Harlan Coben (23 page)

Steven Bacard replaced
the phone's receiver.

You slip-slide into evil, he thought. You cross the line for just one moment. You cross back. You feel safe. You change things, you believe, for the better. The line is still there. It's still intact. Okay, maybe there's a smudge there now, but you can still see it clearly. And next time you cross, maybe that line smudges a little more. But you have your bearings. No matter what happens to that line, you remember where it is.

Don't you?

There was a mirror above the fully stocked bar in Steven Bacard's office. His interior decorator had insisted that all people of prestige had to have a place to toast their successes. So he had one. He didn't even drink. Steven Bacard stared at his reflection and thought, not for the first time in his life: Average. He had always been average. His grades in school, his SAT and LSAT scores, his law-school ranking, his bar score (he passed it on the third attempt). If life were a game where children choose sides for kickball, he'd be picked in the middle of the pack, after the good athletes and before the really bad ones—in that cusp for those who leave no mark.

Bacard became a lawyer because he believed that being a JD would give him a level of prestige. It didn't. No one hired him. He opened up his own pitiful office near the Paterson courthouse, sharing space with a bail bondsman. He ambulance-chased, but even as a member of this small-time pack, he couldn't distinguish himself. He managed to marry a woman slightly above his station, though she reminded him of that as often as she could.

Where Bacard had indeed been below average—
way
below average—
was in sperm count. Try as he might—and Dawn, his wife, didn't really like him to try—he could not impregnate his wife. After four years, they tried to adopt. Again, Steven Bacard fit into the abyss of the great unspectacular, which made finding a white baby—something Dawn truly craved—nearly impossible. He and Dawn traveled to Romania, but the only children available were too old or born drug addled.

But it was there, overseas in that god-deserted place, that Steven Bacard finally came up with an idea that, after thirty-eight years, made him rise above the crowd.

“Problem, Steven?”

The voice startled him. He turned away from his reflection. Lydia stood in the shadows.

“Staring in the mirror like that,” Lydia said, adding a tsk-tsk at the end. “Wasn't that Narcissus's downfall?”

Bacard could not help it. He began to tremble. It wasn't just Lydia, though, in truth, she often had that effect on him. The phone call had set him on edge. Lydia popping up like that—that was the clincher. He had no idea how she'd gotten in or how long she'd been standing there. He wanted to ask what had happened tonight. He wanted details. But there was no time.

“We do indeed have a problem,” Bacard said.

“Tell me.”

Her eyes chilled him. They were big and luminous and beautiful and yet you sensed nothing behind them, only a cold chasm, windows to a house long abandoned.

What Bacard had discovered while in Romania—what had finally helped him rise above the pack—was a way to beat the system. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, Bacard was on a roll. He stopped chasing ambulances. People started looking up to him. He was invited to fund-raisers. He became a sought-after speaker. His wife, Dawn, started to smile at him again and ask him about his day. He even appeared on News 12 New Jersey when the cable station needed a certain kind of legal expert. He stopped, however, when a colleague overseas reminded him of the danger of too much publicity. Besides, he no longer needed to attract clients. They found him, these parents searching for a miracle. The desperate have always done that, like plants stretching through the dark for any sliver of sunlight. And he, Steven Bacard, was that sunlight.

He pointed to the phone. “I just got a call.”

“And?”

“The ransom money is bugged,” he said.

“We switched bags.”

“Not just the bags. There's some kind of device in the money. Between the bills or something.”

Lydia's face clouded over. “Your source didn't know about this before?”

“My source didn't know about any of it until just now.”

“So what you're telling me,” she said slowly, “is that while we stand here the police know exactly where we are?”

“Not the police,” he said. “The bug wasn't planted by the cops or the feds.”

That seemed to surprise her. Then Lydia nodded. “Dr. Seidman.”

“Not exactly. He has a woman named Rachel Mills helping him. She used to be a fed.”

Lydia smiled as if this explained something. “And this Rachel Mills—this ex-fed—she's the one who bugged the money?”

