Dead Silence (6 page)

Will came close to retching again, thinking about dying, because he knew it was true.

Now he was at the rear of the trunk, his nose burrowed close to the taillight, where air filtered free of exhaust, cold off the highway. It was eerie red inside the trunk because of the taillights, the carpet hotter over the wheel wells.

Beside him was a tire jack, a lug wrench and a screwdriver that he’d found under the floorboard. Still working in spurts, Will squared the jack on the frame and ratcheted the jack until it was wedged tight against the trunk lid. He continued ratcheting, hearing metal creak as if the lid was about to burst open. It didn’t.

Will left the jack and rested for a few minutes before prying open the backside of a taillight. Every Skin on the Rez was a shade-tree mechanic. What he wanted was to short out the electrical system, but the damn fuses would blow first. Also, he didn’t have a stripper or side cuts.

Instead, Will grounded a secondary wire just to see what would happen. The brake light began blinking. On the other side of the car, he yanked the ground wire free. The light went out.

It was peculiar, lying there in the car’s trunk, as the red taillight flashed. Piercing red, even with his eyes closed, while thinking about what they’d done to him.

Garbage . . . trash . . . oil-patch bucks. No water, his wallet stolen, no ID.

Yep, they were gonna murder him.

After several minutes of fuming about his situation, being killed by two spic-speaking strangers, Will felt a chemical sensation bloom in the back of his brain that caused his heart to pound. He sat up as the sensation radiated. He felt fear, then a suffocating panic.

“Stop! Stop this goddamn car!”

Will began kicking the floor, hammering at the trunk, wanting the assholes up front to hear. Kept yelling when the car veered right and began to slow. He didn’t care about signaling the cops now. The panic was fading, yet the chemical burn remained. The pulsing red light remained, too—even as he got on his knees and ripped both taillights from their harnesses.

The red light he saw was behind his eyes, Will realized. Red, a color so bright he could smell it. He opened his eyes, then closed them. Red—still there, now strong enough to muffle his hearing.

“A grand mal seizure or anger-management problems,” a government shrink had told Will’s parole officer the first time Will had screwed up and actually told the shrink how it sometimes felt when he got mad.

What he didn’t tell the shrink was that it had happened before. Happened again tonight, in fact, when the big Cuban-speaking asshole grabbed him by the back of the neck and shook him as if Will was a rag, no more valuable than a dog’s toy.

The man had snapped a photograph, causing more searing red dots to bloom.

Whenever the fear inside Will changed to rage, he saw that pungent color. His vision sharpened, the world quieted. Will saw only his adversary, alone in a tunnel of red, red silence.

The darkness of the trunk was red-hued now, as the vehicle bounced off the road and braked to a stop. Will checked the jack and cranked it one more notch, putting so much pressure on the lid that the trunk’s hinges creaked like springs on a steel trap.

Will heard the car’s front door open, passenger side, a voice saying, in Spanish, “Hurry, check on the brat—it’s nine-thirty already!”

Door closed . . . Then Will listened to the heavy steps of a man walking on gravel, coming toward the back of the car to check the noise Will’d been making in the trunk.

Will felt his brain burning, the anger was so strong. In his right hand, he gripped the lug wrench, while air molecules circulated around the trunk space in darkness, tracing pale gray contrails when the boy’s eyes were closed . . . but sparking silver-red when they collided with Will’s hard, dark eyes.

A
t 9:30 p.m., a security guard signed me into Barbara Hayes-Sorrento’s suite, which was actually two suites, courtesy of hotel management. They’d donated the adjoining rooms because there were almost as many staffers inside working for the senator as there were reporters outside waiting for a statement.

Hooker was expecting me because the front desk had called. He wore a corduroy shooting jacket with patches at the elbows, a blue cravat tucked into his shirt. Same clothes he’d worn when he’d excused himself to freshen his whiskey four hours earlier at the Explorers Club. Not a stain or a scratch on him.

