24 Hours (23 page)

“Cover yourself,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t care what you do.” He turned back to the window.

“Why don’t you at least face the truth about something, Will?”

It wasn’t the first time she had used his Christian name, but he still didn’t like it. “What?”

“When you were first giving your speech, and you saw me down there watching you, you were fantasizing about me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You can’t lie about that. You checked me out from head to toe. Then you stared at my panties when I uncrossed my legs.”

“You made them too obvious to ignore.”

“But you were interested. A lot more interested than you were in your speech. And if it wasn’t for the reason we’re in this room together now, we might be here for another reason.”

“You’re wrong,” he said again, annoyed by the accuracy of her instincts.

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“What I saw in your face tonight I’ve seen in lots of guys’ faces. Decent guys, I mean. I know you. For a few years now, you’ve been wishing you had someone like me to sleep with. You love your wife, you wouldn’t trade her for anything, but she just doesn’t do it for you. She doesn’t understand what you need. How you need it, and how often. Nothing, really. She’s making a nest, adding twigs, thinking about the little chickadees. You’re helping with the nest, but you miss hunting.”

“Where’d you get that?
Cosmo?
”

“I don’t remember. But it’s on the money, isn’t it?”

He turned back to the bed, where Cheryl was enacting a fifteen-year-old boy’s dream of paradise. “This isn’t going to happen. You don’t want sex. And you don’t want to ‘relax’ me. What you really want is to somehow make me culpable in what you’re doing.”

“What’s culpable?” She looked genuinely confused.

“You want to make me part of this. To involve me, to pull me down to your level, so that what you’re doing doesn’t seem so horrible. But it
is
horrible. And you know it.”

Cheryl jerked the bra up over her breasts and stared at the television.

He turned and laid his palms flat on the window-pane. The thick glass was cool from the air conditioner, but he knew there was a warm wind blowing outside. Cool compared to the stagnant air hanging over the scrub and stunted pines growing inland from the beach, but warm compared to the frigid air in the casino suite.

“We never finished our conversation from before,” Cheryl said.

“What are you talking about?”

“When you asked how I wound up doing this. Kidnapping kids.”

“You told me your story.”

“I left out a few things.” She looked the way Abby did when she was trying to conceal some surprise. “After Joey made me stop being a featured dancer, he put me back into Jackson. New Orleans and Jackson. Sometimes the club down in Hattiesburg, but that was down-market. Mostly college kids, lining up to get off in their pants.”

“You should go on Howard Stern.”

“Maybe I should. But you should listen to me, Doc. There’s a lesson here for you.”

“I’m on pins and needles.”

“Joey put me back in the clubs, but not really to dance. He started coming in every night I was on, but not to watch me. He came to talk to the people. The owners, the bouncers, the customers. He bought rounds for everybody. Bought them sofa dances. Pretty soon he got a handle on who was coming in there. And it would blow your mind, Doc. Lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, aldermen.
Ministers,
for Christ’s sake. Ministers sneaking in there to get a sofa dance. What a crazy kick. Anyway, Joey got a handle on all these guys. And then we started up a little business on the side.”

“What business was that?”

“Blackmail. These guys got addicted to me, see? I mean, I may not like doing it, but I can
give
a sofa dance. I took those guys places they’d never even dreamed about. They’re dropping fifty bucks a pop for three minutes, and happy as pigs in slop. Pretty soon they’re offering lots more and asking if I do any after-hours dancing.” She wrinkled her nose. “Dancing, right? So, to the right ones—the rich, married ones—I said, Sure, honey. And I let them take me to a motel after work. A motel run by a guy who was tight with Joey, who had special cameras set up in a certain room. Once we got inside that room, I got those guys to do things they would die before they let their wives or bosses see. They left there with their minds blown and their lives in Joey’s pocket. And you know something? I never felt sorry for them. Not once. Every one of those bastards left his wife and kids at home to come into that club. They took me back to that room to screw me senseless, not giving a damn if I lived or died after. Every one of them begged me to do it without a condom, and most of them wanted . . . God, I don’t even want to think about it. And these were pillars of the community, you know? So, when you stand there acting like you’re above it, I know it’s bullshit, okay? You play your little game, but I
know.
”

“I’m not above it,” Will said. “No man is. Or woman, for that matter. It’s called human frailty. It’s pathetic, but it’s the story of life. You don’t have any special knowledge. I think my wife knows everything you just told me, even without experiencing it. She just chooses not to let it touch her.”

