Dead Silence df-16 Page 6

  Hooker said, “High praise indeed,” sounding sincere but smiling.

  Barbara had moved close enough to put her hand on the policewoman’s shoulder but didn’t. The positioning suggested endorsement yet withheld approval. The woman knew how to manipulate people and control a room.

  “The important thing, Captain, is that we work together. You’re the expert. We’re the amateurs. We need your help.”

  “Senator, I think we got off on the wrong foot-”

  “Don’t we all occasionally? I should have discussed protocol with you privately. But let’s get down to business”-Barbara was pouring herself a glass of wine-“so please continue with your briefing. Hold all questions until you’re done?”

  Denzler replied, “That works for me,” sounding grateful and eager to please.

  Senator Hayes-Sorrento poured a second glass of wine. As she offered it to me, I gave her a look: Impressive.

  The woman shrugged, her eyes looking into mine: Part of the job.

  Nice eyes. Gray-green with flecks of gold. Power flecks, my friend Tomlinson calls them. Sensuality transceivers.

  I hadn’t noticed before.

  While Denzler briefed us, the FBI agent’s cell phone buzzed. He went outside to take the call. When he returned, his projected detachment told me it was important. But not too important it couldn’t wait, because he took a seat and listened with the rest of us while the policewoman told us the latest.

  At 8:45 p.m., the kidnappers had e-mailed a ransom note to three general Internet addresses used by the NYPD. Nearly an hour later, the photo arrived sent as an attachment.

  The note was written in precise English, but the syntax suggested it was composed by someone whose native language was Spanish. Probably male. He had written “interned” instead of “buried.” He had written “the air cylinder in testament produces” rather than “the oxygen tank will produce.” The name William Chaser was used in the subject line of the photo, but the note referred to their captive as “she” or “the politician.” The note had been written in advance of the abduction, anticipating the senator, not a teenage boy.

  Denzler said she couldn’t show us the note or the exact wording. Instead, she had created a computer document outlining key points. I understood the purpose but found it irritating.

  The kidnapper’s note said the Minnesota teenager would be put into a box, then buried. The box contained an air cylinder with enough oxygen for approximately thirty-six hours. A tube running from a canteen would be taped to the boy’s mouth, so he would have a limited amount of water.

  If certain demands were met, the kidnappers would post the GPS coordinates of the box on a popular third-party website. It didn’t name the site. If the American government responded before eight a.m. on Sunday, the boy might live. If there was an attempt to negotiate, or to pursue, the boy would die.

  The kidnappers had effectively placed the boy’s life in the hands of the people they were extorting. They claimed to be Castro Revivalists and wanted Cuba to return to National Socialism. They called themselves the Bearded Ones.

  In the frozen pond, Choirboy hadn’t mentioned Castro Socialists. Judging from the FBI agent’s physical response-he looked at the floor, nose wrinkled as if sniffing-he didn’t believe it either. Captain Denzler did.

  “It explains why they were after you, Senator Hayes-Sorrento. Your committee has authority over the materials they’re demanding-it’s been on the news.”

  Denzler touched a remote; the computer screen changed. “Here’s what they want. They refer to them as files. Files C/J-116 through C/Sa-120. We’ve been unable to confirm that these files exist.” The woman gave it a second. “Do they exist, Senator?”

  Barbara was sitting between her chief of staff and her attorney. Both were taking notes. I watched the woman nod. “They’re not just files. Our people discovered a… a place, where the former dictator’s personal papers were being warehoused. Some personal possessions, too.”

  Some personal possessions? The woman was good.

  She said, “But because the information has been”-Barbara glanced at her attorney, who was shaking her head-“because the information is classified, my staff will investigate the steps necessary to arrange a private deposition. I want to do everything I can to help this child.”

  The FBI agent said, “You can confirm, though, these designations match materials that have been cataloged?”

  “Not cataloged-not yet. Grouped under very general terms. Subgrouped, really. C for Castro, then subgrouped, A for apple, B for baseball. Like that. The number refers to the carton. C/J-116, for instance, means Castro Files, letter j, carton 116. You might find something related to Japan inside. Or jewelry. I’m not saying there is jewelry, understand. It’s just an example.”

