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With love to my wife, Lynn Harnett, who gave me the story, and to my cousin FBI Special Agent James McCarty, who could be Randall Shane
Thanks to Sandra Aitken and Peggy Ruggieri, two of the best gown-makers in the known universe, for helping Jane Garner establish her business.
PROLOGUE Kids Like Balloons
Ricky Lang dreams of his three children. Sometimes they are dressed in white cotton nightshirts emblazoned with cartoons from the Magic Kingdom. Goofy and Mickey and various ducks. Sometimes the children appear to be wearing garments made of light, glowing with an intensity that makes his eyes hurt. Sometimes the two girls float above the ground, grinning like mischievous angels while his son, four-year-old Tyler, tugs at his sisters as if they are wayward balloons. Making a game of pulling them down. Sleeping or waking, it does not matter, he dreams of the children. For instance at this very moment he’s wide-awake, lounging in the hot, hushed shade of his tiki hut, staring at the glistening blue water in his brand-new swimming pool. Sipping on a tall iced tea and wondering why the water looks like Ty-D-bowl, the same bright color, and all the while his three children stand in a row on the far side of the pool. Dressed in their bathing suits, of course. All three of them waiting for his signal. His permission to enter the water. Waiting so patiently. The children can’t be there, he knows that.
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“Myla!” he bellows. “Get out here!” Myla hurries out of the house. Slim brown legs, wears little white shorts low on her slender hips and a Victoria’s Secret cami top he purchased online. She’s barefoot, balancing a tray laden with sandwiches and salsa chips. They’ve been together for two months, more or less, and she wants to please him. Nothing pleases Ricky, but she keeps trying. “Hurry up, woman!” Myla is barely twenty, has little experience with powerful men. Her big eyes always register a little fear at the sound of his voice, which is just the way he likes it. “Never mind the food,” he says. “Hit the pool.” “Pool?” “Swim,” Ricky says. “In the water.” “We’re going to swim?” asks Myla, confused. A few minutes ago he was demanding lunch at ten in the morning, not exactly lunchtime. “Not me. You. Go change.” Myla carefully sets down the tray. Smiles at Ricky and then licks a tiny daub of mayonnaise from the side of her hand, delicately, like a cat tonguing its pretty paw. “What should I wear?” “Whatever,” Ricky says. “Use the cabana. Hurry.” Without a word, Myla hurries away, heading for the striped cabana. She looks pleased and hopeful, as if of the true belief that obeying his command, this particular command, will make him happy. Ricky stares at the plate of sandwiches. Normally he’s a man of vast appetites, but not this morning. The faintly salty odor of albacore tuna and finely chopped celery makes him feel slightly queasy. “Myla!”
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“Coming, Ricky!” A few minutes later she emerges from the cabana wearing the latest itsy-bitsy-teeny bikini. Juicy, that’s what it says on her butt, in big white letters. Ricky likes the idea that he gets to read her ass—that’s why he selected this particular item—but at the moment sex is the furthest thing from his mind. Normally he can’t be around Myla for ten minutes without getting the urge, but today he has other things rattling around inside his head. Myla executes a lithe pirouette, showing off her new swimsuit. “You like?” “Yeah, baby. Get in the pool. Swim.” Myla lowers herself to the edge of the swimming pool, gingerly, because the tiles are hot. She’s not much of a swimmer, and this is how she enters the pool, by slipping cautiously into the chemical-blue water, no splashing. Ricky likes to dive, belly flop, get things wet. Not Myla. Very careful girl. Ricky isn’t sure if he really likes careful, not for the long term, but for the moment she’ll do. “Go on,” he urges. “Swim.” She smiles, bright and nervous, and then begins to dogpaddle. Carefully, so as not to wet her hair. Ricky waits until she’s halfway through the first lap before checking to see if the children have gone. He sighs. The muscles in his shoulders and his gut unclench. “Like this, Ricky?” Myla calls from the pool. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Good.” It worked. Myla pushed his children back into the dream. Wherever dreams are supposed to go when you’re awake, that’s where the children went. Which is good, because seeing them there all in a row, ready to jump in the pool at his command, it made him want to scream.
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He picks up a triangle of sandwich, eats. Delicious. The sense of relief pervades every fiber of his body. He begins to think clearly, and among the thoughts is the nugget of a plan. A plan of action. Something that must be done. Something long overdue. After a while Myla calls out from the pool. “Ricky? Can I stop now, Ricky?” “Nah,” he says, not looking. “Keep swimming.”
Part I Island Girls
1. The Girl On The Crotch Rocket It all starts to go wrong one perfect, early summer evening on the Hempstead Turnpike. That’s when something pulls on the secret thread that holds my life together, and starts the great unraveling. I don’t know it at the time, of course. I think all is well, that I’m holding things together, as always. Okay, Kelly and I have been fighting a lot lately, but that’s what happens with teenagers, right? All I have to do is stick to my guns, keep on being an involved parent, paying attention to my willful daughter, and everything will come out fine. Right? I couldn’t have been more wrong. Normally I try to avoid the turnpike at peak traffic hours, but this time there’d been no choice. Mrs. Haley Tanner wanted a third fitting for the wedding party, and when Haley calls, you drop whatever and respond. She and her new husband are hosting her stepdaughter’s very lavish wedding— nine tents, two bands, three caterers—at their Oyster Bay estate, and she’s worried the bridesmaids may have put on a pound or two. Despite her obnoxious habit of summoning people at the very last possible moment, Haley is actually sort
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of likable, in a nervous, insecure, please-help-me way. So worried she’s going to do the wrong thing, make a mistake, and demonstrate to Stanley J. Tanner that he chose the wrong trophy wife. Turns out she’s his second trophy wife. Stanley, CEO of Tanner Holdings, ditched the original trophy wife not long after Haley served him broiled cashew halibut at Scalicious, a trendy little fish café in Montauk. At the time Haley was “staying with friends” while she waited tables, which meant she was paying two hundred a week to sleep on the floor. So nabbing Stanley Tanner was a very big deal. Haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Tanner in person myself— he seems to live in his Lear—but just looking at Haley, you know he’s a breast man. Which is fine. A man has to focus on something, right? Why not something that reminds him, however unconsciously, of his mother? As my friend Fern always says, what’s the harm? Anyhow, poor Haley was melting down about the gowns not fitting and had summoned all five bridesmaids. Turns out two of them had actually lost weight and the very slight alterations were, to everyone’s relief, no problem. An hour later I’m thinking, as traffic inches along, that for all that money I wouldn’t trade places with Haley Tanner. I’d rather work my butt off as a single mom with a mortgage. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous, the newest Tanner mansion, tastefully furnished—one of five homes they own, by the way—but Haley never seems to have an unnervous moment or a peaceful thought. And no children, not yet. Maybe never, unless Stanley gets DNA approval. Second trophy wives aren’t about kids, they’re about decorating. Nope, I’ll stay plain Jane Garner, Kelly’s mom, the wedding lady. The go-to woman for custom gowns. The one driv-
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ing the very nicely detailed, seven-year-old Mercedes station wagon. Classy but reasonably priced, if you let the first owner take the depreciation. Anyhow, I’m cool with being a working mom who balances her own checkbook, who is socking college money away for her daughter, and who thinks she has, at this precise moment, no regrets, no regrets at all. Lying to myself, of course. Lying big-time. I’ve been lying for sixteen years, not that I’m counting. Thing about living a lie, if you do it really well, you sort of forget you’re lying. I forgot. That’s when the crotch rocket went by, scudding dirt and pebbles in the brake-down lane. Actually beyond the brakedown lane, right up on the grass. I know it’s the type of sleek Japanese motorcycle called a “crotch rocket” because Kelly told me. Pointed one out as it shot by us in, where was it, somewhere around Greenwich? Greenwich or Westport, one of those towns. See how they bend low over the fuel tank, Mom? That’s to reduce air resistance. And how did my darling daughter know this, exactly? Everybody knows, Mom. That’s her answer lately. Everybody always knows but you, Mom. It’s not like I’m ancient. I’m thirty-four. Kelly thinks I’m thirty-four going on fifty or sixty. Which drives me nuts, but there it is. What catches my eye isn’t the motorcycle—motorcycles cut and weave through traffic all the time—it’s the girl on the back, barely hanging on. One hand clutching the waist of the slim-hipped driver, the other hand waving like she’s riding a bucking bronco in the rodeo, showing off her balance. The girl on the back has no helmet, which is against the law in
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the state of New York, and also very stupid and dangerous, but that seems to be the whole point of motorcycles, right? Something about the girl reminds me of Kelly. Similar stylish mop of short dark hair, frizzed by the wind. Similar petite, gymnast-type figure in tight, hip-hugging jeans. Kelly has jeans like that, but not the tattoo just above the cleft of her buttocks. What Kelly calls a “coin slot.” Not the tattoo, but the cleft, you know? Anyhow, Kelly doesn’t have a tattoo of angel wings spanning the small of her back, because her totally square mom has forbidden tattoos until the age of eighteen at least. And then the girl on the crotch rocket, the wild and crazy girl on the crotch rocket, the girl who is undoubtedly destined to die in some horrible wreck, or from tattoo-induced blood poisoning, that girl turns her pretty head and looks directly at me as the bike careens back onto the highway. Looking a bit startled actually, the girl on the bike. A bit surprised as she makes unintentional eye contact. I scream. Can’t help it, I open my astonished mouth and scream like a girl. It’s Kelly. My daughter Kelly. No doubt about it. 2. Sleep With The Poodles My friend Fern, who knows most of my secrets—not all, but most—she says the only way to win an argument with a teenage girl is to shoot her in the head. That’s just how Fern talks, like she’s related to the Sopranos, very tough in the mouth but soft in the heart. Even looks a little bit like that crazy sister on the show, the one who shot her boyfriend. Not that Fern’s ever shot anybody, certainly not her own daughter, Jessica, who finally went off to college upstate and is doing great. A sweet kid, basically, even though she and Fern can’t
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discuss the weather without arguing. Jess had her moments— I’m thinking specifically of an all-night prom party in Garden City—and at times managed to put Fern over the edge, into psycho-mom territory. You know, threatening to chain her daughter to the radiator, things like that. My favorite was her plan to put a special collar on Jess, the kind for invisible fences. She wants to go Goth, wear those stupid spikes around her neck? Fine! She can sleep with the poodles! Sleep with the poodles. That’s my Fern. Always funny, even when she’s anxious or angry. Even so, she thinks I’m too hard on Kelly, that I am, in her words, projecting. Fern watches a lot of Dr. Phil. You’re projecting your own teen time on Kelly, Fern says, your bad old days.You gotta wrap your brain around the idea she’s not the same as you. She’s her own person and this isn’t the 1980s, this is a whole new century out there. Yadda, yadda. I know. Really, I know. But still I worry. Every day kids get in really bad trouble in this world. They do stupid things with their stupid boyfriends and ruin their lives. They take drugs, wreck cars, have unprotected sex, fall from speeding motorcycles. They think they’ll live forever and throw away the miracle that gave them life. Kelly got her miracle at age nine—actually on her ninth birthday—when all her tests finally came back clear. No more chemo, no more radiation, no more needles in her spine. After four years of pure hell, she was cancer-free. Unlike some of the less fortunate kids in her clinic, kids who never came back for the remission parties. Empty pillows, Kelly called them, or fivers, because one out of five didn’t make it. Is this why she survived and others didn’t, so she can risk her life showing off on Hempstead Turnpike? Riding without a helmet? One-handed? As you might guess, we’ve argued about risk taking a few
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times. More than a few. Last time she actually had the nerve to tell me I was being ironic. Ironic. What did that have to do with snowboarding at night, or hitchhiking? What did ironic have to do with deliberately disobeying my orders? Was ironic what made her roll her eyes, treat me with such withering contempt? No, Mom, ironic isn’t what you are, it’s what you’re afraid of. Sixteen-year-old cancer survivor killed crossing the street. That’s ironic. Stopped me cold, that one. Of course she’s right. But I do feel that she’s been given a gift and should treat it reverently. But Kelly doesn’t do reverence. Not for herself, not for me, not even for the dead grandmother—my own semi-sainted mom—she used to worship as a kid. Reverence would be so uncool, and for a sixteen-year-old being uncool is way worse than death. Despite being trapped in traffic for another twenty unbearable minutes, I still manage to get home long before she does, and I’m in the kitchen, waiting. Boy, am I waiting. Arms crossed, feet tapping, blood pressure spiking. I’m so anxious and angry at her out-of-control behavior that I don’t even dare leave a message on her cell. Can’t trust myself not to wig out and say something that can’t be taken back, something that will drive her further away. I’m working over all of this stuff, rehearsing, ready to let loose with major mom artillery. As soon as she gets her skinny, tattooed butt inside the door, there will be massive inflictions of guilt. There will be bomb craters of guilt. It isn’t just the boy or the motorcycle or the tattoo. That, unfortunately, has become typical Kelly behavior in the past year or so. What really whacks me is that my daughter is morphing into someone I don’t know. Someone who has no
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respect for me, who all too often doesn’t even seem to like me very much. It’s scary when that happens. Scary enough to make me want to cry, mourning my beautiful little girl. The one who was so strong for me when she was ill. The one who looked up from her hospital bed—she was so sick that night, so sick!—and said, Don’t worry, Mommy, I’m not going to die. I checked with God and he said not to worry, I’ll be fine. And she was. From that day on Kelly got better. Little by little, day by day, every test showed she was going into remission. Eventually, on that marvelous ninth birthday, that wonderful wonderful birthday, all the blood work, all the scans showed her cancer-free. I thanked God, I thanked the doctors and the nurses, but mostly I thanked Kelly, because she’s the one who never gave up, who never let the disease take over. Anyhow, so that’s my state of mind. We live in the house in Valley Stream I inherited from my mom, the one she bought after she and my dad divorced. A divorce I always figured was partly my fault. All the stress I caused for them when I was Kelly’s age. Guilt, guilt, guilt. The mortgage happened when Mom needed money for a hospice. I told her—promised her—I wouldn’t put a mortgage on the house, that was her gift to me and Kelly, but what can you do? My dad, a New York state trooper, he used to have a saying when he was about to deal with something important: I’m loaded for bear. Well, I thought I was loaded for bear, or at least loaded for Kelly. But when she finally did come home what did her mother do? Mom burst into tears. Because Kelly is smiling that impish smile, the one she first learned moments after being born. That smile I hadn’t
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seen for a while, not directed at me. A smile that breaks my heart because I miss it so. “Mom? Why are you crying? Did something happen?” I’m shaking my head. Can’t get the words out so I point to my lips, and then to her. “You want to talk,” Kelly says. “Sure, yeah. You saw me on the bike. It was really dumb, me not wearing a helmet. I know that and I’m sorry. Seth was wearing his helmet, did you notice? He gave me a hard time, said it was so retarded, not wearing protection for your brainpan. Isn’t it weird he’d say ‘brainpan’? But that’s Seth. And the tattoo, Mom?” Kelly swings around, lifts her little midi-blouse. “It’s a fake. Body art. Got it at this place in Long Beach, on the boardwalk.” I wipe my eyes, blow my nose, very nearly speechless. “Oh, Kelly.” My daughter plunks herself on the stool next to me. With her amazing eyes and her amazing smile, she looks five going on twenty. “You’ve got to get over this worry thing, Mom. I’m okay. Really. The helmet? Won’t happen again.” “People get killed on motorcycles,” I respond, my voice husky. “Yeah, they do. They get killed by lightning, too. And by worrying themselves to death.” “Who’s Seth?” Kelly looks at her fingernails. “You’re going to ground me, right?” “Absolutely.” “Then I better go to my room,” she says, and flounces away, as if it’s fun to be grounded. As if being grounded was her idea. She stops on the stairway, looking back at me in the kitchen.
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“Don’t worry, okay?” she says. “There’s just totally no reason to worry about me.” But there is. Big-time. And, as it turns out, for a much bigger reason than I ever imagined. 3. Man Of Steel The thing about a turkey buzzard is that it looks really ugly perched on a branch or hopping around next to roadkill. Looks less like a bird, more like feathered hyena with hunched shoulders and a hooked nose. But let the ungainly critter soar and it becomes unspeakably beautiful, rising on big and glorious wings. What an amazing transformation, from a hideous bag of cackling bones to an elegant dark angel, circling in the noonday sun. Ricky Lang envies the buzzard. He’s sprawled on the trunk lid of his BMW 760i, the twelve-cylinder sedan, staring up into the blinding blue sky. What he wants, what he really and truly wants at this very moment is to be that buzzard. Riding the updraft without effort, just the slightest windripple of white feathers marking the edge of his great black wings. White feathers like daubs of ceremonial paint. Not as valuable or potent as eagle feathers, he’ll grant you that, but Ricky prefers the buzzard to the eagle because buzzards love to fly for the sake of flying. Oh, baby, how they love to soar on the blurry heat rising from the vast casino parking lot. They soar over the malls and highways, anywhere there’s an updraft. Of course buzzards keep their eyes peeled for food, for something newly dead, that’s what they do, how they survive. But it isn’t just hunger that motivates the birds. Ricky has seen scores of turkey buzzards far out into the Florida Bay, circling miles from shore.
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Soaring like that, over water, a buzzard takes its chances. If it has to rest in the water it will be unable to launch itself back into the air. Feathers soaked, it will drown. Yet still it soars in dangerous places. There’s only one explanation for such behavior. The big ugly bird soars in dangerous places because doing so makes it beautiful. When the heat on the trunk lid finally becomes unbearable, Ricky Lang heaves himself upright. Five feet ten inches of hard muscle, small, fierce brown eyes flecked with gold, and the rolling, pigeon-toed gait of a sailor. Not that he’s ever been to sea, not really. Airboats don’t count— an airboat is more like skidding a slick car around a soft, watery track. Got the slightly bowed legs from his dad. That and hands like ten-pound hammers. First time Ricky ever saw the movie Superman he had to talk back to the screen because white-bread Clark Kent wasn’t the Man of Steel, no way. Tito Lang was the Man of Steel, everybody knew that! Fists like steel, head like steel, nobody messed with Tito, back in the day. Ricky, five years old, assumed Superman was stealing from his father. Thirty years later, the Tito of today—that doesn’t bear thinking about, it makes his head hurt. More like the Man of Mush than the Man of Steel. Brain gone soft, pickled with swamp whiskey, and his trembling hands formed into weak arthritic claws that can’t manage his own zipper. Thinking about his dad, Ricky clenches his fists so hard that his ragged fingernails draw blood. Feels good, the pain, keeps him focused. Unlike his father, Ricky doesn’t drink swamp whiskey, or any form of alcohol. He gets drunk on other things, on liquors that form in his own brain.
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Fear of the dead, rage at the living. That’s what keeps his heart beating. Lately he’s learned to sip at the rage, make it last. For instance today he’s been enjoying a prolonged confrontation with casino security. Started at, what, eight in the morning, and it’s nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, so he’s had it going for five hours, on and off. A marvel of sustain. He loves the push and pull of it, the way he makes the security guards all jumpy and sweaty. Their eyes bugging when they see him approaching the main entrance. Hurried yaps into their handheld radios, looking for guidance, calling in the reinforcements. They’re afraid of him and that makes it sweet, because he can savor their fear and use it to organize his own thoughts. Being in charge of his own thoughts is very important to Ricky. That when he says jump, his thoughts say how high? Because his thoughts have been all over the place lately, bouncing around in his skull like speeding pinballs. Each bounce inside his head resonates all the way to the balls of his feet, and makes him feel like he can leap buildings in a single bound. As Ricky approaches the entrance, shrugging his big shoulders like a linebacker, a size-large dude in a lime-green blazer hurries out to intercept him. “Am I a bird or a plane?” he asks before the guard can speak. “You decide.” The guard glances nervously at a charter bus unloading senior citizens. All those soft, Q-tip heads bobbing slightly as they head for the bingo halls and the slot machines. “Sir, I told you, sir. You are not permitted access.” “Bird or a plane?” “Sir, you are not permitted access to the casino or the casino grounds. You must exit the parking lot.” Ricky grins, passes his hand through the thick bangs of his Moe Howard hair. “Dude? I own this parking lot.”
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“I’m sorry, sir.” The guard is blocking his way, but not yet willing to lay hands on him. “I own the casino,” Ricky reminds him. “You get that?” “I don’t know who actually owns the casino, sir. I only know that you are not permitted to enter the premises.” “That was my rule,” Ricky says, pretending to be reasonable. “I made the rule, I can break it.” The guard grimaces, eyes swiveling for the reinforcements that haven’t yet arrived. Nobody likes dealing with Ricky Lang, they’re slow-footing it. “Tribal council makes the rules, sir,” the guard responds rather plaintively. “Members of the tribe are not permitted in the casino.” Ricky doing a two-step dance with the man, trying to get an angle on the entrance. “I am the tribe,” Ricky says. “I’m the sachem, the chief, the boss. This casino exists because of me.” The guard reaches out, places a tentative hand on the center of Ricky’s chest. “Sir, please.” Ricky looks down at the hand, amazed, and becomes very still. “I know who you are, Mr. Lang,” says the guard, as if desperate for him to understand. “Tribal council says you can’t come in, you can’t come in.” Ricky selects one of the guard’s fingers, breaks it with a twitch of his fist. Before the man can fully react to the convulsion of pain, Ricky rolls him across the pavement, where he flops, moaning, at the feet of the seniors entering the casino. “Help!” a Q-tip screams, an elderly woman, or maybe it’s an old man, hard to tell when they get that age. “Indians!” Ricky laughs all the way back to his BMW. Indians, what a
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riot. The old lady probably thought she was about to be scalped. As sachem of the Nakosha, an elected office that made him both chief and high priest, he could have explained that traditional warriors did not take scalps. Never had. Scalps were taken by white soldiers, as souvenirs and to collect bounties. Nakosha warriors took noses—the nose was the seat of dignity—and threaded them into battle necklaces. Some warriors used knives to harvest the noses, others used their teeth. If it ever comes to that, Ricky decides he’ll go with the knife. 4. The Sacred Rights Of Momhood Okay, putting your ear to your daughter’s door doesn’t look good, I’ll admit it. But Kelly is in her room for about ten minutes—door locked, of course—when her latest ringtone starts blasting away. Something from Snow Patrol, who are actually sort of cute. Anyway, I hear the cell go off, my mom-antenna reminds me of the Seth problem. As in who-is-Seth-and-how-did-he-get-in-Kelly’s-life withoutme-ever-hearing-his-name, let alone any sort of description or explanation? Very clever way my daughter has of not answering a simple question: she volunteers for punishment and then disappears into her room, locking the door. The mysterious Seth, the young man with the motorcycle, that’s probably him on the phone right now. And since Kelly has refused to give me any details, it’s within my rights, the sacred rights of motherhood, to determine who this kid is— all that stuff about how the boy really wanted her to wear a helmet sounds bogus to me. Besides, he was the one driving like a lunatic, right? Try as I might, I can’t hear a thing. They must be whisper-
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ing to each other. What I want to know—is he in her class, is he older, what? All I caught was a glimpse, but come to think of it, the minimum age to legally carry a passenger in NewYork is seventeen. So he’s at least a year ahead of Kelly, maybe more. Finally I work up the courage and knock. “Kel?” I ask through the closed door. “We have to talk. Who is this boy? Does he go to your school? Do I know his parents?” After a slight delay she calls out, “It’s late, Mom.” I picture her hand cupped over the phone, her eyes rolling. “It’s nine o’clock,” I remind her. “Since when is that late?” “I’m really tired, Mom. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay? I’ll tell you all about it, honest.” She’s so polite that it isn’t in me to argue. And once again she’s right—by morning I’ll be thinking much more clearly. Not only less freaked about the whole scene, but also less likely to be manipulated into, say, letting her self-select her punishment. Maybe grounded isn’t the right call. Maybe what Kelly needs is a few months volunteering at an E.R. Let her see what happens to kids who risk their lives on a dare, or for the fun of it. Get her pushing wheelchairs, changing drool cups, all that good stuff. I picture a light going off over her head, an epiphany, how fragile life is. Kelly giving me a big hug, saying, Mom, you were right! I have to be careful! The fantasies of parenthood. As Kelly herself would say, there’s minus no chance of that. Minus no chance—in teentalk, that’s less than zero, with a sneer. Most of the women I know watch Letterman or Leno or Conan before they drop off. Tuning in to the mainstream can be reassuring, I guess. It helps us relax, reminds us that we all have our troubles, we’re all capable of Stupid Human Tricks. I’m not averse to a little tube before bed, but the only way
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I can get my head ready for sleep is to make a list. Putting the next day in order helps me feel less anxious about what’s expected of me. 1. check fabrics, ECWW 2. place Tanner order 3. check on second fittings, Norbert & Spinelli weddings 4. call Tracy 5. call Fred 6. lunch McQ 7. dry cleaners 8. grocery ECWW is East Coast Wedding Wholesalers, where I purchase ninety percent of the fabrics for my clients. The satin, silk and lace people. The company is normally very reliable, but they’ve got a new guy running the shipping department and he’s been messing up my orders. I have to do something about that. Last year my little one-woman company purchased over two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of fabrics from East Coast—far from their biggest account but not insignificant. Number two, Haley Tanner, I’ve mentioned already. Norbert and Spinelli are upcoming weddings, nine bridesmaids and two bridal gowns between them, both slightly behind schedule because everything is slightly behind—see the problems at East Coast. Number four on the list, Tracy Gilardi, came on to assist with fittings three years ago, but she turned out to be so competent I tend to let her do her own thing—where I get excitable she always remains calm, which can be very helpful in nervous-making situations like weddings. Fred is Fred Grossman, my accountant. I want
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to check on quarterly tax payments. Alex McQuarrie is one of the top wedding planners in the area; he throws me a bone now and then, sets me up with a high-budget client. Or not. Sometimes all he wants is a companion for lunch, a sympathetic ear. We’ll see. Dry cleaners and grocery, self-explanatory. Business and personal, all in order, every item checked off. Lights out, time for bed. Worrying always exhausts me. So I’m out cold moments after my head sinks into the pillow. The only dream that sticks is something about being at the beach. It’s night and I’m a kid, my daughter’s age, looking for something along the shore. Is it my keys? How will I get home if I can’t find my keys? I search and search, sinking deeper and deeper into the sand. And then my alarm sounds and it’s a new day. Seven o’clock, lots of things to do, not least of which is a very frank discussion with Kelly over breakfast. Or maybe I’ll wait until we’re in the car. She’s got a job at Macy’s for the summer—the cosmetics counter—and that will give us twenty minutes or so to discuss the new boyfriend, see if I can figure out how serious it is. Kitchen or car, one way or the other we’ll sort it out. In my bathrobe, hair still damp, I knock on Kelly’s door. Part of my job, playing rooster. The unlocked door swings open. “Kel? Rise and shine.” At first I can’t comprehend what I’m seeing. Her bed is already made, throw pillows in place. Not possible, not at this hour. “Kelly?” That’s when I see the note. A note prominently displayed on her desk, held down by her South Park pencil holder. A
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note written in her usual florid felt tip, abbreviated as if it were e-mail. Don’t worry, Mom, it’s not what u think. Something came up. Will call u 2morrow at high noon. Luv u tigers and tons(really!), K. She’s gone. Run away. 5. Somebody Special The way Roy Whittle figures, there’s white man crazy and there’s Indian crazy. Both are bad, but Indian crazy is worse ’cause in his opinion Indians are all crazy to begin with. Your average swamp injun is a few shy of a load for starters. Add liquor and syphilis and crazy ain’t far behind. “You figure Ricky’s lost it?” Roy asks his brother. Dug is driving, bumping their brand-new Dodge Ram over the rutted road that leads to the old airfield. He shoots a puzzled look at his brother. “Huh?” Dug not being one to jump into conversation without prodding. “Acting weird,” Roy says. “The big chief. Ricky Lang.” Dug shrugs. “Can’t say.” They’re fraternal twins, but it’s always seemed to Roy that he got all the words, the conversational ability and most of the brains. You can’t say Dug is simple, exactly, not if you don’t want him pounding you, but he’s not a man given to speaking much, or expressing opinions. Or other normal stuff like reading a little and planning ahead—Roy does that for the both of them.
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“Ricky pays us,” Dug points out, nodding to himself in satisfaction, having solved the question. “Yep, he does.” Roy sighs. Might as well be talking to himself. But he can’t let go of the idea that Ricky has been acting peculiar. For instance his recent Superman talk. Staring at Roy with his hard little eyes and saying he can see into his head, he’s got X-ray vision. Like he can read Roy’s mind. A scary thought indeed. When the big man first approached them, Roy thought it was strange, a Nakosha sachem wanting to hire a couple of local white boys. But when he’d explained the situation with his tribe, and what he intended to do about it, it sort of made sense that he needed outside help. Any reservations Roy had got erased by the offer of a new truck with a legal title, insurance paid for, the whole bit. Plus cash money in the very near future. But the last few days he had occasion to wonder if maybe Ricky wasn’t, when you got right down to it, batshit crazy. At the very least he was totally unpredictable, and that made him dangerous. Roy vows to be extra damn careful with Ricky Lang, truck or no truck, money or no money. They come around the last snaky turn in the old logging road. Ahead is the airfield, wide and clear. Not paved, because paving would draw too much attention, but scraped and leveled and hard-rolled, and suitable for everything but the very largest aircraft. Five thousand feet from end to end, straight as a string. A much improved version of the old, rutted clearing where, once upon a time, smugglers limped in, flying wheezy old DC-3 Dakotas loaded with bales of whatever, no runway lights to guide them other than a few pools of smoky kerosene set afire. Wild times that more or less ended before Roy and Dug were old enough to partici-
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pate. Unlike their poor pappy, who died in Raiford Correctional, basting in his own bitter juices. Don’t trust nobody, boys, least of all yur so-called frens. That was Pappy’s only song, for years before he died. How he was ratted by friends and associates and blood relatives. A long story, partly true, mostly bull. The sad fact was, the old man was the last in a long line of willing rats, with nobody left to rat out. Boys who started out jacking gators ended up rich, wrecking fifty-thousand-dollar Jaguars on backcountry roads for the sheer stupid fun of it, until they were spent out, broke, back in the cracker swamplands where they started. Roy, twenty-four years old and barely out of the same neck of the Everglades, has no intention of going back, not without a wad of cash in his pocket. Enough for him and Dug to live decent. And near as he can figure, Ricky Lang is the man to back, moneywise. That is, if he don’t go totally squirrel. “What we do?” Dug wants to know, gazing at the empty airfield. “Ricky wants us to wait,” Roy explains, patient as always. He’d started out life five minutes ahead, is still waiting for his brother to catch up. “Huh? Wait for what?” “Somebody’s coming,” Roy says. He opens the glove compartment, takes out his brand-new ten mil Auto Glock 20 with the fifteen-round magazine. “Somebody special.” 6. Worse Than Sex Fern has been my best friend since the first day of first grade. She sealed the deal by finding my shoes. Brand-new shoes strapped onto my pudgy little feet by my mother barely
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an hour before a group of marauding third-graders—big as invading Huns to me—knocked me down on the playground, pulled up my dress and threw my brand-new shoes into the woods behind the school. There must have been adults overseeing us, but I have no recollection of that. All I remember is being devastated. Destroyed. These were the shoes I’d insisted on when shopping for my new school outfits. Expensive, from the way my mom pursed her lips and looked worried, but I’d made a fuss and she’d given in. Now the precious shoes were gone. I couldn’t go into the school barefoot—mortal shame—and I couldn’t go home. I was lost. The new world of first grade had ended before it even began. I cried so hard I couldn’t see. And then this big girl came out of the fog of tears, a lovely girl three years older than me, with bright, beautiful, almond-shaped green eyes and wonderfully curly hair. She put her arm around my shoulders and helped me smooth down my dress and promised to find my shoes. She did find them, and helped me strap them on, and twenty-five years later whenever I get irritated with Fern, or find her wearisome, I think of the shoes, and that seals the deal all over again. So it’s Fern who gets the first distress call. “Kelly ran away,” I say, my voice breaking. “With a boy.” “Oh, Jane! No way! I have to sit down.” Fern has the wireless, carries it to her favorite chair, the soft leather recliner that belonged to her ex-husband. Poor Edgar. A sweet guy but no match for Fern, not in marriage, not in divorce, not in life. I know she’s using Edgar’s old chair because I recognize the sound of the squeaking springs as she settles in, pushes back, lifting her size-ten feet. “There,” she says. “Tell me everything.” I try, but naturally, Fern being Fern, she interrupts long be-
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fore everything gets told. “So you’re telling me Kelly stayed out all night and skipped out on her summer job? Welcome to the club, Jane.” “But she’s never—” “That you know of. Please. She’s sixteen. Everything but their name is a lie. Sometimes the name, too. I got these calls for Cheyenne? Frat boys looking for Cheyenne. Is that like a stripper name? Jessica was calling herself Cheyenne at some club, gave out her home number. Unbelievable. Jess has a tested IQ of one thirty-five, but at clubs it apparently drops to about sixty-five.” “So you’re telling me not to worry.” “No, no, no. Be very worried. Just don’t think you’re alone.” “But what if she’s having sex?” I ask plaintively. That gets a laugh out of Fern. Laughter so hearty it seems to warm the receiver on my phone. “If, Jane? Did you say if? Of course she’s having sex! Why else would she stay out all night with Smike?” “Seth. His name is Seth.” “He told Kelly his name is Seth and she told you. He could be Smike for all you know. Or Squeers. Or Snagsby. Probably something with an S. Like Sex.” Fern is riffing now, trying to make me laugh. I know what she’s doing, but I can’t help responding, and my heart unclenches. A big, tension-relieving sigh and anxiety begins to recede like the tide. It’s so much easier on the phone. If Fern was here I’d be worried she’d see the tears in my eyes and go all soft, and then we’d both be blubbering. “I hate it that they grow up,” I tell her, taking a deep breath. “No you don’t,” she responds. “Not so many years ago you
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were praying she’d get the chance to grow up. Your prayers were answered.” “True.” “The miracle kid. She’s a character. They broke the mold. What a personality she has! If the average person has a hundred watts, Kelly has five hundred, all of it beaming. One day she’ll make you proud, but right now all she wants to do is blow your mind. And maybe Smike’s little thingy.” “Fern! Please!” “His little mind, too.” Nobody enjoys her jokes better than Fern herself and that gets her laughing until she can barely breathe. After a while, after we’ve both enjoyed a few moments of silent communion, she goes, “So, you got a battle plan?” “Grounding doesn’t seem to mean much.” “Means nothing. Not unless you can lock ’em up and throw away the key. What you gotta do, you gotta scare some sense into her.” “And how do I do that?” “With Jess I used to grab my chest, make my face go all white. Make her think my heart was about to stop.” “You can do that, make your face go white?” “Years of practice scaring my own mother.” “I can’t fake a heart attack, Fern.” “A seizure then. That’s easier. All you gotta do is drool.” I’m crying now, but tears of laughter. “It’ll be okay,” Fern says, shifting to serious. “You’ll see. Kelly’s a good soul. She’ll know what to do, even if you don’t.” “You really think so?” “I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?” I’m still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kelly’s room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left a
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contact number for Seth. No doubt it’s right there on her computer somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. Therefore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then I’ll stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one I gave, assuming she hasn’t taken it with her. Can’t find the address book. What I do find, nestled way back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was suggesting. A photo album I’ve never seen before. Quite new, very slick. Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful. Something worse than sex. Far, far worse. 7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow Once when Roy Whittle was a boy—just the one time— Pap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow that’s how Pappy explained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling. The thing about it was, the memory Roy savors, he and Dug got to pretty much run wild because Pappy was off doing whatever he did, and their momma went to the bingo, and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They didn’t have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive big
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spikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funny—it was a rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loud—and a skinny old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself the Real Fiji Mermaid. What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized. This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own. Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experiment in mass hypnosis, he’d pointed out Dug to his pretty assistant, but Dug wouldn’t have none of it. He wasn’t one for talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand. He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light. Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing Mizmar’s sleepy voice, urging Roy to stare at the wand and feel the light and then to close his eyes and still see the light through his eyelids, and in less than a minute Roy was really and truly hypnotized. It was like being awake but sleeping somehow, frozen in a half-dream, in-between state, and it felt good. Felt right somehow. When the voice suggested it was snowing, Roy looked around, delighted—he’d never seen snow—and then set about dusting the big wet flakes from his shoulders. The laughter of the crowd was like the sound of flowing water or the crying of distant gulls, and when the voice told him to wake up at the sound—a sharp hand clap—he tried resisting. Wanted to stay in the between world, where sleepy voices made it snow. Roy still has his “between” moments and this is one of them. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of their new Dodge Ram, Dug nods off as they wait, and Roy studies the shimmer-
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ing waves of heat that rise from the white runway. Makes the air look like pulsing, transparent jelly. With that and the regular sound of Dug breathing heavy through his nose, Roy can almost hear the drone of the Amazing Mizmar’s voice, he can almost see through the heat-shimmered air into some other place. Almost but not quite, because Ricky Lang pulls him back into the big bad world. Yanks open the door and pokes Roy with an index finger that feels like a warm steel rod in the ribs. “Wake up,” says Ricky. “I wasn’t sleeping,” says Roy. “I’m keeping watch.” Ricky, studying him from behind his mirrored sunglasses. Nodding to himself. “Uh-huh. Whatever. What you watching for, Roy?” “Like you said. A plane.” Ricky’s face untightens, and he smiles with just his lips. “Good. The specific aircraft we’re expecting, that would be a Beechcraft King Air 350. Twin turboprops. Color, green and silver. Tail number ends in seven, my lucky number.” “Yes, sir,” says Roy. He’s tried nudging Dug, but Dug is deeply asleep, and he’s worried about how it looks, his brother snoozing while the boss is giving instructions. “Leave him be,” Ricky suggests. “Don’t matter if he sleeps through the end of the world. This is on you, not your retarded brother.” “Dug ain’t retarded.” “Whatever’s wrong with him, that’s not my concern. You got the Glock?” “Yes, sir.” “And you know how to fire it? How to get the safety off, rack a bullet into the chamber, all that?” Roy nods. He’s pretty sure he knows all that.
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“Good,” says Ricky. “Then you know how to leave the safety on, how not to fire it.” “What’re you saying?” Roy asks. “I’m saying the gun is for show. Don’t shoot nobody is what I’m saying.” “Okay,” says Roy. “I won’t.” “Good. Little while, the aircraft will circle the field. It will land from the east, over there,” Ricky says, indicating where the long runway blends into the low scrub pine. “It will taxi to us. First thing you do, when the engines shut down, you come around from behind and put the chocks under the wheels. Think you can do that?” “I guess.” “Make sure you come at it from the back of the plane, behind the wing, so you don’t get your fool head cut off by the props.” “Okay.” Roy files it away, the propellers are dangerous, watch out for the props. “You just follow my lead,” Ricky says. “Wheels chocked, okay? Next, we get the passengers out of the aircraft. There’s a little door unfolds in the tail, that’s where they’ll exit. Don’t show the gun till their feet’re on the ground.” “How many passengers?” Roy asks, just to show that he’s always thinking. “One or two,” Ricky says, indifferent to the question. “Whatever, you just hold the Glock on ’em. Don’t say nothing, just look like you mean it. Don’t let ’em go back in the plane but don’t shoot ’em. I’m doing all the shooting.” Roy follows Ricky to his BMW, parked nearby. Dirt adheres to the lower panels, fouling the hubs, probably messing up the brakes, too. Waste of a good car, Roy thinks, not
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meant for the backcountry. And then Ricky Lang, his scary new boss, Ricky the crazy damn injun who is going to change Roy’s life, he pops open the BMW trunk, produces an oversize, odd-looking rifle. Almost a crossbow look to it, fitted out with some sort of dartlike powerhead. “What’s that?” Roy wants to know. “Animal tranquilizers,” Ricky explains. Showing his white teeth in a killer grin. “Works on people, too.” 8. Jumping Into The Bare Blue Sky There are some things your eyes refuse to see. Sights unimaginable, or so out of context your brain can’t make sense of them. That’s how it is with Kelly’s secret photo album. I’m looking right at the pictures and still it doesn’t make any sense. What would my daughter be doing on a runway, near a small airplane? Why is she grinning so mischievously? What is she holding up to the camera, some sort of backpack? I know what it is but find it hard to even think the word, let alone speak it aloud. Parachute. Must be a joke. She’s kidding around. Like those old trick photos on Coney Island, where you stick your head through a hole in the canvas and pretend to be a cowboy on a painted horse. Like that. More photos. Kelly climbing into the little airplane, wearing a baggy jumpsuit and what looks like a crash helmet. Kelly crouching inside the plane, giving a thumbs-up. Kelly buddied-up with a handsome pilot, a young man with dark, soulful eyes, gorgeous hair and white, white teeth. I didn’t really get a good look at the guy on the motorcycle, but something about the way this young man holds himself erect,
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good posture even sitting down, something makes me think this might be Seth. If so, he’s way too old for a girl of sixteen. Old enough to be a pilot—how old is that? Has to be at least twenty-one, right? Or is it younger? Hard to say—they both look so pleased with themselves, and happiness makes you look younger. Whatever his age, no way is he in high school with my daughter. He’s not a school kid. No droopy drawers and skateboards for him. He’s into airplanes, motorcycles, highspeed machines. Have him arrested, that’s my first dark impulse. Send this handsome, grinning man to jail. How dare he take my daughter up in a small plane without my permission? How could he let her jump into the bare blue sky. What was he thinking? Because I know what comes next, even before I flip the page. A shot of Kelly waving bye-bye from the open door. Pale sky all around her. A wobbly, slightly blurred shot of an open parachute, a slim figure dangling beneath it. Then the reunion on the ground, with Kelly looking triumphant as she folds up her colorful parachute. A parachute that looks about as substantial as the silk scarves displayed next to her counter at Macy’s. It feels like I’ve been kicked by a mule. At the same time, in some weird way, everything has gone numb. How could I have been so stupid, not to have had an inkling of what was going on with this boy? Never knew he existed until yesterday, and yet he and my daughter have, obviously, been executing a series of death-defying stunts. No doubt there’s more going on than motorcycles and parachute jumps. Suddenly, whether or not Kelly has decided to have sex is a lot less important than the fact that she’s risking her life to impress an older, thrill-seeking boyfriend. Save that hogwash
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about skydiving being as safe as going to the supermarket. If my purse doesn’t open, I don’t end up embedded in the concrete, okay? When I make a mistake parallel parking, do I drift into the high-tension wires? No. Skydiving is about certain death being averted at the last possible moment, that’s what makes it exciting. I may be a stick-in-the-mud, the type who always fastens her seat belt, but I know that much. When Kelly calls with whatever lame excuse she’s cooked up, what should I do? What can I say that won’t make it worse? Fern’s idea of chaining her to the radiator is starting to sound reasonable. I’m at a complete loss here, but whatever I decide to do, it means clearing my calendar for today. No way can I meet with clients, or deal with Alex over lunch. First call is to Alex. Unfortunately, I get him, not the machine. “Janey doll,” he says, chipper as ever. “I have you down for Cholo’s at one.” “I’ve got to cancel,” I tell him. “My daughter.” “The divine Miss Kelly? Is she okay?” Just like that I spill the beans. Everything, more or less. Alex makes all the usual sympathetic noises, but he sounds slightly impatient. “So your daughter has a boyfriend, Jane. It’s not the end of the world.” “She ran away! She’s jumping out of airplanes!” “She left a note,” he reminds me. “She’ll call. And by the way, more people get struck by lightning than die while skydiving.” “She’s a child!” “No,” Alex says firmly. “Kelly is no longer a child.” I could strangle him. How dare he? “She’s a totally amazing woman,” Alex concludes. “Very much like you.”
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It’s a great relief when my accountant doesn’t pick up and I’m able to leave a message about the quarterlies. Ditto for my contact person at East Coast Wedding Wholesalers, imploring them to put a trace on the Norbert and Spinelli orders. Both calls seem to take a tremendous effort on my part, as if merely thinking about work is exhausting. Luckily Tracy has her schedule and can take care of herself, workwise, because I can’t bear the thought of another phone call. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so hollow and shaky? Food. Haven’t eaten since I got up and discovered Kelly gone. And I’m one of those people who simply must have something in her stomach in the morning—must be a bloodsugar thing. That’s probably why my hands are shaking when my cell phone rings. I’m thinking it can’t be Kelly—it’s not quite noon and she never calls early—but that’s her name glowing on the little screen. “Kelly honey? Where are you?” There’s a delay, a pause, long enough so I’m almost convinced the connection has been broken. Then her voice comes through. Not her bright, confident chatty voice. Her whispering voice, as if she doesn’t want to be overheard. As if she might be afraid. “Mom, I need your help. Please call—” That’s it. The call cuts off in mid-sentence. No static, no nothing. Just a final, overwhelming silence. 9. Watching The Detectives Kelly and I watch a lot of movies. Started out with kiddy stuff, of course. When she was hospitalized or enduring
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chemo, movies were an escape, a way to avoid the harsh reality of our situation. Early on I stopped worrying about how a violent or racy scene might affect her. When an eight-yearold stares death in the face every day, can you tell her she can’t watch a car chase, or cartoonish villains firing automatic weapons at infallible heroes, or someone saying a bad word? Some parents did. Not me. Kelly wouldn’t let me. If a movie had a kid with cancer in it—not many did, actually— she always insisted on seeing it. Even if the child died. As she told me, her face screwed up with righteous indignation, she knew plenty of real children who had really died. Okay, four or five at least, which is way more than the average kid. So a character dying in a movie was no big thing to her. It was pretend. Sometimes she’d cry, but that was because it was a sad story, not because she thought the actor really died. Movies were movies and life was life, and they were connected, but not in a scary way. Not for my Kel. And we’ve continued our habit of watching films together. Lately I’ve had to keep my comments to myself, so as not to endure her “please, Mom, give it a rest” reactions, but we still screen two or three movies a week, more if she’s in the mood. One of her favorites is The Usual Suspects. That comes to mind because I’m waiting in a Nassau County Police Department office, at the Fifth Precinct, in the Village of Valley Stream. My very first visit, although I’ve often driven past the building. From the outside it’s a blocky, innocuous kind of place, plain as a potato. Inside it’s all cop, purposeful and a bit macho—a banner declares “The Fighting Fifth”— though it’s a lot less frantic than what you see on TV. Detective Jay Berg has a cork bulletin board behind his desk and that’s what reminds me of The Usual Suspects. Kevin Spacey staring at the stuff on the bulletin board, using
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it to make up a story. Not that Detective Berg thinks I’m making up a story about a girl, a boy and a motorcycle. “We treat every missing minor report seriously,” he intones, tenting his fingers together as if in prayer. He’s a pleasant-looking guy, very earnest, with a thinning widow’s peak and jowls that make him look just a tiny bit like Kevin Spacey, which is probably what got me started, come to think of it. “Even when the minor may have left of her own accord, we take it seriously,” he says. “Runaways are still missing, however it started.” Not for the first time I remind him, “She didn’t run away. Something’s wrong.” “It’s always wrong when a minor leaves parental custody.” “She called. Said she needed my help. But when I called back her phone was off and I got her voice mail. That’s not like Kelly. She never shuts her cell off.” He nods sympathetically. Giving the impression that he’s counseled many an upset parent out here in the not-so-peaceful suburbs. “Very troubling,” he says. “Naturally you’re upset. I would be, too. As I said, that’s why we’re issuing a Be On The Lookout. Your daughter’s photograph and description will be circulated throughout the tri-state area. Local police, county police, state police, within the hour they’ll know to be on the lookout for Kelly Garner.” “What about TV news?” He leans back in his chair, touching his prayerful fingers to his plump and dimpled chin. “We can’t compel the media to run the story, but they will get the BOLO, and then it’s up to them. Absent any indication that she’s been abducted, they may or may not use it.” “What about an AMBER Alert?”
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Berg sighs. He’s been waiting for that question, and he’s ready with an answer. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Garner, the AMBER system has been effective precisely because it’s reserved for child abduction cases. Your daughter left home on her own accord. There’s no indication of abduction. I really do expect she’ll call you as soon as the excitement wears off.” “She did call!” I say, exasperated. “She’s in trouble, I could hear it in her voice. I’m sorry I don’t know the boyfriend’s last name—I feel really stupid about that, okay?—but that doesn’t mean this isn’t an emergency.” More sympathetic nods from the detective. “Of course it doesn’t. The fact is, we are treating this as an emergency. Believe me, all police officers take this kind of thing seriously. Many have daughters of their own. They know what you’re going through, Mrs. Garner. You can be sure they’ll study the BOLO and they will in fact be very much on the lookout. As I said before, if you had a probable destination, or a point of origin, or a make and model of a motor vehicle or motorcycle, we could start from there.” “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I feel so stupid.” No matter how hard I try, another spasm of weeping comes along every few minutes. Detective Berg has thoughtfully provided a box of tissues and my lap is full of wadded-up Kleenex. “You’re not stupid, Mrs. Garner,” he assures me. “Believe me, the parent is often the last to know. And if this guy your daughter is seeing is over eighteen, as you suspect, he might even face charges.” “I don’t care about that. I just want her back, safe and sound.” “Of course. But there are legal ramifications. Let me read you the statute,” he says, picking up a card from the desk. “If the victim is under fifteen and the perpetrator is at least eighteen, this constitutes a second degree sexual offense.
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However, if the defendant is less than four years older than the victim, this may constitute an affirmative defense.’” “What’s an ‘affirmative defense’?” Berg reads from the back of the card. “‘Affirmative defenses are those in which the defendant introduces evidence which negates criminal liability.’” “Meaning he gets away with it? Taking advantage?” The detective shrugs. “The legal age of consent in the state of New York is seventeen. Your daughter is sixteen, so it depends on how much older he is. If he’s thirty, he can and probably will be prosecuted. If he’s twenty or under, probably not, unless your daughter testifies that he forced himself on her.” “Oh God.” The whole thing feels like it’s spinning out of control. All this talk about criminal liability and prosecutable offenses, all I want is for Kelly to be okay. And I want every cop in the known universe out looking for my daughter. I want them a lot more proactive than Be On The Lookout. “I told you the boy is a pilot. Can’t he be traced that way? Can’t I look at pictures, pick him out?” “You already have a photo of the guy,” he reminds me. “We’ll post it with the BOLO.” “A picture but no name. Can’t you like run it through a computer or something?” Berg chuckles. “Like on TV? Face-recognition software isn’t that precise, not in the real world. Plus, you’d have to get access to the right database. But there might be someone who can help.” He rummages around in a desk drawer, hands me a card. “Never met this guy, but he comes highly recommended.” I check out the business card. Just a name, title and phone number. Nothing fancy. “Says here he’s retired,” I say, feeling stunned.
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The friendly, sympathetic detective is passing me off to some geezer. “He’s not a real cop,” I point out. “Don’t let him hear that, these retired guys get very offended.” Berg stands up. The interview is over. He’s palming me off, passing me along. “Get me a name, Mrs. Garner. A last name for this bad boy who ran off with your daughter. Give us a place to start and we’ll do the rest.” He shows me the door. 10. Girl Talk First thing I do when I get home is call Kelly’s best friend, Sierra Wavell. I’m thinking I should have called her first, before reporting Kelly missing. Call the girlfriend, that should have been obvious. If I’d been thinking straight. Which, admittedly, I’m not. I’m instantly bumped to her voice mail, which means her cell is already engaged, no surprise. “Sierra? This is Jane Garner, Kelly’s mom. Please call me when you get this. It’s an emergency, Sierra. Please?” I leave my number, enunciating slowly. Next task is Kelly’s computer. Seth will be on there somewhere. Name or number. Something to work with. Something to give the cops. My computer skills are, by the standards of your average ten-year-old, modest. I know how to work my spreadsheet software, how to send and receive e-mails, even, with Kelly’s coaching, how to download digital photographs from my little Nikon, which comes in handy for taking pictures of first fittings. I know how to search for stuff on Google, all of it business related—fabrics, suppliers, manu-
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facturers and so on. I have a pretty good understanding of how computerized cutting and sewing machines operate, how the information is fed in one end and the complete item comes out the other. That’s pretty much it. A recreational computer person I am not. I don’t game or chat or role-play. If I have an hour to myself I’d rather read a book, or, if my brain is really stressed, veg out watching one of my shows. So I don’t know how to write code or mess with the hardware or hack into encrypted programs. Which means I’m able to open Kelly’s e-mail program, but I can’t get into the files where she actually keeps her saved mail. Files marked with enticing names like Girltalk, Junk-o-la, Facers, S-man. Girltalk. Very clever, my daughter. This will be where she keeps all the gossipy stuff. And every time I click on the file it comes up File locked, enter code. Which I would gladly do if I knew the code. I try Kelly’s birthday. Log-in did not complete for the following reason(s): Log-in Information Is Missing Or Invalid I try her never-to-be-mentioned middle name. (Edith, my mother’s name—there I said it. Kelly Edith Garner. Live with it.) Log-in did not complete for the following reason(s): Log-in Information Is Missing Or Invalid I try the date when she got the all-clear from her cancer. Hit return, fingers mentally crossed.
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Log-in did not complete for the following reason(s): Log In Information Is Missing Or Invalid I try, what the hell, SETH. Banging hard on the keys, SE-T-H, take that! Log-in has timed out. Please exit program. Three strikes, I’m out, and it’s all I can do not to push the insolent little computer off her desk, thinking there ought to be an emergency button for mothers. Maybe it’s not being able to make the computer give up its secrets; maybe it’s having been more or less dismissed by the Nassau County cop. Whatever the reason, suddenly I’m having my first major meltdown. Heart racing, lungs gulping far too much air. Panic attack. It’s been years. Okay, weeks. Part of me able to make the diagnosis, the rest of me huffing like a fish pulled out of water. Paper bag. I’m supposed to get a paper bag, breathe into it so I don’t pass out. But the bags are in the kitchen, a million miles away. Can’t possibly make it down the stairs. Finally I put my head between my knees, and that helps. Constricting the diaphragm. Whoa, that’s better. Big sigh. I’m in the kitchen, uncapping a spring water, when my cell goes off. I flip it open, hoping it’s Kelly. No such luck. “Hi, Sierra. Thanks for calling back.” My heart instantly tripping again, hands so slick it’s hard to hold the phone.
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“You said it was an emergency,” Sierra says, adopting a tone of whiny accusation. “It is an emergency. Kelly is missing and I think she’s in trouble. I need to call Seth, do you know how I can do that?” After a pause she says, “Seth? Seth who?” “Her boyfriend, Sierra. She must have mentioned him.” “Uh-uh. Nope. There’s a Seth in my math class but he’s like fourteen. A freshman. Him?” The very idea of a freshman boy offends her. “This Seth is older,” I tell her. “He might be nineteen or twenty. Maybe even older.” “No way!” “Way,” I insist. “I can’t believe she wouldn’t mention a new boyfriend. You’re still best friends, right?” Another long pause, I can sense her fidgeting, imagine the face she’s making. “Not exactly?” “Not exactly? What does that mean?” “We’re, like, still friends and everything.” “You’re not sharing?” “Not exactly.” Not exactly. The adolescent equivalent of “that’s for me to know and you never to find out.” “Please, Sierra, I need your help. Kelly took off in the middle of the night. I assume with Seth. I’ve reported her missing but the police need somewhere to start. Like with the boyfriend.” Big gasp. “You’re going to have her arrested? Your own daughter?” “No, of course not. I’m trying to find her. She called me and said she needed help, but her cell phone got cut off before she could tell me where she is.” “Really?”
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“Yes, really. I wouldn’t bother you otherwise.” “Mmm, okay, sure,” Sierra hems and haws for a while. “It’s like, Mrs. Garner, it’s like you’re not bothering me exactly. I just don’t know anything. Sorry.” I tell her about the photo album, the images of Kelly skydiving. “You don’t know anything about that, Sierra? She never mentioned skydiving?” “No way!” she squeals, excited again. “She really jumped out of a plane?” “I think her friend Seth was flying the plane.” “Oh. My. God.” And then, to whomever she’s with, a shout to the side. “It’s Kelly Garner! She jumped out of a plane! That’s so cool!” And so it goes. There’s probably no way to know for sure, not without hooking Sierra up to a lie detector—and maybe not even then—but I’m starting to believe she really doesn’t know anything. Not that she’d tell me if she did. At least not directly. We chat for another few minutes. According to Sierra, Kelly has been like out of the group, you know? An older guy makes like so much sense, because she never wants to hang with them anymore even though she’s been like superficial friendly and everything and one time Sierra went to Kelly, she went, what’s up with you lately? and Kelly gave her this like Mona Lisa smile thing that, I’m sorry, Mrs. Garner, but it really pissed me off. I know that silent smile, how infuriating it can be. “Sierra, can you do me a big favor? Can you ask around?” “I guess.” Sounding like she’d rather extract one of her own wisdom teeth with a pair of rusty pliers. “It’s very important. Please?” “Yeah, okay, whatever.” Then she breaks the connection. Not goodbyes, just a
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hang-up. Not that she means to be rude, or even knows what rude is. And I’m left with basically nothing, not a clue, or even a sense of where to go next. Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. Where are you, baby? 11. When The Scream Stays Inside Your Mind Kelly Garner wakes up dead. Dead and floating. That’s the feeling. Her body isn’t there; she’s left it behind. All that remains are a few dim thoughts flickering in the dark nothing. The sensation of flying, of falling through the air. His face, his voice holds her attention briefly, earnestly, then fades. Can’t think of his name. Name on the tip of her tongue, if only she had a tongue. Then gone, leaving nothing behind. It’s just herself alone now, the part of her that lives inside her mind, the dark, knotted core of her innermost self. Warm. There, she actually feels something, a physical sensation. Where is it coming from? Is death warm? No, no, she’s feeling the warm on her skin, on her forehead and scalp. That’s where the warm message is coming from. Beads of perspiration on her scalp. Sweat in her eyes. She blinks instinctively, feels her eyelids respond. How very strange. Her eyes are open but she sees nothing. And although she’s starting to detect the numbing tingle of a body beyond her face, it’s very distant, as if her limbs have been hidden over the next horizon. Not that she can see the horizon in the dark. Dark. That’s why she can’t see! It’s dark. The absence of light. With that realization—she’s alive, in the dark, and something is terribly wrong with her body—comes a wave of
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sheer terror. A flood of icy adrenaline that freezes her brain like an arctic blast. Why can’t she feel her hands, her feet, what’s wrong with her? Was there an accident? The memory floats up like a bubble through honey: she didn’t have an accident. There was an attack. Just as she and Seth are disembarking the aircraft. She has the cell to her ear, telling her mother something important. Something about trouble, about calling the cops. Before she can finish asking her mom for help, a man on the runway is pointing something at them—a gun, a weapon?—and there’s a sharp, needlelike pain in her abdomen, then darkness. Not a bullet, something else. A powerful drug. Was that the needle slamming into her abdomen? Is that what happened? Does that explain the vast numb tingling? The thickness of her thoughts? The sensation that her mind has been wrapped in a fluffy blanket? Kelly’s experience with drugs is somewhat limited. Beer and chronic at parties, and that one time she and Sierra dropped Ecstasy at a warehouse rave in Long Beach. The X was fun—she danced for hours and hours—but at the same time a little scary because part of her kept chanting, “Three! Four! MDMA, methylenedioxymethamphetamine!” She’d made the mistake of looking up the drug’s chemical name on the web, read what it did to the brain, the neurotransmitters, and couldn’t quite shake the uneasy feeling that little bits of her mind were frying like that stupid ad from the last century, your brain on drugs, sizzling like an egg in a pan. Whatever is causing this—it feels like her thoughts are slurring—it isn’t like ecstasy or marijuana or alcohol. It’s something much more powerful. So powerful it’s amazing that her body continues to breathe—she can feel the air in
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her nose and throat, the gluey dryness of her mouth—and her heart, yes, she can pick up on the slow thump of her pulse. Much too slow to keep up with her jittery thoughts, the panic that’s rising like a tide, or the burning sensation she’s just now detected in her abdomen. Seth, what about Seth? It was his plane, his flight plan, his delivery. What went wrong? What happened? Where is she? Is Seth okay or did they kill him?—three lines of a chorus that slowly rises into a scream of fear and confusion. She can’t make her mouth work, so for now the scream stays inside her mind. Silently screaming a heat-seeking name, over and over, endless loop. MOMMY HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME MOMMY PLEASE HELP HELP HELP MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY HELP HELP HELP Hot tears leak from her paralyzed eyes. She’s five again, terrified beyond endurance, and she wants her mommy. 12. The Man Called Shane It’s Fern who suggests trying the name on the card. Having called for an update and gotten an earful—anxiety makes me vent—Fern has agreed that the computer files are vitally important. “It’ll all be there,” she assures me. “These kids, they keep everything in their e-mail and blogs, or on MySpace.” “Kelly’s not on MySpace” is my instant retort. “Really? How do you know?” “She promised. We agreed it was too dangerous. All that stuff in the news about perverts.” Fern sighs, thinks I’m being ridiculous. Teens lie about everything, get over it. “Okay, fine, she’s the only girl in Valley
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Stream without a page on MySpace, whatever. What about her e-mail? Her address book files? Whatever whippy snippy thing the girls have going this week. You need to get in there.” “I need help, Fern. And it has to be fast. Today.” “Agreed. So call the consultant, see if he can recommend an expert.” “Consultant?” “You said the cop gave you a card. So call. What can it hurt? Takes you three minutes. Worst case, he can’t help. Best case, he looks like Johnny Depp.” “Fern!” “Admit it, when Johnny D’s on the screen you are stuck to the seat like a sticky bun.” Swear on a Bible, if I was lying in the wreckage of a major vehicular accident, gasoline leaking, wires sparking, Fern could still make me laugh. After decades, all the way from that first day in first grade, she knows where the laugh button is, and when to push it. Plus she’s right, I have to stop letting anxiety and panic get the best of me. I have to get my little house in order for my daughter’s sake. Get on the horn, Jane, start making some noise, get things rolling. The world is full of computer geeks, I just have to find one who can get started right now, no excuse, no delay. And if the old retired fogy from the FBI can’t help with that, then he gets crossed off the list of helpers, on to the next. Randall Shane Former Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation Consultant, Special Cases Special cases, what does that mean, exactly? Only one way to find out. Punching in the number, I rehearse my opening
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gambit. Try to sound cool, calm and collected. All of which vanishes the instant a thick male voice comes on the line. “Shane.” “Um, I need, ah, to speak to, ah, Randall, um, Shane?” “This is he.” Sounding more than a little gruff. Like, get on with it lady, what’s your problem? “It’s about my daughter,” I blurt out. “She’s gone. Missing.” His tone is no longer impatient. “Go ahead, I’m listening.” “They gave me your card,” I tell him in a rush, clutching the phone with both hands so it doesn’t slip out of my fingers. “I don’t know the boy, isn’t that stupid? I mean I do know his first name, it’s Seth. But not his last name, or where he lives. Nothing! I never heard of him until yesterday and by then it was too late. They can’t, the police, they need somewhere to start, I understand that, really I do, but I don’t know anything and now she’s gone and she was supposed to call and she did and she said she needed help and then the phone got cut off and something really bad has happened I can feel it in my bones a mother knows you know?” “Okay,” says the voice. “Take a deep breath. Hold it for a count of ten and then let it out slowly. Okay?” “’Kay,” I manage. “I’ll count. One. Two. Three…” As he counts I can feel my heart slowing, and I’m thinking he may be an old fogy, he might be a scam artist, but he’s got a great voice and would be calming and reassuring even if he was reading from the phone book. Or counting, for that matter. “Okay,” he says. “Good. Now, if you could tell me your name.” I tell him. “Jane Garner, fine. Here’s how it works, Mrs. Garner. I’m
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going to ask you a few questions and then we’ll decide if I can be of assistance, okay? We’ll start with the note your daughter left. What exactly did it say?” My brow furrows. “I mentioned the note?” “Not exactly. You mentioned a promise to call. I assumed that promise was in the form of a note, but I suppose it could have been a voice mail.” “It was a note,” I tell him. “I’ve got it right here.” As I read him Kelly’s note, part of me concludes that we’ve been in conversation for, at best, a few minutes, and already he’s established that he’s paying attention. Listening. Which is not what I carried away from my conversation with Jay Berg, the Nassau County detective, who let me run on more out of professional politeness than actual interest. As far as Berg had been concerned, my daughter took off with a guy, end of story. Whereas Mr. Shane seems to be taking me seriously. Or at least taking the situation seriously. “Okay,” he says. “Got it.” I can hear him taking notes, the mouse squeak of a felt-tip pen. He reads it back, and I agree he’s got it, word for word. “Now the call,” he says, “As best you can remember.” “‘Mom, I need your help, please call.’” “That’s it?” “Last word was cut off.” “And what was her tone? Excited, worried?” “She was whispering. Like she’d didn’t want anyone to hear. Whispering and worried and maybe a little afraid.” “Please call as in ‘please call back,’ or ‘please call for help.’” I think about it, Kelly’s voice replaying in my head. “Not please call back. It was like she had a lot to say and had to tell me in as few words as possible. So it was more like ‘please call for help.’”
