Head Games

by Thomas B Cavanagh

  CHAPTER 28

  “Uh, hi. This message is for Jennifer Garrity. This is Bill. Y’know, your manager at the mall? Uh, I hope this is the right number. I have a note that this was where I could reach you this month. Anyway, I don’t appreciate your little stunt today. I thought you were more responsible than that. You don’t just walk out halfway through your shift without saying a word to anybody. Unless your mom was in a car accident or something, don’t bother coming back. We’ll send your last check in the mail. I hope the movie or whatever you did was worth being fired.”

  Click.

  That was it. I played it again, praying that this was some sort of mistake, a bad joke. The time stamp on the message was about an hour and a half ago. Bill’s voice repeated the same message in the same annoyed and disappointed tone.

  My head started buzzing as my adrenaline surged. Jennifer was gone. It wasn’t like her to walk out on her shift, especially without notifying anyone. She didn’t call me. Maybe Cam—

  I quickly dialed Cam’s cell phone. It rang a few times and I worried that her voice mail would pick up. But then she answered, sounding hurried.

  “Hello?”

  “Cam. It’s me—”

  “Hi, listen, I’m in the middle of a presentation right now, can I call you ba—”

  “Cam—did you pick up Jennifer today?”

  “What? No. Really, Michael, now’s not a good—”

  “Did she call you?”

  “Jennifer?”

  “Yes. Has she called you today?”

  “No.” Cam paused. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll—I’ll call you later.”

  I hung up. I had a bad feeling about this, the worst kind of feeling. I stood in my kitchen for a moment, paralyzed by it, wondering what I should do.

  Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe the ride in the Escalade and the black eye had shaken me up too much.

  This was probably nothing. Gwen probably came by with some friends and Jennifer decided to play hooky from work. Figured she could get away with it. She was fifteen, after all. I had done much more irresponsible things than that when I was fifteen. I forced a deep, calming breath. Don’t panic, I told myself.

  Call this Bill guy, I thought. Better yet, call Gwen. I’d probably even be able to talk directly to Jennifer. She’d apologize and promise to be more responsible. I’d relax and pour myself a stiff drink.

  But my head was still buzzing and I knew that it was all wishful bullshit. I had to do something. If I stood in this kitchen for another second, my skull would explode. I looked at the phone and said, “Screw it.”

  I grabbed my car keys and sprinted out of the apartment.

  * * *

  I didn’t just speed to the mall, I rocketed. I made the twenty-minute drive in just under ten minutes, weaving around traffic, blowing through red lights. I squealed my truck to a skidding stop in front of Macy’s, leaving it parked askew in a fire lane.

  I charged into the department store, quickly found the mall entrance, and raced to the food court. I dodged through leisurely shoppers—moms pushing strollers, teens grouped in a pack, senior citizens power walking. Some got out of the way and some got an accidental shoulder as I ran past.

  The food court was an expansive tiled space with a variety of fast-food establishments around the perimeter.

  I spotted the Gyro Connection, where Jennifer worked, and ran to the counter. A pimply boy looked up at me. His expression blanched when he saw my black eye.

  “Uh, you wanna try one of our combo meals?” he said.

  “Where’s Bill?”

  “Bill?”

  “Bill. Your manager.”

  “Oh. Right.” The kid turned and shouted into the back of the space, where the sandwiches were prepped. “Bill! Some dude wants to see you!”

  A moment later a prematurely balding guy wearing a blue Gyro Connection polo shirt came out, wiping his hands on an apron. What hair he had left was dark, and his five-o’clock shadow was early and thick. It also looked as if he ate a few too many of his own sandwiches.

  “Yes?” he said, narrowing his eyes at my shiner. “Can I help you?”

  “Jennifer Garrity,” I blurted.

  “What about her?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Hell if I know. Who are you?”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I dunno. When her shift started. She just up and left. We can’t have that. It’s unprofession—”

  “When?” I barked. “Exactly when did you last see her?”

  Bill hesitated. “Who are you?”

  “I’m her father.”

  “How do I know that?”