“So, she’s above it, huh? Maybe that’s why she isn’t doing it for you in the bedroom.”

“You still haven’t told me how or why you switched from blackmail to kidnapping.”

Cheryl drank off what was left of her rum and Coke. “Blackmail gets messy. You can’t predict what guys will do when you hit them with the pictures. The reality of it. The end of life as they know it. Most of them can’t wait to pay, of course. But you never know. One guy wanted copies to give to his wife and everybody at his office.” She smiled at the memory. “But some of them freak. They run home and confess to their wives, or try to kill Joey, or . . .”

She trailed off, and in the moments of silence that followed, Will knew what she had not said. “Some of them kill themselves,” he finished. “Right?”

She squinted at the television. “One guy did. It was bad. He left his copy of the tape playing on the VCR when he shot himself. His wife found him. Can you imagine?” She poured more rum into her glass, straight this time. “The cops nearly got us for that one. After that, Joey decided we were going about it the wrong way. The thing to do, he figured, was a small number of jobs, but get the maximum bang for the risk.”

“Kidnapping?”

She nodded. “When he was working the blackmail gigs, he saw that what these guys were most scared of—way more than hurting their wives—was their kids. They couldn’t take the idea that their kids would lose all respect for them. Their kids were what they lived for. So, the way to get the most money was to make the guys pay for their kids.”

“That’s a hell of a lot riskier than blackmail.”

“It is if you do it the way everybody else does it. That’s like asking the FBI to stomp on you with a SWAT team. Joey’s smarter than that. But I don’t have to tell you, do I?”

Will stepped to his left and collapsed into the chair by the window. After all that had happened, it was Cheryl’s last story that brought the full weight of reality crashing down upon him. He wasn’t special. He was merely the latest in a long line of fools victimized by a man who specialized in exploiting human weakness. Hickey had made a profession of it, an art, and Will couldn’t see any way to extricate himself or his family from the man’s web.

“Tell me one thing.”

“What?”

“Did any of the other fathers take you up on your offer?”

Cheryl intertwined her fingers and put her hands behind her head, which showed her implants to best advantage. A strange smile touched her lips. “Two out of five. The others tortured themselves all night. Those two slept like babies.”

Despite his speech about human frailty, Will couldn’t believe that fathers whose children were in mortal danger would have sex with one of their kidnappers. It seemed incomprehensible. And yet, he knew it was possible. “You’re lying,” he said, trying to reassure himself.

“Whatever you say. But I know what I know.”

Special Agent Bill Chalmers thanked a black homicide detective named Washington and closed the door of the police interrogation room. Dr. McDill and his wife had followed the FBI agent’s car the few blocks from the Federal Building to police headquarters, and what they had come for now lay on the metal table in front of them. A stack of mug books two and a half feet high.

“I know it’s not great,” Chalmers said. “But it’s more private than the squad room.”

“There must be thousands of photos here,” McDill said.

“Easily. I’ll be outside, accessing the National Crime Information Center computer. I’ll check all past records of kidnappings-for-ransom in the Southeast, then hit the names ‘Joe,’ ‘Cheryl,’ and ‘Huey’ for criminal records under actual names and aliases. ‘Joe’ is common as dirt, but the others might ring a bell. Also, I talked to my boss by cell phone on the way over. We may see him down here before long. Right now he’s waking up some bank officers to set up flags on large wire transfers going to the Gulf Coast tomorrow morning.” Chalmers looked at his watch. “I guess I mean this morning.”

