by Jason Pinter
“You know, as dumb as we were,” Ray said, “things could have gone worse the other night. Much worse.”
“Sure could have,” Vince said, a forkful of dripping egg sliding back onto his plate. “What d’you think would have happened if the cops had come before we’d taken care of the place?”
Vince stopped chewing. Put the fork down. “We would have been in a world of shit. Years wasted,” Ray said. Vince nodded as if he’d figured out the right answer on a multiple-choice test.
“Not really wasted. I mean, it’s been fun, right? We’ve made money.”
“You know we’re not doing this for money, for our health,” Ray said. “This isn’t some two-bit scam we’re pulling. There are lives at stake.”
Vince laughed. “You mean like Petrovsky,” he said with a goofy smile.
“No,” Ray seethed. “Not fucking Petrovsky. Lives that matter. Petrovsky was a degenerate. He was a means to an end. And we have to protect that end, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
Ray lowered his voice. “I’ll be talking to our friend later. We need to make sure everything is sealed up on our end. No doubt they’ll find out that house was registered in my name. I’ll play the ‘woe is me’ card, but let it end there. There isn’t enough evidence in that house of anything. I gave it a once-through before we lit the match. Now I’m not too worried about the Hobbs police. If anything they’re doing a good job protecting what we’ve created. But that Parker reporter, we can’t give him anything more to latch onto. The New York media gets hold of this, it goes national. Nobody gives two shits about a poor kid in a poor city.”
“I hear you, Ray. Geez, it’s not like I don’t know this already.”
“Fucking Parker,” Ray said. “Never been so stupid in my life. Ten years ago, no way that kid gets the jump on me. Never used to underestimate folks. All of a sudden Parker can ID me and probably you. His word against mine, and I’ve already spoken to our friend who’s good with tools who’ll claim I was working late that night. So here’s what happens. If it even looks like this guy might throw a wrench into things, we don’t wait for him to fall into our lap. We take him out. And the girl if necessary. No more cigarettes, no more nicey-nice. Quick, simple, and they disappear.”
“Like those kids we nabbed,” Vince said, satisfied.
“No. Not like those kids. Parker and Davies have to stay gone.”
31
Manhattan’s 19th Precinct was located on Sixty-Seventh Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. I’d only been there once, just a month or so after I’d arrived in New York. It was to report a lost or possibly stolen cell phone. I’d filled out a form with my information, handed it to the cop behind the front desk, and that was the last I ever heard about it. Probably for the best. The NYPD has more important crimes to worry about than who took my Nokia.
Curt had worked at the 19th going on three years. I knew he was well respected within the department, one of those up-and-comers that are a rare breed in that they’re both clean-cut enough to stick on a recruiting poster, but hardworking and intuitive enough to gain the respect of the rank and file.
It was this respect that I was counting on as Amanda and I entered the precinct. The majority of cops had no love lost for me, and despite being vindicated many still considered me responsible for the death of one of their own. The irony was that even though the department loved Curt’s image, he couldn’t have cared less. That’s the only reason he agreed to bring me into his precinct. It wouldn’t win him any friends, but it would help uncover the truth.
The precinct was up a short flight of stairs. It had a red brick facade and an arched entryway, bracketed by two green lamps, above which hung a yellow banner that read “Thank you for your support.” The banner was bookended by two images: the American flag and the badge of the NYPD.
Curt led Amanda and me through the precinct, though not nearly as fast as I would have liked. I could feel eyeballs boring holes through me as we snaked through the corridors, and knew that many of these men had worked with, probably known, John Fredrickson. A few years back, I defended two people Fredrickson was beating to death, and in the struggle the man’s gun went off, killing him. I didn’t know he was a cop, and his death was the result of choices made long before I came along. Yet perception was reality, and the feeling was if I hadn’t stuck my nose in, he’d still be alive.