  Before I could launch myself over the counter and pummel Bill, the pimply kid spoke up.

  “She said she was goin’ to the bathroom.”

  “What?” Bill said.

  “Jennifer. She said she was goin’ to the bathroom and never came back.”

  “You didn’t know that?” I said to Bill.

  “No.”

  I turned to the kid. “She told you she was going to the bathroom but she never came back. Didn’t that concern you?”

  He shrugged. “I guess. It happens sometimes. You know.”

  I almost shouted my response. “It’s never happened with Jennifer, has it?”

  “No,” the kid said.

  “So why didn’t you say something?”

  The kid just shrugged.

  “Goddammit!” I shouted. A few nearby patrons glanced over.

  “What’s going on?” Bill asked. “Is she alright?”

  “I don’t know, Bill,” I snapped. “That’s what I’m tryin’ to figure out. I’ll tell you this, though. If she’s not alright, I’m coming back here and putting your face in the deep fryer.”

  The kid’s eyes widened.

  “Hey!” Bill said.

  “She left her purse,” the kid said.

  “What?” I said.

  “She left her purse.”

  “Go get it,” I ordered.

  The kid looked at Bill. “Don’t we need, like, ID or something?”

  My hand shot across the counter and grabbed the kid’s collar. “Get the purse!” I hissed.

  “Whoa—,” Bill said. “Take it easy.”

  “Security!” the kid shrieked. “Security!”

  More heads turned. A few people glanced over midbite to see what the commotion was all about.

  “Let him go,” Bill said to me. Then: “Go get the purse, Damon.”

  I released the collar. The kid, still eyeing me warily, shuffled into the back. He emerged a moment later carrying Jennifer’s purse. I snatched it from him and poked through the contents. I produced a set of keys and held it up between white knuckles for Bill to see. In my other hand I gripped her wallet.

  “Uh-oh,” Bill said.

  I threw them back into the purse and pointed a trembling finger at Bill. I was furious. But before I could unload on him, I heard and felt my cell phone ringing in my pocket. It brought me up short. Breathing heavily, I took a step back from the counter. The phone rang again. Bill and the kid stared at me fearfully, wondering what I was going to do next.

  I took another step back and reached for my phone. For some reason, I kept my eyes on the two of them behind the Gyro Connection counter. I pressed the receive button and brought it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Mikey, I think you’ve made enough of a scene here, don’t you?”

  My mouth went dry.

  “It’s not exactly wise to attract this much attention,” Mr. Day-Glo continued. “Considering.”

  “Where is she?”

  “We’ll get to that in a sec. First things first…”

  I wheeled around, scanning the food court for him. If I saw him, I had no doubt I would kill him.

  I heard him laugh in my ear. “You’re not gonna see me, Mikey. Unless I want you to.”

  I realized that he probably wasn’t even
here. He likely had a spotter, someone I didn’t know, relaying info to him on another phone. I looked around for other people on their cell phones. There were at least a dozen. Probably more.

  “I wanna talk to her,” I said, my grip on the phone tightening.

  “I’m sure you do. In your position, so would I. But, at the moment, what you want is irrelevant.”

  I stood, breathing heavily, biting my tongue. Lashing out wouldn’t help. It could even hurt.

  “Are you listenin’, Mikey?”

  “I’m listenin’,” I replied through gritted teeth.

  “That’s good. ’Cause I’m about to give you the most important instructions you’ll ever hear in your whole life. You better pay attention.” Day-Glo paused, letting that sink in. “We want our money. You’re gonna get us our money. And Juan wants the cousin, too. Juan thinks he’s been hidin’ from him and considers that rude. Juan thinks he needs a lesson in good manners. So, you’ll personally bring us our money and the cousin.”

  “I’ve been workin’ on the cousin. He’s gone.”

  “You need to work harder.”

  “How much harder?” I asked, and closed my eyes.

  “Ah. I was gettin’ to that. You got twenty-four hours.”

  My stomach dropped. “Twenty-four hours?”

  “Good listenin’.”

