Fifteen
WHEN I GOT HOME, I scraped the frost off a supermarket pepperoni-and-onion pizza I found in the freezer and heated it in the oven. I ate it with a can of Coke at the kitchen table while I watched the evening news. Without Evie to share it with, I realized that I had no desire to make any kind of ceremony out of cooking or eating. Food was fuel for the machine.
I was remembering how to live alone again.
Henry sat beside me, alert and grateful for the occasional pizza crust that I gave him. For Henry, food was joy.
The phone rang at seven-thirty.
“It’s Adrienne Lancaster,” she said in that raspy voice of hers, as if I might be expecting phone calls from other women named Adrienne. “I have it.”
“The money?”
“Yes. A quarter of a million dollars. Used twenties, fifties, and hundreds. It’s making me nervous. Please come and collect it.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
I’d left my car in a residents-only space on the street in front of the house. Henry came with me. We pulled into the judge’s driveway around eight-fifteen. There were no other cars parked there.
I cracked the windows so Henry could stick out his nose and sniff the evening air. I told him to be patient, I wouldn’t be gone long. Then I went up to the front porch and rang the bell.
A minute later the judge opened the door. “Come in, please,” she said.
I went in and followed her into the living room.
“Can I get you something?” she said.
I shook my head. “I think this is a mistake.”
“I know you do.”
“You’re going to lose your money, and you won’t get Robert back.”
She shrugged. “The money is unimportant.”
“It’s not too late,” I said. “Let’s bring the police into it. I can make a call, and—”
“No. Absolutely not.” She was wearing blue slacks and low heels and a white blouse. Gold earrings and a gold necklace. I guessed it was the same outfit she’d worn under her judge’s robes that day. She combed her fingers through her steel gray hair, blew out a breath, and gestured at a chair. “Sit down, Attorney Coyne. Please.”
I sat, and she took the sofa.
“I’m fully aware that this could be a mistake,” she said.
“It is a mistake.”
“Either way could be a mistake,” she said. “We won’t know until it’s over. I’ve thought about it, believe me, and I have concluded that we’d all feel worse if refusing to do it their way resulted in…” She shook her head, then turned and glared at me. “If you’ve changed your mind and have decided you don’t want to play the role that these people have assigned to you, Attorney Coyne, you’d better tell me right now.”
“If I back out,” I said, “will you bring in the police?”
“If you back out,” she said, “Robert is dead, police or no police.”
“I didn’t come here to tell you I was backing out,” I said. “I’m just not optimistic about how it’s going to end.”
She nodded. “Neither am I.” She slumped back on the sofa and gazed up at the ceiling. “I love my grandson, Mr. Coyne. I love my son, too, in spite of his weaknesses. I love them more than I love my money.” She moved her head so that she was looking at me. “No, I’m not optimistic, either. Involving the police wouldn’t make me feel better about it, though.”
“I guess we’ll do it their way, then,” I said.
“Thank you.” She pushed herself to her feet and left the room. She was back a minute later with a red Nike gym bag in her hand. She plopped it onto the coffee table in front of me. “It’s all here,” she said.
I unzipped the bag. It was nearly full of paper currency in decks about an inch thick bound by rubber bands. I picked up one of the decks and riffled through it with my thumb. Twenty-dollar bills. Some were crispy and new, some were soft and old.
I emptied the bag onto the coffee table.
“You’ll find fifty-five stacks of bills there,” said Adrienne. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one hundred bills per stack. Twenty-five stacks of twenties, twenty stacks of fifties, and ten of hundreds. I called four banks this morning, and this afternoon they had the money ready for me. According to them, most of those bills have been in circulation.”
“How did you handle it?” I said.
“Handle what?”
“Collecting all that currency. The banks. What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t handle anything,” she said. “I simply filled out withdrawal slips, told them what I wanted, and reminded them that I’d called earlier to be sure they would have the currency on hand. They verified that my accounts would cover it, and they gave it to me.”
“No questions?”
She smiled. “I am a judge. I can be quite imperious.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve noticed that.” I put the decks of bills back into the gym bag and zipped it up. “Now we wait to hear from them.”
“They said they’d call at six tomorrow,” she said.
“Not exactly,” I said. “They said I should turn their cell phone on at six. Who knows when they’ll call.”
“But you’ll be ready.”
I hefted the gym bag. “I’ll be ready.”
“And you will keep me informed.”
“As you keep reminding me,” I said, “it’s your money.”
Around midnight I was trying to keep my eyes open so I could finish one of Melville’s riveting dissertations on whale blubber when the phone rang.
It was Evie. “Hey,” she said. “You wanna get married?”
I smiled. “Sure.”
“My daddy says we should get married. Make an honest man out of you, he says. You being a lawyer.”
“I don’t think I’m dishonest,” I said.
“You’re a lawyer,” she said. “Sly. My sly lawyer.”
“You’re pretty drunk, huh?” I said.
