The Looters (36 page)

As Nunes walked me to the property desk, he said, “By the way. We’re not putting a tail on you.”

“Really.” I didn’t know what to say. Why was he telling me this?

“Takes too damn many assets in Manhattan to do a round-the-clock surveillance. Narrow, crowded streets, a million cars and taxis, subways, takes dozens of agents for a twenty-four/seven watch.”

“Uh, is there a reason why you’re telling me this?”

“Yeah.” He stared at me gravely. “I just wanted to let you know we won’t be around when Stocker comes back for you.”

That was the second time he brought up the subject. I think he was trying to tell me something:
Fess up before Stocker gets you
.

Chapter 58

Freedom tasted good, even if it was a gloomy, chilly, and wet New York City night. I took several deep breaths, savoring air not polluted by suspicious fed agents and legions of criminals. God, I felt like proverbial roadkill: burned-out, bummed-out, and stressed-out.

No reception committee was waiting for me. The newspeople must have gotten tired and decided to go home. It took three hours to get released even after I agreed to give up my passport and not leave the city. I would have promised my firstborn in exchange for my freedom if Nunes had asked.

He didn’t need to hold my passport to keep me in the country. I couldn’t have fled far. I had my purse back with three hundred dollars in cash and less than a thousand left on my last viable credit card. And that was it. By New York standards, that was a couple nights in a moderately priced hotel and a few deli meals. After that, the homeless shelter.

Oh, for the days when a black American Express card was my passport to the haunts of the rich and famous and wannabes like me.

I had two theories why the FBI agents let me go, besides the fact that Nunes was just plain hurting after getting smacked in the face during his near-death experience. He looked like a man with a brave front who needed to go home, have a stiff shot and a warm bed.

He knew I needed money was my first theory. In his mind, the place I’d go for it was where I was secretly hoarding stolen antiquities or ill-gotten gains. That theory didn’t conflict with his statement that I wouldn’t be watched. But not physically watching me didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep an eye on my bank account, credit card, cell phone, and Internet use, along with anything else that was easy to track electronically.

Once I had an infusion of money, he’d pick me up to sweat the source out of me. But I had fooled him on that one. I was broke and would stay that way short of winning the lottery.

The second hypothesis rang even truer and was more scarier: They let me go to see if they could flush out Stocker… the premise being, of course, that he would finish the job of killing me. And since they didn’t have a watch on me, they’d have to sift through the bloody clues left at the murder scene—mine—and witness statements to find him. Either that or Nunes expected me to wrestle the big maniac to the ground, hogtie him, and drag him up the steps to the federal detention building.

With those charming thoughts, I shivered and pulled up the collar of my light jacket. The night was cold, dark, deserted. A description of what my life looked like, with the fires of hell awaiting if Stocker found me.

The Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) was located in lower Manhattan, adjacent to Foley Square and across the street from the federal courthouse. I knew a city police station wasn’t far from here, which didn’t exactly comfort me. Police stations were notorious for being high-crime areas because of the flow of undesirables in, out, and around them.

The area bustled with people in the daytime but was deserted after hours. Right now it was way after hours, about three in the morning. Like most big cities, the safest places to be were the ones with people crowded around. I was tempted to go to the police station and ask them to call me a taxi but decided not to press my luck. I might be on a Most Wanted List with them, too.

Dragging myself down the stairs and onto the dark street, I felt like Nunes looked—beaten. I needed a taxi to take me to a hotel where I could feel safe, not that
anywhere
was overly safe from a man who packed a rocket launcher like some people pack a laptop.

Two taxis passed, both occupied. I had started walking in the direction of the police station when a taxi pulled up to the curve. I got in and told the driver to take me to Times Square, an area that was always flowing with people day and night and also had several hotels.

