24 Hours (7 page)

Will didn’t particularly like the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He never had. The place had a seedy, transient air. A peeling, tired-out atmosphere that drifted over the trucked-in sand and brown water like a haze of corruption. In 1969, Hurricane Camille had torn through the beachfront communities at two hundred miles per hour, and after that things were the same, only worse. There was a pervasive sense that the best times had come and gone, never to return.

But two decades after Camille’s fearsome passage, casino gambling changed everything. Glittering palaces rose off the beach like surrealistic sand castles, employing thousands of people and pollinating all sorts of service industries, particularly pawn shops and “Cash Quick” establishments where you could cash your social security check or hock your car title for money to blow at the craps table. But at night you didn’t see all that. You only saw the line of sparkling towers, their Vegas-style signs blazing over the night waters of the gulf as thousands of cars crawled up the coast highway, filled with the desperate and the gullible.

Will felt strange being by himself, away from home. Having the simple freedom to stop anywhere he chose, to take an unplanned turn without having to explain or to answer to anyone. Of course, that freedom was illusory. There were people waiting for him, and he was late already. He pressed down the accelerator, figuring it was worth the risk of a ticket.

As he neared the casino, traffic slowed to a crawl, but he was already in sight of the words BEAU RIVAGE glittering high in the fading sunlight. He turned off the highway and pulled up into the tasteful entrance of the casino resort, thankful for the bellboys who stood waiting to take his bags. Keeping the computer and sample cases for himself, he gave his keys to a valet and walked through the massive doors.

The interior of the Beau Rivage was built on the colossal scale of post-mafia Las Vegas casinos. A fantasy re-creation of the antebellum South, with full-size magnolia trees growing throughout its lobby, the casino hotel struck Will as a cross between Trump Tower and Walt Disney World. He picked his way through the gamblers in the lobby and walked over to the long check-in desk. When he gave his name, the hotel manager came out of an office to the left and shook his hand. He was tall and too thin, and his name tag read GEAUTREAU.

“Your colleagues have been getting a little nervous, Dr. Jennings,” he said with a cool smile.

“I had a long surgery this afternoon.” Will tapped his computer case. “But I’ve got my program ready to go. Just get me to a shower.”

Geautreau handed over an envelope containing a credit card key. “You’ve got a suite on twenty-eight, Doctor. A Cypress suite. A thousand square feet. Dr. Stein instructed me to give you the red carpet treatment.” Saul Stein was the outgoing president of the Mississippi Medical Association. “Are you sure I can’t have a bellman take those cases up for you?”

Will strained to maintain his smile as he realized that his privacy had been violated. He could hear Dr. Stein telling the hotel manager about his arthritis, warning Geautreau not to let Will carry a single bag upstairs. All with the best of intentions, of course.

“No, thanks,” he said, tapping his case again. “Sensitive cargo here.”

“Our audio-video consultant is waiting for you in the Magnolia Ballroom. You’ll find the VIP elevators past the jewelry store and to the right. Don’t hesitate to call for anything, Doctor. Ask for me by name.”

“I will.”

As Will crossed the lobby, making for the elevators, a heavyset man in his forties shouted from an open-air bar to his left. It was Jackson Everett, an old medical school buddy. Everett was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and held an umbrella drink in his hand.

“Will Jennings!” he boomed. “It’s about damned time!” Everett shouldered his way across the lobby and slapped Will on the back, sending a sword of pain down his spine. “I haven’t seen you since the scramble at Annandale, boy. How’s it hanging? Where’s Karen?”

“She didn’t make it this trip, Jack. Some Junior League thing. You just get here?”

Everett laughed. “Are you kidding? I flew in two days ago for some early golf. You’re giving the speech tonight, I hear.”

Will nodded.

“Hey, without Karen, you’ll have to hit the casino with me. High rollers, stud!”

“I’d better pass. I had a long surgery, and then the flight. I’m whipped.”

“Pussy-whipped, more like,” Everett complained. “You gotta live a little, son.”

Will gave an obliging laugh. “Let’s get a beer tomorrow and catch up.”

“How are your hands? Are you up for eighteen holes?”

“I brought my clubs. We’ll just have to see.”

“Well, I hope you can. Hey, don’t put us to sleep tonight, okay?”