  “You can’t be serious. That’s impossible—”

  “You better hope not. Our patience has run out. You’ll bring us both the money and the cousin in twenty-four hours or we’ll lose confidence in your abilities. Face it, if we don’t think you can do it, we don’t need you anymore. And if we don’t need you, we don’t need to waste our time with a weepy teenage girl.”

  “If you hurt her—”

  “Save it, Mikey. Your parental outrage doesn’t impress me. Now, don’t get any clever ideas. We have people inside both OPD and the Sheriff’s Office, not to mention the Feds. We’re deeper in now than we’ve ever been. You breathe a word of this to the cops and it’s over. You understand what I’m sayin’ here? If you say anything, and I mean anything, we’ll know. And we’ll assume that means you won’t be bringin’ us our money. This is not a bluff. Trust me. If you call the cops, we’ll make it extra bad for her. That’s a promise I can keep.”

  “How am I supposed to find him in twenty-four hours? I’ve already been lookin’ a lot longer than that with no luck. He could be in fuckin’ Hawaii right now.”

  “I dunno. That’s your job. But between you and me, you show up with the money but no cousin, Juan isn’t gonna like that. Personally, I don’t give a crap about the cousin. I just want my money. But Juan’s the boss here now and he gets his say. And I understand he has a reputation to establish. So, that’s the deal. The money and the cousin, in twenty-four hours, or we start workin’ on your little girl.”

  “Jesus. Where the hell am I supposed to find a hundred and seventy-five grand?”

  “Good question. If I were you, I’d start with the cousin. But I’d start pretty damn soon, ’cause the clock started tickin’ when I called you.”

  “Where?”

  “We’ll call you when your time’s up and tell you where. When we do, your job is to get in your truck and drive as fast as you can to wherever we tell you and deliver the money and the cousin. Then you leave. We’ll release your kid and tell you where to get her. You find the money and the cousin and everything works out. Easy.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  A big sigh. “If you don’t, then you’ll be getting another cardboard box in the mail, won’t you?”

  “You son of a bitch. If you touch a hair on her head—”

  “Manners, Mikey, please. Just get me my money. I’m pullin’ for ya. Really. I’ll be in touch. Make sure your phone battery’s charged and make sure it’s on when I call back in twenty-four hours. You do not want to miss my call.”

  “Let me talk to her,” I barked. “I need to know she’s alright.”

  “Say good-bye now, Mikey.”

  “Let me talk to—”

  Click.

  He was gone.

  I let out an involuntary, guttural roar and squeezed the phone until my hand trembled. Then I swallowed and slowly lowered the phone, staring at it dumbly. Somewhere deep in the primitive-lizard part of my brain, I blamed the phone for the call I had just received. I wanted to scream and throw it with all my might at the enormous picture of a gyro glowing directly in front of me. I wanted to smash it with a mallet, to hurl it through the plate-glass windows, to grind the pieces between my teeth. I wanted to howl until my voice gave out. I wanted to lash out and destroy with an intensity I had never felt before.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I became immobile. Catatonic. I swallowed again. The phone’s display said PRIVATE NUMBER. I blinked at it and finally looked up.

  I stood there in the middle of the mall food court, surrounded by three hundred chattering people eating burgers and tacos, and I felt horribly, profoundly alone.

  CHAPTER 29

  Not knowing what else to do, I got back in my truck. I sat for a moment, feeling like I should drive somewhere. But where?

  Maybe the Orlando Police Department headquarters. I could take Big Jim aside and tell him what was going on. But he would have to tell someone. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t keep it confidential. Not something like this. There would need to be a meeting. A red-team task force. A primary investigator. A logistics officer. A public affairs rep. A SWAT team on standby. A hostage negotiation expert. Since it was a kidnapping, he’d have to call in the FBI. There were procedures to follow. Protocols. A kidnapping like this was a big deal.

  What Mr. Day-Glo had said about having people on the inside gave me chills. When I’d arrested Juan the Don a few years ago, we had discovered a disturbing web of informants and cops on the take. Two Orange County deputies, one OPD sergeant, a local ATF agent, an FBI agent in Tampa, and another in New York, all getting fat off mob money. At the time, it was a more than adequate network to get wind of a kidnapping task force. If Day-Glo was telling the truth about having even more assets on the inside now, then they would know about it almost as soon as I would.

