Hold Tight (27 page)

ANTHONY worked as a bouncer three days a week at a skeezy gentlemen’s club called Upscale Pleasure. The name was a joke. The place was a dank pit. Before this, Anthony had worked at a strip joint called Homewreckers. He liked that better, the more honest moniker giving the place a real identity.

For the most part, Anthony worked the lunch crowd. One would think that this would be a slow time for business, that places like this would not draw much of a crowd until late night. One would be wrong.

The daytime crowd at a strip club is a United Nations event. Every race, creed, color and socioeconomic group was well represented. There were men in business suits, in those red flannel tops Anthony always associated with hunting, with Gucci loafers and off-brand Timberland boots. There were pretty boys and smooth talkers and suburbanites and inbreds. You got them all in a place like this.

Sleazy sex-the great unifier.

“You’re on break, Anthony. Take ten.”

Anthony headed toward the door. The sun was fading, but it still made him blink. That was always true with these joints, even at night. It is a different dark in strip clubs. You go outside and you have to blink that dark away like Dracula on a bender.

He reached for a cigarette and then remembered that he was quitting. He didn’t want to, but his wife was pregnant and that was the promise he always made-no secondhand smoke around the baby. He thought about Mike Baye, his problems with his kids. Anthony liked Mike. Tough dude, even if he had gone to Dartmouth. Didn’t back down. Some guys get brave from alcohol or to impress a girl or a friend. Some guys are just plain stupid. But Mike wasn’t like that. He just didn’t have a backup switch. He was a solid guy. Weird as this sounded, he made Anthony want to be more solid too.

Anthony checked his watch. Two more minutes for his break. Man, he wanted to light up. This job didn’t pay as well as his night gig, but it was total cake. He didn’t believe much in superstitious nonsense, but the moon definitely had an effect. Nights were for fighting, and if the moon was full, he knew that he’d have his hands full. Guys were more mellow at lunchtime. They sat quietly and watched and ate the most wretched “buffet” known to mankind, stuff Michael Vick wouldn’t let a dog eat.

“Anthony? Time’s up.”

He nodded and started turning for the door, when he saw a kid hurry past him with a phone pressed against his ear. He only saw the kid for a second, maybe less, and he never really saw his face clearly. There was another kid with him, trailing a little. The kid had on a jacket.

A varsity jacket.

“Anthony?”

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Something I gotta check out.”

AT the front door of his home, Guy Novak had kissed Beth good-bye.

“Thank you so much for watching the girls.”

“It was no trouble. I’m glad I could help. I’m really sorry to hear about your ex.”

Some date, Guy thought.

He idly wondered if Beth would ever be back or if this day would understandably chase her away. He didn’t dwell on it much.

“Thank you,” he said again.

Guy closed the door and moved to the liquor cabinet. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he needed one now. The girls were upstairs watching a movie on DVD. He had yelled up for them to relax and finish the movie. This would give Tia time to pick up Jill-and Guy time to figure out how to break the news to Yasmin.

He poured himself whiskey from a bottle that probably hadn’t been touched in three years. He downed it, let it burn his throat, and poured another.

Marianne.

He remembered how it started all those years ago-a summer romance down the shore, both of them working in a restaurant that catered to the tourist crowd. They would finish cleaning up at midnight and bring a blanket to the beach and stare at the stars. The waves would crash and the wonderful scent of saltwater would soothe their naked bodies. When they went back to college-he at Syracuse, she at Dela- ware-they talked on the phone every day. They wrote letters. He bought a very used Oldsmobile Ciera so he could drive the four-plus hours to see Marianne every weekend. The drive seemed interminable. He couldn’t wait to sprint out of the car and into her arms.

Sitting in this house now, time zoomed in and out, toying the way it does, making something far away suddenly appear right over your shoulder.

Guy took another deep swig of whiskey. It warmed him.

God, he had loved Marianne-and she had pissed it all away. For what? This ending? Horribly murdered, that face he had so tenderly kissed at the beach crushed like eggshells, her wonderful body dumped in an alley like so much refuse.