“But that’s my specialty, Jack.”

Everett groaned and walked off gulping his drink.

As Will waited for an elevator, he saw a few more faces he recognized across the lobby, but he didn’t make an effort to speak. He had twenty-five minutes to get dressed and down to the meeting room, where he would still have to set up the notebook computer for his video presentation.

On the twenty-eighth floor, he opened the door to his suite and found his bags and golf clubs waiting for him. The manager had not exaggerated. The suite was large enough for permanent residence. He set his cases on the sitting-room sofa, then walked into the marble-floored bathroom and turned on the hot water. As the bathroom filled with steam, he unzipped his suit bag, hung a blue pinstripe Land’s End suit in the closet, and unpacked a laundry-boxed shirt, which he laid out on the coffee table. Then he stripped to his shorts and lifted his sample case onto the bureau beside the television. From it he removed a bound folder and laid it on the desk. The title on the cover read: “The Safe Use of Depolarizing Paralyzing Relaxants in the Violent Patient.” The paper summarized three years of work in the laboratory and in clinical trials, as well as in the conference rooms of pharmaceutical companies. The culmination of that work—a drug that would trade under the name
Restorase
—represented potential profits on a vast scale, enough to make Will a truly wealthy man.

Nervous compulsion made him check the other contents of the sample case: a video-adapter unit, which would allow his computer to interface with the hotel convention room’s projection TV, several drug vials, some of which contained prototype Restorase; and some high-tech syringes. Will counted the vials, then closed the case and hurried into the steamy bathroom, pulling off his underwear as he went.

Hickey and Karen sat facing each other across the kitchen table. A few moments before, Karen had picked up the .38, and he had made no move to stop her. She pointed it at his chest as they talked.

“That gun makes you feel better?” Hickey said.

“If you tell me we’re not taking the insulin to Abby, it’s going to make me feel a lot better. And you a lot worse.”

He smiled. “The Junior League princess has guts, huh?”

“If you hurt my baby, you’ll see some guts. Yours.”

Hickey laughed outright.

“I don’t understand why we have to wait until tomorrow,” she said. “Why don’t you just let me empty our accounts and give you the money?”

“For one thing, the banks have closed. You can’t come close to the ransom with automated withdrawals. Even if the banks were open, just pulling out the money would cause a lot of suspicion.”

“What will be different tomorrow morning? How do you plan to get the ransom money?”

“Your husband is going to call his financial advisor here—Gray Davidson—and tell him a great little story. He’s just discovered the missing centerpiece of Walter Anderson’s largest sculpture. It’s a male figure with antlers called ‘Father Mississippi.’ Only one photograph of it exists, and many people believe it was stolen from Anderson’s house. The value is—”

“Higher than any painting he ever did,” Karen finished. “Because he didn’t do much sculpture.”

Hickey grinned. “Pretty good, huh? I do my home-work. These goddamn doctors, I tell you. Every one of ’em collects something. Cars, boats, books, whatever. Look at this kitchen. Every gadget known to man. I bet you got eighty pairs of shoes upstairs, like that Filipino hog, Imelda Marcos. You can’t believe the money these guys piss away. I mean, how many freakin’ gallbladders can you take out in a month?”

“Will’s not like that.”

“Oh, no, he doesn’t spend more money on paintings every year than he pays all his employees put together. These guys . . . a slip of the knife, somebody dies, and it’s ‘Gee, sorry, couldn’t be helped. Wish I could stick around, but I’ve got a two o’clock tee time.’”

Karen started to argue, but she sensed that it wouldn’t help her situation. Hickey knew a lot about their lives, yet there were huge gaps. Abby’s diabetes. Will’s work. Will didn’t even use a scalpel. He was an anesthesiologist. He used gases and needles. She watched Hickey closely, trying to get a handle on the man beneath the bluster. One thing she knew already: he carried a chip on his shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.

“Anyway,” Hickey said, “tomorrow morning, Will’s gonna call Davidson and tell him he needs two hundred grand wired to him in Biloxi. He’s got a one-time opportunity to buy this statue, and the owner wants cash. And just in case Mr. Tight-Ass Gray Davidson is suspicious, Will’s lovely wife, Karen, is coming down to the office to authorize the wire. It isn’t strictly required, but it’s a nice touch. Then you and I are going to drive down to Davidson’s office. I’ll wait outside while you go in and bitch a little. ‘That Will, he goes absolutely off his head when he makes a discovery, but what can you do? Boys will be boys.’ Then you sign off on the money, and the two hundred grand is off to Biloxi at the speed of light. My partner drives Will to the bank in Biloxi, Will goes in, comes out with the cash, and hands it to my partner. And that’s all she wrote.”

