Fat chance!
The boy grinned as he leaned forward, finding Cazzio’s rhythm, once again. For a glorious minute, he felt that soaring warrior feeling, aloof, alone and free…
It didn’t last.
Cazzio stumbled… then stumbled again. The sound of his breathing was changing. Instead of snorting, the horse was wheezing, the air in his lungs making a bubbling sound as if leaking through a secondary exit.
“What’s wrong? You hurt?”
Will spoke into the stallion’s ear. As he leaned over Cazzio’s neck, he saw that bubbles had joined the plumes of steam coming from the animal’s nostrils. The boy’s nose isolated a metallic taste in the air.
Blood!
Cazzio had been shot, Will realized. The bullet had gone into the horse’s lungs, judging from the bloody bubbles, but Cazzio’s heart was so big that he’d continued running.
“Stop, it’s okay. I’ll call a vet!”
Will pulled back on the braided mane but Cazzio wouldn’t stop even though he was slowing. Because Will had once possessed an uncommon horse-Blue Jacket-he understood what was happening, and the knowledge created a vacuum pain beneath his heart.
Cazzio would continue running, no matter what. He would run and run, and keep running, until the last of his life had seeped away.
The fence marking the edge of the pasture was ahead. Cazzio had ten lengths on the car but was now struggling between a gallop and a canter. Will leaned low, like a jockey, and didn’t realize he was crying until his voice broke when he called, “Go!… Go!… Go!”
At the fence, Cazzio rallied, marshaling speed. His body swooped low before attempting takeoff, ascending, but with difficulty, fighting gravity’s terrible weight, and his front hooves clipped the top railing of the fence.
The horse was still ahead of the Chrysler when he landed and gained another length before his rear legs buckled.
Will anticipated the fall. He threw himself clear as the horse crashed head-first into the weeds, then made a high-pitched whinny of frustration.
As Will got to his feet, he stared at Cazzio for a moment but had to turn away. The horse was on his side, blood pouring from a wound in his chest. His legs were moving, clawing at weeds and empty air, still trying to run.
Above, on the overpass, the Chrysler had stopped, headlights bright. Seconds later, another car pulled in. Will guessed it was the man the Cubans had mentioned, the one they’d been waiting for.
Will was ducking beneath the lights and starting for the trees when he heard Cazzio whinny again. The cry was different this time. It communicated fear.
Will looked and saw that the horse’s eyes were wide and wild, terrified. He could also see two men working their way down the rock ledge, Metal-eyes, with his gun, in the lead.
It didn’t matter. Will ran to Cazzio and knelt beside him, his hands kneading the loose skin on the stallion’s neck.
The boy was whispering, “I’ll take you away from this. It’ll all be okay,” when Metal-eyes got close enough to say to Will, “Move-or I’ll shoot you, too.”
13
Even from a distance, I could see a horse’s bloated body lying in a clearing on the far side of a fence.
White fence, gray horse. Conspicuous on a landscape of hills and winter oaks. At dusk, in January, rural Long Island was as colorless as a woodcut on parchment.
The horse had been shot, maybe while jumping the fence, maybe as he touched down. It was possible that Will Chaser had been aboard.
The animal lay in waist-high sedge, his body mass creating an indentation in the grass. Tail and mane were darker than the Appaloosa spots on his rump. He had been dead for at least eight hours, but vapor continued condensing on his coat as heat dissipated from his body.
We had crossed a hundred yards of pasture. Behind us was one of Long Island’s elite equestrian estates, Shelter Point: dressage ring, boarding barn, breeding lab, staff quarters, forty acres of white fencing, a castle-sized mansion in the distance, an orange wind sock that told me the horsey set used private jets.
The practice arena was patched with snow. Jump stations were fabricated with a theatrical precision that reminded me of a miniature golf course.
A quarter mile down the road was a farmhouse where Shelter Point’s manager lived. Beside it was a semitrailer converted to haul horses in style. The trailer was hooked to a new Range Rover, which was typical of the area, opulence that was elaborately, unmistakably, aggressively understated. Welcome to the Hamptons, a cluster of villages, beach estates and ranches that, for most property owners, constituted the most expensive hobbies in the Western Hemisphere.