“Just this way,” Curt said. We followed him down the hall into a row of cubicles, each one set up with large, likely obsolete computers. We entered a larger cubicle which was set up in a U-shape, two computers at either end. The walls were covered with crime-scene photos, mug shots, business cards. Curt pulled up a pair of chairs, then sat in a larger one. He shifted around a few times, then leaned forward and scratched his ass.
“That’s lovely,” Amanda said.
“Hey, if you can convince Chief Carruthers to spend an extra nickel on chairs that don’t make your ass feel like it’s the wrong side of a Velcro strip, you’d be spared seeing illicit activities such as these.”
“Is it really that bad?” I asked.
“Man, come around here during lunchtime when the detectives are all eating at their desks. You’d think a family of porcupines must have made a nest in every seat. Like a messed-up orchestra, all scratching at the time same.”
I said, “Think I’ll file that under ‘visual imagery I hope to file away and never see again.’ So what is this here?”
“Here is where we find out about the criminal record for this guy Benjamin, the dude listed on the property deed on Huntley Terrace. You’re sure this Ray Benjamin is the same cat who hung you out to dry in that tinderbox out on Huntley?”
“I can’t be sure, but that’s what we’re here to find out.”
“Now, you said this guy made a comment about serving time up at Attica, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then our boy’s damn sure got a record. Which means he’s just a mouse click away from being ours.”
Curt logged in to a database, then proceeded to enter first name “Raymond,” last name “Benjamin,” into the fields. He plugged the years 1968 and 1972 into another field marked “date range.” He clicked a box marked “Caucasian” and pressed the search key. One of those helpful little hourglass icons appeared on the screen. On my computer, the sand fell through the hourglass at roughly the same speed as cars cruising Fifth Avenue during the Puerto Rican Day parade.
A few minutes and ass scratches later, the hourglass disappeared and a file appeared on the screen. A mug shot appeared in the top-right corner of the page. I recognized the man in the image at once.
“That’s him,” I said, pointing to the screen like I was picking him out of a lineup. “Holy shit, that’s the guy.”
“From the other night?” Curt said. “This is Raymond Benjamin.”
I nodded. “No doubt.”
Despite the picture being at least twenty years old, it was easy to tell this was the same man. The man in this photo had a fuller head of hair, fewer lines cutting across his face, but the look in his eye was the same. Defiance. Anger.
“There’s no scar,” I said. “When I saw Benjamin that night, there was a faint scar on his right cheek. There’s nothing like that in this picture.”
“Let’s see here,” Curt said. He clicked a button, then the photo enlarged. Curt highlighted a line below the photo. “Mug shot, dated 1969.”
“Probably the last shot taken before he was sent to Attica,” I said.
Amanda traced her finger down the man’s cheek on the screen. “So if this photo was taken before he went to prison, there’s certainly a chance he either got that scar in jail or afterward.”
“Yeah, the scar actually did zigzag a little bit, like it had been stitched up by someone who got their medical license at the local butcher shop.” I looked at Curt. “This is the only photo on record for this guy?”
“Afraid so,” he said. “So what I want to know is how a dude
who got busted for armed robbery in the sixties ended up buying a house that got burned down over thirty years later?”
“After he almost barbecued my balls,” I added. “And if the house is owned by a three-time loser, why did the inside look fit for the Huxtables?”
“Obviously the house was in his name, but that was to hide whoever actually lived there,” Amanda said.
“What I think happened,” I said, “is that this guy Benjamin bought the house as a front. I’m not quite sure what the catalyst was, but a husband and wife named Robert and Elaine Reed have actually been the ones living on Huntley.”
“They weren’t in the fire though,” Amanda said.
“No, no bodies found. Not that Russian doctor or anyone else,” Curt said.
“So the papers are in this guy Benjamin’s name, but he sublets it to the Reeds. Only there’s no paperwork or documentation. The Reeds have a young son, Patrick, but according to receipts from a local toy store they’d been purchasing gifts for a young girl within the past month. I think very recently, the Reeds added a young girl to their family. Only I don’t think they did it through conception or adoption.”
