Authors: Ridley Pearson
Cut and Run (35 page)
The two caterers came and went from the truck in roughly two-minute intervals. Hope reached the back of the truck, snagged the corner of a plastic cooler, and carried it by its two handles. Bravely now, and with great resolve, she approached the building's back door and thumped her foot against it, knocking. She knew the faces of both caterers from having observed them. She was glad to see it was one of these women who opened the door for her.
Hope explained herself. “They asked me to help you out.” She offered a perfunctory smile. “I'm on the wait staff here. Where to?”
“I'm Donna.”
“Alice,” Hope supplied automatically.
“We were told there'd be six of you.”
“Well . . . I'm the first,” she said brightly. “The others will be along.” A stopwatch started in her head. By the time someone determined they had seven waiters and waitresses, not six, she would have to be gone.
“We're setting up in the kitchen,” she was told.
Hope pressed past the woman holding the door.
“We were told it was black bottoms, white tops.”
Hope noticed that Donna had stuck to the uniform. “Yeah. I'll change into my stuff after load-in.”
“Midnight to two,” Donna said. “You always work these hours?”
“We see it all here, believe me,” Hope answered, the cooler growing heavy in her arms.
“At least the pay's right.”
“For
you
maybe.”
“These guys are real pricks about us keeping to the basementâ”
“And the upstairs dining room,” Hope completed, having overheard this condition. “Same old, same old.”
Donna shut the door behind herself as she stepped outside.
Hope hurried down the hall and followed a line of water drops like a mouse after crumbs. She paused at the kitchen door. An exit sign, straight ahead. A small elevatorâno, a dumbwaiterâto the right of the kitchen door. A set of stairs that beckoned her.
She stepped into the busy kitchen, set down the cooler, and wondered what came next.
The Odessa Room had once been a library and still retained
the floor-to-ceiling shelves of leather-bound books, broken only by mahogany slabs bearing oil paintings under the warm glow of brass tube lights mounted above their frames. For years it had doubled as a more intimate dining room, for parties of less than thirty. Some time in the early 1930s, its recessed ceiling had been installed, an elaborately engineered panel with curving sections that met in the very center, surrounding an oval-shaped, hand-painted depiction of a fox hunt. On its north wall was a marble mantel and its matching hearth, a working fireplace. The mantel was shored up by twin stone columns, carved into which were two nude angels bearing baskets of wheat above their heads of flowing locks. Atop the mantel, two silver candelabra, their new candles unlit, protected a dried arrangement of deep-red roses, wheat straw, and burgundy fruit blossoms.
Around the polished rectangular cherry-topped table sat ten men ranging from thirty to eighty and in every shade of skin: African, Native American, Far Eastern, Caucasian, Hispanic. They represented Reno, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, and points in between. They were not unfamiliar to one another.
Philippe, at the head of the table, brought the meeting to order. He thanked them for coming, reached into his black Armani sport coat, and withdrew a plastic jewel case containing a gold CD-ROM, a computer disk capable of storing ten thousand documents. “The highest bidder takes home the entire list. Subsequent sales of the names of individual witnesses, or groups of witnesses, are at the discretion of the buyer.”
A Mexican, who wore a collarless shirt open to a gold chain bearing a St. Christopher, said, “My people tell me a general alarm was put out, that most of the people on that list have fled by now.”
“And that may or may not be true,” Philippe said. “But even so, do you run every time you hear an alarm? Do you uproot your entire family? This list includes
everything
there is to know about these people. Not just new identities, but employment, banking, known associates. It would take months, years, to regenerate all new data for these people. Whether they run or not, they're out there, and they're leaving trails to follow.” He paused, swallowed once, and said, “The bidding will start at ten million dollars.”
A knock on the doorâno cell phones, no weapons, were allowed in this roomâand Ricardo, who sat to Philippe's left, was summoned by one of the guards.
