His parents had done well financially. They could no doubt contribute a hundred thousand to the cause without being in the least pinched. Even if they would give him twice that sum, and considering his own meager resources, he would still have in hand only a little more than ten percent of the ransom.
Besides, he would not have asked because he knew they would have declined, ostensibly on the basis of their theories of parenting.
Furthermore, he had come to suspect that the kidnappers were seeking more than money. He had no idea what they desired in addition to cash, but snatching the wife of a gardener who earned a five-figure income made no sense unless they wanted something else that only he could provide.
He had been all but certain that they intended to commit a major robbery by proxy, using him as if he were a remote-controlled robot. He could not rule out that scenario, but it no longer convinced him.
From under the driver’s seat, he retrieved the snub-nosed revolver and the ankle holster.
He examined the weapon with caution. As far as he could tell, it did not have a safety.
When he broke out the cylinder, he discovered that it held five rounds. This surprised him, as he had expected six.
All he knew about guns was what he had learned from books and movies.
In spite of Daniel’s talk about inspiring children to be self-sufficient, he had not prepared Mitch for the likes of John Knox.
The prey must learn evasion, and the predator must learn to hunt.
His parents had raised him to be prey. With Holly in the hands of murderers, however, Mitch had nowhere to run. He would rather die than hide and leave her to their mercy.
The Velcro closure on the holster allowed him to strap it far enough above his ankle to avoid exposing it if his pants hiked when he sat down. He didn’t favor peg-legged jeans, and this pair accommodated the compact handgun.
He shrugged into the sports coat. Before he got out of the car, he would tuck the pistol under his belt, in the small of his back, where the coat would conceal it.
He examined that weapon. Again he failed to locate a safety.
With some fumbling, he ejected the magazine. It contained eight cartridges. When he pulled the slide back, he saw a ninth gleaming in the breach.
After reinserting the magazine and making sure that it clicked securely into place, he put the pistol on the passenger’s seat.
His cell phone rang. The car clock read 5:59.
The kidnapper said, “Did you enjoy your visit with Mom and Dad?”
He had not been followed to his parents’ house or away from it, and yet they knew where he had been.
He said at once, “I didn’t tell them anything.”
“What were you after—milk and cookies?”
“If you’re thinking I could get the money from them, you’re wrong. They’re not that rich.”
“We know, Mitch. We know.”
“Let me talk to Holly.”
“Not this time.”
“Let me talk to her,” he insisted.
“Relax. She’s doing fine. I’ll put her on the next call. Is that the church you and your parents attended?”
His was the only car in the parking lot, and none were passing at the moment. Across the street from the church, the only vehicles were those in driveways, none at the curb.
“Is that where you went to church?” the kidnapper asked again.
“No.”
Although he was closed in the car with the doors locked, he felt as exposed as a mouse in an open field with the vibrato of hawk wings suddenly above.
“Were you an altar boy, Mitch?”
“No.”
“Can that be true?”
“You seem to know everything. You know it’s true.”
“For a man who was never an altar boy, Mitch, you are so like an altar boy.”
When he didn’t at first respond, thinking the statement a non sequitur, and when the kidnapper waited in silence, Mitch at last said, “I don’t know what that means.”
“Well, I don’t mean you’re pious, that’s for sure. And I don’t mean you’re reliably truthful. With Detective Taggart, you’ve proved to be a cunning liar.”
In their two previous conversations, the man on the phone had been professional, chillingly so. This petty jeering seemed out of sync with his past performance.
He had, however, called himself a handler. He had bluntly said that Mitch was an instrument to be manipulated, finessed.
These taunts must have a purpose, though it eluded Mitch. The kidnapper wanted to get inside his head and mess with him, for some subtle purpose, to achieve a particular result.
“Mitch, no offense, because it’s actually kind of sweet—but you’re as naive as an altar boy.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. I say so.”
This might be an attempt to anger him, anger being an inhibition to clear thinking, or perhaps the purpose was to instill in him such doubt about his competence that he would remain cowed and obedient.
He had already acknowledged to himself the absolute degree of his helplessness in this matter. They could not strop his humility to a sharper edge than now existed.
“Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don’t see.”
This statement unnerved him more than anything else that the kidnapper had said. Not an hour ago, in the loft of his garage, that very thought, couched in similar words, had occurred to him.
Having packed John Knox in the trunk of the car, he had returned to the loft to puzzle out how the accident had occurred. Having seen the neck of the lug wrench snared in the loop of the knot, he had settled the mystery.
But just then he had felt deceived, watched, mocked. He had been overcome by an instinctive sense that a greater truth waited in that loft to be discovered, that it hid from him in plain sight.
He had been shaken by the thought that he saw and yet was blind, that he heard and yet was deaf.
Now the mocking man on the telephone: Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don’t see.
Uncanny seemed not to be too strong a word. He felt that the kidnappers could not only watch him and listen to him anywhere, at any time, but also that they could pore through his thoughts.
He reached for the pistol on the passenger’s seat. No immediate threat loomed, but he felt safer holding the gun.