Ahead of us, the fence’s top rail had snapped midcenter. It looked as if someone might have hit it with a sledgehammer, but the horse had busted it as he jumped the fence-or attempted to jump the fence.
The fence was five feet high. Heavy two-by-sixes bolted to posts. Solid and unforgiving-obviously.
The horse had ended up twenty yards beyond the fence, to the right of the break. Looked as if he caught the top rail with a hoof, then struggled a few strides trying to recover before he fell.
But it wasn’t the fall that had killed the horse. The FBI agent who’d met us at an East Hampton jetport had already provided some details. That night, around ten p.m., a 911 call was placed from a stable near the manager’s house, but the phone went dead before the operator heard the caller’s voice. The operator made the required call back and the manager answered-the number had been forwarded to his cell, he told her. He was in town, no one was at the ranch, so maybe he’d sat on his phone wrong.
When the manager got home, though, he called 911 and said he needed police, it was an emergency.
Police discovered that the phone line had been ripped from an outside wall of a barn. Inside was evidence of a fight, and the ranch’s prize hunter-jumper stallion was missing. They’d found the horse’s body only four hours ago.
The evidence was still fresh, but it was a difficult scene to read. That’s why the agent, Jibreel Sudderram, wanted to have another look. The FBI had instructed Sudderram to let us tag along because a powerful senator had insisted.
“I heard the boy was a competent horseman,” Sudderram had said as we drove from the airstrip, his inflection asking if we knew anything else about Will Chase.
I did. During the flight, I’d slept for a while, then made phone calls. I’d spoken with one of the boy’s former teachers and also to Ruth and Otto Guttersen. Most of the information came from Otto, a crippled ex-wrestler who seemed to genuinely care about the kid. As we talked, the smart-assed teen became a person-complex, troubled, gifted, tough, tricky and, most all, different.
All three said that about the boy: “Will is different.”
I told the FBI agent that Chaser was more than just a decent horseman, he’d been a rising star on the Oklahoma junior-rodeo circuit.
“I suppose they take rodeo seriously in that region.”
I said, “Chaser was qualifying for senior competitions before he was thirteen. At a regular school, the equivalent would be a seventh grader playing varsity football starting at quarterback.”
William Chaser had lived on three reservations and in six different homes before he was twelve, I told the agent. “The only consistent thing in his life was working on ranches. A former teacher said the boy’s a better barrel rider and roper than most men.”
“Barrel riding… He was that good, huh?”
I said, “Hopefully, he still is,” and paid close attention to the agent’s shielded reaction. The man had seen or heard something that convinced him the boy was dead or soon would be.
Because the agent noticed, he amended, “That was a slip. We’re not even sure the boy was in the area. But some strange things took place last night… or early this morning, more likely. We’re still putting it together.”
I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t convinced. Using the past tense might have been careless but it wasn’t accidental. And there was a reason we’d
seen a pair of helicopters working both shorelines as we landed and why there were police cruisers and unmarked cars on most of the roads.
Long Island’s eastern tip forks like a lobster’s claw. The South Fork is a summer retreat, not a winter destination. From the air, the estates had looked as deserted as the shoreline, miles and miles of beach where for two hundred years whalers hunted.
What surprised me was the wild landscape, acres of wooded hills, swamps, kettle ponds and corn stubble. Before today, when I heard the name Long Island, I pictured Brooklyn slums, not a hundred miles of glaciated seacoast, dunes and archaic farms.
I hoped Will Chaser was still alive and on the loose. There was space here to hide from men who had every reason to kill him. Seeing a roadful of cops might not lure a boy with his background from hiding. He had been arrested twice for dealing grass and was also suspected of growing it. And he’d almost gone to jail for stealing a quarter-million-dollar horse. I had discovered all that and more about William J. Chaser, J for Joseph.