Philippe considered Ricardo's departure carefully, wondering what trick he might be playing. He didn't want him outside this room where he couldn't see him.
As the door shut behind Ricardo, Philippe heard whispers that included the words
“. . . your wife . . .”
Fast-moving footsteps followed. It was everything Philippe could do to remain focused as he turned to face the group of raised hands.
“Do I hear fifteen?” he asked.
The Skyjacks operated as motorized trolleys,
a battery pack powering a high-torque motor with an oversize pulley-wheel that ran atop the steel aviation cable supporting the four black high-voltage lines. Each of the two ERT operatives hung suspended from one of the devices in a harness that featured quick-release carabiners that allowed them to bail out one-handed and rappel via a weight-balanced recoil, falling toward the ground, if need be, like frightened spiders.
As they entered the estate's airspace, each carrying a semiautomatic rifle slung around their shoulders, they surveyed the property with high-power night-vision headsets with wireless technology that transmitted the digital images back to the command van. The hands-free radios and earbuds allowed continuous communication between all parties.
“You getting this, Flyswatter?”
“A picture's worth a thousand words,” LaMoia's voice came back to the dangling operative.
In the night-vision's eerie green-and-black, viewed alternately between the
V
s of trees, they saw a small parking lot crowded with luxury SUVs, Town Cars, and two stretch limousines. A cluster of darkly clad drivers and chauffeurs, some of whom were smoking, loitered by a door to the building.
“We need more than a couple cars and chauffeurs,” LaMoia told his two men. “Keep looking.”
At each pole, the operatives were required to suspend themselves from the cross-ties and move the Skyjack past the pole to the next length of cable. Such transfers consumed three to five minutes, conducted with the utmost care, to avoid being electrocuted.
“Off-line,” announced the lead operative in a hushed whisper.
In the command van, Rotem had had his fill.
“We're not going to get anything out of this,” he announced to no one in particular.
“Give it time,” LaMoia said. “Our guys know what to look for.”
“When that meeting breaks up,” Rotem said, speculating, “we lose what we're after.” He had yet to explain, and never would, the loss of
Laena
. “By then we need legitimate reasons for stopping each and every one of those vehicles. And that's not happening in this lifetime. If this goes down as a win, we're going to have to take them as a group, while they're still in that meeting.”
“It's a catered event,” LaMoia reminded. “It's not going to be over in a half hour. They're probably not even set up yet,” he said, completing his argument. “Give 'em a minute.”
“There's baggage,” Hampton advised from his uncomfortable seat.
“What about your guy inside?” LaMoia asked.
“That's unconfirmed,” Rotem said. But then hearing himself say this, he ordered Hampton to try Larson's cell phone again, muttering, “I've waited long enough.” ERT officer Peter Milton, suspended by a woven nylon climbing-strap from one of two wooden booms that supported four high-voltage electric lines, was in the midst of transferring his Skyjack to the next length of cable when he spotted a small stainless-steel box screwed into the wooden pole, and recognized it immediately. He'd moonlighted weekends for Cablevision.
Milton radioed his discovery to the command van and waited to see if LaMoia understood its implications.
LaMoia swiveled on the small stool and faced Rotem. “You may need our help on this one, Marshal Rotemâstate law versus the feds, and allâbut my officer just stumbled upon the unexpected. It seems someone in that compound is pirating their cable television.”
“Television?”
“A black box,” LaMoia explained. “Unauthorized intercept of a coaxial cable. It could be to steal high-speed Internet or a television signal, but state law's the same either way.”
“Are we
sure
?”
“Milton knows his stuff, believe me. If he says it's a black box, it's a black box. And I don't know about Washington, D.C., but in Washington state that's a no-brainer for a search-and-seizure: âto confirm and record the use of the unauthorized interception of radio or television transmission,' ” he quoted. “More to your favor is that our guys typically make such raids evening or nighttimeâlike
right now
âwhen people are in their homes. It's not going to ruffle any judge's feathers to cut us the paper this time of night.”