How do you lose that? When you fall so hard, when you want to spend every moment with a person and find everything they do wonderful and fascinating, how the hell does that just go away?

Guy had stopped blaming himself. He finished the whiskey, stumbled up, and poured himself another. Marianne had made her bed- and died in it.

You dumb bitch.

What were you looking for out there, Marianne? We had something here. Those blurry nights in bars and all that bed-hopping- where did it lead you, my one true love? Did it give you fulfillment? Joy? Anything besides the empty? You had a beautiful daughter, a husband who worshipped you, a home, friends, a community, a life- why wasn’t that enough?

You dumb crazy bitch.

He let his head loll back. The pulp of what was left of her beautiful face… he would never lose that image. It would stay with him always. He might put it away, force it into some closet in the corner of his mind, but it would come out at night and haunt him. That wasn’t fair. He had been the good guy. Marianne had been the one who decided to make her life a destructive search-not just
self
-destructive, because in the end she’d taken plenty of victims-for some unreachable nirvana.

He sat in the dark and rehearsed the words he would say to Yasmin. Keep it simple, he thought. Her mother was dead. Don’t tell the how. But Yasmin was curious. She would want details. She would go online and find them or hear them from friends at school. Another parental dilemma: Tell the truth or try to protect? Protection wouldn’t work here. The Internet would make sure that there would be no secrets. So he would have to tell it all to her.

But slowly. Not all at once. Start simple.

Guy closed his eyes. There was no sound, no warning, until the hand cupped his mouth and the blade pressed up against his neck, breaking through the skin.

“Shh,” a voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t make me kill the girls.”

SUSAN Loriman sat by herself in her backyard.

The garden was having a good year. She and Dante worked hard on it, but they rarely enjoyed the fruits of their labor. She would try to sit here and relax amongst the fauna and green, but she couldn’t shut off her critical eye. One plant might be dying, another might need trimming back, another wasn’t blooming as wonderfully as last year. Today she turned off the voices and tried to fade into the landscape.

“Hon?”

She kept her eyes on the garden. Dante came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“We’ll find a donor.”

“I know.”

“We don’t give up. We get everyone we know to give blood. We beg, if we have to. I know you don’t have much family, but I do. They’ll all get tested, I promise.”

She nodded.

Blood, she thought. Blood doesn’t matter because Dante was Lu- cas’s true father.

She fiddled with the gold cross around her neck. She should tell him the truth. But the lie had been there for so long. After the rape she had quickly slept with Dante as often as possible. Why? Did she know? When Lucas was born, she was certain it was Dante’s. Those were the odds. The rape had been once. She had made love to her husband many times that month. Looks-wise, Lucas had favored her, not either man, so she made herself forget.

But of course she hadn’t forgotten. She had never moved past it, despite what her mother had promised her.

“This is best. You’ll go forward. You protect your family…”

She hoped Ilene Goldfarb would keep her secret. Nobody else knew the truth anymore. Her parents had, but they were both dead now-Dad from heart disease, Mom from cancer. While they were alive, they never spoke of what happened. Not once. They never pulled her aside and gave her a hug, never called to ask how she was doing or if she was coping. There was not even an eye twitch when, three months after the rape, she and Dante told them that they were going to be grandparents.

Ilene Goldfarb wanted to find the rapist and see if he would help. But that wasn’t possible.

Dante had been away on a trip to Las Vegas with some friends. She hadn’t been happy about that. Their relationship was going through an awkward stage, and just as Susan was questioning if she’d gotten married too young, her husband decides to run off with the boys and gamble and probably hit some strip clubs.

Before that night, Susan Loriman had not been a religious person. Growing up, her parents had taken her to church every Sunday, but it never stuck. When she began to blossom into what many considered a beauty, her parents kept a stern eye. Eventually Susan rebelled, of course, but that horrible night sent her back to the fold.

