Let Us Prey

by Blake Banner

  “So that leaves Emma, dos Santos, or one of his men.”

  “We’ll have to wait and see what the ME says. My money is on a .38. But the fact is that with an operator like Baxter, this could have been any one of a dozen people.”

  My cell rang. It was Emma. I showed Dehan the screen and answered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stone, it’s me. I’ve arranged it. I’m at my beach house at Napeague Park, on Long Island. Geronimo will be here at nine. Can you be here for eight?”

  “Napeague Park? That’s at the easternmost tip. It’s a three-hour drive.”

  “I know, darling. I thought, when it’s all over, we could spend a couple of days here, just you and me…”

  My mind was racing ahead of me. I spoke mechanically, without thinking. “That sounds nice, baby, but I told you, we’ll have time to discuss that afterward. First we attend to business.”

  “I know, darling. Say you’ll be here.”

  “I’ll be there. What about Tamara? I told you I wanted to meet her first.”

  “That’s why I want you here at eight. She’ll be here.”

  “Will dos Santos be alone?”

  “No, he goes everywhere with Ronaldo, his gorilla.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you at eight.”

  “And, darling?”

  “What?”

  “Be armed. These men are dangerous.”

  “Leave that to me.”

  I hung up. Dehan was watching me with a face like a hanging judge who just sat on a wasp.

  “You want to tell me what’s going down at Napeague Park, baby?”

  “A meeting, with Geronimo, Tamara, and Emma.” I told her about the portrait and the deal she wanted to make. “We need to get a wire fixed up, and backup. And we need to run this by the captain.”

  She nodded. “Go. I’ll wait for the team and the ME. You need to leave here at four thirty or you’re going to hit the rush hour. You haven’t got long. I’ll be at the briefing before you go.”

  “Okay.” I turned to go.

  As I reached the door, she said, “Stone?”

  I stopped. “Yeah?”

  “Be careful, baby.”

  “Take a hike.”

  I glanced at my watch as I climbed in my car. It was almost half one. I drove fast back to the precinct and sprinted up the stairs to the captain’s office. I knocked and went in without waiting for a reply. He looked up at me and removed his reading glasses in a way that said he was being patient because I was usually worth it.

  I sat without being invited to do so.

  “Captain, I need a wire and I need two cars out at Napeague Park. I also need the harbor patrol alerted, and I need it all in place by tonight at eight o’clock.”

  He heaved a big sigh. “It’s never a simple arrest with you, is it, Stone?”

  I shrugged. “Cold cases are cold because they are not simple, sir.”

  He nodded. It was a reluctant nod. “Okay, Stone, run me through it.”

  Dehan got back at three. I was fitted with the wire and tested, and then we had the briefing with the two backup teams. One would be concealed off Dunes Lane, two hundred yards from the house. The other would be off the Montauk Highway. Both vehicles would be unmarked off-road SUVs capable of driving over dunes. Additionally, the harbor patrol had agreed to dispatch a launch to that area of the beach. Nobody was getting away from me that night.

  At three forty-five, Dehan and the backup cars set off to take up their positions as inconspicuously as possible. I watched them leave and climbed into my Jag. As I put the key in the ignition, my cell rang. The caller ID was withheld.

  “Detective Stone.”

  “Detective Stone, it is a pleasure to speak to you.” If voices had colors, this one would have been green and slimy. “My name is Geronimo dos Santos. We are due to meet later this evening. I wonder if we could have a little, private chat beforehand.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  He laughed like I was not so much funny, as amusing. “Not over the phone, my dear fellow. No, come and see me at my hotel. We will have a civilized drink and a chat, and then we can each make our way to the meeting with Emma, at the beach house.”

  “Give me one good reason why I should.”

  He was silent for a moment. When he spoke, you could tell he was smiling. He still found me amusing. “Let us say that there are things about our hostess that you should know, before you commit yourself to this negotiation on her behalf. All you need to do, Detective, is listen to me. If you find I do not convince you, then we proceed as arranged. What have you to lose?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Where are you?”

