One-Way Ticket (15 page)

“They said they’d call at six tomorrow,” she said.

“Not exactly,” I said. “They said I should turn their cell phone on at six. Who knows when they’ll call.”

“But you’ll be ready.”

I hefted the gym bag. “I’ll be ready.”

“And you will keep me informed.”

“As you keep reminding me,” I said, “it’s your money.”

Around midnight I was trying to keep my eyes open so I could finish one of Melville’s riveting dissertations on whale blubber when the phone rang.

It was Evie. “Hey,” she said. “You wanna get married?”

I smiled. “Sure.”

“My daddy says we should get married. Make an honest man out of you, he says. You being a lawyer.”

“I don’t think I’m dishonest,” I said.

“You’re a lawyer,” she said. “Sly. My sly lawyer.”

“You’re pretty drunk, huh?” I said.

“Wine. A lovely Syrah from the Cline vineyard. Cline Syrah, Syrah. What will be, will be.” She was singing to the tune of “Que Sera, Sera.” “Not to mention some sacred weed, also from California’s Sonoma Valley. Daddy loves Sonoma weed. So do I. Vastly superior to Napa weed. I love Brady, too. Weed and Brady.”

“I’m flattered,” I said, “even to be mentioned in the same breath as Sonoma weed.”

“They grow grapes and cannabis,” she said. “The Sonoma Valley. Bet you didn’t know that.”

“All the important food groups.”

She said nothing for a minute. “Are you mad at me?”

“Of course not. I miss you. Henry and I are here in bed reading
Moby Dick.
Missing you. Henry sends his love. I’m glad you called.”

“Dear Henry,” she said. “And good old sober old unstoned old Brady. Curled up in my bed.”

“So how are you, honey?”

“Outta my skull, baby. Whew.”

“Aside from that.”

“Oh, gosh.” She paused. “Oh, jeez, Brady.” And then I heard that she was crying, and I realized that she’d been crying the whole time. “My daddy is scared. Do you see? He’s not supposed to be scared. I can be scared. I’m his little girl. He’s supposed to be fearless. But he’s not. So I don’t know how to feel. I’m just my daddy’s little girl. I can’t be fearless for both of us. I can’t even be fearless for me.”

“What can I do, honey?”

“Are you fearless?”

“Yes, I am,” I said. “I will be fearless for all three of us. You go ahead, be scared. It’s okay.”

She was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “It doesn’t really work that way.”

“I know.” I hesitated. “Is there any news?”

“We go to the hospital Wednesday. Then there will be news, I bet.”

“I’ll be thinking of you,” I said. “You and Ed.”

“You better,” she said.

“Call me, okay?”

“Mmm.” She was quiet. I could hear her breathing. Then she said, “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“I really don’t want to get married, you know,” she said.

“I know.”

“I was just kidding.”

“I knew that.”

Mike Warner called me at my office around noon on Tuesday. “Today’s the day, right?”

“I guess so,” I said. “I’ll turn on their cell phone at six. Then we’ll see.”

“Adrienne got the money?”

“She did. I have it.”

“A quarter of a million, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Well,” said Warner, “if there’s anything I can do, you know?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“You’re going to have to deliver that money,” he said. “I could go with you.”

“They said just me,” I said. “We better do it their way.”

“Dart’s my best friend. I feel like I should be doing something.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But this is how they want it.”

“Not that I don’t trust you,” he said, “but I think it’s a mistake. Not bringing in the police, I mean.”

“So do I,” I said.

“I lost my son,” he said. “Now this.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to him.

I left the office early that afternoon. I fed Henry and made myself a ham-and-cheese sandwich, which I took out to the patio and washed down with a Coke.

I brought the kidnappers’ cell phone out with me, and at six o’clock I turned it on.

It sat there on the picnic table. Darkness began to seep into my backyard, and the phone didn’t ring.

I might have dozed, because the ring seemed to come from far away. I groped for the kidnappers’ phone, put it to my ear, and said, “Yes?”

When the phone rang again, I realized the sound was coming through the screen door from the kitchen. I jumped up, jogged into the house, and grabbed the kitchen phone as it was ringing again.

“Yes,” I said. “Hello.”

