Titans
Page 38
"OK," Bert said when the cards were all out. "Five-card draw, kings are wild, ante's twenty bucks. How many you want?"
Hunter didn't say a word.
"Hunt, come on . . . let's play."
Hunter turned to his friend and pushed his cards away. "No cards," he said. "I'm not playing."
"See what I mean?" Bert huffed. "You're not yourself, man! You're just not yourself."
Hunter turned back to the window. He frowned, remembering that he'd forgotten to put on the wire when he dressed after the game. He had actually felt a little free from it all this past day and a half. When he had boarded the plane he had known he was leaving Tony Rizzo and Agent Cook and the whole mess behind him, even if for just a day. That was why, Hunter thought, he'd been able to play so well. The game, the trip with the team, it was his reprieve, and it had been wonderful.
Now Bert wanted to play cards. The idea of any gambling turned his stomach. Without it, he and his whole family would be safe right now. Things would be easy, wonderful. It frustrated Hunter. Whenever he finally achieved his dreams on the football field, something in his life got fucked up. In college it had been his family's ruin. Now it was Tony Rizzo.
Hunter sighed and got up from his seat to go back into the rest room and strap the wire to his body. Time to get back to reality.
The team unloaded from the plane slowly. Most were half drunk. Others wanted to finish up card or dice games before they disembarked. Bert and Hunter were two of the first to go after the front of the plane was emptied of the coaching staff and management people. They walked through a raging crowd of fans, cordoned off by police tape, who had come to greet the team at the airport. There were only a few hundred, nothing like the mobs that the Titans had experienced when they'd made their way through the play-offs in January. After a few waves and a few autographs that Hunter signed as he walked, he and Bert were free from the crowd and made their way through the terminal quickly so ^riot to give the gawkers and finger-pointers a chance to stop them for autographs.
They both leaned to one side as they walked, off balance because of the bags slung over their shoulders, but Bert was weaving a little more than usual, and Hunter asked him if he could drive.
"You can," Bert said, wisely tossing his friend the keys.
Hunter navigated through the garage and then across the Island back to the Five Towns. He had downed a few cold ones himself, so he was driving extra carefully. He eased the car off the Beltway and onto Rockaway Boulevard. Because of his care, it surprised him to see the flashing lights of an unmarked police car in the mirror.
"Oh, shit," Bert moaned. "Are you OK, man?"
"Yeah, I think I'm fine," Hunter said, pulling over to the side of the road. "I only had a couple. I didn't do anything. Maybe you've got a bad taillight or something."
The uniformed cop walked up to the car, and Hunter rolled down the window with his driver's license in hand.
"Are you Hunter Logan?" the cop asked.
He was an older guy and he wore dark sunglasses despite the fact that the sun had already gone down.
The question surprised Hunter because it wasn't asked in the normal way, of someone who was confirming the identity of someone who they suspected was a star. It was more like the guy had been looking for Hunter.
"Yes," Hunter said, dropping the hand that held his license to his lap, "I am."
The cop looked around, then nodded. "OK," he said. "Can you get out of the car and come with me?"
"Why?" Hunter asked. He saw this irritated the cop.
"I don't know, Mr. Logan," the cop snapped, "I was just asked to bring you in . . . something to do with the FBI."
The cop looked into the car at Bert and said, "I think that if you want to help your friend out, you won't ask him any questions about this. That means keep quiet."
Hunter quickly looked at Bert. His friend's mouth was agape. Hunter wanted to tell him that he'd done nothing wrong, but he knew that would sound silly.
"Bert," he said, sliding out of the car, "I'll see you tomorrow. Don't say anything, OK? And don't worry. Everything's OK."
"You want me to call Rachel?" Bert whispered so the cop couldn't hear.
"No, just. . . I'll see you tomorrow . . . Don't do anything."
Hunter followed the cop to his car and started to get in.
"Get in the back," the cop said rudely. Then, without apology he said, Those are the rules."
The cop shut his light off and put it down on the seat. He swung out across traffic and back toward the Belt.
"Isn't the headquarters back that way?" Hunter asked, unable to help himself.
