The Kidnappers

by Willo Davis Roberts

  After he’d gone we settled down on the bed with our food. “Which movie are we going to watch first?” Pink wanted to know.

  “Before you start, maybe we could find a newscast,” Sophie proposed. “We could see if they show that sketch Joey told them how to make.”

  So we turned on the TV and flipped channels until we found a newscast. We had to sit through stuff about Congress and some big warehouse fire and a gazillion commercials. There was no reproduction of the sketch the police artist had made.

  I was disappointed, but I hoped that meant they had some other way of catching up with the kidnappers.

  Willie had been a bully, angry with me because of an accident, nothing I did on purpose. He’d felt he could threaten me because he was taller and heavier and he knew he could push me around.

  Now someone was pushing him around. Scaring him. Maybe hurting him. I hoped they weren’t torturing him, that they wouldn’t kill him, even. I hoped if they’d demanded a ransom that his dad could come up with the money. But I couldn’t help hoping, too, that this experience would change Willie’s personality for the better.

  I wondered if he’d still be mad at me after he was rescued. If he was rescued.

  We had just started the first video—which promised adventure, romance, and spectacular special effects—when Mark came in without knocking. Typical. Mark never knocked, at least not until he was already halfway in.

  “Hey, Sophie, I need you to run an errand. Go downstairs to Andy’s and bring up a math book, will you? I forgot mine, and we’ve got a test coming up Monday.”

  Sophie bit off half a miniature quiche before she asked, “Why don’t you go after it yourself?”

  “Because I’m in the middle of this really exciting show, live, and I don’t want to miss any of it. His folks are taking everybody out for the evening in a few minutes, so I can’t wait.”

  “If I go, I’ll miss part of my movie,” Sophie objected.

  “Yours is a video. They can wait for you for a minute,” Mark said. “Come on, I have to get back.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sophie told him. “My supper’s hot right now, and besides, I’m nervous about running around while all this stuff about Willie is going on.”

  Mark scowled at her and turned his attention to me. “You go, then, Joey. It’ll only take you a few minutes. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “How worth my while?” I demanded. I knew they’d restart our movie when I got back.

  Mark dug into his pocket and dug out a crumpled bill. “Here, go on. It’ll only take you five minutes. My show’s coming back on, I gotta go.”

  He shoved the money at me and took off without waiting for my answer.

  “Are you going to do it?” Sophie asked.

  I stared at the bill in my hand. “Well, wait for me to get back to watch our movie, okay?” I took time for a few bites of the meatballs before they were completely cold.

  Sophie didn’t look happy. “Daddy said you weren’t to go out anywhere. Just in case.” She didn’t specify just in case what, but she didn’t have to.

  “He meant outside the building. What could happen here inside the building? A minute in the elevator each way, another minute for Andy to answer his door and hand over the book. If I don’t go, I’ll have to give the money back.” Besides having Mark mad at me, I thought. He always thought everybody else should do what he wanted, and it annoyed him if we didn’t go along with him.

  “I’ll be right back,” I decided, setting my plate aside. “If you guys go after dessert before the party starts, get me some, okay?”

  Nobody paid any attention to me when I walked through the apartment toward the hall and the elevator. The caterers were apparently leaving, except for a few people sticking around to serve. Junie was doing something last minute in the kitchen, and I could hear Mom’s voice somewhere out of my sight.

  I would be glad when things got back to normal. I hoped us kids wouldn’t have to help with the cleanup when it was all over. Poor Junie needed the overtime, anyway.

  The elevator was on our level, so I didn’t have to wait. I zipped down to the sixth floor, got the math book, and then had to punch the button to get the elevator back; it had gone on down to the lobby.

  When it came, the doors slid open, and I saw that there were two people already in it. Nothing about them registered until I had gotten on and the doors closed behind me.

  Then I glanced around and saw him.

  Two feet away, carrying a paper sack again, this time with a carton of orange juice sticking out of it.

