She was too dismayed to speak. Her thoughts whirled crazily. Montana stood watching her expression the way a scientist might watch a lab experiment.
Then shrieks and splashes sounded from the bathroom. The boys were playing in the water, a bad habit she’d worked hard to break.
Without a word, she left Montana and ran to the bathroom and turned off the rushing water. She snatched a towel and began to dry the boys’ dripping hands and faces.
Now I’m supposed to be their guardian. Bleakly she dried Rickie’s ears as he grimaced and wriggled to get free.
How ironic it was, she thought, making him hold still. Her marriage had broken up because she couldn’t have a child. Now, suddenly, she had two—they just didn’t happen to be hers.
But they’re not really my responsibility. I haven’t signed anything. Not yet. And I won’t.
She toweled them both dry, thinking furiously the whole time. Yesterday, she had been caught in emotional tides that made her feel enormously protective of the boys. In the cold light of a new day, she had to think about herself.
She led the boys to their room, made them strip off their wet flannel shirts, and put fresh sweatshirts on them. Trace’s was blue with a picture of Bugs Bunny on it, Rickie’s identical except that it was red.
Of course, Montana was right, she thought—that was the damnable part. What good could Burton Fletcher do if he were back?
Burton couldn’t control the boys; he could barely communicate with them. He was helpless in their presence.
Well, that problem was Montana’s and the law’s, not hers. She saw her situation with a fresh, cold clarity.
She was ready to charge back to the kitchen and tell Montana she’d seen through his double-talk, his pretense of concern, his mind games. Did he think he could play her emotions any way he wished? Did he think she was that simple? Oh, she would tell him, all right.
But Trace’s shoe had come undone, so first she had to sit him on the bed and crouch before him. She tied the lace in a bow and double-knotted it, but her mind wasn’t on shoes or laces.
She would march out the apartment’s front door and away from this mess; the task force had no legal right to stop her. After all, she had a job to keep, her rent to pay, a life of her own to live.…
Trace reached out and took a thick strand of her hair in his hand. He didn’t pull or twist, just held it, rubbing it gently between his fingers.
“Laura,” he said, his voice plaintive, “take Trace home. Home now, Laura.”
Her fingers froze over the knotted lace, and she looked into his eyes. Tears welled in them. He kept fingering her hair, a quick, nervous motion.
She knew she should move his hand away and tell him firmly that he must not do that. But she didn’t. She felt almost humbled by his touch. Stroking hair was one of the few ways he showed affection.
She’d thought she’d broken his habit of stroking hair; she’d had to. It wasn’t appropriate behavior; it wasn’t normal; it wasn’t acceptable. But for a moment she let him, because it gave him comfort.
Rickie came to her side. “Ossbim, Laura,” he said. “Ossbim. Ossbim.” It was a nonsense word he used that meant he was unhappy and wanted to leave. He had dozens of such words; who else would understand them except her?
“Ossbim,” Rickie said with emphasis.
“Laura,” Trace implored, rubbing her hair more desperately. “Take Trace home.”
“This is home for now,” she told Trace, taking his chin and making him look her in the face. “Don’t cry. Laura’s here, and for now this is home.”
She knew they couldn’t understand the concept of for now; time and language about time mystified them. She searched for words to explain, but could find none.
Trace repeated her words mechanically. “Don’t cry. Laura’s here. This is home.”
Rickie nodded and stared at the ceiling. “Laura’s here. This is home. Ossbim. Wavy gravy.”
She swallowed hard. Oh, hell, she thought.
She wasn’t going to leave them, couldn’t leave them. What would they do without her? They needed her. Perhaps they were the only people in the world who actually needed her.
In a brisk, no-nonsense tone she said, “Laura has to talk to Mr. Montana. In fifteen minutes, Laura and Rickie and Trace take a walk.”
Rickie stopped staring at the ceiling and squinted at his watch. “Walk,” he muttered softly. “Walk, walk, walk.”
