He tapped the intercom button on the front gate, smiled at the security camera, and waited until he was buzzed through. He took the stairs, then waited again until Janelle took her sweet time opening the door.
“Mr. Blackstone,” she said without any of her usual charm. She didn’t like him, what he did, or how he did it, and she did little to hide her feelings.
“Mrs. Alden,” he said as amiably as he could. “How are you doing today?”
“We had a death in the family. How do you think I’m doing?”
“Oh yeah. Terrible thing. Peter was a good guy. We’ll all miss him.” He capped the hollow sentiment with an equally disingenuous shake of his head. He waited for her to invite him in.
She didn’t. “My husband is downstairs,” she said, turning away and leaving him standing in the open doorway.
In the real world, My husband is downstairs might mean He’s in the rec room or He’s working out in the gym next to the boiler. But Hunter Alden didn’t live in the real world. He was in the 1 percent of the 1 percent. His downstairs was a cedar and stone grotto that housed a swimming pool, a sauna, and a hot tub—a lush tropical paradise that cost millions to build, and millions more to maintain a perfect temperature-humidity balance during the grim New York winter.
Hunter was soaking in the tub, a glass of red wine in his right hand, two cell phones sitting on a towel within easy reach of his left.
His eyes were lethal weapons, and they were locked and loaded with loathing and disgust. They drilled into Blackstone. “What do you have on the Puerto Rican kid?” he said.
“Lonnie may not be the friend Tripp thinks he is. He’s gone. In the wind.”
“Of course he’s gone. He got taken when they took Tripp.”
“Or maybe it was just staged to look that way. His grandmother didn’t seem to be too worried that he’s missing. She played dumb, but I’m sure she knows plenty.”
“Then put somebody on her around the clock.”
“Waste of time, boss. Lonnie’s not stupid. He’s not going home to Grandma. I have a better idea. Let me scrub Tripp’s computer.”
“His computer? Really? You think he put it in his calendar? ‘Shoot movie. Get kidnapped.’”
“Look. Eight times out of ten,” Silas said, inventing a statistic, “when somebody takes a kid, it’s someone he knows. If Tripp was in touch with this guy by email or through chat rooms, I’ll find him.”
“And then what?”
“Tripp comes home safe and sound. We turn this guy over to the cops—”
“Have you not been paying attention? The last thing I want is this guy talking to the cops, or a DA, or a judge. I don’t want him talking to anyone. Ever. I want him dead.”
Blackstone didn’t blink. He’d heard it before. No euphemisms. Not “I have a business problem.” Not “I want him eliminated.” Just a flat-out “I want him dead.”
“I’ll call Wheeler and get a price.”
“I don’t have time to dick around. Tell him I’ll pay him double what I paid him the last time.”
“Will do. Anything else?”
Alden polished off what was left in his glass and lifted it above his head. Blackstone reflexively took it and walked to the bar. The wine bottle was nearly depleted. He poured what was left into Hunter’s glass and handed it back to him.
He downed it in one swallow. “The computer is in Tripp’s room,” he said. “If Janelle asks you why you’re taking it, tell her Tripp called, and you’re running it up to his school for him.”
“She doesn’t know he’s missing?”
“Why would I tell her? What is she going to do besides annoy the shit out of me? She knows Peter is dead. Apart from that, she doesn’t know anything about anything, and it better stay that way. So keep your mouth shut.”
“I always do,” Silas said. “You want me to open another bottle of wine?”
Hunter lifted himself out of the hot tub. “I’ll get my own wine. You just call Wheeler and tell him I’m making room in my freezer for another head.”
Chapter 17
Tripp Alden was huddled in a corner on the floor, his six-hundred-dollar goose down parka zipped and wrapped tightly around him. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Six feet away, Lonnie Martinez, wearing a Barnaby Prep hoodie and a polyester fleece jacket, sat with his knees pulled up to his chest. “You said that already.”