  “At the Plaza, on Fifth Avenue, in the Royal Suite.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I headed for the Bruckner Expressway and called Dehan as I went.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Dos Santos just called me.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. He wants a meeting before the meeting. I’m going to see him at the Plaza.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Go ahead as planned. I’ll keep you posted if anything changes.”

  “Okay.”

  I parked on West 58th and made my way on foot to the Grand Army Plaza. When I asked the receptionist how to get to the Royal Suite, he raised a skeptical eyebrow at me that was rich with pseudo-nineteenth-century grandeur.

  “Are you Detective Stone?” He asked it in a generic French accent.

  “Yeah.”

  “’E is expecting you.”

  He directed me toward the elevators. I rode up to the suite, wondering why all hotel receptionists pretended to be French.

  The door to the Royal Suite was opened by something an anthropologist would have wanted to preserve and study. He was dressed in an Italian suit, but you could tell he missed his furs.

  “Stone. I’m here to see dos Santos.”

  He would have frowned, only that’s hard to do with only one eyebrow. He jerked his head, indicating I should come in, and led the way to a room that looked like a set from Downton Abbey. Geronimo dos Santos was fat. He had enough chins for a large family. He was sitting at a dark mahogany dining table that Emma would have approved of, with a bottle of champagne in a silver ice bucket by his side. He had a plate and a silver bowl in front of him, and he was stuffing his face with caviar and crackers. He glanced at me as I came in but didn’t say anything.

  Ape Man pulled out a chair for me and indicated with his hand that I should sit. Speaking was obviously not the big thing around here. I was about to tell dos Santos I was short of time when he spoke suddenly.

  “Some people,” he said, “believe it should be eaten with vodka. But in my opinion, those people are brutish. Caviar has a rich spectrum of subtle flavors. Vodka numbs our palate, so we perceive only a fraction of those delicate tones. No.” He shook his head. “We want the clean, delicate flavors of a Krug Clos d’Ambonnay, to sensitize our palate to receive the exquisite taste of the roe.”

  “Spare me your bullshit, dos Santos. What do you want?”

  He looked at me with distaste, like I was spoiling his lunch by wearing the wrong aftershave.

  “You have somewhere else to be, Detective?”

  “Yeah, and you have five seconds to start saying something I find interesting. If you don’t, this interview is over.”

  He sighed and reached for the bottle. I could tell he was counting out the seconds as he refilled his glass. On six, he said, “Can I offer you a drink? I hate to drink alone.”

  I stood. He held up a hand.

  “Detective, you are not the only man with a busy schedule. I have no desire to waste your time, let alone my own. If I have asked you here, it is because I think we can both benefit. Please, have a drink and allow me to explain.”

  I sat. “Spare me the lessons on how to eat my caviar, and get to the point.”

  He turned to Ape Man. “Ronaldo, get
the detective a drink.” He turned to me. “I am guessing you are a whiskey man, Detective Stone.”

  “Bushmills, no ice.”

  Ronaldo disappeared and dos Santos spooned caviar onto a cracker and stuffed it in his mouth.

  “Who has the…” He hesitated for a second. “Who has the box, Detective?”

  “I have.”

  “Have you looked inside?”

  “How is that any of your business?”

  He looked at me with a face that could have skinned a rabbit. “Because I am paying a substantial sum of money for it. Have you looked inside the box?”

  I lied and said, “No. Emma advised me not to.”

  He raised an eyebrow and nodded. After a moment, he said, “You realize that Emma is quite mad.”

  “And what, are you quite sane?”

  He sighed. “You are a difficult man to talk to, Stone. We are not making progress.”

  “I get antsy when people bullshit me. Why don’t you get to the point, dos Santos?”

  Ronaldo came in with a silver tray and a crystal tumbler of whiskey on it. I took a sip. I was beginning to feel I needed it.