Trace, too, turned his gaze to his watch. “Walk, walk, walk,” he echoed.
Gently she made him let go of her hair. He rubbed the unshed tears from his eyes and stared at the sweeping second hand, counting.
She stood and gazed down at them a moment. Then she turned and went back to the kitchen. Montana looked her up and down.
“Well?” he said.
“I have to take them for a walk. In fifteen minutes. How many of you have to come along? Will we look like a parade?”
The two of them stared at each other for a charged moment.
He said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, them being seen together. It’d be better if they weren’t seen at all. Better take them one at a time or not at all.”
Laura’s chin jerked up in rebellion. “They’ll explode. They’re not used to being apart that way. They’re already facing enough change.”
“And I said—”
“I don’t care what you said,” she answered. “You want me to stay, but you can’t make me. That’s true, isn’t it?”
He gave her a smile that seemed sympathetic, but she saw the coldness flicker to life in his eyes. “It’s not true, Laura. We can detain you. Absolutely.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not a witness. I haven’t signed anything that makes me a guardian. You have no right to hold me.”
He shook his head. “You’re the only one who can communicate with them, so ipso facto you’re a material witness. A material witness can be held against his—or her—will. It’s in the law books.”
“I’d like to call an attorney and find out.”
“Save your money,” he said. “An attorney’d tell you the same thing.”
“I doubt it. I only have to stay with these children if I want to. And I refuse to stay unless my word on their welfare is final, do you understand?”
She glared at Montana, who seemed unphased. He gave her a mild little smile, as if she were some harmless featherhead he was forced to patronize.
She wasn’t deterred. She glanced at her watch, then looked him in the eye again. “If you want me to be their guardian, I have to be in charge of them. And I say they go for a walk—in nine minutes. What’s your answer? Yes? Or no?”
Montana gave a lazy shrug and smiled more patronizingly. “I’ll have to talk to Becker,” he said.
He strolled off to the living room, leaving her alone.
Her heartbeat had speeded from this confrontation; the pulses in her temples drummed. She had won, she sensed it, and it gave her a giddy rush of triumph.
The price of triumph, of course, was that she would sign the guardianship papers. She would stay with the twins. She had become a voluntary prisoner.
It’s all right, she told herself. After all, nobody in the outside world would need her or miss her. Since her divorce she’d made herself into an emotional hermit. She’d cut herself off from life as much as Burton Fletcher had.
Perhaps, in her way, more.
• • •
Montana had tried to jive her, and he’d failed.
She was smart, and once her shock had worn off, she’d caught on to the truth all too fast.
She wasn’t about to forgive him, either. She avoided him as much as was possible in a five-room apartment, and she struck up a friendship with Jefferson, the black FBI man, instead of him.
Montana didn’t care. She’d signed the guardianship papers, and that was what counted. She was staying on.
Her work was cut out for her, because the kids were edgy, badly out of sorts. They needed
structure in their lives and lots of it. Laura Stoner knew what sort, and she created it for them.
She alone could truly talk with them. Sometimes the twins said strange, incomprehensible things. She was the only one who understood and could answer.
Only Laura could coax them into looking at mug shots on the computer screen. She had to work hard at it because the kids disliked the task; it bored and irritated them.
After two days, the kids had seen over eight hundred mug shots. They’d said the same thing about every one: “No.”
“Look for the man who shot the gun,” Laura would say patiently. “Say when you see the man.”
A new photo would fill the screen, a new face with a new name and number beneath it.
“No,” Rickie would say vaguely. The faces did not interest him. Instead he wanted to play complicated games with the criminals’ numbers.
Trace, solemn and sometimes surly, would say the same thing: “No.” Like Rickie, he found the numbers more interesting than the faces.
They always wanted to change the pictures faster, yet they seemed to be going through them at such a dizzying pace the men couldn’t believe they were really looking. “They can go faster still,” Laura argued. “Their perception doesn’t work like ours.”