I was leery of going to my apartment. That crazy Stocker was capable of pulling up in front of the building and blowing it up with his rocket launcher. Besides, it was entirely possible that I had been locked out and everything inside repossessed by my creditors. My rent had been due over a week ago. In these days when credit card companies keep close tabs on people, everything not nailed down was probably already cleaned out. I’d find out tomorrow when I went to the apartment to get some clothes and look for jewelry or anything else I could hock or sell instantly.

To satisfy my paranoia I locked both back doors of the taxi, then leaned my head against the seat and closed my eyes.

My mind was swirling. I was on a merry-go-round whirling out of control and couldn’t get off. Being back in the graces of the FBI (since the only Madison Dupre being held prisoner was my passport picture) was a great relief, though I would have felt safer in jail. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about a crazed killer and double-crossed Navy SEALs out for revenge.

Too many problems to deal with all at the same time. Getting to a quiet place where I felt safe and could relax and think out solutions one at a time was a necessity.

I must have dozed off for a few minutes, because I jerked awake when the taxi took a sharp turn.

My heartbeat quickened when I looked out and realized we weren’t on a major street anymore but had entered an alley.

“Where are we?”

“Detour,” the driver said.

I hadn’t paid too much attention to him earlier, but now I could see he had dark olive skin and spoke with a thick Middle Eastern type accent.

Something was wrong. “Let me out!”

The cabbie suddenly braked, pulling to a stop at the back of a building. The door locks went up and my door was jerked open. Another man with Middle Eastern features and wearing black clothes said, “Get out.”

When I didn’t move fast enough, he grabbed my arm and pulled me out.

I opened my mouth to scream, but he put a knife to my throat.

Chapter 59

“Why are you doing this?” I hummed aloud, with no one around to hear me.

I was alone in a small bathroom furnished with a toilet, a sink, and a roll of toilet paper.

I sat on the toilet and worried about my fate.

The bathroom wasn’t exactly on the cutting edge of technology or maintenance. The toilet paper holder was broken, and the paper sat on top of the tank lid. No towel or soap was present. The sink and toilet both needed a good scrubbing, an indication that the place had more men around than women.

I replayed what had happened after I’d been taken out of the taxi. I was hustled into the back of a building and into the bathroom. No one spoke to me. Comments between the men who forced me into the building were in a foreign language. I assumed the language was Arabic and the men were Iraqi.

My initial guess was that I was in the back of a Middle Eastern restaurant or grocery store, since my nostrils got a whiff of aromatic and pungent scents when we entered the building. I picked out the smells of garlic, mint, cinnamon, and maybe saffron.

The more I thought about it as I sat on the toilet, the more I concluded that it wasn’t a restaurant. No smell of cooked lamb and chicken. More likely this was one of those mama-papa stores that specialized in ethnic foods and spices.

Why they put me here was easy enough to figure out. It made a nice jail cell. Hardly big enough for someone to stand in—I could sit on the toilet and wash my hands in the sink if I wanted to—the cubbyhole had no window and a single door. That meant I couldn’t escape and my screams wouldn’t be heard.
They could chop me up in little pieces and flush me down the toilet.

I really didn’t think my predicament was funny. On the contrary, I was terrified but just too tired to show it. Nothing short of the door opening and a mangled, bleeding, homicidal Stocker grinning crookedly at me would get a rise from my weary bones.

Why I had been kidnapped was a mystery. The possibilities were endless and all had unhappy endings for me. My abductors were Iraqis, for sure, and they hadn’t kidnapped me to thank me for recovering national treasures. The time-honored universal motives for crime were profit and revenge. Neither objective fared well for me. Did they think I had more of the museum pieces and could be persuaded to turn them over?

Were they friends of Abdullah out to avenge his death? Certainly the folkways of Middle Easterners were more in tune with avenging murder with biblical solutions than my own Middle America mores, which were limited to calling the cops and/or a lawyer.

It occurred to me that they might be Iraqi intelligence agents who believed I was involved in the museum looting and would torture me to find out where some of the other fourteen thousand or so missing pieces were. That unpleasant thought sounded plausible because the FBI could have advised them that they were pursuing a suspect in the case.