  “The point I am trying to make, Stone, is that she may have misled you as to the real value of the contents of the box.”

  I laughed. “Oh, really? So this elaborate circus you have going on here—the Krug, the caviar, Baxter, and the two years you have been hunting for Tamara Gunthersen—that is all over something that is really of very little value at all.”

  He gave a breathless little chortle. “By no means, Detective. I mean that she may have misled you into believing it is less valuable than it really is.”

  I frowned.

  “She is quite mad. And I, and the people I represent, would be willing to be very generous friends, Detective Stone, if you would cooperate with us. Let me explain what I have in mind.”

  He held out his glass, as though proposing a toast. I was keen to hear, and record, what he had to say. So I knocked his glass with mine, and we both drank. I couldn’t work out at first why he was smiling. He turned to Ronaldo, who was now also smiling, and in a voice that sounded like it was all the way across the room, he said, “Get the car ready, Ronaldo. I think Detective Stone is just about ready.”

  I tried to swear, but my brain had stopped talking to my mouth and all that came out was a slur. I tried to stand, but that didn’t work either, because the table rose up and hit me in the face. And then there was nothing.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The first thing I was aware of was a sharp pain in my shoulders that was making it hard to breathe. Then I realized the pain was in my wrists and arms, and also in my ankles and my legs. I felt sick too.

  I opened my eyes and slowly focused. It didn’t make much difference because the room was dark. A horizontal crack of light slowly resolved itself into a window with the blind drawn down. Another, farther away and at an odd angle, became a door. And as I slowly adjusted to the feelings in my body, I realized I was sitting, not lying, and I was tightly bound to a chair with duct tape. Usually, being bound to a chair is not a good sign.

  I tried to clear my head and hollered at the door a few times. After the third shout, it opened and the Thing came in and looked at me.

  “You awake?”

  “No, I’m deeply asleep and you are part of my dream. That’s why you are in here.” He tried to work it out, but it’s hard when you only have one eyebrow. “Just tell Geronimo to get his fat ass in here and untie me!”

  He gave a nod and went away, down some stairs that were just out of sight. Slowly, my brain functions were coming back. I listened hard to see if I could get some clue as to where I was. The silence was almost total, but there was something like white noise just in my peripheral hearing.

  Surf. I was at the beach house, then.

  I heard two sets of feet climbing heavily up stairs. There was also the heavy breathing of a man carrying too much weight. Geronimo entered the room and flipped a switch. I winced in the sudden glare but took in a writing desk and a chair, a gray carpet, and a bare white wall. Geronimo was leaning on the desk catching his breath. Ronaldo, proto-man, was standing in front of me looking like evolution gone wrong. Geronimo heaved a breath and gave a small laugh.

  “I am not as young as I was. There was a time I would have sprinted up those stairs. And I try to observe a healthy diet, but age, Stone. It comes to us all, and it does not forgive.”

  Here we were, a couple of pals having a chat. He pulled out the chair and lowered himself onto it.

  “Now, Stone, where is the box?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Very well. Ronaldo, I think six should do.”

  It was like getting hit by a wall. I weigh two hundred and twenty pounds, and he made the chair rock. By the second blow, I was disoriented and wondering how I was going to get through another four. He made it easy for me by delivering three of them to my chest, so I felt like I had a rusty saw stuck through my lungs. The last was a backhander that left the room spinning and my ears ringing.

  Through the pain, I heard dos Santos’s voice.

  “Now, let us at least dispense with the vulgarities, Stone. Perhaps I had better apprise you of the situation. Your wire has been removed. Detective Dehan has received a text message instructing her to stand down and await further instructions from you. So nobody is going to come charging to your rescue. You have one chance of survival and one only. Tell me where the box is, and where Tammy is.”

  I knew I had to think. Somehow I had to get my brain working, but Ronaldo’s beating had left me groping for consciousness. I played for time, exaggerating my grogginess. I didn’t have to try very hard.

  “You’re out of your fucking mind. You think I am stupid enough to make it this easy for you?”