“You’re doing all this for two hundred thousand dollars?”

Hickey laughed and shook his head. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. To you, two hundred grand is nothing. A down payment on a house. You won’t even
feel
two hundred. And that’s the point. The money’s liquid. You can get it easy, and you don’t feel any pain when it’s gone. You’re happy, I’m happy, and your kid’s back safe at home. What more could you ask for?”

“Abby here now! Why can’t she stay with us? Or us with her? That won’t hurt your plan a bit.”

Hickey’s smile vanished. “This whole little machine runs on fear, Karen. Your fear for Abby. Will’s fear for you, and for Abby. Fear is the only thing keeping you from pulling that trigger right now. Right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Most kidnappers are brain-dead,” he said. “They get busted the minute they go for the ransom. Or right after. They try all kinds of complicated shit, but the truth is, no ransom pickup method is safe from the FBI. Not even wiring the money to Brazil. The technology’s just too good now. You should see the statistics. Damn near
zero
kidnappings-for-ransom succeed in this country. Why? The drop. Picking up the ransom. But I’m not picking up any ransom. Your husband’s doing it for me. You’re sending it, he’s picking it up. I’m not even
involved.
Is that beautiful or what?”

Karen said nothing, but she saw the merit in his plan. Like all great ideas, it had the virtue of simplicity.

“I’m a goddamn genius,” Hickey went on. “You think your old man could’ve dreamed this up? Fucking gas-passer’s all he is. Pass the gas, pick up the check. And a fine wife like you waiting at home. What a waste.”

She forced herself not to look away as Hickey appraised her body. She would not let him believe she was intimidated by anything but his control of Abby.

“The other way people screw up,” he said, “is taking the kid off with them and sending a ransom note. That leaves the parents at home, alone and scared shitless. Then they get a note or a call—both traceable—asking for more ransom money than they could raise in a week. What else are they going to do but call the FBI? My way, nobody calls anybody but me and my partners, every half hour like clockwork. And as long as we do that, nobody gets hurt. Nobody goes to prison. Nobody dies.”

“You like listening to yourself talk, don’t you.”

He shrugged. “I like doing things right. This plan is as clean as they come. It’s run perfectly five times in a row. Am I proud of that? Yeah. And who else can I talk about it to but someone like you?”

Hickey was talking about kidnapping the way Will’s partners bragged about inside stock trades. “Don’t you have any feelings for the children involved?” she asked. “How terrified they must be?”

“A kid can stand anything for twenty-four hours,” Hickey said softly. “I stood a lot worse for
years.
”

“But sooner or later you’ll make a mistake. You’re bound to.”

“The parents might. Not me. The guy I got keeping these kids? He loves ’em. Weighs about three hundred fifty pounds. Looks like goddamn Frankenstein, but he’s a giant teddy bear.”

Karen shut her eyes against the image of Abby being held prisoner by a monster. The image did not vanish but instead became clearer.

“Don’t worry,” Hickey said. “Huey’s not a child abuser or anything. He’s too slow. Only . . .”

Her eyes flew open. “What?”

“He doesn’t like kids running away from him. When he was little, kids at the regular school treated him pretty bad. When he got bigger, they just yelled things and ran. Then his mama put him in a retard school. Kids are pretty damn cruel. When Huey sees kids run, it still makes him lose his head.”

Hot blood rushed to her face. “But don’t you think it’s natural for a child being held prisoner by a stranger to try to run?”

“Your kid the panicky type?”

“Not usually, but . . . God, can’t we please spend the night wherever they are?”

“I’m getting hungry,” Hickey said. “Why don’t you see about fixing some supper? I’ll bet you were a natural with an Easy-Bake oven.”

Karen looked at the gun in her hand. A less useful thing she could not imagine. “When can we take Abby the insulin?”

“Food,” Hickey said, rubbing his flat belly. “F-O-O-D.”