The Lights of Tenth Street

Down the hall, a stern-faced man wearing a black leather jacket watched as Maris was hustled out of the bathroom and past him. He whistled for the man at the back door to follow them.

  The second man hurried over. “I thought you told me to block the exit.”

  “I’ll watch it. The cops’ll be here any second. Go help them search the bar.”

  He watched as the second man hurried toward the bar, and a small smile softened his face. As soon as the second man was out of sight, he looked upwards as if listening and nodded. Then he vanished.

  Out at the bar, a hard-faced man in a black leather jacket sneered as Maris was hauled out to the bar, oblivious to the dumbfounded looks from the patrons and staff. He began barking out orders. Where was the Palm Pilot? Search the bar!

  Another man came running out to the bar from the staff area, then slowed, confusion on his face as he spied the leather-jacketed man.

  “What are you doing away from the back exit?” The leather-jacketed man barked.

  “Uh—I thought you—Someone else was watching it.”

  Leather-jacket nodded and lowered his voice, glancing around at the chaos all around him. “See if you can get someone on the staff to point out those two girls—Sasha and her roommate. If you find them, bring them here. Quietly. We’ll need to find a way to get them out of here before the cops arrive.”

  Ronnie crouched on the toilet seat. She had to move. Mouth dry, she clambered down and hurried for the door, feeling the awkward weight of the Palm Pilot against her back. She felt like throwing up. She couldn’t do this.

  She listened at the door as Maris had done, and heard nothing. Shaking, she cracked open the door a trace. Nothing. She straightened and emerged from the bathroom as if puzzled about what had just gone on. There was no one in the hallway—and no one guarding the back door! She raced toward the dancers’ room. Had it only been five minutes since she left Tiffany?

  She banged through the door. “Tiffany!”

  Tiffany turned at her cry, jumping halfway out of her seat. She put a hand to her chest. “Where’ve you been?” She gestured into the room. “This officer was just taking our names and statements. I’m next.”

  Ronnie looked at the man at the side of the room, talking to one of the dancers. He was not wearing a uniform, was only half-listening to the girl, his attention instead on this new girl who had burst into the room. His eyes were alert … hard.

  “Good,” Ronnie forced herself to act nonchalantly. “I hope we can help.”

  She stood close beside Tiffany, using her friend to block her movements, and grabbed her car keys from the makeup table.

  Then she squeezed Tiffany’s arm, trying to catch her eye. Her friend flinched and looked up to complain.

  Ronnie’s eyes bore into her friend’s. Please don’t say anything! With slightly raised voice, she said. “I’ve got to use the rest room. Didn’t you say you had to go?”

  “Uh—sure.” She looked around vaguely. “We’ll be right back.”

  The man across the room stiffened and opened his mouth to say something. Before he could, Ronnie had tugged her friend out the door, her heart pounding.

  The back exit was still clear! She kept a vice grip on Tiffany’s arm and started pulling her toward the door.

  “Ronnie! What—?”

  “Just run, Tiff! I’ll explain later! Run!”

  The two girls raced for the exit, banging through just as one of the dancers emerged from the dressing room, pointing, her face puzzled.

  “But that’s Sasha right there …”

  Ronnie raced toward her car, feeling the Palm Pilot beginning to slip. With a sudden jolt, it jarred loose from her waistband. She grabbed for it and caught the end of the leather slipcover. The device slipped out and banged against the pavement. She scooped it up, fumbling with the case, with the keys, aware that there were shouts on the other side of the door, people running … coming.

  She jabbed the car key into the lock, losing her grip on the leather case but throwing the Palm Pilot inside as she and Tiffany fell into their seats. She turned the key in the ignition, revved the engine, and backed out of her parking spot. Tiffany looked back, alarmed.

  “Those guys want you to stop.” She jerked and screamed. “Ronnie, duck!”

  Ronnie heard two sharp noises, heard the glass of her back window shatter. She didn’t flinch, somehow detached. She slammed the car into drive and stomped on the gas pedal.

