No Second Chance

  "Start moving," she said.

  I turned to confront her, but her face made me pull up short. "Jesus, are you all right?"

  "I'm fine."

  Her right eye was swollen over like a boxer's who had gone the distance. There were yellow-purple bruises around her neck. Her face had a giant red mark across both cheeks. I could see scarlet indentations from where her attacker had dug in his fingers. The fingernails had even broken the skin. I wondered if there was deeper trauma to her face, if whatever blow she took to the eye had been powerful enough to break a bone. I doubted it. A break like that would normally knock someone out of commission. Then again, best-case scenario and these were only surface wounds: It was amazing she was still upright.

  "What the hell happened?" I asked.

  She had her Palm Pilot out. The screen was dazzlingly bright in the dark of the car. She looked down at it and said, "Take Seventeen south. Hurry, I don't want to get too far behind."

  I put the car in reverse, backed up, started down the highway. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bottle of Vioxx. "These should help deaden the pain."

  She pulled off the top. "How many should I take?"

  "One."

  Her index finger scooped it out. Her eyes never left the Palm Pilot's screen. She swallowed it down and said thanks.

  "Tell me what happened," I said.

  "You first."

  I filled her in as best I could. We stayed on Route 17. We passed the Allendale and Ridgewood exits. The streets were empty. The shops-- and, man, there were lots of them, the entire highway pretty much one continuous strip mall--were all closed up. Rachel listened without interrupting. I glanced at her as I drove. She looked in pain.

  When I finished, she asked, "Are you sure it wasn't Tara in the car?"

  "Yes."

  "I called my DNA guy again. The layers are still matching up. I don't get that."

  Neither did I. "What happened to you?"

  "Somebody jumped me. I was watching you through the night vision goggles. I saw you put down the money bag and start walking. There was a woman in the bushes. Did you see her?"

  "No."

  "She had a gun. I think she planned on killing you."

  "A woman?" "Yes."

  I wasn't sure how to react to that. "Did you get a good look at her?"

  "No. I was about to call out a warning when this monster grabbed me from behind. Strong as hell. He lifted me off my feet by my head. I thought he was going to rip my skull off."

  "Jesus."

  "Anyway, a cop car drove by. The big guy panicked. He punched me here"--she pointed to the swollen eye--"and it was lights-out. I don't know how long I was lying on the pavement. When I woke up, the cops were all over the place. I was huddled in a corner in the dark. I guess they didn't see me or figured I was & homeless guy sleeping one off. Anyway, I checked the Palm Pilot. I saw the money was on the move."

  "Which direction?"

  "South, walking near 168th Street. Then suddenly they went still. See, this thing"--she gestured to the screen--"works two ways. I zoom in, I can get as close as a quarter mile. I go out a little farther, like right now, I get more an idea than an exact address. Right now, based on the speed, I figure they're driving about six miles ahead of us still on Route Seventeen."

  "But when you first spotted them, they were on 168th Street?"

  "Right. Then they start heading downtown fast."

  I thought about it. "The subway," I said. "They took the A train from the 168th Street stop."

  "That's what I figured. Anyway, I stole the van. I started downtown. I was near the seventies when all of a sudden they started going east. This time it was more stop and go."

  "They were stopping for lights. They had a car now."

  Rachel nodded. "They sped up on the FDR and Harlem River Drive. I tried to cut across town, but that took too long. I fell behind by five, six miles. Anyway, you know the rest."

  We slowed for night construction near the Route 4 interchange. Three lanes became one. I looked at her, at the bruises and the swelling, at the giant handprint on her skin. She looked back at me and didn't say a word. My fingers reached out and caressed her face as gently as I knew how. She closed her eyes, the tenderness seemingly too much, and even in the midst of all this we both knew that it felt right. A stirring, an old one, a dormant one, started deep inside of me. I kept my eyes on that lovely, perfect face. I pushed back her hair. A tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek. She put her hand on my wrist. I felt the warmth start there and spread.

  Part of me--and, yes, I know how this will sound--wanted to forget this quest. The kidnapping had been a hoax. My daughter was gone. My wife was dead. Someone was trying to kill me. It was time to start again, a new chance, a way, this time, to get it right. I wanted to turn the car around and start heading in the other direction. I wanted to drive--keep driving--and never ask about her dead husband and those pictures on the CD. I could forget all that, I knew I could. My life was filled with surgical procedures that altered the surface, that helped people begin anew, that improved what was visible and thus what was not. That could be what would happen here. A simple face-lift. I would make my first incision the day before that damn frat party, pull the fourteen-year-old folds across time, close the suture at now. Stick the two moments together. Nip and tuck. Make those fourteen years disappear, as though they'd never happened.

  Rachel opened her eyes now and I could see that she was thinking pretty much the same thing, hoping I'd call it off and turn around. But of course, that could not be. We blinked. The construction cleared. Her hand left my forearm. I risked another glance at Rachel. No, we were not twenty-one years old anymore, but that didn't matter. I saw that now. I still loved her. Irrational, wrong, stupid, naive, whatever. I still loved her. Over the years, I might have convinced myself otherwise, but I had never stopped. She was still so damn beautiful, so damn perfect, and when I thought of how close she'd just come to death, those giant hands smothering away her breath, those niggling doubts began t o soften. They wouldn't go away. Not until I knew the truth. But no matter what the answers were, they would not consume me.

  "Rachel?"

  But she suddenly sat up, her eyes back on the Palm Pilot.

  "What is it? "I asked.* "They've stopped," Rachel said. "We'll be on them in two miles."

  Chapter 32

  Steven 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 migh:--and Dawn, his wife, didn't really lik
e 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 imagine1, 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 pecke d 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 th e 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.