River: A Bad Boy Romance (10 page)

“Not really”, River says.

“Other than that, we've got some old stock downstairs that we cleared out from the shop floor a few years ago, because our average customer just couldn't afford it. I suppose there could be something down there that might be more suitable for you, if you're happy to wait while I have a look?”

He nods, as though nodding makes the suggestion an even better one.

“You go on, I got all the time in the world. It's my sister that hasn't”, River says flatly.

“Right”, the assistant says, “you hold on up here then, while I go down and look. Give me a yell if anybody comes in.”

“Sure”, River says. “You mind if I watch the news while you're down there?”

“Not at all, although I doubt you'll find out anything you don't already know”, he says.

“Ain't that the truth about these things”, River says in agreement.

The assistant clicks back on the TV, pushes the remote control over the counter to River, with jerky movements of his fidgeting hand, and heads down towards the basement, crouching over to fit his body under the low hanging ceiling that frames the route underneath the shop.

While he's digging through bin bags full of old stock in a tiny room underneath the store, River pays close attention to the mobile phone footage, playing on a loop in the corner of the screen. It's impossible to make out the design of his clothes, but just to be on the safe side, he decides it may be best to get himself a brand new look as well.

The door to Frank's office is already open. Frank is inside, barking at someone on the phone. It could be police related or personal, friend or foe. Frank has a tendency to talk to everyone like that, including his own mother. While he continues, he waves Garland into the office. Garland sits, and holding the print-out in his hands, he waits patiently. Finally Frank slams down the phone, lifts it up and slams it down again. Over his tenure in the police station, his phone has had to be replaced six times from the way he handles it, his desk twice.

“Fucking idiots”, he says, addressing Garland. “They've given us until the end of the week.”

“And then what?” Garland says.

“And then resources get re-diverted back to the other general shit that we have to deal with on a daily basis that pleases the governors and gets the votes, and we stop looking.”

“And if a ransom demand comes in?”

“Who the fuck is going to pay it if it does? Our department? We can't even get her family to make a statement. No-one gives a shit about this girl. They care more about the hunk who took her. The hunk we still don't have an identity for, unless that's what you've got written on that goddamn piece of paper you're waving about like a flag of surrender officer Garland.”

“I'm afraid not, sir”, Garland says.

“I thought not.”

Frank leans back in his leather chair, the backrest squeaking like a box of mice.

“Please tell me you've got something, officer Garland.”

“I've found the Oldsmobile”, he says.

“No shit”, Frank says, leaning forward, his interest piqued again.

“Do you want to know where it was?” Garland continues.

“Not really, no.”

“An underground parking lot, two blocks from the bank.”

“He came back into the city? Motherfucker”, Frank growls, disgusted by not only the bravado of the robber, but the incompetence of his police force. Frank stands up. This new information is too hard to take sitting down.

“Yes he did”, Garland says, watching him calmly.

“Have you got officers there now?” Frank says, readjusting one of the framed certificates of police bravery he has hung on his wall.

“Already on their way”, Garland says.

“What else?”

“We've had six reports of stolen cars come in this afternoon in the area that you asked me to look in, three of which were in a five mile radius of the bank and the parking lot.”

“Nothing
in
the parking lot?” Frank says, turning around to face Garland.

“I'm afraid not sir, no, the closest one was a Camry about a mile and a half away.” Garland says.

Frank leans forward, resting his hands on the table. He gets so close to Garland, Garland has to lean back a little to accommodate him. The two men are like polar opposites of each other. Garland is slight, compact and calm, and Frank is like a tightly packed bomb with the wires hanging out, seconds away from exploding.

“Please tell me there is CCTV footage in the parking lot?”

“Installed, but not operational”, Garland says plainly.

“Fuck”, Frank says, and bangs both of his fists so hard down on the table, the legs creak and the computer keyboard jumps. “Put an APB out on the stolen cars, and not just the ones in the city. For all we know, he could have changed again.”

“Already done, sir.”

“Good”, Frank says, sitting back down again. “What have you got on the identities of the dead robbers?”