“You’re all out of breath.” It was Dalt. “I’m sorry I made you run. I just called because—”

“I haven’t heard from them yet,” I said.

“Oh.”

“When I have any news,” I said, “I’ll let you know. Are you home?”

“I’m at my mother’s. She said she got the money. I’m… this isn’t easy. Waiting, I mean. Doing nothing but waiting.”

“I know,” I said. “Look. Try not to worry. I’m going to do what they tell me to do. We’ll get Robert back.”

“I shouldn’t have called,” he said. “It sounds like I don’t trust you. That’s not it. It’s just… there’s nothing for me to do.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s hard. Did Adrienne want to speak to me?”

Dalt said something I didn’t understand, then he said, “No. She says you and she have nothing further to discuss. I don’t think she means it quite the way it sounds.”

After I hung up with Dalt, I went back outside and watched the sky darken and the stars pop out. The kidnappers’ cell phone did not ring.

Around nine-thirty I put the phone in my shirt pocket, snapped my fingers at Henry, and went into the house. I took the phone to the bathroom with me. It was in my pocket when I went into the living room to watch the end of the Red Sox game, and after the game ended I brought it with me when I went to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.

At half past midnight I’d started on my third mug of coffee, figuring it was going to be a long, late night, when the kidnappers’ cell phone rang.

I pressed the on button and said, “Brady Coyne.”

“Do exactly as I say,” said a voice. It was muffled and hollow. He was doing something to disguise it, and he was succeeding. Maybe it was Paulie, but if it was, I didn’t recognize his voice. He spoke very slowly, pausing after each word. “Robert Lancaster’s life depends on you.”

“Let me speak to him.”

“You have the money?”

“I want to talk to Robert.”

“You are going to need two large black heavy-duty plastic trash bags. I hope you have them.”

“What if I don’t?”

“That would be tragic.”

“I have trash bags,” I said.

“Get them.”

“I’ve got to hear Robert’s voice.”

“You will. Do as you are told. Keep the phone with you while you get those bags and the money. Tell me when you have them.”

“Okay.” I tucked the phone into my shirt pocket and headed for my den. I’d put the red gym bag in the closet. I brought it to the kitchen table. Then I pulled two trash bags out of the box we keep under the kitchen sink.

I took the phone out of my pocket. “I have the bags and the money.”

“The bills are bound in stacks?”

“Yes.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“Yes.”

“In stacks of one hundred bills.”

“That’s how banks do it, yes.”

“Take the bands off the stacks,” said the voice, “and dump it all into one of those bags. When you have done that, tie the top of the bag and put it inside the other bag. Tie the top of that bag the same way. Do it now.”

I opened the gym bag and dumped the stacks of money onto the table. Then I held a trash bag open, and one by one I removed the bands from the stacks of currency and dropped the bills into the bag. I tied the top, stuffed it inside the second bag, and tied the top of that one. All those loose bills nearly filled the bag, although when I hefted it, it was lighter than I’d expected. More air than money.

I left the double-bagged two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on the floor and picked up the phone. “All right,” I said. “That’s done.”

“Take it to your car,” said the voice. “Be sure to bring the phone. It is Robert Lancaster’s lifeline. Keep it turned on. Put the bag on the passenger seat. Then get behind the wheel and start the car. I want to hear you starting the car. Then I will give you your next instruction.”

“When will I talk to Robert?”

“Go to your car now.”

I put the phone in my shirt pocket, slung the trash bag over my shoulder, and headed for the front door.

Henry scurried ahead of me and sat beside the door. He looked at me with his ears cocked.

“You can’t come,” I said to him.

The voice in the telephone said something I couldn’t understand. I took it from my pocket and said, “I didn’t hear what you said. The phone was in my pocket.”

“Who is with you?”

“Nobody.”

“I heard you speak to somebody.”

“It’s just my dog,” I said. “I told him he couldn’t come with me. He’s disappointed.”

“Leave him there. Go to your car.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” I said.

“If there is anybody with you,” said the voice, “if you do not do this exactly as I tell you, Robert Lancaster will die and it will be your fault.”

“I hear you,” I said, and then I realized that he was using the telephone as a listening device, a bug, as well as a way of communicating with me. Whatever I did, he’d know, as long as the phone line was open and I kept it with me.

