“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Everything’s fine.”
“Jennifer’s okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Uh, no. You caught me in the truck. Jennifer’s not here.” Technically, this was not a lie. There was a pause.
“How’s everything going?” Becky asked. “Between you two. Is it alright?”
“Sure. It’s fine. We had a bumpy start, but, y’know, it’s okay now.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that. This is important for both of you.”
“Right. I know.”
“Mike, I know you didn’t want to do this, but—”
“Hey, Becky, I’m about to drive through a thunderstorm here. I should get off the phone. I’ll probably lose you anyway.”
“Oh. Okay—”
“I’ll call you back tomorrow or something, okay?”
“Um, I suppose. I’d like to talk to Jennifer—”
“Sure. We’ll call you back. How long are you stayin’ up north?”
“Another week.”
“Okay. Talk to you soon. Gotta go.”
“Bye—”
I hung up, cringing at my blatant misrepresentation. I didn’t like lying to her, but I didn’t have a choice. I’d made my decision about what I was going to do to get Jennifer back, and Becky would never understand. When we were married, she barely trusted me to take out the garbage. She would never trust me to handle this.
But as I drove, I became more convinced that I was doing the right thing. Maybe it was ego or rationalization, but I honestly felt that going solo was the least risky course. I was an experienced law enforcement professional. I knew the Alomar operation better than anyone else. Plus, even contemplating the idea that I could be wrong was too horrible to imagine.
A few minutes later I pulled into the brick circular drive of the Sommerset villa in Isleworth. Arlene answered the door wearing dark blue sweats. Her evening lounging clothes. She was surprised to see me. And even more surprised by my punched-up face.
“Mike—my God. What happened?”
“Nothin’. I’m okay.”
“What is it?” she asked, reading my expression. “Is it TJ?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
We sat in the living room. She leaned forward, studying me with concern. I suppose I wasn’t doing a very good job of masking my emotions.
“I need the truth, Arlene. This is critical. Have you heard from TJ?”
“What is it, Mike? You’re scaring me.”
“The truth, Arlene. I mean it. Have you heard from TJ?”
She hesitated and narrowed her eyes. “No.”
“Do you have any idea, any wild guess, where he could be?”
“You’ve asked me these questions before.”
“I’m asking again. I need to know.”
“No. I have no idea where he is. Maybe back in the desert. I can’t tell you any more than that.”
I felt the air go out of me. I believed she was telling the truth.
“What’s going on, Mike?”
I rubbed my face in my hands, feeling the tender bruise under my eye. “I’m in trouble, Arlene.”
“How?”
“If I don’t find TJ and produce a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in the next twenty-four hours, they’ll kill Jennifer.”
She blinked, not sure she heard me right. “What?”
I glared at her. She’d heard me alright.
“Oh my God. You’re serious. Oh my God. Who?”
“Eddie’s friends.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No.”
“For God’s sake, why not?”
“Because it’s quite possible that there are people inside the police department, and the FBI, who are actually workin’ for the mob.”
“No…” She shook her head. “You have to call them.”
“I can’t. I can’t take that chance.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. Not for sure. But there’s history there. It’s just too dangerous. If I call and they find out, they’ll kill her.”
“What—what are you going to do?”
“Arlene, I’m desperate.” I took a deep breath. “Can you get your hands on that kind of cash?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“All of it? One seventy-five?”
“Yeah.”
“I—I don’t know. I’ve never had to.”
“Will you try?”
She swallowed and stared wide-eyed at me. She managed a slight nod. “I’ll try.”
I felt my eyes well with tears. I quickly blinked them away.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What does TJ have to do with this?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Don’t they just want their money?”
“They do. But they wanna talk to TJ, too.”
“Why?” her voice was becoming shrill with concern.
“I’m not sure, Arlene. I just have to find him.” I took her hand. “Look at me. I promise I won’t let anything happen to your son.”
She forced a weak smile through her trembling lips.
“How will you find him?” she asked.
“I’m still workin’ on that.”
She placed her free palm on my cheek. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“The rest is up to me,” I said, shaking my head. “Although”—I released her hand and stood—“a coupla Hail Marys couldn’t hurt.”
CHAPTER 30
Two more calls to TJ from my cell phone were typically useless, each one connecting only with his voice mail. I left two urgent messages and raced back to my apartment, the truck’s wheels barely touching the road.
Once inside, I found what I was looking for on the kitchen counter. Eddie’s phone. The only time I had actually spoken to TJ was when I’d called him on his cousin’s cell phone. Although TJ now knew that Eddie was dead and I had his phone, I was desperate. I realized that TJ would probably now ignore a call from Eddie’s phone just as if it were a call from mine. Yeah, it was a long shot, but it was all I had.
I punched in the number and pressed SEND. A few rings later I heard the familiar sounds of TJ’s voice-mail message. I cringed and clenched my jaw. My thumb jabbed the END button fiercely, also pressing the MENU button next to it. The phone’s display screen changed to a scrollable list of choices: SOUND OPTIONS, ADDRESS BOOK, CALL DATA, TEXT MESSAGES, SECURITY, DIALING PREFERENCES. I blinked at the display for a moment, about to press the BACK button. But then I had an idea.
