The Holdouts (Buddy Lock Thrillers Book 2)

by James Tucker

  The rooms were dim, the curtains drawn and blocking most of the afternoon’s gray light.

  He entered the foyer, flicked the switch by the door, and the recessed lights in the ceiling came on.

  He stood without moving.

  The room beyond was barren of furniture, and the old oak floors had no rugs covering them. He walked into the other rooms: kitchen, formal dining room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. This was a very large space in Manhattan, especially for one person.

  He found nothing personal to Sloan Richardson, nothing that would tie this home to its inhabitant.

  Not so much as a toothbrush. Only a single knit ski hat, dust, paper clips, a yellow broom, and a hairbrush.

  No sign of violence. No sign of anything. It was like being in a vacant warehouse.

  As he took out his phone and dialed, he felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. Damn it, he thought. I’m too fucking late.

  68

  Ward sat in the front passenger seat of Brick’s Tesla, watching someone. Brick had a hand on the wheel, but they weren’t moving.

  When Ward’s phone rang, he checked the screen and answered. “Buddy?”

  “Yeah.” His brother’s voice, softer than usual.

  Ward said, “You okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Buddy didn’t answer, but Ward could hear his breathing.

  After a moment, Buddy asked, “Would you call your Swiss banker and ask him if there’s been another deposit in Mario’s account?”

  “Did something happen?”

  “Later,” Buddy said, ending the call.

  Ward sat quietly, studying the entrance to the building into which the man had walked. He was more than a block away and hoped he hadn’t missed anything. In the weak winter light, anything was possible.

  After dialing the number, Ward held the phone to his ear.

  “Zurich Cantonal Bank, Helmut Borer speaking.”

  Ward looked at his enormous watch and calculated the time in Switzerland. “Good evening, Helmut. I have a favor to ask of you.”

  Hearing only silence on the line, Ward continued, “I need you to check Mario Mingo’s account once more.”

  “Mr. Mills,” Helmut Borer began. “This is highly irregular. I—”

  “Must I bring up the excellent service that Credit Suisse has offered me?”

  More silence on the other end of the line.

  Ward could picture the pale-faced banker’s narrow lips pressed together in anger. He hung up, set the phone on the car’s dashboard, and stared at the building entrance. He turned to Brick. “Did we miss him?”

  Brick’s blond hair covered part of his face, but Ward could see the former surfer’s eyes were focused on the building. “No,” Brick said, “he’s in there.”

  69

  Sloan Richardson’s life, wiped clean.

  Much too clean, Buddy thought. And too fast.

  He believed that yesterday when he’d seen Sloan Richardson in the hallway, these rooms had held furniture, rugs, paintings or posters on the walls, dishes and utensils in the sink, food in the refrigerator, bottles of wine or beer, personal effects in the bathrooms, a computer. Someone had cleaned it out, and in a hurry.

  A killer.

  Or someone who could order killers to take the life of a young woman who’d done nothing except prevent others from getting their hands on millions of dollars. Sloan Richardson, he reminded himself, had been the last holdout at the Nanjing building.

  The falling value of human life, Buddy thought angrily.

  He returned to the living room, opened the blinds, and turned around. The space was as empty in natural light. Striding to the doorway to leave, he caught himself.

  No, not yet.

  He’d gone as far as most would go, but he was patient. He knew that if the medical examiner ruled Sloan Richardson’s death the result of murder, a crime scene unit would be here in no time. But he doubted they’d find anything. The cleaner had been a pro.

  But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find something. He saw things others, even CSU teams, didn’t.

  Maybe, he thought. Maybe.

  He turned and started going through the condo a second time, beginning in the smallest bedroom. He opened the blinds and examined the walls, the ceiling, the oak floorboards, the space between the radiator and the wall. He checked the closet, running his hands across the shelves. Finding nothing but wire hangers, a belt, and a pair of Doc Martens, he proceeded to the bathroom. He rechecked the cabinets, the mirror that swung open and doubled as a medicine cabinet. But there was nothing. He moved on to the master bedroom.