“Yes.”

“Is she following us right now?”

“No one knows where she is,” Bacard said. “No one knows where Seidman is either.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“The police think this Rachel woman is involved.”

Lydia lifted her chin. “Involved in the original kidnapping?”

“And the murder of Monica Seidman.”

Lydia liked that. She smiled and Bacard felt a fresh shiver slink down his back. “Was she, Steven?”

He teetered. “I wouldn't know.”

“Ignorance is bliss, that it?”

Bacard chose to say nothing.

Lydia said, “Do you have the gun?”

He stiffened. “What?”

“Seidman's gun. Do you have it?”

Bacard did not like this. He felt as if he were sinking. He considered lying, but then he saw those eyes. “Yes.”

“Get it,” she said. “How about Pavel? Have you heard from him?”

“He's not happy with any of this. He wants to know what's going on.”

“We'll call him in the car.”

“We?”

“Yes. Now let's hurry, Steven.”

“I'm coming with you?”

“Indeed.”

“What are you going to do?”

Lydia put her fingers to her lips. “Shh,” she said. “I have a plan.”

 

Rachel said, “They're on the move again.”

“How long did they stop?” I asked

“Maybe five minutes. They could have met up with someone and transferred the money. Or maybe they were just getting gas. Turn right here.”

We pulled up on Centuro Road off Route 3. Giants Stadium loomed in the distance. About a mile up, Rachel pointed out the window. “They were somewhere over there.”

The sign read
METROVISTA
and the parking lot appeared to be a never-ending expanse, disappearing in the distant marsh. MetroVista was a classic New Jersey office complex, built during the great expanse of the eighties. Hundreds of offices, all cold and impersonal, sleek and robotic, with too many tinted windows not letting in enough sunlight. The vapor lights buzzed and you could imagine, if not actually hear, the drone of worker bees.

“They weren't stopping for gas,” Rachel muttered.

“So what do we do?”

“Only thing we can,” she said. “Let's keep following the money.”

 

Heshy and Lydia headed west toward the Garden State Parkway. Steven Bacard followed in the car behind them. Lydia ripped open the wads of bills. It took her ten minutes to find the tracking device. She dug it out from the money crevice.

She held it up, so Heshy could see it. “Clever,” she said.

“Or we're slipping.”

“We've never been perfect, Pooh Bear.”

Heshy did not reply. Lydia opened the car window. She stuck her hand out and signaled for Bacard to follow them. He waved back that he understood. When they slowed for the toll, Lydia quickly pecked
Heshy's cheek and got out of the car. She took the money with her. Heshy was now left alone with just the tracking device. If this Rachel woman still had any juice or if the police got wind of what was happening, they would pull Heshy over. He would toss the tracking device into the street. They would find the device, sure, but they wouldn't be able to prove it had come from his car. And even if they could, so what? They would search Heshy and his car and find nothing. No kid, no ransom note, no ransom money. He was clean.

Lydia hurried over to Steven Bacard's car and slipped into the passenger's side. “You got Pavel on the line?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She took the phone. Pavel started screaming in whatever the hell language was native to him. She waited and then told him the meeting place. When Bacard heard the address, his head snapped toward her. She smiled. Pavel, of course, didn't understand the significance of the location, but then again, why should he? He ranted a little more, but eventually Pavel calmed enough to say he'd be there. She hung up the phone.

“You can't be serious,” Bacard said to her.

“Shh.”

Her plan was simple enough. Lydia and Bacard would race ahead to the meeting spot while Heshy, who had the tracker on him, would stall. When Lydia was set up and fully prepared, she would call Heshy on the cell phone. Then and only then would Heshy go to the meeting spot. He would have the tracking device with him. The woman, this Rachel Mills, would hopefully follow.

She and Bacard arrived in twenty minutes. Lydia spotted a car parked up the block. Pavel's, she figured. A stolen Toyota Celica. Lydia didn't like that. Strange cars parked on streets like these were noticed. She glanced over at Steven Bacard. His face was moon pale. It almost seemed detached, floating. The scent of fear came off him in waves. His fingers gripped the wheel, tense. Bacard didn't have the stomach for this. That would be a liability.