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“Or please call someone specific?” “Maybe.” I rack my brains, reliving the call, but that’s all I get, a maybe. “You mentioned computer files.” I must have, but have no recollection. Unless, of course, he’s a mind reader. “That’s why I called. To see if you know anyone who can get into protected files.” “How protected?” he wants to know. “I don’t know her password.” “So not necessarily encrypted? Just password protected?” “I’m not really sure. All I know is I can’t into the files. So, do you know anyone who can?” The man called Shane chuckles, warming my ear. He says, “Matter of fact, I do.” 13. Bingo He Says Two hours later, Randall Shane arrives in a gleaming black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows. Is it a cop car thing, or a retired FBI thing, or does he moonlight as a chauffeur? Or does he just prefer a car the size of a boat? As it pulls into my driveway, the big Lincoln looks like it could eat my little Mercedes wagon and spit out the chrome. Standing in the open door—I’ve been chewing my nails and watching the street for at least an hour—I give a wave of greeting as Mr. Shane unfolds himself from the driver’s seat. He nods in my direction—right place, obviously—and pops the trunk lid with his key. Retrieves a bulky briefcase and a laptop, secures the trunk, and strides up the walkway, all business. There’s a lot of him. Very tall, six feet four or five. Wide
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shoulders, long muscular arms, and a purposeful, nononsense way of walking. Not a walk exactly, certainly not a strut—more of a march. Fern’s joke comes to mind—can’t think of anyone who looks less like Johnny Depp. He could put Johnny Depp in his pocket and still have room for lint. No, there’s nothing wistful or soft or feminine about Randall Shane. More the Liam Neeson type, if you have to pick an actor. He’s all angles, with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee that gives him a long, slightly gaunt face. Deep-set, utterly serious sky-blue eyes that are already studying me. Age, somewhere in his forties. Surely not old enough to be retired, and obviously not the elderly gent I’d been expecting, even if he does drive a car associated with seniors. His attire is less formal than I expected. Crisply pressed khaki trousers, a lime-green Polo shirt with a soft rolled collar, brown leather Top-Siders. On someone else it might be a preppy look. Not on Shane. On him it looks like something an NFL linebacker would wear on his day off. “Mrs. Garner?” he asks, with a slight, wary smile. Nice, even teeth. “Jane, please. Come in, come in. This is very kind of you.” “We’ll see,” he says, ducking slightly as he eases into the foyer. “No promises.” “Understood. I’ll pay for your time, whatever happens.” He shrugs, as if indifferent to the notion of payment. Towering over me in the little foyer, smelling faintly of Ivory soap and something like cedar. Manly cedar, though, not the perfumed version. “Show me to her room,” he says. “This way. Up the stairs and to the left.” “No calls?” I shake my head. No calls, no contact. My frantic calls
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are still going directly to voice mail, and my daughter is still in the wind. The summer days are long, so there’s plenty of light in the sky, but early evening has arrived, and as we traipse up the stairs, the host in me automatically offers this stranger something to eat. “Not right now,” he says, pushing open the door to Kelly’s bedroom. A step inside and he stops, checking out the walls, furnishings. The place is girly-girl, teenage girly-girl, but very clean and organized because Kelly is a neat freak. “Did you tidy up?” he wants to know. “She keeps it this way.” He nods to himself, as if registering a fact to be filed away. Sets his briefcase on the floor, his laptop on her desk, and then turns to look at me. More of a quick study than a look. “You didn’t have supper,” he says. A statement of fact. “Not hungry.” “Okay.” He nods to himself, registering another fact. “Do you drink tea?” What’s this about? I’m thinking, but admit that sometimes I do, in fact, drink tea. “Good. Then I suggest you make yourself a mug of strong, hot tea. Put sugar in it, for energy. Eat two pieces of toast, you’ll be able to hold that much down.” “What?” I say, thinking he’s been here less than a minute, already he’s telling me when and what to eat. “You look like you’re about to faint, Mrs. Garner. Time and efficiency are very important at this juncture, and I need you to be conscious and thinking coherently. In a crisis like this, many parents tend to fall apart. We don’t have that
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luxury. Tea, toast. Stay downstairs. I’ll let you know if I need help, or have questions.” I’m halfway down the stairs before I realize he just ordered me out of my own daughter’s bedroom. He may be brusque and bossy, but Randall Shane is right about my needing to eat. The toast settles my stomach and the hot, sweet tea gives me energy. Hadn’t realized how depleted I’d been, how close to passing out. Maybe even fainting, as he’d suggested. But “at this juncture”? Is the man a robot? Nobody says “at this juncture.” Cops do, I realize. They lapse into cop talk. And FBI agents are federal cops. They dress better but they have cop hearts. Not that I’ve ever met an FBI agent, retired or otherwise. All my thoughts on the subject of FBI agents come from TV shows, and muttered asides from my late father, so maybe I’m way off, reading too much into Shane’s formal manner of speech. Whatever, I’m not about to remain confined to the kitchen. With an extra mug of tea as my excuse, I slip upstairs, into Kelly’s room, and find him at her computer. Making her prim little swivel chair look small indeed. “You said tea, so I thought maybe you drank it, too.” Without looking up from the screen he says, “Thanks. Leave it on the desk.” “Any progress?” “I’ll know in twenty-six minutes,” he says, grunting softly to himself as he hits a key. “Make it twenty-five.” There’s a clock on screen, counting down. Shane swivels in the chair, picks up the mug, takes a cautious sip. He studies me with a good internist’s eyes. “You look better,” he says, rendering judgment.
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“I am, thank you.” “Proprietary software,” he explains, nodding at the screen. “If Kelly left her password anywhere on the hard drive, we’ll find it, and if need be the software will crack it. Preliminary search indicates numerous references to both Seth and S-Man, so once I get the files open, we should know a lot more.” “You found his last name?” I say. “That’s great. I’ll call the county cops. I mean police.” “Cops will do,” he says with a slight grin. “No, not his last name. Not yet. Just a search engine tracer showing there are references buried within the files. E-mail folders, HTML folders, chat room folders.” “I don’t understand.” “You don’t need to. It’s just the way computers organize themselves. Each folder has a name and a location. I was able to list the folders by title, but can’t open them without the password. If this particular software doesn’t get us there, I have other ways.” Making it sound almost ominous. Like no mere microchip would dare defy him. “So you’re, um, a computer expert?” “In a limited way, yes. As you say, I’m something of a geek.” He smiles, letting me know that geekness doesn’t offend him. “Actually, for the last several years before I left the bureau, that was my primary role, overseeing the development of software applications.” “You don’t look old enough to be retired,” I point out. “I resigned under special circumstances,” he responds, in a way that shuts down that particular line of inquiry. Retired or fired, gunslinger or geek, it doesn’t matter. If the big man manages to get a line on the mysterious Seth,
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and Kelly’s location, I don’t care what his specialty is or was, or why he left the FBI. “Have a seat,” he suggests. “I need to get some background.” There’s only one chair in Kelly’s room, so I perch on her bed. Amazingly enough, this stranger is offering me a seat in my own house. Not that he’s trying to be offensive—far from it. He’s focused on a task, on helping me, and for that I’m grateful. Still, I can’t think of the last time a single man has been in my home, let alone one of the bedrooms. No ring. I noticed. Not that I’m even slightly interested— every fiber of my being is focused on getting what I need to find Kelly. Shane glances at the clock on the screen, seems satisfied with the progress, then takes a small notebook from his briefcase. “First things first,” he begins. “Where is Kelly’s father in all this?” “Nowhere,” I respond, a little too fast. “I take it you’re no longer married?” “I’m a single mom.” He nods. Not a judgmental nod, just noting another fact. “Has the father been informed that she’s missing?” “There is no father,” I tell him, a flush rising into my cheeks. “Can we leave it at that?” “For now,” he says, conceding nothing. “So. How do you make your living?” “Weddings,” I tell him. “I design and make wedding gowns, bridal gowns, bridesmaids gowns. Or anyhow, that’s how I got into the business. I still do custom gowns when requested, but mostly we work with a couple of different gown manufacturers. Small specialized factories. We do the fittings, they do the sewing.” He makes a note. “So you’re in sales.”
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I shrug. “Bridal design, we like to say.” “Dissatisfied customers?” “It happens. But no one has been upset enough to take it out on my daughter.” Duly noted. “You’re sure about that?” he asks without looking up from his notebook. “Last time it happened I refunded their deposit, simple. That was more than a year ago.” Mrs. Hampton-Barlow of the Sag Harbor HamptonBarlows. The bridal gown arrived on time, but the bridesmaid gowns were lost in transit, and no time to make them again. We arranged for perfectly good store-bought versions. No fault of mine, but I couldn’t really blame her for being upset. We parted with a formal apology on my part, and a promise to return her deposit, which I did. The Hampton-Barlows had their wedding and moved on. Me, too. “Okay,” he says, ticking that off. “Ever been involved in a lawsuit?” “Small-claims court, does that count?” “Depends on the circumstance.” “Collecting an unpaid bill. The marriage was annulled and the couple walked away from their debt.” “You never collected?” “There was nothing left to collect. That’s what they told me.” “And this was when?” “Three or four years ago. Cost of doing business. Happens every now and then. You try to cover your outlay with the initial deposit. In that case, I got stuck on the wrong side of the estimate. My own fault, you might say.
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They upgraded an order, I failed to upgrade the deposit. Live and learn.” “Uh-huh.” Scribble, scribble. “Personal animosities?” “Excuse me?” “Does anybody hate you, Mrs. Garner? Hate you enough to hurt your daughter?” What a question. And yet it has occurred to me, of course. Is there someone out there in the world who is angry enough at me to lure Kelly away? After a moment, I say, “No one I can think of.” “No personal vendettas? How about angry boyfriends? Stalkers?” That’s easy. “No boyfriends, period. No stalkers that I know of.” Shane’s eyebrows lift. Men always seem to think that any reasonably attractive single woman under the age of forty is being hounded by suitors. Guys with flowers constantly ringing the doorbell, begging to sweep you off your feet. If only. “Has Kelly complained of unwanted attention?” he wants to know. “Mentioned someone following her or watching her, or exhibiting menace?” “No,” I say with a quick head shake. “But to be honest, over the last few hours I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And I’m not sure she’d tell me. Yesterday I’d have sworn on a Bible that Kel would share the important stuff, but today I’m not so sure.” At that moment her computer chimes. Shane’s eyes snap to the screen. Beneath his trim, neatly cropped beard his lips turn up in a slight smile. “Bingo,” he says.
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14. Flygirl My mother put up with a lot. It wasn’t that I was a surly adolescent, not like Kelly, because my pathological shyness extended to the family. We had learned, Mom and I, never to raise our voices in the presence of my father. How to hide in plain sight. But I had my silent, secretive ways, and that probably bothered Mom more than surliness or back talk. What are you thinking? she would ask me, as if she really wanted to know, and I would never say, or mutter something and go hide in my room, or have long phone conversations with Fern where we said nothing much at great length. Poor Mom. All she wanted were a few clues, a guidepost or two, and I couldn’t or wouldn’t oblige. Now I know my punishment for letting her down, all those years ago. It’s right there on the computer screen: Kelly has a secret life. Or, more accurately, a life she has kept from me, and apparently from her friends as well. Her user name is flygirl91. The number is, of course, the year of her birth and the “flygirl,” well, to this mother’s ears it sounds slutty somehow. Wild and crazy, at the very least. “But she swore she didn’t have a page on MySpace!” I wail, staring in horror at all the messages and responses in the files she calls “Facers” and “S-man.” “She doesn’t,” Shane explains, manipulating the mouse as we scroll through the files. “You don’t have to post a Web page on MySpace to have access to the site. It appears Kelly logged in as a member but never set up an accessible Web site. She seems to have been deeply involved in searching categories for particular types of individuals.” “Oh my God,” I say, hand to my mouth. “She was trolling.” Shane chuckles and shakes his head. “I believe it’s called
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‘browsing,’ Mrs. Garner. Simply a way to search through the millions of entries for someone you might find interesting. The folks on MySpace often affiliate themselves with groups or common interests. Just like people tend to do in real life.” The Facers file contains dozens of images of young men, mostly posing with their computers or leaning against their cars. One has his shirt off, showing tattoos on his arms and chest. Another, his new nipple ring. There are several motorcycles and a hang glider proudly displayed by boys who look ready to die at a moment’s notice. All of it heart attack material for the mother of a teenage girl. “This is interesting,” Shane says, clicking on the photo of the kid with the nipple ring. “It must have hurt,” I say, wincing at the very thought. “No, I mean what’s missing. Your daughter saved this image, but there’s no indication she ever messaged this particular individual.” “Thank God for that.” “It’s true for most of these images,” Shane says, making eye contact. “She was culling pictures but not necessarily making herself known to the subjects.” “But what does it mean?” I ask. Shane shrugs. “Hard to say. Might just means she liked the pictures. Maybe because they fit her definition of a Facer, whatever that is. Kind of a wise guy, out-there type, maybe? Any thoughts? Have you heard her use the word?” “I’m not sure. Maybe. The cool words change from day to day, you know?” “We can Google it later, if it seems to be pertinent. Right now I’ll concentrate on the file contents.” Shane scrolls through my daughter’s secret life, or her fantasy life, all of it reduced to thumb-size snapshots. I’m
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standing over his broad shoulders, close enough to smell his deodorant—kind of a pine scent—aware that under normal circumstances this level of intimacy with a stranger would be, for me, uncomfortable. But these are not normal circumstances. Far from it. “You think that’s how she met this Seth person?” I ask “Because she saw his picture—his Facer—on the Web site?” “Yet to be determined,” says Shane, manipulating the keyboard with all ten fingers, a level of typing skill never mastered by yours truly. “Ah,” he says, as another folder opens. “Here we go. This is linked to a message Kelly mass-mailed to forty-six recipients.” He deftly places the e-mail in the center of the screen, enlarges the font so we can both read. Young, aspiring pilot looking for flight instruction. Willing to help with cleaning, maintenance of aircraft. Ready to learn.
I’m too stunned to speak. “You notice she doesn’t mention her age or gender, other than to say ‘young.’” “I never knew. Never had any idea.” “That she wants to learn how to fly?” “Any of it. Willing to help with cleaning? I can’t even get her to vacuum the hallway! She takes care of her own room, that’s it.” Ready to learn. The question is, and it breaks my heart to think it, was she ready to learn more than flying? Was this her very clever way to make herself interesting to grown men? “Four,” Shane announces. “Four?” “Responses to that particular e-mail.”
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The first response comes up with a snapshot of a guy who has to be in his thirties. Deep in his thirties, with crinkled eyes and a jaunty handlebar mustache. Wearing a distressedleather flight jacket as he poses in the open cockpit of an oldfashioned airplane. Two wings, like Snoopy used to fly. “That’s a Waco,” says Shane. “Famous stunt biplane. Big bucks.” “Stunt plane? You mean like loop-de-loops?” “Yup,” says Shane. “If you like flying upside down, Waco will provide.” I almost say, I’ll kill her, then bite my tongue. The guy may have a leather jacket and a big mustache, but he’s not the young man from her photo collection. As it happens, the second response is from our mystery boy. There’s no photo, and not much of a message, just a succinct more details, please, but it does include a name, Seth Manning, and his e-mail address,
[email protected]. “This is dated six weeks ago,” Shane notes. “S-Man,” I say. “The folder. Can you open it?” “Already there.” The S-Man folder contains over a hundred e-mails, messages from S-Man and responses from flygirl91. “She didn’t have to mention gender,” I point out. “Flygirl kind of gives it away.” “Good point. If you don’t mind, I’d like to print these out,” Shane suggests. “It’ll be faster and easier than opening each e-mail.” Maybe he’s not that comfortable having me hover over his shoulder. Fine. Whatever, Kelly’s printer starts spitting out pages at a rate of twenty per minute. I sit on the edge of her bed, devouring her correspondence with Mr. Seth Manning, flight instructor and seducer of teen girls. Or maybe not.
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From the tone, right from the beginning, my darling daughter seems to be the aggressor. What have u got 2 lose? Flygirl will make it worth yr while. Hw old r u? Don’t lie. Will b 18, all legal and tender, on 4th of July.
Two lies, actually. Her sixteenth birthday was in May, a few weeks before flygirl started trolling for flyboys. By the time Shane hands me the next batch of pages, I’m feeling physically ill. Partly its residual guilt, for violating her privacy, but mostly what’s making me ill is righteous, motherly anger. How dare she take such outrageous risks with her life and well-being! There’s scarcely a broadcast of the local evening news that doesn’t include mention of Internet predators. It’s not like Kelly didn’t know the danger. She just didn’t care. Or worse—and this might be what’s really making me sick—danger is precisely what she’s looking for. All legal and tender. Cool, oily sweat suddenly pours from my scalp into my eyes, and I barely make it to the bathroom before heaving. On my knees, gagging, emptying my stomach. Shane makes me sit on the closed toilet as he applies a cold cloth to my forehead. “Guess I was wrong about the toast, huh?” “Dummy.” “Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been dumb,” he says kindly, wringing the cloth out. “No, me. I’m the dummy. Should have known. Should have been checking her e-mail.”
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“Here, hold this,” he says, pressing the cold cloth to my forehead. Gets a dry towel, pats the moisture from my neck. “You couldn’t check her e-mail, remember? And if you could, she’d have found another way. Your daughter is obviously a very willful young woman.” “Obviously.” He folds the towel, slips it back on the rack. Most of the men I know, they’d drop it on the floor, because that’s where used towels go. Not Randall Shane. He’s different. Been in my house for an hour or so and I know that much. “You feeling better?” he asks, standing tall, very tall. “Good. I just got a hit on Seth Manning.” “A hit?” “His address. I know where he lives.” 15. Seven Finds A Wall Time is squishy. Sometimes the seconds tick by in a reasonable, almost ordinary way, and Kelly counts her heartbeats, the pulse in her neck. One, two three, and so on. The highest she gets is seventy-six and then the overwhelming darkness seems to bend around her, a kind of dim gravity, and the clock in her head stops ticking and gets all squishy. No other way to describe it. Squishy. Because she can’t measure the passage of time, Kelly has no idea how long it takes for the paralysis to dissipate. All she knows is that at some point she can wiggle her toes, raise her languid arms and let them droop across her chest like melted bones. Could be hours, days, eternity. Thoughts slowly surface out of the inky black, like a die rising inside a Magic 8-Ball. The usual 8-Ball answers, too: Outlook not so good. Ask again later.
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She manages to place her tingling palms on the floor, detects the familiar roughness of concrete. Not bare ground, concrete. Is it night outside, is that why the darkness is so absolute? Wait, how does she know she’s inside rather than outside? Sluggish thoughts, and then she knows the answer. Because it feels inside. The closed silence, the still air, a kind of muffled feeling. Definitely in, not out. Enclosed. On impulse she flails, looking for a wall. Wanting to find an edge, a shape to the world. Nothing. You’re a baby, she thinks. Lying on the floor like a baby, flailing around. Get up. Do something. Learn something. Find a way back to the world. It takes forever, and she has to endure a violent swirl of dizziness, but Kelly eventually turns over, manages to get on her hands and knees. Huffing the thick air because the effort makes her feel faint. Hot, stuffy. Wherever she is, that place can’t be very large. The darkness is close, pressing. Slowly, very slowly, she crawls, struggling to keep her balance. Not wanting to fall over like some cheesy mechanical baby toy. Boink, I fall down, Mommy! Counting as she crawls. One two three, four five six. Seven finds a wall. A very solid wall. Slippery smooth surface. Steel, like the cafeteria counters in school. Now we’re getting somewhere, she thinks, and the thought becomes a giggle. Now we’re getting somewhere? As if! Hilarious. Ironic. Whatever. Keep going. Orient yourself. You wanted to learn to fly, flygirl? Seth’s first flight lesson pours into her brain, and it helps, hearing his gentle confident voice. First rule, know where you are. Find the horizon. Very good, keep your wings level. Trust your balance, but trust the
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instruments even more. It’s all about perception, judgment, making choices. The choices you make keep you alive. I choose to crawl, she thinks. Another giggle. But her body keeps trying, keeps moving. She nudges along the wall, counting as she crawls. One two three four five. Six smacks her head. Not hard enough to see stars. She’d love to see stars, love to find the sky, locate a constellation, but all she’s located is a corner. Ninety degrees. Steel walls intersecting. Still, it means something. The world has a corner. The shape of it begins to form in her mind. A small shed? A big steel box? Where is she and why is she here? What about Seth? What about her mom? What about the beautiful airplane, and the fantastic flight that somehow turned out wrong? What happened? Why? Thoughts starting to click along as the drug wears off. Suddenly the air moves. And then she sees the light. Shocking, blinding light. Light that stops her heart. Almost in the same instant, the sound of a door closing. A vault door, heavy and solid and forever. The light scares her. The light makes her want to pee her pants. She has to pee anyhow and this makes it worse, much worse. She starts to cry because she hates, she really really hates being afraid. Long ago she decided that being afraid is what makes you start to die. She’s been there, done that, doesn’t want to go back. With all the courage she can muster, Kelly forces her eyes open. Sees her hands on the concrete floor—she got that part right. Turns her head, willing herself to look directly at the light. Lamp. Someone has shoved a small, portable lamp inside the
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door. The kind of battery-operated lamp you might use while camping. The light it throws is actually pretty feeble, but it reveals a steel-walled room, maybe eight feet by ten feet, and a solid steel door so closely fitted that the seams are barely visible. A room with no way out, she thinks. Steel box. Trapped. 16. Where The Sacred Waters Flow Most high school students have more limo creds than I do. Proms, mitzvahs, sweet-sixteeners, and parents who hire a livery service rather than risk precious little junior denting the Lexus. Here on Long Island a certain class of teens ride hired cars like we used to ride buses. They know chauffeurs like we used to know school custodians. Although its unlikely that any of the chauffeurs look like Randall Shane. Who insists that I ride in the back—seat belt mandatory. He driver, I passenger. “Personal quirk of mine,” he says. “Safety first.” Actually we’re still in my driveway, with the big Lincoln Town Car in Park and the emergency brake engaged. Can’t think of the last time I set an emergency brake, but with Shane, you guessed it, standard procedure. We’re idling there while he makes a few calls on his car phone. It’s not a cell or Bluetooth, but an old-fashioned heavyduty car phone mounted in the console, equipped with a hardwired receiver.Years ago, I recall, it was a very big deal to have a car phone. Now it’s an anachronism that nevertheless seems to fit the driver, who nods at me as he rings Detective Jay Berg with the news, letting Berg know that Kelly’s hard drive sat up and begged for mercy before giving a full confession. “Suspect’s name is Seth Earl Manning, age twenty-one. M-A-N-N-I-N-G. Correct, with a g.” From the front seat
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Shane gives me a tight smile. All part of including me in the loop, apparently. “Yes, sir, I have an address in Oyster Bay.” He nods to himself as the conversation continues, goes uh-huh for a while, then locks eyes again with me as he says, “So you’ll add him to the BOLO, and any vehicles registered in his name? Thank you, Detective Berg. Yes, she’s right here with me. Oh, and before I forget, there’s evidence that this could be an Internet crime. Correct, in my judgment it could fall under the 2252 statute.Yes, sir. Excellent idea. I will, absolutely. I’m sure Mrs. Garner will be very grateful. Thanks again, sir.” He returns the receiver to the neat little cradle built into the dash. “Stroking the locals,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Unpleasant, but somebody has to do it.” I shake my head, not really sure what he’s talking about. “This means they’ll look for his car?” “Absolutely. Goes to the top of the list.” “What’s a 2252?” I want to know. “Is that like an AMBER Alert?” “Let’s roll,” Shane suggests. “I’ll fill you in on the way.” As drivers go he’s solid, cautious, and, by my standards, maddeningly slow. Hands on the wheel at ten and two, eyes on the road, checking the side and rear mirrors. On the other hand the ride is silky smooth and I do, in fact, feel almost absurdly safe. A meteor the size of Texas could strike, devastating all life, and we’d survive somehow, me and Randall Shane and his sturdy Lincoln Town Car. I feel—and this is pure craziness—that if I can get this man close enough to Kelly, she’ll be safe, too. Like the opposite of kryptonite, radiating strength and safety. Like I said, crazy. Hours of anxiety and worry have addled my brain.
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Once he’s on the thruway, Shane clears his throat and explains, “Statute 2252 is a federal law, Internet Crimes Against Children, ICAC for short. There’s an ICAC Task Force headquartered in Albany, under the state police, and Detective Berg indicated he would contact them.” “Crimes against children?” Just saying it makes my stomach clench. “He can be arrested for crimes against children?” “Probably not,” Shane concedes. “I made a point invoking the statute in hopes that he’d go on the watch list. ICAC has a nationwide reach, and that may be useful. But it doesn’t mean that if apprehended he’ll necessarily be prosecuted. Mostly the law concerns soliciting sex by transmission of indecent images. We didn’t see anything like that on Kelly’s computer. But there’s another part of the statute that covers endangering child welfare. Acting in any manner that is likely to be injurious to the physical, mental, or moral welfare of a child.” “You’re saying he could be prosecuted, maybe.” “Very tough to make that case,” Shane cautions. “Your daughter is technically a minor, but the courts are loath to invoke the law in teen romance situations.” “He’s not a teenager!” I snap. “He’s grown man. Also he’s a flight instructor, that makes him like a teacher, right? With a teacher’s responsibility?” “Agreed,” says Shane. “Absolutely. He had no business responding to a sixteen-year-old girl. The fact that she was, ah, somewhat deceptive about her revealing her age might or might not be a mitigating factor.” I fold my arms across my chest, feeling stubborn. “They always say that, don’t they? ‘She said she was older. Showed me a fake ID.’ Or whatever.” “They always do,” he agreed. “But let’s keep our priorities
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straight. The important thing is to locate your daughter. That’s our goal. After that, let the law take care of itself.” “You think he’s in Oyster Bay? That he took her home?” He glances at me in the rearview. “It’s a place to start. The Nassau County Police will make a drive-by, checking tags. I figure we’ll get a jump start, actually ring the doorbell.” “A private investigator can do that?” I ask. “Ring a doorbell?” He chuckles. “Most of them. But just so we’re clear, Mrs. Garner, I’m not a licensed P.I. I’m a consultant. And we consultants can ring doorbells like nobody’s business.” An hour or so later—would have taken me forty-five minutes, tops—the big Lincoln finally rolls into Oyster Bay, heart of the so-called Gold Coast. North shore of the island, facing the Sound. Heading for the village, not the city. We’re not far from the inner bay, the local claim to fame, but it’s midnight and all I can see is a swath of the shore road illuminated by headlights. That and the moonless silhouettes of majestic trees and huge, estate-style homes nestled along the cove. Randall Shane, clever devil, has an on-board navigation system. “Teddy Roosevelt used to live out this way, did you know that?” he asks. “I heard.” “You do business here?” “We’ve done a few weddings on Cove Neck. Amazing affairs, believe me. Twenty grand for a bridal gown, every stitch by hand. Two thousand just for the pearl embroidery. Anyhow, if you’re lucky enough to live out here you probably call it ‘the Neck’ or ‘the Village.’ That area to the west, along
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the shore, that’s ‘the Cove’. All very different from the city, where the working stiffs live. Out here on the Neck some of the residents tend to talk about Teddy like he lives next door. Like you might run into him at the next catered barbecue.” “No kidding?” He glances at the navigation screen, slows for the next intersection. “So this area we’re heading into, the Mannings are likely to be wealthy, is that correct?” “On the Neck? Super wealthy. Megabucks.” “They may have security,” he points out. “They all have security,” I tell him. “Could be a problem this time of night.” He reaches into the glove compartment, takes out a small leather case. “Gun?” I ask. “Cell phone,” he says, deadpan. “In case some gung ho rent-a-cop picks us up.” The navigation screen bongs gently. Shane applies the brakes, bringing the Town Car to a full and complete stop. “This is it,” he announces. Headlights pick up a locked, black-iron gate and a long, curved driveway beyond, paved with finely crushed oyster shells. Appropriate, given the location. Costs a fortune but makes a nice, satisfying crunch when the Rolls rolls up the driveway. Or the Bentley, or the Ferrari. Whatever the vehicle of choice on any particular day. Shane presses a button and the windows slide down to the smell of the sea, a whiff of cut grass coming to us out of the dark. For some reason I think of a song my mother used to hum, or maybe it was a poem she’d had to memorize for school. All I get are fragments from childhood memory: by the shore of something-or-other, where the sacred waters run. Xanadu, not Oyster Bay. But “sacred waters,” that has
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to be right. Any place this expensive, it has to be sacred, at least to the wily gods of real estate. “How do we get past the gate?” I ask. “Don’t you remember?” says Shane, grinning as he reaches a long arm out the window. “We ring the bell.” 17. The Man In Black The gate never opens. Shane keeps pressing the button, speaking into the lighted intercom, announcing our presence. “This is in regard to Seth Manning. Seth is in legal jeopardy, please respond,” and so on, never varying his authoritative tone. Sounding very much like a federal agent. Legal jeopardy. Up to me, I’d say Seth Manning is in deep shit. We’re both out of the Town Car, stretching our legs and checking out the heavy gate. In movies the hero simply mows the gate down, but this one has electronic locks that slip into a sturdy concrete footing and I’m not at all sure even the mighty Lincoln could get through. Plus we’re under surveillance by at least three cameras, one of which is night vision equipped, according to Shane. Try to monkey with the security gate and the local cops, rented and otherwise, will be on us long before we pry it open. I know this because I’m the one who advocated the mowit-down theory of making ourselves known. “Can’t help you if I’m under arrest,” Shane points out, nixing the idea. “Antagonizing the authorities won’t help.” Very rational, but I’m not feeling particularly rational. I’m exhausted, anxious and cranky. I’m acutely aware of wearing the same skirt and cotton top donned for my visit to the county cops, hours and ages ago. Clothing that now
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smells sour. I need a hot shower. I need a warm meal and a good night’s sleep. I need to brush my teeth. I need my daughter home, my life returned to normal. “Doesn’t this just prove that he’s gone?” I fret, gesturing at the locked gate. “Or that he’s in there with Kelly and won’t come out?” Shane studies me, runs a hand over his neatly trimmed beard. “Seth Manning is in his early twenties,” he says. “I’m assuming this is the family home. The property is listed under the name Edwin Manning. Could be the father.” “Right, of course.” I’d been concentrating on the cradlerobber himself, hadn’t given a thought to his parents. “His parents may not know what’s going on. If you were his age, planning to run off with a minor, would you inform your parents?” “Doubtful.” “For all we know, Seth may in fact live elsewhere,” Shane reminds me. “But this is the address on his driver license, so we start here.” “Okay fine,” I concede. “So Mom and Dad are on vacation. They own other homes. They’re in Gay Paree, or the Ukraine, or touring the moon.” “Yes, quite possibly they could be elsewhere,” he concedes, nodding in agreement. “You want to leave?” “No! That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying if nobody answers the damn bell, I’m climbing the damn fence!” “There could be dogs.” “Then the dogs better watch out. Woman bites dog, that’ll be the headline. And you can’t stop me!” Not sure how it happened, exactly, but suddenly I’m seething, lashing out, and Randall Shane is a convenient target.
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Oddly enough, the big man doesn’t react. It’s as if he’s been expecting me to flip out, and braced himself for it. “What makes you look so smug!” I demand. “The lights,” he says, pointing at the heavy foliage obscuring the curve of the driveway. Are there lights twinkling through the leaves? Hard to say. “The house lights? Are you sure?” “No,” he says. “Not to a certainty. But moments after I first pushed the button, lights shifted.” “The wind? A timer?” He shrugs. “Maybe. My gut says somebody is home. And ignoring a buzz from the gate, that tells us something.” “What?” I ask, embarrassed for teeing off at the guy. “What does it tell us?” Before he can explain, a figure emerges from the bushes and takes a position several paces behind the locked gate. Surprising the hell out of me but not, apparently, Randall Shane. In the darkness the figure resolves into a small, slender man dressed from head to toe in black. He has thinning hair, raccoon eyes, and seems to have rubbed dirt on his face. The small man raises something that could be a gun and points it at us. Before I can duck, the beam of light makes me flinch. Flashlight, not gun. “Who are you?” he demands in a shaky voice. “What do you want?” “Mr. Manning? I’m Randall Shane and this is Mrs. Jane Garner.” “I don’t know you.” He backs away, looks ready to slip back into the foliage. “What do you want?” His voice sounds like a speaker with a loose wire, like he’s on the verge of laryngitis, and fighting it.
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Shane raises both hands, as if in surrender, and takes a step closer to the gate. “We have reason to believe that Mrs. Garner’s daughter, Kelly, has run away with Seth Manning, who is listed as living at this address. Are you Seth’s father, sir? Are you aware that Kelly Garner is a minor? Can you help us find them?” At each statement of fact the man in black seems to shudder, as if receiving a series of thudding body blows. Shaking his head, no, no, no. “Never heard of the girl,” he responds, voice cracking. “You’ll have to leave. I demand that you leave immediately!” Shane slips closer to the gate. His own powerful, compelling voice becomes less demanding, more conciliatory. “Where’s your son, Mr. Manning? Can you help us, please? Mrs. Garner is worried sick. This isn’t about pressing charges, it’s about getting her daughter back.” “Go away! You must go away!” “Why is that? Has something happened?” The man in black retreats, blending into the foliage. Only his eyes showing, like the Cheshire cat. “Nothing happened,” he says softly. “Go away.” Shane takes a business card from his wallet, slips it through the iron bars. It flutters to the ground like a small, white leaf. “My card, sir. I can help you.” The eyes vanish. The voice has been reduced to a pleading whisper. “You can help by going away.” Then the leaves shiver and he’s gone. Shane pulls the Town Car over in a shallow turnaround a few hundred yards from the Manning estate. He kills the engine. On the other side of the road, seemingly close enough to touch, the water is black, glistening. A few miles away, visible along the shore, the snug little cove exudes life. Docks, homes, street-
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lights. A familiar, clustered warmth that seems alien out here on the Neck, where many of the homes are hidden from view. Shane shifts himself in the driver’s seat, facing me. “Your reaction?” he asks. “Messed up,” I admit. The feeling of dread has returned, nagging at my guts. Getting into the car, my knees had been weak. “That was Seth’s father, wasn’t it?” Shane nods. I can’t quite make out his eyes. He’s a handsome skull in the dark. “Almost certainly,” he agrees. “I addressed him as ‘Mr. Manning’ several times and he failed to correct me. Probably used to people knowing who he is.” “His face was dirty,” I say, mouth as dry as sandpaper. “Smeared on the dirt so we wouldn’t see him,” Shane says. “I’m almost certain he was hiding in the leaves, listening to us for a while before he revealed himself.” “But why?” The big man sighs. “This is pure speculation, but I assume he wanted to know who we are. Or more importantly, who we aren’t.” “Why?” I repeat. “Why not call the security guards to run us off? Or call the cops? Why come out to the gate at all? People who live in houses like that, on estates like that, they don’t run around at night, dressed all in black, faces smeared with dirt.” I’m unaware of clutching the back of the leather headrest until Shane gives my hand a reassuring pat, as if preparing me for bad news. “In my estimation Edwin Manning is desperate,” he says carefully, gauging my reaction. “He’s making it up as he goes along.” Desperate, frightened, lost. That was my impression, too. “I’ve seen parents behave like that, many times.” Shane
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says. “Not the sneaking-around part, exactly, but the frightened-out-of-their-wits part. He’s sick with worry, just like you.” “Because his son took off with my daughter?” I ask, dreading the answer. Shane says, “Or because his son has been abducted, and he’s been warned not to contact the police.” 18. Calling All Fathers It’s after midnight and Ricky can’t sleep. Lying a foot or so from Myla on the custom king, he just can’t make it happen. Too many things going on. His sleep button is stuck and the pills no longer work. White man’s medicine, all it does is slow his thoughts a few miles per hour, not nearly enough to let his mind rest. Only thing to do when this happens, he decides, is get up, keep moving. Forward motion pushes all the crazy thoughts to the back of his head, prevents them from bouncing. Saved by gravity or momentum, or whatever the hell it is. Ricky slips out of bed, leaves Myla sleeping like a curledup kitten, a slender hand draped over her eyes. He prowls his new house in the dark, naked. Bare feet cool on the tiles, walking a circuit that takes him through the kitchen, into the hallway, past the three bedrooms he furnished for his children, around through the entertainment alcove, and back into the dining room. Sodium lights coming though the slats like knife-cuts on the tile floors. Step on a crack, he’s thinking, break the motherfucker’s back. On his third circuit Ricky leans into Tyler’s room. Disney World poster, bed like a race car, brightly painted. No Tyler tonight. Sometimes there’s a shape in the bed that might be
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his little boy, but not tonight. Decides not to check on Alicia and Reya because the girls will be with Tyler, all three together, forever and ever, amen. The new house, big as it is, is too small to contain him. In the laundry room he slips into a pair of elastic-waisted, cotton gym shorts, heads into the four-bay garage. No shirt, no shoes, he loves the feeling of air on his skin, believes he can soak up oxygen, make himself stronger. He decides, on impulse, to leave the Beemer and take Myla’s new convertible Mini Cooper. Pushes the driver’s seat as far back as it will go, his big arms cocked over the sides. Thinking he must look like one of those Shriners driving a toy car for the kids. All he needs is the funny hat. Ha, ha, ha, he laughs all the way to the airstrip. Not quite to the airstrip, actually, because the ruts and potholes on the final approach are bigger than the Mini. So he parks the little car in the brush, goes the last couple of miles on foot, snorting great drafts of muggy, night-swamp air though his flaring nostrils. The odor of ancient muck, animal scat and the thin, delicious scent of slow-moving water. Thinking, this is how the old-timers did it, hunting more or less naked, alive to the world, paying attention with all the nerves of their bodies. Ricky feels power flowing into him, and a soothing calmness that slows his brain, stops it from spinning like an off-kilter gyroscope. When he emerges into the clearing he instantly clocks the beautiful Beechcraft exactly where he left it, wings glinting with the light of distant stars. Not far away the jacked-up, fat-wheeled Dodge Ram lurks next to the camouflaged hangar. The toothy front grill makes the truck look like a shiny steel cougar ready to pounce. “Roy!” Ricky bellows, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Dug! Roydug! Roydug! Roydug!”
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Amused by putting their names together, the swampcracker twins who have sworn him allegiance in exchange for the new truck and whatever crumbs may dribble their way. Roy is the brains of the family, meaning he doesn’t drool overmuch. Whereas Dug, his very name apparently misspelled by his illiterate, white-trash mammy, young Dug seems to be missing about half his puzzle. Ricky always deals with Roy, for obvious reasons, but this time it’s Dug who comes lurching out of the truck, swollen eyelids crunchy with sleep. Upon seeing Ricky he stammers, “Um-um.Yeah hey what?” Bare chested, bare-legged Ricky Lang coming out of the dark, chanting his name, it’s like being awakened by a hard slap in the face. An experience not entirely unknown to Dug, whose late and unlamented pappy was notoriously illtempered and free with his hands. “Where’s Roy?” Ricky wants to know. Dug is looking around, wondering how the man got here. A little segment of his brain wondering if maybe the crazy Indian really can fly without benefit of aircraft. Materializing like a ghost with Dug’s name in his mouth. “Um-um,” says Dug. “Um-um, where’s he at?” Ricky demands. Standing close so the stammering white-bread can smell the feral stink of him, the swamp and danger on his breath. Dug is afraid of Ricky—any sane individual smaller than King Kong would be afraid of Ricky Lang, who exudes a kind of steroid strength from the top of his bowl-cut hairdo down to his splayed feet—but Dug is even more afraid that he’ll react the wrong way, ruin everything for Roy. Not knowing what to do, fearing the wrong reaction, he’s reduced
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to stammering, making um-um noises while his brain sorts out the options. Strangely enough, Ricky seems to understand what’s going on with Dug—the obvious strain of having to think— and steps back, giving him room to work it out. “Roy,” Dug finally says, savoring the name. “He gone to check on the girl. I’m guardin’ the airplane.” Giving it the swamp-cracker pronunciations, two words, era plane. “Left you the truck,” Ricky observes. “What’s he driving?” Dug has to think about it, then carefully assemble the words. “Four-wheeler. One in the shed?” That sets Ricky back on his bare heels just a little, because he has always intended the four-wheeler to be a present for his children, eventually. Purchased on a whim months ago, with nobody’s birthday pending anytime soon, he’d decided to store it at the airfield until they were old enough to drive the thing. Picturing Tyler gleeful as he guns the engine, spins the fat wheels. Tyler screaming. Ricky takes a deep breath, swallows his rage, saving it for later. “Took the wheeler, did he?” he says pleasantly, showing his teeth. Dug nods deliberately and with enthusiasm, as if grateful for any question that doesn’t require a verbal response. “Where’s that cell phone at, Dug? The one the girl had. Did Roy leave it with you?” Dug nods again. Two in a row. “Give it over, I need to make a call,” says Ricky, holding out his big fist, opening his blunt fingers. Dug hurries to the truck, returns with the sporty little Razr
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cell phone, places it carefully into the palm of Ricky’s hand. Takes a step back, waiting. “Battery, Dug,” says Ricky, ever so softly. “I need the battery, too.” Back to the truck like a two-legged retriever. Actually Ricky’s pleased that the twins remembered to remove the battery, as instructed. Ricky knows all about surveillance and triangulation, and how an active cell phone can be a homing device. He assembles the phone, fires it up, waits until the signal bars are glowing. Then thumbs the redial button, watches the familiar number march across the little blue screen. “Yo, Edwin,” Ricky says jovially, his free hand slipping into his gym shorts, adjusting his genitals. “You still up. Me again, yeah. What’s a matter, can’t sleep? You call the cops yet? No? FBI? CIA, Wackenhut, Pizza Hut, whoever? No? You swear? Oh that’s good, I believe you. You’re pretty smart for a white dude. Yeah, I’m down with you, bro. We can figure a way out of this, we put our brains together and think real hard. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I know you’re worried about your son. I know that. You should be worried. If we can’t work this out, if you can’t help me, I’ll be forced to cut off your boy’s ears and his nose and his fingers and little white pecker, and then FedEx him to locations around the world.” The FedEx stuff is pure improvisation, something he heard in a movie or on TV. Ricky has already decided that when the time comes the body will go into the swamp, clean and simple and forever. But who knows, FedEx might work for the smaller appendages. Ricky loves this part, deciding who lives, who dies, who gets the power, who shrivels like an earthworm in the sun.
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“Calm down, Edwin,” he says. “Concentrate on figuring out how to get me what I want. You’ve got twelve hours before I start cutting.” 19. The Taste Of Dirty Pennies Men, most of them, seem to think that when a woman cries she’s signaling weakness, falling apart. But sometimes crying is just what you do to relieve the tension. Guys scream or sweat or kick the cat. We cry. There’s this old movie with Holly Hunter, she’s the producer of a TV news show, and she starts the day by sitting at her desk and crying her eyes out for about thirty seconds. Then she’s good to go. I’m having a Holly Hunter moment. The forbidden word abducted is spoken and I’m a fountain, sobbing so hard it hurts in my ribs. Give him credit, Randall Shane doesn’t try to comfort me or offer a shoulder to cry on. He sits back and gives me time, and when I’m finished blowing my nose he simply continues where he left off. “It’s a theory and therefore by definition it could be wrong,” he says. “But I think we have to proceed on the assumption that Edwin Manning believes his son is in peril. Therefore we have to assume your daughter is also in peril, until we hear otherwise. Does this make sense to you, Mrs. Garner?” I nod miserably. “Unfortunately, yes. I was thinking the same thing myself. Guess I didn’t want to admit it.” “Then we’re in agreement?” “I guess,” I say. “Does that mean we go to the cops? Tell them what we suspect?” Shane shakes his head. “We’re not quite there. We need to know why Manning hasn’t called in the Feds. Why he’s so
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terrified that he’s prowling his own yard in camouflage. Once we’ve resolved that, once we have an indication that your daughter is in danger, we’ll notify the local authorities and they’ll contact the FBI. That’s how it’s done.” “How do we find out? He won’t talk to us.” In the dark his smile is tight, resolute. “I’ve got an idea,” he says. Second time around, getting inside is easy. Shane’s idea is to push the button on the intercom and say, “Let us in, Mr. Manning, or I’ll call my colleagues at the FBI. The assistant director in charge of kidnapping is Monica Bevins and I have her on speed dial. Count of three. One…two.” And just like that, the gates slid open. As we roll up the long, curving driveway, I ask Shane if he really has a Monica Bevins on speed dial, and if she’s really an agent-in-charge. “Yes to both,” he says. “And yes, I’m fully prepared to make the call.” “And they let you assist clients like me? The FBI?” “Can’t stop me. I’m a civilian.” “But you’ve got, like, all these connections to the agency, right?” “Some useful connections, yes.” “And this is what you did before you retired, you found missing children?” His eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. He gives me an odd look, like I’m a kid asking too many questions at the wrong time. “No,” he says, “not exactly. I assisted with a number of kidnap cases as an agent on general assignment. At the time it wasn’t my specialty.” At this point I’m too numb to be shocked by this revelation. “No? What did you do?” “Electronics, surveillance gear, mostly hardware stuff.
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Gear and gizmos. Later I helped develop a software program for rapid fingerprint recognition.” “You really were a computer geek? That’s what you did in the FBI?” “Pretty much,” he admits. What was I thinking, that he’d shot John Dillinger and smoked out terror cells? “So how’d you get into this line of work?” “Long story,” he says. “Maybe later.” Secrets. Apparently Randall Shane has a few of his own. We’ve arrived at what appears to be the main building, having passed several low, modern outbuildings. Carriage house, guest cottage, maintenance shed, all very Long Island estate. Lush, illuminated landscaping that looks au naturel but isn’t, believe me. It’s all very tastefully planned, very big money. The main structure is an artful arrangement of steel beams and smoked glass and daring architectural angles. Must be a million precisely weathered cedar shingles keeping out the rain. The property taxes probably exceed my yearly income. No wonder the owner has, apparently, been targeted for extortion—he’s got a lot to give. Kelly’s boyfriend or flight instructor, whatever the hell he is, how did this happen? How did she find herself in this particular world? Shane sets the parking brake and we get out. Lights come on, illuminating a wide, elaborately shingled portico. The oversize door opens—opaque green-glass panels set in a brushed-steel frame—and Edwin Manning staggers out, dressed more or less as we last saw him, with the exception of his face, which has been recently washed. “Who are you?” he wants to know. Then he adds, in a
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voice so faint it seems to fade away, “Leave me alone. Just please leave me alone!” He trips, falls to his knees, his skinny chipmunk face slick with tears. The poor man is a mess. Shane and I help him to his feet, each taking a black-clad arm. He doesn’t weigh all that much and I can feel his pulse pounding, as if his whole body is being struck like a gong. He is, I realize, scared nearly to death, and that makes me even more frightened. “My daughter,” I tell him urgently. “That’s all we want, my daughter back. Whatever else happened, I don’t care.” Manning staggers like a drunk but there’s no smell of alcohol. He’s exhausted and stressed to the point of falling down. Not quite there yet myself, but I can see it coming if Kelly isn’t home by, say, this time tomorrow. Once when Kelly was about ten, a year or so after her last treatment, she accompanied me on a house call, what I call a catalog call because it’s all about looking at photos of designs and fabric samples—satins, silks, laces and finishes. Lots of catalogs, lots of possibilities. Long drive to Montauk, a very successful novelist’s waterfront “cottage.” Won’t mention her name because I don’t want to be sued, but the bride-to-be (marriage number three) made all of her money writing sexy stories about rich divas and had either become one herself or started out that way. A very unpleasant person to deal with, unless you happened to be a fellow celebrity, in which case it was kiss-kiss-oh-Imissed-you-so-much. Anyhow, Kelly’s eyes got big when she saw the house and the beautiful setting on the grassy dunes, and I could tell she longed to live in a place like this rather than in boring old suburban Valley Stream. Couldn’t blame her.
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The writer’s cottage looked like a Laura Ashley catalog cover, the one where Ralph Lauren is visiting, and all the children are perfectly chic. Not that there were any children present other than Kelly. The rich bitch had kids from earlier marriages, but they were all grown-up and not speaking to her. Kelly wandered from room to room as the bride-to-beagain checked out flattering designs and bosom-enhancing brocades. As I soon discovered, the lady liked to vent on the “little people,” meaning employees or contractors, and she included me as one. Contractors were scum, painters were scum, plumbers and electricians were scum. Everybody who worked on her house was scum or stupid or worthless. She said so on David Letterman. Failing to mention that she changed her mind every other minute, made ridiculous demands, then complained when it took longer, cost more. I had already decided that I’d have a scheduling conflict that would prevent me from adding her to my client list, but didn’t quite know how to get out of there without having my head bitten off. So I went along, going through the motions, suggesting possible ensembles that might work—most every suggestion dismissed as “stupid”—absorbing abuse from a woman I’d just met and hadn’t said boo to. When we finally escaped, a mile or so down the road, Kelly touches me on the hand and asks why that lady is so horrible. All I can do is shake my head and tell her that for some people money is like a poison. It makes them sick in the head. Kelly, ten years old, she looks me in the eye and goes, “That woman was always horrible, Mom. She was born that way. Tell her to take her wedding gown and put it where the sun don’t shine.” Ten. I laughed till I cried. Right now, exhausted and shaky
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and ready to fall apart for at least the third time, I’m wondering if she ever set foot on the Manning estate, and if so, what she thinks of it, of them. “Are you alone, sir?” Shane wants to know. We’ve entered something like a glass hut with a high, cathedral ceiling vented with skylights. Canvas-bladed ceiling fans hang like monstrous white bats. Manning staggers to the right, bringing us to a living space. Cherry floors set in a herringbone pattern, stark leather couches, steel-and-strap chairs, lots of bookcases filled with books. Look like real books, too, not designer touches. “Anybody here?” Shane asks, persisting. “Family, staff? Anybody at all?” Edwin Manning has collapsed into one of the custom designer chairs, buried his face in his hands. When he looks up again he seems to have gained some resolve. His voice is hoarse, froglike, as if an invisible hand is gripping his throat. “Nobody,” he croaks. “Sent everyone away. I’m entirely alone.” “Where’s your wife? Seth’s mother, where is she?” The little man snorts, shakes his head. “Dead. Died when he was twelve. I never remarried.” “Other children?” Shane asks. “Just Seth.” He looks up, focuses on Shane. “If you call the FBI, or anyone else, he’ll die. Is that understood? He’ll die quite horribly. That’s really all I can tell you.” Shane indicates that we should both sit. Put us on a level with Edwin Manning. Have a look into his sad, red-rimmed eyes, see what we can see. “Has your son been abducted?” Shane asks, point-blank. “Is he being held for ransom? Is this about money?” Manning shakes his head, clears his throat. “I can’t talk about it, not to you and not to anyone,” he says, as if reciting
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from a script. “That was made crystal clear. I have to do exactly what they say or he’ll die.” Shane sits back, digesting Manning’s strangely laconic response. So far, almost every sentence ends in “die,” or contains the word “death” or “kill,” and yet the big guy doesn’t look the least bit discouraged. To the contrary, he has the slightly satisfied expression of a man whose assumptions have been confirmed. “Okay,” Shane says. “We’ve established there is an abduction in progress, and that you believe your son’s life to be in danger. Have you received proof of life? An indication that Seth is still alive?” Manning breaks eye contact, such as it is. His small, delicate jaw juts forward. “Stay out of this,” he says. “I read your card. If you’re former FBI you know what can happen.” “What about Kelly?” I demand. Somehow I’m on my feet, trembling with anxiety and agitation. “Is she with your son? Is that what happened? Has she been kidnapped, too?” Manning rubs his temples, avoids looking at me. “Never heard of her,” he says. “Seth never mentioned anyone by that name.” For the first time I get a strong sense that he’s lying. He may not have met my daughter—what adult male brings home an underage girl to meet his daddy?—but he’s heard of her for sure. Mos def, as Kelly would say. Shane leans in closer. His whole body seems to come into sharp focus, as if to demonstrate that he could, if provoked, crush the smaller man like bug. “Are you aware that your son originally made contact with Mrs. Garner’s sixteen-year-old daughter on the Internet? That he took her skydiving, and apparently gave her flying lessons, all without her mother’s consent?”
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Manning shakes his head. “I can’t discuss this.” Shane leans closer still. His voice becomes softer, but somehow no less forceful. “You are in deep trouble, sir. You are out of your depth. Let me help.” “I can’t do that. Leave my house at once, both of you.” “Tell me what happened,” Shane suggests. “I’ll take it from there.” Edwin Manning suddenly erupts, shaking his head so hard he almost spins out of the seat. “Go away!” he insists. “I don’t know about your daughter,” he says, turning to me, meeting my eyes for the first time. “If she’s with Seth, they’ll kill her, too. Do you understand? You have to let me handle this. You must. It’s the only way.” Shane’s hands are suddenly gripping my upper arms, pulling me away. Anticipating, almost before I quite know it myself, that I’m about to launch myself at Manning, scratch out his lying eyes. “We’re leaving,” Shane announces. “If you change your mind, call me. I can help.” Couple miles down the road, heading out of the millionaire enclave, Shane pulls over so I can throw up. Kneeling in the darkness by the side of the road, the taste of dirty pennies in my mouth. Shane keeping back, not tempted to hold my head, because he knows what’s going on, why this has happened. It’s not fear that’s makes me sick. It’s anger. 20. In The Bunker Twelve hundred miles to the south, Ricky Lang heads for the bunker. A concrete cube, ready-made and then buried under a load of dirt and gravel long before Ricky was born. Supposedly it dates from the Cuban missile crisis. Some crazy white
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man shit, blow the whole world to pieces. The way he heard, a Cuban contractor buried the thing, all in a panic, convinced Fidel was coming to town on a rocket. Kept his family there for a few weeks, then walked away, never looked back. Whatever, Ricky’s been familiar with the bunker since he was a kid, when he used to play hide the weenie with some of the trailer girls down there. The trailer park is long gone, but the bunker still exists and you never know when a secure location will come in handy. Especially one that cannot be detected from the air. Ricky is keenly aware that any fool with a computer can Google a satellite image these days, check out your backyard, see if you mowed the grass. He’s made sure the Beechcraft is concealed in a hangar, that activity in and around the airfield is kept to a minimum. The place is probably still under some sort of minimum DEA satellite photo surveillance from the bad old days. Nothing to draw their attention now—he made it his personal business to clean up the tribal drug trade. Couple of the stubborn old farts thought it was still a going concern, had to be fed to the gators. The others soon saw the error of their ways, agreed to live on tribal income and whatever they’d managed to hide in the ground. Gator bait was usually ripe chicken, but like they say, everything tastes like chicken once you take the skin off. “Smells bad down there,” Roy warns him, approaching the bunker. Ricky stops, looks Roy in the eye. “White shit smells different from people shit, you ever notice? One sniff, I can tell.” “Oh yeah?” Roy responds, glancing away. “The boy don’t know whether he’s coming or going, or where he’s at.” “Uh-huh,” says Ricky. “Dug, you bring them loppers?” “Yeah, Chief,” says Dug, bringing up the rear, letting the big-branch loppers bump against his trouser leg. Seems to
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think carrying the loppers is some sort of game he can win, if only he can figure it out. Ricky holds out his hand, stops Dug in his tracks. “Ain’t no chief to you,” he says. “I am chief to my own people, only to them.” No surprise, Dug looks confused, seeking help from his brother, who shrugs as if to say Roll with it. “You got the key?” Ricky asks. “Open says me.” Ricky’s laughing as Roy fumbles with the key. Neither brother registering the humor in “open says me,” puns and wordplay not being their thing. Which, in Ricky Lang’s febrile mind makes the Whittle twins more amusing than the usual swamp crackers, a tribe he has made use of, and thoroughly mistrusted, for his entire life. Started out helping his father, Tito Lang, swap tanned hides for the whiskey the crackers made in their hidden stills. Saw the contempt in their colorless eyes— drunk Indians selling their birthright for the poison that would surely kill them. A poison self-administered, and no different in its outcome than the hot bullets so many of the people fired into their own brains as punctuation to their defiled lives. “Wait,” says Ricky, cocking an ear. “You hear that?” Strange noises emanating from the bunker. Sounds like children keening. In his mind it feels like the transmission has slipped, can’t get in gear to the next thought. Stuck on children keening, eee eee eee. “That’s the ventilation pipe,” Roy reminds him. “Wind goes across the top, makes a weird noise.” Keening becomes wind and his mind moves on. “Open the door,” he says. Out comes the nasty smell. To Ricky a white smell. “Need to empty the bucket,” he points out. “He kicked it over.”
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“Then mop it up. Use Pine-Sol.” Roy gives him a little look, like are you serious? gets it that Ricky is deadly serious, and looks away. “Okay, sure. Pine-Sol it is.” Inside the fetid bunker Ricky clicks on his lantern flashlight. The beam finds a frightened face, hollow eyes, a handsome mouth distorted by a gag. “Hey, Seth, I talked to your dad. He sends his love.” Ricky jams a tranquilizer dart into the white boy’s thigh, sees his eyes registering a higher level of fear. “Nothing to worry about,” Ricky says soothingly, watching the tranks hit him hard, making the eyes dull, the rigid limbs relax. “Won’t take anything you’re gonna miss.” 21. We All Scream As young moms go, I was clueless. For instance, I’d never seen an infant nursed until Kelly started playing patty-cake on my left nipple. Never, for that matter, held a newborn baby. Worse, I had no concept of what really happens to the female body during pregnancy and after. Not to be gross, but for a couple of weeks we both wore diapers to bed, me and Kelly. I was a child raising a baby. That’s one of my secrets. Kelly can do the math, but she has no idea how young I really was at seventeen, mentally and emotionally, or how much she frightened me. It’s true. I was scared of my own baby. Terrified I’d do something stupid and she’d either be taken from me, or die. All that stuff about maternal instincts, it wasn’t working for me. Yes, I loved the little bean from the very first moment, but that didn’t stop the fear or ease the anxiety. My mother, bless her soul, carried little white paper bags
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in her purse, unfurled whenever I hyperventilated. Passed them to me like you might offer a Kleenex. Later she told me the bags came from the candy store, which somehow seems fitting. What’ll you have today, Janey, a quarter pound of nonpareils or a panic attack? Baby Ruth or a real baby? Poor Mom. To this day I’ve no idea how she managed it. Somehow she worked full-time, taught me how to care for a baby, dealt with my father’s terrifying temper, navigated the divorce minefield, and made plans for my future. When Kelly was six months old she assumed the baby-care duties and more or less forced me to get my GED and then take design courses at Nassau Community College, where I eventually discovered my inner seamstress. Looking back, it may have been that she actually thought being a single mom was a good thing for me. One less complication, not having to deal with a man. No doubt a result of her own failed marriage, but at the time I appreciated that she never once made me feel ashamed for the strange circumstances of Kelly’s conception. The big secret we never spoke of. Whereas it poured through my father like acid, corroding whatever love he’d had for either one of us. Why is Mom so much on my mind? Because I’m wondering what she’d make of Randall Shane. For that matter, what do I make of him? The big guy has been in my life for less than a day, but already I’m letting him influence decisions that could determine whether my daughter lives or dies. For instance, his decision to stop for breakfast. “It’s two in the morning!” I rant. “Are you crazy? Are you insane? We should be notifying the FBI or the media or both, not eating waffles!” “I’m more of a scrambled eggs person,” Shane says, very calm and matter-of-fact. “Can’t notify my friends at the agency without protein. Preferably in the form of bacon.”
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I know what he’s doing. He’s using gentle humor to calm me down. Just like he’d gently but firmly discouraged me from throwing rocks at Edwin Manning’s big glass house. Like he’d prevented me from grabbing the rich little weasel by the throat and shaking the truth out of him. “If I thought that would work I’d do it myself,” he explains, coaxing me out of the place, back into the Town Car and away from the Manning estate. “The man believes his silence will keep his son alive. He’s clinging to that hope. Physical intimidation won’t change his mind. You could hook him up to a battery, he still wouldn’t talk.” “You’d do that?” Shane shrugs his big shoulders. “Whatever a given situation requires. As a rule I try to avoid torture.” I’m pretty sure he’s kidding about torture. He’s not kidding about scrambled eggs. Shane heads for this all-night diner in Wantagh, gets us there with a minimum of fuss. Says you’re never more than ten miles from a diner in Long Island and he knows them all. The place in Wantagh is the real thing, the shiny metal kind, with a gum-chewing waitress in a starched uniform, a tattooed short-order cook in a white undershirt, overhead lights bright enough to dissolve your eyelids, the whole bit. When we’re seated with thick white china mugs of steaming coffee, Shane explains, “I can’t start making calls until seven a.m. Call in the middle of the night, you need a situation.” “My daughter missing, that’s not a situation?” “Not without further information, no. Nothing we can give them tonight requires an immediate response. If for instance we knew she was being held against her will in a certain location, that’s a call can be made at any time.”
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“But we tell the FBI, right? Once they’re up and showered, had their coffee, whatever.” He ignores my sarcasm, sips his coffee. “Yes,” he says. “We’ll tell them what we know, what we suspect.” “And they’ll take over? Get Manning to talk?” He shakes his head, smiling faintly. “That’s not how it works. Agents can only be assigned to a specific case upon request of the local authorities. Mr. Manning would have to call in the police, the police would in turn notify the FBI, and then the wheels would start to turn.” “So we tell your old friends what we know and they do nothing?” There are about six people in the diner, including the waitress, and they’re all staring at me. Apparently I raised my voice. “Order something,” Shane suggests quietly. “You need fuel, Mrs. Garner. Keep running on empty and you’ll crash.” “Can’t handle eggs. Not hungry. Answer my question, please.” “I’ll have the Wake-up Special with whole wheat,” he says to the waitress, who has ambled over to take the order and also, from her eagle eyes, to check me out. Shane points his thumb at me and says, “She’ll have the same thing, hold the eggs.” The gum-snapper likes his style. “Coming right up.” She smiles at him, flutters her false eyelashes and marches away on sturdy legs. When she’s gone, Shane quietly continues where he left off. “I’m sure my, um, old friends in the agency will be as helpful as the law allows.” “Helpful? Great. And we just wait until I get a ransom note?” Shane leans across the table, more or less forces the cup of coffee into my hands. “Mrs. Garner? There may never be
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a ransom note. Ransom notes are actually quite rare. At this point, we don’t know what happened, or why your daughter hasn’t contacted you again. All of our efforts must be directed toward locating her. We concentrate on that. Finding her. The law can sort out the rest.” The only reason I’m not crying is because I’m too exhausted for tears. “What do we do?” I ask, feeling faint. The tray arrives, loaded. “Eat,” he says. Home fries, sausage, cinnamon toast, applesauce, I’m gorging like a lumberjack. Instinct taking over, making me eat. And as Shane promised, the calories start to have a calming effect. When I’ve become more or less human, he explains that his next move—and our best shot—involves Kelly’s cell phone. “She’s a minor, so the account will be in your name, correct?” I nod. “As the account holder, you have a right to know where and when the phone has been used. If you know the approximate time when you received her last call, we can find out where she was when the call originated, roughly.” “Roughly?” “What cell tower was accessed to route the call. Narrows it down to about twenty square miles or so. Again, not like on TV. But it could be very helpful.” “But we have to wait until morning?” He nods. “Afraid so. And even then it usually requires several hours to get through channels. We’ll be lucky to have the location by noon.” “Noon?” Seems like a century away, a future hard to fathom. “Here’s what I suggest,” he says, as if ticking off a list.
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“We get you home. You shower, put your head on a pillow, get some rest. Meanwhile I’ll be riding my laptop, see what I can find out about Edwin Manning. I’ll bring the Nassau County Police Department up to speed. At the appropriate hour I’ll contact my friend in the FBI, report what we suspect, and initiate the cell phone search.” “I can’t sleep.” “Take a pill,” he suggests. “Later in the day I need you fully cognizant, Mrs. Garner. Firing on all cylinders.” “What about you?” He squints, genuinely puzzled by the question. “What about me?” “Don’t you need to sleep, too?” “No,” he says, as if taken aback. “Oddly enough, I don’t. Not when a case is active.” I stare at the guy, forcing him to look at me with his pale blue eyes. And notice, for the first time, evidence of something he’s hiding. Something he keeps dark and deep and does not want to share. “It’s a form of stress-induced insomnia,” he explains, studying the saltshaker. “I’ve been the subject of at least two papers on sleep disorder.” “You’re serious,” I say, astonished. He shrugs his big shoulders, trying to make light of it. “I’ve learned to live with it. To use it to my advantage.” By way of ending the conversation, obviously very uncomfortable for him, he waves the waitress over. She’s been hovering at a polite range, waiting for him to beckon. “Yes?” she asks brightly, basking in his presence. “Anything else? More coffee?” “Ice cream,” he says. “Vanilla, one scoop.” “Apple pie under that? It’s good here.”