The cop glared back at him in the rearview mirror and said nothing.
"Hey, come on," Hunter said after a while, "what's the deal?"
"Look," the cop said, "we'll be there in a minute and you can ask all the questions you want. My job was to pick you up, OK?"
Hunter shrugged. The whole thing made him nervous, but Cook must know what he was doing. Maybe they'd even gotten something else on Rizzo, and Cook was just bringing him in to tell him the whole thing was off.
The cop headed back toward the airport at about a hundred miles an hour. Suddenly he jammed on his brakes. After screaming to a near stop, he wrenched the wheel and gunned through a fishtail, making a U-turn at an emergency break in the highway and then gunning the engine again. The cop's gaze alternated maniacally between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. They stayed on the Beltway toward the Verrazano Bridge and got off an exit in Brooklyn that Hunter didn't recognize. His nervousness increased, but he figured that was the way things would be for now until the FBI and Rizzo were out of his life. They pulled into the parking lot of a motel, and the cop stopped in an empty spot in front of a row of light-blue doors whose paint was cracked and worn.
"In 107," the cop said. 'They're waiting for you." Hunter got out of the car, and the cop lurched out and squealed away. Hunter wondered how the hell he was going to get back home, but told himself that Cook would take him.
The door to Room 107 opened before he could knock. Carl reached out and yanked him inside with his free hand. In the other hand he held an automatic handgun with a silencer attached. Tony Rizzo sat propped against the headboard of the bed farthest from the door. He was watching Sunday night football on TNT and seemed not to notice Hunter's arrival.
Carl kicked the back of Hunter's knees and he stumbled forward, catching himself from a fall on the edge of the bed. Before he could turn around, he felt the cold barrel of the gun pressed up behind his ear. He froze.
"Get down on your knees," Carl said.
Hunter eased himself down on his knees, already sick with anxiety. This was it! He prayed that Cook had stayed with Rizzo and was out there, somewhere, getting it all. Then he remembered what the cop had said about, the FBI wanting him. Something wasn't right. Hunter felt a nervous sweat break out under his arms.
"Now unbutton your shirt," Carl said with joyful menace in his voice. Hunter hesitated. Carl bumped the gun against his head and said, "Your fucking brains are gonna look real good on that wall."
Hunter fumbled with his shirt buttons, numb with fear. He closed his eyes and cringed, anticipating the shock of the gun going off when they saw the wire. When his shirt was only half unbuttoned, Carl reached around him and tore the wire off his chest, ripped it free from the transmitter, and tossed it onto the empty bed with a grunt.
Tony Rizzo waited for a break in the action before he flicked off the TV and got up from the bed. Calmly he picked up a baseball bat that he'd kept leaning against the wall and stood over Hunter.
"I'm not fucking around with you anymore, Logan," Rizzo said.
'This is the way things are. You fucked around with the FBI, we know that. You tried to fuck me. I don't like to be fucked, so this is what I did. I got your little fucking wife ..."
Hunter looked up at Rizzo in shock.
Rizzo's face twisted into a smile. "Yeah, that's right," he said gleefully, "I fuc
king got her. You know what that means?"
Hunter looked down at the floor. The carpet was a worn-out red and orange shag. Hunter's mind froze on noticing the carpet. He wondered how many bad things had happened on this ugly carpet.
"Do you know?" Rizzo screamed, losing his patience with Hunter's lethargy.
"No," Hunter said, shaking his head and looking dully back up at Rizzo.
"Aw, does that make you sad? Be fucking sad, Mr. Hero," Rizzo said.
Hunter heard Carl behind him, guffawing, "Haw, haw, haw."
"You should be pretty fucking sad, because if you fuck up in any way at all from here on in, your little cunt wife will fucking disappear. You got that? I mean, fucking gone! I mean, no one will ever know what the fuck happened to her. That's my treat for you, you fucking asshole! That's what you get if you try me again.
"Now," Rizzo continued, "the Titans are gonna be favored this weekend against the Giants. You lose that fucking game, you hear me? You lose it."