I pressed ADDRESS BOOK. I scrolled through the stored names and numbers. I recognized a few. Eddie’s mother. TJ. I didn’t see anything that looked like what I was hoping for: specifically, a listing for Alomar or one of his operatives. Eddie had probably been gambling illegally long enough to know some basics—such as always memorize your bookie’s number and never save it in your phone. I thought that maybe I would get lucky and figure out where Alomar was, giving me some type of advantage. Perhaps I could stake out the location, see if I could spot Jennifer, then decide whether to bring in the cops. I could call the SWAT team leader directly. It was unlikely he was compromised.
But it didn’t look like I was gonna get that lucky. The address book was no help. I then wondered if Eddie was smart enough to delete his stored numbers. Most phones store all recent incoming and outgoing calls, even if they aren’t saved in the address book. If Eddie had called Alomar recently, the number might still be in the call list.
I next pressed CALL DATA from the menu. On the submenu I chose OUTGOING CALLS. I cursed silently. For a kid who made a lot of dumb mistakes in his life, Eddie was smart about covering his tracks. The only outgoing calls stored were the two I had placed to TJ’s cell number since I’d acquired Eddie’s phone. Damn. Eddie had cleared the list before he died.
I pressed BACK and returned to the CALL DATA submenu. On mos
t phones, the stored incoming and outgoing calls are cleared at the same time. But, just to be sure, I selected the INCOMING CALLS option. To my knowledge, there had only been one incoming call in all the time I had Eddie’s phone—the call from TJ.
So, my hope faded when only one number appeared on the INCOMING CALLS screen. I closed my eyes and tried to control my breathing. I leaned back against the kitchen counter.
Opening my eyes, I looked back down at the phone, hoping I had been mistaken. But there was still only the one number. I pressed BACK twice to return to the main menu. Just as I was about to select BACK again to reach the default phone display, my thumb froze suspended over the keypad. Something was wrong.
What was it? My subconscious seemed to be moving quicker than the rest of my brain. For some reason, I couldn’t press BACK again. So I returned to the INCOMING CALLS screen and looked again at the one number displayed. The date and time were precisely when TJ had called the other day.
But the number was not his cellular number.
I hadn’t immediately registered the difference. I had been expecting to see TJ’s cell number, so that’s what I thought I saw. Plus, and this was the part that made my hand begin to tremble, the area code was the same as TJ’s cell phone: Orlando’s 407. But the rest of the number was completely different.
Assuming that TJ wasn’t calling on another Orlando-based cell phone I didn’t know about, this implied that, as of the time he made the call, TJ was still in town. My heart began thudding in my chest. TJ seemed to be displaying a genuine reluctance to leave Central Florida. First, he had hidden out at his mother’s house. Then, he had apparently remained in the area at least through a few days ago. Was it possible that he was still in town right now?
One way to find out. I selected the number and pressed the SEND button.
Eddie’s phone told me that it was connecting. Then I heard it ringing. My heart pounded in my rib cage as the ringing continued. I let it ring for a long time. Twenty times. Thirty times. I had no idea. But it was clear that no one was answering. I disconnected.
When I was on the job, it was easy to run down a number and get whatever info I needed from it. But I no longer had that kind of access. I could ask for another favor from Big Jim, but to have him do it now, after dark, with the kind of urgency I needed, meant that I would have to tell him why. And I’d have to be honest. And he would have to do what he had to do and inform the proper folks inside the department. And Jennifer might soon be dead.
I wasn’t ready to take that chance yet. There was another, simpler way.
A few steps later I was in my bedroom, pressing on the power of my seldom-used computer. It booted up and I double-clicked the icon for the Web browser. The computer had been a gift from Cam while we were still married, and according to Jennifer, it was now hopelessly out-of-date. But for the occasional letter or e-mail message, it suited me fine.
I punched up a search engine and quickly found one of a hundred Web telephone directories. I picked one that specifically mentioned a reverse phone-number lookup. I entered the stored number from Eddie’s phone and hit SEARCH.
The site processed for a moment before returning an enigmatic “The requested number is not listed. For advanced features, click here.”
Not listed … I considered for a beat and clicked here.
A page informed me that additional number data were available only to registered members. Registration was free and easily accomplished by completing a simple, Web-based form. I agreed and supplied the information. Basically, they wanted my name and e-mail address. They could have whatever they wanted, for all I cared. Salary, Social Security number, shoe size, whatever.
I navigated back to the site’s home page and retried the search. This time I received a slightly different response: “The requested number is not in our database. It is listed under BellSouth Corporation, Orlando, Florida.”
BellSouth? Was TJ calling from a BellSouth office? They were all over town, but it didn’t make any sense. Plus, it was unlisted.… I pondered this for a second before it hit me—
A pay phone.
