by Tim Green
The man finally uncovered the phone and said, “There is the Salt Museum in Liverpool. You bring him there. You wait on the stone pier behind the museum.”
This was it. Muldoon asked, “When?”
“Now.”
Muldoon thought he heard voices in the hallway.
“I’m four, five hours away,” Muldoon said, talking fast. “I’m not close.”
“Okay, ten,” the man said. “You be there. You bring the police, you die very fucking bad.”
“Salt Museum in Liverpool at ten p.m.,” Muldoon said, but the phone was already dead.
“What’s up?”
Muldoon spun around.
“Just business,” Muldoon said, forcing a smile and holding Sam’s phone out to him. “Hope you don’t mind. I left my cell phone in my office. I just remembered something about a shot up in Syracuse. Follow-up for that bunker story. This is my top priority, but I got other work going on, too. Hey, don’t look at me like that.”
Sam took the phone and opened it, punching the buttons. Connie stood behind him with her hands on her hips, shaking her head as if to say Muldoon was an asshole.
“Bullshit,” Sam said, looking up with hatred in his eyes. “You asshole. It was my dad!”
Muldoon held up both hands and said, “It wasn’t. Sam, listen to me. It was the Albanians. They’re looking for you.”
“With his phone? They have him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call Lurie,” Sam said, digging into his pocket for the agent’s card.
“That’s what I was going to do,” Muldoon said, concocting a story. “I didn’t want to get you all excited, but I’m thinking Lurie can triangulate where the call was made from.”
“So where are you going? Call him.”
“I’ll call from the road and have him come by to get the phone from you,” Muldoon said, moving toward the door. “I’ve got a chance to meet these people. If the phone thing doesn’t work, I want to get them on tape.”
“You’re meeting them? The cops can grab them,” Sam said.
“You think the cops can sweat these people?” Muldoon said with a crooked smile. “That’s the last thing you want to do. You do that, we’ll never see Jake.”
“So what do you do?” Sam asked.
“I’ll give the tape to Ed Lurie. If he can’t find them with your phone, he can run their faces through the FBI computer. They find out who they are and maybe where they are. Then they swoop in with a SWAT team before the Albanians know what hit them. This is a lead we can’t ignore.”
“You can’t just videotape these guys,” Sam said.
Muldoon grinned and said, “They’ll never know. Filament lens. Right in a briefcase. I wire myself for the sound, get a tech in a van a couple blocks away, and I get all they need for a major bust on tape.”
“Then let’s go,” Sam said, rubbing his eyes and scooping up his travel bag.
“No, no, no,” Muldoon said. “You’re staying here.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Hold it, little buddy,” Muldoon said, grabbing Sam’s arm.
“I’m not your fucking little buddy,” Sam said, snatching his arm free.
Muldoon nodded at Connie and made for the door.
“You wait and give the phone to Lurie,” Muldoon said.
“I’m going with you, you fat asshole,” Sam said, slinging the bag over his shoulder and following Muldoon.
Muldoon stopped and turned. He put a stout finger into the middle of Sam’s chest.
“I know you’re upset,” Muldoon said. “But whatever you think of me, I am not going to let you walk right into their hands. That isn’t happening. That would be stupid.”
“My dad,” Sam said, his face starting to tremble.
“The way not to get him back is for you to walk right into their hands,” Muldoon said. “Trust me. You need to stay safe.”
Muldoon gave Sam a little shove to move him away. He took a step backward and, with one eye on the boy, felt for the door until he had it open.
“Connie, get Sam that pastrami sandwich,” he said.
Then he slipped out into the hallway, softly closing the door. He hustled down the hall. He would call Lurie, but not for about six hours. He wasn’t going to let the FBI botch his story. This one was once in a lifetime. When this thing took hold, the whole country would be glued to their TV sets to see the Albanian mob swirling around with one of America’s oldest, richest families.
He’d be the newsman right in the middle of it, in the eye of the perfect shitstorm.
When Muldoon reached the stairwell, he looked at his watch and started to run.
71
SAM KNEW WHAT HIS DAD WOULD DO.
Muldoon kept feeding him that bullshit, and maybe he was right about the media blitz, but Jake wouldn’t sit with his thumb up his ass because someone tossed him a sandwich.
Connie was nice enough, but she was dumb as a stump. She sat there, clicking away on the Xbox controls, while he booked himself a flight to Syracuse online and Googled the Salt Museum in Liverpool, New York. After a few minutes’ navigation, he downloaded a map of Onondaga Lake Park, home of the Salt Museum he’d heard Muldoon talking about. The map included the surrounding landmarks. When he got there, he’d need a place to hide. When the Albanians left Muldoon, Sam planned to follow them.