She had gone with three girlfriends to a bar in West Orange. The other girls were single and for one night, with her husband running off to Vegas, she wanted to be too. Not all the way single, of course. She was married, mostly happily, but a little flirting couldn’t hurt. So she drank and acted like the other girls. But she drank way too much. The bar seemed to grow darker, the music louder. She danced. Her head spun.

As the night wore on, her girlfriends hooked up with different guys, disappearing one by one, thinning the herd.

Later she would read about roofies or date-rape drugs and she wondered if that was part of it. She remembered very little. Suddenly she was in a man’s car. She was crying and wanted to get out and he wouldn’t let her. At some point he took out a knife and dragged her to a motel room. He called her horrible names and raped her. When she struggled, he hit her.

The horror seemed to go on for a very long time. She remembered hoping that he would kill her when this was over. That was how bad it was. She didn’t think about survival. She longed for death.

The next part was a blur too. She remembered reading somewhere that you should relax and not fight-get your rapist to think he’s won or something like that. So Susan did that. When his guard was down, she got a hand free and grabbed his testicles as hard as she could. She held on and twisted and he screamed and pulled away.

Susan rolled off the bed and found the knife.

Her rapist was down and rolling on the ground. There was no more fight in him. She could have opened the door and run out of the room and screamed for help. That would have been the smart move. But she didn’t do that.

Instead Susan plunged the knife deep into his chest.

His body went rigid. There was this horrible convulsion as the blade pierced the heart.

And then her rapist was dead.

“You feel tense, hon,” Dante said to her now, eleven years later.

Dante began to knead her shoulders. She let him, though it offered no comfort.

With the knife still in the rapist’s chest, Susan ran from that motel room.

She ran for a very long time. Her head began to clear. She found a pay phone and called her parents. Her father picked her up. They talked. Her father drove past the motel. There were red lights flash- ing. The cops were already there. So her father took her to her childhood home.

“Who will believe you now?” her mother said to her.

She wondered.

“What will Dante think?”

Another good question.

“A mother needs to protect her family. This is what a woman does. We are stronger than the men this way. We can take this blow and go on. If you tell him, your husband will never look at you the same. No man will. You like the way he looks at you, yes? He will always wonder why you went out. He will wonder how you ended up in that man’s room. He may believe you, but it will never be right. Do you understand?”

So she waited for the police to come to her. But they never did. She read about the dead man in the papers-saw his name even- but those stories only lasted a day or two. The police suspected that her rapist died in a robbery or drug deal gone wrong. The man had a record.

So Susan went on, just like her mother said. Dante came home. She made love to him. She did not like it. She still did not like it. But she loved him and wanted him happy. Dante wondered why his beautiful bride was more sullen, but he somehow knew better than to ask.

Susan started going to church again. Her mother had been right. The truth would have destroyed her family. So she carried the secret and protected Dante and their children. Time did indeed make it better. Sometimes she went whole days without thinking about that night. If Dante realized that she no longer liked sex, he didn’t show it. Where Susan used to like the admiring looks from men, now they made her stomach hurt.

That was what she couldn’t tell Ilene Goldfarb. There was no point in asking the rapist for help.

He was dead.

“You’re skin is so cold,” Dante said.

“I’m fine.”

“Let me get you a blanket.”

“No, I’m okay.”

He could see that she just wanted to be alone. Those moments never happened before that night. But they happened now. He never asked either, never pushed it, always giving her exactly the space she needed.

“We will save him,” he said.

He walked back into the house. She stayed out there and sipped her drink. Her finger still toyed with the gold cross. It had been her mother’s. She had given it to her only child on her deathbed.

“You pay for your sins,” her mother had told her.

That she could accept. Susan would pay gladly for her sins. But God should leave her son the hell alone.

PIETRA heard the cars pull up. She looked out the window and saw a small woman with a purposeful stride moving toward the front door. Pietra looked out the window to her right and saw four squad cars, and she knew.