“Let's make the call,” Rotem said with reservation.
LaMoia could see through to his concern. “As CO, I'm free to solicit the assistance of any law-enforcement personnel that, in my judgment, will better protect my field personnel. A couple federal marshals joining up won't raise many eyebrows. We've got that license plate, that link to OC, to give us good enough reason to go in hot.”
Rotem had his phone out. He told Hampton to get word to Larson to keep his head down because they were coming in.
“I've tried him, like, ten times,” Hampton said.
“Well, try him again.”
Hope spotted a tray holding ten empty water glasses
and two pitchers with ice. Scooping it up, she headed into the hall and turned left toward the stairs. She climbed quickly, arriving into the dizzying smell of oiled wood, leather, and the lingering sweetness of cigar and pipe tobacco. Golf championship plaques lined the walls, some dating back to 1910. Yellowed black-and-white head shots of officious-looking men in blazers and club ties filled in the gaps between the plaques.
She forced herself to walk slowly. With all the activity in the basement and the dining room being on the first floor, she assumed Penny was being kept somewhere here. The first two doors she encountered were closed. She dared not open them. The third was open a crack. She peered into an empty secretary's station, the anteroom of an office. The sound of male voices down the hall won her attention and drew her past two more doors. The hall opened up then into a large trophy room with pennants hanging from the crown molding. Clubby, with brown leather couches and overstuffed chairs, chess sets, and backgammon tables. An armoire concealed a television.
Hope cut across this room and into an opposing hallway where she came across a small window in a swinging door. She peeked through and saw a narrow stairway.
She pushed through and climbed to the second floor, knowingly out-of-bounds. She hoped a simple excuse of being lost might get her by. Stopping at the landing, she heard the elevator's electronic groan. Peering out into this second-floor hallway, she saw the room doors were farther separated than on the ground floor. Bedrooms or billiards or card rooms, perhaps. The stairs continued up to her left. She knew she was in dangerous territory.
The tray grew increasingly heavy for her.
Out in the hallway, she heard the spit of a radio intercom. “Khakis, brown sweater.”
She didn't have to look down to realize she fit that description.
She set down the tray, pushing it into the corner, and quickly climbed to the third floor.
From below she heard a male voice. “Hey, I got a tray here. Glasses. Pitchers. Fresh ice.”
If something was said back to this man, Hope didn't hear it. She pushed through the door and stepped out into the third-floor hallway, struck by the immediate smell of a hospital ward. She wondered if Meriden Manor was serving as a retirement home for mobsters.
She darted past medical equipment, convinced her pursuer was coming through that door behind her at any second.
The smell of old people intensified, like a grandmother's house on a winter day with the windows shut tight.
Through a partially open door she caught sight of a luxury suite of rooms and the back of a bald headâa man wearing hospital pajamas.
Not assisted living, but
assisted dying
, she thought.
Penny might be locked up in any one of these suites, held hostage in front of a color television with room service of ice cream sundaes and grilled cheese sandwiches. How simple here to keep a young child placated and free of complaint.
Burning with resentment, hungry for her daughter's freedom, she retraced her steps, trying each and every door. All locked. Slots for key cards like hotels. The Meriden Marriott. She opened the first door without a lock, albeit cautiously.
A storage room containing linens, a pair of upright vacuum cleaners, and two rolling buckets with a variety of string mops.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught the door to the stairs swinging open. Reacting, she ducked inside and pulled the door shut. She collected herself into the corner, crouching behind the pair of vacuum cleaners. Hunkered down.
A muffled male voice. A guard on a radio checking room to room.
The complaint of the hallway's parquet flooring presaged the doorknob's twisting. Hope ducked farther down, her eyes trained to the floor, head as low as she could manage.
The door opened, the room flooding with light. She could hear his breathing. The light lessened as the door started to close.