  Another man came running around the corner from the front of the club, holding out his arms, his face fierce to stop her. She set her jaw and pressed on the accelerator as Tiffany screamed, throwing an arm over her face.

  The man leaped out of the way at the last second.

  “You almost ran him over!” Tiffany was shouting at her. “What is wrong with you! That was a cop!”

  Ronnie’s tires squealed out of the lot. She made a hard left turn onto Tenth Street and darted onto the highway access ramp. If she could get just a one-minute head start, they’d never catch up. She could see three police cars—no lights flashing—heading down Tenth Street toward the club. Then the highway rounded a bend and the area was lost to sight.

  “What is wrong with you? Stop this car!” Tiffany was pounding on her, her voice high with fright. The wind whistled through the shattered back window.

  Ronnie raced onward, looking in the rearview mirror. Nothing. She reached an exit for another major highway and took it, speeding around the cloverleaf, sure she had lost them. Or maybe the arrival of the police had prevented them from following. Relief came in conflicted waves. She had lost them … but Maris … what about Maris?

  Beside her, Tiffany’s eyes were wide. “I can’t believe you tried to run over a cop.”

  “He wasn’t a cop. They were just pretending.”

  “What do you mean? They were there to take statements about Marco!”

  “No, that’s not what they were there for. Real police wouldn’t have shot at us like that. They were looking for something. That’s what Maris said.”

  “Maris? But she’s the one who said the police would come. I don’t understand.”

  Ronnie glanced sideways. “I think Maris was some sort of spy.”

  “A what?”

  As briefly as she could, Ronnie recounted the intense moments in the bathroom, the transfer of the Palm Pilot, the way Maris had put herself in harm’s way so the men wouldn’t know Ronnie was there.

  Tiffany’s lips parted in astonishment as Ronnie described her nervous escape from the bathroom, the realization that the man in the dancers’ dressing room was not a cop, was also looking for someone.

  “And did you realize, Tiffany, that as we ran through the back door, someone pointed you out to that man? He was looking for you.”

  “Me?”

  “I don’t know why. Do you?”

  “No!” Tiffany began to shiver. “What do we do? If they can find us at the club, they can find us at home.”

  Both girls grew cold. They were fighting something huge … that they didn’t understand.

  Finally, Tiffany cleared her throat. “If you have Maris’s Palm Pilot with the number for the FBI … don’t you think we should call? We’d at least be safe there.”

  “Can you find it? I just threw it in. It should be down by your feet.”

  Tiffany groped around in the darkness. “Here. Okay, where’s the number?”

  “It should be inside the slipcover.”

  “There’s no slipcover.”

  “Oh no. I dropped the case. And I don’t know the number.”

  Tiffany was silent, then spoke slowly. “For Maris’s sake, I hope they don’t find it.”

  The leather-jacketed man picked himself up off the ground, cursing at the pain where he had hit the ground and rolled away from the speeding car.

  He bellowed orders. Get someone after those girls! Get that waitress out here! Several men ran to their cars and raced out of the driveway.

  Another man dragged Maris from the cl
ub, her arm twisted behind her back. They were followed by a sizeable contingent of the staff, clearly stunned at the brutal treatment.

  Her lips were pressed together in a tight line. The man who held her was talking in her ear, his voice low and cruel.

  “And if you try to ask your friends for help, we’ll be forced to kill every one of them right now, see? We’ve got a nice little gallery of hostages over there … they just don’t know it. So don’t say nothing.” He opened the door of a nearby car and pushed her in.

  The leather-jacketed man started to go around to the driver’s side, when Nick ran up with two of the club’s bouncers.

  “Hey, those aren’t police cars! I can’t let you take her without some identification.”

  “This is all the identification you need,” the leather-jacketed man made an obscene gesture, then wrenched open the driver’s side door.

  Nick barked at the bouncers and they moved forward. The other man turned from where he had shoved Maris into the backseat, and pulled out a gun. He leveled it at them.

  “Or maybe this is all the identification you need.”

  The three men wavered, their faces taut with tension and anger. The leather-jacketed man shouted at his comrade as he swung into the driver’s seat.