  Denzler asked, “What about this one. C/Sa? Carton 120.”

  Becoming impatient, Barbara replied, “As I said, everything’s alphabetized. I assume fewer items begin with the letter j, so there’s only one carton. More items are in subgroup S, so there are two or three cartons. Sometimes dates were also added. A sort of sub-subgrouping. The work had to be done”-Barbara hesitated-“in a limited amount of time.”

  “How many people know about the labeling system?”

  “Too many, obviously.”

  The policewoman started to ask another question but decided to let it go. “Then it fits. A pro-Castro organization demanding Fidel Castro’s files. Certain items, I’m saying, that’s what they’re demanding.”

  Barbara was looking at the screen, way ahead of Denzler, maybe thinking what I had already concluded: The kidnappers had insider information. They knew how the items had been organized and at least an idea of what the cartons contained.

  After a long silence, the FBI agent said, “That’s very helpful, Senator Hayes-Sorrento, thank you,” then looked at Denzler, who got the hint, and stepped back so he could talk.

  The FBI agent said, “There was a kidnapping that has interesting similarities. A college student named Barbara Mackle was abducted and buried in a specially constructed box. She was targeted because her father was a wealthy Florida developer. Her abductor was an escaped convict, Gary Krist. Krist spent a month at the Miami Public Library searching for the perfect victim for what he considered the perfect crime…”

  I tuned out the agent, less interested. Harrington had made the connection with the Mackle case. As an intelligence consultant, he would’ve had no trouble piping information to the FBI.

  I was thinking about the third question I had asked Choirboy when we were in the water: Who is your contact in America? His organization had known the senator’s schedule. There had to be an informer.

  Choirboy gave me a name. A code name, really. If I hadn’t been freezing, I might have experienced my first emotional chill. The name was linked to my own personal history. If I believed in evil, the name might have once defined it.

  “Tenth Man,” Choirboy told me, although it was difficult to hear because of his chattering teeth and the congealing fluid in my inner ears. Salt water and blood both crystallize at thirty degrees Fahrenheit.

  Tenth Man made no sense. An alternative translation had come to me later while under a hot shower at the station house.

  Tenth Man…? Ten Man…?

  No, Choirboy had said Tinman.

  Maybe the same person, maybe not. I had my suspicions, nothing confirmed.

  Tomlinson, my friend and neighbor on Sanibel Island, sometimes worked as a roadie for the classic rock band America. His favorite song: “Tinman.” It didn’t prove a connection, but the song wasn’t his only linkage. Like me, he’d traveled the world. Like me, his past life was a gray region, an old map with unexplored territories. Because returning to Florida was now a priority-there was equipment I needed-I would also have my chance to discuss the significance.

  I was eager to talk with Tomlinson.

  My eyes moved around the room, seeing James Montbard at the back of it. He’d lost interest, too. Was it be
cause he’d already heard the story from Harrington?

  Barbara listened while going through a stack of faxes. Her face, seen in profile, showed the patrician nose, the strong chin. The starched collar of her blouse framed a glossy sweep of hair, and my eye moved naturally downward, the curvature of buttons incongruous with the detached expression on her face.

  I pictured Barbara, not the Mackle girl, when the agent said, “…if it’s not a hoax, we expect a second photo before they bury him. A photo of the box with the boy inside. Showing off. Like a trophy. Probably taken just before they close the lid.”

  By the time I had forced the image out of my head, the agent was saying, “Krist told Ms. Mackle the batteries would last a week if she was careful, but the fan would quit in two days if she wasted power. Understandably, she became hysterical when Krist sealed the box and she heard dirt being shoveled onto the lid.

  “He told her, ‘Shut up and stop acting like a baby.’ That’s an exact quote from the report.” The agent’s expression read See the kind of people we’re dealing with?

  He continued, “Two important points: If they bury Mr. Chaser, there’s a chance we will get him back alive. Ms. Mackle was found-almost accidentally, by the way-eighty-six hours later, weak and dehydrated but still alive. Almost four full days. It proves a person can endure what these people are threatening to do. The key is giving the kidnappers what they want. That’s hard for the FBI to say, but there it is.