“I know, but I can’t stop thinking about it. You’re only here because of me. It’s my fault.”
Lonnie shook his head. “Is it your fault that some nut job snatched you off the street?”
“Hey, I’ve known my whole life that this could happen to me. My father’s rich. Ever since I was a little kid he’d pound into me, ‘Watch who you talk to, watch where you go.’ So what do I do? I go up to Harlem, and I wind up in the back of a van. When I get home he’s going to tear me a new one.”
“Tripp, I know you think your dad is a dick, but what are you supposed to do? Live in a bubble? Dude, if some wacko with a stun gun wants to grab you, he’s going to grab you. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Harlem or on Park Avenue.”
“Tell that to my old man.”
“The only thing I want to tell your father is, ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Alden, sir, for coughing up the ransom money to get me and Tripp out.’”
“He’s not going to cough up anything so fast,” Tripp said.
Lonnie scooted his butt across the floor so he was toe to toe with Tripp. “What are you saying? He’s going to let us rot here?”
“Relax: we’ll get out. But not because my father is all heart. He’s got ransom insurance.”
Lonnie lifted both shoulders in a shrug. “Never heard of it.”
“You know how people have car insurance?” Tripp said. “If you’re in an accident, the insurance company pays to have the car repaired. I have ransom insurance. Somebody takes me, the insurance company pays off the kidnapper.”
Lonnie stood up. “Then why the hell are we still locked up, starving, and freezing to death? Where’s the insurance guy with the check? He can settle up with the asshole who took us and get us out of here.”
Tripp laughed. “It’s a little more complicated than that. Plus I know my father. However much money this guy asks for, he’ll negotiate.”
“Why? I thought you said the insurance company pays.”
“Up to a point. After that it comes out of my father’s pocket.”
Lonnie leaned against the wall and stared down at Tripp. “Then I’m dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your father. If he starts negotiating with this guy, then I’m dead meat. That crazy-ass dude will kill me.”
“Kill you? Why would he kill you? We’re not worth anything to him dead.”
“You’re not worth anything dead. You’re this guy’s hole card. Me? I’m not worth shit. Use your brain, Tripp. Your father has more money in his sock drawer than my entire family has had since…since forever. My grandmother makes twelve fifty an hour as a food demonstrator. What’s she going to do? Pay a kidnapper off with samples of Greek yogurt and Bavarian sausage?”
“Chill out. My father will pay for both of us.”
“Oh yeah. I bet he can’t wait to fill up a duffel bag with a couple of million to save my sorry Puerto Rican ass.”
“My father is not going to let you die.”
“Tripp, think about it. This guy who put us in here, he knows how much money he wants. The number doesn’t matter. Let’s just say it’s X dollars. He tells your father how much.”
“Okay.”
“But then your father starts haggling with him. He says ‘How about half of X?’ So now the kidnapper gets all pissed off.”
“My father pisses everybody off when he negotiates. It’s how he wears people down.”
“But the kidnapper isn’t like a regular business guy. He knows your father can afford X, or ten X, or a hundred X. So he figures, ‘Okay, I’m goin
g to send this asshole a message.’”
“Like what?”
“Like in The Godfather when the Hollywood producer wakes up and finds a horse’s head in his bed. That’s the kind of message kidnappers send. That’s the way they get what they want.”
“So what are you saying? This guy is going to kill me to get my father to pay the full amount?”
“No, Tripp. He’s not going to kill you. He’s going to kill me. Don’t you get it? I’m the horse’s head!”
Tripp wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. It all made too much sense. He folded his arms and hugged the parka to his chest. “Oh,” he said, looking up at his best friend. “Then I guess I know what that makes me.”
Chapter 18
We pulled up to the Alden town house for the second time in a few hours. This time it came as no surprise that Blackstone’s Audi was parked out front.