  “No shooting—let’s go!”

  The man holding the gun jumped in beside Maris and slammed the door. He pressed the gun against her head and sneered toward the horrified crowd. The car made a left turn onto Tenth Street just as police cars began streaming into the parking lot.

  FIFTY-SIX

  So where do we go?” Tiffany clutched the Palm Pilot as if it could give her the answers they needed. Her voice rose, high and anxious. “If we go home, they’ll find us! Where do we go!”

  Ronnie’s thoughts were strangely clear. There was one place they could go … a place no one would ever think to look … a place they could get advice … could be safe.

  She turned off the highway and began winding down a series of back roads, explaining briefly to Tiffany where they were headed. Tiffany looked at her as if she were crazy. She began to shake, crying silently in her seat.

  “I can’t handle this … They’re going to kill us … O God … Marco … Maris …”

  Ronnie, too, could feel the pressure building, the floodgates held back only by a severe force of will. She couldn’t lose it. Not yet. Not yet. She spotted a familiar street and turned into a subdivision, large houses rising on every side, the windows dark, the garages closed. Only a few late-night lights here and there betrayed any activity behind all the shuttered doors.

  She looked at the dashboard clock. Eleven-thirty. All these people went to bed so early. She crawled by the imposing homes, trying to determine the right one in the dark, beginning to think she was crazy.

  Proxy stared at Tyson, his eyes crackling with fury as he spouted invectives. How could Tyson’s men have failed to find the Palm Pilot? How could he have let the girls get away? How could he not have known they had a mole in the place?

  Tyson matched his look, not giving an inch. Inside, he was rattled as he listened to the tirade, watched the eyes grow wild. This, then, was the real substance of the man; the severe brutality behind the cool business façade.

  His whole team was, of course, made up of hard men, ruthless in their goals. But there was something different behind Proxy’s look. Between the cracks in his cold manner there was something unnatural, something … unhinged.

  Tyson and the others saw the upcoming human devastation as a simple matter of personal gain and ideological ambition—both goals that, in their cold-hearted calculus, were worth the cost. But now, Tyson stared into a mind that was not cold. This mind was anticipating enjoyment, drawing pleasure from others’ pain.

  He realized, with a jolt, that Proxy probably would have done it for nothing.

  “How long until they get here?”

  Tyson looked at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

  Proxy’s eyes gleamed. “Have them bring her up. We’ll get the information we need.”

  “We should get going, I guess.” Vance Woodward gave Doug Turner a hug and thanked him for dinner. “The kids were all sacked out downstairs in the playroom, last I checked. Couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer.”

  “Yeah.” Doug stretched, feeling a wave of fatigue. “It’s past our bedtime too. But I just—I just felt like we couldn’t not pray.”

  “I wonder what that was all about?” Sherry said. “It all seemed so … strange. I hope Ronnie’s okay.”

  Into the concerned silence came a sudden knock on the door.

  Sherry went into the foyer. She peered through the side windows, gave a cry of surprise, and threw the door open.

  The others hurried over and halted at the sight of two young women hovering on the doorstep, their faces white with fear.

  Twenty minutes later, with the girls clutching mugs of hot chocolate and wrapped in warm blankets, the two couples listened, open-mouthed, to the end of the story.

  By now, Ronnie was shaking, crying as she told of their narrow escape. Tiffany sat beside her, red-eyed but silent.

  “You said … you said I could come here if I needed a safe place.” Ronnie finished in a rush. “I didn’t know where else to go. They could find us anywhere else.”

  Doug went to a front window and peered out around the shade. “There’s nobody out there, that I can see.”

  Ronnie shook her head. “They couldn’t have followed me. I changed highways too quickly. And there was no one behind me on the back roads. I would’ve seen their headlights in the dark.”

  “Okay.” Doug walked back over and glanced at Sherry. Then he smiled down at the two girls. “I’m glad you came. This is the right place for you right now. We’ve obviously got a lot to talk about, but we can do most of that in the morning.”