I quickly returned to the search engine, and one short query later I found myself on an amazingly thorough site that offered locations for pay phones all across the country. It seemed to be someone’s hobby gone berserk.
I found Florida in the menu and chose it. Then I entered the phone number again and clicked a GO button.
And there it was. A complete address. The phone was in front of a 7-Eleven on South Orange Blossom Trail in the heart of Orlando’s red-light district. From my years in a patrol car and working cases, I knew right where it was.
I bolted from the apartment and peeled out of the parking lot, roaring down Sand Lake Road at highly illegal speeds. I made a squealing left turn onto OBT and raced through traffic, weaving around slower-moving cars. I slid in behind a Lynx county bus and got a faceful of diesel exhaust. The bus pulled away, revealing the 7-Eleven. I turned into the parking lot and idled, watching the phone for a moment, before deciding what to do.
A few ragged patrons entered and left the store, several taking swigs from a paper bag as they headed off down the sidewalk. This was a pretty dodgy neighborhood, populated by seedy strip clubs and hollow-eyed streetwalkers, both male and female. With so many transvestites making the rounds, sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
I’m not sure what I expected—that TJ would just happen to make a call while I sat there or maybe he was hiding out by working the Slurpee machine inside—but, unsurprisingly, nothing happened. I cut the engine, got out, and approached the phone.
As I walked, I thought that if this were the movies, I would find a slip of paper wadded up in the coin-return slot with an address on it, leading me to TJ’s precise location. But the pay phone’s coin-return slot was empty, except for a mysterious greasy residue I wiped on my jeans. I examined the phone’s surrounding canopy, looking for a scratched name or number that TJ might have left. All I found was a primitive depiction of male genitalia carved into the paint.
So much for the movies.
I picked up the phone’s receiver and shook it stupidly, before replacing it in the cradle. This was hopeless. TJ was one of a dozen people who had used this phone in the last few days and I had no reason to suspect that he had used it more than once. The idea that I would be able to discern some clue from looking at it was preposterous.
TJ had probably been driving by, stopped to use the phone, then proceeded on his merry way. He was likely long gone a long time ago.
I decided to head inside and talk to the clerk. I’d show him a picture of TJ and see if he recognized him. Maybe TJ had hung around enough to get spotted. Maybe he bought a Snickers. I turned and pulled on the door. But I didn’t go in.
Instead, my gaze landed on the building across the street and my mouth dropped open.
Of course. I should have remembered.
I didn’t need to go inside and talk to the clerk. If TJ was still in town, I now knew exactly where he was.
* * *
The Rainbow Arms called itself a resort, and I suppose, technically that’s what it was. But it was in no way a competitor to the myriad family-oriented resorts dotted across the Central Florida landscape. The Rainbow Arms catered exclusively to a clientele with “an alternative lifestyle,” mostly men.
There were two or three exclusively gay resorts in Orlando, the most notable—and reputable—being the famous Parliament House on north OBT. Even beyond the annual Gay Days event, the Orlando theme parks held a peculiar attraction for the homosexual community. And when they visited, they wanted to stay somewhere where they could be themselves, and where there was little chance of sharing a floor with uptight Midwesterners and toddlers wearing mouse ears.
The Rainbow Arms was located in the much seedier south OBT area. It had been raided a few times on vice charges, but the management couldn’t really control what happened in their rooms. I knew it from my days on the job. It had a reputa
tion of being looser than the Parliament House. A businessman with a wife and family in Omaha could check in under a false name, pay cash up front, and, for a few glorious days, finally act how he felt inside. There would be no paper record of his visit. As long as he provided some name and sufficient cash, there were no questions asked. He could walk a block in any direction from the front door and, for sixty bucks, find a date for the evening.
I knew instantly that this was where TJ was hiding. When I’d spoken to him on Eddie’s phone, he’d said that nobody would be able to find him. And he was probably right. This was really the perfect place for a teen heartthrob to disappear. Nobody would suspect he would be staying at a gay hotel. It was inconceivable to everyone but a select handful of us who knew the truth. And this wasn’t even the nicest gay hotel in town. For a kid with almost unlimited means, the choice of the Rainbow Arms would further throw pursuers off his trail.
Standing there in the 7-Eleven parking lot, I realized that it was a brilliant choice. Hiding right here in town in the last place anyone would suspect.
I hurried across the road, avoiding the barreling traffic, and made my way under the covered circular drive. In the early sixties, long before it became a gay resort, this had probably been a swinging vacation joint. The art deco architecture was so old it was stylish again, and the sea-foam-green paint looked as if it had been applied at least ten years ago. I pushed through the frosted-glass doors and into the lobby.
Speckled linoleum covered the floors. A small sitting area was separated from the registration counter by three chrome columns. Through the glass walls on the opposite side of the lobby, I could see an illuminated pool in the center of a darkened courtyard of hotel rooms. A few men were night swimming, but the courtyard was mostly empty.
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