I’d parked my car in front of the house. I unlocked it with the remote, opened the passenger-side door, and put the trash bag on the seat. Then I went around to the other side, got behind the wheel, started the ignition, and put the phone to my ear. “Did you hear that?” I said.

“Yes. On your phone you will see a button you can press for volume.”

I looked at the phone. “I see it.”

“Maximize your volume, please.”

I pressed the button several times and a kind of bar graph grew taller on the little screen. “Okay,” I said. “How’s that?”

“It’s for your hearing, not ours,” said the voice.

“All right,” I said. “Your voice is loud and clear.”

In fact, I had been listening closely to the voice. I hoped I might pick up speech patterns, dialect, word choices, pronunciation. I assumed it was Paulie Russo or one of his henchmen, but so far, at least, I hadn’t been able to detect anything in the voice on the phone to help me identify him.

“I want you to drive safely,” he said. “You carry valuable cargo. You will drive with the phone on the console beside you. You will be able to hear my instructions. Try it now.”

I put the phone on the console. “Okay,” I said.

“Can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

“Very good, Mr. Coyne. Now let us begin. You are parked on Mt. Vernon Street, directly in front of your house. I want you to get onto Route 93 heading north. You will narrate your journey for me. Tell me each landmark as you pass it, each turn you take, each street sign you pass. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I said.

“Do not exceed the speed limit. Do nothing to draw attention to yourself or your automobile.”

“I’ve got to speak to Robert,” I said.

“You will,” he said. “Now get started.”

I
NEGOTIATED THE NOTARIES, BLINKING
yellow lights, and one-way streets from Beacon Hill to the Zakim Bridge, dumpy old Boston’s splendid anachronism of modernistic design, with its illuminated struts and cables and its elegant lines. I narrated every turn and street sign into the cell phone on the console. Now and then, the voice on the other end said, “Yes,” or, “Good.” Just letting me know that he was there, paying attention.

I crossed the bridge and headed north on Route 93. By now it was after one o’clock on this Wednesday morning in June. Traffic was light. Mostly delivery trucks and taxis. The commercial establishments I could see from the highway, the restaurants and used-car lots and factories and warehouses, appeared to be closed. The empty parking lots in Medford and Somerville were lit by yellow floodlights on tall poles. The office buildings in Stoneham shone lights from their eaves. Their windows were darkened.

I wondered where I was going, of course, but I knew there was no way I could guess. The voice on the cell phone would direct me to someplace the kidnappers had chosen because they believed it was ideally suited for their purposes. It was unlikely that our rendezvous had any connection to where the kidnappers lived or had their headquarters, or where they were holding Robert hostage.

In Woburn, the voice on the cell phone said, “Take Route 95 north. You will see the sign in about one minute.”

“I know the exit,” I said, and when I came to it, I took it.

A few minutes later, in Peabody, Route 95 took a jog to the left—north, paralleling the coast—and became a wide divided highway cutting through woods and fields, suburban developments, and farmland and fairgrounds, from Lynnfield to Danvers to Topsfield, heading toward the New Hampshire border, thence into Maine.

The more distance I put between myself and Boston, the thinner the traffic grew. I kept my speedometer needle on 65. Now and then a ten-wheeler went slamming past me. Otherwise I had the highway to myself.

Somewhere around Boxford I became aware of headlights behind me, and I realized that they’d been there for a while, hanging a couple of hundred yards back, moving in my lane at my speed.

“Are you following me?” I said to the cell phone on the console.

“You are doing well,” said the voice.

“I’ve got to speak to Robert.”

“Soon, Mr. Coyne.”

“I need an assurance that he is all right.”

“I assure you,” said the voice. “He is all right.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

The voice chuckled.

If they had chosen the Massachusetts North Shore or coastal New Hampshire because they thought that taking me out of the city where I lived and worked would disorient and confuse me, they were mistaken. I knew these areas quite well. I’d spent a lot of time in and around the old port cities of Newburyport in Massachusetts and Portsmouth in New Hampshire. I’d driven the back roads, and I’d fished in the rivers and their estuaries, and I’d eaten in the restaurants. I had friends and clients who lived and worked in those cities and their suburbs.