“Any word from the kidnappers?” I asked, taking off gloves that Esterline had loaned me. From the next room, I could hear one-sided phone conversations, the voices of men and women blending with the clatter of a printer.

“No news, I’m afraid. We’ve put a few pieces of the puzzle together, but nothing at all on the boy. The senator’s been trying to contact his parents. Apparently, the father abandoned the family long ago. And staff can’t seem to locate the mother.”

Because the Brit read my expression correctly, he added, “It wasn’t his parents. The boy lives with a foster family in Minneapolis. The men were after Barbara, no one doubts that. Thanks to you, I was able to steer her out of harm’s way. Taking the child wasn’t planned. It may be true of the limo driver as well, but that’s not been confirmed.”

I said, “William Chaser, a teenager from Minnesota. The police kept me updated.”

“Yes—Will I think he’s called. Good organization, the NYPD. They’ve assigned liaison officers to keep the senator informed. She’s very pleased you got one of the kidnappers but worried about you catching pneumonia.”

I was picturing the kid in his cowboy hat and boots, seeing his tough-guy expression when I ordered him back in the limo. By now, he had probably bawled himself dry, too scared to risk his cowboy act.

I said, “No father, living with a foster family? Jesus, a high school freshman. That makes him about thirteen years old.”

Hooker said, “Fourteen. He was held back last term.”

“Huh?” I didn’t know details, but the essay contest had to be a big deal if the prize was a trip to New York. Statewide, maybe nationwide. And from Minnesota? He was no dummy.

“Perhaps troubled,” Hooker offered. Barbara’s staff had assembled all the info they could gather on the teen—not easily done because they couldn’t contact his teachers or friends until a parent had been notified. The foster parents didn’t count because they weren’t adopting, they were volunteers with Lutheran Social Services. The program provided temporary homes for teens at risk.

Will Chaser had actually grown up on an Indian reservation south of Oklahoma City, Hooker told me. It explained the cowboy connection. The reservation was in Seminole County, oil and gas country, but also a stronghold of federally funded ghettos and the apparatus associated with despair: day care, public housing, programs for substance abusers, which included about sixty percent of the adult male population.

Two years ago, the Indian Opportunities Center had “relocated” the boy to a Sioux reservation near Fond du Lac. Maybe he had gotten in trouble, or maybe he’d displayed uncommon talent. A few months later, Lutheran Social Services accepted him into their Foster Grandparents Program. He had been living in Minneapolis ever since with a couple in their fifties, Ruth and Otto Guttersen. If the senator’s staff couldn’t contact the birth parents by midnight, the FBI would notify the Guttersens that Will had been abducted.

Hooker said, “The child has already had his share of trouble. A bloody pity he has to go through something like this.”

“Fourteen years old,” I repeated, feeling a renewed urgency. I checked my watch: 9:40 p.m.

An abduction fires the irrational in rational people. The brain’s flight-or-fight response triggers a craving to do
something
even when waiting is the only option and there is no visible foe to fight. I’d been through it.

Maybe the Brit understood because he made an effort to lighten the mood, waving me into the kitchen as he said, “While awaiting battle, the wise knight oils his armor.” He took a six-pack from the refrigerator. “Care for a drop or two?”

Rolling Rock, green bottles. When I reached for one, he warned, “Not yet,” then used his steel pincers to pop the tops.

“Handy.”

“That’s why it’s attached to my wrist. But this doesn’t compare to an ice ax. You made an unusual choice of weapons, Ford. If memory serves, the intelligence services haven’t used an ice ax since your people summited Leon Trotsky in Mexico.”

I took a step and winced because of my knee. “I’d forgotten. But they left the business end in Trotsky’s head, didn’t they? I left mine in the street. If it’s valuable, I hope someone returned it.”

“The last man to use that ax was Sir Edmund on Everest. Thanks to you, I may lose my fellowship next committee vote.” The Brit smiled. “Don’t worry, the ax is back on the wall. And Hilly would have approved, I think.”