  “Frankly? I do, yes. I don’t want to resort to mutilation, Stone, but if you try my patience, Ronaldo here is pretty handy with a pair of pliers. Don’t push your luck. If I don’t have an answer in the next ten minutes, one of you starts losing digits, or some other parts of the anatomy which may be more persuasive.”

  I looked up at Ronaldo’s passive face. It held the kind of peace only stupidity can bring. I looked past him at Geronimo. He was smiling. I knew I had to turn the situation around pretty soon, or I was going to be in big trouble.

  “I don’t know where Tamara is, but you and I both know, dos Santos, that if I give you the box, I will be dead within seconds. Now you must be aware that I am too smart and too experienced to put myself in that situation.”

  He looked complacent. “I just don’t think you have had enough time to do anything other than put it somewhere safe.” He gave a small laugh. “In fact, I am not even totally convinced that Emma has given it to you.”

  “I’ll tell you where it is, dos Santos. It’s in a drawer, in a desk at the 43rd Precinct. Not my desk—the desk of a uniform sergeant who has instructions to put it in the mail if she doesn’t hear from me by midnight tonight. Now you can torture an address out of me, but how will you ever know if I have given you the right address?”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Maybe I am, Geronimo. But again, how will you ever know?”

  He struggled to his feet. “Come on, Ronaldo. Let us go and talk to Emma for a while, and see if she can be more cooperative.”

  They closed the door, and I heard their big feet lumbering down the stairs. They would question Emma to see if she confirmed or denied what I had told them. So far, I was on safe ground. But I wouldn’t be able to keep the game going indefinitely. And I could not rely on Dehan realizing the messages were not from me. At least not for several hours.

  Duct tape is a very useful, easy way of immobilizing somebody. It only has one drawback. Rope, especially nylon rope, is hard to cut through. With duct tape, all you need to do is nick it in the right place and it tears right in half. I peered around the room, looking for something with a sharp angle. There was nothing immediately apparent. Then I became aware that
just behind me there was a bed. I started rocking the chair from side to side and angling my body so that the chair shifted. Soon I could see, over my shoulder, exactly what I had hoped for. A bedside table with a lamp on it. It was a long shot, but it was worth a try.

  I did a little more angling, rocked a couple of times, and then, putting all my weight into one final rock, I threw myself backward onto the lamp. I smacked my head hard against the wall, and the chair got wedged at a forty-five-degree angle over the bedside table. But underneath my wrists and hands, I felt the glass shade of the lamp crack and shatter into shards. One of which I held in my bleeding fingers. It was enough. I moved it around until I had the tip wedged into the edge of the tape. Then I pushed and felt the tape cut. Another couple of slashes, and the pressure from my wrists was enough to do the rest.

  With my hands free, I acted quickly, leaning forward and hacking at the tape around my ankles. I stood, unsteadily at first, with my head swimming and a feeling of nausea in my stomach. I moved to the door, opened it a fraction, and listened. There was silence.

  There was a landing and, at the far end, a stairwell leading down. Dim light filtered up from below. I moved to the banisters and peered down. There wasn’t much to see, a carpeted staircase and part of a hallway. I had no weapon and no phone to call for backup. I took a couple of steps down and peered through the railings. The hallway was a broad space. Ahead of me, I could see the front door. To one side there was another door that was closed, but obviously gave onto a room at the front of the house, facing the sea. Next to it, there was an arch, and through it, three broad steps that led down into a large, modern living room. The lights were off, but I could make out a large fireplace with a copper hood, a cream sofa, and a large armchair. But no people. Another couple of steps and I could see that to the right there was a passage, and my gut told me that led to the kitchen.

  I slipped into the living room. I was on a mezzanine floor with two steps to a lower level, where one whole wall was made of plate glass, in the middle of which there were two sliding doors that now stood open onto a broad, weatherboard terrace that was bathed in moonlight. Now I could hear voices and the sound of the surf.