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“I’ll try it next time,” he promises. “Dessert for you, miss?” I shake my head, staring at him. “At this hour? Ice cream?” “We all scream for ice cream,” Shane says without a trace of irony. 22. Her Own Personal Black Hole A liter water bottle, a bucket, a lamp. These items have become the center of her universe. The bottle for hoarding and drinking. The bucket for bathroom business. And most precious, a small, battery-operated lamp that she also hoards, not wanting to run it down. That’s the only power she has now, the ability to click the little switch, push the darkness back for a few moments. Not that there’s much to see. Four walls, floor, ceiling, all made of thick sheet metal. She’s being held in some sort of walk-in cooler, she surmises, although the cooler part is clearly not functioning. The air is hot as hell, syrupy thick, getting staler with every breath. Using the lamp, Kelly has located an air vent. Unlike in the movies, this particular vent can’t be utilized as an escape hatch. It measures no more than four inches by twelve inches—too small for a human, although there are signs of a rodent infestation. She’s hoping squirrel or chipmunk, but it’s not like mice or even rats would really freak her out. Kelly’s personal gross factor is more attuned to slimy creatures like worms or snakes. Her friends think Snakes on a Plane is a laugh riot, especially the scrotum-chomping vipers, but Kelly has to avert her eyes whenever they crank up the DVD. Funny how fear works. Until what, yesterday—has it been that long?—she’d thought of herself as basically fearless.
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Death defying. She’d faced down the black monster when she was a little girl, so aside from shrieky-fun things like wiggly worms or stupid movies, there was nothing in real life that truly frightened her. Until now. The hot steel box changed everything. Now she’s really and truly terrified. Having to deal with the adrenaline shakes, an unfamiliar weakness that seems to spread from her knees into her guts, making it hard to hold her pee. Hard to hold the lamp without her hands shaking. Hard to resist screaming. Hard to think coherently. Thinking clear, that’s something to cling to, something to strive for. All she has to do, be as brave as her nine-year-old self. Back then she actually visualized herself in a coffin, and the hot steel box is not a coffin, not yet. Has to be a way out. There’s always a way out, right? “Right? Right? Right?” Kelly’s not too sure, but she may actually have said that out loud. Shout or a whisper, she can’t tell—the darkness makes it hard to distinguish words from thoughts, and her volume control is totally whacked. Let there be light, she thinks, switching on the lamp. Holding it up to the grate, she can see where the narrow vent takes a ninety-degree turn. There are no fans blowing or circulating air, but to Kelly it feels as if the air is fresher at the vent, and she decides to linger in the vicinity. If the air is fresher it must be coming from the outside, right? “Right! Right! Right!” Weird, but it’s like she can see herself screaming into the vent. Only she’s not screaming help! she’s screaming, “Right!” Which is pretty mental, when you think about it. What would someone think? They’re walking down the street, minding
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their own business, and a voice shouting “right!” comes out of a vent? They’ll think crazy person, mind your own business. Kelly gets a grip, puts a different word in her mouth. “Help! Help! Help!” she screams, shouting into the vent. Shouting into her own personal black hole. Black hole sucking in her fear, making it part of the darkness. Black hole where the little girl inside her still lives, visualizing coffins, facing the monster. 23. Snow Bunnies In Heaven Randall Shane stands in the doorway, watching her sleep. Keenly aware that not all sleep is quiet or restful. Example: Mrs. Garner moaning softly, fingertips quivering against the pillow. Her large and lovely eyes move fitfully beneath her eyelids, indicating an active dream state—they won’t be good dreams, either, not with a daughter missing, presumed kidnapped. Interesting woman, Jane Garner. Interesting not only because she’s strong willed and self-reliant, traits he admires, but because she’s an accomplished liar. Deftly pulling the curtain to hide a significant portion of her life, a crucial something having to do with the identity of her daughter’s biological father. Rape? Shame? Some dark variation on family tragedy? What, exactly, makes her hold tight the secret, even at a time like this? Shane backs away, closes the door, walks to the daughter’s bedroom in his stocking feet, holding his Top-Siders lightly in his left hand. Moving as quietly and purposefully as a big jungle cat, with the athletic balance and grace of a much younger man. Grateful as always that he had the sense to quit football after a single high school season, while his knees were still uninjured. Lots of big men his age, early forties,
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were already limping from joints damaged long ago, when size and agility and adolescent adrenaline had put them into violent collisions with young men of similar size and agility. The human knee is a marvelous feat of biological engineering, but it is not meant to endure the sideways force applied suddenly by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound tackler running at full speed, leverage enhanced by cleats. As Shane had determined on his own, at age fifteen, disappointing every coach who’d ever seen him move. Guy your size and speed, they’d say, what a waste. I’m fine, his shyly proud, teenage self would respond. Coaches would come back with promises of athletic scholarships, unaware that the big, rangy kid was an actual scholar, top of his class academically, that he’d read and understood medical research papers on sport-damaged joints and made a rational decision not to participate. Not because he was afraid of pain or injury—as an adolescent he had been totally fearless—but because he liked the feel of his large strong body, what it was becoming, and wanted to keep it that way. He’d had plans, big plans. All of which changed one remarkably cold day in Rochester, New York. Enrolled in the tough-as-nails engineering school at R.I.T., Shane maintains a perfect 4.0 average, despite working several part-time jobs. His job as a library assistant includes returning books to the higher shelves—they call him the human ladder—and keeping the pathways leading to the library clear of snow. That’s where it happens, outside in the wickedly crispy cold. One minute he’s leaning on his shovel, daydreaming about the Nobel Prize he will one day be given for his work in chemical engineering—astonishing discoveries that will change the world—the next minute Jean Dealy walks by in her arctic survival suit, armored and padded and insulated
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against the fierce winter wind roaring in from the Genesee River. This on a campus where students routinely go hatless at ten below, and the truly foxy coeds wear thin little miniskirts, or less, no matter how cold it gets. And yet this young woman has chosen a genderless arctic survival suit that covers her from toes to nose, obscuring every feature but her marvelous eyes, peeking out of the padded suit. Eyes that floor Randall, stopping his heart as she passes by, the snow squeaking merrily under her fur-lined boots. The squeak of his big plans grinding to a halt because in that moment Jean Dealy becomes his new big plan, even before he knows her name or sees himself reflected in her amazing eyes. Twenty-some odd years later, the thought still makes him smile. Strange how the physical act of smiling sets off a pang of loss that closes his throat, as powerful as a fist to the larynx. Mother and daughter connections, that’s what does it, that’s what gets him in the secret place where he tends his memories. Because, like his new client, Randall Shane has secrets of his own. Snow bunnies in heaven, that’s just one of his many secrets. He sits sideways at Kelly Garner’s computer because his knees are too big to fit under the desk. He scans the teenager’s files, makes a few notes and then carries the notebook to the front door, where he dons his Top-Siders. Out in the driveway he manually unlocks the Lincoln Town Car because the woop-woop of the remote key might awaken his sleeping beauty. In the hush of the big sedan he picks up the clunky car phone, presses a key for an oft-called number, leaves a message. “It’s me. Any and all information regarding the following
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individuals—Jane S. Garner, her daughter Kelly Garner, no middle initial.” He gives the address, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, then concludes, “Particular attention to any information regarding Kelly’s birth father. Soonest. Thanks.” Shane hangs up, glances at his wristwatch—too soon for the next call, the crucial call. The call that just might find the missing girl, or at least point him in the right direction. He powers the seat, lays it back as far as it will go. Closes his eyes, tries to rest, willing his mind to blankness. He thinks: Superman has his Fortress of Solitude, Randall Shane his Lincoln Town Car. The self-comparison to a comic-book character makes him smile again, and this time the smile does not hurt. 24. Janet Reno’s Dance Party In the dream my bed lies on a train, a swaying commuter train, and a giant peers in an open door, watching me sleep. Part of me knows I should wake up, search the train for Kelly, but I can’t keep my eyes open. It’s the train’s fault, because trains make me sleepy. “Mrs. Garner? There’s someone to see you.” Shane in the hallway, making his voice big enough to be heard through the solid panel of the bedroom door. One moment I’m asleep, dreaming, the next I’m up, a cold thrill in my blood. Stepping into linen Capri pants, shrugging on a top and calling out, “What? What happened? Is it Kelly? What do you mean ‘someone to see me’?” Shane waits until I open the door. Hands me a mug of hot tea. His cheerful smile has to be a good sign. “My friend from the agency,” he says. “She was kind enough to drop by.”
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There’s a stranger in my kitchen, talking on her cell as I enter, bleary-eyed and clutching my mug of tea. Remember the famous Saturday Night Live routine where Will Ferrell impersonates Janet Reno, the former Attorney General? Which was all the more convincing because Reno was such a tall, big-boned woman that at certain angles, under bad TV lights, she really did look like a man in drag. The FBI agent waiting in my kitchen has Reno’s masculine build—big swimmer’s shoulders—but a much more feminine face. A quite pretty face, with a delicate mouth, big, thicklashed brown eyes, and a narrow, slightly freckled nose. The combo of large but delicately beautiful is unusual, and I find myself staring, a form of rudeness the agent is apparently used to, because she smiles a greeting and offers her hand. “This is Monica Bevins,” says Shane by way of introduction. “Good morning, Mrs. Garner,” she says. “Sorry to wake you so early, but I’m on my way back from the Long Island field office, so it was now or never. Hope you were able to get some sleep.” “No problem.” “Back in the day Monica and I were in the same class at Quantico,” Shane adds. “Difference is, I eventually resigned and she eventually got promoted. And promoted. And promoted. Monica is now an assistant director. Affectionately known as an ‘A-Dick.’ And duly expected to rise to the D.D. That’s deputy director. As high as you can go without a presidential appointment.” “Randall, stop gushing.” “Sorry, ma’am.” The big woman rolls her pretty eyes, but the irritation is feigned. She’s basking in his admiration. Truth is, given her size and forthright personality, she and Shane look like they
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could be brother and sister. And that’s the vibe between them—old, trusted friends who have endured bad times and good. “I understand this big galoot is going to help locate your daughter,” she says. “Mrs. Garner, are you okay?” My legs are still wobbly and I feel weirdly on the verge of tears and don’t want to unleash that particular fountain. So I nod and sit down, clutching at the counter. “You took a pill,” Shane reminds me. A sleeping pill, right. No wonder my brain feels muffled in cotton. “Randall has requested a shadow investigation,” the big woman says. “Are you in agreement?” “Shadow investigation?” I ask, puzzled. “What’s that?” “It’s what we sometimes do in a situation like this, when we haven’t been officially brought in. Despite what you see on TV, the agency almost never imposes on a local investigation if the parents are uncooperative. We follow very specific guidelines governing abduction or kidnapping cases. Bottom line, without a request from the parents or the Nassau County Police, we can’t take an active role.” “What about me?” I ask. “I’m a parent.” “Indeed. And we’ll put your daughter on our missing persons list, and alert all of our local offices. If evidence develops that your daughter has been abducted—a ransom call or note, or some other indicator—this will automatically become a full-on, agents-in-place investigation. Meanwhile, we’ll very quietly take a look at Edwin Manning, see what we can determine. As I say, what we call a shadow investigation.” “Okay, I get it.”
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“You understand we are constrained from an active role, unless and until you get a ransom demand?” “Yes,” I say. “I wouldn’t authorize this if Randall hadn’t assured me that your daughter is not a typical teen runaway, in which case you’d have to rely on local police efforts to locate her.” A sudden flush warms my cheeks. “Kelly’s in trouble and it has something to do with Manning’s son. We know that. We were there.” The big woman nods. “So Randall said. He’s almost always right about these situations. His track record is nothing short of amazing. That’s why I’m responding, and why the agency will take a look. I’m leaving the legal paperwork that will enable us to pen register your telephone lines, have it on the record if a kidnapper calls. You okay with that?” “Yes, of course. Whatever it takes.” “Let’s hope Randall got it wrong this time and your daughter is just acting out. Believe me, hard as that is to deal with—I have two grown daughters, so I know—hard as that is, any sort of abduction scenario is much, much worse.” She hands Shane a legal-size envelope, the paperwork for the phone tap. “Sign and fax to the Melville office, they’ll get the ball rolling. Are we clear?” “Yes, ma’am, all clear,” says Shane. She ignores the taunt, turns to me. “Mrs. Garner?” “Find my daughter. That’s my only concern.” “We’ll do everything we can. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to be in Washington by noon.” She shakes my hand again, gives Shane a sisterly peck on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” she assures me on her way out. “You’re in capable hands.”
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*** The capable hands come through an hour or so later. I’m drinking too much tea and trying to clear my head. Checking my cell for messages that haven’t been left, generally working my anxiety up to higher and higher levels. Desperately wanting something, anything to happen, to convince me we’re going forward, making progress. The phone rings. My office phone. I enter at a run, find Shane with the phone already up to his ear, saying, “Yes. Yes. Got it. Thank you very much.” He hangs up. With my permission, Shane has cleared a space on my worktable for his laptop, one of those sleek, turbocharged things, with a wide screen and a titanium case. A spiral notebook lies open, filled with neat, legible handwriting, some of it emphatically underlined. The phone has been repositioned nearby. He’s been busy, obviously, and I feel a little twinge of guilt for getting much-needed sleep while he worked the phones and the Web, set up the meeting with his high-ranking friend. “Anything I should know?” I ask, indicating the phone. “Seth Manning’s car has just been located.” “His car?” I say, excited. “What about Kelly?” “Let’s take a break, I’ll bring you up to speed.” He grabs his notebooks and I follow him back into the kitchen. Shane takes a stool at the far end of the counter, helps himself to coffee. I cling to the mug of tea like it’s a grenade that might go off if released. “Couple of interesting things,” he begins. “Background on Edwin Manning. The name was vaguely familiar and now I know why. He started a very successful, very private hedge fund, Manning Capital. Big money. Listed assets of five
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billion dollars, over which he has more or less total control. Which makes him a juicy target.” “I’m not even sure what a hedge fund really does.” “It makes money for people with money. Or that’s the idea.” “What about the car? You said they found his car?” Shane nods. “Correct. Seth’s vehicle has been located in the long-term parking lot at Island Executive Airport in Farmingdale. Just the vehicle, locked. The police have impounded it. We’ve agreed it will be given a full forensic search.” “We?” Flashing a quick, almost furtive smile, he strokes his trim little beard, as if embarrassed to have been caught doing something naughty. “Um, Detective Berg and I. That’s the ‘we.’ The way it played out I, ah, happened to suggest a full search and he agreed it made sense. The idea being that the case may fall under the 2252 statute.” Takes a moment for my brain to slip into gear and put together airport and car in the long-term parking lot. “Are you saying they flew somewhere? Kelly and this man? Where did they go? Does this mean they really did run away, they weren’t kidnapped?” Shane consults his notes. “This doesn’t contradict our abduction theory. A car registered to Seth Manning entered the lot at 5:13 a.m., almost six hours before your last contact with Kelly. The I.E. is not a major commercial facility—it’s a small, private airport—but it has charter flights to all the metropolitan airports. LaGuardia, Kennedy, Newark and, by helicopter, to Manhattan. There are regular flights to Atlantic City. So theoretically your daughter could have been almost anywhere when she called you.” Despite all the caffeine, my head is still thick with Ambien-induced sleep, so I’m having trouble processing.
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Can it only be yesterday that Kelly vanished? Doesn’t seem possible. Seems like weeks. “Theoretically?” I ask, seizing on the word. “What does that mean?” “Means her name was not listed on the manifest of any charter flight leaving yesterday morning,” he explains. “Nor was it listed on any private flight plan filed with the tower.” “The FBI told you that? Your friend Monica?” “Not Monica personally. People who work the Long Island office.” “So Kelly didn’t fly? She and this man were kidnapped in the airport parking lot? Is that what you’re saying?” “No,” he says. “My apologies. I’m not making myself clear. I’m not saying she and Seth Manning didn’t fly out of Island Executive, just that they didn’t leave on a chartered flight. It’s a very busy airfield, lots of private and corporate aircraft use it. Hundreds. Civilian pilots are encouraged to file a flight plan, but not all do so.” “Somebody must know what happened to them.” “Somebody does,” he agrees. “We just have to find out who.” 25. Surprise, Surprise The Lincoln Town Car is starting to feel like a sturdy old friend. Keeping just below the speed limit, we cruise into Island Executive Airport in less than forty minutes door to door. More like door to long-term parking lot. Out over the runways, small planes teeter like fragile kites, looking much too slow to stay aloft. The same trick of the eye that makes you think a 757 is barely moving, and these little jobs are way smaller. And yes, I’m one of those who’ve never really under-
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stood how a squat little box with stubby wings can make itself fly. My ninth-grade science teacher, Mr. Polanski, tried his best, but it still doesn’t make sense. Only one of the reasons that the idea of Kelly and small planes freaks me out. Parachutes? Skydiving? Forget about it. Safely parked on the outer rim of the lot—Shane likes an open space on either side—we head for a blocky-looking building near the lone tower that overlooks the runways. The building is divided into bays with separate entrances. There are signs for Flight Instruction, Maintenance, and Flight Operations. Shane heads for door number three. It’s all I can do to keep up without breaking into a run. He notices, apologizes and shortens his stride. “Long legs,” I say. “And big feet,” he points out. A blast of cold air greets us inside Flight Operations. Temperature control is low enough to keep polar bears frisky, and I find myself hugging my bare arms. “Sorry, miss,” says the man behind the counter. Older guy in his sixties with the hanging jowls and the soulful eyes of a faithful bulldog. “Thermostat is out of whack. Grab a jacket.” He points to a row of hooks inside the door and a selection of bright orange jackets, all with Ground Crew stenciled on the back. The jacket is big enough for three of me, but it helps. “Now,” says the man behind the counter, rubbing his hands together. “Bob Cody, what can I do ya?” Bob has a thinning white flat-top, radar-scoop ears, and the kind of deeply creased, leathery skin that’s seen way too much sunlight over the years. But his smile is friendly enough and he seems genuinely interested in helping. “This is Jane Garner,” Shane begins, laying his business card down on the counter. “Her daughter is missing.”
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“Oh my God,” Bob says, glancing at the card. “That’s terrible.” “You were on duty when the police tow truck snagged the Boxster this morning?” Bob nods eagerly. “Seth’s Porsche. Yeah, I saw that. The old man’ll be pissed. Excuse me, miss. I mean missus.” Shane looks pleased. He sort of relaxes his big frame on the counter, leaning on his elbows to make himself appear smaller, less imposing. It’s a conversation between equals now, two men of the world helping out a lady. “This is going to be our lucky day, Mrs. Garner,” Shane says to me. “Bob knows the Mannings. I’ll bet he’s seen Kelly with Seth, right, Bob? Pretty girl, slender and athletic. Dark hair. Taking lessons?” On cue I produce Kelly’s photo, the one that shows her in the cockpit of the little airplane. Bob studies the photograph, shakes his head. “I’m sorry, no. But Seth has quite a number of students, I do know that, because he’s always careful with the flight plans. Not all the pilots are, but he is. That’s mostly when I see him nowadays, when he hands in the paperwork.” While Bob studies the photo, Shane studies Bob. Nods to himself, as if satisfied that the jug-eared gent is being truthful. “Recognize the aircraft?” Bob nods eagerly, which makes his jowls jiggle slightly. “Yep. Cessna Skylane. That’s the plane Seth uses for flight instruction. Took delivery just last year. Beautiful piece of machinery, just beautiful.” He pauses, looks from me to Shane. “Is Seth in some sort of trouble?” “No trouble,” Shane says firmly. “Kelly is the one in trouble, because she neglected to tell her mom where she and Seth were headed.”
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No trouble. First time I’ve heard Randall Shane lie, and it’s a more than a little unsettling to know how good he is at it. “Yeah, well, kids do that sometimes,” Bob says, sounding a little uneasy. “Detective Berg called earlier,” Shane says. “Apparently Seth forgot to file a flight plan.” Bob is shaking his head. “I don’t know who the detective talked to, but Seth Manning, he’s like clockwork. He’s been flying out of this facility since he was sixteen, and he never misses.” “You seem very certain.” Bob nods emphatically. “I was his original flight instructor. Seth was one of my best students. Not just because he had a feel for it—lots of students have that—but because he’s meticulous and organized. A good pilot is always prepared, always checking, that’s as important as any of the physical skills. Some students I had to drum that in, but not Seth. I kid you not, he enjoys working through the checklists. Which is part of what makes him an excellent flight instructor.” “Uh-huh,” says Shane. “So you passed the torch.” “You could say that.” “Mind if I ask why?” Bob gives him a wary look. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I developed cardiac problems a couple years ago. Persistent episodic tachycardia, which is doc talk for bum ticker. Flunked the physical.” Shane nods. “Some guys cheat on that, find a friendly doctor.” “Not me. It was time to retire, before I killed some kid.” “So you’re absolutely sure that Seth didn’t fly out of here yesterday?” “Positive,” Bob says, getting a bit huffy. “You know why
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I’m positive? Because that’s his Skylane right there. Got a prime tie-down right by the flight school.” Shane looks out the window, spots the plane, seems satisfied. “Any aircraft missing or stolen in the last few days?” Friendly Bob has had about enough of us. I can tell because his big ears have reddened. He backs away from the counter, putting space between himself and Shane. “What kind of crap are you talking, mister? Why would Seth Manning steal a plane when he has one of his own?” “For thrills? To impress a pretty girl?” “That’s bull. The kid is no thief. What is this really about? Who sent you here?” Shane drums his fingers lightly on the Formica, rat-a-tattat. “It’s like I said, Mrs. Garner is trying to locate her daughter.” Bob looks sick, puts his hand to his chest. “Seth must have friends at this airfield,” Shane persists. “Maybe he borrowed a plane.” Bob sits down, massaging his chest. His face has drained, leaving him pale as a paper napkin. I’m worried he’s going to keel over, but Shane isn’t backing off. “Same answer,” says Bob, sounding faint. “He’d file a flight plan.” “Charter flights?” Shane says. “Could Seth have chartered a plane?” Bob sounds pissed. “You don’t give up, do you? Anybody can charter a flight, but why would he? His father’s company has a King Air 350. Take you anywhere in North America, at altitude and in style.” Shane smiles, winks at me, as if we’ve just won something special. “A King, huh? Pricey.” Bob snorts. “Not compared with a Lear, it ain’t.” “Couple of million though, right?”
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“More.” “And you know it’s out there in the hangar because there’s no flight plan on file.” Bob looks like he wants to spit. His color has improved and he’s stopped rubbing his chest. Maybe the bad spell has passed. “Exactly right,” he says, jutting out his chin. Shane nods, satisfied. “Mr. Cody, here’s the deal. Show us the King, we’ll get out of your hair.” “I’m not showing you anything, mister.” “Fine. Then give me the tail number, I’ll check it out myself.” Shane doesn’t say anything, but something tells me he wants me to chime in, make myself heard. “Please?” I ask him. “It could be really important.” Five minutes later we’re approaching the hangar, one of three in this particular row. Condos for airplanes. Sort of like really wide storage units, with big roll-down doors. In the end poor Mr. Cody more or less surrendered, handed Shane the keys to the lockup. According to Cody, each unit can hold two aircraft, with openings on either side of the corrugated steel buildings, but Edwin Manning’s corporate airplane has a hangar all to itself. “You think they took off in daddy’s plane, got in trouble somewhere else?” I ask. “Working theory,” Shane says, fitting the key in the appropriately numbered door. “Subject to change.” Inside the hangar our footsteps echo against the metal sides of the building. It’s so dim and darkly shadowed that I can’t see much of anything until Shane finds a switch and trips the overhead lights. “Surprise, surprise,” he says.
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The hangar is empty. “What do we do now?” I ask. Behind us the door swings open, shifting the light. Before I can turn, a ragged, high-pitched voice says, “Keep your hands where I can see ’em.” Standing behind us is a hefty, big-bellied man in a baggy black tracksuit. He has a shaved head, a boxer’s flattened nose, puffy eyelids and scar-thickened lips. In his hand is a shiny black gun. 26. The Man From Wonderbra My first mugging was in Manhattan. On Fifth Avenue, to be exact. About four months after Kelly was born, my mother decided I needed a day off. A chance, she said, to be a grownup for a little while, on my own. Bless her, she gave me a hundred dollars and told me to take the train into the city, have lunch at the Museum of Modern Art—they had a great little Italian café she loved—and buy myself something pretty. “Window-shop on Fifth Avenue,” she said. “I mean really look. There might be something there for you.” A hundred dollars was a lot for my mother, but I thought it would go further at, say, Macy’s, than some upscale boutique, and since part of me was still a bratty seventeenyear-old, I said so. “I don’t mean to buy,” she told me, squeezing my hands. “To learn from. Look and learn.” Look and learn. Truer words and all that. The only class I’d ever really excelled in was home ec, and that was because of sewing. Having watched my mother stitch my little dresses together, and most of her own clothing, as well, I knew how the
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machine worked, wasn’t afraid of the flashing needle, and that put me ahead of the other girls. Plus I was interested in how clothes were designed and cut out and assembled. So there I was, looking and learning, and loving every minute of it. I was a grown-up in the big city, studying retail fashion. Not just style and quality of the clothing, but how it was presented. The design and execution of the window display, the whole look of the thing. I wasn’t taking notes, but my eyes were soaking it all in and my brain was thinking, why does Mom want me to do this, what does she have in mind? It was intriguing, exciting. It might, just might, be a clue about what I should do, how I might live. And that, of course, is when I got mugged. I had my best leather bag securely slung over my shoulder and around my neck, right hand on the strap. I didn’t see the gang of boys coming, but they saw me, and the biggest of them snaked his arm through the strap—he never stopped moving—and the next thing I was being carried down Fifth Avenue by five or six boys. White boys with low-rider attitudes, laughing and cackling and being so outrageously boisterous that my muffled shouts went nowhere. It must have looked like I was part of the gang, if you didn’t happen to notice that my feet weren’t connected to the sidewalk. They carried me for most of one block, worked the strap free of my neck, yanked my hair so hard it felt like they’d torn my scalp, and then dumped me on the sidewalk, scraped and bleeding from both knees. Bag gone, money gone, day ruined. All in broad daylight, with hundreds of pedestrians within arm’s reach, every last one of them looking away, studiously avoiding the noxious teen spirit. Without the fare to get home, and barely enough for a phone call, Mom had to pack up Kelly, come into the city and rescue me. Found me angry and red eyed in Penn Station,
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cursing Manhattan. Could happen anywhere, she said, comforting me. Don’t blame it on the city and don’t let it get you down. That was her other mantra. Don’t let it get you down, baby doll. A constant refrain to herself as well as me, and it got us through a lot. My father leaving, me dropping out of school to have a baby, me getting my GED, me eventually graduating from the Long Island Fashion Institute, me getting my first real job. A whole lot of me, and not much Mom. That was her gift, of course, the road she willingly took from the moment I finally confessed to the pregnancy I’d been hiding and denying for months. Secrets. Anyhow, where was I? Oh, right. The man with the shiny black gun. My second mugging. Guy with a gun, he must want my handbag, right? “You and your boyfriend, stop right there,” he demands, in a voice that seems a little too high and scratchy for his bulk. “Keep your hands where I can see ’em.” His oddly protuberant eyes are darting between me and Shane, like he’s playing eenie-meenie in his head. Is it a thyroid condition does that to the eyeballs? Or high blood pressure? Anyhow, he has eyes like boiled eggs and his closeshaved skull looks like a chunk of hard, lumpy wax glistening under the overhead lights. A drop of sweat congeals at the tip of his flattened nose. An ugly-looking customer for sure, but what bothers me even more than the gun—is it real or a toy, how would I know the difference?—what really bothers me is this: the man is very, very nervous. “Listen real careful,” says the egg man, pausing to wipe the sweat from his nose with his free hand. “Stay away from Edwin Manning. Stay away from his home, his family, his
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business, his airplanes, everything to do with him. Stay away, you’ll be okay. Don’t stay away, bad things’ll happen. Capiche?” “Understood,” says Shane, sounding utterly reasonable. “You happen to know where the King Air was headed?” The man’s forehead furrows. Beads of sweat seep from his forehead, making his egg-shaped eyes blink even more rapidly. “The what? I told you—shut up!” “The Beechcraft that’s supposed to be in this hangar. Where’d it go? We’re assuming Seth was at the controls. He never bothered to file a fight plan, why was that?” The man with the gun looks confused, unsure of how to respond, and he looks at me with a beleaguered expression, as if he wants me to intervene, stop all these complicated questions. In that moment, as his buggy eyes shift, Shane glides in front of me, blocking my view. Next thing I know, the egg man is lying sideways on the concrete, groaning and holding his shoulder, and Shane has the gun. Which on second glance—or tenth—isn’t all that shiny. Just black and deadly. With an air of icy calm Shane says, “Lock the door, please, Mrs. Garner. There should be a thumb latch on the knob.” I hurry to the door. Set the lock before it hits me— shouldn’t we be running away? But it soon becomes apparent that Randall Shane has other plans. “Wallet?” he says to the burly, big-gutted man on the floor. A nasty scratch on the side of the man’s shaved head oozes a little blood, just above the ear. “Fuck you, Jack!” he says in his high, scratchy voice. “Why’d ya do that, huh?” Shane says, “Very prudent, leaving the safety on. Which means whoever sent you issued specific instructions. In the future, you want to menace someone with a Sig Sauer, and
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do it safely, don’t try ‘cocked and locked.’ Empty the chamber. The safety slide is a tip-off.” “Yeah, thanks.” The man grimaces, baring his teeth. “You broke something, you fuck.” “Your right collarbone,” Shane informs him. “It’ll heal eventually. Now kindly produce identification or I’ll break your left collarbone. That means an upper-chest cast. Very awkward and you’ll be laid up for six weeks.” The man angrily slips a fist into his baggy tracksuit, flings a wallet at Shane, who lets it drop to the concrete in front of him. “Please pick that up,” he asks me, very polite, never wavering with the gun. “Let’s see if this nice gentleman has a name.” The billfold is a quality piece, Italian made. Dyed ostrich skin, hand stitched. Inside, a New Jersey driver’s license identifies our would-be assailant as Salvatore J. Popkin, residing on McKinley Avenue in Atlantic City. “Says he’s six foot, two hundred pounds,” I note. Shane chuckles. “More like five-nine, two-fifty,” he says. “Didn’t your mother teach you to always tell the truth, Sal?” I keep rummaging through the billfold, hold out another identification card for inspection. “Interesting,” Shane says. “Sal is a security crew supervisor at Wunderbar Casino. That’s the one they call Wonderbra, right Sal? On account of the chip girls?” “I ain’t talkin’ to you,” Sal responds sullenly. “Sure you are,” Shane cajoles. “You were sent here to talk to us, right? Try to scare us? Why else have the gun on safety? You want us to leave Mr. Manning and his various toys alone. Anything else?” Sal thinks about it. While he’s mulling it over his fingers probe the scratch above his ear and he inspects the seeping blood. His expression becomes even more malevolent. If his
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swollen, oddly protuberant eyes were laser beams we’d both be burned to a crisp. But they’re not, and he’s on the floor with a broken collarbone, and something tells me Randall Shane doesn’t need a weapon to reduce Salvatore Popkin to a whimpering puddle, and Sal knows it and hates him for it. “Just keep the fuck away,” he says grudgingly. “That’s it.” “Or else? Threats of physical harm and so on?” “Yeah, big-time.” Shane considers this. “So Edwin Manning tells you keep an eye on his empty hangar? Or is it more like, if certain people come sniffing around, looking for Seth, run them off?” Sal looks away, purses his sweaty lips. Clearly wishing himself elsewhere, on a planet that didn’t include big rangy guys who can take away his gun, break his bones. “Got it all figured out, huh? If you’re so smart, why’d the FBI get rid of you?” This elicits a dangerous-looking smile from Shane. “I left in good standing,” he says softly. “Not that it’s any of your concern. But thank you for confirming that your boss read my business card.” “Concrete is killing me,” the fat man protests. “I’m gonna get up.” “Not quite yet,” Shane tells him, emphasizing with the gun. “Couple of ways to play this. I can notify the authorities—and that will include the Feds—and we can press charges. Assault with a firearm, threat of deadly force. Serious felony charge, especially if you don’t happened to be licensed to carry this particular weapon. Or, and I’m hoping Mrs. Garner will indulge me in this, we can go a different route. You with me so far?” Another grudging nod from the floor. “How about this?” Shane suggests. “You report back to Mr. Manning, tell him the threat worked. You waved a gun around and talked tough and we’re frightened out of our
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minds. We begged for mercy. We promised to keep out of Manning’s personal business and we’re way too scared to go to the cops. Does that work for you, Sal? Can you sell that?” The man stares up at him. “You serious?” “It’s the smart move.” “What about my piece?” he says, pointing with his chin. “The Sig? You get it back.” “And this?” he asks, indicating his crippled shoulder. Shane grins. “You smacked me so hard it fractured a bone. You don’t know your own strength. Bruise your knuckles on something, make it convincing.” Sal has a strange look on his face. Takes a moment for me to decipher it as a smile. “I could bruise it on your face,” he suggests. “Make it real.” “Trust me,” Shane says. “You don’t want to do that. Now take off your shoes and socks.” 27. Call For Edwin Manning Funny how life changes in a blink. One day your five-yearold is happy and healthy, the next she’s got cancer. The day after that she’s flying off with a boyfriend you never heard of, and two minutes later you’re holding a Nike sneaker with a pistol shoved into a white cotton sock. Or that’s how it seems, everything rushing by so fast I can’t get a grip, can’t make sense of what’s happening. And oh, I really do have the gun in the sneaker, sock and all. “Here it is,” Shane says, indicating a new Chevy sedan in the rental car row. I place the loaded Nike beside the rear left tire, as promised. Shane’s rather clever means of hobbling our assailant, who will be limping along behind us, trying to keep his fat
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and tender feet from burning on the hot tarmac. One assumes he will retrieve his shoes and his socks and his weapon, although not the actual bullets, which Shane has thoughtfully removed. By then—I picture bad-boy Sal jumping up and down with rage, his belly jiggling furiously—we’ll be long gone, melting into traffic. Or that’s the plan. “Hope you know what’s going on, because I sure don’t,” I protest, scooting gingerly into the hot leather seats of the big Lincoln. “What if that creep helped kidnap Kelly? Shouldn’t we have him arrested? Or torture him or something?” That elicits a full-throated chuckle from the man in the driver’s seat. “Torture? You wouldn’t object?” “If he knows where Kelly is, I’ll torture him myself!” Shane eyes me in the rearview as he fires up the engine, adjusts the AC. “I’ll take care to remain on your good side,” he says thoughtfully. “Let’s get rolling, then I’ll explain.” The expressway is clotted but steady—my ever-cautious driver has no trouble staying well under the speed limit, unfortunately. Must admit I do keep checking out the back window, fighting this weird idea that our bent-nosed assailant will come running down the median in his bare feet, waving his gun, seeking revenge for his humiliation. Once we’re well clear of the airport, Shane says, “Okay. Remember I mentioned that Edwin Manning made his fortune with a hedge fund? It’s called the Merrill Manning Capital Fund. Merrill was his wife’s maiden name, and that’s where the money originally came from.” “So he’s loaded. We already knew that.” “There’s rich and there’s superrich,” Shane points out. “Manning Capital is a private hedge fund, as private as the law allows. It has five billion dollars in assets. Management
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fees on a fund like that would be something like thirty million a year, plus twenty-five percent of the profit. So Edwin Manning is probably pulling down two or three hundred million a year, maybe more.” “Wow.” “Yeah, wow.” “And what, he gambled it all away? That’s why he knows that creep from Atlantic City?” “Not exactly. The fund he runs—the fund he owns, for all practical purposes—is the single largest private investor in the gaming industry. That’s their specialty. Online gambling, casinos, real estate associated with casinos. If someone is wagering money, chances are Manning Capital has a piece of the profit.” I’m stunned. It’s hard to imagine the frightened little man, cowering all alone in his empty house, as some sort of gambling mogul. “You mean Manning’s a gangster?” I ask. “Like the godfather or Tony Soprano?” “Not a gangster,” Shane says, shaking his head. “An investor.” “What’s the difference?” Shane laughs. “One goes to prison, the other doesn’t.” My friend Fern likes the slots. Not me. I hate the idea of putting money in a machine that doesn’t stitch things together, so I never participated. Truth is, I’ve never actually been in a casino, not in New Jersey, not in Connecticut, not anywhere. I don’t buy lottery tickets. With me it’s not a religious or moral objection, it’s about years of being careful with every penny, apportioning this much for groceries, that much for a car payment, medical insurance, so many dollars
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for school expenses. Plus, you win a game of cancer, roll the bones with death, everything else pales. Heading back to Valley Stream, Shane does his best to bring me up to speed. All the things he was doing while I slept, and after Monica Bevins came by. How Kelly’s prints may be present in Seth’s Porsche, and that’s why it was important to have the vehicle impounded—it will help build a case for intervention. How, exactly, the FBI runs a so-called shadow investigation. No agents will approach Edwin Manning directly, but in all other ways the full investigative weight of the agency will come to bear, with a special emphasis on the financials. Financials being the money that flows to and from Mr. Manning. According to Shane, the financials are the key. “He withdraws a large amount of cash, we’ll know it before the teller stops counting. If he wires money to, say, an offshore bank, we’ll know that, too.” “You think this has something to do with gambling? That’s why his son was kidnapped? Or is it just because Manning is rich?” “Dunno,” says Shane. “Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe we’re completely off base about a kidnapping and Seth and your daughter hijacked daddy’s private plane and are out there sightseeing.” “You believe that?” “Unfortunately, no,” Shane admits. “Edwin Manning isn’t worried about his boy borrowing the company plane. Somebody scared the hell out of him.” “So what do we do? How do we find Kelly?” “I suggest we leave the determination of abduction up to law enforcement for the moment, and concentrate on locating the Beechcraft. Make sense?”
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“Yeah, but the man at the desk, he made it sound like that plane could go anywhere,” I say, discouraged. “Range of fifteen hundred miles,” Shane admits. “That means with fuel stop or two it could be anywhere in North America. But it’s not just anywhere, it had a specific destination. A destination yet to be determined.” “You make it sound hopeless.” “No, no,” he protests. “My bad. Not hopeless at all. We’ve got the tail number. Airports, even small local airports, pay attention to tail numbers. We’ll find it. And once we find the plane, I promise you, we’ll find your daughter.” Shane sounds so confident, so sincere. I would be more comforted if I hadn’t heard him lie so convincingly earlier. The big break is waiting for us at my house, on the kitchen counter. On Shane’s laptop, to be exact, in the form of a message from my cell phone company. “What does it say?” I ask eagerly. “Have they found her?” The big guy hunkers down, scrolling through a PDF file of the current bill. “Here we go,” he says softly, clicking on a line. “You have relatives in Florida? Friends? Does she?” “Kelly’s in Florida?” “Her phone is. That last call you received, it originated somewhere within range of a cell tower in western Dade County.” “Dade County?” “Miami,” he says. And then his finger touches the screen, “Hey, look at this. Several more calls have been made from her phone, accessing the same cell tower. The most recent was about ten hours ago.” “She tried to call me?” I say, my heart slamming. “Why
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didn’t I get the call?” Then it hits me. “Oh! I was asleep! What an idiot!” Fumbling for my cell phone, wondering how I could have missed it—I checked for messages first thing and there’d been nothing. I’d been compulsively checking every fifteen minutes all morning, still nothing. Stupid phone! “No, wait,” Shane says, sounding intrigued as he switches between windows on the screen. “The calls weren’t placed to you. See this? The calls went to a number in Oyster Bay, New York.” He looks at me, eyebrows raised. “Oh…my…God,” I say, as the implication slowly sinks in. Can’t be true, no way. “Interesting,” Shane says, easing back on the stool. “Your daughter’s in the Miami area and she’s been calling Edwin Manning. Now what do you suppose that means?” 28. The Man With A Plan They say everybody has falling dreams—that’s why they call it falling asleep. Trouble is, I’m wide-awake in my own kitchen, but it feels like somebody shoved me out of a plane without a parachute. Falling into the truly terrifying idea that my beautiful daughter has become someone I don’t recognize. Someone complicit in an extortion scheme, stealing money from her boyfriend’s superrich dad. And if that’s true, if I don’t know my own child, then nothing makes sense. In the end it’s Randall Shane who reaches out with his long arms and snatches me just before I hit the ground. Not that he knows it. “There’s another, even more plausible explanation,” he says, stroking his chin, lost in thought. “Maybe it wasn’t your daughter who called Edwin Manning.”
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“You said it was her phone!” “Exactly. But let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that she and Seth were detained.” “Detained?” He flashes a grim smile, studies me with his sad and handsome eyes. “I thought detained might be a nicer word than abducted or kidnapped. And you look like you could use a nice word. I had no idea a living person could look so pale. Anyhow, let’s assume Kelly has been detained, okay? They take her purse. They use her cell phone to call Manning. Simple as that.” Simple as that. Something to cling to, and also it makes sense. I’d been stuck on the fact that Kelly’s phone is practically an appendage, and that therefore any calls from it would originate with her, but that’s just stupid. No self-respecting kidnapper would let a victim keep her phone. Victim? What am I thinking? The idea of Kelly being a victim—first time I’d put that horrible word and her name together—sends a shudder through me. At the same time there’s no denying that I’m vastly relieved that she need not be complicit just because her phone has been linked to a crime. Then it hits me again, the double whammy, would it be better if she’s a victim or the criminal? Missing or runaway? Dead or alive? The whole world spinning, demanding that I choose. “You better sit down,” Shane is saying from a great distance. He hands me a white paper bag. Where on earth did he find this particular bag? Did he know it was left there for exactly this purpose? I recognize it by the scent of the mint chocolates it once held. Mint chocolates Kelly and I pretended to fight over, sneaking them out of the bag when the other wasn’t looking, a lovely game we like to play. Shane
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is insisting that I breathe into the bag, and it’s a while before I’m back down to earth, breathing at a normal rate. “Sorry,” I whisper, feeling ashamed. “Anxiety attacks are allowed,” he says, pressing a glass of water into my hands. “Drink this slowly. No gulping.” “Happens,” I say. “Yes, it happens,” he agrees. “Drink.” I drink. Slowly my heart stops slamming. Whatever triggered the episode fades into my bloodstream or back into my brain, wherever it comes from. Truth? I’m no stranger to hyperventilating. Started when I was about twelve, just entering adolescence. Had my first period and fainted dead away. My mother thought it was the shock of seeing my own blood, but it was more than that, because for a while it happened several times a month. Our family doctor gave me some pills—mild tranquilizers—but the funny feeling they gave me actually made me more anxious and so I stopped taking them. I used to carry a paper bag in my purse for emergencies. Nurses would find me puffing on the things in the hallways while waiting on Kelly’s latest test results. Got to be routine, almost. No big deal. ’Scuse me, Doctor, while I huff into this for a while. Okay, what were you saying, another course of radiation? More chemo? No problem, puff-puff-puff. Oddly enough, the longest time ever without an anxiety attack was while pregnant. All kinds of stress in my life— denying the pregnancy, then hiding the pregnancy, then dropping out of school, parents breaking up, money problems—but it never triggered an attack. Maybe it was hormones. Maybe it was Kelly inside me, calming me down. Whatever, the hyperventilation episodes came back with a vengeance when Mom got sick, and continued right through the day of her funeral. But for the past couple of years,
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months go by without a problem, and when it does happen it’s not so severe as in the past. Until now. Shane, the man who never sleeps, it figures he’d understand. “Not a problem,” he says. “We’ll keep a bag handy.” “Thanks.” In my present condition a few kind words make me weepy, which he’s kind enough to ignore, which in turn makes me more weepy, until finally he has to find a box of tissues, tell me to blow my nose. Feels like I’m three years old, making a scene in day care. Honk, honk. “You sound like a duck,” he observes. “Or maybe a goose.” That gets me laughing and then crying and then both at the same time. More tissues, more honking, until finally the tears dry up and all that’s left is the gentle laughter. “Good,” he says. “Better?” “Yeah, thanks.” He fiddles with a pen, making doodles in his notebook. Waits a beat and says, “Maybe from here on out, you could stay by the phone, sort of guarding the home front, and I’ll take care of the fieldwork.” My head shakes before my response is fully formed—an instinctive, powerful rejection of his offer. “No way. Don’t you dare. She’s my baby, I need to be there.” Shane nods like he expected me to object. “That’s okay, too. You realize we have to go to Florida?” To be honest my brain hadn’t got that far, but of course he’s right. “So this man, this boy, whatever, he flew them to Miami in his father’s plane? And they got in trouble there?” “Looks that way,” Shane says. “It’s the best lead so far. Theoretically a Beechcraft King Air 350 could make it to
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southern Florida without even a pit stop. Aircraft like that could fly there and back in a day, easy.” “But they didn’t make it back.” “No indication of that, no. Evidence suggests that Seth and your daughter have been detained in Florida. Something happened down there.” “They were kidnapped. That’s why Seth’s father is so scared,” “Yes, but kidnapped for what purpose?” Shane wants to know. “Money. All that money makes him a target.” “Yeah,” Shane says carefully. “But Edwin Manning has hundreds of millions, so the big question is why hasn’t he taken charge of the situation? Guys like that, hugely successful, they’re alpha dog personalities. They assume they can use power and wealth to fix just about anything, and usually they’re right.” Hand to my chest, I say, “You trying to give me another attack?” “No. But you need to know what we’re facing. This isn’t a typical abduction or extortion. And that means I have no idea what we’re up against.” “I thought you had a plan,” I protest, sounding plaintive. “Oh, I do have a plan,” he says, utterly confident. “My plan is to find your daughter.” 29. The Truth Almost When I finally admitted I was pregnant, and failed to name the father, Fern joked about my immaculate conception. She called me the swollen angel and talked about my unborn child as the baby Jesus. And always it made me smile because that was just Fern being Fern. Think of a white
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Queen Latifah except slightly taller and without the celebrity diva glitches. A big beautiful woman who can enter a room, size it up and make it her own. No matter what the occasion, wedding, funeral, or lunch with the posse, she’s out there, a wild girl with a wicked sense of humor. Words that on another person’s lips would be rude or insulting are, coming from Fern, an invitation to laugh at yourself, at her, at the whole crazy world. First thing she says when seeing Shane, “Get a load of Mr. Big Hunk. So, is everything in proportion?” “Fern! Be nice!” “Bet you get that all the time,” she continues, ignoring me. “Girls checking out your hands and feet, wanting to know if the rest of you is built to the same scale. Am I right?” “Randall Shane,” he says. “Care to shake my big hand?” Fern takes the hand, draws him close, gives him a smooch on the neck, which is as high as she can get on tiptoe. “Keeper,” she says to me, with a wink. And then back at him, “You’ll have to make the first move. Janey has the shy bug.” “Fern, stop it.” “She hasn’t had a date since the Clinton administration. So here’s the deal. Help her find the kid, then I’ll treat you both to dinner at a schmantzy bling hotel. A big juicy steak and then big juicy you. Let nature take its course, what do you say?” Shane chuckles, carefully disengages himself from Fern. “You lost me at schmantzy.” “Ha! Fat chance! So dish, darlings. What’s the haps? Where’s Flygirl and how do we get her home? Tell me all before I read it in the tabloids.” The big guy gives her what I’ve come to think of as the Randall Shane eyeball. Not an accusing kind of look, exactly. More careful, studied, but still the sort of serious look that
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makes you not want to play him. A look that reminds you that despite the good manners he can, under the right circumstances, be dangerous. “Jane warned me about you,” he says, more or less affably. “She also said she’d trust you with her life.” “She said that? Janey, that’s so sweet.” Shane bears down, insisting on serious. “She’s about to do just that, Mrs. Cabella. Trust you with information that could put Kelly’s life at risk. Or hers, or mine, for that matter.” “Mrs. Cabella?” Fern looks shocked, eyes getting bigger. “You told him my name was Mrs. Cabella? I haven’t been Mrs. anything since I traded Edgar for his Barcolounger, and his last name was Fineman. Cabella is my father’s name, so I guess technically you could call me Mr. Cabella’s daughter, but see, Mrs. Cabella? That’s my mother.You want a date with my mother? She’d love you. Can’t remember her own name, or who I am most of the time, but she always loved big, handsome men. Janey, I ever tell you she once propositioned Burt Lancaster in the lobby of the Waldorf? She was married at the time, too. My aunt Nancy told me all about it, they were having drinks in the bar and she wrote her number on a napkin and gave it to Burt Lancaster. And you know what he did? He thought she wanted an autograph, so he signed the napkin and handed it back. Isn’t that a riot?You know who Burt Lancaster was, Randall? Do you like old movies? I’m like plugged into AMC, that’s my default channel, all day long I’m watching these good-looking dead people. I like the noir. Can’t be too noir for me. You know what noir is, Randall? That’s French for ‘the bitch is going to shoot you in the end, you big dumb moron.’” Fern is still going when I walk her to the couch, persuade
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her to sit down. She’s always a talker. But this is something else. Like she feels she’s made a fool of herself and has to keep yakking to cover the embarrassment, which is really strange because Fern doesn’t do embarrassed, it’s not part of who she is, and then I realize, hearing her babble on about old movie stars, that she’s nervous, maybe even frightened. She goes dead quiet when she learns that Kelly has gone missing in Florida and has possibly been abducted, and that I’m leaving immediately. “All you have to do is answer the phone,” I say. “Tell people there was a family emergency, I’ll get back to them in a few days. If it’s a fitting or some sort of fabric crisis that absolutely has to be handled, Tracy can take care of it. She’s good with nervous clients.” “You really think Kelly has been kidnapped? Oh my God. What do I do if the kidnappers call?” “You tell them I’m not here, you give them my cell number and tell them to call me. And Fern? We don’t know for sure that she’s been kidnapped, okay? All we know for sure is that she’s missing. No one has called to demand anything.” Shane and I previously agreed not to share all of our information with Fern. I desperately need her to mind the phone, take care of business, but he’s says it’s better if she doesn’t know about Edwin Manning, or the FBI phone tap or the shadow investigation. No sense alerting any bad actors, he says—cop talk for bad guys. The less she knows the less they’ll know, if someone does call my landline and speaks to Fern. Which makes sense. I’d trust Fern with my life, I really would, but she does love to talk and doesn’t always know when to stop.
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Still, it’s hard not to be completely straight with my oldest and dearest friend. “There are things I can’t tell you right now,” I caution her. “Are you okay with that? Can you do this for me?” “More secrets, Janey?” “Not for long. All we have to do, establish what’s really going on, then the police will take over. The police and the FBI.” “But don’t mention the FBI,” Shane warns her. “Not over the phone. Very important. You don’t know where Jane is, or what she’s doing.” “You don’t know anything,” I urge. “You’re just answering the phone for a friend. Mostly it’ll be business calls. Vendors and clients. Use your best judgment, make excuses, whatever. Anybody calls about Kelly, what do you say?” Fern shakes her head, exhales sharply. “Okay, okay, I get it. Jane isn’t here, try her cell. Other than that I’m like Colonel Schultz—I know nothing.” “Perfect,” says Shane. “Cell will be off for a couple of hours while we’re en route, but I’ll get any messages. And I’ll call you as soon as I can. Love you, Fern,” I say, hugging her. “You’re a lifesaver.” “Go,” she insists, waving me away. “Find her.” We’re heading for the door. “I mean it about the bling hotel!” she reminds us. Thanks to small miracles, our flight departs on time. An added bonus, it’s only three-quarters full, so the middle seat is empty. Shane has a real problem with his long legs, so he takes the aisle and I snuggle up against the window, hoping the hum of the engines will be calming. Trying not to obsess on what might be happening to Kelly at this very minute, or
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what might already have happened to her, or if she’s suffering or terrified or just plain lost. Too much to think about. I have to find a way to put it aside, concentrate on the here and now, and whatever the next step may be. Get to Miami, then worry about Kel. Once we’re airborne and at altitude, Shane opens his laptop. No Internet connection, but he’s downloaded what he describes as scads of data, and he starts sorting through the files. Catching up on paperwork, he calls it. “Mostly I’m treading water until I can get back on the Net,” he admits. “My advice, put your head back, close your eyes, get some rest.You’re going to need it when we get there.” “But you never sleep,” I say reprovingly. “Not on a job.” “How is that possible?” He makes a rueful face. “Never got a satisfactory answer. I’ve been brain scanned, studied by sleep deprivation specialists, checked into insomnia clinics, examined by neurologists, shrinks, fortune-tellers, you name it.” “Fortune-tellers? Really?” “No,” he admits, “but the rest, yes. They never found any organic brain disorders, nothing they can point to.” “Sounds terrible.” “It can be,” he admits. “The brain requires sleep—being deprived of it can actually kill you—so when my brain doesn’t sleep for too long it compensates by sending me into a fugue state for short intervals.” “Fugue state? How does that work? Do you mind my asking?” “No, it’s fine,” he says. “Basically I sleep with my eyes open, but don’t know I’m asleep. I can be up, moving around, unaware of my condition. Sort of like sleepwalking. When
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it gets really bad I tend to hallucinate. They call it wakeful dreaming or sleep state misperception.” “And that’s why you left the FBI?” “Pretty much, yes,” he says, sounding evasive. “You had this all your life?” “No,” he says, glancing away. “It’s a result of trauma.” “You got shot? And that caused it?” Shane turns to face me in his narrow seat. Not easy because his long legs are jammed. His eyes are as deep and as blue as the sky around us and they’re searching mine, as if looking for a clue. “No, I wasn’t shot,” he says. “You want to know exactly what happened?” I nod, but there’s something in his manner that tells me I’ll regret asking. “I propose a fair trade,” he begins. “I’ll tell you what happened to me if you’ll tell me about Kelly’s father. Who he is, where he is, and why you don’t want to talk about him.” I turn to the window, gaze at the cotton clouds, the wavelaced sea below. “Mrs. Garner? Jane?” “Can’t,” I say. “Does it have to do with what’s happened to your daughter? Is her father part of this? I have to know if I’m going to help.” He waits for an answer, patient but insistent. “I really can’t tell you about her father,” I say in a small voice, “because I have no idea who he is.” And that’s the truth, almost.
Part II Screams In The Night
1. Let Him Sizzle There’s nothing like a dry martini at thirty thousand feet to set the mood. Edwin Manning, normally not much of a drinker, sips the icy vodka and decides that he has, finally, taken charge of himself, if not the whole nightmare situation. His twenty-four-hour emotional meltdown has left him deeply ashamed. The way he showed weakness in front of the former FBI agent and the girl’s mother was despicable. For the first time in his adult life he’d been unable to cope, immobilized by fear of what might happen if he makes the wrong decision. He didn’t snap out of it until the package arrived. At that moment it became obvious that if he failed to get it together and act like a man his son would surely die. Demands have been made, outrageous demands. As a father he has to find a way to fulfill those demands, impossible as they may be. It all starts with Edwin getting his ass in gear, transporting himself and a few burly associates to the scene of the crime, as it were. The associates, those with him on the chartered Gulfstream, include Mr. Salvatore J. Popkin, borrowed from the Wunderbar staff, where he is not-so-affectionately
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known as Sally Popeye or Sally Pop. Whatever juvenile, wannabe-wise-guy name he uses, at this moment he’s staring longingly at Edwin’s perfectly chilled martini with his egglike eyes. “Have a beer if you like,” Edwin suggests, “But I want you sober when we arrive, understood?” “I’m fine, Mr. Manning.” “Really?” says Edwin, feeling a slight buzz. “You look like shit.” “Ha-ha. You should see the other guy,” Sally responds, wincing as he readjusts his arm sling. With his thick bulk and his shaved head and the weird eyes, Sally has the look of a guy who can’t be stopped, but Edwin figures he got in trouble with the other big man, the former special agent, himself no slouch in the art of intimidation. It doesn’t matter how it really went down, Edwin finally has a plan, of sorts, and Sally Pop still figures into the mix. “At most we’ve got forty-eight hours before the FBI steps on my neck,” Edwin reminds him. “So we need to roll as soon as we land. Thirty minutes to the condo, pick up a few things, another forty-five to the destination.” “No problem,” says Sally. “No problem?” Edwin responds, voice rising. “You think this is no problem?” His eyes well with tears as he indicates the red plastic cooler nestled under his seat. “I mean, ah, no problem with transportation,” Sally says uneasily, trying not to glance at the cooler. “That other thing, Mr. Manning, I don’t know what to say.” Edwin finishes his martini, good to the last drop. He’s not even slightly ashamed of the tears. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a good cry. He’s aware that the other associates, the new
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guys Sally Pop brought on board, already have a nickname for him. Weepy. Nice, but Edwin doesn’t care. They’re so far down the food chain he’s barely aware that they live, breathe or think. Nothing like thinking or higher reasoning, but they do have functioning nervous systems, brain stems and so on. Temporary employees. Disposable, if it comes to that. Their thoughts and opinions are of no import. At the moment his sole concern is his beautiful son, a young man worth ten thousand of the bent-nose rope-a-dopes who will be acting as Edwin’s personal security detail until he gets this all sorted out. It’s a new thing, the need to surround himself with hired muscle. But he knows the mad bastard on the phone, the one who threatens to shake his world to pieces. Knows the man to be intelligent, unpredictable and highly dangerous. Capable, as he has demonstrated, of the most unimaginable acts, not the least of which sloshes in the red plastic cooler beneath his seat, in a solution of saline and chipped ice. Flesh of his flesh. Seth’s little finger, still wearing the ring Edwin gave him when he graduated from flight school. FedExed to him as promised in a cheery little ice pack. A well-known replantation surgeon has already examined the severed finger, pronounced it too damaged to reattach, even if Seth is located in the next few hours, but Edwin isn’t ready to give up on that. He’ll find a more daring surgeon. He’ll get Seth back, make him whole again, no matter what it takes. And then he will make sure that the man who damaged Seth will cease to exist. Edwin Manning, a slightly built, intensely driven man who has never deliberately caused physical harm to another human being, now dreams of slowly immersing his adversary in a vat of bubbling acid.
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Let the bastard suffer as I have suffered, he’s thinking, tears in his eyes. Let him sizzle. 2. The Twenty-four Hour Rule When Kelly was eight years old, my mother got it in her head that we needed a vacation. Partly it was to celebrate Kelly having finished a successful course of chemo, partly because Mom thought we ought to do something as a family that didn’t involve hospitals. It was a two-part holiday extravaganza, financed entirely out of her personal savings. The first part was a four-day package tour of Disney World. Included, a perfectly nice motel in Orlando with shuttle service to the park, where Kelly, frankly, went totally bonkers. Loved it to pieces. The rides, the actors in the goofy costumes, the food—she even claimed to love waiting in line. It makes Space Mountain so much better, Mommy, having to wait! She was so happy to be alive and healthy, so glad to be doing things other kids did, that nothing could temper her joy, not even ninety minutes in a line of squirming brats. My own mother was so pleased that I’d catch her smiling and humming songs to herself. It was a rare event for Mom, to have everything work out as planned. So as far as the Garner clan is concerned, Disney World was the greatest family vacation of all time, a glorious childhood memory for Kelly, for all of us. And then it got even better, at least for me. The second part of the trip, which Mom kept a big secret, was a three-night stay in South Beach, coinciding with Fashion Week. How she managed it I’ll never know, but she got us a room at a great little boutique hotel right there on Ocean Drive, in the heart of the Art Deco District, and tickets to one of the runway shows. On the short flight from Orlando to Miami she kept looking at me sideways, to see if I was
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loving the idea, and I kept bursting into tears and hugging her, and Kelly kept wanting to know why grown-ups cried when they were happy. When I miss Mom the most, those are the days I want to experience all over again. The South Beach Caper, as she called it. How proud she was to have pulled it off! All her life she sacrificed for her child—me—and this was the payoff, those few precious hours when she could be mentor and mother and grandmother and confidante and best friend and tour guide. She especially loved the runway show, the exotic models strutting wild little dresses and fake furs that made them look like skinny éclairs on high heels. The designers orbiting the stage like nervous satellites, one of them literally tearing out tiny clumps of his bizarrely coiffed hair. Mom would have loved it if I was one of those designers—not the tearing-out-the-hair part, of course—and she’d done everything she could to give me the opportunity. Maybe I wanted it, too, at one time, in the excitement of first discovering I had some talent in that direction. But then Kelly had gotten sick and healing her became the center of my life, and when we came out the other side, all three of us, I was more than happy to earn a good living being my own boss, selling elaborate wedding gowns to people who have more money than sense. Anyhow, that was my one and only visit to Miami until now, and stepping into the tropical sunlight without my mother and my daughter brings on a hollow pang of loneliness so overwhelming it hits my guts like a physical blow. “You okay?” Shane wants to know. “I’ll be fine. Let me sit for a minute.” The big guy finds me a seat on the lower level, says he’ll keep me in sight while he arranges a car rental. Sure enough I can spot his head above the crowd, see him glanc-
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ing back from the Hertz counter, signaling that it won’t take long. Fern has left a number of messages on my cell, all of them variations on “hope you’re okay, call me soonest.” She answers on the first ring. “Thank God!” she begins. “I was worried if the plane crashed.” “The plane didn’t crash. I’m here, we made it, we’re renting a car. Any calls?” “Any calls? Are you kidding? The phone hasn’t stopped ringing! Who is this Haley person? Seems kind of sweet but also seriously whacked. She actually started weeping when I said you were out of town for a few days. I’m telling people your great-aunt Hilda died. She was ninety-three, by the way, and a former Ziegfield girl. The one with the diamondstudded tiara and the peacock feathers. There are rumors she had a fling with Bugsy Siegel. Or was it Warren Beatty?” “You made her up?” “Background details are important, Jane. I have to believe in Aunt Hilda. Amazing woman. Too bad you were estranged for all these years.” “Fern, I don’t know what to say.” “Not to worry, I’m taking care of business. Mrs. Norbert was very nice, she said no problem, she’ll see you when you get back. Ditto the Spinellis. There was inquiry for an estimate, a ten-member wedding party in Bellport, they want you to coordinate the tuxedos with the gowns, whatever that means, but they’ll wait until next week. Let’s see, what else. Oh, Fred is filing the tax quarterlies, he said to let you know there were no surprises. And Alex McFairy suspects something is going on, but he didn’t push.” “McQuarrie. His name is McQuarrie.”
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“Whatever.” Something I’ve never really understood, Fern not liking my friend Alex. It’s not that he’s gay—Fern has more gay male pals than Cher and Madonna combined. She thinks Alex is a terrible snob, and of course that’s true, but if I don’t find his snooty attitudes offensive, why should Fern? One of those unfortunate things about life—no matter how hard you try, not all your friends are friends. “The detective called,” she’s saying. “Jay Berg? He sounds full of himself. Nothing to report from his end, just checking in—wanted to know if Kelly had made contact. I said no, was that okay?” “That’s fine. I don’t want to start lying to the cops, not if we can help it.” “Any news?” “We just got here. How could there be any news?” “You sound so stressed! Janey, listen to me, you need a shoulder to cry on, cry on his. Those are good shoulders.” “Got to go. Thanks, Fern, you’re a saint.” “Not if I can help it. Bye-bye. Love you, Janey poo.” Janey poo. Fern is the only person in the world who can get away with calling me that. My playground name. I’m seven years old, fall on my bum in the mud. All the kids laughing, saying I pooed my pants, which seems so utterly unfair, since I haven’t even wet the bed in years and years—or months, at least. Fern, who loved being the playground hero, swooping in like the wonderful wicked witch, saying she’ll poo on them if they don’t shut their dirty mouths, and from then on it’s her secret sister name for me. A name that says we’re in this together, blood of my blood, best friends forever.
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Thank God for Fern. Having her on my side makes an impossible situation just a little bit easier to take. Randall Shane returns from the counter disappointed. No Lincoln Town Cars available. “I settled for a Crown Vic,” he says, handing me the paperwork. “You drive.” On the short bus ride to the car lot he explains that he’s into his twenty-seventh hour without sleep and doesn’t trust himself behind the wheel. “Are you sure you’re okay with the rest of it?” I want to know. “Can you do this?” “I’m fine,” he insists. “Never felt better. The twenty-fourhour rule is my own personal thing. Like not driving if you have a glass of wine.” “Lots of people drive with a glass of wine. I have, if it’s only one with dinner.” “Not me. Never,” he says, very firmly. End of discussion, obviously. Mr. Shane has his rules and sticks to ’em, thank you, ma’am. What’s with him, anyhow? The so-called sleep disorder—did he have an accident, fall asleep at the wheel, is that what this is about? At some point I do want to know, but it’s not important enough to pursue, not at the moment. Certainly not worth surrendering my secrets. Ancient history. There are bigger priorities. Waiting in the Hertz lot is a big, dark green Ford sedan with tinted windows. To me it looks suspiciously like a cop car. Shane says that’s no surprise, lots of law enforcement agencies use the Crown Victoria, including the FBI. “You’re thinking of the P71 Police Interceptor model. This is the rental version,” he says, sliding into the passenger seat. “Less power, smoother ride. Also shotgun, police radio, or on-board computer. Otherwise pretty much the same vehicle.”