“Are you with me, Mitch?”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll call you again at seven-thirty—”
“More waiting? Why?” Impatience gnawed at him, and he could not cage it, though he knew the danger of the infection proceeding to a state of foaming recklessness. “Let’s get on with this.”
“Easy, Mitch. I was about to tell you what to do next when you interrupted.”
“Then, damn it, tell me.”
“A good altar boy knows the ritual, the litanies. A good altar boy responds, but he doesn’t interrupt. If you interrupt again, I’ll make you wait until eight-thirty.”
Mitch got a leash on his impatience. He took a deep breath, let it slowly out, and said, “I understand.”
“Good. So when I hang up, you’ll drive to Newport Beach, to your brother’s house.”
Surprised, he said, “To Anson’s place?”
“You’ll wait with him for the seven-thirty call.”
“Why does my brother have to be involved in this?”
“You can’t do alone what has to be done,” said the kidnapper.
“But what has to be done? You haven’t told me.”
“We will. Soon.”
“If it takes two men, the other doesn’t have to be him. I don’t want Anson dragged into this.”
“Think about it, Mitch. Who better than your brother? He loves you, right? He won’t want your wife to be cut to pieces like a pig in a slaughterhouse.”
Throughout their beleaguered childhood, Anson had been the reliable rope that kept Mitch tethered to a mooring. Always it was Anson who raised the sails of hope
when there seemed to be no wind to fill them.
To his brother, he owed the peace of mind and the happiness that eventually he had found when at last free of his parents, the lightness of spirit that had made it possible for him to win Holly as a wife.
“You’ve set me up,” Mitch said. “If whatever you want me to do goes wrong, you’ve set me up to make it look as if I killed my wife.”
“The noose is even tighter than you realize, Mitch.”
They might be wondering about John Knox, but they didn’t know that he was dead in the trunk of the Honda. A dead conspirator was some proof of the story Mitch could tell the authorities.
Or was it? He had not considered all the ways that the police might interpret Knox’s death, perhaps most of them more incriminating than exculpatory.
“My point,” Mitch said, “is that you’ll do the same to Anson. You’ll wrap him in chains of circumstantial evidence to keep him cooperative. It’s how you work.”
“None of that will matter if the two of you do what we want, and you get her back.”
“But it isn’t fair,” Mitch protested, and realized that he must in fact sound as ingenuous and credulous as an altar boy.
The kidnapper laughed. “And by contrast, you feel we’ve dealt fairly with you? Is that it?”
Clenched around the pistol, his hand had grown cold and moist.
“Would you rather we spared your brother and partnered you with Iggy Barnes?”
“Yes,” Mitch said, and was at once embarrassed to have been so quick to sacrifice an innocent friend to save a loved one.
“And that would be fair to Mr. Barnes?”
Mitch’s father believed that shame had no social usefulness, that it was a signature of the superstitious mind, and that a person of reason, living a rational life, must be free of it. He believed, as well, that the capacity for shame could be expunged by education.
In Mitch’s case, the old man had failed miserably, at least on this score. Although the thug on the phone was the only witness to this willingness to save a brother at the expense of a friend, Mitch felt his face turn warm with shame.
“Mr. Barnes,” the kidnapper said, “is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. If for no other reason, your friend would not be an acceptable substitute for your brother. Now go to Anson’s house and wait for our call.”
Resigned to this development but sick with despair that his brother must be imperiled, Mitch said, “What should I tell him?”
“Absolutely nothing. I’m requiring you to tell him nothing. I am the experienced handler, not you. When I call, I’ll let him hear Holly scream, and then explain the facts.”
Alarmed, he said, “That’s not necessary, making her scream. You promised not to hurt her.”
“I promised not to rape her, Mitch. Nothing you say to your brother will be as convincing as her scream. I know better than you how to do this.”
His cold, sweaty grip on the pistol was problematic. When his hand began to shake, he put the weapon on the passenger’s seat once more.
“What if Anson isn’t home?”
“He’s home. Get moving, Mitch. It’s rush hour. You don’t want to be late getting to Newport Beach.”
The kidnapper terminated the call.
When Mitch pressed the END button on his phone, the act felt grimly predictive.
He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to gather his unraveled nerves, but then opened them because he felt vulnerable with them closed.
When he started the engine, a flock of crows flew up from the pavement, from the shadow of the steeple to the steeple itself.
19
Famous for its yacht harbor, its mansions, and its wonderland of upscale shopping, Newport Beach was not home exclusively to the fabulously wealthy. Anson lived in the Corona del Mar district, in the front half of a two-unit condo.
Shaded by a massive magnolia, approached by a used-brick path, with New England architecture as interpreted by a swooning romantic, the house did not impress, but it charmed.
The door chimes played a few bars of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
Anson arrived before Mitch pressed the bell push a second time.
Although as fit as an athlete, Anson was a different physical type from Mitch: bearish, barrel-chested, bull-necked. That he had been a star quarterback in high school testified to his quickness and agility, for he looked more like a middle linebacker.
His handsome, broad, open face seemed always to be anticipating a reason to smile. At the sight of Mitch, he grinned.