There was no hesitation. She picked up her cell phone. There was only one number in the speed dial. She pressed down and heard it ring twice.

Nash said, “What’s wrong?”

“The police are here.”

WHEN Joe Lewiston came back down the stairs, Dolly took one look and said, “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said, his lips feeling numb.

“You look flushed.”

“I’m fine.”

But Dolly knew her husband. She wasn’t buying. She got up and moved toward him. He almost backpedaled and started running away.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, I swear.”

She was now standing directly in front of him.

“Was it Guy Novak?” she asked. “Did he do something else? Because if he did…”

Joe put his hands on his wife’s shoulders. Her eyes moved over her face. She could always read him. That was the problem. She knew him so well. They had so very few secrets. But this was one of them.

Marianne Gillespie.

She had called for a parent-teacher conference, playing the role of a concerned parent. Marianne had heard about the terrible thing Joe had said to her daughter, Yasmin, but she sounded understanding. People blurt things out, she told him on the phone. People make mistakes. Her ex-husband was crazed with anger, yes, but Marianne said that she was not. She wanted to sit and talk and hear Joe’s side of the story.

Maybe, Marianne had suggested, there was a way to make this better.

Joe had been so relieved.

They sat and they talked. Marianne sympathized. She touched his arm. She loved his teaching philosophy. She looked at him with longing and she wore something low-cut and clingy. When they embraced at the end of the conference, it lasted a few seconds too long. She kept her lips near his neck. Her breathing grew funny. So did his.

How could he have been so stupid?

“Joe?” Dolly took a step back. “What is it?”

Marianne had planned the seduction revenge from the beginning. How could he have not seen that? And once Marianne got her way, within hours of leaving her hotel room, the calls started:

“I have it on tape, you bastard…”

Marianne had hidden a camera in the hotel room and threatened to send the tape first to Dolly, then the school board, then every e-mail she could dig out of the school directory. For three days she made the threats. Joe couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. He lost weight. He begged her not to do it. At some point Marianne seemed to lose her drive, as though the whole enterprise of vengeance suddenly wore her out. She called and told him that she wasn’t sure if she would send it or not.

She had wanted him to suffer-and he had-and maybe that would be enough for her.

The next day, Marianne sent an e-mail to his wife’s work address.

The lying bitch.

Fortunately Dolly was not big on e-mail. Joe had her access code. When he saw the e-mail with the video attached, he totally freaked. He deleted it and changed Dolly’s password, so that she couldn’t see her own e-mail.

But how long would he be able to pull that off?

He didn’t know what to do. There was no one he could talk to about it, no one who would understand and be unconditionally on his side.

And then he thought of Nash.

“Oh God, Dolly…”

“What?”

He had to put an end to this. Nash had killed someone. He had actually murdered Marianne Gillespie. And the Cordova woman was missing. Joe tried to put it together. Maybe Marianne had given a copy to Reba Cordova. That would make sense.

“Joe, talk to me.”

What Joe had done was bad, but bringing in Nash had compounded his crime a thousandfold. He wanted to tell Dolly everything. He knew that it was the only way.

Dolly looked him in the eyes and nodded. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just tell me.”

But then a funny thing happened to Joe Lewiston. The survival instinct kicked in. Yes, what Nash had done was horrible, but why amplify it by committing marital suicide? Why make it worse by destroying Dolly and maybe his family? This was, after all, on Nash. Joe hadn’t asked him to go this far-certainly not to kill anyone! He had assumed that maybe Nash would offer to buy the tape from Marianne or make a deal with her or, at worst, scare her. Nash always hit Joe as playing near the edge, but he never in a million years dreamed that he’d do something like this.

What good would it do now to report it?

Nash, who’d been trying to help, would end up in prison. Moreover, who had been the one to recruit Nash in the first place?

Joe.

Would the police believe that Joe didn’t know what Nash was up to? When you thought about it, Nash could be viewed as the hitman, but didn’t the police always want the guy who’d hired out the hit more?

Again that would be Joe.