  “The second point isn’t pleasant. The note mentions an air cylinder and a water tube. Nothing else. Ms. Mackle’s abductor was a megalomaniac, a loser by every definition of the word, but he at least exhibited some empathy. He provided a little food, a few personal items and enough room for Ms. Mackle to bend her legs and arms.”

  The agent was referring to the tube that would be taped to Will Chaser’s mouth. Either the coffin was too cramped to lift a canteen or the kidnappers planned to bury Will with his hands bound. Why else make him drink through a tube?

  When the agent described the tube and how Will’s hands were taped, Barbara’s attorney stood, made a coughing sound, then rushed from the room. Two staffers followed, maybe to help but more likely not.

  “He’s better off dead,” I heard one of them say.

  7

  When Hump leaned over the rental car and pressed the button, the trunk shot open as if on springs. The Chrysler emblem whacked the man hard on the chin, and his knees buckled as he backpedaled.

  Hump let himself fall, expecting to land in weeds and trash, like in the ditches in Havana. But Farfel had stopped at the edge of a ravine on an off-ramp where there was no traffic, only the window lights of a distant home-a ranch or farmhouse-the world starry-skied and silent at ten p.m.

  Dazed, the huge man braced for impact. But instead of a ditch, he dropped fifteen feet off the hill’s sheer lip and landed hard, shoulders first. Hump made a high-pitched whine of surprise, then a wheezing whufff when he hit.

  Out of control, he tumbled down the hill through bushes and nettles, his arms covering his head because of the rocks-and also because of his bloody ear, which the sonuvabitching kid had bitten almost off, after promising to cooperate when they’d stopped to kill the limo driver.

  Hump kept his head covered several seconds after banging against what might have been a fence, unconvinced he had reached the bottom, or that this wasn’t another of the kid’s vicious tricks.

  Then Hump raised his head to look because he heard something. No, someone… Yes, cowboy boots on rock.

  Mamoncete!

  Instead of trying to escape, the insane boy was chasing him down the hill. Scrambling to his feet, Hump called in Spanish to his partner, “Farfel, I have captured him. He is here-,” then made the wheezing whufff noise again when the boy tackled him, shoulder down, swinging wildly at Hump’s head with a lug wrench.

  “Farfel! Come quickly. I have the little goat turd!”

  Will Chaser spoke Tex-Mex Spanish and understood enough Cuban to yell in reply, “You’re the turd! I’ll use your horn as a damn gun rack!,” referring to what he’d said before biting Hump’s ear in the limo: “A head like yours needs glass eyes and a plaque on the wall.”

  Will was on the huge Cuban’s back, trying to fight the man’s hands away so he could get a clean shot with the lug wrench. When Hump tried to elbow him, Will countered with his own elbow, hammering at Hump’s neck. When Hump tried to buck free, Will locked his legs around Hump’s waist, the toes of his boots cinched tight.

  “Get off me, you little maricon! Get off me and I won’t hurt you, I swear.”

  Will yelled, “Stop moving-I’ll surrender,” hoping to knock the Cuban unconscious with the wrench, but Hump continued to buck and roll.

  No way could the huge man buck him free. It was because the boy was experienced in riding animals that bucked. Before Will was expelled from school and sent north, to Minnesota, he was on the Seminole Oklahoma Rodeo Team, top steer wrestler and bull rider, Junior Division. He would have won a third All-Around Cowboy title if the cops hadn’t discovered that his horse, Blue Jacket, was actually Paddy’s Painted Darling, a famous roping pony and quarter horse stud that had disappeared six months earlier from Lexington Farms, Texas.

  Only twice in his life had Will Chaser ever cried, not counting when he was an infant, which he couldn’t remember. First time was when the cops trailered Blue Jacket and drove away. He had cried in private, of course, where no one could hear.