“In vitro?” Curt said.
“No.”
“Adopted a kid from Zaire?”
“Uh-uh. I think they kidnapped a child, and until that house burned down they’d been holding the girl just like whoever took Daniel Linwood and Michelle Oliveira had done. Amanda, you saw all the toys in the room you were held in. This wasn’t some medieval torture chamber, this was a home. A place for a family to live.”
Amanda reluctantly nodded. “Actually reminded me a little of my room when I went to live with Lawrence and Harriet Stein,” she said. She turned to Curt. “I was adopted. My parents died when I was young, then I went from orphanage to orphanage until the Steins took me home. I remember my room feeling not really like an actual room a young girl would live in, but the kind of room parents thought a girl would want to live in. Too many floral patterns, too many dolls. Just overkill to the extreme.”
“That’s why the Reeds racked up a hefty bill at Toyz 4 Fun,” I said. “They were pampering this kid like she was their own.”
Curt said, “So why kidnap a kid if you’re not holding her for a ransom? What, you just pamper her for a few years and then let her go? I mean, you’re comparing this Girl X to Danny Linwood and Michelle Oliveira. Both those kids wound up returning home unharmed. If what you’re saying is true, the Reeds planned to eventually let this kid go. Why go through all that trouble?”
“So she’d feel like a part of their family,” I said. “When I interviewed Danny Linwood, he made a brief reference to his ‘brothers.’ I didn’t think much of it at first, but combined with this, I think all three of these kids were taken with the intent of ingratiating them into their ‘new’ families.”
“But why?” Amanda said. “If the kidnappers knew they were going to let them go, why bother?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But what scares me is that the Reeds somehow knew Raymond Benjamin. He owned the house they used. So how did a supposedly regular family, a loving father and mother with a young son, wind up in bed with a career criminal, and end up stealing someone else’s child?”
None of us had the answer.
“So what else can I do?” Curt said.
“We need to confirm that the Reeds did in fact kidnap another child. And if we do that, and we can find out who that child is, hopefully we can find the Reeds and they can answer all these questions.”
“It’ll be tough,” Curt said. “I can submit a request for a breakdown of all children reported missing within the past two weeks, but unless we can narrow down where the child was from we’re basically looking in every town in every city in the country.”
I thought for a moment. Then I said to Curt, “Cross-check your records with Yardley Medical Center, the pediatrics unit. I have a feeling whatever child was taken was born in Hobbs County, and was a patient of Dr. Petrovsky’s, just like Daniel Linwood and Michelle Oliveira.”
“How can you be sure?” Amanda said.
“Thiamine levels,” I said. “I spoke to Jack’s doctor at Bellevue and asked what might cause a child to go through what Daniel and Michelle did. According to him, it’s likely they both suffered from a severe case of anterograde amnesia, exacerbated by depleted thiamine levels. He said that it was technically a form of short-term brain damage, but when thiamine and vitamin B1 levels dropped in patients whose thiamine levels were low to begin with, it could cause exactly what afflicted Daniel and Michelle. I think whoever has been kidnapped was born with low thiamine levels, and Dr. Petrovsky supervised it all.”
Amanda said, “That would have to mean the kids were preselected based on their medical histories. Which means Petrovsky knew which kids to look out for.”
“I think there’s a strong chance he did just that. So this new Girl X was chosen for the same reasons Dan and Michelle were years ago—they were susceptible to having their thiamine levels tampered with to a far greater degree than a normal child. With the right—or wrong—nutrition and care, you could almost literally give a child short-term brain damage and harm their memory receptors.”
“Which would explain why Daniel and Michelle didn’t remember a thing about their time missing,” Amanda said. “And it means the Reeds are expecting the same thing from this kid. Girl X.”