There was still a chance, albeit slight, that this could all end somewhat okay. Nash doesn’t get caught. The tape never gets shown. Marianne ends up dead, yes, but there was nothing to be done about that-and hadn’t she pretty much asked for that? Hadn’t she taken it too far with her blackmail scheme? Joe had made an inadvertent blunder-but hadn’t Marianne gone out of her way to seek out and destroy his family?

Except for one thing.

An e-mail had come today. Marianne was dead. Which meant that whatever damage Nash had done, he hadn’t plugged all the leaks.

Guy Novak.

He was the last hole to plug. That was where Nash would go. Nash hadn’t answered his phone or responded to Joe’s messages because he was on a mission to finish the job.

So now Joe knew.

He could sit here and hope it turned out for the best for him. But that would mean that Guy Novak could end up dead.

Which might mean the end of his problems.

“Joe?” Dolly said. “Joe, tell me.”

He didn’t know what to do. But he wouldn’t tell Dolly. They had a young daughter, a budding family. You don’t mess around with that.

But you don’t just let a man die either.

“I have to go,” he said, and he ran for the door.

NASH whispered into Guy Novak’s ear: “Yell up to the girls that you’re going into the basement and you don’t want to be disturbed. Do you understand?”

Guy nodded. He walked to the foot of the stairs. Nash pressed the knife against the back, right near the kidney. The best technique, Nash had learned, was to go a little too far with the pressure. Let them feel enough pain to know that you mean what you’re saying.

“Girls! I’m going to the basement for a few minutes. You stay up there, okay? I don’t want to be bothered.”

A faint voice shouted down, “Okay.”

Guy turned toward Nash. Nash let the knife slide across his back and come to rest at his belly. Guy did not flinch or step back. “Did you kill my wife?”

Nash smiled. “I thought she was your ex.”

“What do you want?”

“Where are your computers?”

“My laptop is in my bag next to the chair. My desktop is in the kitchen.”

“Any others?”

“No. Just take them and get out.”

“We need to talk first, Guy.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I have money too. It’s yours. Just don’t hurt the girls.”

Nash looked at this man. He had to know that there was a good chance he would die today. Nothing in his life had ever suggested heroism, yet now it was as though he had enough and was making some sort of final stand.

“I won’t touch them if you cooperate,” Nash said.

Guy checked Nash’s eyes as though searching for the lie. Nash opened the basement door. They both headed down. Nash closed it behind him and flipped on the light. The basement was unfinished. The floor was cold concrete. Water gurgled through pipes. A water-color canvas leaned against a storage chest. There were old hats and posters and cardboard boxes scattered everywhere.

Nash had everything he needed in a gym bag he’d kept over his shoulder. He reached for the duct tape, and Guy Novak made a big mistake.

He threw a punch and shouted, “Run, girls!”

Nash threw a hard elbow to Guy’s throat, choking off his words. He followed up with a palm strike to the forehead. Guy crashed to the floor, grabbing his throat.

“If you so much as breathe,” Nash said, “I will bring your daughter down here and make you watch. Do you understand?”

Guy froze. Fatherhood could even make a gutless worm like Guy Novak turn valiant. Nash wondered if he and Cassandra would have had children by now. Almost definitely. Cassandra had come from a big family. She had wanted a lot of kids. He wasn’t so sure-his outlook on the world was considerably dimmer than hers-but he would never deny her.

Nash looked down. He considered stabbing Novak in the leg or maybe slicing off a finger, but there was no need. Guy had made his move and learned from it. There would be no more.

“Roll onto your stomach and put your hands behind your back.”

Guy cooperated. Nash wrapped the duct tape around his wrists and forearms. Then he did the same with the legs. He attached the wrists to the ankles, pulling the arms back and making the legs bend at the knee. Classic hog-tie. The last thing he did was cover Guy’s mouth by wrapping tape around his head five times.

Once that was done Nash made his way to the basement door.