  He opened the blinds, walked across every floorboard, even bending over and pressing on them where they were coming apart slightly in the dry winter air. But they held fast. He went into the closet and checked every built-in shelf. He found nothing. He looked up at the ceiling, walking back and forth across the room, but there was no water damage and no displaced or discolored plaster. It was evenly white. He checked the walls. A few minor nicks. Small holes in the center of most of the walls, evidence of picture hangers. The paintings or posters hadn’t been in place long enough to show a difference in the color of the walls where they’d hung. Below the window stood the radiator.

  Unlike the radiators in the other rooms, this one was covered by a wooden box enameled in white. He stood over it, arching his neck to see behind the box, but it was flush against the wall. He moved left and right, to see if there was a gap between the box and the wall at either end, but he saw no gap. Crouching down, he gripped the sides of the box and pulled. It held fast. Somehow, he knew, the iron radiator had to be connected to the building’s heating system via a pipe that ran under the floor or in the wall. That pipe had to be accessible to the super or a plumber to bleed off any excess air in the pipes. He guessed the pipe would be on the left side of the box, and he sat on the floor there and studied the box. A faint line showed the border of a side panel.

  Reaching out, he worked his fingertips around the panel’s edges and pulled until it came free.

  As he set the panel to the side and looked through the opening, he saw the dull glimmer of iron poured long ago that must be filled with more than a half century of sediment. Yet the radiator still worked. He could feel the heat emanating from the piping. And hidden to the left of the iron, flat against the oak floor, lay a white envelope.

  70

  With his latex gloves, Buddy picked up the envelope carefully. He examined it. The back flap was unsealed. No writing marred its crisp exterior. He turned up the back flap and peered inside.

  He saw two pieces of paper. Or rather, one piece of paper, folded, and one small photograph.

  He removed the photograph first. It was the color image of a baby, perhaps six months old, perhaps slightly less. The baby was fat and smiling and pretty, and wore a pink dress with ruffles down the front. She had dark eyes, light-brown hair, and chubby bare feet. A woman in a lime-green skirt or dress and also barefoot held up the child’s arms so the baby could stand on an Oriental rug that was green and black. He stared at the rug, thinking he’d recently seen one like it. But then he noticed that around the woman’s right wrist was a distinctive silver bracelet. Continuing to search the image, he saw that the woman’s legs above the knee, and all other parts of her, were beyond the frame. The remaining details of the photograph were blurry. Buddy turned it over.

  On the back, in cursive and in blue ink, were the words: Sloan, five months.

  Buddy dropped the photograph into the envelope and took out the folded piece of paper, which was smaller than letter-sized. When he unfolded it, he recognized it immediately.

  It was a birth certificate, noting the birth of a baby named Sloan Richardson on March 2, 1992. The certificate listed the father as Arthur Paul Richardson and the mother as Susan Chapman Richardson. It listed the baby’s place of birth as New York City. Nothing unusual there. Except there was a blank. There wasn�
��t anything written in the field for the name of the hospital where the baby was born. Maybe, Buddy thought, the baby was born at home. Or in a cab. Did it matter?

  And yet the blank put him on alert. He studied the certificate carefully. He reviewed the birth date: March 2, 1992. He saw the date of the certificate: September 18, 1992. That seemed strange to him.

  Sloan Richardson’s birth certificate had been issued more than six months after her birth.

  Buddy stared at the certificate. Then he looked again at the photograph, and the writing on the back of it: Sloan, five months.

  She must have been adopted, Buddy thought. And this photograph might be the only one showing Sloan and her biological mother. Sloan had this information, and she wanted to know more.

  If he had it right. If his guess was correct.

  Which it might not be.

  But if it were, he wondered if Sloan Richardson had been born to a New Yorker before her adoptive parents had taken her to California. Perhaps she’d grown up there, as Lin Wong had told him, and finally returned to New York as a young woman in search of her biological mother. Buddy wondered if Sloan had found her mother, had met and spoken with her. He wondered how that conversation had gone.