“Alex Gottleib you already know, Jack Peters and Carlos Mendez are the other two.” Garland pauses to cross his legs and clear his throat. “Carlos has connections in Mexico, which is a possible route our fourth man will be heading on. There isn't much background on Jack Peters apart from some time spent inside, several years ago for his part in a - no prizes for guessing - armed robbery that went wrong.”

Frank snarls.

“One name that seems to come up quite often in all of their profiles, is a gentleman by the name of Buck Tavern. Ring a bell?”

“No, who is he?” Frank says, genuinely interested.

“A seemingly legitimate business associate of all three of them, and without a criminal record”, Garland says, clearly disappointed by that detail. “He owns the club that Jack Peters used to run the door on, and was in partnership with Alex Gottleib on a low rent casino and unofficial, but legitimate betting ring, where Jack Peters and Carlos Mendez ran security, and I expect a lot of dodgy money was embezzled. I have officers in the process of tracking him down, but as yet, we've come up empty handed. He seems to have disappeared.”

“Find him and bring him in”, Frank says.

“You think he could be our guy?” Garland asks.

“It doesn't sound much like his style, but he might know who is”, Frank says. There is a pain of stomach acid crawling up his throat, where his pasta has begun to repeat on him.

“I'm on it”, Garland says.

“So tell me something Garland, what the fuck
is
written on that piece of paper? You've been holding it against your chest like a small child since you came in here. Have you brought me another love letter?”

Garland finally passes the piece of paper over to him. It's a printed ransom demand in cut out and scanned newspaper letters, and says:

I have Madeleine. Her life for a million dollars.

“What the fuck is this?” Frank says, his oesophagus burning. “Is this a joke?”

“That was emailed to the station this morning by Madeleine's father”, Garland says.

“Emailed?” Frank says, stunned by the nature of the way the information has been communicated.

“Someone emailed it to him, he emailed it to us”, Garland continues, as though re-explaining something simple to grasp.

Frank looks at the page in astonishment. He can't believe what he's actually looking at.

“Have you spoken to him?” he says finally.

“Yes”, Garland says.

“And what did he say?”

“He told me to deal with it”, Garland says flatly.

“Deal with it? What a fucking dick”, Frank barks, so close to banging his fist down on the table again, Garland prepares for it. “Don't let the press get hold of this yet. I want to sit on it a while and see how it develops. Tell that fuck Parker not to involve the press either.”

“Don't worry, he won't”, Garland reassures him. “Even if it's real, I don't reckon he has any intention of paying it. He definitely doesn't want that information out freely. It looks bad enough he hasn't yet commented on his daughter's kidnapping.”

“Did you ask him about that?” Frank says.

“Yes”, Garland says. “He told me it's nobody's business but Maddy's.”

“What a fucking world we live in”, Frank says. “If it was me in her place, and my daddy had the money, he'd pay it just so he could kick the shit out of me when he saw me again.”

“I guess not everyone has such a special connection with their families”, Garland says sarcastically.

Frank growls. The picture he has on his desk of his mother, pulling exactly the same face as he is now, looks just like him.

“Good work officer Garland”, Frank says, commending him. “Next to Edwards, you look like a fucking sheriff. Go get yourself a treat from the cookie jar and don't come back until you've got something more solid for me to go on. Go on fuck off, I've had enough bad news for one day.”

Garland nods.

“Sir”, he says by way of a goodbye, and disappears back out to the chaos of the open plan office he works in.

The assistant returns to the shop floor with a selection of real hair wigs that once belonged to the local theatre company.

“I think your sister might be in luck”, he says placing the wigs down onto the counter top and pushing them around unnecessarily once there. “As long as she doesn't mind it smelling a little bit stale, although I guess she can just wash that whole odour off. I've got several different shades of blonde, from the almost white, through the golden sun-kiss, to the nearly brunette, that I'm sure will serve your purpose just fine. What do you reckon?”

“I reckon you've outdone yourself”, River says, picking up the golden one, with thin fair hair that would almost reach Maddy's waist.