But Becker’s order was no, the pictures couldn’t be speeded up any more. Once Trace’s frustration burst out.
“The man got three moles,” he said impatiently. He pressed three fingertips against his cheek for emphasis. “Moleman,” he’d said. “Moleman, Moleman, Moleman.”
Jefferson had laughed. “So that’s who we’re looking for—Moleman. Wasn’t he the bad guy in a Flash Gordon movie?”
So the killer was dubbed Moleman, but mug shot followed mug shot with never a glimpse of him.
Becker and Stallings grew pessimistic and lost faith the boys would ID anybody. Their hope eroded almost completely after they learned the twins didn’t understand age. When asked how old they thought Moleman was, Rickie said, “Eight,” and Trace said, “Three.”
“We’re getting nowhere fast,” Stallings grumbled at one point.
“If there’s a picture of him, they’ll know him when they see him,” Laura insisted.
“We don’t even know if they were right about the car or license,” Stallings said, looking sour-tempered.
“They were right,” Laura told him. “You can bank on it.”
“Optimism,” Jefferson nodded. “We need optimism here. Gotta accentuate the positive.”
Montana said nothing, but he’d seen his nephew’s phenomenal memory at work. He believed Laura was right. When the twins saw the killer, they would know him.
Subtly, sides were taken within the confined apartment, allegiances formed. Both Stallings and Becker kept clear of the twins as much as possible. Becker acted almost hurt by the kids’ aloofness, and Montana sometimes caught Stallings regarding the twins as if they gave him the creeps.
Jefferson was another story. Once things settled into routine, Jefferson had dropped his guarded expression, lost his distant attitude. He joked with Laura and was patient and friendly with the twins.
Jefferson, divorced, had two sons of his own, and he instinctively knew how to win the kids’ interest. He could recite endless sports statistics, which fascinated the twins even though they didn’t understand sports.
Jefferson was an inveterate reader of newspapers, and he didn’t mind reading the boys the columns of basketball statistics in the Times. They memorized rebounds, assists, and free throws without knowing what they were.
Copying from the kids’ books, Jefferson could draw lizards, either realistic or comic ones. The twins preferred realism.
Jefferson could make a coin seem to walk across the back of his dark knuckles, a feat both boys struggled to imitate. Montana could get them to recite long lists of reptiles for him, but that was all. His own early success with the boys was eclipsed by Jefferson. And of course Laura ate it all up.
Montana was amazed to feel the faint stirrings of something resembling jealousy. He ignored it.
What he couldn’t ignore was his growing doubt about the safety of the safe house. At last he felt compelled to speak to Conlee about it on the phone.
“Conlee, I don’t like this place. The kids have to spend time outside, and they’re too conspicuous. They act up, people look at them.”
Conlee sounded bored and unconcerned. “Relax, Montana. This is New York. Nobody’ll notice.”
“People notice. Trust me. I don’t like it.”
“It’s the best I can do. The task force hasn’t got funds for things like this. The state’s got no funds. Beggers can’t be choosers.”
“Any word on the car?”
“None.”
“Any hard information of any kind?”
“Some. We keep getting street talk that the Colombians didn’t do the hit. That it wasn’t Mafia infighting, either. But that’s only rumor.”
Montana shook his head. “It seems damn stupid for the Colombians to have done it. But it’s got all the earmarks.”
“Sit tight. We’ll get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, stop sweating the location. You’re safe.”
Montana didn’t contradict him. But he didn’t believe him, either. Working the streets had made him cynical.
“How’s the teacher?” Conlee asked. “She doing her job?”
“Yeah,” Montana said without emotion. “She’s doing her job.”
Laura slept again on the couch, an uneasy sleep because a light stayed on and there was always a man in the room. Early in the dark hours of morning, someone kept coughing. The phone rang. A door opened, a door closed.
The phone, rang again; again a door opened, a door closed. Men talked in hushed voices. She tried to ignore the sounds, to escape into a dreamless void.
