Trapped (19 page)

“And that’s why you left the FBI?”

“Pretty much, yes,” he says, sounding evasive.

“You had this all your life?”

“No,” he says, glancing away. “It’s a result of trauma.”

“You got shot? And that caused it?”

Shane turns to face me in his narrow seat. Not easy

because his long legs are jammed. His eyes are as deep and

as blue as the sky around us and they’re searching mine, as

if looking for a clue. “No, I wasn’t shot,” he says. “You want

to know exactly what happened?”

I nod, but there’s something in his manner that tells me

I’ll regret asking.

“I propose a fair trade,” he begins. “I’ll tell you what

happened to me if you’ll tell me about Kelly’s father. Who

he is, where he is, and why you don’t want to talk about him.”

I turn to the window, gaze at the cotton clouds, the wave-

laced sea below.

“Mrs. Garner? Jane?”

“Can’t,” I say.

“Does it have to do with what’s happened to your

daughter? Is her father part of this? I have to know if I’m

going to help.”

He waits for an answer, patient but insistent.

“I really can’t tell you about her father,” I say in a small

voice, “because I have no idea who he is.”

And that’s the truth, almost.

Part II

Screams In The Night

1. Let Him Sizzle

There’s nothing like a dry martini at thirty thousand feet

to set the mood. Edwin Manning, normally not much of a

drinker, sips the icy vodka and decides that he has, finally,

taken charge of himself, if not the whole nightmare situation.

His twenty-four-hour emotional meltdown has left him

deeply ashamed. The way he showed weakness in front of

the former FBI agent and the girl’s mother was despicable.

For the first time in his adult life he’d been unable to cope,

immobilized by fear of what might happen if he makes the

wrong decision. He didn’t snap out of it until the package

arrived. At that moment it became obvious that if he failed

to get it together and act like a man his son would surely die.

Demands have been made, outrageous demands. As a

father he has to find a way to fulfill those demands, impos-

sible as they may be.

It all starts with Edwin getting his ass in gear, transport-

ing himself and a few burly associates to the scene of the

crime, as it were. The associates, those with him on the char-

tered Gulfstream, include Mr. Salvatore J. Popkin, borrowed

from the Wunderbar staff, where he is not-so-affectionately

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known as Sally Popeye or Sally Pop. Whatever juvenile,

wannabe-wise-guy name he uses, at this moment he’s staring

longingly at Edwin’s perfectly chilled martini with his egg-

like eyes.

“Have a beer if you like,” Edwin suggests, “But I want you

sober when we arrive, understood?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Manning.”

“Really?” says Edwin, feeling a slight buzz. “You look like

shit.”

“Ha-ha. You should see the other guy,” Sally responds,

wincing as he readjusts his arm sling.

With his thick bulk and his shaved head and the weird

eyes, Sally has the look of a guy who can’t be stopped, but

Edwin figures he got in trouble with the other big man, the

former special agent, himself no slouch in the art of intimi-

dation. It doesn’t matter how it really went down, Edwin

finally has a plan, of sorts, and Sally Pop still figures into the

mix.

“At most we’ve got forty-eight hours before the FBI steps

on my neck,” Edwin reminds him. “So we need to roll as soon

as we land. Thirty minutes to the condo, pick up a few things,

another forty-five to the destination.”

“No problem,” says Sally.

“No problem?” Edwin responds, voice rising. “You think

this is no problem?” His eyes well with tears as he indicates

the red plastic cooler nestled under his seat.

“I mean, ah, no problem with transportation,” Sally says

uneasily, trying not to glance at the cooler. “That other thing,

Mr. Manning, I don’t know what to say.”

Edwin finishes his martini, good to the last drop. He’s not

even slightly ashamed of the tears. Fuck ’em if they can’t take

a good cry. He’s aware that the other associates, the new

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guys Sally Pop brought on board, already have a nickname

for him.
Weepy.
Nice, but Edwin doesn’t care. They’re so far

down the food chain he’s barely aware that they live, breathe

or think. Nothing like thinking or higher reasoning, but they

do have functioning nervous systems, brain stems and so on.

Temporary employees. Disposable, if it comes to that. Their

thoughts and opinions are of no import. At the moment his

sole concern is his beautiful son, a young man worth ten

thousand of the bent-nose rope-a-dopes who will be acting

as Edwin’s personal security detail until he gets this all sorted

out.

It’s a new thing, the need to surround himself with hired

muscle. But he knows the mad bastard on the phone, the one

who threatens to shake his world to pieces. Knows the man

to be intelligent, unpredictable and highly dangerous.

Capable, as he has demonstrated, of the most unimaginable

acts, not the least of which sloshes in the red plastic cooler

beneath his seat, in a solution of saline and chipped ice.

Flesh of his flesh.

Seth’s little finger, still wearing the ring Edwin gave him

when he graduated from flight school. FedExed to him as

promised in a cheery little ice pack. A well-known replanta-

tion surgeon has already examined the severed finger, pro-

nounced it too damaged to reattach, even if Seth is located in

the next few hours, but Edwin isn’t ready to give up on that.

He’ll find a more daring surgeon. He’ll get Seth back, make

him whole again, no matter what it takes. And then he will

make sure that the man who damaged Seth will cease to exist.

Edwin Manning, a slightly built, intensely driven man

who has never deliberately caused physical harm to another

human being, now dreams of slowly immersing his adver-

sary in a vat of bubbling acid.

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Let the bastard suffer as I have suffered, he’s thinking,

tears in his eyes. Let him sizzle.