McDill sighed. “Could we have some coffee or something?”

“You bet. How do you take it?”

“Black for me. Margaret?”

“Is it possible they might have tea?” she asked in a soft voice.

Chalmers gave her a smile. “You never know. I’ll check.”

After he went out, Margaret sat down at the table and opened one of the mug books. The faces staring up from the page belonged to people the McDills used all their money and privilege to avoid. The faces shared many features. Flash-blinded, dope-fried eyes. Hollow cheeks. Bad teeth. Nose rings. Tattoos. And stamped into every one, as though dyed into the skin, a bitter hopelessness that never looked further than the next twenty-four hours.

“Are we doing the right thing?” Margaret asked, looking up at her husband.

McDill gently squeezed her shoulder. “Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“The right thing is always the hardest thing.”

Abby sat scrunched in the corner of the ratty sofa, crying inconsolably, her Barbie held tight against her. Huey sat on the floor six feet away, looking stricken.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I just did what Joey told me to. I have to do what Joey says.”

“He stole me from my mom and dad!” Abby wailed. “You did, too!”

“I didn’t want to! I wish your mama was here right now.” Huey squeezed his hands into fists. “I wish
my
mama was here.”

“Where is she?” Abby asked, pausing in mid-wail.

“Heaven.” Huey said it as though he didn’t quite believe it. “How come you ran away? It’s because I’m ugly, isn’t it?”

Abby resumed crying, but she shook her head.

“You don’t have to say it. I know. The kids in my school ran too. Nobody liked me. But I thought we was friends. All I wanted to do was be nice. But you ran. How come?”

“I
told
you. You stole me away from my mom.”

“That’s not it. You don’t like me because I look like a monster.”

Abby fixed her swollen eyes on him. “What you
look
like doesn’t matter. Don’t you know that?”

Huey blinked. “What?”

“Belle taught me that.”

“Who?”

Abby rubbed her eyes and held out her gold-lamégowned Barbie. “This is Belle.
Beauty and the Beast
Belle. She’s my favorite Disney princess because she reads books. She wants to be something someday. Belle says it doesn’t matter what you look like. It only matters what you feel inside. In your heart. And what you do.”

Huey’s mouth hung slack, as though he were staring at a magical fairy risen from the grass.

“You never saw
Beauty and the Beast
?” Abby said incredulously.

He shook his head.

“Let’s pretend I’m Belle, and you’re Beast.”

“Beast?” He looked suddenly upset. “I’m a beast?”

“
Good
Beast.” Abby wiped her runny nose. “Beast after he turns nice. Not mean like at first.”

She slid off the couch and held Belle out to him. “Say something Beast says in the movie. Oh, I forgot. You missed it. Just say something nice. And call me ‘Belle,’ remember?”

Huey was at a loss. Tentatively, he said, “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Belle. I’m going to keep you safe till morning comes, and your mama comes to get you.”

Abby smiled. “Thank you, Beast. And if the villagers come and try to kill you, me and Mrs. Potts and Chip will make them go away. They won’t get you!”

Huey swallowed, his eyes bright.

“Now you say, ‘Thank you, Belle.’”

“Thank you, Belle.”

Abby petted the doll’s hair. “Do you want to brush her hair? Just pretendlike.”

Huey reached out shyly and petted Belle’s hair with his enormous hand.

“Good, Beast,” Abby murmured. “Good Beast.”

TWELVE

Karen watched the digital clock beside her bed flash over to 1:00 A.M. She was sitting in the overstuffed chair in the corner, hugging her knees; Hickey lay on the bed, his injured leg propped high on some pillows. The Wild Turkey bottle sat beside him, along with Will’s .38. His eyes were glued to the television, which was showing the opening credits of
The Desperate Hours
with Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March. She was glad he hadn’t yet realized there was a satellite dish connected to the bedroom television; she didn’t want him flipping through to Cinemax and getting more ideas from the T&A movies they seemed to run all night.