  The second time was just a few hours before Hump opened the trunk. Stuffed in a garbage bag, his hands, feet and mouth duct-taped, Will had listened to the limo driver begging for his life and then to his screams as the Cuban assholes stabbed him.

  In the abrupt, rattling silence that followed, Will had wept, convinced he would be the next to die, regretting only then that he had insulted the Cuban, telling him his head would make a nice trophy.

  Now, though, Will was filled with rage, not regret.

  The thing growing from the side of Hump’s head was spiked, like a tooth. It made a good target for Will. He had the man on the ground now and he swung the lug wrench with intent.

  The big Cuban was quick, though, deflecting the boy’s arms when he swung the wrench, metal sparking off rocks with each miss. That ancient sound, steel striking stone- cha-leenk -was scary so close to Hump’s bloody ear. The Cuban had been surprised, but now he was getting mad.

  “Get off me!”

  “Hold still.”

  Cha-leenk.

  “I’m warning you.”

  “Quit bouncing, you candy-ass!”

  Cha-leenk. Sparks showed Hump’s black eyes.

  “You little queer, I’ll kill you!”

  The huge man stood, Will’s legs still cinched around his waist. Using the butt of the lug wrench, Will pounded Hump’s neck as Hump staggered to a fence, turned and slammed hard against it, crushing Will against the boards.

  Will lost the wrench in the first collision. Hump rammed the fence again and Will fell to the ground. Hump leaned over the boy- “Maricon!” -and began kicking.

  “Don’t kill him. Not yet!” Farfel was yelling as he zigzagged down the hill, careful not to fall. He had a pistol in his left hand. The pistol had a laser sight that painted a narrow band of light over the tree canopy as it sought the boy.

  Hump kicked again and Will felt a rib snap. He screamed and rolled away in a fetal position.

  Now Farfel was yelling, “You idiot! Not until we get another photograph!”

  Will remained balled up, expecting to be kicked again. A moment passed. He looked up. A couple of yards separated him from the huge man, who was looking at the older Cuban.

  It was time to let the men know he spoke Spanish. Will said, “I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me no more,” as he got to his feet. Because Hump was coming at him again, Will added quickly, “Promise, I’ll do what you tell me. God damn, you busted up my ribs! I’ll do anything you say.”

  Hump stopped and touched the back of his h
ead, then squinted at his fingers: blood. His head was ringing from the blows and his ear was throbbing. “You crazy brat, you hurt me with that tire tool. I will have a knife next time. I will cut you like a frog!”

  Will had his hands on his knees, groaning like he was going to be sick-and he did feel sick-but he was also examining the nearby fence: four boards high, on the back side of a pasture, with strands of electric wire strung tight on insulators. There were probably horses or bulls grazing inside or maybe buffalo. Will had noticed the lights of the ranch, which had sparked a homesick-like feeling inside him.

  The older Cuban called, “Come back to the car. We won’t tie you this time.” He was motioning for Will to follow. The man had nasty metallic eyes. He was lying, of course.

  Will yelled, “I will. I promise. But first I have to do something.”

  As the two Cubans looked at each other wondering if maybe Will had to piss, Will threw the rock he’d been palming. The rock was baseball smooth, oval shaped and heavy. It bounced off Hump’s forehead, making a melon sound.

  Tu cabron!

  Will scrambled over the fence, jumped clear of the insulators and ran. Seconds later, he heard the huge man bellow again. Will made a chortling-crying sound, a mix of laughter and pain from the broken rib, but he continued running.

  The dumbass grabbed the electric fence.

  Across a hundred yards of pasture, Will could see the elegant silhouettes of dozing horses and the yellow windows of a ranch house. A larger house, mansion-sized, lay beyond. The boy ran, one hand holding his ribs, legs taking long strides, his boots familiar with the cobble work of hoofprints in a frozen meadow.

  Every few seconds, Will glanced over his shoulder. No sign of the Cubans. As he ran, the nickname old Otto Guttersen had invented came into his brain: Pony Chaser. For the first time, the name fit, like in the TV westerns. The tough kid running from the bad guys… only, on TV, the bad guys were usually Skins, not Cubans, men who really would kill him if they caught him.