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“Feels like a boat,” I point out. “Drives like one, too,” he says. “Where are we headed, exactly?” Shane unfolds the Hertz map. “I want to find that cell tower,” he says. “We’ll go from there.” 3. Darkness My Old Friend The mosquito is driving her insane. Kelly knows she should conserve the battery in the lantern—her only source of light—but for the past twenty minutes a mosquito has been sucking her blood like a winged vampire. She’s decided she can take the confinement, the hunger, the worrying about what has happened to Seth, the toilet-in-a-bucket, but the goddamn mosquito makes her want to run into a wall, knock herself out. Crazy thought. How can she find a way to escape if she’s unconscious? Zzz-zzz-zzz, dive-bombing her ear. Stupid bug! Kelly clicks on the feeble light. Catches a glimpse of something zipping around her face, then loses it. She crawls to a corner, hoping the bug will stay around the light, leave her alone. The strategy works for less than a minute. Zzz-zzz-zzz. With her back braced to the corner, swatting air, she makes a terrible discovery: there’s way more than one mosquito. There are dozens, attacking in turn, and more are streaming in through the narrow air vent. There will be no end to the biting, the buzzing, the swarming dots of madness. Sobbing frantically, she slaps at her ears, hair, neck. Kelly remembers a kid in the hospital having a seizure, how
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scary it was to observe, and this is like that—uncontrollable, involuntary. Her limbs kicking out, her brain throwing sparks instead of thinking. And she hates it, not being in charge of her body. As she continues to slap herself, the hate part gradually overcomes the fear. She concentrates on hating what’s been done to her. A hatred as white and hot as a knife to the brain. How dare they? Not that she has a clear idea of who they are. The mission was to deliver his father’s company plane to a location in Florida—a fabulous flight in a dream aircraft, with Kelly flying hands-on most of the way. Supposedly a favor to some business associate. Deliver the King Air, then return on a commercial flight, they’d both be home the same day, no big deal. But when she and Seth exited the aircraft, three men were waiting on the packed gravel runway. Dark, dangerous men— one of them darker and more dangerous than the others. Glossy black hair in a bowl cut—he’s the one who shot her, drugged her. Wait. Does she have that right, was she really drugged? Did he shoot her with some sort of dart or is that something from a bad dream, the nightmare of waking up in the dark? Hard to sort out that jumble of images, decide what’s real, what’s imagined. Similar to how her memory got scrambled when they gave her anesthesia in the hospital. You come out of a black hole, can’t quite put it all together. Dazed and confused for sure. Gradually Kelly settles. Takes control of her breathing, stops slapping at herself. Let the bastards bite, she’s got more important things to do. Figure it out, Kel. Or, like her mom is always saying, use your noodle. First thing, she turns off the lamp. Darkness my old friend. Something from a song her grand-
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mother used to play. An actual turntable album, probably still there with the stuff in the attic Mom can’t bring herself to throw out, although the turntable itself is long gone. Kind of a spooky-pretty song, high boy voices, and when Kelly had to go back into the hospital, face it all over again, the words resonated. Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to speak to you again. Made sense to her then, and it makes sense now: the darkness really can be her friend, if she can find a way to use it. She can’t break through the steel walls or fit through the ventilation slot. She has no knife, no gun, no secret karate moves. There’s only one way to escape: she has to think herself out. Her weapon is her brain. Her brain and the dark. 4. Small Alligators The road runs straight and true, a sliver of hot black tar straight into the middle of nowhere. This is my first experience driving in South Florida—with my mom we took shuttles and courtesy vans—but I seem to be doing okay. With Shane navigating, I manage to connect with a street south of the airport and follow it west until the endless stoplights gradually diminish and the flat, urban sprawl gives way to a sea of grass that stretches all the way to the horizon. Nothing but sunburnt grass, and low mangroves, and silvery glints of water under a bleached-out sky. We’ve gone from the twenty-first century to some ancient, empty wilderness in less than forty minutes. “This is the Everglades?” I want to know. “The edge of it,” he says, consulting the map. “Pull over at the next rest stop.” It’s not so much a rest stop as a narrow strip of baked earth. When I shove open the heavy door and step out, the sudden blast of heat takes my breath away. Shane is already peering
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off into the great flat distance, using a rock-steady hand to shade his eyes. “There,” he says, pointing. Half a mile away, on a little man-made island in the grasslands, a sky-blue tower juts up like a rude finger. “Got it,” I say, squinting into the brightness. “But what good does it do us?” Can’t say I ever before actually noticed a cell tower. Why would I? Normally all I care is if the phone works, not the technical aspects. But here we are, in the middle of the soggy forever, staring up at this huge thing that bristles with what Shane says are microwave transponders. “Cell phone transmission is basically line of sight,” he explains. “What you carry in your purse is a small radio transmitter with a range of only a few miles. The nearest tower picks up your transmission, beams it to a base station, where the call is shunted into the normal phone lines we all know and love. Think of it as a much bigger way of doing what your cordless phone at home does, providing radio connection between the bases. Pretty simple, really.” Yeah, sure, pretty simple if you happen to be a technofreak. Some of us have never figured out how electricity comes out of those little receptacles in the wall, let alone how cell phones, or TVs or radios work. Mostly because we don’t really care how stuff works, just so long as the toaster oven gets all hot when you push the button. I’m thinking about heat and toasters and ovens because it feels like we’re being baked alive. When the big trucks roar by, the gusts of wind hit like a hot slap in the face. I’m going to need a hat or a visor, and most of all a pair of big, wraparound sunglasses—or maybe one of those welder’s masks, to shield me from the brutal sun.
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Shane smiles, showing his teeth. Looks like a handsome shark, pleased to be out of water. “The most recent calls from your daughter’s cell phone were made in line of sight from here, via that tower. Figure the height of the tower, that means a radius of up to ten miles.” “Yeah, I get it. But if someone else is using her phone, then she isn’t necessarily within the same area, right? Plus there’s nothing out here. Maybe the kidnappers were driving along this road when they made the call. Maybe they’re a hundred miles from here by now. Or a thousand, if they stole the flyboy’s airplane.” Shane nods, still shielding his pale eyes. “Agreed, lots of maybes. But we have to start somewhere. I wanted to get a physical look at the area before I start working from maps and aerial photographs.” The heat is curdling my brain, making me cranky. “Okay, you had a look,” I say. “What do you see but a whole lot of nowhere?” He seems to take the question seriously, has another slow scan around the area. “I see hundreds of birds. Mostly cattle egret—those are the little guys—but some heron and ibis and at least one osprey. I see miles and miles of waterway that would be navigable in a flat-bottomed boat, or even better by an airboat. I see a man in a straw hat fishing with a cane pole. I see a small alligator.” “What!” I do a little involuntary dance step, as if something is nipping at my heels. “On the canal bank,” he says gently. “Over there.” Blame it on the blinding light, but I really hadn’t noticed much of anything but the sky and the grass. Shane is right, of course. The little white splotches are birds, I can see that now. A lot of birds, some of them circling high overhead,
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which probably means the place is teeming with life, right? Nor had I noticed the canal that runs along the road, because it looks more like a wide irrigation ditch, and who pays attention to ditches? Most shocking, there really is a small alligator—maybe three feet long—on the opposite bank, as motionless as a moldy log. Never saw it. And the old man with the really long fishing pole, how did I miss him? Or the rusty old pickup that must have brought him here? If I didn’t notice a man and a truck and an alligator all out in the open, what else haven’t I noticed? Did I expect to find my missing daughter waving her arms, shouting “Over here, Mom!”? “This whole area, it was a major drug smuggling destination some years back,” Shane explains. “You can’t see it from the road, but within a few miles of here there are remote airfields, old storage buildings, trailers, bunkers, you name it. Lots of secret places to run a criminal enterprise, hide an abductee, whatever.” Lots of places, I’m thinking, to bury a body. “Those birds up there,” I say, pointing. “The ones way up high. Are those vultures?” “Buzzards.” “What’s the difference?” “Not sure. Vultures are bigger.” “But they both eat dead things, right? Dead things out in the swamp?” Shane nods to himself. “I think we’re done here,” he says gently. 5. Pretty Little Thang The only thing Roy Whittle likes about the Glade City Hunt Club is the stuffed wolverine perched atop the old wooden
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phone booth in the lobby. The nasty beast, big as a dog, is in full weasel snarl, teeth bared, glass eyes flat with a hatred of all creatures not itself. In the wild, a fifty-pound wolverine in a bad mood can take down a moose, fueled by sheer tenacity and scalpel-sharp claws. As a kid Roy used to imagine the stuffed wolverine coming to life, leaping on the fat neck of Buster Nyles, the Collier County sheriff who took bribes with both hands, and then betrayed low-level drug smugglers like Roy’s father. The good old boys who ran the show walked away, burying their millions in pickle jars and offshore investments while swamp-cracker chumps like Pappy shuffled into cells at Raiford. And yet the old man, dumb as a load of cinder blocks, always aspired to be one of the regulars who drank with Sheriff Nyles and his minions, impressing the hell out of the sunburned tourists and occasional movie stars who flocked to the fabled Hunt Club for a taste of Old Florida ambiance. The huge gator hide nailed to the red-cedar paneling, darkened by a century of cigar smoke. The lovingly framed photo of Hemingway standing at the famous veranda bar, his arm thrown over the shoulders of a very young Buster, then a lowly game warden who told lies outrageous enough to impress a famous novelist. The formal menus signed by Clark Gable and Harry Truman, the fat, exuberant tarpon mounted over the entrance to the immense screened-in porch where the movers and shakers, the elected and the anointed, had for generations gathered to gorge on blackened redfish caught by their guides. In the glory days more bullshit flowed through the Glade City Hunt Club than in all the saloons of Texas. The days when local fishing guides moonlighted on the wrong side of the law, jacking protected gators, piloting airboats full of forbidden marijuana bales, and then bragging on it to Donny Nyles, the
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Hunt Club bartender, Buster’s little brother, and himself a coke-sniffing smuggler and dissembler of some note. Buster and Donny are both dead now—cancer and self-administered gunshot respectively—but Roy still hates their rotting bones. Hates them for sneering at Pappy, then shining him on, setting him up. Wrecking his pathetic life because they could, and because it amused them. Roy’s is a prideful hatred, a blood hatred, the Whittle family having settled in these parts at about the same time as the Nyles clan, difference being the Whittles, barefoot and willfully ignorant—Pappy bragged he’d never dirtied his mind by reading a newspaper—the Whittles kept to their hidden whiskey stills and their secret gator holes and never ran for office, or secured employment with law enforcement agencies. Therefore never had the leverage to enrich themselves at the public trough, or avoid serving time because they controlled both the jails and the courts. What Roy would really like to do is take out his uncircumcised member and urinate all over the precious lobby, add a little sheen to the hardwood floors. Instead he tucks in his shirt, straightens out his Caterpillar ball cap, and presents himself at the famous bar. “Hey, um, Donny,” Roy says, addressing the barkeep by the name pinned to the lapel of his Tommy Bahama shirt. “Good afternoon, sir.” “Stick around?” “Excuse me, sir?” “Stick Davis. Supposed to meet him here.” The barkeep eyes the otherwise empty bar, the message being, see for yourself, moron, nobody home. “Gimme a Bud,” says Roy, taking a stool. “Corona, Heineken, Harp, and Sapporo on tap,” he recites.
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“Bottled beer listed on the board. No Budweiser today. No Budweiser tomorrow.” “You ain’t from around here.” The barkeep, a sly, surfer-blond dude about Roy’s age, volunteers that he’s from Orlando. Roy has never been to Orlando. Fact is he’s never been north of Bradenton, and then only once to visit his mother in the hospital. “Orlando,” he says, rolling the word around on his tongue. “That’s Disney World, right?” “Yes, sir. Disney World, Sea World, lots of worlds in Orlando.” “And your name ain’t really Donny, am I right about that, too?” The barkeep glances warily at his own name tag. “It’s like a tradition, I guess.” “For Donny Nyles, yeah. This was his bar, back in the day.” “Is that right?” “Yeah. You know what he did once, Donny Nyles? Got in a fight with some tourist, mighta been from Orlando, come to think, and he hits the guy with one of those little clubs they break ice with, and the guy is so drunk he’s knocked out cold. So Donny decides to wake him up by throwing him off the dock. Guy never woke up. He drowned. They stood there and watched him drown in his sleep. Pretty funny, huh?” The barkeep shrugs. “If you say so.” No more “sir,” Roy notes. Apparently the “sir” time is over. He wonders why he’s being ugly to a young man, a stranger that’s never done him any particular harm, and then he remembers why. He hates the Hunt Club and everybody in it including, at the moment, himself. “Donny Nyles thought it was real amusing,” Roy goes on, unable to stop himself, the dangerous edge in his voice sharp-
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ening like a gutting knife on a grindstone. “Must have told that story a hundred times, about how he drowned a guy trying to wake him up. Most folks, prob’ly they thought it was just a bar story, only it really happened. Donny, the guy whose name you got on that little green tag on your skinny little chest, he thought killing a loser was really funny, like a good fart joke or a rubber crutch.” The fake Donny is eyeing the intercom, wondering if he’ll have to call in enforcements, when Stick Wilson enters the bar and raises his straw cowboy hat. “Roy the boy!” “Hey, Stick.” Stick must be about forty now, and looks it, still skinny everywhere but for his little vodka belly, straining the buttons of his safari shirt. Aviator glasses covering bloodshot eyes the color of a bleeding battle flag. When Roy was just a little tyke, Stick got temporarily famous for putting a DC-3 down on Alligator Alley after both engines flamed out. Deadstick, they called him, then Stick, and it stuck. Almost as legendary was how he persuaded a startled Florida State trooper that he’d been hijacked, dadgum it, Officer, and that the cargo of Jamaican marijuana now burning merrily within the wreckage was not connected to him in any way, shape or form. What really impressed the good old boys in Glade City, who had financed the venture, was that Stick, barely twenty years of age, an outsider hailing from Mobile, Alabama, had the good sense to torch the aircraft, thereby eradicating not only the evidence but any possible connection to their august selves. What really impressed five-year-old Roy was that the famous pilot actually seemed to like Roy’s father, treating Pappy like an equal and wanting to know about cool and interesting things like running jars of whiskey to the Indians, and did bull gators really mate with their dead prey.
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Near as Roy’s been able to determine in the intervening years, Stick wasn’t one of those involved in betraying the old man. One of the very few. Which is precisely why he’s decided to go out on a limb and trust Stick, despite his reputation as a major league juicehead and plane-wrecker, the old DC-3 being the first of many. They take their drinks, a beer for Roy and two tall triplevodka tonics for his guest, and retire to the far frontier of the veranda. Few couples having dinner, seated in high-back wicker chairs, around white-clothed tables overlooking the canal. Very civilized. Very Hunt Club, the sleepy afternoon, flooded with dappled sunlight version. “Yawl still lookin’ out for your brother?” Stick wants to know. “Dug? Yeah, I guess.” “That’s a fine thang, takin’ care of family.” Stick looks around the old club, never raising his shades, a faint smile twitching on his thin chapped lips. “Same place, different people,” he drawls. “Less puke, too. Old days, somebody’d be whoopin’ over the rail by now, messin’ up their Top-Siders.” “Yeah,” says Roy. “The good old days.” Stick smiling with his teeth and drinking gulps of chilled vodka like ice water, waiting for young Roy Whittle to make his move, say his piece. Roy puts down his empty glass. “What if I was to help you put your hands on a pretty little thing worth a whole lot of money?” Roy asks, trying to see through the dark glasses, into those bloodshot eyes. Stick sits up straighter in his high-back wicker chair, caressing his hard little belly. “Pretty little thang? What kind of pretty little thang?”
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6. Get This Party Started Back in civilization, the concrete, steel and palm tree variety, we’re scheduled to meet with a local FBI guy, who is supposed to bring us up to speed. I assume we’ll go to the office, like they do on the TV shows, all those nicely dressed, unfailingly polite agents focused on making us safe, on getting our children back. But Shane directs me to a drowsy shopping mall in a Miami neighborhood called Miramar, where Special Agent Sean Healy eventually finds us staking out a table at a Denny’s. It seems the field office is nearby, but since we’re not on board in an official capacity it’s better we don’t make ourselves known—the way Agent Healy puts it, we’re off the books. Plus he’s dying for a spicy buffalo chicken melt and a side of seasoned fries, and this, he says pointedly, won’t take long. After the waitress takes his order he goes, “So. You’re Randall Shane, huh? Heard of you,” he adds, without any particular enthusiasm. “You took early retirement, whatever that is.” “Yup,” Shane says, nodding. “That I did.” “Obviously you’ve still got friends in high places.” “What makes you say that?” Shane asks, all innocent. Healy is a good-looking guy in his late-thirties, kind of a hunk, actually, if you think for instance that Josh Hartnett is a hunk. You know, rangy and slim and masculine but somehow boyish, with good bones and really nice hair and plump, kissable lips. Except Healy looks vaguely pissed off, and that makes him unattractive in a faintly disturbing way. Something to do with the fact that his default expression seems to be a sneer, and the sly way he’s clocking my boobs, it makes me form a negative impression of the man inside the body.
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Nice to look at but definitely a don’t-touch, because the more you see the less you’ll like. “What makes me say you got pull?” Healy responds, snorting. “Reality makes me say that. Reality is, we got more than two hundred agents actively working cases from here to Key West, and we never work a case without opening a file, not ever, and along comes this former agent, and suddenly we got six people, more you count support, six agents and who knows how many staff gathering information regarding a certain individual, even though no file as been opened and officially we’re not looking at the individual, if you know what I mean.” Shane says, “I know what you mean.” “That was a figure of speech. What they call a rhetorical question.” “Uh-huh. Is this where I’m supposed to apologize for putting you out?” Shane asks, ever so sweetly. “That would be nice,” says Healy, sipping a tall glass of ice water and eyeing the kitchen door, where his spicy chicken melty thing has yet to emerge. “I’ll have to work on it,” Shane says. “Get my apology all spiffy. Until then, what can you tell us about Edwin Manning and any connections he may have, financial or otherwise, to this area?” Healy glances at me. My actual face, not my chest. “Maybe I’d share with you, Mr. Former Agent, but I’m not sharing with a civilian. No way. Not without an official investigation, a file open, on the books.” Shane has been sort of going along with Healy, feeding the banter, but that changes in an instant. There’s a sudden chill in the air and it’s not the AC at Denny’s. “Mrs. Garner is not a civilian,” he reminds Healy. “She’s the mother of a
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missing child. She’s the reason I’m here. She’s the reason you’re here. Show some respect.” Give Healy credit, he recognizes the change in Randall Shane’s attitude and right away he backs off. Probably pretty much the way a lion tamer backs off when the lion makes a certain kind of noise in its great big throat. Like, careful or I’ll get all snarly and have you for breakfast, and we don’t want that, do we? Healy glances at me, nods. “Right, no disrespect intended. Just for the record, this violates every procedure but what the heck, this is between friends, right?” “Absolutely,” says Shane. “Totally,” I say. “Okay then. Here goes.” Healy produces a small notebook, flips it open. “Item number one. Follow the money. We checked and there have been no recent large transfers of funds from any of Edwin Manning’s private accounts. At least not those we have been able to identify. Whether or not something has been fiddled on the other end, the business end, our forensic accountants can’t make that determination. Lots of money flows in and out of Merrill Manning Capital Fund. Many, many millions. Brokers and bankers buying and selling every day, it will take a while to sort that out, and as you know, former-agent Shane, private investment funds don’t have the same disclosure obligations as publicly traded funds. So, to sum it up, we’ve got nothing showing on the money front, but we can’t be certain nothing is happening.” “It was a long shot. Thanks for trying.” Healy flips a page. “Item two, Manning’s interests in South Florida. Substantial. Public record makes him the owner of a brand-new four-million-dollar condo on Brickell Avenue. That’s the financial district, not the beach, by the way. Pent-
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house with a helo pad, although he doesn’t presently own or lease a helicopter. Also, Merrill Manning Capital Fund is the primary investor in the new Nakosha gaming and casino complex. Can’t be certain the exact dollar figure, but the accountants say the fund has, at minimum, a hundred mil directly invested, and another three hundred leveraged offshore.” “Indian casino?” “Native American,” he says, correcting Shane. “Other than gaming rooms at racetracks, all the freestanding casinos in Florida are owned and operated by Native Americans.” “How come I’ve never heard of the Nakosha?” Healy shrugs, his handsome eyes slightly hooded. “Because they didn’t get full tribal status until about ten years ago? Because compared to the Seminoles and the Miccosukee they’re a small tribe? I can’t speak to what you don’t know. But what you really do need to know—and take this to the bank— is that the Nakosha have official legal status as a sovereign, domestic dependent nation, and no, repeat, no treaty arrangements with federal enforcement agencies. None whatsoever.” “You’re serious,” Shane says, looking concerned. “Deadly,” says Healy. “And since you seem so keen on that bit of information, I might tell you we have enforcement arrangements in place with the Seminole and the Miccosukee, but not the Nakosha. Legally they’re obliged to enforce federal statutes, but as a practical matter the enforcement has been, shall we say, problematic. Bottom line, they run their own show. We do not step over that line—that is, we do not set foot in Indian country—absent a directive from the AG. Who is not, as far as I know, a personal pal of yours.” “Never met him,” Shane admits. “So you need to forget the casino connection, stay away from the tribe.”
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“I’ll be sure to do that.” “Do I detect sarcasm?” Healy says, flipping a page in his notebook. “Here’s the good part. My boss had me write it down and instructed me to read it to you, word for word. Ready? Is everybody attentive?” “We’re listening,” says Shane. Some guys, the calmer they get, the more you pay attention. Randall Shane is one of those guys. Healy knows it but he can’t help himself, he keeps pushing. “Here we go.” The agent makes a show of clearing his throat, starts reading. “‘Agents of the FBI and the Justice Department, whether active or retired, have no independent authority on Nakosha tribal lands, and if they do violate Nakosha tribal lands or interfere in Nakosha tribal business, may be found in violation of federal statute and subject to arrest.’” Healy pauses, gives Shane a triumphant smile. “Would you like me to repeat that?” Shane smiles back. “I’ve got it, Special Agent Healy.” “Good, because that’s all I’ve got. We’re finished here.” Healy leans back as the waitress delivers his melty thing on a hot plate, with enough fries on the side to stop a healthy young heart. He grunts happily as he reaches for the ketchup, dismissing his audience. We stand up to leave. “Oh,” says Healy without lifting his head, “there is one other thing. Edwin Manning is in the house.” “Yeah? Like Elvis?” Shane responds. “Exactly like Elvis. Manning arrived in Opa-locka on a Gulfstream charter flight two hours ago, went directly to his condo.” “Alone?” Healy shakes his head, slurps a fry. “Guys like that never travel alone. He’s got a security detail with him.”
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“Bald head, arm in a sling?” For the first time the agent looks surprised. “Careful,” he says, chewing with his mouth open. “You got big shot friends can call in favors, I’ll grant you that. But you’re no longer a law enforcement officer, pal. You get in trouble, call the cops. Maybe they’ll call us. We’ll open a file, get this party started.” Shane herds me to the exit before I can comment on Mr. Healy’s table manners. 7. Stinking Badges Have I mentioned that my father was a cop? Have I mentioned my father at all? There’s a good reason for that. File it under secrets to be revealed later, if ever. And no, I wasn’t sexually abused, so put that out of your dirty mind. Anyhow, my dad was New York State Police. A trooper. The black knee-high boots, the peaked hat, holstered sidearm, the whole six-foot package designed to impress and intimidate. As a small child I assumed that being a trooper meant he was not allowed to smile, not even when he was off duty. Later, after he was transferred to warrants, he rarely wore the uniform, although it was always ready in the closet, carefully draped in plastic. I was twelve before I realized that “warrants” meant arresting criminals and that he was, in fact, engaged in a dangerous business. Maybe that explained his dark view of the human race, or maybe the sour attitude was just his nature. My mother said he was different when he was young, and he must have been, for her to marry him. It wasn’t because she had to marry him. I came along five years later, at a time, she later confessed, when she was considering divorce. Years after that, after the final ugliness, I asked her what happened, what was wrong with my father, and she
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shrugged and said he changed. People do, she told me, and not always for the better. I like to think that all the good in me, whatever warmth and humor I inherited, it all comes from my mother. Plus the little thumbprint dimple on her chin. The one thing I did get from my father is a temper. The difference is, Dad was more or less always in a bad mood, whereas I’m reasonably cheerful most of the time, and it takes a lot to set me off. When I do lose my temper (once or twice a year—really, it’s that rare) I become another person, a darker version of me. As Kelly once observed, after seeing me get ugly with a doctor who hadn’t bothered to read her file, my passive gets aggressive. I seethe, rage, lose control to the point that it scares me. Witnessing it for the first time, people who know me tend to be shocked by the transformation. Shane gives no indication of shock. Possibly because he saw a hint of it when I vented on Edwin Manning. Whatever, he apparently notices the telltale signs—my face getting red, my eyes getting huge—and he hustles me out of Denny’s before I can explode in the general direction of Special Agent Sean Healy. “You have to calm down,” he urges, steering me toward the rental car. “Do you need the paper bag? Are you hyperventilating?” In full fury I yank my arm away and start raging about Healy, his obvious inadequacies, his piglike mental state, his animal rudeness. How it will be his fault if Kelly is dead out there in the stinking swamp, because all the effing FBI cares about is opening official files and scoffing disgusting food and staring at my breasts. How the lowlife bureaucratic bully represents all the stupid and evil things in the world and makes me so angry I want to explode or die. Then I start
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bawling and banging my hands on the hot fender of the Crown Vic. In the past, some men have responded to this kind of display by attempting to hold or hug me. Bad idea. Human grenades don’t want to be held. Shane has good instincts. He doesn’t touch, he gets Kleenex from the car, then says, with great confidence, that he’s convinced that my daughter is alive and that we’ll find her. “That’s what you’re thinking, right?” he wants to know. “That the worst has happened? It was seeing the Everglades. Somehow that made you think she was dead.” Astonishment makes me stop sobbing and stare at him with watery eyes. How could he possibly know what I was thinking? “It was the look on your face,” he explains. “Unmistakable.” “The look?” “Like you’d hit a wall, suddenly lost hope. I thought a meeting with Special Agent Healy might put things right. My bad.” “He really is an idiot.” Shane shakes his head. “I seriously doubt that. There’s a special test for new recruits, it weeds out the idiots.” “You’re making a joke.” “A bad one, apparently. Can’t say I warmed up to Mr. Healy, but understand he’s in a difficult position. Guys in the trenches, they always resent it when word comes down to do something off the books. They hate getting their strings pulled. Young guys like Healy, they’re aware the agency has a bad history of being manipulated by the powers that be. He thinks I’m using the agency, trying to get leverage on Edwin Manning for my own purposes, and he’s right.” “We’re trying to find my daughter.” Shane nods. “And one of our best sources is Manning, if
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only we can persuade him to share what he knows, or at least confirm what we suspect. So we are looking for leverage any way we can get it. And absent a ransom call, a witness, or physical evidence of abduction—none of which we have— the agency protocol is to assume Kelly left home of her own free will. ‘Missing of her own volition’ is the phrase.” “She’d never do that, not without telling me.” “Agreed, but Healy has convinced himself that we’re misusing agency resources to locate a headstrong teenager who ran off with her boyfriend. He thinks that because ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that’s what happens.” Shane pauses, lets his summary of the situation soak in, then adds with a wry smile, “Plus he’s a mouth-breathing moron who should be crucified.” I stare at him in disbelief. “Did I say that? Crucified?” “I believe the phrase was ‘nail the bastard to his stinking badge.’” “Really?” Shane glances at the restaurant. “He’ll be licking his plate about now,” he says. “I suggest we leave before he decides to have us for dessert.” A few minutes later we’ve exited the parking lot unscathed and are blending into traffic. Stinking badge? Where did I get that? Then it hits me. We don’t need no stinking badges, is a phrase Kelly used for a while when she was in the hospital. Something she picked up from TV, or from the oncology nurses, who were always trying to be humorous with the kids, making jokes and feeding them lines as well as medication. Out of the blue Kel would say “we don’t need no stinking badges” in a bad Mexican accent, then erupt in giggles at her own cleverness. I think she was acting out a
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part, pretending to be someone who wasn’t sick. If you’re laughing you can’t be dying, right? “Where are we going?” “The first motel that looks decent,” Shane says. Reacting to my quizzical look, he adds. “We need a base of operations. Somewhere I can recharge my laptop, take a shower, make a few calls, decide what the next move should be.” “You said you had a plan,” I remind him. “Seth’s father is in town,” he says. “That changes things.” “You think he’s here to make a payoff?” “I do, yes,” Shane admits. “A payoff or some other contact with the abductor. Either way, we have to find out exactly what he’s doing, where he’s going, who he’s seeing. If he finds Seth, we find Kelly.” “You make it sound easy.” “It won’t be,” he says. “But Manning in Miami, that’s good. It means he’s convinced that his son is alive.” We drive for a while. I’ve no idea what road or street we’re on, anything other than a vague sense we’re traveling south in heavy traffic, stoplight to stoplight. I could turn off at any corner, find a motel or hotel easily enough, but something keeps me on the road. Like I’m waiting for a shoe to drop, an idea to reveal itself. “Where is he staying?” I ask suddenly. “Edwin Manning, where’s his condo?” “Somewhere on Brickell,” Shane responds warily, giving me a quizzical look. “Healy said Brickell Avenue, the financial district.” “Will there be motels on Brickell?” “It’s Miami. There are motels everywhere. But the Brickell area is high-end, very pricey.” “Whatever. Just get us there,” I suggest. “Tell me the way.”
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8. The Man In The Snakeskin Vest Edwin Manning and his new associates travel the rutted, unpaved road in the muscular glory of a fusion-orange Hummer. An H2 model, so new it’s barely out of the box, with the Vortex V-8, eight-way leather seats, and every accessorized goody known to manly men. Not really Edwin’s kind of transport, he’s basically a Mercedes kind of guy. It was his son Seth who picked out the Hummer, big grin on his face, going, Dad, you need this. It’ll be a chick magnet— next time we’re down we’ll drive it to Key West and see what happens. The boy always trying to fix him up, kidding but serious in his own earnest, well-intentioned way. And Edwin always responding with the same line: if I wanted another wife I’d buy one. Which they both know is bullshit because in all the ways that really count Edwin is still married to Seth’s late mother. Death is not a divorce, not for Edwin. Next time we’ll drive to Key West. He can hear the boy’s voice and the memory brings with it a kind of emotional pulse, almost electrical in nature. Edwin prays there will be a next time. Prays that he can find a way to free his son, make him whole again. That desire, that overwhelming need, is the only reason he’d ever confine himself in this miserable jouncing tin box with a subordinate like Salvatore Popkin and his low-life associates, whose individual names Edwin has blanked from his mind. These are not people he wants to know, they are underlings he must tolerate under a circumstance. “Oof! Fuggin’ hum-job!” says one of them, a nervous, grinning goon with stringy, unkempt hair, powerful halitosis, and a nose that evidently demands picking on a regular basis.
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True enough, the ruts in the road have been rattling their teeth, but out of loyalty to his son Edwin resents any criticism of the Hummer, or the slang reference to it as a humjob. What he’d like to do is give Mr. Stink Breath a smack on his thick forehead with something heavy, a lead paperweight perhaps. Instead he orders the driver to slow down. That lasts for a few hundred rattling yards and then inevitably the big V-8 finds its own speed and they keep jouncing. When one of the morons bumps his head on the roof, Edwin has to remind him to tighten his seat belt. The man looks dumbfounded—the idea obviously never occurred to him— then complies and nods his thanks. I am surrounded by overgrown children, Edwin decides. Big stupid kids with guns. Wonderful. After three miles on unpaved, rutted road, they come upon a large sign. A very prominent sign that demands attention. YOU ARE ENTERING THE SOVEREIGN TERRITORY OF THE NAKOSHA NATION. VISITORS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CARRY OR POSSESS FIREARMS OF ANY KIND. VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO ARREST. NO EXCEPTIONS. The Hummer idles, huffing fuel like a juvenile delinquent. “So what do we do?” Sally Pop wants to know, peering at the sign, which is large, professionally lettered, and illuminated with cove lighting. “You’re asking me?” Edwin says, turning in the passenger seat to stare at him.
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“I mean, is this enforced or what?” Edwin shrugs. “I assume they’ll pat you down.” “Can they do that?” Stink Breath wants to know. “I mean can an injun really arrest a white man?” Edwin stares at the man, who is, in his opinion, barely Caucasian. “They make their own rules,” he says. “But Florida, anybody can carry a piece,” Stink Breath says. “I looked it up.” “This isn’t Florida,” Edwin points out. “This is the Nakosha Nation.” “It’s fucked is what it is.” “Sally?” Edwin says, exasperated. “Handle this please.” Sally’s plan is they all get out, open the rear door, and secure the handguns in one of the storage wells, under the peel-up carpet. Four men, eight guns. A nice symmetry, Edwin is thinking. You want to know how many weapons, count the bent noses and multiply by two. The rutted road continues for another eight miles. For all of it, every shudder and jounce, Edwin ponders on the possibility that the Nakosha have another, even more private access road, and that it is as smooth and well paved as the autobahn. Restricted to tribal members, of course. Each of whom now has a net worth in the multiple millions, no small thanks to him. Men who not so long ago trapped reptiles for food, who rarely operated a flush toilet, these same men now logged on to check their diversified portfolios because Edwin Manning had said yes, why not, by all means let the gambling begin. At the time it seemed a prudent investment for the fund, a business decision based on anticipated return, no more, no less. All of which had led him here, to this road from hell, and to the hell his son was enduring.
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Talk about unintended consequences. The road, hemmed in by dense mangrove for most of its winding length, widens as it approaches the settlement. A dozen or so homes built in the traditional manner, on sturdy stilts that lift each building a good ten feet above the floodplain. Roofs expertly made from thatches of sable palm fronds. Very picturesque. At one time, Edwin knew, most of the family had lived—barely survived was more like it—in a decrepit trailer village, since leveled and replaced by luxury versions of the traditional chickees, the designs borrowed from, if not actually executed by, the neighboring Seminoles. The village has no security gate, no obvious security guards, but moments after the Hummer parks in the shadow of the chickee huts, black-haired men emerge as if from nowhere and surround the vehicle. They could be brothers or cousins, all with similar dark eyes, thick hair the color of glittering coal dust, and not a smile among them. Edwin lowers his window. “Edwin Manning. I’m here to see Joe Lang,” he announces. “I called.” “No guns.” “Fine,” Edwin says. He exits the vehicle, raises his arms, expecting to be patted down. Indicates that Sally and the boys do likewise. Soon they’re all standing around with their arms in the air. The black-haired men stare at them but do not touch. “No guns.” “Fine, sure,” says Edwin. “We agree, no guns. We are not carrying firearms. Go ahead, check.” One of the men, little more than a teenager, really, but stocky and confident, holds out his hand and says, “Give me the keys.”
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Edwin says, “Somebody give him the keys, please!” With key in hand the youth goes directly to the back of the vehicle, opens the rear door, lifts the rug, and exposes the assortment of handguns stashed in the storage well. He looks at Edwin, just the trace of a satisfied smirk starting to show. “The penalty for possession of firearms is ten years, unless the council decides to show mercy.” “Fuggin’ hell!” blurts Stink Breath. “Are they crazy?” The stocky teenager shrugs his indifference. “We passed that law because white men kept coming on our land. Jacking gators, running dope, distilling alcohol, all those crazy-ass white man activities. Only an idiot would insult us by ignoring the law.” “I freely admit these men are idiots,” Edwin says, “and I’m an idiot for employing them. Take the guns. Now, may I please see Joe Lang? It’s a matter of life and death or I wouldn’t be here.” A voice comes down from above. “Up here,” it says. A man in a snakeskin vest looks down from the porch of a newly built chickee, gestures to Edwin. “Just you. Rico? See the others get something cold to drink.” Edwin climbs the steps, moves into the shade under the thatched roof of the wraparound porch. “Joe,” he says. “Thank you for seeing me. Nice place you got here.” “Sit.” Edwin knows better than to offer to shake hands. Nakosha tribal members sometimes embrace, but never acquired the habit of gripping hands, and tolerate the practice only out of politeness. The man in the snakeskin vest pours iced tea from a heavy glass pitcher dewed with moisture. He’s of slender, wiry build, fifty or so, with creased skin the color of saddle
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leather. Bare chested under the vest, and his faded jeans are fastened at the waist by a hand-tooled leather belt with a solid gold buckle cast in the shape of an alligator jawbone. “You like the vest?” he asks, admiring his own garment. “Rattlesnake skin, imported from the Philippines. Only rattlers around here are farm raised. They sell ’em in the casino gift shop. Five grand. The vest, not the rattlers.” Edwin waits, sips his iced tea, well aware that the man in the vest, like his brothers and cousins, does not like to be rushed into the meat of conversation. Eventually he nods his assent, invites Edwin to begin the real discussion. “You know about Ricky?” Edwin begins. “What he’s done, what he’s doing, what he wants?” “We do not speak of that person. He is dead.” “I understand,” Edwin says, “but if he doesn’t get what he wants he’s going to kill my son.” “The person is crazy. He is not Nakosha.” “He was. He’s still your nephew. I need your help, Joe. Surely you and your family owe me that much.” The man in the vest avoids eye contact, stares off into the distance. “We’re very sorry for your troubles, Mr. Manning, but we can’t speak to the dead. And even if we could, the person would not listen. The person will do what he wants to do.” “I’m not asking you to speak directly to Ricky at this point. I’m asking you to convene the council, make it look like you’re considering his request. I’m begging you. Help me find my son.” The man in the vest reaches into a pocket, removes a pair of classic Ray-Bans, and puts them on. Eyes completely concealed, he looks as regal as a shirtless man can look. “I am sorry, Edwin, but what this person does is no longer our business. There is nothing we can do.”
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“That’s your position?” Edwin says, taking care to keep his voice level and nonthreatening. “Just let it happen? Let your nephew cut off my son’s fingers, feed him to the buzzards, piece by piece? That’s your position?” The man in the vest shrugs. “What can I do? I told you, he is dead to us.” “What happened is, Ricky asked to borrow the corporate plane. I felt I owed him that much. But it was just an excuse to snatch my son, who he knew would be piloting the aircraft. He wants me to intervene with the tribal council, get him reinstated.” “Not our problem. He is no longer Nakosha. There will be no reinstatement.” Edwin looks down from the porch, observes his security detail drinking bottles of Coke in the shade, looking fairly relaxed, given the situation. The young tribal members have backed away, giving the visitors—the violators—space. Near as he can tell there have been no more threats about the concealed weapons. Good. He hasn’t got time for that. Just as he hasn’t got time to enter lengthy, cordial negotiations with Joe Lang or other members of the council. Seth hasn’t got time. Time is the enemy. Time is death. Edwin leans forward, doesn’t bother looking into at the opaque sunglasses, which he assumes are meant to be, if not a direct insult, a way of maintaining a cool, impregnable distance. “Let me tell you what will happen if my son dies,” he begins, softly but insistently. “First, I will close off all lines of credit to the tribe and to the gaming enterprise. You may find another source of financing, but it will be, at the very least, difficult and more expensive. Second, I will seek to tie up all tribal assets. I don’t mean your land or your houses or your trucks and motor homes, those can’t be touched. I mean
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your money. Based on my belief, as elucidated by the army of cunning, soulless attorneys who will represent me, that you and the council and every member of the tribe have a shared responsibility to oversee the actions of one of their own. Call him dead, if you like. Kick him out of the tribe, fine, that’s your prerogative. But you will not be able to hide behind any legal, ethical or tribal fictions that the actions he has taken against me personally are not a direct and deadly consequence of the actions you took against him. You hurt him, therefore he hurt me because he knew I’d come to you on bended knee, which I have. I have asked for your help and you spurn me.” Edwin pauses, his heart slamming like a tag-team wrestler pounding the canvas, begging for mercy. Outwardly the man in the snakeskin vest has not reacted beyond a slight thinning of the lips. “If my son dies because you refused to help me, refused to help a man who helped you and your people, then I promise you this. On the graves of my wife and son, I swear I will spend every penny of all my wealth to wreck havoc upon your people. I will hire lobbyists. I will bribe politicians. I’ll buy judges. Whatever it takes, on all levels— county, state and federal—from now until the last day of forever. You will have to spend every dollar of casino income defending yourselves. You think you have trouble with Ricky Lang? Imagine what will happen when those young men down there find that you’ve squandered their future income on lawyer fees. If my son dies because of an argument you and your cronies had with your crazy nephew, so help me God I’ll seek to prove that the Nakosha are not a distinct tribe, and therefore do not deserve tribal status. And after I’m dead it won’t end, because I’ll have endowed a foundation whose
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sole purpose will be proving that you’re not Indian at all, but a band of escaped Cuban sugarcane slaves who hid in the swamp and played Indian when it suited your purpose.” “That’s a white man’s lie,” says the man in the vest, softly, his jaw muscles clenching. “It’s a white man’s world, Joe,” Edwin reminds him. “But look, I didn’t come here to make threats or throw my weight around. I came here asking for help. Help me, please.” The man in the vest takes off his pricey sunglasses. His eyes give nothing away. “The council will meet,” he says. “There will be a discussion.” On the long and bumpy ride out, Edwin Manning orders Sally Pop to stop at the sign warning visitors that firearms are prohibited in the sovereign territory of the Nakosha Nation. The Hummer idles, engine growling. “What do you see?” Edwin asked. Sally peers helplessly out the window, eyes popping more than usual. “What am I looking for?” he asks plaintively. “You tell me,” Edwin suggests. “You’re the security guy. Maybe, I dunno, the surveillance camera on top of the sign? The camera that lets the really smart Indians watch the really stupid cowboys try to hide their guns?” “Shit,” says Sally, clocking the small but rather obvious CCTV camera mounted on the pole holding up the sign. Stink Breath rolls down his window and leans out, giving the camera a pudgy middle finger. “Remember the fuggin’ Alamo!” he shouts. “That was Mexicans,” Edwin points out, “not Indians.” “Same thing,” Stink Breath insists.
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9. Rockin At The Europa Million-dollar penthouse condos don’t look like all that much these days, at least from the outside. Just another row of windows in another silver tower scratching at the city’s jagged skyline. In downtown Miami the old tropical pastels having given way to a more businesslike brushed chrome and raw concrete. One of many such recent structures in what used to be the Brickell Avenue financial district, which has been transformed, according to Shane, into a financial/residential/retail area with thousands of new units under construction, presold or occupied. The elevated cranes are everywhere, crawling like thin steel spiders, weaving a brand-new city in the sky. Progress measured by the cubic yard, total square feet and creative financing. “Boom doesn’t describe what’s happened to Miami,” he explains, surveying the glittering new tower with a pair of small Nikon binoculars. “More like one of those crazy reality movies, Real Estate Gone Wild. A lot of it fueled by Latin American money. Makes a lot of sense if you look at an aviation map—Miami is right in the center of air-travel routes from all of South and Central America. Wealthy family from, say, Caracas, they keep a nice place in Miami, come here to shop every couple of months, check on the investments. And if the crap ever hits the fan back home, they’ve already got a stake in the good old U.S.A., and a ready-made roof over their heads.” “So it’s all about money?” “Sure. Money and security.” “Speaking of money, I gotta ask,” I say, a little nervous. “What do you charge? I mean, this is going to be expensive, right? Helping me find Kelly?”
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He lowers the binoculars. “Please don’t concern yourself. When the job is done, when your daughter is safe home, we’ll sit down and determine a reasonable fee. Some of the people I’ve helped are wealthy and some are not. People pay what they can afford. It all evens out.” “I was just, you know, concerned.” “Don’t be. Not about my fee, in any case.” He returns to the binoculars, subject closed. “I see somebody. One of Manning’s underlings, I assume. Looks like he’s pouring himself a drink at the stand-up bar.” Shane hands me the binoculars, lets me look for myself. We’re on a balcony facing the condo tower. In a manic burst of energy I’d checked us into Europa, an elegant new hotel in an exclusive little enclave on Biscayne Bay. The place is absurdly, almost offensively pricey, which is what got me nervous about money, but it has a direct view of Manning’s condo from the balcony, and so on impulse I had handed over my American Express card and tried not to look at the per-night total for adjoining rooms. A big ouch. The careful, businessperson part of me still counting dimes while the desperate mom throws caution—and credit—to the soft tropical winds. To be more specific, the breeze from the bay is sultry, moisture laden, smelling faintly of salt and a fecund odor that Shane says comes from the mangroves miles away. Whatever, I’m adjusting to the heat, buying into my new sense of mission. If Edwin Manning and his minions are here, there must be hope. “That’s him!” I exclaim. “The bald jerk with the pop-out eyes.” “The guy from the airport?” “Yes! He’s got his arm in a sling.” “Got his ass in a sling, more like.”
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“He’s pointing his finger at the guy with the drink, telling him something. Doesn’t look like a happy conversation.” “Lemme see.” I hand over the binoculars. Shane studies, nods. “This is good. We’ve got the right address.” “You already got that from the Internet,” I point out. “Yeah, but it never hurts to confirm. Back in the day, I was on a stakeout once for a whole week? Two teams, twelvehour shifts, waiting for the suspect to show his face. Turns out we had the wrong side of the building, the suspect was coming and going the whole time. We were staking out the wrong apartment. My mistake.” “I prefer to think you never make mistakes.” He places the binoculars in my hands. “Me? To err is human.” “Where are you going?” I ask. “Back to my computer. Just thought of something.” “What should I do?” “Keep watching.” “What am I watching for?” Shane looks at me. “You’ll know it when you see it. Something out of the ordinary.” “But everything is out of the ordinary,” I protest. “I’m supposed to be adjusting hemlines, not spying on billionaires.” “Keep watching,” he insists, heading for his laptop. I keep watching. He keeps clacking on the keys. Eyeballing the interior of Manning’s condo gives me a new appreciation for bird-watchers. I had no idea it was so much work, keeping focus. Plus the lens distorts things and it takes concentration to figure out what, exactly, you’re
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looking at. For instance I keep seeing this flash of white, and assume that someone is darting across the big room, but that doesn’t really make sense—why run?—so I keep looking and eventually figure out it’s a reflection from a TV screen that must be wall mounted, facing the interior of the room, or maybe coming from a corner. Which also explains the dull looks from the heavy guy with his arm in a sling. He and two other burly types just sitting there staring like a row of hypnotized apes. Monkey see, monkey sit. And yes, I do know that apes aren’t monkeys. Having been corrected by Kelly, who as usual was rolling her eyes at my ignorance. Part of me can’t wait for her to grow up and have kids of her own, so we can commiserate, talk about the bad old days when she was a teenage drama queen. Another part of me wants her to be ten years old again, the year of no hospitals when she was rediscovering the world, seeking approval and encouragement from me. Like I was a person who had valuable insights to share. Like I really and truly mattered. Whereas now I’m this fatally uncool, totally hopeless repository of embarrassment who has nothing to offer, whose role has been reduced to that of a housemaid—except no selfrespecting housemaid would tolerate that level of scorn. A scorn that made my precious daughter think it was okay to keep so much of her life from me. Her thrill-seeking, deathdefying life. Her own personal flyboy kind of life. Talk about exciting—fast cars, motorcycles, airplanes, parachutes. An entire life kept secret from the tedious bore who does her laundry. How could she? How could my little girl do this to me? It’s like all her life I’ve been saying the equivalent of be careful crossing the street and she decides to run out in traffic
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just to spite me. Sticking out her adolescent, know-it-all tongue as the bus runs her down. Okay, I’m a thousand miles from home, sick with worry, but I’m also really and truly pissed at my own daughter. This is where I’m at, mentally and emotionally: I want to rescue the little bitch so I can kill her myself. Which is, of course, insane. “Anything new?” Shane asks, making me jump. “I don’t get how a guy your size can sneak up on people,” I say. “Squeakless sneakers,” he says. “Squeakless sneakers?” “Hard to find but worth their weight in gold.” “I’m really really mad at her,” I confess. His big hand brushes his bearded chin. “Of course you are. You’ve a right to be. We get her back, you can ground her for a year.” “Fern says I should chain her to a radiator.” Shane gives me an odd look, and then it hits me. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I said that! That’s what kidnappers do, isn’t it? Chain the victims to radiators.” “We’ll find her,” he assures me. “You have my pledge.” I believe him. But he doesn’t say whether she’ll be dead or alive. My first impulse is to burst into tears for the twentythird time, but my tear ducts are empty, and wanting to cry just makes my eyes itch. “You have your cell phone?” he asks. I nod. “I want you to put me on speed dial,” he says. “I’ll set mine to vibrate and if you see any cops or security guards heading my way, you hit the dial.” “What are you talking about?”
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“Oh,” he says. “Sorry. Forgot you can’t read my mind. Manning has a local motor vehicle registered in his name. A big orange Hummer, which ought to be easy to find. I’ll enter the garage beneath his building, locate his vehicle, and leave him a little surprise.” “Oh. What kind of surprise?” He holds up a Baggie with something small and rectangular inside, looks like a black electrical switch. “Am I supposed to guess?” I ask. “Sorry. It’s a handy-dandy GPS tracking device.” “Something you got from the FBI?” “No, ma’am. This particular model is readily available online. Magnetic mounted, motion activated. So where Manning goes, we can follow.” “Is that legal?” “Absolutely not,” Shane says. “That’s why you’re keeping an eye out for the cops.” 10. What Needs To Be Done Far below, the wet street glistens like black glass. Traffic lights gleam in electric jellybeans colors, cinnamon-red and spearmint-green. Amazing how a little rain can make a city look all shiny and clean, especially at night. Air smells fresher, too, although a faint aroma of tropical funk remains. Eau de rotting vegetation, or maybe it’s something deeper, something more malignant, released from beneath the fragile ground by marauding bulldozers, probing shovels, long-forgotten sins. Morbid thoughts. I keep waiting for Shane to emerge, figuring he’ll have to cross the street to get to Manning’s condo building, but either the big guy has an invisible cloak or he’s got a different route in mind. Should I call, check that
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he’s okay? No, his instructions were very specific: buzz if the cops show. Most definitely he did not suggest that I call for a chat, or to make sure his cell is set on vibe rather than “Teen Spirit.” I’ve seen that movie where the hero gets caught when his phone trills at exactly the wrong moment. Can’t let that happen. Randall Shane must be protected at all costs because he’s all I’ve got. The police in Long Island, the obnoxious FBI agent, they’re all just going through the motions, issuing bulletins and be-on-the-lookouts. The assumption being that yet another wild teenager has run off with her boyfriend. Big whoop, happens every day. Girls eventually come home or they don’t, it’s up to them, no matter what mom has to say on the subject. And why exactly is this nonsense humming like a bad song in my brain, one of those stupid popzillas you can’t get out of your head? Because some tiny, miserable part of me worries that the worst may have happened. Okay, not quite the worst, not Kelly in a shallow grave, but Kelly involved in some sort of death-defying stunt, helping her flyboy hit up his dad for a few million bucks, just for the thrill of it. I’ll deny it to anyone who asks, Fern included, but the fact is that if circumstances are exactly wrong, if the temptation is too great, even so-called good kids like Kelly can suddenly go off the rails. Like all teenagers, she’s vulnerable to the impulsive, wouldn’t-it-be-cool riff that can lead, when things go bad, to prison or death. When Kel started getting seriously mouthy, acting like a different person, I did a little Google search to see if childhood cancer had any long-term effects on behavior, maybe like post-traumatic stress disorder. Having cancer is certainly traumatic and stressful, right? Anyhow, that was my theory. Then I clicked on an article that had nothing to do with chemo or surviving cancer. It was a scary description
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of what physically happens to the human brain during adolescence. According to the article, the brain starts shedding synaptic connections at about age twelve to fourteen. Synaptic connections are what enable us to think rationally, to process information, so why is the teen brain getting rid of vital connections? Because it’s preparing for the next big growth spurt, which results in the formation of the deep neurological connections that enable adults to make reasoned decisions. The article compared the teen brain to a plant pruning itself so it will eventually grow stronger. For a couple of crucial years, the adolescent mind tends to react emotionally—and often inappropriately—because the rational connectors are still in the process of forming. Which explains lots of things, from slammed doors and hysterical tears to kids who play Russian roulette with sex or, God forbid, actual guns. What makes me think my own darling daughter might be capable of making a really bad decision? A decision that changes her life, or maybe ends it? Because I’ve been there. I was that girl. There were no glamorous flyboys in my life, no billionaire dads, but even so I had managed to screw up so badly that two lives were put at risk. And all because I surrendered to a crazy impulse on a moonless night. My dark secret, you see, really is about darkness. Not metaphorical darkness, but real, actual darkness. A darkness so complete that the sultry summer night made me think I was invisible, invulnerable. Like whatever happened in that darkness did not count. And yet, of course, it did, no matter how hard I tried to deny it at the time. What happened that night all those years ago, in the secret darkness, still haunts me. Makes me think crazy, frantic thoughts. Makes me ashamed to imagine, for even a moment,
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that Kelly might behave as stupidly, as selfishly, as I had once behaved. She’s better than me. Smarter than me. No way is she participating in some scatterbrained extortion scheme. Kelly didn’t come home because she can’t come home. She needs help. She needs her mother. Too bad her mother is weak and pathetic. Too bad her mother keeps falling apart. “Mrs. Garner?” Shane stepping out on the balcony, observing me with concern. “It’s not ‘Mrs. Garner’!” I blubber. “I’m not married! I was never married! Garner is my maiden name, my father’s name.” “Sorry,” he says. “I forgot. Why are you crying? Has something happened?” Crying would be the polite description. Bawling my eyes out is more like it. Guess the tear ducts weren’t empty after all. “She’s not me!” I blubber. “She’s better than me! She might run away, she might risk her own life, but Kelly would never, ever hurt another person! Not on purpose.” Not sure how it happened, but I’m weeping into his big chest. Strong, gentle hands hold me tight but not too tight. I’m aware of the damp rain clinging to his close-cropped beard, and the newer dampness of my own tears. “It’s okay,” he says, speaking in a craggy whisper. “It’ll be okay, I promise.” I want, I want, I want—what do I want? Not sex, I’m wound way too tight for that, vibrating with the exclusive, overwhelming need to find Kelly. Plus the big guy isn’t really my type, not physically. Although that, I suppose, could change, given time and proximity. But no, the wanting is linked to something else, a deeper need, something that can’t
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be satisfied by sex. What I want is something I can’t even articulate. Father, brother, protector, friend, my own personal superhero, all these things and more, all of it balled up into a need so powerful that I cling to Randall Shane like he’s the last man in the universe. Bless the guy, he seems to understand that all the frantic clinging and weeping isn’t about getting him into bed. His hands never stray, never explore, and somehow I know absolutely that he’d never take advantage of my emotional state. Instead he lets me cry, allows me to sob my heart out until there’s nothing left but hanging on. After a while he gently disentangles himself, heads into the suite. He locates the well-stocked minibar and returns with a bottle of Perrier and a glass filled with ice cubes the size of fat diamonds. “Drink,” he suggests. “You need the fluid.” “I’m really, really sorry.” “Don’t be. Never apologize for being a good mother.” That sets me back for a moment. “How do you know I’m a good mother?” He shrugs. “I just do. Care to share?” “Share?” “What set you off. Something that happened when you were Kelly’s age.” “I said that?” “You implied,” he responds. My knees suddenly go wobbly—I’m a puppet with severed strings, looking for a place to collapse. Shane leads me to a plush leather sofa, remains standing. “We’ll get to this later,” he suggests. “Whenever you’re ready.” “What about them?” I ask, indicating the condo tower that looms over the hotel. Wanting rather desperately to change the subject.
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“Mission accomplished, more or less,” he says with a grin. “If the Hummer, moves, it will inform my laptop, and you in turn will inform me.” He sits me in front of his computer, shows me the software. The screen frames a map of downtown Miami, and on it the location of the tracking device pulses like an orange gumdrop. Looks very much like the navigation screen on Fern’s Escalade, the one that tells her when she takes a wrong turn. The one she yells at. “If the vehicle moves more than three feet, two things will happen,” Shane says. “The program will bong until you click on this button, okay? Then you’ll call me. If you can’t get hold of me, just sit tight. The program will track Manning, show us where he goes.” “I’m supposed to call you? But where will you be? He shrugs, avoiding my eyes. “I’ll be, um, otherwise occupied for the next few hours.” At first I assume he’s going to try and get some sleep, maybe take a pill, but that’s not it. He has another mission, a mission he’s not willing to discuss. “So you want me to share, but not you? That doesn’t seem fair.” “Fairness is not a factor,” he informs me, crossing his long arms over his chest. “Over the next few days there will be things I need to do—actions that must be taken—which are not strictly legal.” “Like planting a tracking device.” “Like that,” he admits. “Some of these actions, it’s best you have no knowledge.” “But I want to help.” “You are helping,” he assures me. “But when two or more individuals engage in a criminal activity, that can result in con-
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spiracy charges. Easier to prosecute and easier to prove than an individual action. We want to avoid legal jeopardy, if possible.” “Criminal activity?” I ask. “Did you say ‘criminal activity’?” “Break the law, you’re engaging in criminal activity. No point sugarcoating it.” “What kind of criminal activity?” I ask. “Best you have no knowledge. That’s the point.” “Bad things?” He smiles, shakes his head. “Not so bad. Not major felony. But if I happen to be in violation of a particular statute, it will be just me, do you understand?” “Except for the GPS thing,” I point out. “I’m part of that conspiracy.” “You are,” he concedes. “My apologies, but I can’t monitor the vehicle on my own. Not and do what needs to be done.” “Okay,” I say, feeling completely spent. “You do your thing, I’ll do mine. Still want me to buzz you if the cops show up, or if Manning leaves the building?” “Absolutely.” A moment later he’s gone and I’m all alone. Just me, the binoculars, and a pulsing gumdrop on a computer screen. 11. Cherchez La Femme Randall Shane finally has his Town Car. Not actually his own, of course, but hired from a car service. And because Shane will not put himself behind the wheel when he’s been awake for more than twenty-four hours, the car service has also supplied a driver. “You get much work this time of night?” Shane asks, settling into the shotgun seat. Fully retracted and lowered, the seat accommodates his long legs without his knees bumping
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the glove box. Taking the front so he can keep a keen eye on the driver’s skills, which at first glance appear to be sufficient. No squealing tires, no herky-jerky braking action. The driver, a middle-aged Haitian with velvety dark skin and delicate features, responds in formal, rhythmically accented English. “Oh, yessuh, plenty much work nighttime. The people, they go to the clubs and dance all night. They go to the beach and watch the sun come up. Maybe then I take them to the airport, they fly home to NewYork or Chicago or Los Angeles.” “Rich people.” “People with money, yessuh,” he says, gently correcting his passenger. “Rich people, you know, they have full-time chauffeur, S-Class Mercedes.” Shane hadn’t really considered the distinction between rich people and people with money. But of course there is an important distinction. Taking himself as an example, he isn’t wealthy but he’s able to hire a car. Therefore he belongs to the category of people with money, in the form of a valid Visa card with sufficient credit. That’s all it takes. Not so long ago, within living memory, an average middle-class person wouldn’t dream of hiring a car and driver. Such luxuries were considered the province of millionaires. Nowadays the average lawyer or dentist is a millionaire, at least on paper. A typical school superintendent in a reasonably prosperous district might in retirement be worth a million dollars, if she bought the right house at the right time and invested in taxdeferred funds. On certain blocks in Manhattan, doormen are millionaires. Not doubt about it, billionaire is the new millionaire. Partly it’s a social construct, a mind-set, partly a weird inflation not entirely based on money. And yet money and the getting of money are still at the heart of it, making people behave in not always predictable ways.
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Shane is thinking about money and wealth and what it all means because he doesn’t know exactly how Edwin Manning’s superwealthy status plays into the situation. Is it a straight abduction for ransom? Some sort of extortion scheme that may or may not involve Manning’s private hedge fund? A scam engineered from within the family, targeting dear old dad? What? Somehow he has to find an angle, the leverage to pry it all open and, hopefully, extract Kelly Garner alive. Not an easy or a certain task. Despite the assurances he’s given to Mrs. Garner, Shane is keenly aware of the cruel statistics of abduction cases. If it’s a straight-up money deal there’s a high probability that the daughter has already been killed. Particularly if she just happened to be along for the ride. Why bother with the risk and trouble of keeping an extra victim alive if the target is Manning’s son? For that matter, the only reason to keep the son alive is to establish proof of life prior to a payoff. Making the payoff ends the need for proof of life, often with fatal consequences for the victim. Shane likes the casino connection. If Seth Manning flew his father’s corporate plane to an airfield in the Glades—a theory yet to be proved—and Kelly Garner’s cell phone has been logged through a cell tower not far from tribal land— established as factual—then it stands to reason the tribe and/or casino is somehow involved, if only by proximity. “You gamble?” Shane asks the driver. The man shrugs. “Sometimes, you know, the lottery tickets.” “Games? Slot machines?” The driver laughs. “Put my money into a machine that will not give it back? No suh.” “Folks love to gamble.” “Many do,” the driver concedes. “Not me. Do you gamble, suh?”
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“All the time. But not games or slot machines.” “Champ de courses?” the driver wants to know. “Racetrack? Horses?” “People,” Shane tells him. “Ah,” says the driver, as if he’s been let in on a great joke. “Yessuh, very good.” The car service required an itinerary, obviously. Shane had mentioned Naples, a two-hour drive straight west, across the top of the Everglades. He paid up front for six hours, with the credit card on record for any further charges. The driver, he has been assured, will remain with the car for however long Mr. Shane desires. The way he figures, if it takes more than six hours it will mean he’s been shot or abducted, or both. From Brickell they head out Calle Ocho, through Little Havana. Calle Ocho eventually morphs into 8th Street, widens, and then becomes U.S. 41. Same desolate area he and Mrs. Garner explored earlier, searching for cell towers. The main difference being that at night the road seems to exist all on its own. As if the endless, grassy horizon melts away with the setting sun. A mile or so beyond the junction with Krome Avenue, the last major intersection, he instructs the driver to turn north into what looks like the middle of nowhere. “There’s a 7-Eleven I want to check out,” he explains. “Don’t worry, the road’s good.” The driver’s glance reveals suspicion. “Is no 7-Eleven that way,” he says. “Maybe it’s some other chain. Gas station slash convenience store, whatever. Two or three miles north, on the right. Do you mind?” “Naples not that way, no, suh.”
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“I need to use the bathroom.” The driver shrugs, reluctantly turning north as instructed. Exhibiting a tension that must soon be dealt with, before he calls his dispatcher with suspicions about the passenger, or panics and goes for whatever weapon he has stashed under the seat. Shane keeping an eye on the guy, trying to relax him with small talk, but the driver doesn’t want to play. He wants, understandably, to know what’s going on, why a big white guy who looks like either a cop or a criminal—often indistinguishable from an immigrant’s point of view—would hire a car to take him to a dubious all-night convenience store out in the bad-news boonies. When they arrive at the no-name store the driver deftly pulls into the brightest circle of lights and quickly slips out of the vehicle before the motor stops ticking. Standing by the door pretending to stretch, or maybe he’s practicing putting his hands in the air, expecting a holdup. Shane strolls around the front, reaching for his billfold. The driver sees him coming and freezes, eyes round with fear. “Hey,” says Shane, holding out the billfold. “No worries. You familiar with that expression? I think it’s Australian. No worries. Nice, huh?” “What you want?” the driver asks, terrified. “What do I want?” says Shane. He opens the wallet, extracts a hundred-dollar bill, tucks it into the driver’s shirt pocket. “I want you to relax. Get yourself a soda or a pastry or whatever.” The driver, for all his nervousness, is reluctant to leave the vehicle. “Take the keys with you,” Shane suggests. “I’m not stealing the car, okay? Nothing going on here except a slight detour. You’ve already done your part.”