“Wine. A lovely Syrah from the Cline vineyard. Cline Syrah, Syrah. What will be, will be.” She was singing to the tune of “Que Sera, Sera.” “Not to mention some sacred weed, also from California’s Sonoma Valley. Daddy loves Sonoma weed. So do I. Vastly superior to Napa weed. I love Brady, too. Weed and Brady.”
“I’m flattered,” I said, “even to be mentioned in the same breath as Sonoma weed.”
“They grow grapes and cannabis,” she said. “The Sonoma Valley. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“All the important food groups.”
She said nothing for a minute. “Are you mad at me?”
“Of course not. I miss you. Henry and I are here in bed reading Moby Dick. Missing you. Henry sends his love. I’m glad you called.”
“Dear Henry,” she said. “And good old sober old unstoned old Brady. Curled up in my bed.”
“So how are you, honey?”
“Outta my skull, baby. Whew.”
“Aside from that.”
“Oh, gosh.” She paused. “Oh, jeez, Brady.” And then I heard that she was crying, and I realized that she’d been crying the whole time. “My daddy is scared. Do you see? He’s not supposed to be scared. I can be scared. I’m his little girl. He’s supposed to be fearless. But he’s not. So I don’t know how to feel. I’m just my daddy’s little girl. I can’t be fearless for both of us. I can’t even be fearless for me.”
“What can I do, honey?”
“Are you fearless?”
“Yes, I am,” I said. “I will be fearless for all three of us. You go ahead, be scared. It’s okay.”
She was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “It doesn’t really work that way.”
“I know.” I hesitated. “Is there any news?”
“We go to the hospital Wednesday. Then there will be news, I bet.”
“I’ll be thinking of you,” I said. “You and Ed.”
“You better,” she said.
“Call me, okay?”
“Mmm.” She was quiet. I could hear her breathing. Then she
said, “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
“I really don’t want to get married, you know,” she said.
“I know.”
“I was just kidding.”
“I knew that.”
Mike Warner called me at my office around noon on Tuesday. “Today’s the day, right?”
“I guess so,” I said. “I’ll turn on their cell phone at six. Then we’ll see.”
“Adrienne got the money?”
“She did. I have it.”
“A quarter of a million, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Well,” said Warner, “if there’s anything I can do, you know?”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“You’re going to have to deliver that money,” he said. “I could go with you.”
“They said just me,” I said. “We better do it their way.”
“Dart’s my best friend. I feel like I should be doing something.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But this is how they want it.”
“Not that I don’t trust you,” he said, “but I think it’s a mistake. Not bringing in the police, I mean.”
“So do I,” I said.
“I lost my son,” he said. “Now this.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to him.
I left the office early that afternoon. I fed Henry and made myself a ham-and-cheese sandwich, which I took out to the patio and washed down with a Coke.
I brought the kidnappers’ cell phone out with me, and at six o’clock I turned it on.
It sat there on the picnic table. Darkness began to seep into my backyard, and the phone didn’t ring.
I might have dozed, because the ring seemed to come from far away. I groped for the kidnappers’ phone, put it to my ear, and said, “Yes?”
When the phone rang again, I realized the sound was coming through the screen door from the kitchen. I jumped up, jogged into the house, and grabbed the kitchen phone as it was ringing again.
“Yes,” I said. “Hello.”
“You’re all out of breath.” It was Dalt. “I’m sorry I made you run. I just called because—”
“I haven’t heard from them yet,” I said.
“Oh.”
“When I have any news,” I said, “I’ll let you know. Are you home?”
“I’m at my mother’s. She said she got the money. I’m… this isn’t easy. Waiting, I mean. Doing nothing but waiting.”
“I know,” I said. “Look. Try not to worry. I’m going to do what they tell me to do. We’ll get Robert back.”
“I shouldn’t have called,” he said. “It sounds like I don’t trust you. That’s not it. It’s just… there’s nothing for me to do.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s hard. Did Adrienne want to speak to me?”
Dalt said something I didn’t understand, then he said, “No. She says you and she have nothing further to discuss. I don’t think she means it quite the way it sounds.”
After I hung up with Dalt, I went back outside and watched the sky darken and the stars pop out. The kidnappers’ cell phone did not ring.
Around nine-thirty I put the phone in my shirt pocket, snapped my fingers at Henry, and went into the house. I took the phone to the bathroom with me. It was in my pocket when I went into the living room to watch the end of the Red Sox game, and after the game ended I brought it with me when I went to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.
At half past midnight I’d started on my third mug of coffee, figuring it was going to be a long, late night, when the kidnappers’ cell phone rang.
I pressed the on button and said, “Brady Coyne.”
“Do exactly as I say,” said a voice. It was muffled and hollow. He was doing something to disguise it, and he was succeeding. Maybe it was Paulie, but if it was, I didn’t recognize his voice. He spoke very slowly, pausing after each word. “Robert Lancaster’s life depends on you.”
“Let me speak to him.”
“You have the money?”
“I want to talk to Robert.”
“You are going to need two large black heavy-duty plastic trash bags. I hope you have them.”
“What if I don’t?”
“That would be tragic.”
“I have trash bags,” I said.
“Get them.”