I followed him around the corner into the sitting room, where management had set up a buffet table. In the adjoining suite, they had also installed desks and additional computer lines.

The room was crowded. A half dozen people, a plainclothes bodyguard, plus Senator Hayes-Sorrento, who was pacing the terrace, a phone wedged against her ear. Staffers were also on phones or frowning at their computer screens. When the woman noticed me, she waved and managed a wan smile but continued talking, emphasizing a point to some subordinate.

The senator looked good for a woman who had just been assaulted. Blue blouse, gray slacks—the first female on the hill to wear men’s suits. She had been a TV anchor before inheriting a congressional seat from her late husband. The woman still had the requisite good chin and eyes, the photogenic jaw that could flex on cue. She was also smart as hell. The Senate was the next logical step.

Writers described her as
handsome,
a word safely attached because the mix of feminine and masculine reflected her political style but also transmitted a sexuality that was pure female. It was no charade. On a recent Caribbean vacation, it had almost ruined the senator’s career. A blackmailer, a hidden camera and a beachboy were involved.

Thanks to random good luck, I was able to snatch the video and return it. Barbara and I had had a few dates since, but I didn’t feel the abdominal awareness that signals sexual chemistry—possibly because those signals weren’t being sent by Barbara.

I liked the woman. She was driven and complex, and aggressively private in the way some public figures are. Because of the way I’d dealt with the video, she trusted me. Because I knew the video’s content, pretense was pointless. The woman felt free to say damn-near anything when we were alone together. We hadn’t known each other long, we weren’t lovers, yet were becoming confidants. It was an unusual relationship for two healthy heterosexual adults.

As I stood in the doorway, talking with Hooker, I glanced toward the terrace to confirm Barbara was still on the phone. She’d been looking at me, hoping to get my attention. I saw her confidential nod, as she held up a finger, eyes posing the question
Can you give me a few minutes?

Hooker noticed the exchange. He took out a cell phone, touched a button or two, then slipped it into his pocket. “This might be a good time.”

I said, “For what?”

He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned so he could say privately, “There’s a gentleman who would like to have a word with you.”

“Who?” I was unfolding the paper he had slipped into my hand. There was a key, too.

“It’s a room number. Just down the hall.”

“Do I know this person?”

Hooker replied, “I couldn’t say,” meaning exactly that.

The room was empty but the phone was ringing. It was my old boss, Harrington, the man who’d summoned me to New York.

When I recognized the voice, I said, “The gentleman who gave me the message. A new member of your staff?”

“No, just returning a favor. You sound irritated.”

I was, but it wasn’t because he’d used Hooker as a messenger. “I had a date tonight, but something pulled me away. Your people? I need the truth.”

Harrington said, “
Our
people, you mean?”

“Depends on the answer.”

“Why do you think I called? You’re suspicious because of the timing. I would’ve been suspicious myself.”

I said, “As a general rule, I’m suspicious of anyone who invites me to lunch. Almost getting killed proves it’s a good rule.”

In the last week, Harrington and I had met several times, usually at the Lotos Club, but once at the Café Vivaldi, in Greenwich Village, where we’d interviewed a member of Alpha 66, a Cuban militant group. Fidel Castro’s personal possessions—the contents of a secret home, including his private papers—had been discovered, seized and shipped to Langley. That was the story leaked to the international press anyway.
Castro Files
was the phrase being used to underplay that more than three tons of personal effects, books, photos and papers had been confiscated.

Harrington had a personal interest in what the files contained. So did I. It was my main reason for coming to New York.

I changed my question to eliminate wiggle room. “Did you have any prior knowledge about what happened tonight? Even a hint?”

With the phone to my ear, I was searching the room, opening closets, switching on lights. Empty rooms make me nervous. So do telephones.

Harrington said, “Zero. No involvement. It’s not the way we operate. Even off the reservation, it would mean breaking all the rules. Can you think of an exception?”