Kylie flashed her badge at the security camera, and we were buzzed through the gate. A familiar face opened the door. I’d seen pictures of Janelle Alden, but they didn’t do her justice. Up close she was heart-stopping. Green eyes, blond hair, pink sweater, blue jeans—all my favorite colors on one incredible-looking woman.
“Mrs. Alden,” I said. “NYPD.”
She let us in. “Thank you for coming,” she said, a soft, sweet smile on her face like she’d invited us over for cocktails. “Do you have any—what’s the right word—leads?”
“We’re working on it,” I said. “We spoke to your husband earlier, and we’re here to do a follow-up. Is he home?”
“Hunter is at the pool,” she said as casually as most people might say “He’s in the kitchen.” To her, having a private indoor pool on the Upper East Side of Manhattan must have seemed perfectly normal.
We took the elevator downstairs, and she led us through a jungle of lush, exotic trees.
Silas Blackstone saw us first. “Detectives,” he said. “We meet again. How goes the homicide investigation?”
I ignored the question and looked down at Hunter Alden, who was soaking in a hot tub, a glass of wine in his hand. The flushed skin, drooping eyelids, and sagging cheeks let me know this was far from his first drink of the day.
“Any news on Peter?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “Have you heard from your son?”
“Not since last night,” he said, putting a little spin of exasperation on it to make sure we knew that we were wasting his time.
“He wasn’t in school today.”
Alden shook his head. “Kids,” he said as if a single word could explain away the disappearance of a person of interest in a murder case.
“Tripp texted one of his teachers last night. He said he was on his way to Rochester to interview some people for that film he’s shooting.”
Hunter nodded. “That makes sense. My father has family up there.”
“We found his Prius on 136th Street this morning and impounded it,” Kylie said. “We were wondering how he’d get upstate without a car.”
“Yeah, that’s a real stumper, Detective,” Alden said. “But I’m going to take a wild guess and say train, bus, plane out of La Guardia. The kid is resourceful. He’ll figure it out. What I can’t figure out is why you’re not looking for Peter’s killer. Why are you so focused on Tripp? Do you think he’s got some magical lead that will solve this case for you?”
“Sir,” Kylie said, “we told you this morning that—”
“And I told you this morning that Peter Chevalier was a skirt chaser. There are a dozen jealous husbands and boyfriends who’d be happy to cut his head and his balls off. There’s your lead. As for my son, I promised you that when I heard from him, I would have him call you. The fact that you’re back a few hours later badgering me with the same request borders on harassment. Do you understand that, or would it help if I called your superiors and had them explain it to you?”
Before Kylie or I could answer, one of the cell phones sitting on the towel rang. Not the one with the leather case embossed with the initials HHA, but the piece of crap AT&T flip phone you can pick up at Best Buy for twenty bucks.
Silas jumped. Hunter stared at it but didn’t move.
“You want me to answer it?” Janelle Alden said after the third ring.
“Let it go,” Hunter said, “but I would very much appreciate it if you showed these two officers to the front door.”
Another ring, but Hunter didn’t budge. He stared at us over the rim of his wineglass, defiantly ignoring the phone.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Alden,” I said, slowly, deliberately. Kylie and I weren’t going anywhere.
“We realize this has been a stressful day for you,” she said.
The phone rang two more times. And then it stopped.
“We’ll be in touch,” I said, waiting for the burner phone to ring again. It didn’t.
We took the elevator upstairs with Janelle. “You’ll have to forgive my husband,” she said. “He’s very upset about Peter’s death.”
“We completely understand,” I said, my response as full of crap as her explanation of Alden’s behavior. “Do you know where your son is?”
“No, but he’s eighteen. I can’t always…” She shrugged off the rest of the answer.
“Did he contact you last night?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No,” she repeated.
“It’s important that we talk to him,” I said. “Here’s my card. If he calls you, please have him call me.”
“Absolutely,” she said, flashing me a beauty-pageant-winning smile.