Hunter nodded.
"And I'm going to be watching you, too," Rizzo said. "I'm going to be watching everything you do. Now, your little girl is somewhere and I don't know where. That bitch wife of yours did something with her, but she's not around because we looked for her. You find that little brat and you put her someplace quiet because here's the thing. If something goes down again with the FBI, or the police, or the fire department, or the fucking Boy Scouts of America, if any noise starts getting made, that's it. Your wife is gone. Now you just go about your business and lose that game Sunday, and bing! everything in your life is gonna be back to normal just like nothing ever happened. But if you fuck up . . . then good-bye, little Rachel... oh, and I will give her a nice little fucking before I snuff her, too."
Hunter raised up from his knees instinctively, driven mad with fury. A roar came from deep in his body. His vision was blurred with the primal urge to kill. Rizzo wound up and hit him square in the stomach with the bat. Hunter collapsed in a heap on the musty carpet.
"That's good," Rizzo said, standing above him. 'That shows you've got enough balls left in you to pull this off. But you see what you got? You tried to get me, and I fucked you up before you got off the floor. Don't you forget that."
Hunter heard the men leave and the door shut behind them. He rolled on the floor in pain for several minutes before he could catch his breath. A low, guttural animal noise escaped from Hunter's throat. It grew louder and louder until it was almost a scream. He pulled the hair on his head and shook his entire body back and forth like some crazed cobra. It was all like a nightmare. It was too much to believe.
Hunter finally calmed himself and got a cab that took him to Hewlett. He mumbled to himself in the backseat, and the driver glanced back at him nervously, a disheveled, unshaven loony whose hair was standing almost on end from being tugged so violently. If it wasn't New York and if Hunter hadn't flicked a fifty at the cabby from the start, it was likely he wouldn't have been driven all the way home. Hunter clung to the idea that maybe Rizzo was just having fun with him after all. Maybe Rachel was fine, but Rizzo just wanted him to consider the possibilities.
But how had Rizzo known? That was what haunted Hunter. What had Cook said? That they would be safe? That no one but him would even know? Hunter hoped he'd get the chance to pay Cook back. In fact, his anger was completely focused on Cook and not Rizzo. The mobster was an evil force in the universe that simply had to be reckoned with, something that Hunter just wanted to go away and then avoid for the rest of his life. But Cook? He was supposed to be one of the good guys. Hunter had trusted him, counted on him.
The cab stopped suddenly.
'This ain't your place," the cabby said incredulously. Hunter did not argue. He jumped out of the car and raced into the service door of the house, which was still ajar. He yelled for Rachel. He began running through the house, wishing, more than he'd ever wished for anything, that she'd just be there, somewhere, reading, or playing with Sara, or taking a bath, doing anything, just so she was there as she should be.
When he got to Sara's bedroom, he yelled instinctively, "Sara? Sara!"
By the time he got to his own bedroom at the end of the hall, Sara was pulling herself free from some clothes in his closet, screaming, "Daddy! Daddy!"
Hunter almost didn't recognize her. Her face was dirty with dust and tracked with tear lines. Her nightgown was smudged and grimy. She looked like a child's doll cast aside long ago, pathetically awaiting someone's attention in some forgotten corner of the attic. Hunter surrounded her with his arms and held her tightly to his chest. She began to sob hysterically, reliving for him the awful moment when their house had been invaded by the bad men. Hunter stroked her hair and whispered calmly to her that everything would be all right.
"Daddy," she cried, "I want Mommy. Where's Mommy, Daddy? Did the bad men get her?"
Sara continued to cry for her mother, and Hunter was able to deduce much of what had happened by her rantings. She was sobbing something about being brave and having to pee in the cellar when she suddenly let up and said, "Daddy, I'm hungry."
Hunter carried her downstairs to the kitchen and made her a peanut butter sandwich. The simple act was a relief from the constant thought of Rachel being taken from him. But when Hunter sat down to watch Sara gulp down the sandwich, the horror flooded in again. How could it have really happened?
"Daddy, can I have another?"