Guy started bucking, but there was no need. Nash just wanted to make sure that the girls hadn’t heard Guy’s stupid scream. He opened the door. In the distance he could still hear the TV. The girls were nowhere in sight. He closed the door and moved back down.

“Your ex-wife made a video. I want you to tell me where it is.”

The duct tape was still wrapped around Guy’s mouth. The confusion on his face was obvious-how was he supposed to answer the question when his mouth was taped? Nash smiled down at him and showed him the blade.

“You’ll tell me in a few minutes, okay?”

Nash’s phone vibrated again. Lewiston, he figured, but when he checked the caller ID, he knew the news was not good.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The police are here,” Pietra said.

Nash was barely surprised. One prop goes, it all starts to cave in on itself. Time was tight now. He couldn’t stand here and hurt Guy at leisure. He needed to move fast.

So what would make Guy talk fast?

Nash shook his head. That which makes us brave-that which is worth dying for-also makes us weak.

“I’m going to pay your daughter a little visit,” he told Guy. “And then you’ll talk, right?”

Guy’s eyes bulged. Still hog-tied he squirmed and tried to signal what Nash already knew. He would talk. He would tell him everything that he wanted to know if only he’d leave his daughter alone. But Nash knew it would be easier to get the information with his daughter in front of him. Some would say that the threat was enough. They might be right.

But Nash wanted the daughter down here for other reasons.

He took a deep breath. The end was coming now. He could see that. Yes, he wanted to survive and get out of here, but the crazy had not only seeped in but taken over. The crazy lit up his veins, made him feel tingly and alive.

He started up the basement stairs. Behind him, he could hear Guy going nuts in his bindings. For a moment the crazy let up and Nash considered going back. Guy would say anything now. But then again, maybe not. Maybe then it would look like just a threat.

No, he needed to carry through.

He opened the basement door and stepped into the front foyer. He looked at the stairs. The TV was still on. He took one more step.

He stopped when he heard the doorbell ring.

TIA pulled into the Novak driveway. She left her phone and purse in the car and hurried to the front door. She tried to process what Betsy Hill had told her. Her son was okay. That was what was most important. He might have some minor injuries, but he was alive and could stand upright and even dash away. There were other things Adam had told Betsy-about feeling guilty over Spencer, stuff like that. But that could all be handled. You need to survive first. Get him home. After that, you can worry about the other things.

Still lost in these thoughts, Tia rang the Novaks’ doorbell.

She swallowed and remembered that this family had just suffered a devastating loss. It was important to reach out, she guessed, but all she really wanted to do was grab her daughter, find her son and husband, get them all back in the house and lock the doors forever.

No one answered the door.

Tia tried to peek through the little window, but there was too much reflection. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered into the foyer. A figure seemed to jump back. Might have just been a shadow. She pressed the doorbell again. This time there was plenty of noise. The girls made a ruckus stampeding down the stairs.

They charged the door. Yasmin opened it. Jill stood a few feet behind her.

“Hi, Mrs. Baye.”

“Hi, Yasmin.”

She could see from the girl’s face that Guy hadn’t told her yet, but that wasn’t a surprise. He was waiting for Jill to leave so he could be alone with Yasmin.

“Where’s your father?”

Yasmin shrugged. “I think he said something about going in the basement.”

For a moment the three just stood there. The house was tomb still. They waited another second or two, waiting for some kind of sound or sign. But there was nothing.

Guy was probably dealing with his grief, Tia figured. She should just take Jill and go home. None of them moved. This suddenly felt wrong. The normal pattern was to act this way when you dropped your child off-walking your child to the door to make sure a parent or babysitter was inside.

Now it felt as though they were leaving Yasmin alone.

Tia called out, “Guy?”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Baye. I’m old enough to be by myself now.”

That was questionable. They were at that uncertain age. They were probably okay on their own, what with cell phones and all. Jill had started wanting more independence. She had proved herself, she said, to be responsible. Adam had been left on his own when he was her age, which in the end was not such a ringing endorsement.