“No, not Iraqi cops,” I told the closed door.

More likely they were thieves who wanted to get their hands on the pieces for profit. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the whereabouts of any other missing antiquities. How long would they torture me before they realized I knew absolutely nothing?

I needed to tell them something so they wouldn’t harm me. I could say there were pieces at my penthouse. They would need me, of course, to get them past the doorman. Then I’d start screaming and running the first chance I got.

Speaking of running, I hadn’t even tried the door handle to see if it was locked. The door opened outward and had a slip bolt on the inside. It probably wasn’t locked. Who would lock a bathroom door from the outside? But either they had it blocked from opening or, worse, one of the thugs was waiting for me to make a run for it.

I was too scared and weary to try to shoulder it open if it was blocked. So far they hadn’t hurt me, just tight grips on my arms as two men led me into the building. I didn’t want to push my luck.

Once they had shut the bathroom door, I heard muffled voices, but I hadn’t heard anything for the past hour.

My only option was to sit on the toilet until someone decided to tell me why I had been kidnapped. Or someone had an urgent need to use the toilet.

My recent fall from grace with the world made me wonder if I was being punished for doing something bad in a past life. Something very bad. The sort of thing for which you get reborn as a worm in a cesspool in hell.

I finally heard voices and footsteps approaching. A spike of fear-generated adrenaline gave me enough energy to sit up straight as the footsteps approached my door.

The door opened and Coby stared at me. He didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked dangerously pissed.

I raised my eyebrows. “Gotta go?” I don’t know why I made that cute remark. Not the right time, considering his mood.

He sucked air. Staring down at me, his face grew a deep red. Violent red. As if he had been storing up anger and seeing me had turned it loose.

“I should break your fuckin’ neck.”

I pushed a strand of hair off my forehead. “I did it for you,” I said in a calm voice. I was hoping to diffuse his angry mood.

His face just got redder. He wasn’t in any mood for jokes. I decided it was time to talk my way out of being murdered.

“I needed to get the stolen pieces back to the Iraqis, and Stocker in jail, so I could go on with my life. I didn’t think Neal told you the truth about where the pieces were stored. I went to the warehouse to see if the stuff was really there. And to see if we would be walking into a trap. All that talk about Stocker booby-trapping the place, it sounded like a war was going to erupt, and that the antiquities would also end up being casualties.”

He noisily sucked in a deep breath. Breathing was good. He was ready to kill me. Taking those deep breaths told me he was trying to keep the temptation under control.

“You’re lying. You called the feds to meet you there.”

I held up my hand. “Stop. You’re completely wrong.”

He leaned down closer, still beet red. “Tell me it’s just a fuckin’ coincidence that the FBI agent on the case was on his way to the warehouse when you were leaving it.”

I stood up, showing real indignation. If there was anything I loved doing, it was telling the truth. Especially a version that could be sold.

“
I did not tell the FBI about the warehouse
. Nunes tracked me there because of my cell phone. They didn’t even know about the warehouse. The phone was in the car parked around the corner in front of a self-storage facility. They thought I was in the storage facility, that the stolen antiquities were stored there. They were driving by my car when I came around the corner in the truck and hit them head-on.”

That gave him pause. “What did you tell them about us?”

“Enough of the truth to satisfy Nunes that I wasn’t holding out on him. But I never mentioned your name or the names of the others. I said the man I dealt with was Viktor Milan.” I tapped him on the chest with my finger. “That is absolutely the truth. Viktor Milan was the only name I gave.”

“What about Neal?”

“Jesus, get real. You don’t think I’d tell the police I was in the house when Neal got—”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

I held up my hand in an imitation of the way he gave pledges. “Scout’s honor.”

He bit his lower lip and stared at me. “You planned all along to give the pieces back to the Iraqis.”

That amounted to an accusation that I had betrayed them. Of course, there was a problem with putting the blame on me for the feds getting the stolen antiquities: We had both agreed to give the pieces back. I was just the one who actually intended going through with it.