He made another sandwich and thought about where he would go from here. He knew only one thing: He wanted his wife back. He'd do whatever it took. If it meant throwing another game and keeping his mouth shut in the meantime, that was something he was prepared to do. He had to get Sara away. That was a problem.
"Sara, honey," he said, "I'm going to have you stay with Nana and Poppa for a few days, is that OK with you? It's not that I don't want to be with you, but I need to be able to work so I can get Mommy back."
Sara's eyes brightened at the mention of Rachel's return.
"You're going to get her?"
"Yes, honey," Hunter said, sick with uncertainty but trying not to be. "I am."
Hunter called Rachel's father, Morty, and told him as much as he could without being too specific. He told him he was having problems with the Mafia because they wanted to force him to throw some football games and that they were keeping Rachel from him until he delivered. Her father was frantic, but Hunter rammed home the idea that the only way to get her back was to keep things quiet for a week and do what they asked.
"What about the police, the FBI?" her father said desperately.
'The FBI is the reason why they took Rachel in the first place," Hunter said. "Look, you've got to trust me on this. She'll be fine, really. These people are businessmen. I give them what they want, and there won't be any trouble. The worst thing you or I could do would be to make any noise about this."
After a long conversation, Morty agreed. He told Hunter he would be there as soon as he could.
Sara was asleep on Hunter's lap long before his in-laws arrived. They loaded her into the car, and Hunter tried to assuage their worried looks with assurances that everything would be fine. Like Rachel, he was at his best when those around him needed his strength. Rachel's parents, usually rosy and robust, were now bent and pale.
"Hunter," Morty said to him before getting into his car, "I want you to know something."
Hunter nodded. The older man had allowed his small wire glasses to slip down his long nose. He looked as though he'd aged ten years.
"Many people look to their sons as the ones who will carry on for them after they have gone. But in the Jewish religion, it is the woman who passes on the lineage. This is the way it has always been. What I'm saying is that Rachel is my only girl. I love my sons, but she has always been the light of my life. I think you know that.
"What I mean to say is this. I know that if there is danger for my girl, I couldn't think of anyone other than you that I would rather have responsible for getting her back. You ask me not to
go to the police, not to say anything about this to anyone, and I won't. I won't because I know that you will bring her back. This is why my Rachel married you and why it was so easy to accept you into our family, because you're a mensch. It means you're strong . . . and you are good."
Morty turned slowly and shuffled around to the other side of the car. He got in without another word. Rachel's mother sat quietly in the front and gave Hunter a pained and burdened smile. He saw his daughter go by as the car pulled past him around the circle and out the drive. His father-in-law's words spun inside his head like brightly colored tops in an empty room. Strong and good. He wondered how long they would spin before they lost momentum, wobbled, and dropped lifeless in their own tracks. He wondered if in fact they had done this long ago.
Chapter 38
Cook followed Logan from the airport and watched and listened over the transmitter as he and Bert Meyer were pulled over. Cook suspected that Rizzo was making his move the minute he saw the "cop"
get out of the car and start looking furtively around him. Cops worried about only one thing when they pulled someone over, and that was who and what was inside the car. This guy was more concerned with who was watching him. When Cook heard the cop talk to Hunter, he broke out in a sweat.
Cook followed at a safe distance as Hunter was driven onto the Belt Parkway. He was right behind them when suddenly the cop doubled back on the expressway. Cook didn't jam on his breaks and try to follow. That would have given him away. He kept his cool and doubled back as safely as he could at the next exit. Losing audio contact because of the distance between him and Logan would have made a less experienced agent panic. But Cook could afford to be patient. The homing disc that Hunter Logan wore on the underside of the transmitter would tell him where the quarterback was being taken, and they would have to stop somewhere before Rizzo could talk to Hunter. When they did stop, Cook could catch up and get in audio range again.
Cook popped open the computer case and followed the homing track toward Brooklyn. He was led into the parking lot of a seedy motel off the highway. He was in range now, and the audio came back. Cook stopped quickly and flipped on his recorder. He heard a rough voice saying, . . gonna look real good on the wall..."