The kid was a survivor. The more I learned, the more I wanted to meet him. Not just to save him-I am a rescuer by nature, or so I’m told-but to find out how the boy had managed to escape, if he had indeed escaped. He was unusual and I wanted to know how… and why.
“It’s because you see yourself in the kid,” Tomlinson had told me on the plane. “Or want to. Not all homeless kids are functioning, independent adults by the time they’re sixteen. You were. Maybe Will is, too. But it’s unfair to hang those kind of expectations on him, man.”
I had chided Tomlinson, accusing him of being in a foul mood because the plane didn’t serve booze. That’s what got him started. Maybe he read my refusal to debate as an admission of guilt. Or disinterest. Whatever the reason, it irritated him and he pressed the issue.
“If Will outsmarts the people who snatched him, it validates you, Doc. If he’s too tough for them to break, it validates your totally unsympathetic view of what makes a man strong. Of what constitutes ballsiness in a real man.”
When I replied, “Are you thirsty or just going through withdrawal?,” his irritation escalated a notch.
“I’m talking about your definition of manhood, not mine. You say you’re interested in the boy because he’s different? Baloney. You have no interest whatsoever in people who are really different: old souls with artistic sensibilities, a telekinetic awareness of other dimensions and previous lives.”
I shouldn’t have smiled, because he interpreted my skepticism as derision.
“Laugh all you want, but you’re too honest to say it’s not true. If the kid really is different, it’s not because he has unusual qualities. It’s because he lacks the common qualities that make people human. That’s what you’re hoping anyway. It fits with your Darwinian, no-emotion, no-excuses, start-thinking, quit-whining view of what constitutes a competent male. Competent: the ultimate compliment when you speak of a man. Did you realize that?”
I had almost finished the thought, “Next trip, I pack a pint of rum instead of extra socks…,” but Tomlinson’s voice drowned me out.
“I knew you were hooked the moment you said the kid fired back at you, the way your eyes lit up. Then, on the phone, Otto Guttersen saying the boy was as fearless as an alley cat. Self-reliant, independent. Doesn’t take shit off anybody. What it sounds like to me is, the boy’s a certifiable thug if someone gets in his way or crosses him, because you two share the same simple rules of life: The weak survive only if the strong prevail. And all damn quitters should be eaten like breadsticks along life’s highway.
“You don’t think I know why you’re pulling for young Will Chaser, Doc? What you see as ‘different,’ others might define as ‘deviant.’ If the kid’s anything like he’s been described, you two are like peas in a fucking pod!”
Tomlinson calmed a little when I said, “He’ll need to be shrewder than I was at fourteen to survive. And a lot tougher to stay sane if they do what they’re threatening to do.”
It was unfair to play a rational, serious card while Tomlinson was on one of his irrational tirades venting because of the stress.
But he laughed when I added, “What might help you is attending a meeting. You stand up and say, ‘Hi, my name’s Sighurdhr.’ ”
I pronounced it correctly-Sea- guard -er-which was risky because few people know his first name. He thought the name was pretentious, he had once confided. Associated it with his aristocratic roots and the privileged, yacht-club society he had spent his adult life denouncing.
I knew Tomlinson was okay when he responded with a cheerful, “Screw you!,” then resumed his nervous finger drumming, twisting and gnawing at a strand of his hair.
He was right about a couple of things, though. The kid had his hooks in me. Whether he was different or deviant, I was interested. Science is fueled by anomalies. I am driven accordingly.
I had learned something else while on the phone: William J. Chaser scared people. Ruth Guttersen had told me the boy sometimes made her nervous but sounded more than nervous when she explained, “He’s a completely different child when he gets mad. He’s so… silent!”
His teacher tried to hide it, too, but twice during our conversation paused to remind me, “This conversation is confidential, right? You’re not going to tell Will… Right? ”
The information provided me with a secret, speculative hope… until just before we landed when my phone rang.
It was Harrington. A security camera outside the Explorers Club had produced grainy images of the kidnappers. One was Choirboy. But the FBI couldn’t identify the other two.