“You can just drop me off,” she said.

“I want to know,” he began, “what you plan on doing here.”

She just looked at him.

“My God.”

“Spare me the indignant act.”

“No one was supposed to be hurt.”

“You mean like Monica Seidman?”

“We had nothing to do with that.”

Lydia shook her head. “And the sister, what was her name, Stacy Seidman?”

Bacard opened his mouth as though he might counter. Then he lowered his head. She knew what he had planned on saying. Stacy Seidman had been a drug addict. She was expendable, a waste, a danger, heading for death, whatever justification floated his boat. Men like Bacard needed justification. In his mind, he wasn't selling babies. He really believed that he was helping. And if he made money—lots of money—from it and broke the law, well, he was taking tremendous risk to better lives. Shouldn't he be well compensated?

But Lydia had no interest in digging into his psyche nor comforting it. She had counted the money in the car. He had hired her. Her take was a million dollars. Bacard got the other million. She shouldered the duffel bag with her—and Heshy's—money. She stepped out of the car. Steven Bacard stared straight ahead. He did not refuse the money. He did not call her back and say that he wanted to wash his hands of this. There was a million dollars sitting in the seat next to him. Bacard wanted it. His family had a big house in Alpine now. His kids went to private school. So no, Bacard did not back off. He simply stared ahead and put the car in drive.

When he was gone, Lydia called Pavel with the two-way radio portion of the cell phone. Pavel was hiding behind some shrubs up the block. He still wore the flannel shirt. His walk was a labored lumber. His teeth had suffered under a lifetime of cigarettes and ill care. He had a squashed-from-too-many-fights nose. He was Balkan rough trade. He had seen a lot in his life. Didn't matter, though. When you don't know what's happening, you are in over your head.

“You,” he said, spitting the word. “You no tell me.”

Pavel was right. She no tell him. In other words, he'd known nothing. His English was beyond broken, which was why he had been the perfect front man for this crime. He'd come over from Kosovo two years ago with a pregnant woman. During the first ransom drop, Pavel had been given specific instructions. He'd been told to wait for a certain car to pull into the lot, to approach the car without speaking to the
man, to take a bag from him, to get into the van. Oh, and to confuse matters a little more, they told Pavel to keep a phone in front of his mouth and pretend to talk into it.

That was it.

Pavel had no idea who Marc Seidman was. He had no idea about what was in the bag, about a kidnapping, about a ransom, nothing. He didn't wear his gloves—his fingerprints were not on file in the United States—and he didn't carry ID.

They paid him two thousand dollars and sent him back to Kosovo. Based on Seidman's rather specific description, the police circulated a sketch of a man who, for all practical purposes, was impossible to find. When they decided to rerun the ransom drop, Pavel was the natural go-to guy. He would dress the same, look the same, play with Seidman's head in case he decided to fight back this time.

Still, Pavel was a realist. He would adapt. He had spent time selling women in Kosovo. White slavery in the guise of strip clubs was a big market over there, though Bacard had come up with another way of using those women. Pavel, no stranger to sudden change, would do what needed to be done. He gave Lydia some attitude, but once she handed him a wad of bills adding up to five thousand dollars, he grew quiet. The fight was out of him. It was only a question of how.

She handed Pavel a gun. He knew how to use it.

Pavel set up near the driveway, keeping his two-way radio channel open. Lydia called Heshy and told them they were ready. Fifteen minutes later, Heshy drove past them. He tossed the tracking device out the car window. Lydia caught it and threw back a kiss. Heshy kept driving. Lydia brought the tracking device into the backyard. She took out her gun and waited.

The night air was starting to give way to the morning dew. That tingle was there, lighting up her veins. Heshy, she knew, was not far away. He wanted to join in, but this was her game. The street was silent. It was 4:00
A
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M
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