words Disney World, Orlando-The Magic Kingdom. Next line. The number three. Then, Park at Pluto 24. Go across Seven Seas Lagoon on theferry, not the monorail. 12:50 P. m. today. This will be finished by 1: 15. Last line. Detective Alex Cross will deliver the ransom. Alone.. It's signed Son of Ltnavergh. ” Bill Thompson looked up immediately. His eyes searched the crisis room. He had no trouble finding me in the audience. I can absolutely guarantee that his shock and surprise were nothing compared to mine. A hit of adrenaline had already mainlined its way into my system. -What the hell did Soneji want with me? How did he know about me? Did he know how badly I wanted his ass now?

  “There's no attempt at any negotiation!” Special Agent Scorse began to make a fuss. “Soneji just assumes we're going to deliver the ten million.”

  “He does,” I spoke up. “And he's right. It's ultimately the family's call how and when a kidnap ransom gets paid. ” The Dunnes had instructed us to pay Soneji-unconditionally. Soneji had probably guessed as much. That was undoubtedly the main reason why he'd chosen Maggie Rose. But why had he chosen me?

  Standing at my side, Sampson shook his head and uttered, "The Lord, He sure does work in mysterious

  A half-dozen cars were waiting for us in the sunbaked parking lot behind the Bureau building. Bill Thompson, Jezzie Flanagan, Klepner, myself, and Sampson traveled in one of the FBI sedans. The securities and money went with us. Detective Alex Cross will deliver the ransom.

  The money had been put together late the previous night. It was a tremendously complex deal to get it accomplished so quickly, but Citibank and Morgan Stanley had cooperated. The Dunnes and Jerrold Goldberg had the power to get what they wanted, and had obviously exerted great pressure. As Soneji had requested, two million of the ransom was in cash. The rest was in small diamonds and securities. The ransom was negotiable, and also very portable. It fit into an American Tourister suitcase.

  The trip from downtown Miami Beach to the OpaLocka West Airport took about twenty-five minutes. The flight would take another forty. That would get us into Orlando at approximately 11 45 A.M. It would be tight.

  “We can try to put a device on Cross.” We listened as- Agent Scorse talked over the radio to Thompson. “Portable radio transmitter. We've got one on board the plane.”

  “I don't like that very much, Gerry,” Thompson said. “I don't like it, either,” I said from the backseat. An understatement. “No bugs. That's out.” I was still trying to understand how and why Soneji had picked me. It didn't make sense. I thought that he might have read about me in the news coverage back in Washington. He had some good reason, I knew. There could be little or no doubt about that.

  “There'll be unbelievable crowds at that park,” Thompson said once we were on board a Cessna 3 1 0 to Orlando. “That's the obvious reason he's chosen the Disney Park. Lots of parents and kids at the Magic Kingdom, too. He just might be able to blend in with Maggie Dunne. He may have disguised her as well.”

  “The Disney Park fits into his pattern for big, important icons,” I said. One theory in my notebooks was that Soneji might have been an abused child himself. If so, he'd have nothing but rage and disdain for a place like Disney World-where-e “good” little kids get to go with their “good” mommies and daddies.

  “We've already got ground and aerial surveillance on the park,” Scorse contributed. “Pictures are being pipe d into the crisis room in Washington right now. We're also filming Epcot and Pleasure Island. Just in case he pulls a last-minute switch.”

  I could just imagine the scene at the FBI crisis room on 10th Street. As many as a couple of dozen VIPs would be crowded in there. Each of them would have his own desk and a closed-circuit TV monitor. The aerial photography of Walt Disney World would be laying on all the monitors at once. The room's Big p Board would be filled with facts... exactly how many agents and other personnel were converging on the park at that moment. The number of exits. Every roadway in or out. Weather conditions. Size of the day's crowd. Number of Disney security people. But probably nothing about Gary Soneji or Maggie Rose, or we would heard about it.

  “I'm going to Disney World!” One of the agents on board the plane cracked a joke. The pretty typical cop talk got some nervous laughter. Breaking the tension was good, and hard to achieve under the difficult circumstances.