  The guy with the earring.

  Chapter Eleven

  The dinosaurs must have felt like this when the glaciers swept over them, burying them in ice, cutting off their oxygen.

  The elevator was moving, silently as always. If I’d been able to breathe, I could have heard myself doing it.

  I couldn’t really think, then, but I remembered later.

  There were two men. One was tall and rather slim, dressed in a blue suit with a red and white tie. He was carrying a briefcase.

  The other one was not as tall, but more muscular, in a dark blue jacket. I’d done a good job of describing him for the police artist, because he looked a lot like the picture produced on the computer.

  My chest had begun to ache. I had to draw in some air, but I couldn’t do it. I stared straight ahead, not looking at the men. I could see the floors flipping by, and I prayed the two would get off before the elevator reached our apartment on the top floor.

  Sometimes praying helps a lot. This time it didn’t, though for a moment I had hope. The men had pushed the button for the floor below ours, and the elevator came to a stop. The doors slid open, and I thought they were going to get off and I was going to be safe.

  Then my fingers, gone numb in shock, forgot to hang on to the math book I was carrying. It slid out of my hand and landed with a thump on the floor of the elevator.

  Both men swiveled to look at me.

  The sack the nearest one was carrying split down the side as he turned, spilling stuff onto the floor. A package of chips landed on my foot, a couple of TV dinners—Mexican—skidded toward the front of the elevator. The juice container split and began to leak.

  The elevator doors opened, but the men didn’t get off. Instead they were staring at me.

  “It’s him!” the taller one said. “It’s that Bishop kid!”

  The elevator doors decided nobody was getting off, so they closed before anybody moved to stop them, and we rose the rest of the way to our floor, where they opened again.

  I finally managed to get a gulp of air, and I lurched forward, actually getting a foot into the hallway before the men moved.

  “Stop him!” one of them cried, and a hand grabbed the back of my shirt.

  I twisted, desperate now to reach our door and safety. I heard my shirt rip, and for an instant I was moving again. Then he got a solid grip on my arm and wrestled me to the floor. With his weight on top of me, I didn’t have a chance. I couldn’t even gather enough wits to pray that someone would come out of our apartment, that something would happen to save me.

  “Hurry up, get him in the elevator,” one of the men said, and I was hauled backward in a way that almost strangled me. I was trying to yell for help, but it came out a squawk that wouldn’t have carried very far.

  I was slammed against the rear wall of the elevator as the doors came shut, and we dropped downward. Tears of pain and fear formed in my eyes.

  “Hurry up,” the tall one said as we returned to their floor. “If someone calls for the elevator, we don’t want anyone to have noticed where it’s coming from, when they start looking for him.”

  There were two apartments on this floor. They hauled me out of the elevator, unlocked the door into one of them, and jerked me roughly inside.

  “Move,” the shorter one said, and the door closed behind us.

  If terror really killed people, I’d have died right there.

 
“What are we going to do with him?” the one with the earring demanded, shoving me along through the foyer and into a living room beyond. He was propelling me fast enough so that when he finally let go, I fell onto a couch.

  “I know what I’d like to do with him.” The tall one stood over me, pursing his lips. “It was a good plan, and everything was going just the way it was supposed to, until this nosy brat stepped in.”

  “We’ll have to shut him up.”

  I flinched. I hoped shutting me up didn’t mean permanently.

  “We don’t have time to deal with him now. Lock him up. We’ll talk about what to do with him later.”

  “With the other kid? Or by himself?”

  “What difference does it make? They can’t do anything behind locked doors.” The tall one seemed to be the boss. He had picked up the things that fell out of the sack, and he turned away with them. “I’ll stash this stuff in the kitchen, and then we’d better get ready to go.”

  The other kid. That registered. If I’d had any doubts that they were the ones who’d kidnapped Willie, I didn’t now.