  All of Ronnie’s adrenaline was ebbing away. “What—what should we do about Maris? Those police cars were almost there when we left, so maybe she was okay. But—” She lifted her hands—“I don’t know what to think.”

  Doug glanced at the others. “We should try to get ahold of the FBI, at least. See what they say.”

  Ronnie sagged back against the couch, her brain dull. Shouldn’t she be doing more? She was beyond thinking clearly. Another consideration pressed on her brain, and she asked Sherry and Doug if she could use their phone.

  “I think I should call my mom, let her know where I am.”

  Doug pointed toward the kitchen phone, his voice cautious. “I wouldn’t call anyone else, though. Do you have a cell phone?” He pursed his lips when she nodded. “I would ignore all calls until we get a handle on things; we don’t want anyone to have a chance of tracing you somehow.”

  Ronnie put the call through, but it rang only once and went straight to voice mail. Her mom must be on the other line. Odd, after midnight. She hesitated, then left a brief message, playing down the drama of the night but hearing the exhaustion in her own voice. She left the Turner’s name and phone number, then rang off. “I’ll try calling you tomorrow, if I can.”

  When she returned to the living room and collapsed on the sofa, Vance and Doug were standing by the door, debating how best to contact the FBI. Vance and Jo had their coats on, a sleeping Blake on Vance’s shoulder.

  Vance’s brow was furrowed. “We don’t have the phone number, or that code that Maris gave her.”

  “I’ll look up the main number in the phone book. Unless I just go down there.”

  “With all the security these days, you wouldn’t get very far. Call first, and see what they say. And let me know what I can do.” Vance looked over Doug’s shoulder and smiled at Ronnie. “Unless something breaks, we’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  She gave him a weak smile. “Okay. Thanks for everything.”

  As Sherry and Doug said their good-byes to the Woodwards, Ronnie closed her eyes, feeling the tide of exhaustion rising, images and impressions flashing across her overwhelmed mind. Marco’s face, in t
he parking lot on Christmas Eve … the sound of Tiffany’s voice, breaking the dreadful news … the urgency in Maris’s eyes … the rush of angry men … terror … hiding in a bathroom stall … the frantic flight from the club …

  She felt movement nearby and opened her eyes again. Sherry was standing beside the sofa, looking down at the two girls. “While Doug tries to get through, let’s get you settled in for the night. Neither of you are in much shape to go anywhere. He can always bring the Palm Pilot down there by himself, if necessary.”

  The after-hours phone rang in the middle of a clamor. A multiple shooting had taken place downtown during a long-planned bust of a large drug ring, and several FBI agents were down. People ran through the darkened hallways, talking on cell phones, hurrying to jump in their cars and head to the hospital or liaise with the local police. Two of the kingpins had gotten away, and an APB was already out. Heads would roll if they weren’t apprehended.

  The phone rang again. A late-night rep snatched it up.

  “FBI!”

  A tired voice came through the phone. “I’m not sure who to speak with. I have something that should be of interest to the FBI.”

  Someone yelled down the hallway, and the late-night rep listened for a second before turning back to the phone.

  “I’m sorry, sir. We’re in the middle of something here. Did you say you have a tip of some kind?”

  “I guess that’s what you’d call it—”

  “Let me transfer you to our Tips and Public Leads department, okay, sir?”

  “Okay—”

  The rep punched a few buttons and the call was gone, freeing him to run down the hall and hear the latest report.

  Doug knocked on the guest room door, hearing Sherry’s voice rise behind it.

  “Come on in, sweetheart.”

  He opened the door and smiled at the three women clad in pajamas, all sitting on the queen-size bed, all sagging with fatigue.

  “Well, I called. Someone in their Tips department took a message and said they’d get back to us. He said it probably wouldn’t be until tomorrow.” He let out a frustrated sigh. “I kept telling them that it seemed urgent—I told them about the Palm Pilot and what Maris had said—but frankly I think the person was little more than an answering service with no authority or understanding beyond just taking a message. They seemed pretty busy with something else. They weren’t keen on me coming down there tonight.”