  The whole notion of meeting up with a madman and a kidnapped little girl wasn't a nice one. Neither was the cold reality of the holiday crowds waiting for us at Disney World. We were told that more than seventy thousand people were already inside the theme park and its parking areas. Still, this would be our best chance to get Soneji, This might be our only chance.

  We rode to the Magic Kingdom in a special caravan, a police escort with flashing lights and sirens. We took the breakdown lane on 1-4, passing all the regular traffic coming in from the airport.

  People packed into station wagons and minivans jeered or cheered our speedy progress. None of them had any idea who we were, or why we were rushing to Disney World. Just VIPs going to see Mickey and Minnie.

  We got off at exit 26-A, then proceeded along World Drive to the auto plaza. We arrived inside the parking area at a little past 12:15 P. m. That was cutting it extremely close, but Soneji hadn't given us time to organize.

  Why Disney World? I kept trying to understand. Because Gary Soneji had always wanted to go there as a kid, and had never been allowed? Because he appreciated the almost neurotic efficiency of the well-run amusement park?

  It would have been relatively easy for Gary Soneji to get into Disney World. But how was he going to get out? That was the most intriguing question of all.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 23

  ENIOR DISNEY attendants parked our cars in the Pluto section, row 24. A fiberglass tram was waiting there to pick us up and take us to the ferry. “Why do you think Soneji asked for you?” Bill Thompson said as we were getting out of the car. “Any idea at all, Alex?”

  “Maybe he heard about me in the news stories back in Washington,” I said. “Maybe he knows I'm a psychologist and that caught his attention. I'll be sure to ask him about that. When I see him.”

  “Just take it easy with him,” Thompson offered some advice. “All we want is the girl back.”

  “That's all I want,” I told him. We were both exaggerating. We wanted Maggie Rose safe, but we also wanted to capture Soneji. We wanted to burn him here at Disney World.

  Thompson put his arm around my shoulder as we stood in the parking area. There was some nice camaraderie for a change. Sampson, and also Jezzie Flanagan,

  124 wished me good luck. The FBI agents were being supportive, for the time being at least.

  “How're you feeling?” Sampson pulled me aside for a moment. “You all right with all this shit? He asked for you, but you don't have to go.”

  “I'm fine. He's not going to hurt me. I'm used to psychos, remember?”

  “You are a psycho, my man.”

  1 took the single suitcase with the ransom inside. I climbed onto the bright orange tram alone. Holding tightly to an overhead metal stirrup, I headed toward the Magic Kingdom, where I was to make the exchange for Maggie Rose Dunne.

  It
was 12:44 p.m. I was six minutes early.

  No one paid much attention to me as I moved with the congealed flow of people toward rows of ticket booths and turnstiles at the Magic Kingdom Ticket Center. Why should they?

  That had to be Soneji's idea for choosing the crowded location. I clutched the suitcase tighter. I felt that as long as I had the ransom, I had a safety line to Maggie Rose.

  Had he dared to bring the little girl with him? Was he here himself Or was all this a test for us? Anything was possible now.

  The mood of the Disney World crowd was lighthearted and relaxed. These were mostly family vacationers, having fun under the bright cornflower-blue skies. A pleasant announcer's voice was chanting: “Take small children by the hand, do not forget your personal belongings, and enjoy your stay at the Magic Kingdom.”

  No matter how jaded you might be, the fantasyland was captivating. Everything was incredibly clean and safe. You couldn't help feeling completely protected, which was so goddamned weird for me.

  Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Snow White greeted everybody at the front gates. The park was immaculate. “Yankee Doodle Dandy” played from loudspeakers cleverly hidden somewhere in the manicured shrubbery. I could feel my heart pounding under a loose-fitting sport shirt. I was out of touch with all my backup for the moment. It would be that way until I was physically in the Magic Kingdom.

  The palms of my hands were clammy, and I wiped them against my trousers. Mickey Mouse was shaking hands right in front of me. This was nuts.

  I had just entered an area of deep shadows cast from the Transportation and Ticket Center. The ferry was visible, a miniature Mississippi riverboat, without the paddle wheel.

  A man wearing a sport jacket and brimmed hat slid alongside me. I didn't know if it was Soneji. The sense of Disney World's safety and protection was broken immediately.