  I was dragged to my feet and urged across the room and into a hallway. The guy with the earring produced a key and unlocked a door, and I was thrown inside, on my knees. I heard the lock clicking shut behind me.

  “Bishop?” The voice was familiar, incredulous.

  I raised my head and met Willie’s eyes. He was sprawled out on the bed, and he sat up.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “They kidnapped me, too, I guess. So I couldn’t tell anybody about them.” I got up and rubbed the place on my arm where it had been twisted. “Are you okay?”

  “If you call being locked up this way okay, I guess so,” Willie said. He didn’t seem quite as big as he had when I’d last seen him at school.

  I licked my lips and eased onto one corner of the bed, facing him. “I imagined you being tortured or something, to make you talk.”

  He stared at me as if I were an idiot. “Talk about what?”

  “I don’t know. The combination to your dad’s safe, maybe.”

  “I don’t know the combination to my dad’s safe. How come they kidnapped you? Are they going into this business wholesale or what?”

  “I don’t think so,” I decided. “I think it’s because I saw them kidnap you, and then I described the one with the earring for the police—”

  He sat up straighter, dropping one foot to the floor. “You did? Where were you?”

  I explained to him, feeling kind of foolish. If I hadn’t run away from him and hidden in the foyer of that apartment house, they’d never have been able to kidnap either one of us. Well, maybe they’d have still snatched Willie, but I wouldn’t be here now.

  “You said the police. Are they looking for me?” he asked eagerly.

  He didn’t include me, I noticed. “I guess so. They didn’t tell us anything, but I described the guy I saw, the one with the earring, and they made a computer picture. It hasn’t been on TV yet, but it was distributed to the cops, so they know what one of them looks like.”

  “Did they have my picture, too?” Willie demanded.

  “No. Just the kidnapper’s. Or maybe the cops got your picture from your family.”

  He scowled. “Why don’t they have my picture in the paper? I’m the one who’s missing!”

  “Who knows why the cops do anything? I don’t think they’ve made it public that you’ve been kidnapped. Probably the kidnappers threatened your dad if the news gets out before they collect the ransom.”

  “Then if the cops are already looking for them, how come they needed to kidnap you?”

  “Because I met them in the elevator in my own building. I don’t suppose they want me to report that they’re here. Why are they here? This building is full of families of businesspeople, not crooks.”

  Willie gazed at me for a moment, then decided to reveal his superior knowledge. “The man who lives here, Mr. Zoulas, is in Paris for the rest of the month. One of the kidnappers—the tall one who dresses in suits—is a personal secretary for him. His name is Studen. The other one, Tedesco, is somebody’s chauffeur. I think he used to work for Mr. Zoulas, but he got fired. Now he drives for a Mrs. Civen. She’s gone, too, to Miami. Between them, they have the use of this apartment for a couple of weeks and longer than that for Mrs. Civen’s car. So they decided it would be a good time to kidnap some rich kid, for the ransom, and stash him here where nobody would think to look. Until the ransom’s paid, that is.”

  “But then what? Everybody knows what they look like,” I objected. “You would know even if I hadn’t seen that what’s-his-name, Tedesco? So how can they let you go?”

  Willie stared at me as if he’d never thought of this possibility. “My dad will pay the money, and then they have to let me go,” he stated.

  “Why will they? What are they going to do, take you home so you can tell the police everything and they can catch the kidnappers? So you can swear in court they’re the ones who did it, so they’ll be sent to prison forever? Why would they do that?” Seeing that he still didn’t quite grasp what I was getting at, I added, “As far as I know, there aren’t any rules for kidnappers. They do whatever they think they can get away with. They do expect to get away with this, don’t they? At the very least, they’ll need time to escape, out of the country, maybe, after they’ve collected the ransom. Turning you loose will make it harder for them, so why should they do it?”

  It was clear from Willie’s face that I’d brought up some unwelcome ideas. “They said all I had to do was sit tight until my dad forks over the money, and then I’d be all right.”