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“Not thirsty,” the driver says, as if suspecting an ambush inside the brightly illuminated convenience store. Maybe some cracker confederates ready to feed him to the gators and steal his lovingly polished vehicle. “Suit yourself,” Shane says, trying to sound soothing. “Fact is, you got me where I need to go. Or in the neighborhood, anyhow.” “Why you come here, to this place? Nothing here, no, suh.” Shane flashes a conspiratorial grin, a man-to-man kind of smile. “There’s this lady, okay? Got a place not far from here, out behind the store. Cute little trailer park.” “A woman?” the driver says, starting to relax. “Special lady,” Shane says, nodding. “We need to keep it sort of quiet, okay? No strange cars in her driveway. No limousines arriving in the middle of the night.” “A woman.” “Yup, a real fine woman. I might be a while. How about if you come back in, say, three hours? Another hundred to drive me back to Miami, plus the regular fee on my card at the hourly rate, keeps the owner happy. Can you do that?” The driver buys it. Cherchez la femme, that he understands, accepts. It’s agreed that the horny, woman-chasing passenger will call when he’s ready to be picked up. “Glad we got that settled.” “Yessuh. You call me, I meet you right heah, this place.” “Deal.” Shane shakes the driver’s limp hand, then returns to the Town Car, retrieves his drawstring backpack. The backpack having been left for him at the hotel desk by a former associate—not Sean Healy—in the Miami Division. The backpack’s contents, difficult if not impossible to clear through airport security, and therefore obtained locally, include a KA-
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BAR fighting knife, military-grade night-vision goggles, and a handheld Garmin GPS unit. Plus a small, powerful flashlight and a hand-dandy roll of duct tape. Because you never know when duct tape will come in handy. He leaves the driver with the impression that the backpack perhaps contains an assortment of sex toys for the lady’s pleasure. “Better check my batteries,” Shane says with a leer, hefting the pack. It’s all the driver can do not to roll his eyes. 12. Welcome To The Bat Cave A few hundred yards behind the all-night convenience store there is, indeed, a small, decrepit trailer park. Maybe thirty units, most of them set on wobbly concrete blocks in the previous century, and now slowly sinking into the dirt and weeds. Half again as many vehicles, high-riding pickups and fat-bottomed sedans, some functional, many under repair or abandoned. The abandoned vehicles have a feral look, as if they might slink away like furtive animals. More likely, they will erode and dissolve into the sandy soil, leaving nothing behind but iron oxide and tinsel-size flakes of chrome. A few dim lights are exuded from the trailers themselves, but there is no activity that signals wakeful occupants. No matter, Shane has no business here. He moves purposefully up the little pathway that winds among the trailers. Actually walking beside it, so as not to make the gravel crunch underfoot. If the Haitian driver happens to be checking out his passenger—unlikely—he will see Shane blend into the shadows, bound for Airstream glory. On the far end of the clearing, a row of tall, wispy casuarinas that either survived the last hurricane or have sprung
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up since. Sometimes called she-oak or ironwood, the pinelike casuarinas are more than sufficient cover for a man who wants to vanish into the wilderness, and who knows how to use the patchy shadows as camouflage. Within a few strides the wispy trees give way to a vast scrub of slash pine and saw palmetto, sturdy and sharp, and it will stay this way, Shane knows, for miles and miles. The ground elevation is a crucial foot or so higher than the great river of grass the white folk call the Everglades, and is therefore perfect for sandy pinelands. Which does not mean there will not be a few wet, lowlying spots among the saw palmetto, and pocket gopher holes just right for snapping ankles. Most of the bigger and more lethal life forms—snakes, gators, panthers—gravitate to the water’s edge. Larger animals aren’t keen on the serrated, bladelike leaves of the wellnamed saw palmetto. Deer and wild boar sometimes stray into the scrub, but tend to be reclusive, fleeing from the sounds of interlopers. Pythons, the exotic Glades invaders that started out as house pets, prefer thicker vegetation, bigger trees, and tend to feed on various rodents and small pigs. Much more dangerous are the lesser snakes, the diamondback and the coral, which explains Shane’s sturdy, high-cut hiking boots. A panther would have to be crazy with hunger to take on prey Shane’s size, so the big cats don’t worry him half as much as the hidden holes and fissures underfoot. Now that he’s clear of the trailer park and prying eyes, Randall Shane makes no effort to be stealthy. Better to let the wildlife know he’s stomping through their world, give ’em a chance to hide or flee. By his calculation, as indicated on Google Earth’s remarkably detailed satellite images, he has slightly more than a mile to the first waypoint. All he has to do is head straight west for two thousand
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paces. Nothing to it. Except it turns out he can’t proceed in a straight line, not without cutting his limbs on spiny fronds of saw palmetto. So for every yard west he has to dodge one north or south, or back himself up and find a new path when the scrub gets too thick. One mile becomes two, and that makes him hurry. At this point he has not bothered to don the night-vision goggles, mostly because he knows from experience that moving quickly in NV gear can be more dangerous than traveling blind. It’s like running while looking through binoculars. Plus there’s a quarter moon a few degrees above the horizon and the air itself, moist and tangy, seems slightly luminous. Hurrying is never a good idea at night, in a dangerous locale, and a low-lurking palmetto frond finally snags him only yards from the waypoint. Amazingly nasty plant. It sliced right through his jeans just below the knee, and blood seeps from his shin. A mere flesh wound but it itches something fierce. Cursing himself for not being more careful, Shane removes the roll of duct tape from the backpack and quickly wraps it around his leg, molding denim over the gash. Stop the bleeding for now, deal with cleaning up the small but nasty wound later. Temporary repair complete, he studies the terrain, carefully weaves his way though the last few yards of palmetto, and at long last finds himself standing on a narrow dirt road. Not dirt, actually, but the limestone marl that forms the brittle base of most of southern Florida. He’s pleased to see that the white gravel road—little more than a path wide enough for one vehicle—heads northwest, just as indicated on the satellite imagery. The hand-held GPS calculates the he’s 3.12 miles from his destination. The same unit also informs him that it’s been
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fifty-five minutes since he left the comfortable leather seat of the Town Car. In a little less than four hours the sun will rise. Time to put the pedal to the metal. He adjusts the pack, finding the sweet spot between his shoulder blades, increases his respiration until his lungs are fully filled with the warm, humid air, and then begins to run. Randall Shane is a large man, too big and heavily muscled to make a good long-distance runner—a marathon is out of the question, it would pound his joints to dust. But with his long stride eating up the yards he figures he should be able to cover a mere three miles in a little less than twenty minutes, no problem. Half an hour later, lungs aching, heart slamming, drenched in sweat, he finally staggers to the edge of the hidden landing strip, collapses to his aching knees and vomits copiously into the gravel. From the refuge of the tall grass he surveys the terrain through the NV goggles. It’s no accident that the landing strip doesn’t look like much. Just a slash through the pinelands, a mile in length but less than a hundred feet wide. From altitude it looks like a short stretch of unfinished highway, maybe, or the remains of some abandoned canal or drainage project. Years ago there were dozens of similarly camouflaged landing roads cut into the wilderness west of Miami. Even from the air they were hard to locate, mere slices in the firmament, but if the gravel was packed and graded properly a sizable aircraft could land and take off, provided the exact coordinates were known to the pilot. Some cases it wasn’t even necessary to take off again—the value of the illicit cargo was such that the aircraft could be abandoned, or dragged into the swamp to make room for the next flight.
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This is no abandoned airstrip. There are a few weeds poking up through the compacted surface, but the whole thing has a groomed look that doesn’t originate in nature. Someone is actively maintaining the place. Let it go for even a few months and the scrub would take over. Shane hasn’t seen them yet, but he’s betting there are hidden beacons—flicked on for only moments at a time—that allow night-landing pilots to make fine adjustments at the very last minute. The secret landing strip is interesting—the only possible use is for illicit cargo—but what originally got his attention on the Google Earth image lies a quarter mile away, and as rushed as he is for time he wants to thoroughly surveil it before approaching. In the satellite imagery the anomaly appeared to be no more than a faint, roughly rectangular shadow, notable only because of its proximity to the milelong slash that he’d recognized as a possible landing strip. In the lenses of the NV goggles its true form is revealed. Hangar. An aircraft hangar cleverly constructed and landscaped to look like a natural slope of ground, and therefore almost completely invisible from directly overhead. Palmetto and slash pine grow from the top of the mound, contributing to the effect, but on the side facing the runway there’s a vertical cut wide enough to accommodate almost any aircraft capable of landing on the narrow strip. As if the builder had been inspired by some of the old camouflage techniques from World War II where, say, what appeared to be a caravan trail in North Africa might actually hide a squadron of fighter planes under the dunes, ready to roll out at a moment’s notice. This is scrub pineland, not desert, but the effect is the same: hide in plain sight by blending into the landscape. The hangar
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entrance has been obscured with palm fronds, but Shane can make out the vertical panels of a wide door. A shut-up hangar without cross ventilation, it must be hot as an oven in there. What’s inside that needs hiding? He’s approaching the hangar, intent on a closer look, when the high drone of a gasoline motor makes itself known. Coming at speed. Automotive engine, not aircraft. Shane runs full tilt for cover as headlights flicker though the palmettos. He scrambles atop the mound of earth covering the hangar, figuring if he’s on higher ground the headlights won’t pick him up. A heartbeat later a pickup truck skids onto the runway from the access road, kicking gravel, and heads straight for the hidden hangar. What happens in the next few moments will depend on whether the sudden appearance of visitors is a coincidence or the result of remote surveillance. Maybe he has unknowingly activated a motion detector or been picked up by an infrared video-cam. Or maybe it’s just time to make the donuts, or check on the drug stash or whatever. Belly to the ground, Shane edges his way back from the curve of earth that obscures the hangar beneath it. When the truck stops moving, so does he, knowing that a human figure is easier to pick out of a dim landscape when the eyes are quiet, not jouncing around on the stiff suspension of what looks to be a shiny new Dodge Ram. Moment of truth, Shane thinks as the truck doors snap open, shedding pools of yellow light. Wishing he had a firearm, or lacking that, a Kevlar vest. The cab spills out three men, two of them young and solidly built, of more or less identical height. The third man, stretching and yawning, is somewhat older and taller, a scrawny, narrow-shouldered guy with a funny, protuberant
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belly. Like he’d swallowed half a soccer ball. He’s wearing a straw cowboy hat, well broken in, and has a lilting drawl that sounds to Shane like coastal Alabama, or maybe the Panhandle region of Florida. “In there?” Straw Hat wants to know, loud enough to be heard over the big V-8, which has been left running. “Pretty cool, huh?” says one of the two younger men, tugging on his cap. “Sort of like the bat cave.” “Bat cave? Y’all got them fanged little devils out heah in the swamp?” “Naw. Like Batman from the movies.” “Oh yeah? Oh, ah gets it, Roy. Good ’un.” Shane quickly picks up on the fact that of the two younger men, the one called Roy does most of the talking. It’s also clear that an intruder has not been detected—the men have business having to do with the hangar. Roy takes out a ring of keys—his face obscured by a ballcap visor—and approaches the hangar, thereby passing out of sight. Meanwhile the other one—they could easily be brothers—lowers the truck’s tailgate, recovers a coil of thick rope or cable. Beneath him, Shane hears a big hangar door sliding open. “Son of a bitch!” the man in the straw cowboy hat exclaims. “Oo-ee, y’all ain’t lyin’! Ah be damned if this ain’t the real deal!” Very excited about whatever it is inside the hangar. “Pretty little thang, ain’t she?” “Ah swear, Roy, she’s givin’ me a bone! Hot damn!” The leering tone of conversation almost convinces Shane that the two men are discussing Jane Garner’s missing daughter. Until they rig the rope from the front bumper of the Dodge and pull the sexy aircraft from the hangar.
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The long white wings of a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air pass directly beneath Shane, looking down from the top of the hangar. Might as well be angel wings. He can’t quite make out the tail numbers, not from this angle, not yet, but he knows in his heart that this is Edwin Manning’s missing aircraft, the very same plane his hotshot son flew out of Long Island, accompanied by Kelly Garner. Lying on the roof of the hidden hangar, Shane grins into the dirt and mouths a silent Yes! 13. Chasing The Hum Job Sleeping in chairs is bad for the back. Plus it can give you nightmares. Apparently I fell asleep sitting up, waiting for the laptop to bong, the binoculars cradled in my lap. Dreaming that Kelly is somewhere in Manning’s penthouse but I can’t find her because the binoculars won’t focus. Also I’m late for a fitting and can’t locate the wedding party. Anxious dreams, but not quite nightmares. In nightmares Kelly would be dead. My bleary eyes are open for a moment before I register what woke me. Daylight filtering through the sliders? My own internal alarm clock? The doorbell? Bong. The warning signal on the GPS! The laptop is telling me that Manning is on the move! With a sharp little scream I jump to my feet. Eyes skidding wildly around a superluxury, two-bedroom hotel suite, empty except for me. “Shane!” Pointless. My half-asleep brain boots up just enough to remind me that the big guy left last night on a mission. A
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mission he refused to discuss. Some creepy-crawly investigation thing it’s best I don’t know about. Or so he said. For all I know he’s trolling South Beach for leggy lingerie models. Hitting the late-night club scene because, you know, he can’t sleep. Why not? I know nothing about the man, not really, except that he’s left me holding the bag. What should I do? Grab the laptop, run down to our rented car and try to follow the GPS signal? Stand on the balcony and scream? What? “Mrs. Garner?” Shane stands in the bedroom doorway, bare chested, wearing white boxers and a big bandage on his leg. Dark blood seeps from the bandage. His eyes are puffy. Like me, he’s just awakened. Liar. “You were asleep!” I say accusingly. “You said you never sleep!” “Yeah. Amazing,” he responds thickly, shaking his head. “REM sleep, dreams, the whole nine yards. I got back late and didn’t want to wake you and I guess I conked out.” The laptop keeps bonging. Shane finally notices. “They’re in motion!” he exclaims. “The Hummer is moving!” “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” “Go,” he says, returning to the bedroom for his clothes. “Get the car out of the garage, meet me on the street. Grab your purse and go!” There’s nothing more disorienting than waking up to an emergency in a strange place. Not that Miami is particularly strange—okay, actually it is—but it isn’t home, and therefore I can’t rely on a familiar comfort level. It’s as if
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there’s no bottom or limit for my anxiety. And yet I can’t, no way, I simply can’t let myself turn into a hyperventilating mess. Cling to that, girl. Make it your religion for just this day, the Church of No Panic Allowed. Focus on not being afraid, because your fear could ruin any chance you have of finding your daughter alive. Don’t think about it, just react. Grab your purse, run to the elevators. Avoid the temptation to bang on the doors or punch the button into oblivion, it won’t make the elevator arrive any faster. Let’s see, twelve stories to the garage level, does it make sense to take the stairs? Give it a few more seconds. Patience. The signal dings, the doors open. Empty car. Perfect. Get in, punch G, thumb the Door Close button. There, you’re dropping, going down, gravity never felt so good. And while you’re dropping try to picture where, exactly, you parked the rental car, the precious Crown Victoria. See it in your mind. Recall pulling into the dim garage, slightly blinded, following the signs and arrows. Finding a parking slot three rows from the elevators, feeling proud of yourself as you grabbed your bag from the trunk, headed for the lobby. Small miracle, the elevator proceeds uninterrupted to the garage level. The door slides open. And right there where you pictured it, the dark green Crown Vic, big as life. Keys! Are the keys in your purse? How could you be so stupid! How could you not make sure about the keys? Tears of frustration start to blur my vision, but that stops when my questing fingers grasp the plastic fob to the car keys—a warm pulse of relief—and then I’m in the big sedan, being waved through the gate and onto the street a full thirty seconds before Shane hits the lobby level and spots me waiting at the curb. Bolting through the exit with the laptop
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cradled under his arm like a football. Who are the big guys, the runners? Fullbacks? He looks like a fullback ready to run over anyone who dares to get in his way. Except for the small problem of his Top-Siders being unlaced, flapping dangerously. And the slightly askew baseball cap. “Beautiful,” is the first word out of his mouth as he slips into the passenger seat, slightly breathless, grinning at me. “Well done! Go, go! Turn right onto Brickell, then left at the first light. They’re heading west.” All the panic and hurry turns out to be unnecessary. The flame-orange Hummer is moving at a crawl though morning rush-hour traffic, no more than a quarter mile ahead. Shane can follow it on the GPS map and I can see it with my own eyeballs, big as life and not exactly easy to maneuver in bumper-to-bumper conditions. “Okay, good,” he says, breathing a sigh of relief. “For all we know, this could be a false alarm. Maybe they’re off to breakfast at IHOP, running an errand, whatever.” Stomach rumbling, my head begging for coffee, I ignore the reference to breakfast and point out that the Hummer has darkly tinted windows. So how do we know Edwin Manning is in the vehicle? Could be anybody, right? “Could be,” Shane acknowledges. “Want to turn around?” “I’m just saying.” “Sorry. You’re right—all we know is that the Hummer is on the move. We don’t know who, or why, or where it might be headed. Standard tail, we’d have someone maneuver ahead of the target vehicle, confirm passenger identity. But we don’t have that luxury.” “Because we’re on our own,” I say bitterly. Shane gives me a glance, and his voice softens. “Maybe not for long.”
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“What do you mean, maybe not for long?” As we slog in the stop and go, the bright orange roof of the Hummer slowly beckoning us onward, Shane recounts what he was up to last night. His better-not-to-know mission. Not pursuing leggy South Beach models or hanging out at clubs, obviously. More like entering forbidden territory, and very nearly getting himself killed in the process. Avoiding sleeping snakes and gopher holes and something called palmetto, which he describes as a palm tree with a built-in machete. All of which he blames on something called Google Earth. “That’s how I located the strip,” he explains. “By checking out satellite images of the area within fifteen miles of that cell tower. The images aren’t as clear as those available to military analysts, of course, but they’re good enough to identify larger structures.” “You were trespassing? In the Everglades, in the middle of the night?” “Figured it was more dangerous in daylight,” he says with a wry grin. “Night you can find a shadow, blend in. Daylight you’re exposed. And it’s not exactly the Everglades, that particular area. Technically it’s pine scrub. More or less dry underfoot.” “But you found the airplane? The King Whatever?” “Beechcraft King Air 350. Yeah, it was there. I was able to confirm the tail numbers. Aircraft is registered to Edwin Manning, DBA Merrill Manning Capital Funds.” “Amazing!” I exclaim, suddenly elated. “Maybe that’s where they’re keeping Kelly, right at the airport!” “It’s not an airport, Mrs. Garner,” Shane responds, cautioning me. “It’s a very narrow strip of cleared land, suitable for surreptitious landings.”
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“But you said there was a building!” I protest, pushing the idea that Kelly might be there. “A camouflaged hangar. I checked it out after they left. No sign of Kelly or Seth. No indication anyone had been held there against their will. Just an expensive aircraft in an otherwise empty hangar. Wherever they’re keeping Kelly, it’s not there.” That shuts me up for a while. The giddy spike of hope quickly dissolves into low-level anxiety. Don’t think about Kelly, or what might be happening to her at this very moment, just concentrate on keeping the Hummer in sight. They’ve gotten one light ahead, but are at the moment frozen in gridlock. We could get out and walk. “Okay, we haven’t found her yet, but it does mean a lot, identifying the plane,” Shane explains, sensing my plummeting mood. “She’s almost certainly being held somewhere in Southern Florida, probably in a location just as remote as the hidden landing strip. Quite possibly within the Nakosha territory.” We’re not moving. Slowed to a crawl, now we’re not even crawling. Stuck in gridlock just like the Hummer, what Kelly gleefully calls a Hum Job. Downtown Miami makes the LIE look like a trek in the remote wilderness. I turn in the seat, wanting to look Shane in the eye. “You think Indians did this? Kidnapped Kelly?” The big guy shrugs, rubbing at his injured leg. “Don’t know. The men who came to inspect the aircraft were white. Redneck white. But the airstrip is right in the middle of tribal territory, so there has to be some sort of relationship. Could be someone in the tribe leases it out to smugglers. Lot of that went on in the old days. Tribe looks the other way, eventually makes some money out of the deal, in a way that can’t easily be traced or connected to the smuggling operation.”
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“Is that what this is about. Smuggling? You think Kelly’s flyboy was running drugs?” “I don’t know,” he admits. “At a glance, yes, it looks that way. Drug deal gone bad. Except that Edwin Manning is involved, and somehow I don’t think a billionaire running a billionaire’s hedge fund is consorting with drugs dealers trying to turn a quick profit.” I shake my head. “Look, I’m mad enough at this boy to strangle him. Seth I mean. For putting my daughter in danger. But you saw the pictures. He gets his kicks from airplanes and motorcycles and parachutes.” “Agreed,” says Shane. “Smuggling drugs is low probability. Unless it was for the thrill of it. Like skydiving.” “Now you’re really scaring me.” Shane strokes, strokes thoughtfully at his carefully trimmed beard. “Whatever happened, we can know that Manning has been contacted. Demands have been made. He admitted that much.” “Yeah, but what kind of demands?” I want to know. “That’s the billion-dollar question.” I’m grumbling at the stalled traffic when a light goes on over my dim, undercaffeinated brain. “Give me your hat,” I say, snatching the ball cap off his head. “Take the wheel.” I put the car in Park, engine idling. In a moment I’m out the door, dodging bumpers. Horns honk at me, but so what? Let ’em honk. Let ’em shoot me the digit, who cares? In a few strides I’m clear of traffic and on the crowded sidewalk, giving a thumbs-up to a very startled Randall Shane as he tries to get his long legs behind the wheel, take control of the vehicle.
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Pulling down the brim on the oversize hat, I head for the Hum Job. 14. Planet Ricky Four miles to the south, more or less, in the gated enclave of Cable Grove, Myla methodically gnaws the glitter off her fingernails and wonders what should she do about Ricky. Munching nails in the cabana because that’s where she’s been hiding for the past five hours. Okay, not hiding, exactly, that’s the wrong word because Ricky hasn’t exactly been trying to find her. More like she moved her butt to the pool cabana because the house is simply too scary to share when Ricky Lang starts conversing with invisible people. Talking with ghosts or whatever. It began at three or so in the morning, with Myla sound asleep, snuggled under the covers because the AC is on frosty, just the way she likes it. Hot as a bug outside, where she left Ricky on a lounger by the pool, lying with his enormous forearms crossed under his head, staring up at the stars. Talking about how the stars hold stories of the ancient days, the days when the animal gods roamed the world and spoke to men in their true voices. Which was sort of romantic, until the clouds came rolling in and the rain started and Ricky would not stir from the lounger. Telling her the rain was good for her soul, if she had one. If she had one. What did he mean by that? Everybody has a soul, right? You get it when you’re born. It comes with. So, feeling a little petulant, a little put out, she’d left him there in the spattering rain and gone to bed. To be awakened hours later by a weird, high-pitched yowl that sounded like a raccoon caught in trap. She was instantly awake, ice water
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in her veins, skin crawling. Because she knew it was Ricky making the noise. She found him in Tyler’s bedroom, curled up on the little race-car bed. Hanging off the sides, actually, because he’s way too big. Eyes closed, his high cheekbones glistening with tears. And when he opens his eyes, responding to the light she switches on, he roars, shut that fucking off you bitch! and leaps to his feet, as agile and jumpy as some cougar on bad crank. Brushing her aside with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. Slamming her into the wall—although he didn’t mean to—it was as if she didn’t exist. As if he didn’t know who she was. Right after the incident in Tyler’s room he starts talking, and not to her. Yakking and gesturing with someone who isn’t there. Pausing for the voices only he can hear, and then arguing with himself. Myla has no idea what he’s talking about because he’s speaking what he calls pidgin. Nakosha words and phrases mixed with English and then stirred with a Spanish swizzle stick, is how he once explained it to her, bragging about the private language of his clan, understood by less than a hundred people on planet Earth. A planet no longer occupied by Ricky Lang, apparently. Having no experience or understanding of active psychotic episodes, Myla assumes he’s on drugs. Eating mushrooms or buttons or whatever Indians do. All she knows is that he’s scarier than usual, and that’s when she decides to hang in the cabana for a while, until he calms down. Hours go by. He never shuts up. Raging and laughing, crying and pleading, mostly in his own private language. Meanwhile Myla makes a nest for herself in the chlorine-smelling cabana, tries to nap on some deck-chair cushions but she can’t get comfortable. She thinks about calling someone—she has her cell—
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but who would she call? His family? Not an option. The cops? Ricky would kill her, really and truly kill her to death. Truth is, Myla has no ideas, no options, other than to wait for whatever happens next. Last thing she expects is a gentle knock on the cabana’s flimsy door. “Myla? Time for breakfast, honey.” The door opens and there’s Ricky, showered and wearing a change of clothes. The tight black Calvin Klein muscle shirt she likes, the one that shows off his amazing pecs. Loose khaki cargo pants cinched with a leather belt at his narrow waist, bare feet with his brown toes splayed. What a guy. His eyes are deep, dark and haunted, but he looks so powerful, her own personal Incredible Hulk. Like he’s ready, willing, and able to leap into the air and fly to the ends of the earth, if that’s what it takes to make things right. At the moment, making things right means breakfast. “Scrambled eggs and toast,” he says, smiling and showing his strong white teeth. Myla isn’t sure if he wants her to prepare the food or if he’s already made it just for her. Not that it matters. Either way is okay because it means they’ll be together. She takes his arm, tracing her fingertips over his taut bicep. “Did you sleep okay, baby?” she wants to know. Stuck in rush-hour gridlock, Shane blames it on sleep. If he wasn’t still groggy from his unplanned nap, no way would his client have managed to slip out of the vehicle before he stopped her. Instead he sits here like a goof, watching in astonishment as Jane Garner flips the bird to at least three honking drivers, then strides up the sidewalk with a purpose. He powers down the window so he can see better. She’s moving fast, dodging pedestrians. Medium height but she’s
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got long legs when she wants to. Great legs, come to think, and a nice look in those trim linen slacks. A little rumpled for having nodded off in a chair, but on her, rumpled looks… sexy. He puts on the brakes, the mental brakes that stop this kind of salacious thinking. Reminds himself that Mrs. Garner is a client, experiencing tremendous stress and anxiety over a missing child. No matter how attractive, she’s vulnerable and therefore off-limits. Don’t go there, don’t even think about it. Having taken an icy shower, mentally, he concentrates on keeping her in view. Not easy because at this time of day, in this part of the city, the sidewalks are loaded. Folks on their way to work, or out to the shops, or intent on grabbing a flaky, guava-filled pastelito. A strolling mix of business suits and guayaberras, because it’s one those high-traffic areas where everything comes together, the various ethnicities and business interests, from international banking to hand-rolled cigars, from hole-in-the-wall con leche stands to bright new Starbucks. Old men play dominoes at social clubs while their children congregate in Wi-Fi cafés. Past, present and future, all sharing the same space, feeding off the same energy. In other circumstances it might be fun to explore the neighborhood. Grab a stool somewhere and watch the world go by. But given the circumstances, the doomsday clock counting down on the missing girl, all he wants is Mrs. Garner back in the vehicle where he can keep her safe. “Espresso, señor?” Smiling mischievously as she hands him a little paper cup through the open window. And then, her timing immaculate, slipping into the passenger side just as the traffic starts moving. Knocking back her own shot of black, heavily
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sugared Cuban coffee, she holds up the empty cup and says, “These are like those hospital cups, where they put your medication. Or those shots of vodka Jell-O at the bars? Do they still do that at the bars, serve shots of vodka Jell-O from trays? I haven’t been for ages. And by the way, confirmation on Manning being in the Hummer. He’s on the phone, very intent. Maybe he’s talking to the kidnapper? Is that possible?” Words coming out of her in a rush, all the pent-up anxiety and excitement. Her green eyes gleaming with hope. Shane can’t bring himself to rain on her parade, forces himself to say that yes, there’s every possibility Edwin Manning is about to make a payoff. Jane Garner listens politely and then sighs. “You’re just being nice,” she decides. “You don’t really believe this will work out.” “Short-term, we’ll see. Maybe this is something, maybe it isn’t. But long-term, I’m a believer. Keep working the angles, we’ll find a way in. We’ll get your daughter back.” “Coffee okay?” “Coffee is great. Amazing how much caffeine they pack into that little cup.” Staring straight ahead as they pick up speed, she asks, very carefully, “Ever had one of these go bad?” Shane doesn’t know what to say, but the lady obviously expects a truthful answer. “It happens,” he admits. “Depends on the circumstances.” “Like what sort of circumstances?” she wants to know. “Worst-case scenario is a psychotic pedophile who preys on young children.” “A monster.” “Yes.”
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“Use the kid and throw it away.” “Yes.” Mrs. Garner, Jane, keeps her silence for the length of a city block. “So what’s the best-case scenario? Is there one?” Shane touches the brakes. Both hands on the wheel, ten and two, as cautious at twenty miles per hour as he is at one hundred. “Best case is the kid ran away and I find him or her. Which has happened. Next best case is what we’ve got—an apparent abduction for extortion, payoff, or some other business purpose. Which is actually quite rare in this country, thank God. The money scenario has a rational component, rather than a psychosexual component.” “So in a way this is good?” “In a way. Better if it never happened at all.” “Turn signal,” she announces. Shane sees it, too. The blinkers indicate the target vehicle is changing lanes, headed for an exit. “Expressway,” he says, following, eyes picking up the signs. “Wherever they’re headed, it’s not the International House of Pancakes.” 15. Scream Like A Girl Forty-five minutes later we’re circling the enormous parking lot at Nakosha Nation Casinos & Resort. Or rather the access road that feeds all four satellite parking lots. Acres of blacktop under the brutal sun, more or less surrounding the new casino complex, which includes a shimmering, palmgreen hotel tower that would not be out of place in Las Vegas. Situated not far from the Everglades, on tribal land. I know this because the last three miles has been punctuated by various signs reminding us that we’ve entered a sovereign
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nation, and therefore must abide by the laws and regulations of the Nakosha Tribal Council. What those laws are, and how they might be different from the laws of the United States, is not spelled out. Not enough room on the signs, apparently. “I think mostly it means gambling is legal here,” Shane opines when prompted. “Plus no tax on tobacco products.” We’re circling the parking lots—hiding, really— because we don’t want Edwin Manning and his goons to spot us as they slot the Hummer and saunter into the casino, and because, frankly, Randall Shane isn’t sure what to do next. “If they’re making a payoff, I don’t want to spook the deal,” he says, sounding sick with worry. “Manning knows what I look like. So does his chief of security.” “You think? Six-foot-five white dude made them pee their pants with fear, you think they’d remember?” “Sometimes being tall has disadvantages,” he admits. “Get me near the entrance.” “They know what you look like, too,” he protests. “Not with your hat and my dark glasses. I already proved that, okay?” “You can’t be sure of that.” “I very much doubt they’d be able to pick me out of a crowd. Not to be a noodge, but their attention was focused on you. I can blend, you can’t.” “It could be dangerous,” he reminds me. “Dangerous is whatever happened to Kelly. They get scary, I’ll scream like a girl.” The first thing I notice, aside from the way brash daylight transitions into soft, lingering twilight inside the casino
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complex, is the gentle ringing of bells. A kind of musical background noise that reminds me of money. Not cash registers ringing, but the silvery chime of heavy coins colliding. A peaceful, hopeful, never-ending song that says you’re a winner, be happy. It is, of course, the gaming machines. They all chime. Hundreds of one-armed bandits with lights flashing like diamonds, and soft leather seats for your tired tush. Sit down, my friend, the whole look and feel of the place says. Take a load off and fill your pockets with gold. Very few coins are actually falling, mostly it’s plastic cards you put in the slot, with your loses deducted by magnetic strip, like a debit card. All of which has been described and explained to me by Fern, who claims never to have lost at a casino, but seeing it with my own eyes is something of a revelation. I’m on a mission here, looking for Edwin Manning and his cronies, and yet the whole machinery of the place calls to me. Demonstrating how powerful the urge to play, to take a chance, to be one of the lucky ones who shriek and point, leaping around like the blissfully demented contestants on Deal or No Deal. Part of my disguise, in addition to the oversize hat and the big wraparound sunglasses, is my cell phone. Clamp that to the side of your face and you become a slightly different person, more inward, less engaged, and at this point in our cellular society, less noticeable. “I’m in,” I say into the phone, keeping my voice low, not that anyone is likely to overhear me in the cacophony of machines. “No sign of Manning yet. But this place is huge, they could be anywhere. You enter through what looks like a giant tiki hut. Very dramatic lighting. There are three
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separate casinos and a bingo hall, all with cute names like Wampum and Sachem’s Cave and Wonderluck.” “I doubt he’s there to gamble.” Shane, stuck out in the parking lot, sounds frustrated. “Wampum is about a million slot machines, rows and rows of them. Lots of older folks, some of them in wheelchairs. They must bring them in by the busload. Can’t see Manning anywhere. Okay, wait, I’m headed toward Wonderluck. Slot machines here, too, but mostly it looks like table games. The one they have on TV, Texas Hold Up.” “Hold ’Em,” says Shane, sounding exasperated. “Keep moving.” “Texas whatever, I am moving. You should see this place. There’s a whole section for some sort of Chinese table game they play with green tiles, like mahjong, but it isn’t mahjong. The dealers are Asian, too. I thought this was a Native American thing?” “Asians love to gamble. Every casino has a room like that. Keep looking, what do you see?” I have trouble tearing my eyes away from the enthralled, tile-smacking Asians, who look as crazed as traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, shouting and gesturing and slamming tiles on the blue felt, eyes gleaming like, well, the madly blinking lights of the slot machines. This corner of the casino feels more like Hong Kong or Macau—not that I’ve ever been further west than Pittsburgh. Looking around, I see antlike trails of feeble old folks trudging eagerly into the vast bingo hall, some of them tottering on walkers. Old folks you might just as easily find in Long Island as in an Indian casino on the edge of the Everglades. Asians, blacks, whites, Latinos, most ethnic groups seem well rep-
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resented, some gaming in groups, others traveling solo to their favorite machines. Everybody but the folks who own the place—I’ve yet to see anyone recognizably Native American, either among the uniformed staff, who wear cute little money-green vests, or among the players. Pretty smart, I’m thinking. Take the money and keep it. “Oh!” I exclaim, struggling to keep my voice low. “The bald guy with the eyes like eggs!” “Salvatore Popkin. You see him?” “In the area between gaming rooms there’s like a highpriced food court, except with sit-down restaurants? Oh look, they’ve got a Wolfgang Puck pizza joint! What am I saying, they have those in airports,” I add, rambling on, just an excitable girl and her cell. “Popkin’s in a restaurant? Where are the others?” “No, no. Sorry. He seems to be guarding an unmarked door in a hall between the restaurants. Or maybe it is marked, I can’t tell from here. Looks like the whole wall area behind him is smoked plate glass. Lots of dark, smoky accents in here.” “Has he spotted you?” “There are hundreds of people wandering around.” “That doesn’t answer my question.” “No, he hasn’t spotted me. Relax, I’m fine.” “Don’t get any closer,” Shane warns, husky in the receiver. “Just keep an eye on him. Just a glance, don’t look directly at him. Even from across a crowded room, a direct look will get your attention.” “Yes, Mom.” Exasperated, the voice in my ear goes, “Don’t move, damn it!” I have absolutely no intention of obeying—where the egg man goes, I’ll follow—but for now Mr. Salvatore Popkin is
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glued to the door. Dressed in the same sort of shapeless nylon, soft-shell sports gear he was wearing when we confronted him at the airport. Sport stripes running down the baggy legs. The Nike version of Tony Soprano. What I hadn’t mentioned to Shane, the egg man is actively eyeballing the crowd, giving off a Jersey bouncer vibe, like better steer clear, little people, the VIPs are doing important VIP things. Like bullets would bounce off his cast-iron skull. Didn’t look quite so imposing when Shane bounced him off the concrete. No obvious sign of the injury to his collarbone, but he does appear a bit stiff on one side. Trendy little headset and earpiece may explain why he appears to be talking to himself. I’m thinking about sidling closer, determining if the smoked-glass doorway he’s guarding is in fact unmarked, when something tugs at the hem of my blouse. Whirling around with hand raised, ready to take a slap at whatever lowlife is trying to cop a feel, I find Shane sitting in a casino wheelchair, wearing a floppy sunhat. “Are you sure about this?” I ask, trying to shield him from view, not any easy task, considering the difference in size. “Best I could think of on short notice,” he says, leaning to get a line of sight on the egg man. “You said it yourself, they remember my height.” “At least let me tear the price tag off the hat. You look like that old lady on The Grand Old Opera.” He chuckles. “Grand Ole Opry, and she was before your time.” “Whatever. You know who I mean.” “You’re right about this place being crowded,” he observes. “That helps.” Shane’s scheme is, my opinion, totally whacked. I’m supposed to push the wheelchair, keeping the crowd between
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us and the egg man, and we’ll get a closer look. Shane has a theory that Manning is in the business office getting cash for a payoff. Either that or dealing directly with some casino employee or associate implicated in his son’s disappearance. “The guy is a billionaire,” I say, grabbing hold of the wheelchair. “Why would he need cash from the casino?” “He’s a fund investor. He doesn’t deal in cash, and criminals prefer folding money. It’s just a theory. Roll me up to the next casino entrance, we’ll work our way back.” “You’ve got to be kidding.” “What’s wrong?” “I’m pushing but you’re not moving.” “Oh,” he says. “Sorry.” With him pushing the wheels, all I have to do is steer, or pretend to steer, and we’re moving along, keeping pace with the shuffling gamblers. What I find amazing is that no one is making or seeking eye contact. Even in the most crowded mall people tend to check each other out, maybe smile if the impulse strikes. Not here. The vibe is that everyone has his or her own bubble and none of the other bubbles really exist, they’re just background, like the continuous chiming of the slots, the whisper of the air-conditioning, the dreamy lighting that makes the blinking machines look more alive than most of the players. We’re up to the entrance of Sachem’s Cave—more slot machines but bigger payoffs—and have made the turn, sneaking up on the egg man, when Shane urgently announces, “Look at Popkin. Something is going down.” The egg man, Mr. Popkin, is apparently reacting to something he’s heard in his earpiece. Shaking his head and looking furtively around as he talks, as if he’s not sure what to expect. All nervous and jumpy.
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Does he know about us? Have we been spotted, and the message relayed? The weird thing is, the egg man looks scared. “I’ll be damned,” says Shane, rising from the wheelchair. Coming through the entrance, moving quickly with almost military precision, is a band of black-haired men, unmistakably Native American, and from the similarly dark, high-cheekboned look of them, all sharing the same blood. Brothers and cousins, uncles and nephews, moving as one. They carry M4 carbines slung over lithe shoulders, not bows and arrows, and their uniform blouses are matching white guayaberra shirts with tribal police emblems, but there is no doubt about who they are. A war party, ready for battle. 16. The Absolute Zero Of No It’s an amazing sight, really, totally out of sync with the sedate atmosphere at the casino. The tribal security squad marches in, shoves aside the egg man—no resistance there— enters through the smoked-glass door, and emerges less than a minute later carrying Edwin Manning in an office chair. A chair to which he is obviously clinging, having refused to move. Looking like a deposed king being borne away on his throne, he appears to be both livid with anger and frightened out of his mind. “This all goes away!” he shouts, making a gesture that takes in the whole casino complex. “Think about it! Money, success, all gone! Just talk to the man, that’s all I’m asking! I’m begging you, please talk to him! Make him give me back my son!”
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The men carrying him have eyes like chips of black ice. They betray no expression, pay no heed to their lively burden, hustling him out the casino as he clings awkwardly to the prison of his chair. What really gets me, what puts the cold fear in my guts, is what happens next. Up in the chair, carried by those he cannot buy or influence, Manning seems to surrender himself to madness, a lunatic in suit and tie. He begins to scream wordlessly, saliva spraying from his mouth, tears leaking from his eyes. As if anguish and fear and frustration have made it impossible to communicate in words, and from now on only screams will do. I find myself clinging to Randall Shane like Mr. Manning clings to the chair, because it’s either hold on or fall down. The big guy senses my distress, squeezes my hand. “Kind of like watching a patient undergo surgery without anesthesia,” he says softly. “He’s falling apart. Something terrible has happened since we saw him. Something truly awful.” “We don’t know that,” says Shane consolingly. “I do.” Bless the man, he does not argue, but instead decides to take action. “Be right back,” he assures me, and then strides into the crowd on his long legs. Be right back? No way am I missing this. So I’m right behind the big guy when he corners the goggle-eyed egg man and goes, “Sal—do they call you Sal?—we have to talk.” To give him credit, the egg man looks more lost than frightened, although he does catch his breath and shrink back as Shane approaches. “What are you doing here?” he demands, protuberant eyes
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rolling around like big white marbles in a jar of oil. “Are you nuts? You want to wreck everything, is that it?” Shane raises his open hands to show he means no harm. “Furthest thing from my mind. All I want is talk. Your boss is in trouble, maybe you can help.” Egg man closes his eyes and curses, uttering a few suggestions I’ve never before heard applied to human beings. Then he opens the eyes—amazingly puffy eyelids, blinking must be like lifting weights—and goes, pleading to heaven, “How do I get into this shit?” “Look,” says Shane, sounding conciliatory. “It’s obvious that your boss has lost control of the situation. He’s afraid to call in the cops, make it official? Fine. I’m not the cops. I’m private. And we have exactly the same goal, the safe return of Seth and Kelly. We can cooperate, help each other out.” “I dunno,” says the egg man, not looking at either one of us. “These people are just plain nuts. You see what they just did to Mr. Manning? He owns the joint and they treat him like shit.” The guy rubs his shaved, chunk-o’-cheese head and squints, as if looking for a way to escape the range of Shane’s long arms. But Shane mirrors his moves and keeps him cornered without ever having to actually touch him. “Who did this?” Shane asks, persisting. “Who took Seth and Kelly?” The egg man sighs, giving the impression that not only does he want to avoid any sort of physical confrontation, he also knows he’s way out of his depth and really could use some help. “I work the casinos, you know? Like a bouncer, only I get paid better. My so-called career in the ring, all it ever gave me was a face that scares some people. Not you obviously, and not so much you, either, Miss Whoever-you-are.”
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“Jane Garner,” I remind him. “What happened to Seth Manning? Is he still alive? Is my daughter still alive?” He shrugs, the kind of whole-body shrug that can only be deployed by those born and raised in the part of New Jersey that lies a bridge or tunnel away from New York City. “If I knew I’d tell you, honest. Come on, think I’d hold out on a worried mom? I ain’t that kind of guy.” “What do you know, Mr. Popkin?” “Call me Sally, please,” the man says. He seems relieved that I’m asking the questions at the moment, rather than Shane, who looms over both of us, exuding energetic patience. “I been Sally Pop all my life, that’s what I’m used to. What do I know? Less every day. But I do know Mr. Manning is in trouble, big trouble, and he don’t know what to do. All his money, that don’t seem to be helping.” “Who did it, Sally? Who took Seth?” Sally the egg man studies me, makes up his mind. “What I heard between the lines, it’s some crazy big-shot Indian everybody’s scared of. But I’m guessing, you know? ’Cause Mr. Manning, he don’t share with me. Not specific to names he don’t.” “You sure about that?” Shane interjects. “No name?” “I told you, he don’t share,” the egg man says indignantly. He’s tottering heel-to-toe on his Nike running shoes, gathering himself for a move or maybe looking for a way to regain his dignity. “I told you something,” he says to Shane. “Now you tell me something, awright? How the hell did you know we’d be here? You’re a New York guy.” Shane chuckles. “I’m an everywhere guy, Sally. Seriously, you’re not that hard to find. I followed the money and here we are.You’re in charge of Mr. Manning’s security, is that correct?”
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“Yeah, for the moment,” he says, jutting out his chin with pride and defiance. “So what?” “So you better get out there and help calm him down before he gets arrested,” Shane says, indicating the commotion that has continued out into the parking lot. “And if you want to do your boss a big favor, have him call me. I can help. No cops, no FBI, and no charge. Just someone very discreet who has done this before.” “You, huh?” Shane tucks a business card into Sally the egg man’s pocket. “Me,” he says. “Go on, get out there and help the poor man.” Under the brutal, incandescent sun, Edwin Manning seems to have recovered the gift of language. Dumped from the chair to his own two feet, he stands his ground like a belligerent little general, reading the riot act to the squad of Nakosha security goons who ejected him from the casino complex. “Are you people completely stupid?” he demands, strutting the hot pavement. He adjusts his striped club tie, squares his shoulders. “What happens when the money dries up? What happens when the casino closes? What happens when the federal government revisits your tribal status? You really think you can get away with protecting a monster? You think you’re above all laws? You think you can walk away from this? No, no, the world doesn’t work that way. You made this man, this beast, you can’t deny your responsibility. You can’t pretend he’s no longer yours.” But they do walk away, without acknowledging his pleas and threats. To them Manning is simply white noise in a tailored suit.
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Having been abandoned by the Nakosha goon squad, he’s left with his own. Sally Pop approaches the boss like he’s a live grenade, imparts some comment to which Manning reacts with cold fury, shouting, “No! I told you, no! Absolutely not!” Shane and I have been taking all this in from a distance, but at the moment Sally retreats, Manning looks up, searching the parking lot. He’s drawn quite an audience, entertainment for the curious, the bored and the broke, but he spots us immediately. More likely he spots Shane rising above the herd and I’m just part of the package. He stares at us with eyes that have the charm and welcome of black holes sucking all light from the universe, and shakes his head firmly. No, no, a zillion times no. The absolute zero of no. 17. Quantum Physics When the show is over and the burnt-orange Hummer has exited the parking lot, Randall Shane decides the time has come for straight talk. “Coffee?” he asks. “Can we sit down, take a load off?” His client remains agitated, wanting to do something, anything. As if perpetual motion means not having to think about the possibility of it all ending badly. “Aren’t we going to follow them?” she asks plaintively. “No point,” Shane tells her gently. “I’ll buy you a coffee and tell you why.” “I don’t need a coffee,” she says, still eyeing the exit road where the Hummer vanished. “We need to sit,” he insists. Together they reenter the casino complex, where business has resumed, pretty much as if nothing had happened.
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Which Shane thinks may be close to the truth. Just beyond the giant phony tiki hut he finds a pseudo-Starbucks, scores a tall, no sugar, for himself and a bottled water for Mrs. Garner. Want it or not, she needs to hydrate, if only to replenish the tears. Not that she’s blubbering or complaining or throwing herself on his willing shoulder. Just weeping silent rivers that drip from the cute little cleft in her chin. “This is so messed up,” she says, accepting the bottle of water. “Agreed.” “A man like that flips out, it must be really bad.” “It’s not good,” he concedes. “Kelly’s already dead,” she says miserably. “That’s what kidnappers do. I knew that, I just didn’t want to think about it, you know?” He clears his throat and says, “Look at me, Jane.” Wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, she studies him with glistening eyes. “When there’s no hope, I’ll let you know,” he promises. “Good, bad or tragic, I’ll tell you the truth. We’re not there yet.” “But you gave up,” she reminds him. “You didn’t follow them.” “Because the action is right here,” he says, tapping his finger on the laminate of little café table. “Manning was on a mission—he wanted information or cooperation, or both— and they blew him off. The interesting thing is that it wasn’t casino security that chucked him out, it was the tribe. Called in from outside. They have adequate security in place, uniforms working for the casino, so why bring in the tribal heavies, armed with carbines?”
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“Because the tribe is involved?” she responds, perking up. The tears have stopped flowing. “That appears to be a certainty,” he agrees. “The tribe, or some individual member of the tribe who may be a rogue actor. According to Popkin, quote, ‘some crazy big-shot Indian everybody’s scared of,’ unquote.” “But he didn’t know who, exactly. And Manning isn’t going to tell us.” “There’s another way,” he suggests. “It starts with you going back to the hotel.” “And what do I do at the hotel?” she asks warily. “Couple of things. You can monitor the GPS tracker from there, see where Manning goes.” “But not follow him?” “No. They’ll be looking for us now and if they spot a tail his behavior will change.” He leans forward, speaking intimately, confidentially. “Detective work may not be rocket science, but it really is like quantum physics—by observing something you change it. So we back off and let the tracker software do its thing, logging locations. The other thing, and this is your primary mission, I want you to locate the best, most aggressive criminal attorney in Miami. Be ready to contact him or her.” She looks puzzled. “Why do I need a lawyer?” “You don’t,” he says, and grimaces. “But you might?” He nods. “I’m going to rattle some cages, see what falls out.” After the lady departs, somewhat reluctantly, Shane gets down to business. Keenly aware that he’s not operating in familiar or friendly territory, in terms of legal jeopardy. Special Agent Healy spelled it out—if he gets his butt in a
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sling on Nakosha territory, don’t expect the cavalry to come to his rescue. He will not be backed up, picked up or bailed out, not by the friendlies. Mess up and he’ll be on his own, dealing with tribal law enforcement. Worrisome, but he sees no alternative. Jane Garner has it mostly right. Edwin Manning’s behavior indicates a deteriorating situation. The man looked like he’d seen a ghost or, more likely, evidence that the captors were willing to inflict harm on his son. Which means they had started cutting, always a bad sign. Ears, noses, toes, fingers. Shane has seen it all, the savage proof of savage intentions, designed to frighten, intimidate, extort. One case, the abductors drained a pint of blood from the victim, sent it along with a ransom note. The lab determined the blood came from the vic, and that he was alive at the time—everybody found that very encouraging—but what the lab couldn’t determine was the intention of the perpetrators, who had in fact let their captive to bleed out. Not a happy ending. Shane figures he’s got a day, maybe two. After that it will be a body search. The boss of casino security is, as Shane had already surmised, a former police officer. City of Miami, not the beach, and nowhere near old enough to take retirement. “Sixteen wonderful years,” Tony Carlos says, folding his hands over his flat, forty-year-old stomach. Obviously an area he works on, refining his abs, watching his diet. Goes with the manicure and the haircut and the hair gel and the perfect spa tan. His lime-green casino security blazer rests on a padded hanger. No tie—this isn’t exactly tie country— but he’s wearing a crisp white dress shirt, not a wrinkle on it, and his light-gray dress slacks are similarly flawless. On
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his dapper feet, spit-shined Bruno Magli oxfords with extra thick soft rubber soles, the better to walk on acres of carpeted concrete. The man tends to his generically handsome self like a faithful gardener, that’s the impression. Snap judgments can be wrong, but Shane decides to play it that way, assuming the security chief will respond with alacrity to any threats to his comfort and well-being. “Sixteen wonderful years but you didn’t go twenty,” Shane points out. “Most guys, they do sixteen, they’ll go for the full twenty, get it on the books.” The security chief shakes his carefully coiffed head. He’s smiling, showing off his nice dental work, but not in a particularly friendly way. “Tribe made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Same benefits, more money, regular hours.” “I bet it was the regular hours did the trick.” “It helped. So what can we do for you, Mr. Shane?” he says, allowing his impatience to show. “My girl said you wanted an application, I should check you out with my own eyes.” Shane gives him a flat, humorless smile. “If I wanted a job, Mr. Carlos, it would be your job. Guys on the floor, they’re making what, ten an hour?” “Something like that. Says here on your application you were FBI. But since you don’t want a job, I guess that was just to impress me, huh?” “Get your attention, not impress. I doubt you impress that easily.” “My girl was impressed by your size, not your résumé,” the security chief says, forcing a laugh. “Is she your girl?” “Excuse me?”
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“The female person at the desk. Daughter? Wife? Girlfriend?” “My secretary,” says the security chief, getting pissed. “Ah,” says Shane. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Ah means ah, Mr. Carlos. We FBI men are trained to be sensitive in all matters regarding female persons.” “Former FBI, and I don’t much care for your attitude. Is this how you’re spending your leisure years, harassing security personnel?” “No,” says Shane. “I’m spending my leisure years working for the man who owns this casino.” The security chief smirks. “The Nakosha people own this casino. And I know damn well you don’t work for them.” “Think harder,” Shane suggests. “You’ll figure it out.” The security chief thinks about it, and as he does so his expression morphs from smug to chagrined. “Shit.” “Technically you’re correct,” Shane concedes. “My boss doesn’t own the casino. He controls the various financial instruments that allowed the casino to be built, staffed, promoted and run on a day-to-day basis. He owns the money. In the neighborhood of three hundred million dollars. Which I’m sure you’ll agree is a pretty nice neighborhood.” Carlos raises his hands in supplication. “I had nothing to do with that.” “With what, Mr. Carlos?” “Him being escorted from the premises.” If birds of prey could chuckle they would sound like Randall Shane. “Oh really. Is that what you call it? ‘Escorted from the premises.’ I’ll be sure to mention that in my report, so Mr. Manning can factor it in when he garnishees your
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salary, and the salary of all casino employees, and uses every legal means to obtain satisfaction by attaching liens to your assets. House, boat, vehicle, whatever.” “He can’t do that,” Carlos blusters. “I wouldn’t bet your retirement on what Edwin Manning can and cannot do.” “It was out of my hands! What the council wants, the council gets.” Shane sits back, rocking a little in the undersize chair, as if getting comfortable for the long haul. For his purposes it helps to think of Tony Carlos as a simple instrument. Press certain keys and he will respond favorably. Keep playing and he will divulge whatever he knows. No torture required, just good musical skills. “So what are you saying?” Shane asks, as if he’s open to reasonable explanations. “The council asked you to remove Mr. Manning and you refused? And that’s why they resorted to the tribal police?” Carlos utters a short, humorless laugh. “That bunch? Please. Tribal police look and act like cops. That was the, um, special squad.” “Okay. Why not you and your men? Why not the tribal cops, if you refused? Why call in the goon squad?” Carlos considers his answer, deciding what to lie about, where to tweak the truth in his own favor. “Me, they never asked. Probably knew I’d never agree to bounce a guy like Mr. Manning. Nakosha cops, I doubt they’d respond. Policy is, stay out of the casino. More than policy, it’s tribal law. You may have noticed, no Nakosha in the house. Not for employment purposes, not for gambling. The council members are the only ones inside, and they pretty much keep to their office. Counting receipts, I assume, or doing whatever.”
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“Doing whatever?” “I wouldn’t know. Security personnel are not allowed in the council chambers, only members of the council.” “You know why Manning was in the house?” Carlos shakes his head. “Why would I? I assume he was here on business. It’s not unusual, him checking in. Happens every month or two. Except he usually comes on his own, without an entourage.” “Ever bring his son along? Fly down on the corporate aircraft, pop in to check on their investment?” Carlos decides to get cagey. “I don’t know. Maybe. If so, I was never introduced.” Shane nods thoughtfully, studying the security chief. “The reason my boss is so upset? The reason he’s asking questions? His boy Seth has been abducted.” The security chief’s complexion goes from spa tan to fishbelly gray in a heartbeat. “You’re kidding, right?” “It’s not a joking matter, Mr. Carlos. That’s why I’m here, to help Edwin Manning recover his son, dead or alive. We’d prefer alive.” The man exhales slowly, seems to shrink a little as beads of sweat the size of small, oily bullets form on his brow. “You know I had nothing to do with this, right?” “Do I? We have information that the abduction was carried out by a member of the tribe. I believe the description was ‘some crazy big-shot Indian everybody is scared of.’ I’m guessing the crazy part is right on, considering the consequences and, from the panicked way the tribal council is responding, the gentleman really does inspire fear. I’m also guessing, from the little lightbulb that just went on over your head, that a name popped into your mind.” The security chief nods miserably.
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18. Begging Is Good My first wedding gown was for my friend Fern. Fern’s January wedding to Edgar who was impossibly slim and good-looking at the time. Fern, always gorgeous in her own unique way, had put on fifty pounds in pregnancy but still managed to glow. She had insisted that I not attempt to hide her baby-full belly when draping the gown. As if. There she is on the steps outside the church, posing for the formal photograph, looking like she was having quintuplets at least. But that smile, and her fabulous eyes, and the way she’s looking at Edgar, like she’s ready to eat him in one big bite. I’m there, too, a skinny, nervous, teenage bridesmaid, one of three in identical blue satin gowns. We look like frosting accents on Fern’s fabulous white wedding cake. That was the idea, that the bridesmaids would echo the colors on the cake. A totally stupid concept, all mine, but somehow it worked because somehow a wedding always seems to work, even if the marriage itself is doomed to end badly, with poor Edgar begging for his favorite recliner and Fern crossing her arms and saying no, like a scene out of a bad sitcom, Men Behaving Pathetically. All these years later, I’m still not sure what got into me, volunteering to make the gowns. There was more to it than Fern not having the money for a proper bridal shop gown, which even then were outrageous. Maybe it was about me wanting to be involved in the wedding itself, as more than a best friend and bridesmaid. Putting my mark on the event. All I really remember is looking in the shop window with Fern, announcing with great virginal confidence that I could make her a gown like that, no problem. I’d been sewing my
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own stuff for a year or two at that point, what was the big deal? A pattern, a little nice lace, a few ruffles, nothing to it. Could I have been that naive? Or maybe I knew what I was getting into, the panic and the endless fittings, all the handstitching because the lovely silk kept bunching in the machine. The other two bridesmaids squirming like eels, worried about staining their underarms with flop sweat. Fern’s dad bursting into tears when he saw her, and not of happiness. Her mom dragging him off for a lecture about pregnancy being a gift from God. Fern snorting and rolling her eyes, telling me to ignore her ridiculous parents and make her look beautiful please. Which she did, and yes I helped it happen because the gown really was amazing, and we bridesmaids really did look like perfectly matching, skinny little planets orbiting a wonderfully round sun goddess. Once upon a time I used to stare at this photo—it remains a precious keepsake, living in my purse—and imagine myself not as the bridesmaid, but as the bride. I could see myself in Fern’s place, in a smaller gown, of course. And not as beautiful as Fern, that goes without saying. But for the life of me I could never picture the groom. Total blank. An empty space. Less than a year after the photograph was taken, eight months to be exact, I was pregnant with Kelly. Secretly, deniably pregnant. No wedding for me, not then, not ever. And my father didn’t burst into tears. He said the kind of things that can’t be taken back and walked out the door. He’s gone now, forever gone, as is my mother. Kelly, if she’s alive, is the same age as me when I got pregnant with her. Can the world be so cruel as to let a precious child survive cancer, only to have her die because she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong guy?
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The answer, of course, is yes, the world can be that cruel. Check the newspapers if you disagree. Except that in my daughter’s case Shane thinks there may still be a chance. He’s taking risks, pulling out all the stops. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t already too late. Unless it isn’t too late. Unless it is. All of which is swirling around in my throbbing head when the phone rings. Not my cell, the hotel phone. Takes me a minute to find it, focusing through the blur. “Any news?” Fern wants to know. She sounds almost jovial. “I can’t believe it,” I say, rubbing a tissue at my leaky nose. “I was just looking at your picture.” “This is your psychic hotline,” says Fern, into character instantly. “I predict you’ll tell me what’s happening.” So I recount the meeting with Special Agent Healy, checking into the outrageous Europa, spying on Manning’s penthouse from the balcony, following the Hummer to the casino complex. Me in my ridiculous disguise. Then the strange and terrible scene of Edwin Manning breaking down, begging. “It’s like he knows his son is already gone,” I tell her, clutching the phone to my ear like a lifeline. “Like he knows he’s dead.” “Janey, stop it!” Fern commands. “You’re obsessing. I don’t know this jerk from a crack in the sidewalk, but if he’s begging for help, then he thinks the boy is alive. Dead he’d be arranging a funeral or seeking revenge, but not begging. Begging is good.” “Begging is good? You really think?” “Trust me. What’s Mr. Incredible doing now?” “Um, checking out a lead, a possible suspect. I’m supposed to be lining up a lawyer, in case he gets arrested.”
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“Shane?” “Yeah. He may have to break a few laws.” Fern squeals with pleasure. “I love it! Send lawyers, guns and money. Plus he’s worried about you. He wants you in a safe place while he does the dangerous stuff.” “Or out of the way so I don’t mess things up. I’m useless, Fern. I keep bursting into tears.” “Panic attacks?” I think about it. “Um, not since I got here. Not a full-blown attack, no.” “No? That’s interesting, don’t you think?” “Not very. I wish you were here, Fern.You’re the strong one.” Her big laugh is unforced, genuine. “Me? Are you serious? Maybe I could beat you arm-wrestling, but you’re strong where it counts, Janey poo. Doing what you did when Kelly was sick? In and out of the hospital for years? Always, always being strong for her, not letting her see how scared you were? Earning a living with your talent, making a business? Then dealing with your poor mother? Don’t you know what I tell everyone? That my friend Jane Garner may look as sweet as a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses, but you better watch out because she’s made of diamonds and tungsten steel. She’s like that cute guy in Terminator 2, knock her down, blow her up, she keeps on coming.” “He was a bad guy,” I remind her. “You can be a bad guy if you need to be. And a good guy when you need to be. Whatever you need to be, Janey, that’s what you’ll be, guaranteed. Diamonds and steel.” “Now you’re making me cry.” “Crying is natural. Go ahead, blow your nose. I was going to fill you in on all the business calls. Problems with fittings—somebody ate too many Fritos—a cancellation,
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some other stuff. But you know what? You don’t need to know. Alex is helping Tracy take care of it. He’s really good.” “Alex is good? I thought you hated Alex.” “Hate? No, no. I hate things like cellulite, I never hated Alex. And if I did I’ve changed my mind. He knows what he’s doing, he’s good with customers, all these nervous women love him, plus, and I never knew this, he can sew on a button. What’s not to like?” What can I say? I can’t say anything, I just cry some more. Big strong me. After Fern gets off, I follow her advice and take a long hot shower. One of her main prescriptions for what ails you, the other being “take a pill,” by which she means a sleeping pill. Take a long hot shower or knock yourself out, or both. Sage advice, in my opinion. Nothing more I’d like to do than take a pill, sleep like the dead in my own bed. In the middle of the day, just sleep. No dreams though. Dreams would be dangerous. Conversation with a loving friend leaves me cried out, free of the emotional roller coaster for now.You get to a point where you’re so wrung, so whacked, that your mind can’t handle any more anxiety. You become calm by default, because there’s nothing else left. That’s where I’m at, all soaped up with the shower pulsing, wondering idly how Edwin Manning is coping. Does he have anybody to talk to besides his dopey guards? Anybody to share with? Friends, relatives, associates, where are they? Sure looks like he’s all alone out there, hanging off the edge by his well-buffed fingernails. Being a financial master of the universe isn’t doing him much good at the moment. What does he know and why won’t he talk to us? Is Shane the problem? The cop look of him? Hadn’t occurred to me, but that might be it. Why not? From Manning’s point of view,
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Shane represents a force that, in the full pursuit of justice, may threaten his son’s life rather than save it. And if that’s true, if that’s what he he’s afraid of, maybe I can use that to our advantage. That’s right, our advantage. Me and Kelly. It’s like she’s in my head, encouraging me. Go Mom, do it. Edwin Manning is a widower, never remarried, a doting father, maybe he’ll respond to me as a mother, a parent. It’s worth a shot, I’m thinking. Ring his doorbell while Shane is otherwise engaged, see what happens. Go Mom. I’m actually smiling as I get out of the shower and grab a towel. Having decided to do it, to visit the lion in his own den. Me playing the part of the little mouse, offering to pull the splinter from the lion’s paw. And that, of course, is when the phone rings. “It’s me,” Shane says in a hushed voice. “Write this down.” “I’m just out of the shower, hang on,” I stammer. As I hurry for pen and paper, dripping all over everything, I’m glad he can’t see me blushing. Ridiculous as it may be, I’ve never been comfortable speaking to a man on the phone while naked. Which, as Kelly would say, explains a lot. “Okay,” I say, fumbling with the pen. “Go.” “Ricky Lang,” he whispers. “Twelve twenty-three Bay Vista Drive, Cable Grove. Got it?” “Got it. Is this the guy?” I ask, a flush of pure excitement replacing the blush of embarrassment. “Is this the guy who took Kelly?” “Too soon to say,” says Shane, still whispering. “This is a lead based on a rumor based on hearsay. Right now all I know for sure is that he’s a member of the tribe and he’s had some sort of long-running conflict with the tribal council. Ap-
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parently Lang is a very common name among the Nakosha. Doesn’t sound Indian to me, but there it is.” “What should I do?” “Right, sorry. Call Special Agent Healy for me. If you can’t find his card, his number will be on my laptop in the address book. Give him the name and address and tell him Shane says he’s a person of interest. Can you do that?” “Of course.” “I’d do it myself but I’m kind of in a situation here.” “Where are you?” “At the address I just gave you.” “At this guy’s house?” I ask, alarmed. “In it, actually,” Shane whispers. “Gotta go.” Leaving me with a dial tone, wet hair, and a few million questions. 19. Mr. Goldilocks And The One Bear It was not like breaking and entering, not in the classic sense. Entering, obviously, because here he is, prowling the cool tile floors of a lovely expanded bungalow in one of the most exclusive waterfront enclaves in Miami. Four-bedroom Mediterranean style, recently refurbished, on a one-acre enclosed lot with water access, had to have set Mr. Lang back a few mil. Not grand enough or new enough for the rock stars and celebrities who gravitated to the area, but very tasty, and beautifully landscaped with palms, cactus, and a lush Bermuda grass lawn that looked like it would need to suck up half of Biscayne Bay on a hot day. What Shane thinks of as pre-Scarface Miami, before wannabe crime bosses and Internet zillionaires who’d seen too many episodes of Miami Vice came to town demanding
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homes so gaudily, obviously expensive they resemble drivethru banks with big stucco hats. Shane isn’t a fan of recent architectural trends, to say the least. This joint he likes. Big enough so he has room to move, cozy enough so it feels like a home, not a hotel lobby. True, he has to duck under the ceiling fans, and he’s a slightly put off to realize he and a potential suspect have similar taste in dream houses, but still. Getting inside had been a piece of cake. The place has the usual security, and warning signs testifying to that effect, but the gated driveway was left open. Shane had his driver—the same baby-faced Haitian—drop him a few blocks away, and he’d simply strolled up the driveway, expecting to find the owner at home, given the open gate. On the way to the front entrance he takes a peek through the windows of the four-stall garage. Only one vehicle in residence, a spiffy little convertible Mini Cooper. Whereas there are two, possibly three oil spots on the concrete. Interesting. Maybe the suspect isn’t at home. The Mini Cooper strikes him as a wife or girlfriend’s car, a fashion accessory, given the neighborhood. He tries the buzzer, listens to the echo. No response. After the buzzer fades, hushed silence pervades, nothing to indicate that anyone is home. Thinking maybe the three bears are out shopping or, who knows, kidnapping, Shane decides to play Goldilocks. Casual stroll around back, his Nikes easing into the lush grass as he comes upon the cool sapphire swimming pool with a neatly constructed tiki hut bar, and what looks like a recently erected cabana. The backyard kingdom of the pool. Beyond that, glimpsed through the rustling palm fronds, some sort of highspeed craft on a boat hoist, blocking the wind-dappled waters of the bay.