“Fratello mio!” Anson exclaimed, embracing his brother and drawing him into the house. “Entrino! Entrino!”
The air was redolent of garlic, onions, bacon.
“Cooking Italian?” Mitch asked.
“Bravissimo, fratello piccolo! From a mere aroma and my bad Italian, you make a brilliant deduction. Let me hang up your coat.”
Mitch had not wanted to leave the pistol in the car. The gun was tucked under his belt, in the small of his back.
“No,” he said. “I’m fine. I’ll keep it.”
“Come to the kitchen. I was in a funk at the prospect of another dinner alone.”
“You’re immune to funk,” Mitch said.
“There is no such thing as funk antibodies, little brother.”
The house featured a masculine but stylish decor, emphasizing nautical decorative items. Paintings of sailing ships portrayed proud vessels tossed in storms and others making way under radiant skies.
From childhood, Anson had believed that perfect freedom could never be found on land, only at sea, under sail.
He’d been a fan of pirate yarns, stories of naval battles, and tales of adventure on the bounty. He’d read many of them aloud to Mitch, who had sat enthralled for hours.
Daniel and Kathy suffered motion sickness in a rowboat on a pond. Their aversion to the sea had been the first thing to inspire Anson’s interest in the nautical life.
In the cozy, fragrant kitchen, he pointed to a pot steaming on the stove. “Zuppa massaia.”
“What kind of soup is massaia?”
“Classic housewife’s soup. Lacking a wife, I have to get in touch with my feminine side when I want to make it.”
Sometimes Mitch found it hard to believe that a pair as leaden as their parents could have produced a son as buoyant as Anson.
The kitchen clock read 7:24. A traffic backup from an accident had delayed him.
On the table stood a bottle of Chianti Classico and a half-full glass. Anson opened a cabinet, plucked another glass from a shelf.
Mitch almost declined the wine. But one round would not dull his wits and might restore some elasticity to his brittle nerves.
As Anson poured the Chianti, he did a fair imitation of their father’s voice. “Yes, I’m pleased to see you, Mitch, though I didn’t notice your name on the visiting-progeny schedule, and I had planned to spend this evening tormenting guinea pigs in an electrified maze.”
Accepting the Chianti, Mitch said, “I just came from there.”
“That explains your subdued manner and your gray complexion.” Anson raised his glass in a toast. “La dolce vita.”
“To your new deal with China,” Mitch said.
“Was I used as a needle again?”
“Always. But he can’t push hard enough to puncture me anymore. Sounds like a big opportunity.”
“The China thing? He must’ve hyped what I told him. They aren’t dissolving the Communist Party and giving me the emperor’s throne.”
Anson’s consulting work was so arcane that Mitch had never been able to understand it. He had earned a doctorate in linguistics, the science of language, but he also had a deep background in computer languages and in digitalization theory, whatever that might be.
“Every time I leave their place,” Mitch said, “I feel the need to dig in the dirt, work with my hands, something.”
“They make you want to flee to something real.”
“That’s it
exactly. This wine’s good.”
“After the soup, we’re having lombo di maiale con castagne.”
“I can’t digest what I can’t pronounce.”
“Roast loin of pork with chestnuts,” Anson said.
“Sounds good, but I don’t want dinner.”
“There’s plenty. The recipe serves six. I don’t know how to cut it down, so I always make it for six.”
Mitch glanced at the windows. Good—the blinds were shut.
From the counter near the kitchen phone, he picked up a pen and a notepad. “Have you gotten any sailing in lately?”
Anson dreamed of one day owning a sailing yacht. It should be large enough not to seem claustrophobic on a long coastal run or perhaps even on a voyage to Hawaii, but small enough to be managed with one mate and an array of sail motors.
He used the word mate to mean his fellow sailor but also his companion in bed. Regardless of his bearish appearance and sometimes acerbic sense of humor, Anson was a romantic not just about the sea but also about the opposite sex.
The attraction women felt for him could not be called merely magnetic. He drew them as the gravity of the moon pulls the tides.
Yet he was no Don Juan. With great charm, he turned away most of his pursuers. And each one that he hoped might be his ideal woman always seemed to break his heart, though he would not have put it that melodramatically.
The small boat—an eighteen-foot American Sail—that he currently moored at a buoy in the harbor was by no measure a yacht. But given his luck at love, he might one day own the vessel of his dreams long before he found someone with whom to sail it.
In answer to Mitch’s question, he said, “I haven’t had time to do more than bob the harbor like a duck, tacking the channels.”
Sitting at the kitchen table, printing in block letters on the notepad, Mitch said, “I should have a hobby. You’ve got sailing, and the old man has dinosaur crap.”
He tore off the top sheet of the pad and pushed it across the table so that Anson, still standing, could read it: YOUR HOUSE IS PROBABLY BUGGED.
His brother’s look of astonishment had a quality of wonder that Mitch recognized as similar to the expression that had overtaken him when he had read aloud the pirate yarns and the tales of heroic naval battles that thrilled him as a boy. His initial reaction seemed to be that some strange adventure had begun, and he appeared not to grasp the implied danger.