  He considered another possibility: Sloan hadn’t found her mother and at the time of her death had still hoped to find her.

  He took out his phone and called Mario. When his partner answered, Buddy said, “Hey, would you check on a woman named Sloan Richardson? Early or midtwenties, lived in the Nanjing building, from somewhere in California?”

  “I don’t know, Buddy. Didn’t Malone give orders not to help with this suicide case?”

  The question annoyed Buddy, although he knew he was working alone. He said, “You got something else to do?”

  “Ah, yeah, I do. Homicides.”

  Buddy thought for a moment. Then he said, “Can you help me?”

  Very slowly, Mario replied, “Chief Malone ordered me not to. He said you’ve got to stop working this shit. I mean, Jesus, Buddy. Get with the program.”

  Buddy paused to learn if partnership meant anything to Mario.

  After a moment, Mario said, “A few more days and we’ll be working together, right?”

  Buddy hung up.

  After using his phone to take photographs of the birth certificate and the baby picture, he replaced them in the envelope. He’d take the envelope with him and leave it with Henry Lee at the restaurant around the corner.

  The safest place for it, he thought. Until I know who I can trust.

  Standing, he considered the situation. The birth certificate. The photograph.

  He assumed that Sloan Richardson’s search had been cut short, had failed. Her search probably had nothing to do with the deaths of the Sungs or with her own death. But it was important to him that the young woman had wanted something badly, that she’d been trying to learn where she came from. Sloan Richardson had wanted to make a connection to her mother or father. Yet it seemed likely that she’d been murdered before she could make that connection. If her biological parents were living, they’d probably never met her as an adult and she’d remain forever lost to them. She’d reached out a hand into darkness, but no hand had taken hers.

  Buddy stared at the floor, imagining a young woman approaching her mother or father, introducing herself, asking—perhaps begging—to talk with them, to hear their voices, to feel their embrace. To regain what she’d lost so long ago, in a reunion fraught with emotion, regret, and recrimination but also, just maybe, forgiveness.

  But what if the meeting had taken place? What if, in some odd way, her death had resulted from that meeting?

  He looked at the blank wall and listened to himself breathing. He shook his head and yearned for a drink. A deep sadness surrounded him as he left the silent rooms.

  71

  Buddy closed the door to Sloan Richardson’s condo and returned to the stairs. He climbed up one level to the roof and walked outside. The cold hit him at once, and he buttoned his coat. He noticed the Nanjing building was lower than the new buildings. Not enough units for the land value, he understood. A taller building would yield more units, which would yield more money for the developer, Cromwell Properties.

  Cromwell would be his next stop.

  But first he walked to the edge of the parapet wall and looked down. He saw the crew finishing the installation of construction fencing around the building. Men in hard hats and fluorescent orange vests moved rapidly. Now that the Sungs and Sloan Richardson were gone, nothing stood in the way of the Haddon House project.

  The workmen noticed him. They looked up and motioned for him to get off the roof and get out of the building. While watching him, one of them took out a phone and began speaking into it.

  Buddy stepped back from the parapet wall before returning to the interior of the building. After going down the staircase to the foyer, he walked out onto Hester Street.

  Not having obtained a replacement car for the totaled Charger, he came to the corner and walked south on Mott Street, dropped into Henry Lee’s restaurant, and handed him the envelope for safe keeping. Henry Lee nodded and carried it to his office at the back of the restaurant.

  Outside again, Buddy felt his head throbbing with leftover pain from the concussion. He was glad to descend into the subway on Canal Street and begin the ride north. His plan was to go home, take an Advil, eat some lunch, and maybe sleep an hour before catching the management of Cromwell Properties at the end of the workday, when they couldn’t make excuses about having meetings.