“Find her,” I said to Curt. “I’m tired of this bullshit, like one lost kid doesn’t matter. What, because Hobbs County and Meriden got a few extra bucks, a few of the houses got a nice coat of paint, this is all swept under the carpet? These kids are giving their lives for some awful cause I don’t understand.”
“I hear you, man. Give me some time,” Curt said. “I’ll need to get medical records from Petrovsky’s office, which won’t be easy, especially since the dude’s disappeared.”
“He’s dead,” I said. “There’s just no body to bury.”
“Either way, the guy won’t be answering his phone. Give me a day. I’ll get an answer.”
“Thanks, Curt, every second counts. Benjamin wasn’t expecting us to follow Petrovsky, and who knows if the Reeds are even still alive. There’s a chance that, like Petrovsky, they ‘disappeared’ the Reeds so nobody could ask questions. We need to see if we can find the Reeds before Benjamin takes desperate measures. And this is a guy who seems to be redefining the term.”
32
Raymond Benjamin dialed the number of the motel. He’d made the reservation for the Reeds just before he’d told them what was going to happen to their home. He’d broken it to them matter-of-factly. He’d told them they might have to leave at a moment’s notice, but didn’t really believe himself it would ever come to that. Elaine seemed pretty unnerved but agreed to cooperate. Like always. Bob stayed silent, nodded at his wife’s approval. But now it was Ray who was unnerved.
When the receptionist picked up, he said, “Yes, can you connect me to the room of Robert and Elaine Reed?”
“Hold a moment, sir.” Ray heard typing in the background. “Sir, we don’t have any record of anyone by that name checking in.”
“But you do have a reservation, right?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Reed, weekly rates, supposed to have checked in yesterday, but according to this they haven’t.”
“Fuck me,” Ray said.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Nothing. You’re sure about that?”
“Yes, sir. Would you like me to have a message waiting for them when they do check in?”
Ray slammed the phone down on the cradle so hard the plastic receiver broke in half. It took him far too long to jimmy open the door to the pay phone booth, and finally he cracked the glass when he kicked it inward with his foot. Vince was leaning up against the car, an errant toothpick sticking out of his mouth. Either it was lodged between two teeth or the man had simply forgotten it was there. Ray had a sudden desire to smack the thing out of his mouth. But he restrain
ed himself.
This wasn’t going as he’d hoped. Things had taken a drastic turn once Parker and the girl had arrived at the house on Huntley, and that necessitated burning the place down. Of course, doing that meant relocating the Reed family, which was an ordeal in and of itself.
He’d begun to worry about Bob and Elaine from nearly the moment they took the girl home. There was something in their eyes that was different from the other families, a sense of sorrow that worried him from the start. He’d told them from the first time he met them that they’d have to be strong. Keep everything in perspective. Look at this as short-term pain for a long-term solution. They were doing it for the right reasons, and years from now they’d be happy they did it.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Bob and Elaine had a motive. There was a reason they were chosen. The same way there was a reason Ray was good at his job, he expected the Reeds to live up to their end of the deal. Looking back on that one week that shaped Raymond Benjamin into what he’d become, he knew how fast one moment could change everything.
Few people knew the truth about Raymond Benjamin. That all of the violence, everything that had occurred during the horrific, bloody days from September 9 to September 13 was because of him. While the riots started because the Attica prisoners were tired of being treated like animals, there was one spark that started the explosion.
The week of September 2, 1971, a small metal bucket was placed inside Ray’s cell. It contained about a gallon of water. The guard told him it was his weekly supply of water to shower with. On September 8, during mess hall, Ray mouthed off about the food. He didn’t remember his exact words, but it boiled down to the meat loaf tasting like it had been some poor guy’s meat. That got him one cigarette burn behind his knee.
The next morning, on September 9, Raymond Benjamin thought he was in for the worst day of his life. The previous night, one of the guards came by, dropping a single roll of toilet paper into Ray’s cell. Hope you got a clean ass, ’cause this is the last one you’re getting until the end of the month.