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Yup, a man could live here, no problem. Put up his big tired feet and never leave. Spend a year or two staring at the pool, grab a frosty at the tiki hut, then amble out to the seawall, try fishing without a hook for the rest of his days. Once upon a time Shane had something like this. The suburban New York version, much more modest. Threebedroom ranch with pool. Nothing remarkable, but comfortable and welcoming because that earlier version of Randall Shane was a nester. Loved to paint, putter and improve. Wife and child, backyard barbecue, Volvo wagon equipped with golden Lab, the whole bit. When that ended, a new Randall Shane eventually emerged, one who lives in rented rooms, hangs no pictures, and does as he damn well pleases. Although lately the urge for domesticity has been sniffing at his ankles like some sly, familiar dog, wanting to know where he’s been, when he’s coming home. Not yet, Shane thinks, taking it all in, but when the time comes, this will do. There’s still the small matter of having to win a multistate lottery, but what the heck, a man can dream. He tries a French door that exits onto the patio and is not entirely surprised to find it unlocked. No screaming siren, no flashing lights, so he assumes the security system is not armed. As his eyes adjust to the dim light he finds himself in what must be the master bedroom. The oversize bed designed to look like it’s floating over marble floor. Sleek matching furniture, beautifully lacquered and illuminated by discrete cove lighting. Louvered door to what he assumes is a walkin closet, and the typical master bath that’s big enough to park an extra SUV if the garage ever gets filled up. He checks out the walk-in. One side jammed with a young woman’s clothing, size six and under. The other side more sparsely populated with white guayaberras, khaki cargo
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pants, a few muscle shirts, and a neat selection of Tommy Bahama silk tropicals that have either never been worn or are fresh from the dry cleaners. Gives him a picture of Mr. Ricky Lang and his wife or girlfriend, but the real purpose of searching a closet is to locate hidden assets like safes, file boxes or firearms. Especially firearms. Ninety percent of gun owners stash their weapons in a closet. He checks all the likely spots. Then all the unlikely spots. The place is clean. Either the suspect is not in fact a bad boy, or he keeps his toys and weapons elsewhere. It’s while he’s in the closet that Shane feels a faint thump resonate through the cedar-lined wall. Like someone tossed a tennis ball in an adjacent room. Or dropped a shoe. Silence follows, but Shane instantly understands that he has miscalculated. Despite his initial assessment, he is not alone in the house. That’s when he decides to call Mrs. Garner, give her the name and address, ask her to share it with Special Agent Healy, a precaution he should have taken before venturing up the driveway. Serious about wanting a lawyer on standby, he has no intention of letting himself be arrested, not inside the house. Helps that he didn’t damage a lock or slice a screen, because if need be he can argue that he was invited into the residence, plead a misunderstanding. The old vampire defense—your honor, he asked me in. When the call to Jane is completed, Shane slips the cell phone into his pocket. He’s bending down, preparing to recon through the slats of the louvered door, when a sizable fist comes crashing through the louvers and into his nose. Knocking him down but not quite out. The pink fog means the nose has been broken—not for the first time—but what really concerns him are two indisputable
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facts: the man wielding the fist is immensely strong and knows how to punch, and has in his possession a Glock G37, which typically holds ten .45 caliber rounds in the magazine. Shane knows this because the short barrel of the gun is about eighteen inches away, aiming at his broken nose. “So which is it?” asks the man with the gun. “You sniffing panties or jock straps? Or maybe both?” The thing about a broken nose is that the pain is beyond belief for a couple of minutes before it subsides to bearable. Making it hard to think clearly, or formulate replies to leading questions. So rather than make any rash decisions—like, say, attempting to disarm his assailant—Shane prudently decides to rest on his haunches and bleed for a while. The light is behind his assailant, rendering him into a bulky silhouette that fills the closet doorway. Even at that, the description more or less matches the one given by Tony Carlos, the casino security chief: What is it you Anglos say? Built like a brick shithouse? That’s Ricky Lang. Some people think he looks like one of the Three Stooges. Others call him The Hulk. Personally I find him just plain scary. “You’re a big mother,” the hulking figure observes, emphasizing with the Glock. “Nothing in there is your size. Doubtful you could even fit one of Myla’s little thongs on that big fat head of yours.” Shane gets the impression that, despite the taunting, his assailant knows full well he’s dealing with more than a common intruder. Having a little fun with him while he decides what to do next. Call the cops? Report a break-in? Shoot? Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is pretty clear. A home owner can shoot and kill an intruder if he believes the intruder
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represents a danger to his person. No obligation to retreat. No actual weapon or threat required, simply the impression of danger. And what person would not assume danger, having come upon an intruder? Fire away, the law implies. Shoot ’em if you got ’em. As the throbbing in his head subsides to no more than a common jackhammer, Shane decides he has nothing to gain by silence or denial. “You Ricky Lang?” he asks, his tongue so thick in his mouth he sounds drunk. His assailant laughs. “What, you got my name off the mailbox?” “It’s not on the mailbox,” Shane points out. “Can I get up? Maybe get a cold washcloth?” “Nah,” says Lang. “You messed up enough of my stuff already. Can’t have you spoiling the washcloths.” “Fine,” says Shane, wadding his shirttail and using it to stanch the blood. “Come on out, but crawl. If you stand up or move quick, I’ll shoot,” Lang warns, backing up. Shane works his way through the door. Calculations for escape or counterattack running through his mind. Maybe try a feint, get the gun hand moving, leap the other way. But moves like that work in the movies, not in real life. In real life Lang, who clearly knows how to handle a gun, will put a bullet in his spine. One of the disadvantages of being large, he makes a bigger target. Having crawled out of the closet as instructed, Shane remains on his haunches. That will give him an opportunity to launch himself at Lang if he gets the chance. Also he can bleed on the marble floor, leaving his DNA marker in the
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cracks between the close-fitting tiles. Little gift for the crimescene technicians, if it comes to that. “Stop right there,” Lang orders. “Stay on your knees.” Shane stops, letting his nose drip. His eyes are swollen from the blow but his vision has cleared and the light is such that he can finally focus on his assailant, who has perched on the edge of the oversize bed, the Glock never wavering. Strong arms, to hold a weapon so steadily with one rocksolid hand. The average civilian has no idea of the difficulty, holding and aiming a large-bore handgun. Thirty-five ounces may not sound like much—a little more than two pounds fully loaded—but the compact weight, held in an outstretched hand, soon becomes massive. Gravity is unrelenting. The hand tends to drop, the forearm muscles compensate by raising, tightening. Muscles start twitching and the hand wavers or trembles. Officers are trained to brace the wrist with the other hand, but even with two hands, wavering or trembling can’t be avoided for long. Ricky Lang does not waver or tremble. Perched on the edge of the bed, grinning as if he’s just heard the best joke in the world, Lang does indeed resemble a Native American version of Moe Howard. Mostly because of the thick black hair, the crude bowl-cut that leaves glossy bangs covering his forehead. The Hulk description works, too. Something about his broad sloping shoulders, the over-amped lats and biceps, the narrow waist and powerful legs. Bare feet adding to the effect, as if the man was continually bursting out of his shoes. Shane figures that in a fair fight—if such a thing ever exists—he might well prevail, using his own considerable strength and relying on his added leverage. But in close combat, an eye-gouging, throat crushing fight to the death, Ricky
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Lang would be exceedingly dangerous. Might come down to who lands the first damaging blow. “You can’t be a cop,” Lang muses. “Cops always come in pairs.” “My name is Randall Shane. I’m former FBI. I consult on missing children.” Lang finds this interesting. “No shit? A former Fed? So what, they fired you? Caught you going through underwear drawers, vamoosed your sorry ass?” “Something like that.” Lang shakes his head, vastly amused. “This is good. I’m out in my boat, changing the oil? I hear this footstep, real soft, on the patio? Take a peek and there you are, big as a linebacker, breaking and entering into my bedroom.” “The door was unlocked,” Shane points out. “My colleagues have my location. They’ll respond soon.” “Yeah? I’d like to meet ’em. Except you said you were fired.” “Resigned.” “Uh-huh. So what you doin’ here, Randall?” Moment of truth, Shane thinks and decides he doesn’t care to die with a lie on his lips. “I’m looking for Seth Manning and Kelly Garner.” Ricky Lang smiles and nods. “The pilot and his girl. It’s about time,” he says. “What took you guys so long?” There are lots of things going on with Shane physically, from the wicked throb of his freshly broken nose to the ache of his hamstrings, but nothing so bad it overwhelms the fleshcrawling chill that runs up his spine. He did it. He found the perp. Now if only he can live long enough to do something about it. “You a hero, man,” Ricky Lang is saying, sounding gen-
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uinely pleased for him. “Just this morning I’m trying to figure, should I kill ’em or let ’em go? You know, like weighing it on my mind? And then along comes you.” “Easy decision,” Shane encourages. “Let them go.” The disturbing thing, other than the unwavering Glock, is the way Ricky Lang’s smile flashes on and off like a neon sign with a bad connection. Like he’s all there one moment and gone the next. “Want to know how I got you, man? Pow through the door? Because I can be invisible. I can make it so you can’t see or hear me, like a blindfold on your mind. Then boom! nailed you through the door. Because also I’ve got X-ray vision, like Superman.” “You saw me through the louvers.” “Nah, man, I sensed you. I got the magic, man. I got the power.” “But you’ll let them go.” “Sure,” Ricky Lang says with a shrug. “Why not?” He stands up, tucks the Glock in his waist. “Let’s get you that cold washcloth, then I’ll take you to them.” 20. What Gods Provide Live or die. The choice has become that simple. During the dark and endless hours she has come to understand that dying would be easy. Just give up, let go. Stop drinking from the jug of water. Stop eating the ridiculous peanut butter sandwiches her captor left in a plastic bread bag. Famished, she had demolished several of the awful sandwiches, gagging with every bite, the soft white bread tasting of greasy fingers. Worse than any of those icky hospital meals
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because it has been touched by the unclean hands of her tormentors. And yet she had consumed the awful things because to refuse would have been to become weaker. Again, very like the conscious choice she’d made as a nine-year-old. Deciding to be strong and resolute and not give in to her illness. Summoning all of her strength, willing her body to overcome the ravages of radiation treatments and chemotherapy. Fighting for her life by refusing to die. Kelly had been a voracious reader, even at her sickest. Partly because books were an escape, entry into another world where she could, if she wanted, be a warrior princess fighting dragons, or Harry Potter’s friend Hermione, or just a normal healthy girl having fun with her friends. An early chapter book stuck in her mind because of the vivid illustrations. Myths of The Ancient World. All about the battles between gods and heroes. Especially resonant with Kelly was the way gods liked to play tricks on the heroes and punish them horribly for what seemed like small infractions of rules. Lying in her hospital bed, weak from whatever the nurses and technicians had inflicted on her small body, she could readily identify with the fire-giver Prometheus, chained to the ground so a vulture could eat his liver. And then overnight his liver would grow back and the vulture would come again, its great beak gleaming like steel. Or poor Sisyphus, being made to push a giant rock up a steep hill for all eternity, only to have it roll down, having to start all over, shoving and pushing forever and ever. She invented her own tormented hero. The great, tragic and stunningly beautiful Chemo, trapped in her bed, held down with tubes and bags of fluids, having to endure the torments administered by the gods of Sloan-Kettering. Striving to be good and brave and true so the miserable disease would give up and leave her alone.
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Chemo the Brave, Chemo the Magnificent. Chemo who fought death to a standstill and won back her life. Hadn’t thought about her in a long time. No need. But now in the muggy darkness of her little prison, Kelly summons her back. Not to suffer tragically, but to fight and win. First requirement, a weapon. Other than her hands, teeth and fingernails, what is there? She numbers the objects in her mind. 1. Plastic water jug. 2. Small plastic lantern. 3. Five-gallon bucket. Three things, and none of them is exactly a loaded gun. She decides to examine each object, with the aim of devising a weapon. The water jug is smooth and flimsy. She rejects it. The battery-filled lantern is fairly heavy, it feels sort of substantial, but the shape makes it awkward to throw. Leaving the bucket. She loathes the bucket, the humiliation of having to use it for a toilet. Could it become a weapon? Fling it hard enough at her captor’s head, the next time the door opened, maybe it would stun him, give her time to slip past him. Gingerly touching the bucket, her hand encounters the handle, reclined against the side. The handle is nothing more than a curved piece of stiff metal rod, with ends that hook into the side of the bucket. Exploring the handle inch by inch, she discovers that the hooked end is sharp. Not razor sharp by any means, but she can feel the edge. Her hands shaking slightly with excitement, Kelly unhooks the handle. Straightening it as best she can, she begins to rub the sharp end of the handle against the floor of her prison. Steel against steel. After a few minutes the metal rod warms in her hands. It begins to have the feel of a weapon. Something sharp and
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strong. Something she can plunge into the heart of the next man who comes through the door. 21. Strictly Stiltsville The Glock is within reach, Shane decides. Ricky Lang having nonchalantly tucked the weapon in the waistband of his cargo pants. As if, the issue of releasing his captives having been settled, there is no need for guns. The only trouble, if Shane does manage to get his hands on the Glock he will undoubtedly have to shoot the guy, thereby complicating the task of recovering Kelly Garner. Not that Shane is convinced Ricky Lang is telling the truth about letting his captives go. Truth being a relative term to a man who believes he can make himself invisible. Probably thinks bullets won’t hurt him either, but Shane is pretty sure a .45 caliber slug, discharged at close range, will kill him. Rendering him useless in a search for the victims. Shane decides to bide his time. Determine if Lang really intends to lead him to the captives, then take whatever action is necessary. “You like boats?” Lang wants to know. “Sure,” says Shane. They’re detouring around the sapphire-blue pool, heading for the seawall. Shane would dearly love to get out his cell phone and make a few calls but he’s afraid of interrupting the flow, the insane rhythm of the man with the bowl-cut hair. If there had been any doubt as to his mental state, it was confirmed when Lang had ducked into what was obviously a child’s bedroom and waved bye-bye to the empty space. “My kids,” he’d said, black eyes shining with a ferocious, mind-consuming love. “Alicia and Reya, those are the girls,
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aren’t they sweet? Troy, the little one, he’s my little boy. Go on, kids, wave to the nice man!” He waits a beat, turns to Shane and says, “Cute, huh?” Shane had, of course, agreed. At the seawall Rick Lang produces a small remote control and sets about lowering the sleek red boat into the water. The notion of fishing as a pleasant activity aside, Shane knows very little about boats. This thing, long and narrow and pointy, looks built for speed and nothing else. “My special baby, a Y2K Superboat,” Lang explains as the winches unwind. “Pure racing machine, custom-built in New York. Turbocharged, seven hundred horse motor with a Bravo One stern drive. Three stage hull. You want to know how fast it goes? Hundred miles an hour, man. Get you to Bimini in twenty minutes.” “Very impressive.” Lang’s finger comes off the remote and the winch stops, causing the big boat to shudder in its cradle. “You messin’ with me, man?” he says, his eyes hardening. Shane, not sure how to react to the sudden change in mood, asks, “Why would I mess with you?” Ricky Lang snorts, his neck swelling. “The way you said ‘very impressive.’Like you don’t believe me. Some crazy Indian bragging on his stupid boat, is that what you think? Huh?” “No, no,” says Shane, trying to assure him. “I mean it. I love the boat. Very impressive.” “So you know about go-fast boats?” “Not a thing, no. Comes to boats, I’m dumb as a rock.” Lang stares at him, then thumbs the remote, resumes lowering the boat. “This an A-class racer,” he explains, sounding like a man grievously wounded by insult, struggling to be amenable.
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“Water gets a little rough, it goes faster. Get it balanced right, there’s only about two square feet of hull in the water at any one time. Air under the hull lifting like wings on a plane. Boat rides on the prop, man. It flies, okay?” “Sounds dangerous.” Lang chuckles, a sound that, with his pumped-up build and the Glock in his possession, is anything but reassuring. “Oh man, this boat’ll kill you, you don’t look out.” Lang leaps spryly into the cockpit, holds a hand out to help him aboard. Shane hesitates. “We’re going to get the captives?” “Captives?” Lang says, sounding puzzled. “Kelly Garner. Seth Manning.” “Not captives, man. Guests.” “Guests, yes. But they’re okay? They’re alive?” Ricky Lang grins, showing his square white teeth. “They be better when you come to the rescue, man.” Biscayne Bay is the color of a mint-green milk shake, little foamy whitecaps marching along in ragged formation, propelled by a hot, southerly breeze. Off in the distance, a land mass connected by a long sliver of causeway. Must be Key Biscayne, Shane concludes. Beyond that, South Beach is a smudge on the horizon. In the heat of the afternoon, with sunlight exploding from every whitecap, it could be a pastel mirage, hastily sketched. Closer to hand are a number of smaller islands, some natural, others created by developers, as well as navigational aids that appear to be extruded upward from the shallow sea bottom. As the throbbing beast of a boat glides through the intricate channels, heading out into the bay, Ricky Lang smiles and points out the sights, chatting amiably as he drives the
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big racing machine one-handed. Shane can’t make out a word, and forms the impression that Lang knows this full well. As if he’s performing a pantomime show, impersonating a friendly host. And yet the way he’s ever so casually leaning on his seat, oriented toward his “guest,” would make it difficult if not impossible for Shane to grapple successfully for the gun. The posture is hardly an accident. Ricky Lang may or may not be delusional, but he’s what the FBI assault teams would call “situationally aware.” Armed, dangerous and playing a part. Or maybe lost in his role, hard to say. At the end of the channel Lang slots the shifting lever to neutral, lowers the throbbing engine to idle, and raises his voice to make himself heard. “So you up for a ride, man?” “Where we going?” Shane wants to know. “Check out my little guesthouse, what you think? You want to be a hero or what?” Shane considers the man, the handsome eagle-beak of a nose, the keenly intelligent eyes. How does it reconcile with the Moe Howard hairstyle, the swaggering, almost theatrical way he presents himself? What’s the message here? Is he daring the world not to take him seriously? Does he revel in his clownish behavior, using it as a disguise? Or are these all symptoms of a deteriorating mental condition? Randall Shane, never a profiler and always distrustful of snap psychological assessments, decides he has no clue as to what motivates Ricky Lang. “I just want to find the girl,” he says truthfully. “And the boy, too, if he’s still alive.” Ricky laughs. “What are you so worried about?” “Boats make me nervous.”
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“Yeah? You don’t look nervous, man. You look more like you’re planning to jump me, hijack my ride.” Shane manages to look astonished. “Why would I do that? I want to find the girl.” “Yeah, but when I take you there, then you’ll jump me, right? Shoot me, arrest me, whatever.” Shane shakes his head. “Not me. I’m no longer a law enforcement officer.” “Somebody else then. Snipers. A SWAT team. Shoot me in the back, like at Wounded Knee.” “Doesn’t have to be that way, Mr. Lang. Take me to the girl, you’re free to go. No one will press charges. It was a simple misunderstanding.” “You serious? No charges?” “I swear.” “Like it never happened?” “Absolutely.” Lang chuckles, shakes his head. “Man, you’re a good liar, you know that?” “Seriously, if the girl is unharmed we can work something out.” Lang grins, seriously amused. “She’s okay, man. Hang on, I’ll show you.” He jams the throttle down, pinning Shane to his seat. For the next two minutes all he can do is hang on for dear life because the boat, as Lang promised, is pretty much airborne. Scudding over the swells, barely making contact with the water as it accelerates. The pitch of the huge screaming engine is a mere decibel below total disintegration. To Shane the sensation is akin to falling down an elevator shaft, except death by elevator would be over by now and at ninety
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miles an hour across open water, two minutes is a very long chunk of eternity. With the boat careening around like an Exocet missile, visibility is pretty much nil. Plumes of white spray explode over the bow, only to be crushed back into the sea by the headlong velocity of the boat. At the last possible minute Shane sees a structure looming. Scabby concrete pilings holding up what looks like a giant shoe box. They’re going to hit it head-on, at nearly a hundred miles an hour, with a thousand pounds of supercharged engine, and who knows how much fuel right under his seat. No time. That’s the profound thought he has at the very moment of his death. No time. Then Ricky Lang yanks the throttles back, killing the motor if not all of the momentum. Shane is thrown forward, whacking his head on the padded dashboard, which starts his nose bleeding in a fresh spurt, and he ends up flat on his back in the bottom of the cockpit confused and dazed. After a moment, the shoe box resolves into a boarded-up wreck of a house on stilts, way out in the bay. Nothing but blue sky and sunshine and a row of insolent-looking seagulls perched on a railing, staring down at the intruders. Ricky Lang then looms over him, offering a hand. “We’re here, man. Stiltsville, or what’s left of it.” Not a bad spot, Shane is thinking, to stash a captive or two. 22. Small Miracles Lang insists that Shane disembark by going over the side of the boat.
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“You want me to dent this fine machine by tying up to the pilings in this chop? No way, man. You want to be a hero, you can jump the last couple of yards. You gotta ask yourself, What Would Superman Do?” “It looks abandoned,” Shane says, looking up at the boarded-up shack. Rick Lang shrugs. “That’s because it is abandoned. Park took over, kicked the people out. Back in the day, this is where they gambled and whored. Put a boat aground on a sandbar two miles from shore and open for business, the law couldn’t touch you. Water’s only three feet deep, you could get out and walk.” Shane, pretending to tend to his smashed-up nose, calculates his odds. What he’d prefer is to subdue the suspect and then conduct the search, in case the shack is a ruse or a trap, as seems likely. But his adversary is pumped and hyper and despite being a head shorter looks about as easy to subdue as a charging rhino on amphetamines. Everything about Ricky Lang screams go on, make your move, like he’s been practicing his quick-draw techniques and wants to try them out. Plus there’s the fact that he may be clinically insane, talking to invisible children and muttering about, of all things, Superman. What that signifies, Shane hasn’t a clue. Other than a conviction, born of experience, that psychotic suspects are infinitely more difficult to subdue. “They’re in the shack,” Shane says, watching Lang’s hands. “Kelly and Seth. Alive?” Ricky Lang grins. “Only one way to find out, man. Because you ain’t got X-ray vision, that’s obvious. You had X-ray like me, you’d already know.” Shane makes his decision, slips over the side. Ready to duck under the hull if Lang reaches for the Glock. Instead he
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slams the gear into reverse, leaving Shane standing, as promised, in waist-deep water. By the time Shane wades over the soft, mucky bottom to the stilts beneath the shack, the big racing machine is nothing but a white rooster tail fading into the hazy distance. He’s pulling himself up a rusty iron ladder when he remembers that the cell phone is in his pants pocket, and therefore has been submersed in salt water. Great, perfect. And maybe that’s what Ricky Lang intended all along. Neutralize the larger man with promises, put him off balance with feigned insanity, then dump him in the water a couple of miles offshore and make an escape. Crawling up the ladder, Shane shakes his head. Still doesn’t make sense. No need to play games when Lang had the Glock. One bullet does it, either to disable or kill. No need for mind games or boat rides or stories about superheroes. Unless his captives are really stashed in the shack. Alive or dead. At floor level Shane hauls himself up through an opening in what remains of a narrow porch that runs around the entire building. The seagulls have fled, but unless the birds are big beer drinkers, the shack has a history as a party destination. Empty cans and bottles strewn everywhere. The windows and doors have been securely boarded with heavy plywood by Biscayne National Park, which has stenciled warnings all over the plywood. No Trespassing Condemned Property Criminal Penalties Apply This Means You!
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Shane, dripping and no longer hopeful, bangs a fist on the plywood. “Kelly! Seth! Anybody there?” He puts his ear to the plywood. Hears a moaning. Not human, but wind whistling through the building. Which means there must be an opening. He lopes around the deck, scuffling through the party debris, searching. Finds, on the side facing the sea, a section where the plywood has been unfastened along the bottom edge. Leaving a gap of an inch or so, more than enough for the wind. Shane braces himself, heaves against the heavy plywood. Not quite enough leverage. He repositions his feet against the base of the wall, leans back, using his legs. With a mighty screech the sheet of plywood comes loose, yanking screws and through-bolts through the softened wood frame. Shane lands on his ass with his hands full of splinters and the plywood in his lap. Catches his breath, shoves the plywood aside, and crawls through the dark opening. Shane stands up. The floor is spongy underfoot. There’s a stink he associates with nesting birds. A few slashes of sunlight penetrate through the galvanized metal roof and under the eaves. As his eyes adjust he’s able to determine that the shack is basically one big room, bare to the wood frame walls, stripped of anything that’s not nailed down. Empty. No place to hide a captive, every indication the shack hasn’t been occupied in years. He resists the impulse to pound his fist through the wall. Because now he knows what Ricky Lang was up to, taking him for a boat ride. He’s buying time. Whatever is going down, it’s going to happen while Shane is stranded in
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an abandoned stilt shack a mile or two from the nearest shoreline. He’s been played. Shane hurries outside to the porch, finds his cell phone in a soggy pocket. Shakes off the salty moisture, flips it open. Before daring to activate it, he blows the keys dry with his own breath, offering up a prayer. Small miracle, the screen light comes on, the phone boots up. He waits impatiently while it searches for a connection. “Come on, you little beast,” he urges. “I’ll buy you a new battery, promise.” The screen resolves. The bars climb. Connection established. Carefully he punches in a number, watches it play out across the screen. “Special Agent Healy? Can you hear me? Good, excellent. This is Randall Shane. I’ve got a situation. You’re gonna love it, trust me.”
Part III Dead Or Alive
1. Giving The Finger For me, fear is like the flu. It starts in my belly and the small of my back and makes me want to hide in bed until the flu, or the fear, is over. No bed today, no hiding. As much as I dread confronting Edwin Manning, it has to be done. My idea is to start by ringing his doorbell, assuming he has one, but the uniformed security guard in the lobby has other ideas. “Sorry, miss. Only way you get upstairs is if they call down, put you on the access list.” “This is a matter of life and d-d-death,” I stammer. “Sorry, miss, those are the rules.” I’m looking past him, wondering if I can make a dash for the elevators. He senses my desperation—or maybe he doesn’t want to waste batteries Tasering me—and offers to call the penthouse, make an inquiry. “What do I say?” he asks me, wanting to be helpful. “Tell him this is Jane Garner and if he doesn’t talk to me his son will die.” The guard’s mild brown eyes widen in shock.
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“I didn’t kidnap his son,” I assure him. “But I know who did. Tell him all of that.” The guard hands me the intercom phone. “Better tell him yourself.” The voice on the other end does not belong to Edwin Manning—might be the egg man, I can’t tell—but I nevertheless make my spiel, essentially repeating what I told the astonished security guard and adding, “You’ve one minute. I’m in the lobby.” Fern says I’m the bravest woman she knows, but surely that can’t be true or I wouldn’t be fighting the impulse to throw up. It’s not that I’m afraid of Edwin Manning or his henchman. That’s not where the fear originates. The fear has to do with not knowing what is going to happen in the next few hours, and how I will survive if it all goes wrong. What do you do if the world ends? I’ve no idea and it makes me afraid. In less than a minute Edwin Manning emerges from the elevator accompanied by Mr. Popkin. Both men look as concerned and uneasy as I feel, but there’s something in Manning’s palpable anxiety that makes me know exactly what to do. Before he can speak I reach out and take his hand. “You have to come with me,” I tell him. “If you love your son, come with me.” Our little team has assembled in my suite at the Europa. Randall Shane, looking beleaguered and for some reason ashamed as he holds an ice pack to his swollen face. In addition, Special Agent Sean Healy and his partner, Special Agent Paloma Salazar. All of whom had thought it might be nice if Mr. Manning was persuaded to join us, and agreed that
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he’d be more likely to respond positively to a desperate fellow parent, which is where I came in. Acting desperate had not been a problem. “Who’s this?” Healy wants to know when the egg man comes through the door. “Salvatore Popkin,” the bald man responds, holding out his left hand for a shake. “I work for Mr. Manning.” Healy glances at the hand. “You’ll have to wait outside. Family only.” When the egg man starts to protest, Manning goes, “Do what he says,” without a backward glance. As Popkin backs awkwardly out the door, dissed and dismissed, I take him aside. “Sally? There’s a nice restaurant out by the pool. Get something to eat or drink, whatever you want. Put it on my room. I’ll let you know when your boss is ready to leave.” The egg man blushes, not a pretty sight. Back inside, Manning paces in a tight circle, flexing his hands like he wants to strangle someone. “Don’t tell me,” he says. “It all went to shit, right? That’s why you brought me here, to make your excuses.” Special Agent Salazar guides Manning to a chair and insists that he sit, relax. She’s about thirty, with big lovely eyes, dark pixie hair that frames her oval face. She’s dressed in a nicely tailored linen suit, can’t be more than a size four, tops, and wearing expertly applied makeup. Only thing wrong with the picture is that she’s wearing flats instead of heels, but for all I know that’s an agency regulation. Makes sense—if you have to chase down a suspect, or stand and fire your weapon, heels are probably not a good idea. Apparently the arrangement is that she will do most of
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the talking and Healy will take notes and comment when he sees fit. In a clear, melodic voice with a slight Latino accent, Agent Salazar informs Edwin Manning that the FBI has information they are obliged to share about his son. Manning stares fiercely at his hands. “You’re going to tell me he’s dead. Get it over with.” “Sir, we have no information regarding the physical condition of your son.” His head lifts. “So he’s alive?” “We don’t know his status,” says Salazar carefully. “We are in active pursuit of a suspect who confessed to the abduction of your son and Mrs. Garner’s daughter, and then fled. We believe he may be heading for home. Indian territory.” If Edwin Manning looked sick before, now he looks on the point of death. “I told you people to leave us alone. Begged you. Now look what you’ve done!” “Has Ricky Lang made contact with you today?” Manning shakes his head. “Has he at any time demanded payment for the safe return of your son and/or Mrs. Garner’s daughter?” “It isn’t about money,” says Manning savagely, his eyes shiny. “Is that all you people understand?” Maybe it’s just me, but the scorn for money seems kind of strange, coming from a guy who manages an eight-billiondollar hedge fund. On the other hand he’s obviously been through the wringer, so I decide to cut him some slack. For a moment there in the lobby of his condo I’d thought we were finally in sync. Maybe not—he’s yet to admit to knowing about Kelly, or to acknowledge the fact that I’m as much a victim as he is. When Shane glances up from his ice pack, he has two
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slightly blackened eyes that make him look like a melancholy raccoon. “They’re trying to help,” he says to Manning. “I’m the one who screwed up.” Healy snorts. “You said it.” Shane keeps his silence for the rest of the meeting. The petite but somehow imposing Agent Salazar remains a study in calm. Perched on the corner of one of the suite’s napa leather sofas, she elucidates her agency’s position deftly, and without a lot of the law enforcement jargon her partner favors. “Here’s where we stand, Mr. Manning. Two days ago you declined assistance and refused to confirm that your son was missing. We respected your wishes. Then Mrs. Garner and her consultant—he’s the big gentleman over there, I believe you’ve met—Mrs. Garner and Mr. Shane developed evidence that her daughter Kelly was abducted from a private aircraft registered in your name. As near as we can determine she was a passenger on a flight piloted by your son, Seth Manning. We have a witness who will testify that the aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air 350, is being stored in a hangar at an unregistered airfield located within the Nakosha reservation. Therefore we conclude that your son was abducted at the same time as Kelly Garner, and that because of your financial connections to the Nakosha gaming resort, he may have been the prime target, and Miss Garner may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. “At Mrs. Garner’s request we have opened an investigation into the disappearance of her daughter. The investigation is ongoing, but so far our main focus has been on Ricky Lang, a prominent member of the Nakosha tribe. Mr. Lang has no criminal record, but he does have a long and complicated history with the tribe and, more important, with the founding and financing of their new gaming resort. Until re-
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cently he was, in fact, president of the tribal council and chief of the Nakosha people. Our working theory is that Ricky Lang abducted your son as a means to force you to intercede with the tribal council on his behalf. Is that correct, Mr. Manning?” Agent Salazar’s cool, clear recitation of the facts seems to have drained Manning of indignation, if not of anxiety. “Yeah, that’s it. You figured it out. Did you figure out he’s crazy?” “In Mr. Shane’s opinion, Ricky Lang shows signs of mental instability and may be delusional,” Salazar concedes. Manning’s expression is one of profound sorrow. “I’ll tell you how crazy he is. Ricky contacted me a few days ago. Wanted to borrow the Beechcraft, said it was a family emergency. He knew Seth would be piloting the plane. He wanted my son, not the plane. Ricky Lang kidnapped Seth, cut off his ring finger, and FedExed it to me.” Both agents bend over their notebooks. Meanwhile my heart plummets, drowned by a vision of my little girl being dismembered, one appendage at a time. It’s too much, too awful. I have to banish the image or lose my own hold on sanity. On instinct I reach out, give Manning’s hand a squeeze. He looks at me guiltily. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Ricky said if I reported this to the authorities he’d send me pieces of Seth in the mail. I kept my promise, but he cut off his little finger anyway. I went to the council but those bastards refused to help. They claim Ricky is no longer their concern or responsibility.” Salazar clears her throat. “Any idea why Mr. Lang was fired as chief?” Manning shrugs. “No one will talk to me. You have to understand, the tribe has always been very secretive. I assume it’s because he became unstable, acting out. I do know he’s
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been showing up at the casino, ranting at the guards and customers. I was told that he claims to have superpowers. For all I know, he’s hearing voices from outer space.” Salazar nods. “The casino incidents conform with our information—there have been several confrontations with Mr. Lang, and at least one assault, although no charges have been filed by the tribal police. We also find it interesting that Lang is no longer living on the reservation. He recently purchased a home in Cable Grove, did you know that?” Manning looks surprised, maybe a little puzzled. “Cable Grove? Well, I guess he could afford it. He’s quite wealthy, you know. They all are. I helped make them rich and this is how they repay me,” he adds bitterly. Healy perks up. “Are you saying this was a revenge abduction? That Ricky Lang took your son to get even?” “No, no,” says Manning. “That’s what makes this whole thing so crazy. Ricky had no reason to punish me. We, my staff, we helped his tribe get full recognition. Our relationship was always cordial, very businesslike. On a personal level I liked the guy. He was bright, engaging, and very ambitious for his people.” “In what way did you help the tribe get full recognition?” Salazar wants to know. “The same thing we’ve done for other small tribes who want to cash in on gaming opportunities. I arranged to have them represented in Washington by a top lobbying firm.” “Sounds expensive.” “Five million and change. Cheap when you consider what they got out of it. The sovereign right to form their own government, their own police force, and of course their own casino.” “Which made them all wealthy.” Manning leans forward, making eye contact with the
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agents. “Last year’s net profit for the casino and resort was over four hundred million dollars. Ricky always said he wanted every member of the tribe to be a millionaire. They are now, no question.” Healy and Salazar scribble busily in their notebooks. “Are we correct that your hedge fund provides financing but does not actually run the day-to-day operation?” Salazar wants to know. Manning nods. “The casino is run by an independent management company. No connection to Merrill Manning Capital. My fund has a small investment in the company that manages the hotel and resort, but we stay out of the gaming operation.” “You provide the money to get this all started and yet when you went to them for help the tribal council threw you out?” He nods miserably. “They’re afraid of Ricky. He’s out of control and they know it. He wants to be reinstated as president and chief of the Nakosha. They refuse. Claim he’s no longer a member of the tribe.” “Are you aware of any speculation as to why?” “No. Like I said, the Nakosha are a small tribe and they’re very secretive. It’s essentially a large family, a clan. Less than two hundred adult members. All I know is, one day Ricky Lang is the chief, the next day his cousin Joe takes over.” “And this occurred about six months ago, is that correct?” “In January, yes.” “Where you in communication with Ricky Lang after he was deposed as chief?” Manning shakes his head. “I had no reason to be. The fund doesn’t even deal directly with the tribe, we deal with the accountants who manage the money.”
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Salazar gives him a tight smile, closes her notebook. “Thank you, Mr. Manning. We know what a horrible experience this must be for you. The resources of the agency is being deployed to attempt recovery of Kelly and Seth. We will keep you informed.” The two agents stand up, meeting over. “That’s it?” Manning looks totally befuddled, lost in a fog of anxious concern. “Yeah, there’s one other thing,” says Special Agent Healy. “We’ll need the finger.” 2. The News From Valley Stream To be honest, Shane’s silence is freaking me out. Has the big guy given up? Even with the FBI finally on the case, I still want him on my side, searching for Kelly. “Randall?” I ask. “Are you okay? Do you need to go to the E.R.?” Healy and Manning have departed. Leaving us with Agent Salazar, who seems to share my concern for Shane’s wellbeing. “Place like this probably has a doctor on call,” she suggests. “I’m fine,” he says gruffly, waving us off. “Just a broken nose, no big deal. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.” Somehow I couldn’t square the image of Shane getting beaten to the punch by another man. Which is ridiculous, especially if the other guy had a gun. Except the egg man had a gun and Shane had taken it away in the blink of an eye, no problem. So I’m confused. What happened? Speaking of superheroes, how did mine fall to earth? “I’m sorry, Jane,” he says, a world of hurt in his eyes. “What can I say? I blew it.”
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“But you found out who took Kelly,” I remind him. “He confessed to you. We finally know who did it.” “It was an error in judgment on my part,” says Shane, as if obliged to make his own confession. “I never should have gone onto his property, or into his house. I should have waited for backup, done it by the book.” “The book?” Salazar rolls her eyes. “That would have taken hours. And based on what—your gut saying Lang might be involved? Because his name had been mentioned by a casino security cop? It was a good hunch, but it was thin. Sean would have slow-played it. You did the right thing.” “Sometimes observation is more effective than action,” Shane says miserably. “I went in there so quick, I never noticed the suspect was on the property.” “In a boat,” I remind him. “Yeah, but there all the same. Once he saw me enter that house, he knew that we knew. It set him off.” “So he punched you.” “No, no,” says Shane, shaking his head. “That’s not what I mean. Taking a punch is no big deal. What concerns me is that my careless actions may have put your daughter into more peril. Once I showed up, Ricky Lang went over the edge. I set him off. He’s in end-game mode, and that’s on me.” I’d like to slap some sense into the big guy, but don’t want to reinjure his poor swollen nose. “So it’s your fault, what he did to Kelly? What he intends to do to her? You going to sit here feeling sorry for yourself, is that your plan?” “I’m really sorry.” “Get up, you big lug,” I tell him, hands on my hips. “I know you’re not Superman, even if this crazy bastard thinks he is. But you’re the best I’ve got, and that will have to do.”
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*** Thirty minutes later we’re checked out of Europa—thank God for plastic—and on the road again. Even better, Randall Shane has finally quit apologizing. Possibly because driving requires all of his considerable concentration. Honestly, you’d think he was piloting the space shuttle, not a rental sedan. The plan is, agents Healy and Salazar and the rest of the FBI will be doing their thing while we do ours. The tribal police have been informed of a suspected violation of federal statute—kidnapping, abduction by force—and are expected to cooperate in a reservation-wide manhunt for Ricky Lang and his victims. The arrangement is that FBI helicopters will search by air, coordinating with the Nakosha cops below. One of the choppers will carry a tactical assault team, who will be landed and deployed the moment the FBI has a clear lead as to the location. The hunt for Kelly that started out with me alone, and then Shane, has at long last expanded to more than two hundred law enforcement agents, all of them focused on recovering the captives alive. It’s happening. The big guns are out. Part of me is jubilant, part terrified. Bottom line, it’s a great relief to have all these people searching for her, even if the search itself might make the perpetrator do something drastic. Waiting has never been a viable option, and now that we know Ricky Lang is taking trophies, it’s even less so. Taking trophies. Don’t think about that. Think about Kelly, how much you want to find her safe and sound. How good it will be when it happens, when I have her back. Which reminds me of a line
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from a song my own mother used to love, about a mother and child reunion. Beach Boys? Joni Mitchell? I cycle through Mom’s favorite bands, trying to think of the song. Helps the “taking trophy” thing recede to where it’s manageable. We’re about fifteen minutes from the hotel, heading for a place called Glade City, on the far end of the Everglades. Shane wants to “run down a person of interest”—not literally, he promises—check out the owner of the truck who was messing with the Beechcraft. He says in Glade City I can rent an entire motel for the price of a suite at Europa. Plus we’ll be closer to the search area, good to go when the search teams locate my baby. “Simon and Garfunkel,” I say suddenly. “’Scuse me?” “One of my mom’s favorite bands. Never mind, just thinking.” “Think away,” he says, concentrating on traffic. “I can always use the extra brain power.” My cell rings. Fern with news. “You’ll never guess” are the first words out of her mouth. “Jessica knows all about Kelly and Seth Manning.” “Jess?” I say, amazed. “I thought Jess and Kelly never talked.” “Ancient history, apparently,” says Fern with a chuckle. “Now they do.” One of the great regrets of our friendship is that our daughters never clicked. Never really bonded, despite sharing a crib for a time and having moms who lived in each other’s pockets. Whether it’s the age difference—Jess is fifteen months older—or a difference in personality, we never knew. Three years hadn’t kept Fern and me apart. If anything it made the bond stronger because I always looked up to her,
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went to her for guidance, admired her tenacity and her toughness. Not that Jess and Kelly hated each other, or worried about competing for our affections. It’s just that we kept pushing them together and they kept going their separate ways. By the time Jess was in middle school—a crucial two grades ahead—they might as well have been living on different planets. They ran with totally different crowds and never seemed to be more than indifferently polite to each other. Secretly I’d always wondered if Jess found Kelly’s cancer off-putting. Not that she was ever mean, but that she found the whole subject icky, something she preferred not to think about. Like maybe Kelly’s situation was a constant reminder that kids her age can die, and who needed that? Plus there was the added complication of her parent’s marriage breaking up, dealing with her bereft and needy father, not to mention the consequences of her own wild behavior. Fern’s talk about chaining her to a radiator, that wasn’t without cause. Let’s just say Jess went boy-crazy in a dangerous way and leave it at that. Then, miracle of miracles, she somehow manages to graduate from high school and within a few months her behavior changes radically. Steady boyfriend, a new outlook on life, and good grades in community college, where she’s studying to be a nurse. The sweet child reemerging as an adult. But it never occurred to me that one of the changes might have involved a connection with my daughter. “Kelly never mentioned it,” I say. “I had no idea.” “They never tell us anything,” Fern says. “We don’t exist. Not in their little world we don’t.” “How did it happen?” “According to Jess, Kelly bumped into her at the mall— they were shopping in the same store. Kelly had some really
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sweet things to say about a skirt Jess was trying on. So they ended up doing a mind-meld at Starbucks. Caffeinated girl talk. Yakking about their childhoods, and Kelly’s illness, and how their clueless mothers were always pushing them together, which they both hated. Not the other girl, but the pushing. Anywho, Jess talks about her relationship with Tim—they’re living together, did I mention that?—and Kelly tells her about this cute older guy she met online. From there it’s all about how Kelly wants to learn how to fly, which by the way doesn’t surprise Jess one bit, and how she’d be willing to sleep with her instructor, he’s that cute, but it turns out he’s gay.” Fern waits for my reaction. “Seth Manning is gay?” I ask, my voice rising. “Are you sure?” Shane glances at me, shrugs, as if indifferent to the information. “How could I be sure?” Fern says. “I never met the guy. Even then, who can tell if they don’t advertise? But my point is, Kelly told Jess he was gay. Deeply in the closet, too, because he adores his father and doesn’t want to disappoint him. Very conflicted. That’s the word Kelly used. Told Jess that in a few short months Seth had become her closest friend in the world. He was teaching her to fly and she was trying to help him deal with his father. Or deal with his own feelings about his father. Whatever, Jess was really impressed, said Kelly was having her first adult relationship, even if it didn’t involve sex. I blame that on the psych course she took last semester—now she’s an expert on adult relationships! As if! She came away thinking Kelly Garner is, in her words, really cool for her age. Like Jess is so much more grown-up, right?” “Did she know about them flying to Florida?”
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“Sorry, no. As far as Jess knew, the farthest Kelly had flown was to some airfield in upstate New York. Kelly said she wanted to solo in the mountains.” “You’re amazing, Fern.” “What’s amazing? I mentioned Kelly to Jess, she told me all about it. Wasn’t like I had to pry.” Fern pauses, then asks, very lightly, “Any news?” “Tons,” I say, and fill her in. 3. Papa Has A Plan The helicopters look like giant dragonflies sweeping over the eastern edge of the rez, along the grassy shoreline. Busy things, buzzing around, scaring the birds, flattening the grass when they swoop down for a closer look at what, some old gator sunning himself? A wrecked vehicle abandoned to the elements? A roofless chickee hut from the bad old days when the people were poor? Figure a few more hours of daylight, they’ll go back to wherever they came from, none the wiser. Ricky isn’t worried because he’s willed himself invisible. Chopper could be right overhead, they’d never see him. White eyes don’t know how to look, wouldn’t know a man from a stump post. Might be fun to shoot one down. Why not? He’s got the firepower. Fully automatic Breda M37 machine gun with a full belt, a thousand rounds. Full-auto AA-12 shotgun with enough shells to melt the barrel. Couple of classic M16 semis that come with cool-looking bandoliers. A fully equipped M40, the Marine Corps standard issue sniper rifle, with day/night scope. Deadly up to a half mile, which is going to come in handy. Various pistols and revolvers, all .45 caliber so he doesn’t have to screw around with
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different shells for the handguns. And just for fun, a brace of Russian-made RPG-7s with fuel-air warheads capable of exploding a good-size house, or, for that matter, a noisy helicopter. Oops, kaboom. Talk about wow factor. Not now, though. For the moment he’ll remain unseen and unseeable. Thigh deep in the warm water, muck between his toes, pushing his flat bottom aluminum skiff ahead of him, following a shallow channel only he knows. The stash of weapons in the skiff, under a flat gray tarpaulin covered with grass. He’s coming in the back way with a little surprise for his brothers. He’ll cache the weapons, enough to arm a full platoon of warriors, then pop up where they least expect him, surprise, surprise. What the council doesn’t know, Joe Lang and his little club, is that they’ve given him the power. Saying he doesn’t exist, that he’s dead to them, that’s what makes him invisible. Soon he will be a ghost among ghosts, making amends to some, seeking revenge of others. Letting the tall white man live, he’d wondered at his own generosity. Seeing the helicopters made him understand. Because the time has come, and the tall white man serves as the messenger, the go-between. No more secrets, no more subterfuge. No more begging. Ricky likes it that the choppers are over the rez, searching for him, for a needle in a hundred square miles of haystack. He likes that the tribal police have mustered a team in support of the federal invaders. Or pretended to. He’s noticed that none of the Nakosha uniforms have seen fit to leave their brand-new cruisers. They know Ricky Lang is out there and they’d rather stay on the roads, thank you very much. Doesn’t help that very few of them know the back-
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country, not like Ricky does. Most of the young officers would hesitate to get their feet wet, let alone hunt for an armed and dangerous enemy who could be anywhere. Superman becomes Swamp Thing, that’s how his legend will be amended. The idea makes him laugh because he is, indeed, a thing of the swamp. Even his breath smells like a bog, a bull gator’s breath. The sour funk of all the bad things he’s done, and for which he must atone or risk being a ghost forever. He hears a splash, sees that his children have come to play in the boat. Tyler, the baby, splashing gleefully while his older sisters wear the pirate costumes he bought them last Halloween. “Hi, kids,” he says. “Papa’s happy to see you.” The children stare at him, saying nothing. “Soon we’ll talk,” he assures them, shoving along the boatload of weapons. “Papa has a plan.” 4. Blood Relations “They not bad boys, understand, they just too poor to be good.” Another folksy remark from Detective Rufus T. Sydell, of the Glade City Police Department. Roof, as he asks to be called, is a skinny, small-boned gentleman with a sun-damaged complexion and a slightly goofy, frequently deployed smile that’s about as wide as his face. Deeply crinkled, flat-gray eyes, set wide apart, as if he can see around corners. Wears his silvery hair in a military burr cut and began his second career as cop after retiring from the United States Marine Corps. “Sydell a cracker name, like Whittle is a cracker name,” Roof explains, weaving his fingers together as he speaks.
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“Go back far enough we got relatives in common, guaranteed. Them old boys got up to all kinds of mischief out in the islands, fathering children and what all. Young lady, I am referring to the Thousand Islands, an area runs along the west side of the Glades. Sydells lived on a shell mound out in the Glades, just like the Whittles. Mound is a little island made by the Calusa Indians long time ago—heaps of oyster shells piled in the mangroves till it gets to be a foot or so above flood level. Just barely in this world, you might say.” “Yes, sir,” I say, feeling like one of his young recruits. Ten minutes into his charm-dog spiel, I know enough to shut up and salute. We’re talking to Roof, or rather he’s talking to us, because Shane wants to follow up on the Whittle brothers, see if they have any connection to Ricky Lang. Could be they’re just taking advantage, trying to fence a stolen aircraft, or it might be that they’re acting as agents for Lang, in which case they might have knowledge of the abduction. A notion that Detective Sydell dismisses as improbable. “Smugglin’ drugs like their pappy done is more likely,” he says. “From what I know, this Ricky Lang individual don’t have much to do with white folk. First ever I heard of him, he was raising hell with the Sheriff’s Department, trying to enforce a no-alcohol regulation on the reservation. Long-established cracker business, trading moonshine with the Indians, and Mr. Lang made it pretty clear he didn’t like ’shine and he didn’t like crackers. Man was a real crusader.” “What happened? What changed him?” Roof shrugs happily. “Money and politics, I guess. You think them boys up in Tallahassee play fast and loose? Young lady, I refer to our noble state legislators. Tallahassee ain’t
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got nothing on a tribal council, from what I hear, not once they got a dollar to fight over.” “Either of the Whittle brothers have a record?” Shane wants to know. “No more than the usual juvenile hijinks,” Roof responds airily, putting his hands behind his head, leaning back in his chair. “As I recall, young Dug—spells his name like what gets dug with a shovel—young Dug was brought up on charges for tormenting an alligator. Dragged it behind a vehicle for a few miles, as I recall, and got caught by the game warden. Must have been about twelve years old at the time. Then there was neighbors complained of a missing dog and a pet raccoon, blamed it on Dug. So we kept an eye on him. Any more pets went missing, I never heard about it. Roy keeps a watch over him, too, is my guess. Dug ain’t what you’d call full-on retarded but he’s pretty dim.” “The pickup truck was brand-new,” Shane points out. “Is Roy Whittle gainfully employed?” Roof laughs. “You mean like a paycheck job? Not that I’m aware, no. That don’t mean nothin’ in particular. There’s ways to earn a living around here don’t involve criminal activity.” From Shane’s tight smile I can tell he thinks Detective Sydell is playing him. “You’re not concerned they were on an unregulated airfield with an aircraft used in an abduction?” In his friendly, corn-pone way, Roof remains dismissive. “Out of my territory. Took place on the reservation, correct? Seems to me, if the Whittle boys were trespassing, so was you, which makes you not much use as a witness, was it ever to come to that. That said, somebody from a law enforcement
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agency develops evidence or hands us a warrant, we’ll pick ’em up, rest assured. But from what I know, an abduction scheme would be a big leap for Roy Whittle. Never struck me as that ambitious. So if you and all your associates in the federal guvmint don’t mind, let me check up on the Whittles. This is my little slice of the world, I prefer to strut my own stuff.” “Okay, that’s fine,” says Shane, standing up. He adds, stiffly but politely, “Thanks for your time.” “No problem, I try to be helpful.” Roof says cheerily. He takes my right hand in both of his, gives me a reassuring squeeze. “Young lady, I hope this all works out. Terrible thing when a child goes missing. We hear anything from the search parties, anything at all, I’ll be sure to let you know.” He stops us at the door, pretends to have an afterthought. “Mr. Shane? Young lady? It just come to me, that if you’re looking for a local connection to Ricky Lang, might be you’re barking up the wrong tree. There is a connection, come to think, but it ain’t the Whittles. Man you want to see is a fella goes by the name Leo Fish.” Shane perks up, interested. “Leo Fish. He’s associated with Ricky Lang?” Roof smiles like a toad with a nice fat fly in its mouth. “There’s a blood association ’tween ’em. Ricky had children by Leo’s sister. Used to be real friendly, Leo and Ricky.” “Used to be?” Roof shrugs elaborately. “Heard they had a falling-out.” “Where do we find this Leo Fish?” If Roof’s smile got any wider he’d swallow his own head. “Now that might be a problem, if Leo don’t want to be found. Guess you best ask around, see what falls out of the tree.”
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*** The Glade City Motorcourt Inn looks to have sprung up from the moldy wet ground in the 1950s, and the various hand-lettered signs posted around the office—No Fishing Off The Dock Past 10 PM, No Bait In Rooms, Ice For Beer Only— indicates a clientele of visiting anglers. That probably accounts for the slightly fishy smell to the place. The scrawny, curlyhaired blonde in charge looks like a product of the same decade as the decaying motel, but can’t be more than thirty years old. She introduces herself as Trishy, has the same wide-apart flat-gray eyes as Rufus Sydell, which makes me wonder if they’re related, but frankly I haven’t got the nerve to ask. Maybe everybody “hereabouts” has a blood connection, as good old Roof implied. I’m not exactly a world traveler— life intervened, as the saying goes—but in my few excursions have never felt so in need of a passport. Not that Trishy is the least bit unfriendly. On the contrary, she’s very chatty and curious. “Welcome to Glade City,” she says, handing us separate keys. “You’ll notice it’s not exactly a city. Heck, it’s barely a village. Used to be called just plain Glade and added the city part when the developers come down from Naples. Then the developers got flooded out by the hurricanes and left the name behind. You here for the fishing?” she asks doubtfully, checking out my slacks and shoes. When Shane explains, her eyes widen. “Oh gosh! The search! I just this now heard about it. Wondered about the helicopters, figured it was somebody lost. We get the kayak folks, sometimes they misplace themselves, can’t find their way back. Your daughter, she was took by Indians, you say?” “Looks that way,” I say. “The suspect is Nakosha,” adds Shane. “We don’t know who else might be involved.”
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“I heard they’re on the hunt for Ricky Lang, is that true?” I’m getting the impression that at least some of Trishy’s eagerness is about keeping Shane in the room. The batting of the eyelashes, the deep breathing that draws attention to her modest little chest. Maybe he reminds her of her father or a boyfriend, or both. An unkind thought—she seems totally sincere in her concerns—but I’m cranky and on edge, wondering why we’ve gone so far afield from the search area. Wanting it to be over, wanting Kelly so bad my bones ache. Shouldn’t we be with the copter crews, or at least somewhere on the reservation, awaiting news? Shouldn’t we be doing something other than chatting up the locals? “That’s right,” says Shane, warming to his fetching little inquisitor, or at least giving the impression of great interest. “Do you know Ricky Lang?” “Me?” she giggles prettily. “Are you serious? No way! Not personal, but he’s real famous in these parts. Everybody’s heard of Ricky Lang. When he made all them Nakosha instant millionaires, folks around here started searching their family trees. You got old boys as white as cake flour claiming some Nakosha uncle, trying to get at the money. Nobody did, though. They had it sewed up tighter than a…” She hesitates, thinks better of what she was about to say. “Um, you know, real tight.” “This is very helpful,” Shane says, leaning slightly closer. “Give me the lay of the land, as the saying goes.” “Mmm. That surely is the saying.” Batt-batt-batt of the long lashes. Who does she thinks she’s kidding? Okay, she’s probably capable of kidding every heterosexual male on planet Earth, but I’m not buying. “How about Leo Fish?” Shane asks, very casual. “Do you know Leo?”
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“Sure, a course. Everybody knows Fish. He’s a character, Fish is. One of the best fish and hunting guides ever, till he quit guidin’ and went back to the country. Oh!” she exclaims as a happy thought arrives. “Fish knows Ricky Lang! They’re practically related. That’s why you asked about Fish, right?” “You’re quick, Trishy. Can’t fool you.” If her smile was any more coy, some director would be yelling cut! “Oh, I can be fooled,” she says, entirely focused on the big guy. “Depends who’s doin’ the foolin’, if you know what I mean.” Shane strokes her hand where it lays ever so fetchingly on the counter between them. “Trishy, you are a treasure,” he tells her. “Any idea where we can find Leo Fish?” “Oh,” she says, melting. “I might.” 5. Another Way In “The lay of the land? Trishy, you are a treasure?” “Interrogation takes many forms,” Shane says archly. Luggage has been dragged to our adjoining rooms, Trishy thoughtfully providing units sharing an interior door, with shoddy latches on both sides. The place is clean but primitive. Faded linoleum on the floors, peeling wallpaper with a fish motif. An old AC unit is noisy but it blows cold air—a great relief from the muggy heat of the fading twilight. The bath has cracked tiles but looks and smells recently scrubbed. Not the Europa, certainly, but better on the inside than the out. “Depends on who’s doin’ the foolin’, if you know what I mean,” I say breathily, batting my stubby little eyelashes. Shane grins ruefully. “Okay, maybe I overdid it. But we’ve
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got a place to start looking. That’s more than we got out of Detective Sydell.” “Maybe if you had patted his little hand,” I suggest. “Maybe if you had, young lady,” he rejoins, mimicking the cop. The bantering runs out of steam, leaving an awkward silence. The elephant we’re ignoring is what’s happening on the reservation, out of our control. The manhunt for Ricky Lang, and what might happen to my daughter as a consequence of those actions. Has she already been maimed? Is she even alive? Seth Manning was clearly the target, the means of forcing Edwin Manning to act on Lang’s behalf. Why keep another, relatively useless hostage alive? I keep thinking of that ugly phrase, collateral damage. Shane sets up his laptop, connecting a phone cord to the jack. No wireless of course. And nothing much to report, other than a credit report for Roy Whittle, the owner of the new pickup Shane spotted at the hidden airfield. “Interesting,” says Shane, studying the screen. “No indication of a lien on the vehicle. Therefore no loan. I guess Roy must have saved his pennies, huh?” “You mean how did he get the money?” “Exactly. From what Sydell said, the family is dirt-poor. Fully equipped Dodge Ram is thirty grand, easy.” Shane is seated on the bed because the cubbyhole desk is way too small to accommodate his long legs. I take the only chair in the room, force myself to stop pacing because the constant motion seems to make things worse. “Why do we care about these guys?” I ask. “Why are we here, instead of with the FBI?” Shane listens, considers, then formulates a response. “Okay, a couple of things. The agency will shut us out of the
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search. They’ll be very polite about it, but they absolutely do not want you—or me, for that matter—in the vicinity of their tactical teams. The Nakosha cops are likely to be even less inclusive. So we need another way in. That’s point one. Point two, Lang almost certainly has accomplices. He’s hanging out in Cable Grove, thirty miles from his old stomping ground. Somebody has to be looking after Kelly and Seth.” “Maybe he hid them in Cable Grove. An apartment somewhere in Miami. Why not? Why does it have to be the reservation?” “Good question. Theoretically the captive location could be anywhere. But the likelihood is that he’d use somewhere on the reservation not only because that’s where the abduction took place, but because it would be, from his point of view, much safer. No need to transport captives over public roads. Even better, state and local law enforcement is forbidden from entering the reservation. Investigations have to be carried out under the authority of tribal police. Federal authorities like the FBI can swoop in, demand cooperation, but how long did that take? Two days? Means he’s had a lot of time to find a hidey-hole and he’s operating in a familiar area. His homeland. An example of how that might be a factor, you may recall the pursuit of Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber. Goes to ground in the Appalachians. FBI knows he’s in there somewhere, living off the land, but it takes years to apprehend him.” “Great. Glad to hear it. You mean the man who took my daughter could do the same thing, run around the swamp for years.” Shane looks rueful. “Sorry, no. Rudolph is simply an example of fugitive thinking, and a bad one at that. Unlike the Army of God bomber, Ricky Lang is mentally unstable.
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He’s unraveling. He thinks he has superpowers. Eventually he’ll make a mistake or deliberately reveal himself. Plus we know he has an agenda that involves the tribal council. That’s our hope, that the captives he abducted are no longer central to whatever is motivating him. Everything he’s done so far is an effort to get back what he lost—power, prestige, his place in what amounts to an extended family. Manning, your daughter, they’re just means to an end. What he wants is to reconcile with his tribe. Granted, he’s done it in a way that ensures he’ll never be reconciled—he’s now a federal fugitive—but that was his game plan. My impression, he’s mentally unbalanced, but there’s a certain logic to his actions.” “Are you saying they won’t find Kelly? All those helicopters, all those people searching?” “No. I’m not suggesting that. They’ll find his lair eventually. But the sun is almost down, so the air search will suspend until first light. That leaves the tribal police, coordinating with FBI. But the ground effort will be limited by darkness, too. Maybe they’ll find her tonight, maybe they won’t. You have to pick your battles, Mrs. Garner, and my battle isn’t with the search parties, it’s out here on the periphery of the investigation, trying to find another way in.” “You said that, find another way in, but what does it mean?” “Pursuing intelligence. Locating someone who may have knowledge of Ricky Lang’s secret places. Where he’d go if he was hiding from the world.” Shane pivots the laptop, points to the screen. “See this? That’s a Google Earth view of the Everglades. This little corner up here, that’s the Nakosha reservation, but it borders wilderness on two sides, all of which is part of
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either Everglades National Park or Big Cypress National Preserve. That’s over three million acres, and the only human occupation is around the edges—and that’s only within the area officially designated as parkland. The actual wilderness is at least five times larger. Very few roads, and most of those are on the periphery. There are hundreds of square miles that can only be accessed on foot or, in a limited way, by airboat.” “So it really is hopeless. He could be anywhere.” “No, no. He’s somewhere, a definite somewhere,” Shane strenuously insists. “That’s my point. We need to find a way in to Ricky Lang’s world. Either by locating one of his partners in crime, or an individual who knows him intimately and is willing to talk.” “Whittle or this Fish person.” “Precisely.” Suddenly Shane puts the laptop aside and leaps up, as if he’s got ants in his pants. Or, given our location, roaches. But it’s his cell phone, which he left on vibe, and soon enough he flips it open. “Agent Healy? We’re fine, any news? I see.” He shakes his head at me, restarting my heart. “Good, excellent,” he says, using his eyes to let me know the information isn’t life or death. “Let me get a pen, I want to write this down.” He fumbles around in his luggage, locating notebook and pen. He listens for about five minutes, saying little more than uh-huh, and small encouragements to keep Healy talking. Finally he concludes, “Sean? Thank you very much. We really and truly appreciate everything you’ve done, everything you’re doing. We know the operation is in good hands. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Garner? She says yes. Excellent. Talk to you soon.” He flips the phone shut, sits there thoughtfully, as if
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ticking over various ideas. “Interesting,” he says. “We finally have a motive.” “Beyond him being crazy?” “Might be what made him crazy. Agent Healy just interviewed Ricky Lang’s live-in girlfriend. Apparently this is a recent relationship and the girl has no connection to the tribe, but she does know that Ricky has been obsessed about his dead children.” “Dead children?” I say, the words catching in my throat. “Six months ago Lang’s children perished in a house fire. According to the girlfriend, Ricky blames the tribal council.” “Oh my God. You think they killed his children?” “No idea,” says Shane. “This is all second- or third-hand information. But if Lang holds the tribe responsible for the death of his kids, that explains a lot.” “He’s out of his mind with grief.” Shane nods thoughtfully. “And seeking revenge.” 6. Mr. Crispy Says Goodbye Roy figures patience is in order, take it one step at a time. Dug and Stick have been on his case about the helicopters flitting over the airfield four or five times in the fading hour before sunset, as if puzzling out whether to bother landing. Like all this unwanted attention is his fault somehow. Stick Davis, more or less sober, wants to know what the Feds are looking for, and what does it have to do with a stolen Beechcraft. “This some kind of sting operation?” he asks in his deceptively casual Alabama drawl. “Y’all setting up old Stick?” Roy figures Stick is armed someway or other. Not in the vicinity of his waist—the oddly protuberant drinker’s belly
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takes up all the available space—but maybe an ankle iron, or a larger-caliber handgun secreted in the tattered backpack on the floor of the truck. Stick in the rear seat, legs out, ankles crossed, wearing leather deck shoes without socks. Actually humming to himself and twiddling his thumbs. A creature never looked so relaxed. Which you might say about a rattlesnake curled behind a rock, if you didn’t know squat about venomous snakes. Tell him the truth, more or less, Roy decides. As much truth as needs telling. “They’re lookin’ for a couple of folks, none of ’em us,” he says. “None of your concern. Nothin’ to do with the airplane.” Stick chuckles, shaking his head. “Roy, you know what? I wasn’t born yesterday. Other thing, I ain’t figure on getting arrested today, awright? So whyn’t you tell old Uncle Stick what’s really going on?” Dug, looking eager, says, “It’s a secret, ain’t it, Roy?” The new Dodge Ram is parked at a deserted rest stop area just outside the reservation. Not that anyone has picnicked here lately—with the crumbling concrete benches and the hardscrabble ground strewn with broken glass, the area is not exactly welcoming. Not that it matters. None of them have exited the cab, not wanting to be clocked by whatever long-range cameras or spotting devices they may have aboard the surveillance helicopters. Roy has left the motor running to boost the AC, but the cab feels close and smells of whatever Dug has tracked in on his boots. His twin being a magnet for shit of all species. Pig, deer, dog or human; if a turd is out there, Dug will find it. “What happened is, Ricky Lang detained a few people,” Roy explains. “They’re lookin’ for them, the, um, people, not the airplane.”