2. The Twenty-four Hour Rule

When Kelly was eight years old, my mother got it in her head

that we needed a vacation. Partly it was to celebrate Kelly

having finished a successful course of chemo, partly because

Mom thought we ought to do something as a family that didn’t

involve hospitals. It was a two-part holiday extravaganza,

financed entirely out of her personal savings. The first part was

a four-day package tour of Disney World. Included, a perfectly

nice motel in Orlando with shuttle service to the park, where

Kelly, frankly, went totally bonkers. Loved it to pieces. The

rides, the actors in the goofy costumes, the food—she even

claimed to love waiting in line. It makes Space Mountain so

much better, Mommy, having to wait! She was so happy to be

alive and healthy, so glad to be doing things other kids did, that

nothing could temper her joy, not even ninety minutes in a line

of squirming brats. My own mother was so pleased that I’d catch

her smiling and humming songs to herself. It was a rare event

for Mom, to have everything work out as planned. So as far as

the Garner clan is concerned, Disney World was the greatest

family vacation of all time, a glorious childhood memory for

Kelly, for all of us. And then it got even better, at least for me.

The second part of the trip, which Mom kept a big secret,

was a three-night stay in South Beach, coinciding with

Fashion Week. How she managed it I’ll never know, but she

got us a room at a great little boutique hotel right there on

Ocean Drive, in the heart of the Art Deco District, and tickets

to one of the runway shows. On the short flight from Orlando

to Miami she kept looking at me sideways, to see if I was

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loving the idea, and I kept bursting into tears and hugging her,

and Kelly kept wanting to know why grown-ups cried when

they were happy.

When I miss Mom the most, those are the days I want to

experience all over again. The South Beach Caper, as she

called it. How proud she was to have pulled it off! All her life

she sacrificed for her child—me—and this was the payoff,

those few precious hours when she could be mentor and

mother and grandmother and confidante and best friend and

tour guide. She especially loved the runway show, the exotic

models strutting wild little dresses and fake furs that made

them look like skinny éclairs on high heels. The designers

orbiting the stage like nervous satellites, one of them liter-

ally tearing out tiny clumps of his bizarrely coiffed hair. Mom

would have loved it if I was one of those designers—not the

tearing-out-the-hair part, of course—and she’d done every-

thing she could to give me the opportunity. Maybe I wanted

it, too, at one time, in the excitement of first discovering I had

some talent in that direction. But then Kelly had gotten sick

and healing her became the center of my life, and when we

came out the other side, all three of us, I was more than happy

to earn a good living being my own boss, selling elaborate

wedding gowns to people who have more money than sense.

Anyhow, that was my one and only visit to Miami until

now, and stepping into the tropical sunlight without my

mother and my daughter brings on a hollow pang of loneli-

ness so overwhelming it hits my guts like a physical blow.

“You okay?” Shane wants to know.

“I’ll be fine. Let me sit for a minute.”

The big guy finds me a seat on the lower level, says he’ll

keep me in sight while he arranges a car rental. Sure

enough I can spot his head above the crowd, see him glanc-

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ing back from the Hertz counter, signaling that it won’t

take long.

Fern has left a number of messages on my cell, all of

them variations on “hope you’re okay, call me soonest.” She

answers on the first ring.

“Thank God!” she begins. “I was worried if the plane

crashed.”

“The plane didn’t crash. I’m here, we made it, we’re

renting a car. Any calls?”

“Any calls? Are you kidding? The phone hasn’t stopped

ringing! Who is this Haley person? Seems kind of sweet but

also seriously whacked. She actually started weeping when

I said you were out of town for a few days. I’m telling people

your great-aunt Hilda died. She was ninety-three, by the way,

and a former Ziegfield girl. The one with the diamond-

studded tiara and the peacock feathers. There are rumors she

had a fling with Bugsy Siegel. Or was it Warren Beatty?”

“You made her up?”

“Background details are important, Jane. I have to believe

in Aunt Hilda. Amazing woman. Too bad you were estranged

for all these years.”

“Fern, I don’t know what to say.”

“Not to worry, I’m taking care of business. Mrs. Norbert

was very nice, she said no problem, she’ll see you when you

get back. Ditto the Spinellis. There was inquiry for an

estimate, a ten-member wedding party in Bellport, they want

you to coordinate the tuxedos with the gowns, whatever that

means, but they’ll wait until next week. Let’s see, what else.

Oh, Fred is filing the tax quarterlies, he said to let you know

there were no surprises. And Alex McFairy suspects some-

thing is going on, but he didn’t push.”

“McQuarrie. His name is McQuarrie.”

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“Whatever.”

Something I’ve never really understood, Fern not liking

my friend Alex. It’s not that he’s gay—Fern has more gay

male pals than Cher and Madonna combined. She thinks

Alex is a terrible snob, and of course that’s true, but if I don’t

find his snooty attitudes offensive, why should Fern? One of

those unfortunate things about life—no matter how hard you

try, not all your friends are friends.

“The detective called,” she’s saying. “Jay Berg? He sounds

full of himself. Nothing to report from his end, just checking

in—wanted to know if Kelly had made contact. I said no, was

that okay?”

“That’s fine. I don’t want to start lying to the cops, not if

we can help it.”

“Any news?”

“We just got here. How could there be any news?”

“You sound so stressed! Janey, listen to me, you need a

shoulder to cry on, cry on his. Those are good shoulders.”

“Got to go. Thanks, Fern, you’re a saint.”

“Not if I can help it. Bye-bye. Love you, Janey poo.”

Janey poo.
Fern is the only person in the world who can

get away with calling me that. My playground name. I’m

seven years old, fall on my bum in the mud. All the kids

laughing, saying I pooed my pants, which seems so utterly

unfair, since I haven’t even wet the bed in years and