So far our investigation hadn’t turned up much, but there was one thing I knew for sure. Of all the people who had lied to me today, Janelle Alden was by far the prettiest.
Chapter 19
The man who knew the one secret that could destroy Hunter Alden’s life, his legacy, and his entire financial empire sat in his Subaru Outback, heater running, watching the people come and go at the house on East 81st Street.
He had no idea who the short man in the Audi was, but the vanity license plates were a good place to start. He Googled “SDB” and came up with assorted acronyms—a talent agency in Los Angeles, a website for the school district of Beloit, Wisconsin—and then, jackpot: SDB Investigative Services in New York, New York.
A picture of the founder, Silas David Blackstone, was on the home page. The diminutive Mr. B was a private eye.
The two cops who showed up ten minutes later were much easier to identify. Detectives Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald had made the front page twice, for taking down the two most notorious serial killers in recent New York history: first The Chameleon, and then the Hazmat Killer.
Peter Chevalier’s murder had also made page one. If it bleeds it leads, and a headless body in the park always helps sell newspapers. But the man in the Subaru didn’t care about getting ink. He wasn’t killing for glory. He was only in it to make a buck—a hundred million of them, to be exact.
He wished he could see the look on Hunter Alden’s face when he heard that number. Calling the burner phone while the cops were in the house hadn’t been part of his original plan. It was pure inspiration. A little improv. Alden wouldn’t dare answer with Jordan and MacDonald breathing down his neck. They left within minutes of the call, obviously booted out by a control freak desperately trying to control something.
The two cops were smart enough to know that Tripp had been kidnapped, but without a formal complaint from the Aldens, they were bound by the rules of NYPD to stay out of it.
Silas Blackstone, on the other hand, was a hired gun who made up his own rules as he went along. SDB would be trouble.
The man in the Subaru was prepared for trouble. Overprepared. He had studied The Art of War, the definitive Chinese treatise on military strategy written twenty-five hundred years ago by the brilliant general and philosopher Sun Tzu. He had then spent three months and thousands of dollars planning every detail of the operation with military precision. And when he was finally ready,
he had stepped back and asked himself, “What haven’t I thought of?”
He didn’t know what he didn’t know, but if the goal was to be ready for any situation, he needed an arsenal. Not just weapons, but the same sophisticated equipment that was used by anyone orchestrating a clandestine operation.
He had found everything he needed on the Internet. There were hundreds of online retailers selling surveillance devices and other tools of the espionage trade to jealous wives, paranoid employers, Peeping Toms, or, in his case, a kidnapper with a hundred million dollars at stake.
For his money, the best one on the Web was Cheaters Spy Shop. There was a backpack on the floor of the car filled with covert paraphernalia he’d bought from the company, much of which he had ordered “just in case.” He pulled it up on the passenger seat, rummaged through it, and found what he was looking for: a micro GPS tracker. Weatherproof, magnetic, and, most important, wireless.
He got out of the Subaru, walked toward Blackstone’s car, bent down as if to tie his shoe, and within seconds the tracker was held fast to the underbelly of the Audi.
He returned to his car, and thirty minutes later, Blackstone emerged from the town house carrying a laptop under his arm. He got into the Audi and drove it to 89th and York. The man in the Subaru tracked his journey every inch of the way without even moving from his parking spot on East 81st.
The GPS worked perfectly. He smiled as he realized that, like the legendary General Sun Tzu, the vehicle tracker was another glorious gift from the land of dragons and emperors.
Chapter 20
Kylie could barely wait till we got back in the car.
“Holy shit,” she said as soon as the doors were closed. “Do you realize who just called Alden while we were standing there?”
“Well, gosh, Detective,” I said in my best country bumpkin voice, “I know you graduated first in our class at the academy, and I only came in sixth, but since Mr. Alden didn’t pick up the phone, I’m going to take a wild stab at it and say it was one of them telemarketers.”
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