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“You saying the Beech isn’t directly involved?” Stick wants to know. “Not no more it ain’t. Plus, Ricky is on the run, busy getting his butt chased by about five hundred cops. So this is our opportunity to make a few dollars.” “Uh-huh,” says Stick. “Figured something like that. You’re taking an opportunity.” “You still in?” “Until I’m out. Which will be decided dependin’ on my observations of the situation. Calculating risk, we call it.” “There’s always risk,” Roy points out. Stick laughs. “Oh my. The boy is a philosopher.” They sit in the crap stink of the Dodge Ram until the sun winks out over the Everglades. There one moment, gone the next. Just to be sure they wait out the twilight, what the oldtimers call “after light,” and there comes a time when the helicopters retreat to the east, seeking home base and refueling. The vast Everglades, difficult to search in daylight, are impossible at night. Roy backs out of the rest stop, drives onto the access road. No headlights because he’s heard that satellites can detect running lights. The boundaries of the narrow road are marked by the red eyes of coons and other small creatures sniffing out the truck as it passes. Roy driving with care and concentration, thinking about the multimillion-dollar Beechcraft King Air 350. How he’ll trade the insanely valuable airplane for a new life. Buy some old farm up in the Carolinas or maybe Kentucky, see what happens next. Make sure there’s a cabin for Dug, a place he’ll feel comfortable. Not in the main house, surely. All his brother needs is a place to lay down and creatures to kill. Squirrel or possum or house cat, four legged or two, Dug ain’t particular, so long as he can make it dead.
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The airfield glows faintly with the light of early-rising stars. Roy aims the big Dodge like a beacon, crunching on fine gravel until they arrive at the mound of earth that forms the camouflaged hangar. He can feel Stick tensing in the back seat, eyes full of the darkness, thirsty for any sign of betrayal. His own heart slamming because for all he knows the FBI has staked out the hangar. Meantime Dug, soothed by a chronic lack of imagination, comes awake with a grunt. “Where we at?” he wants to know, grumpy as a child. “We’re here,” Roy whispers. “Money in the bank, ain’t that right, Stick?” They wait for a while in the truck, engine off and ticking as it cools, until Roy gathers up his courage and steps out, ready or not, here he comes. Standing in the hot velvety hush of backcountry nightfall, ears keen for the cocking of a gun or the crunch of boots on gravel. When he’s satisfied they’re alone, Roy tells his brother to get out, hands him the key. Dug fumbles with the padlock, cussing softly and heaves open the big door. Yawning blackness within, and blessed silence. The airplane in faint silhouette, crouching like some great bird, confident in its stillness. “No lights,” Stick orders sharply, when Dug reaches for a flashlight. And then softer, mostly to himself. “Hell on toast, we might actually get away with this. Right under their noses, wouldn’t that be sweet!” The Whittle brothers rig up the tow line, hooking a rope loop on the front bumper, and slowly back the big aircraft out of the hangar once again, this time forever. “Lordy me,” Stick says, gazing in rapture at the aircraft. “Boys, let’s gas ’er up, get this show on the road.”
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Dug peels the tarp off the back of the Dodge Ram, exposing two drums of Jet-A fuel. Tough to come by, but Stick insisted on the real deal, no substituting high-test and kerosene for properly blended turboprop fuel. Something about pure filtration and low flash, typical pilot talk. Roy uncoils the thick rubber hose and then Stick takes charge, muttering about spilled fuel marking the wings. He uses a tiny penlight to illuminate the fuel access and position the nozzle as Dug works the hand crank on the drums. Dug enjoying the fumes—as a boy he’d huffed gasoline a time or two, seeking extra numbness, and vaguely recalls the cell-killing experience with fondness. Twenty minutes later the tanks are topped off and Stick Davis has a grin that shows in the dark. “It’s less than five hundred nautical miles to Cancun,” he reminds them, strutting around the aircraft as he goes over a cursory checklist. “Make a little stop, change the tail numbers, then hop over to see my friends in Guatemala.” “These are the friends want the plane?” “Them or associates of theirs. Might end up in Caracas or São Palo, hard to say.” “How much, you figure?” Roy pretty much knows, but wants to savor the amount. “This little beauty?” says Stick, hands massaging his little belly as he gazes fondly at the plane. “With less than three hundred hours on the airframe? The original owner has to have shelled out close to five mil. Maybe more, with that particular avionics package. If we had clear title we’d get, say, four million easy.” “Four million,” says Dug. Anything more than will fit in his wallet he can’t quite fathom. “That’s if we owned it legal, which we don’t,” Stick points out. “Lucky I know some who ain’t particular.”
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“So how much?” “What I said before. On the ground in Guatemala, I won’t take a penny less than a cool million. Cash, U.S. dollars, and we split it fifty-fifty, true partners in crime.” Roy figures that means two million, but he doesn’t care how much Stick Davis steals so long as he clears the agreedupon five hundred thousand. That was the deal, sealed on a handshake at the Hunt Club. Roy thinking, don’t be greedy, that’s what wrecked his father, trying to squeeze a crooked deal for every last dollar. For the first time in a week, Roy feels like he’s back in control. Things have finally fallen in place. Ricky Lang on the run is the best thing could have happened. He and Dug can walk away from the crazy kidnapping, make their money on the airplane, still have enough for a fresh start. Meantime Ricky takes the fall, probably with a SWAT bullet in his whacked-out brain, end of story. Stick is chattering on about vectors and airspeed in a way that makes Roy think he’s gotten into the vodka. How exactly he can’t imagine, since he showed up sober and hasn’t, so far as Roy has observed, taken a swig of anything. What, does he distill alcohol out of the air? Absorb it through his skin? Then again, Roy knows from long familial experience how clever boozers can be, how furtive, sucking down a medicinal shot so fast the human eye can barely register, like a hummingbird probing a blossom for nectar. Whatever, Stick Davis has a reputation for getting an overloaded crate off the ground even when so drunk he can’t keep both eyes open. Plus he’ll be flying light in a new machine, nothing but himself and the fuel that will get him to wherever it is he’s going. Anywhere but Cancun, Roy
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figures, he’s mentioned that as a destination strictly for diversionary purposes. Probably heading somewhere further down the coast of Mexico. Full tanks give him range to Costa Rica, for that matter. Knowing Stick, he may sell the Beech to a drug king pin, then fly the same aircraft home with a full load, make out on both ends. Roy doesn’t care where he goes or what he drinks, so long as he delivers the agreed-upon sum. “Sure you don’t want to come along for the ride?” Stick teases. “That’s your deal,” Roy says. “Ours is both feet on the ground, right, Dug?” “Whatever you say, Roy,” says Dug, still a little high from the whiffs of jet fuel. They’re helping Stick align the aircraft on the narrow runway when Ricky Lang suddenly materializes out of the darkness, a plastic five-gallon bucket in one hand and a .45 caliber Glock in the other. “Going somewhere?” he says, at the same time squeezing off a round that explodes through Stick’s left foot. Big bad Ricky Lang standing over the writhing man, saying, in a conversational tone, “You must be the pilot, because these two dumb crackers couldn’t fly a kite.” Roy and Dug are both frozen, hands on the wings of the aircraft. Dug waiting on his brother to make a decision and Roy calculating if he can get back to the truck and retrieve his handgun before Ricky blows a hole in his back. Deciding no, he can’t. Amazed by the situation, and by Lang’s bizarre appearance—he seems to have bathed in mud, bare-chested, his big arms glistening in the starlight, and the old Moe Howard haircut slicked back and interlaced with what appears to be strands of swamp grass.
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Looks like he’s got a head full of snakes, and that’s how he’s acting, too. “Your name is Davis,” Ricky says to Stick, who’s rolling around, clutching his shattered foot. “I can read your mind. I can see your spine and all the bones. I can see your fat liver.” Roy, careful not to make any sudden moves, slowly backs away from the wing and says, “It’s not what you think.” Ricky finds the remark hilarious. But his laughter is silent and therefore terrifying. “You’re on the run, we figured you’d need money,” says Roy. Even funnier. Ricky finally gets his breath back and says, “Do exactly what I say or you’re dead.” Dug looks sullen but Roy quickly nods assent. Ricky says, “Kill the girl and bring the boy to me.” He tells them where and when to deliver Seth Manning, watches them scoot away like scalded kittens, scampering to their precious pickup truck, away to do his bidding. Underlings dispatched, his attention returns to the wounded pilot, who is attempting to crawl away. Not making much progress, either. “How you doing, Mr. Davis? Did you find your toes?” Stick whimpers. Ricky goes, “Inside your head, you know what I see? I see lies and alcohol. I see guns and money and drugs. I see a life wasted ruining the lives of others.” “Don’t shoot,” Stick begs, holding up his hands as if attempting to catch bullets. “Please don’t shoot.” “Sure, whatever you want,” Ricky says, slipping the Glock into the pocket of his muddy cargo pants. “Ready?” he asks. Stick, weeping, asks, “R-r-ready for what?” Using both hands, Ricky upends the five-gallon bucket of jet fuel, drenching the pilot.
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Stick coughs, begins to shiver as the rapidly evaporating, highly flammable fuel cools his flesh. He’s been around, seen some amazing sights in his time, and he knows what happens next. “Shoot me,” he begs. “Shoot me in the head.” Ricky apologizes, explains that he’s already put the gun away, and that therefore it will not be possible to shoot Stick in the head. Then he strikes a match. 7. The Mysterious Mr. Fish Stuffed animals are not my thing. Not teddy bears, not real bears, stuffed. Not in museums, not in homes, and certainly not in restaurants. Excuse me, but killing an animal and trying to make it look alive, or not quite dead? Creepy. You want to kill a big deer? Catch a big fish? Fine. Eat what you want and throw the rest away. Just don’t expect me to admire it on your wall. So the Glade City Hunt Club is not exactly my kind of place. Then again, we’re not here to admire the alligators nailed to the paneled wall, or the huge black bear that guards the entrance, glaring at visitors with beady glass eyes and exposed fangs that look like they need a good brushing. Ugh, disgusting. The bar, where the only thing stuffed is the tip jar, is not my scene, either. In terms of design it’s actually quite pleasant. A curved mahogany bar top with matching brass rails, and wide-bladed ceiling fans stirring the thick, muggy air. Behind the bar, liquor bottles glow like amber jewelry, illuminated by hidden lights. It’s the clientele that turns me off. Too much testosterone, combined with the loud, braying voices of manly men bragging about themselves. Truth be known, I go for the strong silent types, and
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silence does not seem to be an option at this particular watering hole. We’ve been told that if you want to locate Leo Fish, who doesn’t want to be found, start at the Hunt Club. One of the guides will know where to find him, although persuading any of the locals to help an outsider might be tough. That’s the gospel according to Trishy with the flat-gray eyes. We’re about to see if there’s anything to what she says. Shane glances at his watch, announces, “We haven’t got time for finesse,” and then abruptly strides out onto the screenedin porch, where the raucous crowd clusters two or three deep around the bar. Leaving me at the entrance looking lost and feeling a lot of hot stares checking me out. Shane is anything but lost. He opens his wallet, extracts some cash and waves his fist high in the air. “Five hundred dollars to the man who can put me in contact with Leo Fish!” Wow. The resulting silence is shocking to the ear. An entire roomful of macho hunter-fisher types eyeballing the big guy, sizing him up. Maybe this was what it was like in the Old West when a new marshal came to town. I’m ready to duck in case gunfire erupts, but after a few thudding heartbeats, conversation returns to the previous level. Eyes look elsewhere. We’re being ignored. Shane waves his fist again. “Hey! Pay attention, you maggots!” Again, utter silence, not to mention death-ray looks. Shane, having got their full and undivided attention, explains: “We need to contact Leo Fish because he may be able to help us save the life of a young woman. Anybody who wants the finder’s fee, or who just wants to do the right thing, may contact me in the parking lot at the Motorcourt inn. I’ll
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be there for the next hour. The man who helps me find Leo Fish will have a friend for life, as well as the five hundred. Thank you for your attention and have a good night.” He takes me by the hand and more or less drags me out of the Hunt Club and doesn’t let go until we get to the rental car. “Sorry,” he says. “The exit was overly dramatic but I wanted to leave ’em hanging. Wondering who you are. Maybe curious enough to help.” “That was an act?” I say, a bit breathless from trying to keep up. “‘Pay attention, you maggots’?” Shane gets in, fires up the engine and puts the car in gear. “Absolutely. We want the whole town buzzing. If anybody in Glade City knows how to put us in contact with the mysterious Mr. Fish we’ll know in the next hour. And if not, we’ll know that, too, and not be wasting our precious time.” “Kelly’s precious time,” I remind him. “Exactly,” he says. Shane’s idea is to wait outside in the Motorcourt parking lot, so any potential snitches will feel more comfortable approaching under cover of darkness. But the mosquitoes are so bad— they feel as big as blue jays—that we have to remain in the Crown Vic or be drained of blood long before the hour is up. “How did they stand it around here before they had screens and air-conditioning?” I ask. “I assume they drank heavily. A habit that doesn’t appear to have died out with the invention of bug spray.” Shane is trying to keep the conversation light, but I just can’t do it. Can’t fake being wry and relaxed when inside I’m screaming. “When will they start searching again?” I want to know. Shane considers, then replies, “There may be ground units
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working through the night, investigating known locations. Air surveillance will resume when the sun rises.” “That may be too late,” I point out. “All we can do is keep trying,” Shane tells me. “Never give up. That’s the only way to proceed, and you’d be surprised how often ‘never give up’ produces results.” To his everlasting credit, the promised results are produced about fifteen minutes later, when an old pickup bounces into the parking lot and begins to circle, as if uncertain of what to do next. Shane gets out, does his raised-fist thing, and the truck stops. A scrawny little dude gets out, looks around to see whether he’s been followed. I’m beginning to recognize the type. Except for the long scraggly hair tied in a ponytail, he could be kin to the sheriff, or to Trishy for that matter. “What you want Fish for?” he asks suspiciously. “You a cop?” “Retired. This concerns Ricky Lang. Heard he was married to Leo Fish’s sister, and thought he might help us find Mr. Lang.” “The crazy injun they huntin’ for?” “The fugitive,” Shane insists. “Lang kidnapped this woman’s daughter.” “Um, Leo and Ricky don’t exactly get along.” “That’s no concern of ours. We just want possible locations. Can you contact Mr. Fish or not?” The scrawny dude with the ponytail scrutinizes the larger man. “It ain’t like Leo’s got a phone or ’lecricity. He’s a white man but lives more or less like them Seminole Indians in the old days. He ain’t got a normal home, he camps out deep in the Glades, moving when it pleases him. Take me two hours to get to him by airboat, and two hours back if he wants to come.”
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“Take me to him,” Shane says. “I’ll talk to him there, wherever it is.” Ponytail dude shakes his head. “No way, Jose. Ain’t leadin’ no lawman to Leo Fish. I’ll take him your message, see what he says, but it’ll cost you a thousand.” He looks at me for the first time, nods politely. “Evening, ma’am. Airboat is expensive to run, blows through gas like you wouldn’t believe, that’s why I got to get my price.” “Two hours?” asks Shane. “Four or five round trip.” Shane nods agreement. “Okay. Five hundred to cover the cost of the airboat, regardless. A thousand if you bring me Leo Fish.” Scrawny licks his chapped lips. “The five up front?” “When you get back,” Shane says firmly. “How I know you won’t drive away, leave me for a fool?” “Because you have my word.” “Okay, deal.” Scrawny shakes on it, looking like he believes in Randall Shane. That makes two of us. 8. The Furious Thing Roy Whittle has Old Sparky on his mind. The electrified killing machine used by the state of Florida to execute deathrow inmates. Called Old Sparky because the method— surging two thousand volts through the human body—is not entirely reliable. Sometimes the inmate’s head catches fire and has to be doused with a handy bucket of water, kept nearby for that purpose. Sometimes the heart fails to stop beating and a second or third jolt is required. Sometimes, and this is what really bothers Roy, the inmate starts sizzling like a big ham under the broiler.
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If it comes to that, Roy figures he’ll opt for lethal injection, on the grounds that going to sleep and never waking up is way better than cooking to death. “How you gonna do it?” Dug wants to know as they approach their destination. Distracted by thoughts of flaming skulls, Roy asks, “How’m I do what?” “Kill the girl.” Roy slows the truck to a stop, shifts the stick to neutral, and looks his brother in the eye. “We’re not killing no girl, get that straight.” Dug has that stubborn look he gets. “Ricky said.” “Ricky Lang done lost his mind,” Roy reminds him. “Think about it. We kill the girl, there’s nothing left for us. Ain’t like he’ll be around to pay us our share. Whatever he’s got planned, it ends with him getting his head blown off.” “He told you that?” “Hell no! Didn’t have to. The crazy bastard thinks he’s Superman. He thinks bullets can’t touch him. And sooner or later, he’ll find out different.” That silences the slower twin for a few moments as he processes the information. “I could do it if you want,” Dug eventually offers. “Tap her down.” Most observers would conclude that Roy Whittle shows remarkable patience with his brother, but even he has his limits. “Listen to me, Dug. Get this straight. The girl is our only remaining chance of getting anything out of this. We’ll trade her for money once Ricky’s gone.” Dug makes a face, stares at his hands. “Ricky burned Stick,” he points out. “Yeah, he did, and he burned the plane, too, but he ain’t going to burn us. You’re gonna take the boy to him, like he
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wants. That’s all he really cares about, the rich man’s son. He won’t know if the girl’s alive or buried in the swamp. We’ll keep her somewhere safe till this blows over, then see what we can get for her. If her family won’t pay, we’ll find someone who will. Good-lookin’ white girl that age is fully negotiable.” Dug is clearly troubled, but mutters a reluctant acceptance of his brother’s superior judgment. “Whatever you say, Roy.” Roy sighs, keenly aware their prospects have plummeted. “I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. A thousand percent right. We messed up, getting in with Ricky Lang, but I’m gonna fix it. That’s a promise. Carolinas here we come.” They drive until the road ends, then hike half a mile through the saw grass, following an old Indian trail so obscure and overgrown you have to know it’s there. A perfectly good ATV waits on the other end, designed for terrain like this, but Ricky has insisted it only be used for transporting the captives, and that at all other times it remain hidden under camo-netting, far away from prying eyes. The Whittle brothers make do, proceeding afoot, having covered the same ground several times recently. The night is especially dark—no moon, and the stars obscured by heavy clouds. Roy illuminates the way with a flashlight, figuring if satellites can pick up flashlights they’re screwed anyway. Dug grunting as the sharp grass whips at his legs but Roy knows his twin could go like this for miles, even in the night. Maybe especially at night, if there’s something to hunt. Say what you like about Dug, he’s never been scared of the dark. Almost the reverse, like he’d come up with a notion that darkness protected him from those who tormented him by daylight. Namely their father, until Dug got too big to beat,
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and the kids who taunted him during his brief and disastrous stint in school. They come upon the remains of the old settlement just beyond the saw grass, at the edge of where the wetlands begin. One of Ricky Lang’s backcountry lairs. The settlement, originally an Indian camp, had eventually included a dozen or so ramshackle trailers, as well as a few decrepit chickee huts and a tarpaper shack or two. Population, as Roy understood it, had been mixed. Members of the Lang clan, some mixed-blood Seminoles, a few cracker trappers who’d gone native or who just liked living outside of civilization. At the end, tribal drug runners had used it as a storage depot. A little world all its own, or so Roy imagines, having seen similar type settlements in the Ten Thousand Islands, where the populace was pretty much white, though equally impoverished. Park rangers had eventually taken over, clearing out the trailers, burning the shacks. Then at some point the area had been zoned inside the Nakosha Reservation and mostly forgotten. Not by Ricky Lang, though, who liked the fact that it could be accessed by land or by water. Plus, from the air it looked like nothing more than a small clearing in the saw grass, one of thousands of such bald spots within the Glades. The useful bits that remain are undercover, out of sight. “I’ll check on the girl,” Roy tells his brother. “You get the other one, take him to Ricky.” “Where you gonna put the girl?” Dug wants to know. “Dunno. Closer to home, I guess. Someplace Ricky doesn’t know.” Truth is, Roy isn’t sure he wants Dug to know the location. He’s got it fixed in his mind the girl needs killing, and Roy knows his twin well enough to understand that his stubborn notions can become obsessions that must be acted upon. Like
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the neighborhood pets when they were boys, and a few other much more serious incidents later on. Killing wasn’t a sex type thing with Dug, just that he liked to snuff things out. Household cats, wild pigs, human beings, they all gave similar satisfaction. “What if he asks?” Dug says. “You tell him I took care of it. Just hand over the boy and get out of there. He won’t be expecting no long conversations. You got your knife?” “Always got my knife,” Dug responds with elaborate dignity. “Okay then. You best be careful. Whole idea is, we come out of this alive. We got plans, remember?” “I get my own cabin.” “You get your own cabin, and enough ammo to kill everything in a ten-mile radius, how does that sound?” “Good,” says Dug, and obediently turns to the path that will take him to the boy. Roy hurries toward the girl. He can feel Ricky Lang in his head, a nudge of pure fear that makes his knees feel weak. He’s well aware of the terrible risk he’s taking by failing to obey. My God, look what befell poor Stick! One moment a laid-back dude, a living legend, the next moment nothing more than a howl in the flames. Ricky’s way of saying see what happens to those who disobey. Not that he’d ever actually forbidden Roy from hijacking the aircraft, selling it on the black market. Like most of Ricky’s rules it was a presumed thing, subject to his whims. All gone now, that beautiful flying machine. Reduced to twisted metal, a blackened path on the runway. A man dead, millions of dollars up in smoke, all because the former Nakosha chief is in a bad mood, wants to make an impression on his subordinates.
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Kill the girl. Just issues the order without explanation. Like saying burn the money, only worse, because even if he and Dug survive the madness of Ricky Lang, the abduction and killing of a minor in the state of Florida almost invariably leads to death row. If they get caught. If? A zillion FBI agents combing the area, what are the odds of not getting caught on a stone-cold murder? No, no, no. Roy knows he has to play it smart. Play it smart and he can still come out the other end with something to show for his troubles. His mind ticks over the possibilities as he approaches the cooler. The old walk-in cooler, ripped out of a failed Miami restaurant and dumped here in the middle of nowhere, had once been used to store wax-sealed bales of marijuana. Somehow it had been missed when the rangers swept through. Probably because it had been neatly hidden within a stand of overgrown cypress. Now its thick, insulated walls make a handy cage of galvanized steel. Nice thing, the girl can scream her lungs out, all that emerges is a faint, birdlike shriek. Plus with the foot-thick door padlocked from the outside, she can be left unattended for hours or even days. Really too bad they can’t keep her in the cooler, but eventually the search parties are bound to find it. Plus there’s the Dug problem. Roy is thinking about Dug when he opens the cooler door and steps inside, flashlight roaming. Before he can react, something flies out of the darkest corner, something deeply furious, something with a long sharp claw that pierces the softest part of his throat, penetrating his esophagus. As he falls to his knees, choking on his own blood, the furious thing flies past him, out the door and into the night.
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9. Oof Says The Monster Man Pure adrenaline carries her out of the steel prison, into the muggy darkness. Clawlike branches scratching at her face, tugging her hair, raking her bare arms. There’s no up or down, no direction home, just the explosive desire to get away. Wherever she imagined she might be, it is not here, in the absolute wilderness. The steel box made her think of buildings, maybe a village near the remote airstrip where she had Seth had put the Beechcraft down, enjoying their big adventure. A real live Indian chief! What a kick, what a tale to tell her friends. The real thrill, though, had been piloting the aircraft all the way from New York. Seth finally taking control for the tricky landing on the narrow strip, but that was it. And then, of course, the dream flight turned into a total nightmare moments after they touched down. Heedless of the branches and thorns and vines, Kelly crashes headlong through the stand of cypress, arms shielding her eyes as best she can. Is he dead? Did she kill him? She’d been aiming for an eye—hours she’d waited, crouching in the corner like a tautwound spring. Psyching herself up. Telling herself this was her one chance. Go for the eye. Blind him, kill him, whatever it takes. Get out of the box or die trying. And then run for your life, girl. Run as long and as far as you can. All of a sudden she stumbles into a clearing. An area large enough that the edges melt away into the night. She looks at her scratched and bleeding hands, realizes she no longer has the weapon she honed so carefully. Hide. She must find a place to hide until the sun comes up, whenever that is. The man she attacked may be alive, or
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there may be others. She has formed a firm conviction that more than one man has been keeping her captive. Changing the foul bucket, leaving behind the bag of pasty, white-bread sandwiches and the jug of water that has kept her alive, barely. Two at least, maybe more. At that very moment, heart slamming and lungs heaving, she imagines footsteps following her. Run! Weakened by her captivity, half-starved, the adrenaline takes over, making her legs pump furiously. Kelly sprints through the clearing, then through grass up to her knees. Runs like a madwoman until the rough ground reaches up, catches a foot, sends her sprawling facedown. Wham. Knocks the breath out of her. Lying in the rough grass she manages to roll over, searching the sky for stars. Fearful that if she doesn’t find something to judge direction she’ll end up running in circles. Her eyes detect a few faint stars intermittently obscured by low clouds, and somehow that calms her slightly. Her breathing returns to something like normal. Stay where you are, she decides, until you get your bearings. Then choose which way to run. Gradually her heart slows to match her breathing and she begins to discern sounds. Insects buzzing. A bird squawking some distance away. Heron? Owl? Something wild that’s for sure. The low-pitched bellow of something far away—could that be an alligator? Does that mean she’s close to the Everglades? Miles from where they landed, if true. Crickets, very close, mere inches away. And then another sound that pours like chilled water through her veins. A human voice. “Move along, you little shit!”
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Kelly flattens herself, trying to blend into the ground. Is the grass deep enough to hide her? In a panic she tries to dig herself into the rough ground. Impossible, too hard. Lie still, her instinct urges. Be quiet. Be small. “I ain’t carryin’ no full-growed man,” the voice says. “Walk or be dragged, them is your choice.” “My legs don’t work,” says another voice. Faint and obviously in a lot of pain. Seth! Kelly lifts her head until her eyes just barely clear the grass. At first she can’t see anything. Gradually her vision adjusts and she can make out what looks like a dark, humpbacked creature slowly making its way along the edge of the clearing, barely visible. The humpbacked thing becomes two men, one of them hobbled, barely able to walk. “That just cramps in your legs. Walk ’em off.” The hobbled man—it has to be Seth—is tied up somehow, hands bound, a rope around his waist. The other man, medium size but strong looking, is all coiled impatience. Jerking the rope as if he enjoys the grunt of pain it produces. “You want me to chop off another finger? I can do that, you want.” Eyes narrowing, Kelly begins to search the ground for a weapon. Hands encountering nothing but hard dirt beneath the blades of grass. Having convinced herself that Seth’s oppressor is focused on tormenting his victim, Kelly crawls and slithers until she reaches the edge of the clearing. Has to be something, a branch or a stick, something to poke the monster in the eye. What she finds, belly flat to the ground, is a chunk of rock about the size of her head. Charred and smelling of a camp-
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fire. Her hands explore the weapon, finding it very rough and not quite as heavy as expected. Whatever, it will have to do. Gathering the meaty rock into her hands, she waits for her moment. That’s the hardest part as her fury rises, waiting as the monster continues to torment her friend. “What are you,” the monster demands, “some kind of fag? There’s nothing wrong with your legs! You tryin’ a trick me, huh? We’ll see about that!” The monster does something and Seth collapses. “Get up and walk like a man! We ain’t got all night!” The monster bends over Seth, a fist raised. Kelly explodes across the clearing, the hefty chunk of limestone raised high. And as the monster turns, astonished— the thing has human eyes, is that possible?—Kelly brings the rock down on his head with every ounce of her adrenalinecharged strength. “Oof!” says the monster man, falling backward. A moment later she and Seth Manning are running for their lives. 10. Eyes That Couldn’t Care Less The Irish have their wakes, the Jews sit shiva. At the Glades Motorcourt Inn there are no kegs of whiskey, no mirrors to cover, unless you count the cracked glass over the medicine cabinet. Nevertheless, the sense of mourning, of loss that has yet to catch up, seems as deep and insidious as the black specks of mold on the walls. Whatever flush of excitement came with our little triumph at the Hunt Club has been erased by the long wait for Leo Fish. Please. I’m supposed to put my faith in a stranger with a
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ridiculous name? Some hermit who lives in a swamp? Talk about grasping at straws! Other than Fern leaving a pep-talk message, no one has phoned my cell with news of the search. Not the FBI, not the local cops, nobody. Despite Randall Shane’s encouraging words about not giving up, I’m taking the lack of news as a bad sign. The man Shane surprised in Cable Grove has had plenty of time to return to wherever he kept my daughter, and to eliminate her as a witness. Isn’t that what mad kidnappers do? Snuff out their victims? I’ve seen the movie, read the tabloid version. I know how this ends, with the poor mother weeping and the media vultures shedding glycerin tears. Shane is in the next room, his television faint but discernible through the thin walls, tuned, as mine is, to local news. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, the man who never sleeps has encouraged me to do so. As if. My exhausted brain seems determined to clock each passing second. Waiting, waiting. Two hours have ticked by since Mr. Ponytail zoomed away in his airboat—sounded like a plane taking off, frankly—and each minute has been soaked in molasses. So when 11:05 p.m. finally ticks over, and fat tires spray the driveway gravel, I’m not at all surprised to see Detective Rufus Sydell climbing out of his cruiser, adjusting his hat, looking professionally grim. He has news to impart and my thudding heart tells me it won’t be good. Shane and I burst through our doors at precisely the same moment, like cuckoos out of the same clock. “Evening,” says Roof, stepping back, a little startled. Shane glances at me, then reaches out and gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. “Go on,” he says to the cop. “Something happened. What?” “Um, you all mind if I come inside? Skeeters are fearsome.”
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“Of course.” I follow them into Shane’s room, slapping instinctively at the mosquitoes that follow. I have to restrain myself from leaping on the cop’s back and tearing the terrible truth out of him. Roof takes off his hat, runs a ruddy hand over the gray speckles of hair on his shiny, freckled skull. He looks like he’d rather be elsewhere. Anywhere but here, reporting to a concerned mom. “Ma’am, I need to ask, how tall is your daughter?” Taken aback, I stare at him stupidly. Why would he want to know such a thing? Then it dawns on me. They’ve located a body, need identification. He’s trying to break it gently. “Ma’am?” “Kelly is five foot five,” I tell him in my smallest voice. “Exactly my height.” Roof drops into a plastic stack chair, causing the legs to creak ominously. He lets out a breath and breaks into a facewide grin. “Well, that sure is good news! Didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am, but they come upon a body out in the backcountry, and the only thing they took off it so far is approximate height. Five foot ten is a long ways from five-five.” “Oh my God.” “Yes ma’am, it surely had me scared. Lots of tall girls these days.” “So the search parties are still out there?” Shane asks, surprised. “Not as such,” Roof says, fanning himself with his hat. “The tribal police was attracted by flames. Could be seen for miles, apparently. Seems there was a fire out that little airstrip Ricky used. The one Mr. Shane here located. An airplane was torched and a charred body was located not far from the aircraft. Body was burned so bad the, um, sorry ma’am, the
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gender isn’t immediately obvious. They’ll know more when they get the remains back to the lab.” “So it could be a male?” Shane asks. “You’re thinking, who, Seth Manning?” Roof looks around, spots the dented little refrigerator. “You wouldn’t happen to have a beer, would you? I’m not normally a drinkin’ man, but I surely could use one about now.” “Sorry, no.” “Can’t be helped,” he says, obviously disappointed. “Oh well, Where was we? Oh, right. No, it’s likely not Seth Manning, on account of the height I mentioned. Turns out he ain’t but a few inches taller than the girl.” “Kelly,” I remind him. “Right. A course.” “You have another theory?” Shane prompts gently. “About the victim?” “Just a hunch.” “Hunches can be good,” says Shane. “Well,” the cop drawls, pronouncing it wall. “I got to thinkin’, after our little talk. Decided maybe I’d take a look at Roy Whittle, since his name come up. Found he wasn’t home to talk to, but he had been seen recently in the company of a fella name Stick Davis. Stick being a pilot with a shady reputation. Come to me that Stick pretty well fits the description you gave, of the suspects checking out the stolen airplane.” “Uh-huh. So you had your suspicions.” Roof grins ruefully. “I’m a suspicious kinda fella, Mr. Shane. But until I know a fact I tend to keep it to myself. Made a call or two, and it seems like Roy and Dug and Stick was seen in Naples, at an airfield there, purchasing two drums of aviation fuel for cash money.”
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Shane looks puzzled. “And what, they burned the plane? Getting rid of evidence?” “Don’t need no drums of expensive fuel to torch a plane, all you need’s a match,” he points out. “I figure, they go to all the trouble to buy fuel for a turboprop, they intended to use it.” “Move the plane?” “More likely steal it. Wouldn’t be the first time Stick Davis involved himself in a stolen aircraft. That particular one, a nearly new King Air 350, they tell me that’d be worth two or three million on the black market. Sell it no problem whatsoever in Colombia or Venezuela, or maybe closer to home. All they do is swap out the transponder, change the tail numbers, and keep on aflyin’. Long as it don’t come back into the U.S. for inspection, no problem.” “So what went wrong?” Shane asks. “You have a theory on that?” “Not so much a theory as a guess, you might say. I ask myself a question, what if Ricky Lang found out they was hijacking that plane? Maybe he was in on the deal, maybe he wasn’t, I ain’t got clue one in that regard. But I ask you, Mr. Shane, who else do we know is crazy enough to burn a milliondollar aircraft?” “No sign of the Whittle brothers?” “Nope. They ain’t showed their face. Maybe they dropped off Stick and skedaddled. Or could be I got it wrong altogether.” “Is there enough left to DNA the body?” Roof gives me a careful look. “Expect there will be, when they get down to it. You know how it is with crispy—’scuse me, ma’am, charred victims. Sometimes it takes months to make a positive ID. Sometimes never.” He stands up, plops the hat on his head, gives me an avuncular nod. “Glad I wasn’t bearing bad tidings, ma’am. Search
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resumes at dawn, I’m sure they’ll find your girl. Right now I’m off to locate me a beer, else I won’t be able to sleep.” We again retire to our respective rooms, cuckoos retreating inside the clock. And the clock keeps ticking, increasing the sense of dread with every passing moment. A severed finger, a burned body, a psycho on the loose—try to make something good out of those ingredients. Try to find hope. Who said that, keep hope alive? Whoever it was must have known how easily hope fades, how the very idea becomes a cruel joke. As if we have the power to change events by thinking good thoughts, and therefore when bad things happen it’s through our own weakness. As if, say, cancer is caused by bad thoughts instead of bad cells! Reasoning like that used to drive me crazy when Kelly was in the hospital. Doctors and nurses will tell you a positive attitude is important, but succumbing to the disease isn’t a sign of mental weakness—it’s proof that that human beings are frail vessels. That’s where I’m at, here in Glade City. Back to the cancer ward, praying that my child may live. Bargaining with death. Take me if you must but please, please, let my daughter live. Take another child, not mine, please please please. She’s barely nine years old, she’s already suffered enough for any ten grown-ups. And now she’s barely sixteen, on the cusp of being an adult, her whole life ahead of her. Let her live, God, or I will claw my way into heaven and bring you my full fury. You think fallen angels are trouble? Wait until you meet plain Jane Garner, mother of Kelly. Let her live, God, or I swear I’ll just close my eyes and die and make You miserable. Close my eyes and dream I’m searching for Kelly in the hospital. She keeps fleeing down the long white corridors,
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hiding and laughing because she thinks death is a game she can win; she’s already won once, she says. I’m trying to warn her but my voice is too small, it barely gets beyond my lips, and my feet are so heavy I can’t run fast enough to catch her. My beautiful daughter running away, laughing at death. Waking up is a shock because there’s no awareness of having fallen asleep. But suddenly it’s two in the morning and someone is knocking on my door. Politely but insistently knocking. I crawl from the saggy bed fully clothed, stagger to the door, throw it open. First thing I notice are his eyes, glaring at me from under the wrinkled brim of a cowboy-style straw hat with a curled brim. Eyes so pale and cool they make me want to slam the door and go back to sleep. Eyes that couldn’t care less, not about me or anyone who lives in my world. The rest slowly comes into focus. The leathery, weathered face that could be forty or sixty. A lean, compact body that seems entirely composed of sinew and bones, and the powerful, sloping shoulders of a pole vaulter. His hands, kept loose and ready at his side, are out of scale, too big for the rest of him. His feet are bare, and so splayed that no normal shoe would ever fit. Thick toenails curve like ivory claws, as if the part of him that touches earth wants to cling there, like a bird on a branch. He’s a man from another time, and everything about him says he’s not pleased to be here, tapping on my door in the middle of the bug-infested night. “Leo Fish,” he says gruffly. “State your business.” 11. The Squealing Time Is Here In the darkest hour of a moonless night, ten miles from the nearest incandescent light, Dug Whittle hunts the girl like
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he’d hunt a wild pig. By stealth and cunning and by using his nose. You can smell out a pig from heavy cover, if you know what to sniff for, and Dug figures sniffing out a sweaty, unwashed female should be easy. True, she and the fag boy have about a two-hour head start. But that makes no never mind in the backcountry, which he knows and she don’t. The girl is weak because that’s the way females are, plus she’ll be slowed down by the fag boy, who is bleeding and feverish. Supposed to be the boy he’s after, turn him over to Ricky Lang, but the blow to the head has given Dug other ideas. More to the point it’s given him one very powerful idea: he will kill the girl and gut her like a pig. Maybe gut her first, see how long she lasts. He’s pretty sure Roy would agree. His brother being kind of soft when it comes to women and animals, but surely getting his throat tore up will have hardened him some. Dug said as much on the race to the E.R., flooring that Dodge for all it was worth, but of course Roy couldn’t express his opinion because of the wire in his throat. Dug not wanting to pull it out for fear he’d spout like a fountain. All Roy had to say was gah, gah, like a baby, his eyes wet with tears. Dug can’t recall a time when Roy didn’t speak for him, so it’s both a shock but also sort of exciting that he’s now in charge, making decisions. He starts, like any good tracker, from the last known location. The spot where she clobbered him with that chunk of rock. Easy enough to find where the escaped captives lay in the saw grass, her and him, and how they then moved off west. Probably no idea where they’re going, just wanting to get away. As it happens moving closer to the watery part of the Glades, where gators prey on anything they can get their jaws around.
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Dug has an old carbide Autolite affixed to his hat, the identical kind he uses when night hunting for alligator—pop that light on and you see the eyes looking back at you from the dark—but decides not to fire it up unless absolutely necessary. Pop a light, she’ll know he’s coming and he prefers an element of surprise. Plus, as he knows from experience, human eyes don’t show red in the dark. Best way to night hunt, move slowly, keep an ear cocked. Many’s the time he’s heard a pig panting in the underbrush. The pig is fearful, knows it’s being hunted and should be silent, but it can’t help itself. It will pant, sometimes even grunt like a person will grunt, thinking things over. Wants to get downwind and that’s the challenge, to keep the scent advantage. Even a night like tonight, with the air so still, there’s motion, a direction to carry smell. Once, hunting raccoon at night, Dug killed one with his knife, just to see if he could. Was it possible to stab a moving coon in the dark? Turned out to be not that difficult, just hafta know which way the coon would jump. Dug has always known which way a hunted creature will jump. He has no doubt he’ll know which way the girl will jump, when it comes to that. He carries with him, into territory he knows like the landscape of his own flesh, a skinning knife, a pump shotgun, and his vast experience killing things. He crouches, using the tips of his fingers to find the ragged trail they’ve left. He sniffs, holding the air in his nose, loving the flavors. Flavor of swamp, flavor of grass, flavor of girl. Kelly lies flat on her belly, sucking dirt. Her right arm hugs Seth, keeping him down. He’s not exactly delirious but she
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can feel the heat of his fever and knows he isn’t thinking clearly. How could he, after what he’s been through? After the first dash to freedom it became clear that Seth wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. She could help him along, carry most of his weight, but that made for slow going over uneven terrain in the dark. “I was supposed to rescue you,” he’d mumbled, when they finally stopped running and collapsed to the ground. “Next time,” she’d said brightly, still high on adrenaline. “I thought you were dead.” “Me, too. I mean, I thought you were dead.” “They cut me,” he’d said, showing her the wound. Amazingly enough, it didn’t repulse her. Maybe in daylight it would, but in the close darkness it didn’t really seem all that bad. A little finger missing, no big deal. The rest of him was half-starved and filthy, but intact. The problem was that the wound had become infected and the infection had spread most of the way up his arm. He was in terrible pain, shivering from the fever, and it was absolutely essential that, with the monster man so close, Seth remain absolutely motionless. That’s how she thought of him, monster man. Obviously she hadn’t hit him hard enough to do any real or lasting damage. When first she realized they were probably being followed, she’d found a cluster of mangroves on a little mound of soggy ground surrounded by water. The water was shallow, no more than ankle deep, but she figured it would help cover their tracks. That’s how they always did it in the movies. Sometimes in the movies they submerged under the water, breathing through reeds, but Kelly was pretty sure that wouldn’t
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work in real life, and anyway this water wasn’t deep enough for that. The cluster of mangroves is thickly overgrown on the outside, less so on the inside, and she believed that once she and Seth had wormed their way inside their little hideaway they’d be as good as invisible. There were lots of these small overgrown areas dotting the area, hundreds probably, and monster man couldn’t possibly search all of them. They’d be safe so long as they didn’t move, didn’t give themselves away. Or maybe not. She has no idea how he managed it so quickly, but monster man prowls along the water’s edge a mere fifty yards from where they’re hiding. Kelly touches Seth’s lips with her fingers, meaning silence, and he nods that he understands. Monster man blends into the darkness. He seems to be going away, following the wrong track. She feels some of the tension drain and hauls Seth closer. Hot and muggy as it is, he’s shivering. With all her experience as a long-term patient in intensive care, she knows the signs. She has to get Seth to a hospital in the not too distant future or there’s a chance he will die from a raging blood infection. Septicemia they call it. They’ll need to hang a bag, drip him full of antibiotics. In a few hours time Kelly Garner, age sixteen, has gone from being totally focused on saving her own life to being totally focused on saving the life of her best friend. Best friends, as she knows, are not easy to come by. When Kelly met Seth in the flesh for the first time her impression was, the guy is too good to be true. Too handsome, too smart, too kind, too generous, too everything. Later, after he’d been tutoring her for several weeks, demonstrating in his
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calm clear way exactly how to fly safely, she decided that sometimes first impressions are correct. He was the real deal, a decent guy who wanted to help her without trying to get into her pants. Later on, when he’d finally taken her into his confidence— he really had no one else to turn to—Kelly realized she’d never been in any danger from Seth Manning. Not that kind of danger, anyway. Not that being gay had diminished his perfection in her eyes. If anything he was more perfect because he was unobtainable, even if she’d decided to cross the age barrier. To see him like this, shivering in the heat, weak as a kitten, his left hand wrapped in a bloody rag, it makes her want to weep. “Hang on,” she whispers. “We’re gonna make it, I promise.” “Leave me,” he says. “Get away while you can.” “Never,” she says. “You’re my favorite flyboy and I’m keeping you. That’s final. Now try to snuggle closer.” Monster man holds the air in his mouth. He’s picked up the faintest whiff of human perspiration not his own. He forces himself to relax, to melt his way into the landscape. Not only smelling the smells, but sorting through the background noise of birds, water frogs, tree frogs, whining mosquitoes, scrabbling raccoons, splashing baitfish, gators small and large, the whole wilderness mishmash. What can’t be heard can help, too. A place where the animals have left to make room for human. And he’s picking up a beacon of silence, a quiet zone in one of the smaller mangrove islands. Thinking, as he glides into motion, you’re mine, little pig. The squealing time is here.
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12. Best Keep Your Hands Inside The Pan Zooming through the Everglades on an airboat at night is like riding a dirt bike full speed through a pitch-black forest. Not that I’ve ever been on a dirt bike, or in pitch-black forest, for that matter. But it has to be something like this, the sheer exhilarating terror of not knowing what’s out there and when it might suddenly crash into you. Shadows, mangroves, grasslands, open water, all blending into one dark and scary blur. Every bump and scrape and feral swoosh of grass against the flat bottom of the aluminum boat hits me like a jolt of electricity, frying my nerves. Leo Fish says not to worry. Fine. What I’m experiencing isn’t so much worry as paralytic fear. Clinging to the little seat, mouth tightly closed so the bugs can’t get in (more advice from our improbable guide) muscles so tense they’ve petrified, I can’t even scream. First impression of Mr. Fish, he’s not exactly a people person. He listens to Shane’s pitch—help us find my daughter by finding Ricky Lang—nods his unenthusiastic assent, and then gravely tells us that chances are we’re already too late. “I can find him for you,” he says with a shrug. “But I can’t fix what might already be done. Just so’s you know that from the get-go.” Shane apparently decides that the best thing is to be affable. Ignore the morbid, misanthropic streak and engage the man in conversation. The window of opportunity being the trek between the motel and the Hunt Club dock, where Ponytail has obligingly loaned his airboat to Leo Fish. On foot, because Fish makes it clear he “can’t abide a car,” meaning he won’t ride inside a vehicle. Too soon to say whether that means he’s claustrophobic or just plain weird.
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“We understand that Ricky was married to your sister,” Shane begins. “Yup. My half sister Louisa Mae. My daddy took up with a Seminole woman in his old age, and little Louisa Mae was the result. Beautiful child. Beautiful woman, too. Ricky never seen fit to marry her, being as she wasn’t Nakosha, but they made ’em some babies. Two lovely girls and the cutest little boy you ever did see.” “I understand they died in a fire.” “Died in a fire, yup, all of ’em.” “And Ricky blames the tribe?” The question stops Leo Fish in his tracks—he has the look of a man who’s taken a surprise punch to the gut. “He tell you that?” “No, sir. Got it from the FBI, who got it from his girlfriend.” “So that’s what he told his girlfriend? The tribe did it?” “Apparently.” Leo Fish grunts, spits copiously. He stares down at his naked feet, as if trying to decide who to kick. “That’s a damn lie. Tribe ain’t had nothin’ to do with it. Ricky Lang set fire to that house himself. Killed Louisa and the kids, whether he meant to or not. It’s on him, all that death.” Now it’s Randall Shane who looks stunned. “Lang killed his own children?” Fish responds with a curt nod and says, “He’d had this fancy new house built on the reservation, and then he and Louisa Mae got to fighting—might have been over this girlfriend you mentioned. Upshot is, she refused to let Ricky into his own house, and that’s when he said he’d sooner burn it down then let her live there. Louisa Mae, she’s a feisty one,
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she called the tribal police, but they refused to intervene ’cause Ricky was the big man.” “So he burned the house down with them in it?” “Not exactly. Man always had a crazy temper. What happen, he come out one night when they were all in bed, woke ’em up, and forced ’em all out of the house. Standing there in their pajamas, the three kids, and Louisa Mae cursing him for the devil. Then he sets the place afire with gasoline, to prove he can do what he likes with his own house. After he throws the match and sees the fire spreading, he takes off in his boat, in case the tribal police showed up after all. Leaves the kids weeping but alive. What he didn’t figure on, after he was gone, little Troy ran back inside to get his new puppy, they had it in one of those puppy crates for training purposes, and Louisa and the two girls ran after him. The roof came down and they all perished.” “He was never prosecuted?” Fish tugs at his straw cowboy hat, as if intending to screw it onto his head. “You got to understand about Ricky Lang. He made that tribe. They was just a collection of nobodies, not Seminole, not Miccosukee, not white neither, until Ricky got ’er done.” According to Fish, the Nakosha are really more of an extended family than a tribe. Cousins within cousins, most of them called some variation of Lang, after a Methodist missionary who had been absorbed into the family at the turn of the twentieth century. In addition to fathering fourteen children with three successive Indian wives, the Reverend Robert Lang had initiated the long and arduous process of seeking tribal recognition. Robert Lang had argued that unlike the Seminole, his adopted tribe were descended from a distinct band of the original Calusa who had been living on this land
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when the conquistadors first splashed into the great swamp, looking for El Dorado, or the Fountain of Youth or, failing that, to copulate with the native women. Lang’s bureaucratic battle had been carried on by successive generations, and had not been resolved until ten years ago, when the tribe had been granted dominion over a hundred square miles of boggy, mosquito-infested swampland, most of which was submerged during the rainy season, and therefore of minimal interest to developers. Ricky Lang was instrumental in transforming the Nakosha bingo license into a giant casino complex, vastly enriching the tribe. “Man was always smart, had big ideas to help his people, but he had to be the top dog, no matter what. Got away with it, too, until his crazy temper ended up killing his own children,” Fish tells us. “Tribal council finally decided they didn’t have enough to prosecute—or more likely didn’t have the stomach for it—so they deprived him of his office, took back his land, and banished him. Which, the way they think of it, is worse than the death penalty. From what I heard, Ricky thinks so, too.” The news that my daughter’s kidnapper was responsible for the deaths of his own small children hits me like a body blow. It explains his delusional beliefs—communing with dead children—and his spiral into ever-increasing violence, but it surely does not bode well for Kelly’s survival. The man gets away with arson and manslaughter at the very least, and is then haunted into a killing madness. A psychiatrist might theorize that Ricky Lang wanted to punish Edwin Manning for the way he doted upon his own son. Or maybe he really did believe that Manning could force the tribe to take him back. Whatever his motives, however twisted by grief and guilt, it’s obvious that in Ricky Lang’s world a stranger’s child doesn’t count for much.
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Never give up, Shane says. I’m trying to hold on to that as we rocket through the swampy wilderness, bumping and banging as Leo Fish punches the airboat over slick shallows, mere puddles, gunning the five-hundred-horsepower engine until it screams. The engine and the raging propellers are contained in a wire cage directly behind the raised seat where Fish sits like a mad king clinging to a throne, both hands on the rudder stick. Shane in the seat beside him, grinning into the wind, no doubt with bugs in his teeth. Bringing up the rear, the small square boat Fish is towing. It flails around in the black wake, twitching and jumping like a thing alive. The wild run seems like it lasts forever—fear slows the clock—but when Fish finally kills the engine and glides up on a piece of dry grassland, forty minutes have passed. “Not bad,” he announces, hopping down from his throne. “Covered near twenty hard miles in less than an hour.” “We’re here?” I ask, stomach in knots and ears ringing. No idea where “here” might be, barely able to distinguish land from sky. Fish looks at me, shakes his head. “We’re still a ways from where we’re headed, missy. This as far as the airboat can take us.” Missy? I’m not sure if that’s a term of endearment or one of contempt. Not that it matters. Teaching Leo Fish how to act civilized is not my problem. He could drag me along by my hair, caveman style, if it leads us to Kelly. What he’s dragging, however, is not me but the little square-sided boat. “What we call a pan,” he informs us, loading rifles, ammo, a push-pole, and fresh-water jugs into the little boat. “Every waterman got to have his pan.”
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Fish puts a rope over his shoulder and marches forward, pulling the boat over the damp grass. “I could help,” Shane offers. “Not much, you couldn’t,” Fish says. “You follow along as best you can.” Take that, Mr. Big FBI Man. Shane rolls his eyes but does as instructed, shortening his stride so that he’s pacing me rather than the reverse. The ground beneath us is damp under the grass and my running shoes are instantly soaked. Mosquitoes seem not the least repelled by the bug spray Fish provided, although in truth the dive-bomber buzzing in my ears is even more maddening than the actual bite. The only thing that keeps me from slapping at them compulsively is a notion that I’d have to slap myself unconscious to escape. “You always lived out here?” Shane wants to know as we trudge along. “Happened sort of gradual,” Fish says over his shoulder. “Always hunted and fished, everybody did. For some years I did some guiding, living off the tin canners.” “Tin canners?” “What we call the tourists. All that guidin’ finally decided me away from town, you might say. Now I’m so used to bein’ outside that I’d rather not be inside.” He stops, eases his small boat or “pan” into a little creek. The water so black I’d have easily mistaken it for solid ground. “Best you come aboard first, missy,” he says, offering a gnarled hand. “We can’t all fit in that little thing,” I point out. Fish laughs, which startles me. Hadn’t thought of him as the laughing type, but it’s actually quite a good laugh, makes him sound human. “Missy, I’ve had as many as a dozen
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sizeable gators on board. Most every one of them outweighed you.” “What about Shane?” “Him? Oh he’s a bigg’un, but he ain’t no more than three gators’ worth.” There are no seats, so I have to sit on the floor or the deck or whatever they call it, instantly dampening my butt. Thinking if Kelly and I manage to survive this, I’ll celebrate by taking a long hot shower. Hours long. We’ll wrap ourselves in soft robes and lounge about in air-conditioned, bugfree rooms, eating fancy hors d’oeuvres and watching TV until our brains dissolve into mush. Pure fantasy, but it helps me keep going. Helps keep me from screaming. Shane clambers aboard, all arms and legs, and is instructed to crouch in the middle, to keep the boat balanced. My knees end up against his back. Once Three Gator Shane is in position, Fish jumps sprightly on board and shoves us away from hard ground, using his pole. He remains standing, relaxed and perfectly balanced as he deftly works the pole, pushing us through the water. Looking up, a few dim stars illuminate his gaunt face. He’s smiling to himself, really smiling, and it finally dawns on me that despite his gruff way of talking, Leo Fish is actually having a good time. He gets a kick out of leading ignorant strangers through the world he knows so well. He’s not so much a people hater as a solitary man, and not without his own brand of dry humor. “You mentioned alligators,” I say, trying to sound casual as I cling to the sides of the little boat. “Any around here, by any chance?” Fish looks down at me and grins. “There might be one or two,” he says. “Best keep your hands inside the pan.”
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*** Some folks hate a hospital type situation. Detective Sydell isn’t one of them. His job often takes him to one E.R. or another, and he always has pretty much the same reaction: amazement that there are so many good people dedicated to helping those in trouble. Granted they’re getting paid, and sometimes they’re grumpy or incompetent, but the overall thrust of the deal is about helping. Plus he likes nurses. Okay, Roof likes anything in skirts, but in his opinion, nurses are top of the heap. For instance there’s a leggy E.R. nurse here in Naples who sets his old heart to beating double time. Come to raising his blood pressure, she’s better than push-ups. He’s looking around— gal by the name of Suzy Queenan—but Suzie Q. isn’t around. Probably not on duty at this godforsaken hour of the night. Oh well, maybe next time. Roof gets right down to it, approaches the desk and asks for the duty police officer by name. That same duty officer, as he well knows, already having gone off shift. “Got a call from Officer Morris Kendall, alerting me to the presence of a certain person. By that I mean patient. Young fella from my home town, his ailing momma wants me to check to see that he’s okay.” A few moments later he’s ambling along, directed to a curtained area in the far corner of the E.R. “I’ll be damned if it ain’t Roy Whittle himself,” Roof says, grinning around the curtain. “What you doin’ in here, Roy? Gettin’ some shut-eye? Sucking’ up on the free morphine?” Roy, heavily bandaged about the throat, stares at him with dull eyes. The detective is joking about morphine, but evidently the young man has been dosed with some sort of painkiller, seems to have numbed him out considerable.
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“Can I help you, Officer?” a pretty little Latino LPN wants to know. Roof introduces himself, tips his uniform hat. “This young scamp is my cousin Roy. Second cousin is more like it, but you know how it is in Glade City. Heck, a man’s lucky if he ain’t his own grandpa, ain’t that right, Roy?” The nurse smiles nervously—rural inhabitants having a certain reputation in the big city of Naples—says to call if he needs anything, and then hurries away, as if afraid of what his next friendly joke might be. Roof approaches the hospital bed, lowering his voice a few decibels, and generally cutting the crap. “Here’s the thing, Roy. You show up with a piece of steel wire in your throat, dropped off by your dopey brother, that attracts my interest. Officer on duty tells me the wire they pulled outta your throat looks like it mighta sorta maybe come off a five-gallon bucket. That make sense to you, getting accidently stabbed by a bucket?” Roy closes his eyes, doesn’t even bother shaking his head. Looks to Roof like he’s got way more problems weighing on him than a throat wound, however painful that might be. “Thing of it is, folks have been inquiring about you, son. Official kind of folks. Could you be involved in some way with Ricky Lang? Was you at that old airstrip when a body got burned, and an airplane, too? Questions like that. I been telling ’em you’re a good man, Roy, because I believe that to be true, more or less. Tonight it’s considerable less. Person driven to protect himself with a bucket handle, that might be because alls he’s got is a bucket. That make sense to you? A bucket like you might provide a person was he to be kept prisoner, and not have access to a proper toilet. That what happened, Roy? You went to fetch the man, or maybe it was the girl, whoever it was managed to stick you with a piece
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of wire? Huh? Because they tell me you’re lucky to be alive. Missed your carotid artery by a whisker.” Roof pauses, looks around, carefully places his hand over Roy Whittle’s right wrist. The boy feels about as weak as a fresh-drowned kitten. Roof gives him a little squeeze. “Figure with your esophagus all swole up you’d have a hard time screaming,” says Roof, keeping his voice friendly in tone and barely above a murmur. “Nothing wrong with your hearing though, is there? My concern ain’t you, because you I can have arrested anytime. My concern is that brother of yurn who likes to torture creatures. He run away practically soon’s he dropped you off. So my question is, where’d he go? Is he off huntin’ the one did this to you? Huh? And where’d that be, exactly? Best tell me, son. Best tell old Roof everything you know.” Poor boy wants to scream but he can’t. 13. Say Your Prayers Never before has Kelly Garner dreaded the sunrise. Not that she’s usually up that early but still, when it does happen her heart always stirs with warmth, even if her eyes are bleary from an all-nighter. Probably because it triggers memories of childhood confinements at various treatment centers. There were a few bad nights, nurses and doctors hovering, when the prospect of witnessing another dawn seemed unlikely. So she’s keenly aware, despite what her mom may think, that each new day is a precious gift. Kelly knows the monster man is close. Hasn’t dared rise up for a look lately, but her sixteen-year-old ears register everything. The squish of a heavy foot coming up from the damp grass. The faintest clink of something metallic—a knife or gun?
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He’s out there, waiting patiently. Waiting for her to make a mistake, give herself away. Waiting for the sun to rise, when it will be easier to find them. Seth remains feverish, quaking uncontrollably, but he’s not yet delirious. He understands the consequences of making a sound, and has kept silent, communicating, as best he can, by touch. They cling together, not daring to so much as slap away a mosquito. Kelly wondering if it’s possible to be bitten to death, to actually be bled dry by mosquitoes. They’re both so swollen with bite marks that the bugs are having trouble finding fresh spots. Kelly takes great care not to put any pressure on Seth’s swollen arm. There’s a limit to how much pain he can stand without crying out. Best thing, she decides, go somewhere far away in her head. Somewhere that gives her hope, makes her feel strong. For Kelly that somewhere is in the left-hand seat of Seth’s brandnew Cessna Skylane. Seth in the co-pilot’s seat, letting her have the controls for the first time. He’s still a bit uneasy about taking on the responsibility of instructing a teenage girl, one who has been badgering him unmercifully by e-mail. He’s made it clear he’s not interested in some whimsical impulse to get a free ride in a small plane. She will have to prove herself, and quickly. Seth Manning, for all his boyish good looks, is the most serious man she’s ever met. For him flying is a vocation, not a hobby or job. He’s been flying since he was fourteen—he soloed at fifteen, long before he could legally drive—so he knows that some teens are capable of serious commitment. She knows what he must be thinking: this skinny girl in the pilot seat has made all the right noises, but the fact is she’s never even been in a small aircraft, let alone taken the yoke. For all he knows, she might be a puker. Lots of steady,
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serious people can’t fly because of motion sickness. Others can’t learn because they don’t listen. Kelly doesn’t puke. She’s a sponge, soaking up instruction and repeating it back to him word for word, if necessary. Her attention is fully engaged, firmly concentrated, and when he tells her to place her feet on the rudder pedals, find the balance between them, she does so with the confidence of someone who trusts her own physical instincts. Then she has the yoke and she’s flying the aircraft, banking firmly to the right as she follows his instructions, gradually coming back to level, finding the horizon, checking the instruments. Flying. The moment is, for Kelly, transcendent. For the first time in her life she’s in control of her own destiny, flying free above the earth. Her heart tells her that so long as she can fly, she’ll live forever. She can see not just her own small life, but the shape of the world below. Joy comes off her like waves of heat, and Seth knows what she’s experiencing. She can feel him studying her, judging her ability, and when she risks a quick glance the first thing that registers is the kindness in his eyes. He wants her to succeed. “You’re a natural pilot,” he tells her that day, as if slightly disappointed. “That’s good, right?” “It can be. But it means you have to be extra careful, especially during the first few hours of instruction, as you develop discipline. Naturals tend to fly by the seat of their pants because they have an instinctive understanding of how the aircraft moves through the air. They concentrate on the feeling part and tend to ignore the instruments. That’s what gets them into trouble. When a plane stalls into a tailspin, there’s no ‘feel’ about it. You have to trust your instruments
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and your instruction, not your instincts. Most of being a good pilot is in your head, not your hands.” “But my hands are okay?” “Your hands are fine. If it’s any consolation, I was a natural, too. But I forced myself to become a very boring, bythe-numbers pilot.” “By-the-numbers isn’t boring,” Kelly tells him. “By-thenumbers means staying alive.” It was exactly the right thing to say. Once they were back on the ground—no, he wouldn’t allow her to attempt a landing the very first day—he seemed as excited about her continuing instruction as she did. He bought her a coffee at the airport’s little café and they talked for hours. He told her how he became obsessed with the notion of flying shortly after his mom died, when the idea of lifting into the air seemed like a way to escape grief, and later became something altogether different, a place where he felt whole and in control and completely alive. His mom died of cancer, he told her, and for the first time in her life Kelly found herself willingly recounting what it had been like to be a child stricken with leukemia, facing the very real possibility of death at an age when most kids’ biggest fear was invisible monsters under the bed. They bonded big time. Seth was different. Not like a potential boyfriend or a teacher, more like the perfect older sibling—or that’s how she, an only child, imagines it might be to have an older brother. She can’t, she won’t, let him die. That’s why, when the first shotgun blast explodes through the mangroves, followed by the flat bang of the discharge, Kelly Garner covers Seth Manning’s body with her own.
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“Come on out, little pig,” says the monster man. So close he might as well be whispering in her ear. “Ain’t got all day. Quit humping your fag boyfriend.” Kelly stays where she is, not moving. The next shot blows apart a branch not an inch from her head, spitting shredded mangrove leaves into her tightly clenched eyes. “Two ways we can do this,” says monster man. “Crawl out and beg, or be killed where you’re at. Thing is, I need fag boy alive, so I’ll have to wing you and let you bleed to death, then drag you off him.” He kicks at the mangroves. Kelly decides she doesn’t want to die with her eyes closed. She opens her eyes, squints up through the tangle of mangrove branches. Monster man is no more than ten yards away. “Make up your mind,” he says. “I ain’t got all night.” Beneath her Seth struggles. “Leave her alone,” he says, voice muffled. “I’m the one you want!” Feverish and weak though he is, Kelly can’t stop him from crawling out from under. Clenching his teeth, groaning in agony as his swollen arm thrashes through the branches. Finally staggers to his feet, finds himself up to his knees in the dark water surrounding the stand of mangroves. A faint blush of first light just now showing along the horizon. “I surrender,” Seth says, straightening up, his feverish body shivering. “You got what you want. Take me and just leave her there.” “Oh, I aim to,” says the monster man, chuckling. He swings the shotgun from Seth to the mangroves where Kelly still lies entangled in the branches, barely able to move. “Say your prayers, little pig,” he says. A shotgun fires. And part of monster man’s head turns to dark mist.