“You learn anything new?” The assistant says. “I see you switched off that junk.”

“Nothing more than the fact that perhaps I better work out more, if girls fall in love with fellas because of their arms”, River says, and the both of them share a laugh. “I reckon this'll be just perfect.”

“Now son”, the assistant says fidgeting even more than usual, “I reckon I ought to let you know, before you get your hopes up and all that, that these wigs are real hair, and they don't come cheap. People used to lease them on a day by day basis, and it was the cost of them that forced me to change the quality of my stock.”

“That doesn't matter”, River says. “I'll buy it outright. I've got money to spend, and no cost is too much for my baby sister.”

“I'm talking six hundred dollars, but we can work out a deal if you want to maybe only take it for a few days or so. Just to give her the idea.”

“That's alright”, River says. He takes the roll of one hundred dollar bills out of his pocket again, counts out six and passes them to the assistant, who seems a little shocked by the young man's wealth. He takes the money, looks at the boy, licks his fingers and counts it in the same jerky way he does everything else.

“I'm a bit of a businessman myself”, River confesses, by way of an explanation. “I've got a parcel of land up north and I breed horses. Some for steer, some for racing. All of it pretty lucrative.”

“I can see”, the assistant says, holding up the money.

He wraps up the wig, with more care than he's given a client's purchase for years, and hands the parcel over to River.

“You make sure she enjoys that now”, he says to him.

“I will”, River says. “This is going to change her life, I promise you that.”

With a smile, he's on his way back outside, and the old assistant is sat back down again, the TV up on the stand behind him for company.

Before River returns to the motel, he gets a haircut and a cut-throat razor shave, that makes him look even younger and more handsome than he does already, and he buys new boots, new shirts and new jeans. It isn't much of a new look, more of a smartening up of the old one, but the patterns are different enough at least to the clothes he was wearing during the raid to throw somebody off a scent if they ever get one. It's enough of an effort River figures to cover his back and make absolutely sure. Their main focus is Maddy, so as long as she looks nothing like the woman he took hostage from the bank, nobody's likely to give them a second look.

When River finally gets back to his current home, he's absolutely starving, a hunger which not even rolled up cigarettes will cut through.

Arms loaded down with bags, including Maddy's handbag and the bag of stolen money from the bank, he enters the motel room once more, immediately relieved to see that Maddy hasn't managed to escape.

“I'm hungry”, she says when she sees him, relieved he's finally come back home.

It's only when she speaks, does River realise that she's somehow managed to undo the pillowcase gag. What he doesn't know however, is whether she's already screamed.

B
uck Tavern, alive and well, suns himself on a pool side lounger, while he slurps lazily from a tall glass filled with whiskey and soda, and eats peanuts from a ceramic dish balanced carefully on his oversized, pinkish belly.

Next to him, his plastic surgery enhanced wife, a mud brown from head to toe, and wrinkled in parts the surgeon couldn't quite reach, pretends to read a mildly engaging romance novel, while instead, she keeps her eyes on the athletic pool boy, built like a Greek god, who endlessly sweeps non-existent leaves out of the pool.

Another member of staff calmly approaches them from the house, this one fully dressed and much less attractive than the boy hovering around the pool, who has been employed purely as eye candy for Alicia Tavern. He stands in front of Buck, and blocks out the sun, while he waits for him to notice.

“Well”, Buck says without looking up, in an accent tinged with a southern drawl, and difficult to place specifically.

“They are all dead”, the man says in a matter of fact way as though he were informing Buck of the weather.

“Who's dead?” Alicia Tavern says, never once taking her eyes off the curves of the pool boy's chest and arms, and his tight little butt.

Now Buck sits up. “Alex is dead? Dead, dead?” he says and takes off his sunglasses as though in doing so he'll somehow be able to gauge the veracity of the information.

“Alex, Jack, Carlos, the only one that isn't, is River Woods. It seems that the boy you sent, somehow made it out of their alive. Perhaps aided by the hostage he took with him.”