Harrington’s sources could. No surprise. They had access to cross-reference files that included people the FBI had no reason to log.
“The Cuban Program,” Harrington said. “How much do you know?”
I knew enough to feel an adrenal charge.
“Castro trained three interrogators. All graduated from medical school, University of Havana. The staff that worked for them varied, but one of the three took on an apprentice late in the game. Vietnam, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan-the team got around. Twenty years spent learning their craft.”
“Medical research,” I said. I meant “experiments”-an attempt at maintaining code protocol.
“The campers gave them nicknames. That’s never been made public.”
Campers were POWs.
Harrington asked, “Remember the Nestle’s commercial, the ventriloquist-nice guy, seemed like-and Farfel?”
A floppy-eared puppet came into my mind, Farfel the dog. Snap a wooden ruler on a table, that was the sound Farfel made when his mouth slapped shut. “Choc-laaaate”- snap.
“One of the interrogators had the same mannerism,” Harrington told me. “He clicked his teeth to make a point. Farfel: His real name is Rene Navarro.”
Another interrogator was nicknamed Hump because of a subcutaneous horn growing from his forehead-a pathology less rare in the Caribbean than in other parts of the world.
“In the security photo, Hump should be a lot older,” Harrington said. “Either Hump hasn’t aged or Farfel is using Hump’s son. A relative maybe.
Or a Soviet special edition: part human, part something else. They tried that, you know.”
Yes, I knew.
Harrington had given physical descriptions to the FBI, minus details about the Cuban Program. There’d been rumors, but the information was still classified. “Not many POWs survived, but the few left don’t want it made public what Farfel and the other two did to them. The Americans called them Malvados, a Spanish word.”
Fiends. I didn’t have to ask why.
I said, “You’re sure about this.” I was thinking, They’ll torture the boy before he dies. Just for fun.
“I’m convinced. It’s their way of showing they’re serious about getting the library. It’s political.” Harrington’s warning tone again.
I said, “Screw protocol. A fourteen-year-old boy from Oklahoma is alone with Soviet-trained sociopaths.” Damn
. “The gloves come off, right?”
Harrington said, “Rules are rules,” then switched subjects, his way of closing the door. He was asking, “Did you see the news story about the football player they thought drowned?,” as I hung up.
As we crossed the pasture, Frederick Gardiner, who managed the ranch and had trained horses for forty years, told us, “Reason Long Island’s warmer here on the South Fork is ’cause the ocean pushes the snow up island. Gulf Stream sweeps close to the Springs, from away down by Florida-like you three.” He chuckled, surprised by the accidental irony, a man unaccustomed to making jokes.
The FBI agent told him, “I thought I mentioned that I’m from Boston, Mr. Gardiner. These men work for Senator Hayes-Sorrento, not the agency.”
The horseman stopped. He tossed a blanket over the shoulder of his Barbour jacket, gray hair showing beneath his wool hat. “Boston, eh?”
“Near Concord, like I told you. It couldn’t have been more than an hour ago.”
“Well, maybe so, but Boston’s Boston. And maybe you heard me mention I’d appreciate not hearing no smart comments about the Yankees, if you happen to be a Red Sox man. Don’t think I didn’t notice that sticker on your vehicle. Now here you are back again.”
When I started to laugh, Tomlinson elbowed me. Gardiner had already exceeded his joke quota. The man was serious.
“Red Sox people, they always got some damn smart remark. A way of being clever, I suppose, to those b’low the bridge, but they’ll get no smile from me. Which I think you should be aware of, Mr… Mr… .” He’d lost the name. “Oh, here we are. Why you gotta take another look at the saddest thing that ever happened here, it don’t make no sense to me.”
It was a little after six but felt later because of a waxen light that blew off the North Atlantic. We had stopped at the broken fence. Death creates its own silence, a silence with boundaries that extend beyond the body mass of the corpse. We stood without speaking for a minute. I got the feeling Gardiner would have been offended if we’d scrambled over the fence to get closer.
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