“I’ve got to hear Robert’s voice.”
“You will. Do as you are told. Keep the phone with you while you get those bags and the money. Tell me when you have them.”
“Okay.” I tucked the phone into my shirt pocket and headed for my den. I’d put the red gym bag in the closet. I brought it to the kitchen table. Then I pulled two trash bags out of the box we keep under the kitchen sink.
I took the phone out of my pocket. “I have the bags and the money.”
“The bills are bound in stacks?”
“Yes.”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Yes.”
“In stacks of one hundred bills.”
“That’s how banks do it, yes.”
“Take the bands off the stacks,” said the voice, “and dump it all into one of those bags. When you have done that, tie the top of the bag and put it inside the other bag. Tie the top of that bag the same way. Do it now.”
I opened the gym bag and dumped the stacks of money onto the table. Then I held a trash bag open, and one by one I removed the bands from the stacks of currency and dropped the bills into the bag. I tied the top, stuffed it inside the second bag, and tied the top of that one. All those loose bills nearly filled the bag, although when I hefted it, it was lighter than I’d expected. More air than money.
I left the double-bagged two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on the floor and picked up the phone. “All right,” I said. “That’s done.”
“Take it to your car,” said the voice. “Be sure to bring the phone. It is Robert Lancaster’s lifeline. Keep it turned on. Put the bag on the passenger seat. Then get behind the wheel and start the car. I want to hear you starting the car. Then I will give you your next instruction.”
“When will I talk to Robert?”
“Go to your car now.”
I put the phone in my shirt pocket, slung the trash bag over my shoulder, and headed for the front door.
Henry scurried ahead of me and sat beside the door. He looked at me with his ears cocked.
“You can’t come,” I said to him.
The voice in the telephone said something I couldn’t understand. I took it from my pocket and said, “I didn’t hear what you said. The phone was in my pocket.”
“Who is with you?”
“Nobody.”
“I heard you speak to somebody.”
“It’s just my dog,” I said. “I told him he couldn’t come with me. He’s disappointed.”
“Leave him there. Go to your car.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” I said.
“If there is anybody with you,” said the voice, “if you do not do this exactly as I tell you, Robert Lancaster will die and it will be your fault.”
“I hear you,” I said, and then I realized that he was using the telephone as a listening device, a bug, as well as a way of communicating with me. Whatever I did, he’d know, as long as the phone line was open and I kept it with me.
I’d parked my car in front of the house. I unlocked it with the remote, opened the passenger-side door, and put the trash bag on the seat. Then I went around to the other side, got behind the wheel, started the ignition, and put the phone to my ear. “Did you hear that?” I said.
“Yes. On your phone you will see a button you can press for volume.”
I looked at the phone. “I see it.”
“Maximize your volume, please.”
I pressed the button several times and a kind of bar graph grew taller on the little screen. “Okay,” I said. “How’s that?”
“It’s for your hearing, not ours,” said the voice.
&nb
sp; “All right,” I said. “Your voice is loud and clear.”
In fact, I had been listening closely to the voice. I hoped I might pick up speech patterns, dialect, word choices, pronunciation. I assumed it was Paulie Russo or one of his henchmen, but so far, at least, I hadn’t been able to detect anything in the voice on the phone to help me identify him.
“I want you to drive safely,” he said. “You carry valuable cargo. You will drive with the phone on the console beside you. You will be able to hear my instructions. Try it now.”
I put the phone on the console. “Okay,” I said.
“Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said.
“Very good, Mr. Coyne. Now let us begin. You are parked on Mt. Vernon Street, directly in front of your house. I want you to get onto Route 93 heading north. You will narrate your journey for me. Tell me each landmark as you pass it, each turn you take, each street sign you pass. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I said.
“Do not exceed the speed limit. Do nothing to draw attention to yourself or your automobile.”
“I’ve got to speak to Robert,” I said.
“You will,” he said. “Now get started.”
Sixteen
I NEGOTIATED THE NOTARIES, BLINKING yellow lights, and one-way streets from Beacon Hill to the Zakim Bridge, dumpy old Boston’s splendid anachronism of modernistic design, with its illuminated struts and cables and its elegant lines. I narrated every turn and street sign into the cell phone on the console. Now and then, the voice on the other end said, “Yes,” or, “Good.” Just letting me know that he was there, paying attention.
I crossed the bridge and headed north on Route 93. By now it was after one o’clock on this Wednesday morning in June. Traffic was light. Mostly delivery trucks and taxis. The commercial establishments I could see from the highway, the restaurants and used-car lots and factories and warehouses, appeared to be closed. The empty parking lots in Medford and Somerville were lit by yellow floodlights on tall poles. The office buildings in Stoneham shone lights from their eaves. Their windows were darkened.
I wondered where I was going, of course, but I knew there was no way I could guess. The voice on the cell phone would direct me to someplace the kidnappers had chosen because they believed it was ideally suited for their purposes. It was unlikely that our rendezvous had any connection to where the kidnappers lived or had their headquarters, or where they were holding Robert hostage.
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