  As he emerged from the subway at Seventy-Seventh Street, he walked a block south on Lexington, and then west on Seventy-Sixth toward the entrance to the Carlyle Residences. In front of him there were no cars, and on this west-to-east one-way, all traffic would be coming toward him. But his eyes roamed the sidewalk in front of him. He used his peripheral vision to check the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

  Behind him he heard the screech of tires and realized that a car was headed the wrong way. Now he heard heavy footsteps rapidly gaining on him.

  As he turned to face whatever was coming, something hit his head. He blacked out.

  72

  Forty yards behind Buddy, Ward Mills watched the white panel van’s nose tilt forward as its driver stomped on the brakes. He saw the side door slide open. He began to run when he saw the two men jump out of the van, when one of the men hit Buddy’s head with a baseball bat. He sprinted as Buddy crumpled and the men dragged Buddy into the van through the side door and the van sped toward Fifth Avenue.

  Ward couldn’t reach the white panel van in time to help his brother. But he remained calm. He’d had experience with this kind of thing before, and he was prepared.

  Instead of his typical Brioni suit, today he wore black Carhartt pants, Nike field boots, a black wool zip-up sweater, and a black North Face parka. Plus black sunglasses. This was a day he’d expected harm to come to his brother, and he was right.

  He spoke into his Bluetooth earpiece. “In front of Buddy’s building. Where are you?”

  “Right behind you!”

  He turned. Instead of his silver Range Rover, he saw Brick’s silver Tesla Model 3. It was maneuverable and could drive on sidewalks if necessary. Brick stopped the car.

  Ward climbed in the front passenger seat. “Up ahead,” he said. “White panel van turning on Fifth.”

  “Got it.”

  As the car accelerated, Ward took out his phone and dialed Ben’s number.

  No answer.

  Ward left a message, speaking calmly, as if he were in no hurry at all. “Hey, Ben. It’s Ward. When you pick this up, would you give me a call? Thanks.”

  Brick turned the corner and headed south on Fifth. “There it is!” he called.

  Ward saw the van, which was about to turn left on East Seventy-Fourth Street.

  Brick said, “Want me to get close?”

  Ward shook his head. “No, they might kill him. Stay back, but don’
t lose them. We go where they go.”

  Brick said, “And then what happens? What’s the plan?”

  Not answering, Ward looked around to the floor of the back seat. In one of the foot wells lay a duffel bag containing several handguns, ammunition, and other high-tech objects he’d packed. He examined them for a moment. When he again faced forward, he pulled back the left sleeve of his jacket and pressed the homing beacon feature of his wristwatch. A red light on its face began blinking.

  “If we get separated and I stay with Buddy, follow my beacon wherever I go, no matter the cost.”

  Brick looked over at him and nodded silently.

  Ward said, “The plan is they die, and Buddy and I don’t. But plans have gone wrong before.”

  73

  At first Buddy was aware only of his head and how much it hurt. He blinked his eyes open. Shut them. The brightness overwhelmed him. Dizziness made everything sway. Around him he heard white noise. It was loud, as if he were standing near a high-powered fan.

  What is that?

  He realized that he was sitting upright but moving. His overcoat was gone. Opening his eyes a second time, he squinted in the pale light under gray clouds. He looked down and saw what they’d done to him.

  Bungee cords tied him to a wooden chair with armrests. Bungee cords also tied the chair to a chrome-plated luggage trolley. The luggage trolley’s horizontal bar banged against his head, and he leaned right and left and forward to avoid the bar. And to learn if the cords around his arms and legs would loosen.

  But they held fast. They were so tight they hindered his circulation. His arms and legs were partly numb.

  He glanced around. A man in front of him was pulling on the vertical bar at that end of the trolley. A second man, behind him, pushed against the vertical bar at the back of the trolley. They were big guys, one huge, and dressed all in black. Both with military bearing.

  Rat Eyes and Ponytail, who threatened me in Henry Lee’s restaurant?

  He wasn’t sure. Black mountaineering face masks showed only their eyes.