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He collapses backward into the water and does not rise. Standing behind him, a different monster. One wearing night-vision goggles and aiming a large, odd-looking shotgun. “Get in the boat,” says Ricky Lang, yanking on the rope to an aluminum skiff. “We’re going to a party and you’re both invited.” 14. Three Shots At Sunrise Leo Fish is beginning to grow on me. For the first hour or two in our company, he parted with very few words, but the coming dawn has warmed him up. Or maybe years of rarely speaking have left him with a lot of pent-up verbal pressure. Whatever, every stroke of the push-pole seems to bring forth another anecdote or observation. “When I was a boy, say about seven, my daddy come upon hard times. Had a house in Glade City but lost it to the bank. So he moved us out to the shell mounds—them are the little islands made by the Calusa Indians—and we camped out for a year, living off the land. Dint have a proper tent to start out, just a piece of canvas strung over a limb. Skeeters were bad, but the fishing and the trapping was good. Daddy gimme a little .22 rifle and I become a good shot. Yessum, best year of my life, out on the mounds.” Part of me is aware that he’s purposefully distracting me from our present situation and I’m grateful for the effort. Shane, a hulking presence in the little boat because of his size, remains mostly quiet, staring off at the dark horizon as if willing the sun to rise, and the search to resume. “For a whole year we dint eat nothing much that wasn’t protected species nowadays. White ibis—what they call Chokoloskee chicken—and night heron and egret and such.
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It was that or starve. Today they might say we was homeless, but we dint think of it that way. Once Daddy got together a few gator hides, he was able to trade for staples like cornmeal and flour and beans and cooking oil. Life was hard but good. When you work yur butt off from sun comes up till sun goes down, cleaning and salting hides, you better believe Mama’s cornbread in the iron skillet smelled like heaven. “Funny enough, we never ate gator. Just skinned ’em and threw away the rest. They say it tastes like chicken. I say chicken tastes like alligator,” he says, chuckling at his own joke. “How far, Mr. Fish?” “Just Fish, or Leo if you druther. Mister makes me nervous. Not too far, missy. Around the bend a short ways. We’ll get there, don’t you worry.” “You think we’ll find her?” “Gonna do our very best for you, missy. Ain’t that right, Mr. Shane?” “Just Shane,” says Shane. “For the same reason. And yes, absolutely, we’ll find Kelly.” Can’t help notice he doesn’t specify on finding her alive. Around the bend arrives, and Fish puts us ashore on a tidy little island he calls a hardwood hammock. Tall trees, mostly tamarind, acacia, and something called gumbo-limbo, are thick around the outside, like the walls of a fortress, the interior being mostly ferns and low-growing shade plants. Much of this has been cleared because he sometimes used it as a camp. The deep canopy of fronds and leaves makes it feel almost like a roof over our heads. Fish looks around, smiling with contentment, and says, “Always sleep like a baby in here. I woke up once ’cause a whitetail fawn was licking my face. Must have been the salt. Which makes me an old salt lick, I guess.”
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Setting us at our ease as he unpacks a rifle from his little boat. “What’s going on?” Shane wants to know. His plan is to leave us here for a bit while he checks out one of Ricky Lang’s camps. Shane naturally wants to accompany him, but Fish insists on going alone. “On my lonesome I can do it in twenty minutes,” he says, tying little bits of rope around his trouser cuffs. “With you along it’d be an hour. Plus you’ll be tough to hide on open ground. So rest yourself down on the nice soft ferns. We’re gettin’ where we need to be, even if it don’t seem so at the moment.” Shane reluctantly agrees to let him go it alone. “Those ropes around your pant legs, what’s that for?” I want to know. “Keep out the leeches, missy. Don’t mind a leech or two on my ankles, but up higher they give me the willywaws, if you know what I mean.” Moments later he’s waist deep in the dark water, holding the rifle clear, and before long I lose sight of his cowboy hat as he blends into the swamp. Leaving me with a lump in my throat and nothing to do but wait. Shane, sensing my despair, plops himself down next to me, hugging his knees. “I feel good about Fish,” he says. “He knows the way,” I say, without much enthusiasm. “Yes, he does. And in about twenty minutes the sun will come up and the search will resume. Today’s the day, Mrs. Garner.” “Me Jane,” I respond laconically. “You Shane.” He actually giggles. Which sounds weird coming from such a big guy. When he realizes I’m not going to join in, he clears his throat and says, “A while ago you asked me why I
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resigned from the FBI. I said I’d tell you about it later. Now seems like as good a time as any. You still want to hear my story?” He, like Fish before him, seems intent on distracting me from the more immediate crisis. Obviously he’s trying to help, so I go, “Sure. Why not?” more out of politeness than interest. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he adds, not quite kidding about it. “You go first,” I suggest. “The Randall Shane story. But make it quick, because Fish’ll be back in twenty minutes.” “Won’t take me five,” he promises. “It starts, like a lot of good stories, with a beautiful wife and a beautiful child. Jean and Amy. Jean was my wife, Amy was our daughter. We had this nice little place in New Rochelle, I think I mentioned that part already, and I worked out of the New York office, mostly testifying in fingerprint cases. We’d had to reorganize the fingerprint division after a scandal—the previous expert never saw a print, any print, that he couldn’t connect to a criminal case—and I’d become the new and improved resident expert, basically reorganizing the way we identify prints. Computer stuff. Boring guy with a boring job, but I loved it. “Anyhow, I had this long weekend, so Jean and I decide we’ll take Amy to the Smithsonian. She’s got this project for her world-studies class and the Smithsonian will really help. Plus we both like Washington. That’s where we hooked up, when I first got hired by the bureau. So we throw the bags in the car and drive from New Rochelle to D.C., four and a half hours door to door, piece of cake. “Amy, she loves the museum. She adores it. Everybody says this about their kids, but Amy was truly amazing. Twice as smart as me, and she was only twelve years old. Jean and I had just the best weekend, watching Amy soak up all that
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knowledge. She was having such a great time, taking notes and collecting pamphlets that we end up staying longer than we intended. Would have made sense to stay over, and we discussed the possibility, but decided we had to get back home that night because Amy has school the next day and I’ve got work and Jean has work—did I mention Jean was a lawyer? No? She worked for the Legal Aid Society in New York. Anyhow, it’s night, heavy traffic. We’re on the New Jersey Turnpike when my eyelids start to get heavy. So I pull into the Walt Whitman rest area and let Jean take over. She’s wide-awake, fully caffeinated and raring to go. Amy’s in the back, sound asleep. Probably dreaming of her eventual Nobel Prize nomination for her sixth-grade world-studies class project.” “Oh Shane,” I say, knowing what’s coming. “Yeah,” he says. “It was bad. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a wreck and I’m the only survivor. While I was asleep Jean got sideswiped by a tractor-trailer and we got dragged under his rear wheels.” I hug the big guy, but he doesn’t really hug me back. Too tense, too focused on the pain. “So that’s my story,” he says. “Why I resigned from the FBI.” “What did you do?” “What can you do? I buried them. Then, see, I was so afraid of forgetting, so unable to let go, that I spent a year or so working on a family scrapbook. Which turned out not to be such a good idea for me, mental health-wise. That house in New Rochelle? Must have looked like Howard Hughes was living there. I wasn’t saving my own toenail clippings, or worse, but I was obsessing on assembling the perfect family scrapbook that would somehow take us all back to our
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happy boring life together. That was my purpose in life, culling through snapshots of dead people.” “So what happened?” I want to know. “How did you get through it? How did you survive?” He shrugs. “Ran into someone more desperate than me. This lady in the neighborhood, she came to me because she knew I used to be FBI. Short version—she had a problem with her missing daughter and I agreed to help her if I could, and it turns out I could, and I sort of kept going from there.” “I’m glad you did. No matter how this turns out.” “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.” “Can’t help it. Sorry.” “Try this,” he suggests. “Show me yours. The secret of who fathered Kelly. Get it off your chest.” I want to share, really I do, but as usual, something holds me back. Something deep and veiled puts a cautionary finger to my lips and says, no, not now, not yet. “If we get her back,” I tell him. “If Kelly survives she deserves to know what happened to her father. Knew I’d have to tell her someday. I’ll tell her first, and then I’ll tell you, promise.” “Not if,” he says agreeably. “When.” At that moment a gun blasts in the distance. I’m no expert on gunshots, but when you hear one go off in the middle of the Everglades you know what it is. Not a firecracker, not a backfire. A gunshot, no doubt. Shane grips my hand, doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t need to. Two more shots fire, and I know in my heart that someone just died.
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15. Something Rises From The Black Water Minutes go by, jagged little shards of eternity. We’re at the edge of the hardwood island, facing the sunrise, because the thudding sounds came from that direction. “Shotgun,” Shane decides. “Fish had a rifle, so it’s not him.” Thing is, I’m not thinking about our guide, or what he might or might not have done. I’m thinking about an execution at dawn, because that’s what it sounded like to me. The final, deliberate, carefully aimed shots that turn a living human being into something lifeless and ugly. “Hard to say how far,” Shane muses. “Less than a mile, that’s for sure.” As I stare, something separates itself from the brightening horizon and begins to fly back and forth, relentless and buglike. “Helicopters are up,” Shane says approvingly. “Resuming their pattern. Remind me to ask Fish if he’s got a flare gun.” I’m hearing Shane but not fully processing his words— helicopters, pattern, flare. I’m concentrating on the stillness in my heart, wondering if it will ever resume beating. Of course it never stopped, not really, it’s just a symptom of unbearable anxiety, thinking your heart has ceased beating. Shane says lots of other stuff, probably reassuring things, but I’m not listening. We never do see Leo Fish coming back. All of a sudden he’s there in front of us, soaking wet from the armpits down, and looking especially grim. “Best follow me,” he says, retrieving his little boat from the bushes. “Is it my daughter?” I ask, mouth dry. “Can’t say,” Fish says, turning away.
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Back to the taciturn hermit. As Shane and I clamber into the little boat, it feels like gravity has doubled. Everything is much heavier, even the air. I’m at the point where breathing is no longer automatic; I have to concentrate on expanding my lungs, sucking in the syrupy air. The mosquitoes so thick you have to breathe through a tightened mouth or risk drawing them into your lungs. Fish, not a young man, poles the boat with fierce concentration, shoving us rapidly along, and the blood-tinted sky ripples in the wake. The blood color gives way to garish, neon-orange and by the time Fish nudges the little boat up on dry land—five minutes? ten? my inner clock no longer functions with clarity—the sky has become a thin wash of blue with a few stars or planets still showing. I realize, with a sickening shock, that darkness made the wilderness smaller. With the blooming light comes a sense of vast distance. The tiny helicopters are miles and miles away, too far to make any sound. They say the horizon is only about three miles away when you’re at ground level, but from here it looks a thousand miles and a million years, with distance and time hopelessly entangled. Vast but hardly silent—a million birds are screaming bloody murder and things are splashing in the water, disturbed by our presence. Before I quite know what is happening, Fish has grabbed the rope and he’s running across the grass, dragging the boat. Moving with urgency, as if he knows that some terrible thing awaits us. Which he must. He came this way, right? He’s already been here. He knows but won’t say because he’d rather show me. Panic is like a fierce little bird trapped in my chest. I want to fall to my knees and let it happen, a full-scale panic attack, fluttering heartbeats, hyperventilation, the whole works. But
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my legs have ideas of their own, they carry me forward, over the damp grass and the firm mud beneath, through the ragged, toothy fronds of saw grass and palmetto slashing at my knees. Racing forward, my eyes searching wildly for the one terrible thing I hope never to see, my daughter’s name resonating within me, kellykellykellykelly on an endless loop until suddenly I burst through a thick stand of palmetto bushes or trees or whatever they are, and go facedown with a great womp! into the black water. Shane pulls me out, holds me up, shakes me. Shaking me dry or maybe trying to shake some sense into me. Hard to say because I’m blubbering and with water in my ears not really listening. I see his mouth move, but what is the silly man saying? “Nutter!” he says. So he thinks I’m crazy. That makes two of us. Then the syllables begin to separate themselves and I realize he’s saying, “Not her.” Not her. Not Kelly. He sets me down, looking as worried as ever I’ve seen him. Worried for my state of mind, obviously. As he should be. “Back with us, missy?” Fish wants to know. Too soon to speak, but I manage to nod in the right places. “Shots were fired here,” he says, indicating a thick area of mangroves. “I was too far away to see it, but there’s plenty of trace left behind. See the way those branches are bent? Two people lying there. Hiding, is my guess. Just above, where the branch is busted, that’s from the first shotgun. Ten gauge, from the sound of it, and looks to be a slug shot. Sorry, missy. That’s the size gun and ammunition a man might use hunting deer or wild boar.” “Or people,” I manage to gasp. “Or people,” he concedes. “Which is what he was doing,
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right enough. The way he fired the first two shots, he was maybe tryin’ to back ’em out of the mangroves. There’s no blood, no indication they was hit.” “They?” I ask. The guide’s methodical approach helps calm me, ever so slightly, and my heartbeat is no longer fluttering. It helps there are no bodies. I was expecting bodies. “The two was hiding in the mangroves,” Fish explains. “You see that area over there? Where it opens up and the water looks a little deeper along the shore? That’s one of Ricky Lang’s old camps. Used to be trailers and shacks and such like, until the rangers burned it all down. Ricky lived here till he was about twelve years old, is my guess. I’m also guessin’ he has someplace nearby where he kept his captives. Yur daughter and the young man.” “Seth,” I tell him. “His name is Seth.” “Whatever you say, missy.” “What happened? Where are they?” Shane wants to know as badly as I do. We’re both waiting on Leo Fish, hoping he has the answers. “Can’t know for sure,” he concedes. “Signs and trace give me clues, but it ain’t certain. Two people hiding in the mangroves, two shots to scare ’em out. Minute or so later, comes another shot from a different gun. A twelve gauge, probably an AA-12. Very distinctive sound.” “An AA-12, are you sure?” Shane wants to know, his voice laden with concern. “Ain’t dead sure of nothin’ in this life, son. But it had the sound of an auto assault shotgun, firing a single. The Cuban paramilitary units used to train with the AA-12, pretending to invade Cuba. Very scary noise, when firing on full auto. Those boys would spook the wildlife for miles around, playing with their full-auto shotguns.”
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“Two shooters,” Shane says. “Yup, they was two. One killed by the other.” Shane and I both have the same reaction. We look at the bare ground, as if expecting a body to materialize. Fish shakes his head and goes, “Sorry, missy. I ain’t used to explaining. That dark stuff spattered on the mangrove?” he says, pointing. “That’s blood, and if you’ll pardon me for saying so, it includes specks of brain matter. So we know it was a head shot.” If there’s blood and brains on the mangrove leaves I’ll take Fish’s word for it. I have no desire for a closer look. I’m still trying to puzzle out why, if someone was killed, there’s no body. And how does he know that one shooter killed the other? How—and this is killing me slowly—how does he know the spatter doesn’t come from Kelly or Seth? “Because I seen him, missy. The dead man. He was shot from behind and fell back in the water. Made sure of who it was afore I come back for you.” Fish hefts his push-pole, studies the oily black water, then plunges the pole into the surface not a yard from my feet. He levers the pole down, grimacing with the effort. Something rises. A wet thing with not much of a face. “Sorry, missy,” says Fish. “Seems like you need to see this, to prove it ain’t your daughter. This a local boy name of Dug Whittle and you’ll notice he dint let go of his shotgun. A ten gauge. So he was the one shootin’ at the mangroves.” “Ricky did this?” Shane asks. “That’d be my guess.” “Oh my God,” I say, seeing what happened, finally picturing what Fish had seen at a glance. “She escaped! Kelly escaped! She was running away. She and Seth.” “Looks like,” Fish says, lowering the pole. “But it didn’t hold. Ricky Lang has got ’em now.”
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16. Later Alligator She floats in a jungle canopy, under a blanket of lush green fronds that cover her, good as any camouflage. All she can see is the green, up close and blurry, and it takes tremendous effort to keep her eyes open, so mostly she concentrates on floating. Also on breathing. She reminds herself that it is important to keep breathing even though the air doesn’t taste good. Breathing isn’t about taste, silly, it’s something you have to do whether you want to or not. Remember to breathe. In, out, keep it going. On some level Kelly knows that she has been drugged. Partly the recent memory of what the animal tranquilizer did to her the first time, there on the airstrip where all this began, when the dart was fired into her abdomen. This time the needle came from behind, wielded by the wild man with the crazy-looking shotgun. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a gun like that in some old movie. Terminator? Predator? One of those. So maybe this is dream about a movie and she’s really home in her bed experiencing that heavy, paralyzed sensation that sometimes happens in a dream. Where you want to move or scream but you can’t and it isn’t until you wake up that you fully comprehend what happened. A voice comes through the palm fronds. A mad voice that insinuates itself into her waking nightmare. “See you later, alligator,” says the voice, inches from her ear. “No, no, that’s not right. What I mean to say, see the alligator later. Which you will, I promise.” The mad voice laughs and drifts away. Kelly wills herself to wake up. If only she could scream she could wake herself up.
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17. And Then The Boss Is Gone “Good morning, Daddy, how you doing?” Ricky, looking down at his father’s withered body, savors the irony. One of his first acts as tribal president was to designate a percentage of gaming revenue to the construction of a new Elder Care & Hospice Facility, located right here on the rez. He made it happen, made sure it was done right, sparing no expense in either the construction phase or the staffing. The individual suites are large, airy and comfortable, bearing little or no resemblance to a hospital room. There are no locks on the doors and each unit has a screened porch with a spectacular view of the Everglades. All in all it’s about as nice as such a place can ever be, considering that many of the residents are either dying or demented, or both. Tito Lang scores on both counts, his liver slowly failing, his brain irreversibly damaged by a thirty-year immersion in alcohol. “Look who’s here, Daddy. Your grandchildren! Did you ever meet them? I been trying to recall, but it seems like maybe you were already too far gone. Doesn’t matter, today we make up for lost times. Say hello to your grandfather, children. Daddy, this is Alicia, Reya and Tyler. See how they’re all dressed up? They’re going to a costume party. Little Tyler, he really wanted to be a pirate but I said, no no, children, no more pirates or princesses, no more dressing up as white people. Today you dress up as Nakosha people.” Ricky smiles down at his children, who flit around in such a way that it’s difficult to see all three at once. “Kids, do me a favor, go play on the porch. Your grampa Tito and I need to have a grown-up conversation. Alicia,
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honey? Don’t let Tyler go outside, I want you all together, okay? For the party later, that’s why. Good girl. Go on, shoo.” Ricky shaking his head and smiling, pleased that his father has finally had a chance to see his beautiful grandchildren. From the scent of shampoo and soap, he knows his father has already had his morning bath, and that the hospice aids will not be back to check on him for at least twenty minutes. Plenty of time for a conversation. “I been thinking, Daddy. That’s what’s wrong with me, too much thinking. All the time, day and night, awake, asleep, always thinking. Is that why you drank so much, to keep from thinking?” His father’s eyes skid away, unable to hold focus for long. The diagnosis, rendered months ago, was unequivocal. Neuronal damage to the cerebral cortex with serious cognitive impairment, resulting in a borderline vegetative state. Nominally conscious or wakeful, but no longer able to form or hold thoughts, and verbally unresponsive on all levels. Tito Lang, once a big talker, speaks no more. His awareness comes and goes. He likes it when the nurses sponge him, and will swallow soft food spooned into his mouth. When spoken to, his eyes at first respond, then quickly drift away. The lights are on, dimly, but he’s rarely at home in any meaningful way. Perversely his heart remains strong. No one has been able to say how long he will linger in his present condition. Could be weeks, months, maybe longer. “What have I been thinking about?” says Ricky, sitting on the edge of his father’s bed. “I’m glad you asked. I’ve been thinking about the old times. Before I was born, before you were born. The long-ago times, and how our people lived back then. You ever think about that? Yeah?
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“You’re right, Daddy. In those days when people got old, too old to contribute to the community, they went away. They got left behind. The people would give them a weapon and maybe a little water and a blanket, and the people would move on, leaving the elder behind. Sounds cruel but it ain’t, not really. It’s natural. My guess, it didn’t take long. And next year when the people came back they’d gather the bones and bury them in a big jar. They call it an ossuary. That’s the white word. We’ve forgotten the Nakosha word, isn’t that sad?” Out on the screened-in porch the children are playing cowboys and Indians. Despite his native costume, naughty Tyler is pretending to be the cowboy, which means he gets to chase his big sisters around, shooting them with his makebelieve gun. They indulge him, being sweet girls. Look how they pretend to die, writhing on the floor. Ricky smiles indulgently. They’re good kids, he’s lucky to have them. “You know what, Daddy? Lately I’ve been thinking maybe it would be better if all of us got left behind. All the Nakosha people. Our cousins and brothers, all of them. Time has come to let the other people move on, leave us behind. That would be the kindest thing. No more fighting, no more betrayal, no more pain, no more suffering. Wouldn’t that be better? We’ll all of us go where the spirits go, and we’ll be together. The world will be clean and new and it will last forever.” In the end, after the conversation is over and Tito agrees, Ricky uses the pillow. Sally Pop finds it more than a little weird to be back on the reservation, hanging out with so many cops and federal agents. Some are polite, some choose to aggressively ignore
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him. Mostly they’re focused on coordinating the search for Mr. Manning’s son and the pretty lady’s daughter, so he tries not to take offense. Back in Jersey he avoided cops and Feds like the plague. Not because he was in any great danger of arrest or prosecution, but because guys in his situation were expected to avoid the company of cops and Feds. Tough guys. Guys of a certain size and heft, useful in casino establishments as a kind of enforcement decoration. Okay, sometimes he got a little rough, maybe accidentally fractured a limb or kneecap while encouraging payment obligations. But really it was all an act, part of the routine that kept him employed. Act a certain way, talk a certain way, they’d fall for it because he looked the part, courtesy of not being able to avoid a punch in the boxing ring. Sally thinks of it like the old joke about not being a doctor but playing one on TV. He’s not really a tough guy, but he plays one in real life. Edwin Manning, being a very smart dude, seems to have figured this out. He’s dismissed the others and is no longer relying on Sally for security—who needs private security when you’re surrounded by cops and Feds?—but has decided to keep him around to serve as an extra pair of ears. Sally performs that function quite willingly—the pay is still good, and he likes being around all the action. So when Manning calls down from the chickee hut—the official visitor’s hut, whatever that means—Sally obediently trots up the steps, finds his boss standing at a railing, staring out at the nasty big wet grassland or mosquito breeding ground or whatever. A freaking swamp is what it is. “Coffee?” asks Sally. “They brought in a fresh urn.”
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Manning declines the offer. Looks like hell, his eyes sunk so deep in his head it’s a wonder he can see. Still eating himself up over the decision to level with the Feds, admit his boy got snatched. For what it’s worth, Sally thinks he made the right choice. When you’re dealing with Indians, especially ones who confiscate your guns, sometimes the best thing is to call in the cavalry. “What are they saying?” Manning wants to know. “Nothing new. They got the chopper thing going, they’re hoping to spot something from the air, just like yesterday.” What they’re calling the “forward deployment area” is in fact a couple of portable trailers, with room in front for an improvised helicopter pad. The choppers can touch down and pick up, but refueling has to be done off the rez, at the DadeCollier Training airport, north of the Everglades. The whole business of helicopters is way too noisy, Sally has decided. So far lots of flash but no result. A resupply station has been set up for the ground-based effort. The “boots on the ground” troops. Since the area is far too large for any generalized search, the volunteers have been divided into units and are presently tramping through likely quadrants, as directed by the tribal police in coordination with federal agencies. Checking out various hunting and fishing camps, other places Ricky Lang has been known to frequent, as well as so-called anomalies identified from the air, which have so far turned out to be things like animal carcasses. Basically everyone is guessing, from what Sally can tell. “No word on Lang?” Manning wants to know. “Nothing since he burned the airplane.” “I don’t give a shit about the plane,” Manning says, grimacing. “Enough about the plane! They got five hundred
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people out there and they can’t locate one man? What the hell are they doing?” “They’ll find him, sir.” “Based on what? Putting on a big show? What if he’s already dead?” Sally blanches. “Excuse me, sir?” “Ricky Lang. He’s off his rocker, maybe he killed himself. What if he killed himself and left Seth out there to die? No water, no food. Exposed to the elements. Have they considered that? Have they?” Sally gets why Healy and Salazar and the other agents are avoiding Edwin Manning. Ostensibly they’re supposed to be informing him of every step of the investigation, but in practical terms the little guy goes ballistic when they bring him anything but good news. Questioning their competence, insulting them and so on, but all along really second-guessing himself. Plus just being on the rez seems to piss him off, since he considers himself betrayed by the tribe. Which is why Sally decides not to mention the dogs. Waiting in line for coffee as the sun came up, he heard this one guy let it slip they had corpse-sniffing dogs ready to go. Sally figures Mr. Manning doesn’t need to know about the dogs. Not at this particular juncture. “I heard one of the agents say they get good results eighty percent of the time,” Sally says. “Those are pretty good odds.” “Oh yeah? It’s bullshit. In a situation like this there are no odds. They either find him alive or they don’t. So please don’t bring me any more happy talk, or stuff you overheard. Just facts.” “Yeah, of course,” Sally says affably. “You sure you don’t want coffee? It ain’t half-bad.”
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“No.” “How about some pastry. They got this Cuban stuff is really tasty. You gotta eat something, boss. Keep up your energy.” The bodyguard’s hand instinctively slaps at a particularly nasty mosquito feasting on the back of his neck, and is startled to find some sort of dart protruding. He’s thinking he needs to say something, warn Mr. Manning, but the thought never triggers the words because a great, warm numbness flows out from the dart, paralyzing his jaw. Funny, he has no recollection of falling but there he is on the floor, looking sideways at Edwin Manning, who lies sprawled nearby, a dart protruding from his neck. Amazing. What happened exactly? Sally’s thoughts have become vague. Is he dying? If so, it’s not so bad. So far. A big, meaty fist comes into his angle of vision. For some reason it reminds Sally of one of those coin-operated games on the boardwalk, the one where you try to snatch a kewpie doll with a little crane. The big fist locks on Mr. Manning like he’s a kewpie doll, and from behind comes a haunted voice that says, “I decided you and your son should be together.” And then the boss is gone. 18. Events In The Sky Even as an adult, whenever I got seriously out of whack my mother had a favorite song she would hum—”Cleopatra, Queen of Denial.” She always did it with a smile—the idea was to kid me into straightening out, or at least accepting reality—but she had it right, believe me. For many years I
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was the queen of denial. Something about the world I didn’t like, I’d tune it out, ignore it to the point it no longer existed. Best example, getting pregnant. I’m sixteen and my periods have always been somewhat irregular. So it’s fairly easy to not pay attention when the time comes and goes. And okay, I did pretend to use and dispose of tampons, so Mom wouldn’t catch on, but that was just to avoid embarrassing questions about menstruating, not because a pregnancy was possible. No way. Couldn’t be. Don’t even think about it. I tucked away the fear—it was a terrifying notion, me having a baby—and went on with my teenage, high school life. A life in which I was the shy girl without a boyfriend. There were plenty of girlfriends and friends who were boys, but no actual hang-out, take-you-on-a-date, try-to-make-out boyfriends, because either my father chased them away or I did. He because of a deep belief that all teenage males were basically evil and me because the whole idea of sex and boys was scary. I wasn’t ready, didn’t have a clue. Amazing attitude, considering that I was pregnant. The queen of denial, floating on a river of lies. One month went by. Two months. Three. My body cooperated with my brain, hiding the truth. I put on a few pounds, but not many, and besides, my weight was fluctuating then, as I lost baby fat and put it back on, dieted and binged. My belly muscles tightened rather than expanded. Most women, healthy women, when they get pregnant they want to show, and they do. Not only did I not want to show, I refused to admit the reality of what was happening. If I didn’t have a protruding belly I couldn’t be pregnant, therefore I didn’t allow myself to have a belly. That was good for about five months and then my seamstress skills came in handy, altering blouses and skirts, mak-
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ing sure the cut and drape of the fabric concealed what I continued to deny. Amazing what a few blousy frills can hide. Not even Fern suspected, although to be truthful at the time she was pretty busy with her own new baby, and fighting day and night with her future ex-husband. Bottom line, nobody knew, not until I was well into the seventh month. I’m lying on the couch because my “tummy” aches. Too many damned potato chips, according to my stern and disapproving father, but in reality the infant in my belly is kicking with both feet. We’re watching Seinfeld, my father and me, while Mom is in the kitchen polishing the dishes with a special cotton cloth so as to avoid my father’s wrath about spots on the dishes, one of his numerous pet peeves. Anyhow, I must have groaned in a certain way because Mom came flying out of the kitchen and before I could stop her she put her hand to my belly. She knew. “Maybe it’s her appendix?” my father suggests, backing away from the couch as if fearful his inexplicable daughter might explode. Mom reminds him that I had my appendix removed at the age of eight. Her immortal, marriage-ending words: “She’s pregnant, you asshole.” Kelly was born three weeks later, a preemie but strong and healthy despite that. It was a very long labor, with several starts and stops, and when I finally got home from the hospital, shocked and thrilled and terrified of the tiny infant in my arms, my father had moved out of the house and from then on it was just Mom and me. And Kelly, of course, who ruled from day one. What a pair of fists that little girl had! Grabbing at anything within reach and refusing to let go. Tiny, impossibly small hands, of course, but amazingly strong. First time she latched
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onto my nose and wouldn’t let go was also the first time she laughed. Gleeful. An actual grin of triumph. She was ten weeks old. Way early, according to the pediatrician, but Kelly always got there early. High-speed crawling at seven months, walking at nine. She never toddled. She walked and then she ran. The queen of denial is back, refusing to believe that Kelly escaped and then was again taken captive. My girl is running. No way did she let herself get kidnapped all over again. Leo Fish may think he’s seen the “signs” and what he calls the “trace,” a few spots of blood, the imprint of a flatbottomed boat nudged on the grass, and what he insists are footprints. To my eye it’s all just bent grass. He can’t possibly know what happened, other than that one man was murdered. “Okay, she was here, she escaped, I believe that part,” I tell him. “But how can you assume Lang grabbed her? Maybe she got away while he was shooting this other man. It was dark, you weren’t there, you can’t possibly know what really happened.” “I agree it ain’t a certainty,” Fish says. “I can see where you might be doubtful, not recognizing sign and trace.” He’s being patient with me, which of course drives me nuts. How dare he? “Maybe Ricky got her, maybe he didn’t,” Shane says, interceding. “Whichever it is, we still need to locate her.” “Best get a move on,” Fish suggests, preparing to lead the way. “My cell is out of range,” Shane says. “Got any flares?” “Might be one or two in the pan,” Fish responds. Shane’s idea, set off a flare to alert the helicopters, let them know where to recover the body. It’s not just the body, but whatever evidence may be developed from the site—his old FBI instincts tell him there may be important clues in the vicinity, and he can’t walk away without notifying the authorities.
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I immediately like the idea, because if Kelly is out there, running or hiding, she may see the flare and understand that her rescuers are nearby. “Ricky will see it, too,” Fish points out, but he doesn’t argue the point. Knowing two very stubborn people when he sees them. Standing ankle deep in the dark water, so as not to set the grasslands on fire, Shane ignites the flare and holds it high in the air, a Statue of Liberty pose without the crown or the gown. The hot-red flame is so bright I have to look away as billows of white smoke rise up into the morning sky. “They gotcha,” Fish comments in his laconic way. He indicates a direction and I pick up on a helicopter cruising the distant horizon. Sure enough it has shifted course and is heading in our direction, no doubt having spotted the smoke if not the flare itself. As we wait for the helicopter the discussion turns to strategy. Should we proceed by air? Does it make sense for Fish to guide search parties from the helicopter? Shane seems to be pushing for the helicopter, in the belief that we can cover more ground quickly, whereas Fish seems to think the helicopter is a bad idea because Ricky will hear it coming and take precautions. “Man apparently believes he can make himself invisible,” Fish points out. “In some ways he can, if we’re in the air and he’s on the ground. This may look like open country but it ain’t. There’s a million places to hide and a thousand ways to not be seen. Ricky knows all the tricks. Best chance is me locating his sign.” In the end the discussion is settled by events in the sky. The search-and-rescue helicopter, which Shane identifies as a Bell 412, is close enough so we can discern the pilot, as well as a passenger using binoculars. The passenger seems
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to be pointing, no doubt at the flare smoke, which has begun to disperse. Worried that they’ll lose us, I wave my arms and jump up and down. Figuring if I can see them, they can see me, which may or may not be true. Which is why I’m looking directly at the helmeted pilot when the helicopter explodes in a ball of hot orange flame. “Pretty cool, eh Tyler?” Ricky says, lowering the RPG launcher. Tyler grins, makes a boom! motion with his hands, and goes back to running in circles around his sisters, who are drifting through the saw grass, light as butterflies in their pinafore dresses. The children have been with him more or less continuously since he had the conversation with his father. Their presence is a comfort, and he doesn’t want them frightened away by roving helicopters. Figuring one down, they’ll call back the rest. Not expecting rocket-propelled grenades or, indeed, any of the other interesting weapons he has in his arsenal. What did they think, his weapons would be limited to bow and arrow? “Reya, honey? Careful of the water, you don’t want to get your shoes wet.” Reya—it means queen in Spanish, her mother’s idea— Reya is the middle child, tends to be careless of her belongings, and she sticks her tongue out at him and skips through the shallow water in open defiance. Ricky smiles. This is the new Ricky Lang. There was a time when he might have lost his temper, maybe even spanked her little bottom, but those days are over. He’ll not raise a hand to any of the children now, or ever again. Solemn promise, hand to his heart. Strange. His big hand searches around his chest, attempt-
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ing to locate a heartbeat. Can’t find one. As the black smoke rises from the wreckage of the helicopter, he grabs his wrist, checking for a pulse. No pulse. Amazing. The sudden realization that he’s dead fills Ricky Lang with joy. He’s left himself behind! He can no longer be killed. Being dead creates all sorts of interesting possibilities. 19. The View From The Fire Tower Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life, but up to now the only place I’ve ever seen a dead body was in a hospital setting or a funeral parlor. In the hospital the dead look empty and at peace and at funerals they tend to resemble wax dummies. Sad but not remotely scary, and never a hint of violence. So far this morning my count includes the victim of a gunshot wound and two would-be rescuers blown out of the air. It feels like we’re surrounded by sudden death and frankly it almost scares the pee out of me. Not quite, because I manage to get behind a clump of bushes to do my business. My male companions avert their eyes and say not a word, for which I’m grateful. “What happened?” I manage to stammer upon return. “Why did it blow up? Was there a bomb?” “Surface-to-air explosive device,” Shane concludes. “Probably an RPG.” My first reaction is that we lured them to their doom, homing in on our flare. Shane looks like he’s thinking the same thing. “You couldn’t know,” I tell him. “No, I couldn’t,” he admits. “It’s like you call the fire department to report a fire and
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on the way somebody shoots at the fire truck. It wasn’t you who made them shoot.” Shane looks rueful. “Not quite the same. I knew he was out there, I just never imagined he had the weapons to bring down a helicopter.” “It wasn’t your fault.” “Makes you wonder,” Fish says, staring off at the black smoke. “We know he’s got a fully automatic shotgun and now a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. What else has he got, and why’s he need such an arsenal?” “Must have big plans,” Shane suggests. Fish nods agreement. “Revenge type plans. Who’s he mad at, besides the rich white man who helped him buy the casino?” “His own people,” Shane responds instantly. “For kicking him out.” At the top of a new steel fire tower, located not far from the forward deployment area, Special Agent Paloma Salazar backs away from her spotting scope. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Bird down, no doubt about it. Salazar gets on the radio, orders the remaining helicopters grounded. These are search-and-rescue craft, not equipped to defend against surface-to-air attacks, and she simply can’t risk keeping them on task. Thinking about risk management, there’s the problem of unarmed ground-search units who have volunteered to tramp through the grasslands. They lack body armor and would be vulnerable to gunfire. Should they be pulled back, too? Not an easy decision, weighing two lives with known risk—indeed, they may already be dead—against possible risk to several hundred. On the other hand the volunteer units knew going in that an armed madman was out there.
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For the moment the ground-search teams will remain deployed. Salazar is about to phone Special Agent Healy, who is coordinating with the tribal police, when the fire tower begins to vibrate. Instantly she drops into a crouch, unholstering her firearm. A head of thick black hair appears above the access ladder. Salazar reholsters her firearm. “Good morning, Assistant Director.’ “‘A-Dick’ is fine,” says Monica Bevins, pulling her full, six-foot height to the top of the fire tower. “Nice view.” “Not so nice, I’m afraid,” Salazar remarks, glancing at the wisp of black smoke spiraling up from the horizon. “Sorry, of course,” says the A-Dick, chagrined. “Am I being relieved?” Salazar wants to know. Well aware that having an assistant director on site in the middle of an operation is not exactly a vote of confidence. “No, nothing like that,” Bevins says brightly, surveying the wide-open landscape. She folds her arms, an unconscious habit that slightly diminishes the width of her powerful swimmer’s shoulders. “I have every confidence in your organizational skills. Because of our, shall we say ‘delicate’ relations with Indian nations, the D.D. wants an eyes-on report.” “You can assure the deputy director we’re fully cooperative with Nakosha law enforcement and responsive to their concerns.” Monica towers over the smaller, lower-ranking agent, but she’s not the type to use her man-size body for intimidation, quite the opposite. She backs up a step to give the little lady breathing space. “I’ll do that,” she vows. “Now bring me up to speed, please.” “Yesterday we initiated a full-scale search-and-rescue
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slash manhunt for fugitive Ricky Lang and two victims we believe he kidnapped. Said victims being the same as those identified in the shadow investigation of Edwin Manning, initiated by, I’m assuming, you.” “Your assumption is correct. I initiated the investigation at the suggestion of former agent Randall Shane. Have you had the pleasure?” The way Monica is smiling—kind of a Mona Lisa deal— makes Salazar wonder if she’s had the pleasure. Not an image Salazar cares to linger on, having seen large animals mating on the Nature Channel. “We met with Mr. Shane after he’d been assaulted by the suspect.” “Two black eyes, I heard.” “Yeah, and a broken nose. Caught him by surprise, apparently.” “You can be sure of that,” Monica says firmly. “Anyhow, it was the right call, getting a jump on the missing girl. Manning folded, gave us everything he knew about Lang.” “What’s your take on the suspect?” “May I be candid?” “Please.” “He’s a full-blown nut-job with berserker tendencies. I doubt he’ll be taken alive. Recent reports indicate he’s delusional, possibly hallucinating. He’s already killed or been responsible for the deaths of his three children, his commonlaw wife, and his own father, and he’s a suspect in another suspicious burning death.” “Wait a minute,” Monica says, looking startled. “The father? When did that occur?” “Just happened in the last hour, A-Dick. I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently there is surveillance footage of him breaking into a rest home here on the reservation. Went in
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through a screen door unimpeded. Location not far from where we stand, actually. There was no interior surveillance, but Lang’s father was found in his bed, smothered with a pillow.” “Right under our noses, so to speak.” “Right under our noses, most definitely. To be fair to my people, it was the tribal police who had the rest home under surveillance. If you don’t mind another candid observation, A-Dick, the tribal cops are scared to death of Ricky Lang. They’re going through the motions, giving us access and so on, but frankly I’m not expecting much from that quarter.” “Noted,” says Monica. “Anybody know how he managed to get his hands on an RPG?” “Not yet, no, but this is South Florida. Plus various wellarmed Cuba Libre militias have trained in the area. Who knows what they left lying around?” “I thought ‘Cuba libre’ was a drink?” Salazar’s eyes get slightly hot. “It’s a way of life in Miami, A-Dick. As I’m sure you know.” “Sorry, Agent Salazar, it slipped my mind that your father was at the Bay of Pigs. No offense intended. Have the Nakosha been apprised that we think the suspect has access to heavy assault weapons?” Salazar nods curtly. “Gentleman by the name of Joe Lang, he’s running the show. Relative of the suspect, obviously. Agent Healy advised him the suspect has rocket grenades, maybe worse.” “What was the response?” “These folks don’t exactly talk your ear off, A-Dick, but Healy said Lang—that’s Joe Lang, the new tribal president— he’s already assuming that the suspect will come in with guns blazing, possibly targeting the village.” “The berserker segment of your nut-job diagnosis.”
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“I never claimed to be a profiler, A-Dick.” “No, but you might make a good one. I agree, everything about this guy, including the recent murder of his father, indicates he intends to go down in a hail of bullets. That’s the endgame scenario.” “Yes, A-Dick.” “And if it comes to that, the deputy director would prefer that the hail of bullets come from tribal authorities. Has the tribal president indicated how they intend to respond?” Salazar shrugs. “He told Agent Healy that they’d be ready, but declined to provide details. Which, pardon me, A-Dick, but that’s typical of this operation. They’re polite and all, but they don’t share.” “Not a surprise, Agent Salazar. My report to the D.D. will indicate you’re doing all that can be done in a difficult situation.” “Thank you. I do appreciate that.” “Any word from Randall Shane?” “Nothing recent. Last I heard, he was planning to hire a backcountry guide.” “Interesting.” “Yeah, I guess.” Salazar’s cell phone starts to vibrate. She flips it open. “Yes? Go ahead. What?” The diminutive agent’s eyes get big. “Holy shit, I’ll be right there.” “What happened?” Monica wants to know. “It’s Edwin Manning. He’s missing and his bodyguard has been found, drugged with animal tranquilizer.” “Holy shit indeed,” says the A-Dick.
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20. Run, Jane, Run Crouching in the muck of the Everglades, the mud that gave birth to his people, Ricky feels the power of the earth entering his body through the soles of his bare feet. He will come to them as avenging warriors came to the Nakosha in the old times, streaked with gray mud. The righteous wrath of an unseeable ghost may be what his people deserve— death from the sky, falling upon them like bolts of lightning—but the mud will make him visible, so they can gaze upon the instrument of their destruction. Delicately he strokes three fingers of mud upon his left cheek, three upon his right. Using a razor-sharp KA-BAR killing knife, he saws away his black bangs, exposing a broad forehead. There, with a single index finger, he paints a dollar sign. They’ll see him coming for sure, a creature of mud and vengeance, with the white man’s sign upon him. Sign of greed and corruption. Sign of the great forgetting. Sign of the end. Out of the rising sun he will come, wielding the white man’s terrible weapons, leaving all of his people behind. The old and the young, the guilty and the innocent, none shall be spared. As a tribe of ghosts he will lead them away from temptation, into the perfect wilderness of a new and better world. In the great river of grass his children hover like fireflies, glowing from within. He calls them. “Alicia! Reya! Tyler! Come to your father!” The girls obey, glorious in their incandescent white dresses. Tyler, ever the impish wayward boy, hangs back,
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hiding in the deep grass. Peeping at them with eyes like little candle-flames. Now you see him, now you don’t. “Wait for me here,” he tells them. “The house is forbidden, do you understand? It was paid for with the white man’s filthy dollars, and must be turned to ash. It must be erased from the earth. Tyler! Pay attention, son, this is important. Keep with your sisters, they’ll protect you until I get back. Understood? Very good. Your father loves you, children. He loves you to death.” Before he gathers his weapons, Ricky strides along the shore, dripping with the rich black silt of the Everglades. There, in an area that once served as a boat ramp, on sloping ground a few inches above water level, he has arrayed his sacrifices. Three being the sacred number, the number of his dead children. The sacrifices have been camouflaged with fresh cut palm fronds, to hide them from the air. The white man’s helicopters, the white man’s satellites—their cold mechanical eyes can’t see the life beneath the green and the grass. Ricky crouches, gently parts the fronds until he can see a frightened blue eye looking out at him. “Your blood will not be wasted,” he assures the frightened blue eye. “Before my people came from the mud, the alligator gods ruled the water and the grass. It is said that they walked upon two legs, and spoke in a tongue that not even the sun could understand. My people made them walk upon four legs, but gave them tails so they could swim, and teeth so they could eat.” The blue eye blinks furiously, swinging violently from side to side. “Struggling is good,” he says, patting at the palm fronds. “Struggling will bring them more quickly. Don’t worry, you
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will not be eaten alive. The alligator first drowns his prey, and if the prey is large he will keep it hidden and consume it at his leisure. This time next year, my dear, you’ll be a purse and a pair of shoes.” Ricky leaves them staked to the ground and goes to gather up his weapons. Some people are made for running. Slender bodies with long skinny legs and narrow hips. You can tell they like it, running through the pain or whatever. Not for me. I’m small waisted and fairly long legged for my size, but these childbearing hips were not engineered with marathons in mind. Even if I had been a runner, one of those moms who race along pushing special three-wheeled baby carriages, it’s doubtful I could keep up with Randall Shane. One stride and he’s past me, three and he’s heading for the horizon. A mile, Fish tells us. The site of Ricky Lang’s house, the one he burned to the ground, is located roughly a mile along the shoreline. Half a mile beyond it, the new residential village constructed by the Nakosha. Traditional chickee huts built on stilts, as well as a new school, health clinic, and elder hospice, all of which may be his targets. If he wants to kill a lot of people, his own people, that’s where he’d go. Shane, already out of sight, can obviously run a mile. For all I know he can run a hundred. Whereas I’ve never run a mile in my life. I’m a Long Island girl, we drive. Fish isn’t even trying. Bad knees. He’ll pole his way along in his little boat, meet us there in twenty minutes. Kelly may not have twenty minutes, which is why I’m running with Shane, racing along the shoreline, kicking through the saw grass. More like I’m kicking through it and
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he’s leaping over it. Long arms pumping, long legs eating up the yards, what an amazing man. That big and he runs like a gazelle. He wants to save the world. I want to save my daughter. God help me, that’s all I care about, just the one life. Let her live, let her live, let her live, that’s the mantra that keeps my legs pumping, my heart pounding. Glancing down as I run, my thin linen trousers are in tatters, shredded below the knee by the blade-sharp grass. Grass that can cut you to pieces, who invented this stuff? Lawns are better. Roads are betters. Malls are better. Run, Jane, run. Run for her life. You can do it. Anybody in reasonably good shape can run a mile if they absolutely have to. Ignore the blood running from your knees to your ankles. You can bleed to death later, after you’ve found Kelly. Alive or dead, she must be found. Alive or dead you’re going to take her home. Let her live let her live let her live, that’s the song in my heart, what keeps me running when my burning lungs beg me to stop. No stopping. I won’t stop until we get home, both of us. Alive or dead, both of us. The mad mud ghost yanks back the tarp, exposing his cache of weapons. First thing he loads up is the famous Breda machine gun, draping a full belt of ammunition over his shoulders. A thousand rounds. The weight of that alone is enough to make an ordinary man’s legs buckle, but Ricky Lang was no ordinary man even before full-blown psychosis doubled then tripled his strength. Next, the fully loaded AA-12 automatic shotgun with the custom sixty-four-round drum magazine ready to fire, and a
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spare drum hooked to his belt. Thirty pounds of lethal firepower and he holds it in one hand. Ricky slings the three remaining RPG launchers over his left shoulder, a crushing load he doesn’t even notice. He thinks about carrying a pistol for close work, decides his KABAR killing knife will do. The KA-BAR can be held in his hand or in his mouth, whichever gives him the most dexterity when firing the automatic weapons. A panting dog watches from the charred ruins of the house he burned down six months ago. “Get away!” he shouts, placing a shot at the dog’s feet, watching it scamper away with a startled whimper. Calling back over his shoulder, he says, “Tyler, you leave that puppy alone! Girls, keep hold of that boy! Grab him by the ankles if you have to! Daddy’ll be back soon!” He follows a path familiar only to him. Half a mile later, draped with bullets and lugging enough explosives to bring down a fleet of 747s, Ricky Lang strides into center of the Nakosha village. The native-style elevated huts that are really perfectly constructed homes with every modern convenience. The two-room schoolhouse open to the air, so the children do not fester and mold. The clinic where white medicines are dispensed, and herbal remedies, too. The hospice where Tito Lang, once a hero to his son, wasted away. All of it bought and paid for with the wealth Ricky brought to his people, laid at their feet like a gift. Love me, the gift said. Love me and we shall all of us prosper, we shall all of us live forever, one people, forever and ever amen. Ricky stands in the middle of the village, ammo gleaming in the sunshine. If the devil designed a perfect killing machine it would need to resemble Ricky Lang, part flesh, part steel, all muscle, and fueled by the urge for death.
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“Joe Lang!” he bellows. “Show yourself!” Not a sound from the village. They’re all hiding, he tells himself. Under the beds, in the closets, hiding and ashamed. “Joe Lang!” he screams. “You’re the big man now! Be brave!” A shadow moves on the porch of the biggest hut. Joe Lang must be hiding. Too scared to face him. Ricky hefts the grenade launcher, drops to one knee, bracing himself. He fires. The blowback scorches the side of his head, but all he cares about is the red streak followed by the satisfying WOMP! of the fuel-air warhead detonating inside the chickee hut, vaporizing it in a ball of howling flame. Ignoring the blowback, he fires the two remaining RPGs, exploding the schoolhouse and the clinic. His right ear sizzles and his black hair melts against the side of his skull, but he feels no pain. Ricky Lang smiles with the unburned part of his mouth as he goes from door to door, blowing through the thin walls of the huts with the twelve-gauge. Finger locked on fullauto, barely any recoil, launching Frag-12 explosive shells at a rate of three hundred per minute , ka-wump-ka-wump, steady as a driving piston. Having emptied the spare drum magazine, he drops the auto shotgun, shrugs his big shoulders and continues with the Breda M37 machine gun. Raking the huts, the wreckage of school, with eight-millimeter slugs. In his head the machine gun is stuttering die-die-die-diedie-die-die. The M37, a real classic, is normally fired with both hands from a tripod, not freehand. Wicked, bone-jolting recoil, and
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it heats up after less than a hundred rounds, but Ricky is having fun, he’s getting into it, and when the machine gun finally jams with a few hundred rounds still to go, he peels the glowing metal stock from his boiling hands and drops it to the ground. Where did he put the KA-BAR? Right, between his teeth. Ricky figures most of his people died in the initial explosions or the lethal gunfire that followed, but there may be a few survivors and he doesn’t want them to suffer. This isn’t about inflicting pain, it’s about getting things right. Knife at the ready, he ducks into the smoking remains of one of the chickee huts. With bare feet he kicks though the wreckage, looking for bodies or parts of bodies. Looking for familiar faces, frozen with regret for the great sin of banishing their leader. Screaming wordlessly, he runs to the next hut. And the next. Nobody. Nobody. The village is empty. 21. The End Of The World As She Knows It When I stagger into the clearing Randall Shane is already there, staring at the blackened remains of what must have once been a house. He looks utterly defeated, and gazes at me with an expression of such intense sorrow that I immediately burst into tears. In the distance another rifle shot, one of hundreds popping off in the last few minutes. Another muffled explosion, then a terrible, lingering silence. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “Where is she?” I blubber. “Where’s Kelly?” “Not here,” he says. “I was so sure she’d be here, at the place it all began. I was wrong.” He does not flinch when I beat my fists on his chest. It feels like I’m the rain and he’s a rock, and the world is
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ending, and nothing will matter ever again. Then I start running in circles, splashing through the ash of the ruined house, screaming her name. “Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!” Shane watches, doesn’t try to stop me. He looks like he wants to die, and at the moment I don’t care if he does. “Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!” There is no echo in this place. The landscape is too wide open, nothing to throw back my voice as I scream my daughter’s name, again and again, as if saying it will bring her back. Something stops me in my tracks. A small sound, one I’d recognize anywhere. “Mom!” Very faint. As faint as a memory. “Did you hear that?” “Hear what?” Shane asks. It comes again, smaller still. He can’t hear it, but I can. “Over there, by the water.” Shane glides to the shore, to a place where the ground slopes gradually away. “Oh my God,” he says. He’s staring at the water’s edge and my blurry eyes finally focus on what he’s seeing. A ragged pile of palm fronds scattered along the shore, as if by the wind. Extending out from under the green fronds, a long dark thing that seems to be pointing toward the water. A tree trunk—no, it’s not. The thing twitches. A tail. I dive at the fronds, ripping them away, and find myself staring into the anthracite eyes of an immense alligator. It’s
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so close the pink wrinkles on its ugly, pebbled snout are clearly visible. So close I can smell its rancid, reptile breath. Startled, it roars. A bellow to shake the earth, ancient and menacing. Its breath moist on my face. This time I really do wet my pants a little. The beast shakes its great nobbed head from side to side and then backs slowly into the water and sinks, vanishing from sight. Frantically I rip away the rest of the fronds and there they are, spread-eagled and staked to the ground. My daughter. Edwin Manning. Seth. Manning is breathing, barely, but Seth looks dead. Kelly locks eyes with me and tries to speak. Nothing comes out. Randall Shane, knife in hand and grinning like he’s just won the lottery, helps me cut away the rawhide ropes binding them to the deeply driven wooden stakes. We get Kelly’s arms free, but something’s wrong, terribly wrong. It’s as if she’s partially paralyzed, unable to move on her own. Is it the effect of being staked down, held immobile, or is it something worse? Her beautiful blue eyes are trying to communicate something and her jaw is working, but no words come out. How did I hear her calling me? Not that it matters. Nothing matters but the fact that she’s alive. “Some sort of powerful tranquilizer,” Shane theorizes, sawing at the ropes. “We need to move her limbs, stimulate her circulation. You do Kelly, I’ll work on him.” He means Seth, who, although cut free, remains as still as death, one arm and part of his face strangely swollen. Shane starts to pump on the young man’s inert chest.
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“I’ll get to you in a moment,” he says to Edwin Manning, who is struggling and failing to speak. Manning’s tear-filled eyes blink rapidly. We both know he’d want his son saved first. Kelly’s eyes become frantic. Has she figured out that Seth is dead or dying? Or is it something else? She seems to be trying to look behind me. Wanting me to look, too. I’m about to turn when a pair of huge, bloodied hands grab Shane by the throat. Before I can fully react, or understand what’s happening, a muddy foot connects with the side of my head, knocking me into the water. There’s nothing quite so stimulating as falling into water very recently occupied by a twelve-foot alligator. I’m out of there like a scalded cat, but even so by the time I crawl back onto the shore, Shane and Ricky Lang are rolling on the ground, hands locked around each other’s necks. Neither man speaks. Except for a few wheezing grunts, the battle is conducted in total silence. Shane is taller, but pound for pound his opponent is more muscular, and has the uncanny strength of the insane. Shane’s face is getting blue and his eyes are bugging out. Find the knife, I’m thinking frantically, find the knife! But there’s no time for that because the mud-covered madman is pounding Shane’s head into the dirt. Shane struggles, kicks at him, pumping his knees up into Lang’s midsection to no avail. I look around for something to use as a weapon. A rock, a two-by-four. In the movies there’s always something handy. But out here in the middle of godforsaken nowhere there’s nothing but floppy palm fronds.
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No weapons available, so I do what any hundred-andtwenty-five-pound woman would do in similar circumstances—I leap on his back and try to gouge out his eyes. Bad idea. With a roar that made the startled alligator sound timid, Ricky Lang instantly leaps to his feet, whirls around and throws me into the bushes. The whole move takes less than a heartbeat and I land flat on my back with a force that knocks the wind out of me and cracks a few ribs. I can’t breathe and my ears are ringing, muffling the world in silence, but my eyes are still functioning. I can see what happens next. Shane on his knees, drooling blood. Ricky Lang methodically kicking away the palm fronds and recovering a knife. Not Shane’s knife, something bigger and uglier. Then my ears pop and I can hear again. Birds chirping, bugs buzzing, peepers peeping, and my heart banging against my broken ribs. Ricky Lang looks at me with eyes from another world. He looks at Shane on his knees. He says, “Gator needs blood,” and he strides toward Kelly, knife raised. Shane lunges, grabs his ankles. Lang grunts with irritation and is about to plunge the big knife in Shane’s back when he changes his mind and slowly sits down on the damp and bloody ground. It’s like watching a sturdy building collapse. His huge shoulders slump. He sighs deeply, the big knife falling from his open hand. He looks around, as if searching for someone. “Kids?” he says, his throat gurgling. Lang smiles and tries to lift his arms, as if to embrace an
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invisible someone, and seems satisfied, relieved of a great burden. The air leaves him. His dark eyes stare up at the bright vastness of the deep blue sky and then glass over, gone forever. “Everybody okay?” asks Leo Fish, standing there in his little boat, lowering a smoking rifle. I never even heard the shot. “Sorry it took so long,” he says sheepishly. “I can’t run like you young folk.”
EPILOGUE Six Months Later
The plane looks so small, the sky so big. We’re all of us waiting at the airfield in Monticello, New York. Me and Fern and our new friend Seth Manning, who turns out to be a really neat kid—excuse me, young man. Shane had wanted to be here but he’s off on a case, searching for another missing child. He told me recently that the kids he recovered were for him like an extended family, he keeps in touch with all of them, as he does with both Seth and Kelly. It doesn’t make up for his loss, but it helps. It was a near thing with Seth, a raging blood infection that put him in a coma for a while. God bless Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and all the folks who worked so hard to find the right combination of antibiotics, and who never gave up. Probably didn’t hurt that his father was pledging to build a new wing, but I’d like to think they saved him because saving people is what they do. Not a bad mission in life, come to think, and one Kelly has lately been drawn to. Whether from her own experience or Seth’s, I can’t be sure. Maybe both. Anyhow, she’s been talking about a career in medicine. Maybe one that somehow
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involves flying, which is just like a kid, wanting everything rolled into a nice, neat package. If only life worked that way. But she’ll learn. That’s her up in the ridiculously small airplane. All by herself at, Seth tells us, five thousand feet. Soaring over the rolling, snow-dusted Catskills on a brisk but sunny December day. I wanted her to wait until summer—anything to put this off—but she really, really wanted to solo by Christmas, please, Mom, please, and so here we all are, giving in to my willful daughter, even though the idea of her up in a plane all by herself is scaring us to death. Okay, scaring me to death. Seth and Fern seem to be okay with the concept. Seth because he taught her, and Fern because she thinks Kelly can do anything she sets her mind to. It isn’t setting her mind to it that worries me. It’s all the things that can go wrong. Engines stall or catch on fire. A bird could hit the windshield. Planes fall out of the sky. It happens, don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. Fern, sensing my anxiety, goes, “Ya need a bag, lady?” Making a joke of it. Amazingly enough, I haven’t hyperventilated or had a panic attack since Miami. Actually it was before Miami, come to think. Whatever, I still get anxious, but seem to have lost my need for those little white paper bags, as Fern well knows. “Let me fret, okay?” I say irritably. “She’s seventeen and she’s flying a plane, for God’s sake! I get to fret—that’s my job.” Seth shakes his handsome head and smiles. He knows me pretty well by now. “She’s doing great, Jane. See how steady she holds the wings? There, she’s starting her bank for the final approach.”
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“Don’t call it the final approach. That sounds terrible!” Fern gives me a squeeze to let me know it will be all right. Fern always thinks things will be all right, that’s one of the reasons we’ve been friends for all these years—because she’s so generous with her strength. The wings of the little plane teeter slightly as it straightens out and begins to lose altitude. “You go, girl!” Fern shouts up at the sky. “You come on home!” Fern knows my secret, finally. I kept my promise to Randall Shane and told Kelly first and then him, and eventually all the important people in my life. It’s simple, really. When I was a kid my parents used to vacation in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, for two weeks in August. It was cheap enough for a state trooper’s family in those days, and we always rented the same rinky-dinky cottage six blocks from the beach, teetering on the edge of the salt marsh. It was the highlight of the year because I got to roam the boardwalk by myself. Being pathologically shy with strangers, I never said a word to anyone, but used to bop along on my lonesome, secretly checking out the boys. Of course if one of them chanced to look back I’d instantly drop my eyes and hurry away. Boys were fascinating but also terrifying and I wasn’t ready, not for dating, not for kissing, not for anything. Until, one moonless night, I was. Not just ready for dating or kissing, but for anything and everything. I’m sixteen and it’s summer and there’s a great local band at the old ballroom on the boardwalk, they do covers of all my favorite groups. My mother says fine, go, just be home by midnight. It’s a scene in there, all these sweaty teenagers strutting to the pumping music, shaking their fine little booties, hooking up
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for quick summer flings. Some of them grinding against each other in ways that border on the obscene. In the dim corners, lots of face sucking, furtive feels, you get the picture—you’ve probably been there. That particular night the place had a wild, overtly sexual vibe that was fascinating to observe because that’s all I was there for, just to watch. Not to participate. If a boy mumbled a request to dance I’d quickly shake my head and avert my eyes. Do that a few times and most of the boys will leave you alone. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore, all those mixed-up feelings blending into the incessant beat—why, oh why couldn’t I be like them?—and I fled that musky dance hall and had a little panic attack on the beach. Ashamed of myself, really. I was sixteen and I’d never been kissed! What was wrong with me! And so on. The usual adolescent mishmash of feelings, and hardly the first time I’d ended up alone on the beach, feeling sorry for myself. What was different about that night was the absolute darkness. Black darkness. No moon, an overcast sky and therefore no stars. Lights peeping along the boardwalk, of course, but out on the beach, a hundred yards away, it was so dark I could barely see my hands. And that particular night the darkness made me feel different in some important, life-changing way. It freed me, made me feel not only invisible and anonymous, but invulnerable. Like whatever happened in the dark did not count. I could be someone else, a girl without a name. Anyone but plain Jane Garner the shy girl. All those mixed-up heady feelings from the dance hall— they weren’t something to be hidden or to be ashamed of, they were to be acted upon. Who would know? It was dark, no one could see me. You can guess the rest. How I found a boy on the beach,
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a boy at least as shy as me. A boy who flinched at my touch, though not for long. A boy who wanted to know my name, but accepted my refusal when I made up some flippant nonsense about how I’d be the beach girl and he’d be the beach boy and that was all we needed, just the made-up names. Nattering on as I unbuttoned his pants. Oh yes, I was definitely the aggressor. My nameless beach boy knew about as much about having sex as I did, but if you put two young bodies together, the bodies themselves figure it out. And when the deed was done, I was the one who got up and ran away. Running away as if it had never happened, as if it was some other girl doing it in the dark, not me. Not only did I not know his name, I never even really saw his face, beyond the fact that he had a bump on his nose and a cleft in his chin. So when the time came there was not only no father to name, there was no one to look for. What happened? What made me act so wild and out of character? Years later, I’m reasonably sure it was a hormonal surge. I was ovulating, obviously, and my body was telling me to fertilize that egg. Very dangerous for a sixteen-yearold who yearns to live in the moment and doesn’t want to consider the consequences. Don’t take this as an endorsement of anonymous adolescent sex, but in my case it all worked out for the best, eventually. The best in this case being a perfectly amazing human being name Kelly Garner. Who, upon hearing my story, joked that she should change her name to Cleft, as in Montgomery Cleft. Or I could be Chin, she said, no wait that’s a Chinese name. Joking me out of my shame and telling me that if she ever really wanted to find her biological father she’d put an ad on the Internet, asking did you get lucky on such and such a date, at Hampton Beach, in the summer of love? and I said
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the summer of love was way earlier and she said not for you it wasn’t, Mom. And Fern said, well he must have been goodlooking, even in the dark, because look at Kelly. He was your flyboy, Jane, even without the plane. All of which made me wish I’d fessed up years ago. “Any second now,” Seth is saying. “She’s almost there.” Excuse me, but I have to stop breathing until this is over. When the little plane is only a few feet from the ground, all of a sudden the wings flutter and the plane rocks back and forth. “Ground effect,” Seth says soothingly. “A little extra lift under the wings. Perfectly normal.” And then the plane is down, bouncing along the runway— is that too much bounce? Is she going to crash?—and then like a miracle everything is okay and the plane is under control and it slowly comes to a stop fifty yards from where we’re standing. Fern holds me back. “Give her a moment,” she suggests. “She wants to savor. Plus, knowing Kelly, she wants to make an entrance.” After a moment the cockpit door swings open and my baby girl climbs out and plants her two feet on the ground and raises both hands in the air and flashes a world-beating grin that’s as bright as all the snow in the Catskills, and then I’m running, running to my beautiful, my brilliant, my totally amazing daughter.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-0785-5 TRAPPED Copyright © 2007 by Rodman Philbrick. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. MIRA and the Star Colophon are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. www.MIRABooks.com