  If he was telling the truth. That was the central question. Sitting here in my truck, trying to decide what to do, it all hinged on whether I thought Day-Glo was bluffing. I had no doubt that he was telling the truth about hurting Jennifer. If he found out that I had gone to the cops, I knew that I would indeed receive Jennifer’s severed head in a box. I clenched my eyes and shook my head, trying to jar the gruesome image from my mind.

  But he might never know. If he was lying about his reach inside, then he would never know about the task force. I would also make sure I told Big Jim, and even the chief, that they might be compromised and to tightly control the information. But who was I kidding? OPD headquarters was gossip central. There was no way they would be able to put a lid on everything. Something would slip out, and if Alomar or Mr. Day-Glo had someone inside, it would be too late.

  Was that a chance I was willing to take? Was I willing to gamble Jennifer’s life on a guess that Mr. Day-Glo was lying? And, either way, was I willing to put her life in the hands of others, especially if I didn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut?

  It wasn’t that I thought they were incompetent. Far from it. My former colleagues at OPD were professionals. They knew what they were doing and I respected them. I had spent my career in their ranks and knew that they would take Jennifer’s kidnapping as seriously as if it were their own daughter. I also knew that not involving them risked not having all the intelligence I might need. For all I knew, they were already in the midst of a massive investigation of Juan Jr. and knew where he was right now. They might even have ongoing internal affairs investigations and could potentially know who the suspected informants were. Knowing who the informants were meant that they could be cut out of the loop.

  But there was only one way to find out if they had that intelligence, and that was to tell them. This was
a bad spot to be in. Whatever I decided, I wouldn’t know if it was the right answer until it was all over.

  However, I was dealing with a situation I knew as well as anyone. During the MBI investigation, in my undercover role, I had been accepted within the Alomar crime world. First as a customer, then as a low-level operative, recruiting other customers, being allowed access to information about other activities besides illegal gambling.

  I knew these guys better than anyone else currently on the force. No one was more qualified to talk to them, to think like them, to go up against them, than me. These guys were actually fairly simple to understand. Their motivations were greed and power.

  I wouldn’t get Jennifer back by having a SWAT sharpshooter put a bullet through a window. These guys were too smart for that.

  Plus—and this was what it all boiled down to, wasn’t it?—I did believe Day-Glo when he said he had people on the inside.

  I had made my decision.

  Maybe, if my time was running out and I had no other options, I’d call the FBI. There was no way I was telling Alomar that I didn’t have the money. That would be Jennifer’s death sentence. The FBI might supply me with the cash for a drop. They had done it before. Pay the kidnappers, stall for time, keep the hostage alive, and try to nab the bad guys after the drop. Maybe the Feds could even supply me with a TJ look-alike to accompany me. That was what I’d do when I had no other options. But, at the moment, I still had one other option.

  I could find TJ.

  I put the truck in gear and headed for Arlene Sommerset’s house.

  * * *

  I had just pulled out of the mall when my cell phone rang, jolting me from my thoughts. My body gave a startled jerk and I fumbled in the seat to find the phone. The number had an 828 area code. I didn’t recognize it. Fearing who it might be, I pressed ANSWER.

  “Hello?” I said into the receiver.

  “Mike, why haven’t you called me back?”

  I held my breath. It was Becky, apparently calling from the cabin in North Carolina.

  “Becky,” I said as a greeting.

  “So what’s going on? Is everything alright?”

  There was a loaded question if I ever heard one. Hell no, everything was not alright. But I wasn’t about to tell Becky that. If she had any idea the kind of danger Jennifer was now in, she would lose her mind. And she would never trust me to handle this alone. She would be on the phone calling every law enforcement agency, congressman, and senator. And she would not be satisfied until she saw Tomahawk cruise missiles launched against enemy positions in and around Orlando. Telling Becky the truth might be the single fastest way to get Jennifer killed.