  “And you believed whatever they said? You think guys who would kidnap a kid and extort money from his family would stop at telling a lie or two to keep you quiet?”

  He was frowning deeply now. “If they’re not going to turn me loose, what are they going to do with me?”

  “And with me,” I reminded him. “I’m here, too. I don’t know, but I’m sure they don’t want to be caught. What if your father can’t pay the ransom they’re asking for?”

  “He can pay it. I’m his only son, and he’ll pay whatever they ask for.”

  “Well, I don’t know if my father will get a ransom demand, too, or not. And I don’t know how he’d raise a lot of cash on a Saturday. Or maybe they don’t intend to ask for money for me. Maybe . . .” I stopped, swallowed, and realized I was scaring myself as much as I was scaring him.

  “Maybe what?” Willie asked with a tremor in his voice.

  “Maybe they don’t intend ever to send us home . . . alive.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Willie sat very still and got redder and redder. Then all the color washed out of his face and he was so pale I wondered if he was going to faint. I felt like fainting myself.

  What if the kidnappers didn’t intend to let us go? Ever?

  We looked at each other, not speaking for a minute or so.

  It was a nice room. As nice as our apartment. The other rooms had been nice, too. A comfortable home. I began to remember things I’d seen as I passed through the living room.

  A Mr. Zoulas lived here, but he was in Paris now. He thought he could trust his secretary, the man called Studen, and he’d left his home for the man to take care of. Mr. Zoulas collected things: paintings, and different kinds of wood carvings that had maybe come from Africa and India, and books. He had hundreds of books.

  There were some of his collected items in here. A bookcase that held quite a few books, and an elephant carved from some kind of dark glossy wood, and a running horse with a flowing mane, of an even darker wood.

  There was a telephone jack, but no phone.

  Willie saw me looking at it, and finally spoke. “They took it away. So I couldn’t call for help, of course.”

  “Yeah. Do they ever give you a chance to get out of this room? There must be another phone somewhere.”

  “There is, because I’ve heard one ring. But the only pla
ce they’ve let me go is to the bathroom.” He jerked a thumb toward a door across the room.

  “What’s in there? Anything useful?” I got up and walked over to check it out. Some people had phones in their bathrooms, but this place didn’t. Just the standard kind of things people put in their guest bathrooms. I tried the door into the hallway, but it was locked.

  Willie had come to stand behind me in the doorway. “Nothing to help me escape,” he said.

  “Have they fed you?” I turned around to face him.

  “Sure. Mostly junk my mom won’t let me eat. I don’t think either of them can cook.”

  “At least you’re not going hungry. I imagined you going hungry.”

  “And being tortured. You said you thought about me being tortured.” He wasn’t looking all that friendly. “How come you imagined me being tortured?”

  “It just seemed like the kind of thing kidnappers might do. It was pretty scary, watching you get dragged into that car, and I didn’t know what to do about it.”

  “You could have given the police the license number.”

  “I didn’t see it. I didn’t get outside until the car was too far away.” Facing in a different direction, I saw something else. “You’ve got books and a TV in here. That’s better than a dungeon.”

  “Where would anybody find a dungeon in a modern city?” Willie said. “The books are all stupid. About hydraulic mining and archaeology and medical research. Who wants to read about that kind of stuff?”

  “They might be interesting,” I observed, thinking that maybe it was Willie who was stupid, not the books. My father had all kinds of books on technical things in his study, and I’d looked at some of them.

  Willie walked over and turned on the TV. “I can’t believe there’s nothing on TV about me. Maybe you didn’t have it on the right station.”

  I stood watching while he changed channels, looking for a newscast. The only one he could find was mostly international news and football scores. No police sketch of the man named Tedesco.

  I sat down in the only easy chair in the room, wondering if they’d missed me yet at home. How long would Sophie and Pink wait for me to come back? Or would it be Mark who got annoyed because I hadn’t brought the math book yet?