She was awakened by a hand shaking her shoulder. “Wake up,” Montana said. “Pack. We’ve got to get out of here.”
She raised herself on one elbow and blinked at him sleepily. “What?” she said. “No. It’s night.”
He shook her harder. “Get up and pack. We have to leave—fast.”
Groggy, she glanced at her watch. It was not yet six in the morning. Only one light was on, and by its muted glow, she saw that Montana needed a shave. Stubble shadowed his sharp jaw. This fact, however, was not interesting enough to keep her awake. She tried to sink back to the sofa.
“Come on,” he said impatiently. This time he shook her so hard it jarred away all muzziness. Her eyes flew open in surprised anger.
She tried to wrest away from him. “Stop.”
“This is crazy,” Jefferson said, appearing behind Montana. “Who took the news? You?”
“Stallings,” Montana said from between his teeth. He brought his face close to Laura’s. “Listen. You’ve made the headlines. The World Weekly Record went to press last night. They’re doing a story on you and the kids. Pictures, everything. We’ve got to get out of here, because we’ve been seen walking these streets, and people will remember.”
“My God,” Laura said, stunned. “You mean—you mean—?”
His good hand still gripped her shoulder. “We tried to keep you secret. It didn’t work. We need to get you out of here.”
For a moment she was too dazed to think clearly. “Where—where are we going?” she asked, her heart beating hard.
“Valley Hope,” he said, and he must have seen the reluctance in her eyes because he said, “It’s a private hospital on Long Island.”
“Valley Hope?” she said in dismay. She knew the name. The place was a scandal, on the verge of having its license revoked.
“You can’t take them there,” she said. “It’s a snake pit. No.”
“Don’t fight us, Laura. It’s the only place Conlee could set up at this short notice.”
“No—” she tried to argue, but he cut her off.
He fixed his gaze on hers. “We’ve got no choice.”
The way he looked, the way he
spoke, the way he held her, she knew he meant it.
They had no choice.
Hurry, hurry, hurry, said everything in the apartment’s atmosphere. Even the beat of Laura’s heart seemed to repeat the command: Faster, faster, faster. From the corners, the very shadows seemed to whisper it.
She struggled to seem calm. She knew the twins sensed the uneasiness in the air, and it set them on edge.
Montana had said, “Give them breakfast. Then we’re outta here.”
Down the hall, she heard the men ripping apart the cheerful room she had so carefully reconstructed for the boys. Drawers slammed, curtain rods clattered, and packed boxes thudded as they were stacked.
Montana came into the kitchen. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked.
“It’s not me I worry about,” she said. She turned to Trace. “Don’t play with the toast. Eat the cornflakes. When the cornflakes are gone, we’ll go for a ride.”
Trace squinted at her, his sleepy face dubious. “Go for a ride,” he echoed tonelessly.
“Yes,” she promised. “But eat the cornflakes.”
“I’m sorry to do this to you,” Montana said. “I’m sorry for them, too. It’s twice as hard on them.”
No, she thought. Not twice as hard on them—three, four, ten times harder. Maybe a hundred times.
“Who’d do such a thing?” she demanded, watching Trace. “Exploit them, put their pictures in the paper? What kind of people would do such a thing?”
“People who sell papers,” he said.
“How did the paper even get the story?” she asked. “And pictures? They really have our pictures? How?”
“The World Weekly Record gives five hundred bucks for the best news tip of the week. You were it.”
He went to the kitchen’s small window. He parted the slats of the Venetian blind with his scarred hand and looked out. The sky was still dark.
“Five hundred dollars?” she asked in disbelief. “Somebody would sell out two children for five hundred dollars?”
He let the blind’s slats fall back together. “No,” he said, turning to her. “They sold out two children and a woman. You know anybody from the school who needs money that bad? Or wants it that much?”
“No,” she said, horrified by the thought. “Why should it be somebody from school? What about the police?”
See How They Run Page 8