That brought him to his next bit of business. He found a Syracuse limo company online and hired a town car to pick him up at the airport and stay with him for the night, paying with Jake’s credit card. He’d seen his father do the same thing on a trip they once took to Miami, where his dad did a story and took him to SeaWorld in between tapings. You rented a car and a driver and they did what you told them.
The sandwiches Connie had ordered arrived and Sam ate his, a big fat pastrami with golden mustard. His stomach was queasy, but a man had to eat and he didn’t want to lose steam later because he had passed up a perfectly good sandwich. He washed it down with an orange soda, belched quietly, and wiped his mouth on the back of his arm.
With everything in place, Sam got onto the Vonage Web site and started up a phone account. It was less than five minutes before he was placing a blocked call to his own cell phone.
His ringer’s quiet chime filled the silence of the greenroom.
Connie was leaning this way and that, making little huffing noises as she blasted her way through some alien world.
Sam cleared his throat.
Connie kept playing.
Sam directed his face to the computer screen and said, “Do you hear something?”
Connie jumped and said, “Damn, they got me. What did you say?”
“Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, pretending to type.
“Oh, your phone,” Connie said.
“Jesus,” Sam said, grabbing for it.
He flipped it open and looked at her.
“Hello,” he said, then jumped to his feet. “Dad! Are you okay?”
He sniffed, wiping his face, and looked at Connie, who wore a mask of shock.
“No, I’m okay, Dad,” Sam said. “I’m at the studio with Connie.”
Connie nodded fervently.
“No, she’s great, Dad,” Sam said. “No, they’re not keeping me here. They’re helping me.”
Connie stood up, wringing her hands.
“Can I talk to him?” Connie whispered.
Sam scowled and shook his head, making a crazy motion with his finger. He covered the phone and held it away and in a whisper said, “He’s pissed.”
Sam put the phone back to his mouth and said, “She’ll take me. No, she’s right here. Where? LaGuardia? We’ll leave right now. I love you, too.”
Sam snapped the phone shut and grinned at Connie.
“He’s okay,” Sam said. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m just doing what they asked me,” Connie said.
“I know.”
Sam c
losed up his computer and gathered his things. Connie reached for the phone on the end table next to the couch.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked, his insides tightening.
“I’m letting them know,” she said.
“No,” Sam said, making a furious canceling sign with both hands. “My dad said just go. He said to have you take me to the airport. Let’s just go. He didn’t even want me to leave the hotel, but Muldoon, he scared the hell out of me. My dad said to trust you, that you’d do the right thing.”
Connie hesitated, then set the phone down.
“I guess if he’s meeting us,” she said. “It’s not like I’m not staying with you. That’s what they want.”
“Definitely.”
“Then if Jake says to go, they can’t blame me for that.”
They walked down the hallway through a flurry of activity. The show went to air in less than an hour and no one paid any attention to them. They flagged a cab out on the street and rode in silence.
When they finally arrived at the airport, Sam hopped out, the thrill of escape flooding his frame.
“Hey!” she yelled.
He glanced back and saw her standing beside the cab’s open door. Panic bubbled up in his throat.
“Should I just hold this cab?” she asked.
“Good idea,” Sam said.
Then he pushed through the doors and disappeared into the crowded terminal.
72
ACROSS THE RIVER, the sun was settling into the arms of the Catskill Mountains. Bloodstained clouds gathered at the horizon, eager for the close of the day. In their shadows, the small city of Kingston moved closer to its final end and another day further from its eminent past. The congressman’s private study looked out over it all, the back lawn with its Italian fountains, gardens, and burial ground. His hand massaged the fold of skin beneath his chin as he thought about things present and past and the tendrils of time that connected them in the way that Siamese twins were bound. Bloodlines and nerves that, if disrupted, inexplicably killed them both.
Slatten’s peculiar double knock on the thick wood door filled the room and Van Buren told him to come in.
“Congressman,” Slatten said, “Channel Six is running—”
“I know all about it,” Van Buren said, cutting Slatten off by raising a hand.
“Are you going to watch?” Slatten asked.
Van Buren sighed and turned his eyes toward Slatten and away from the sweeping view.
“In 1777, the British burned this place to the ground,” he said, nodding across the Hudson toward the decrepit city. “Everything, on both sides of the river, except Ridgewood and the home of the British commander’s mistress.
“The Rothschilds. You’ve heard of them? For centuries they’ve ruled, never openly. Jewish bankers. But money, carefully placed, and they not only survived, they thrived, no matter who ran the government, or the armies, or the church. William Van Buren did the same thing. Something he passed down through the generations the way your father probably taught you to shoot a rifle.”
Van Buren scooped the remote off his desk and sat down, rocking back in the leather chair and clicking on the TV that rested in a cabinet surrounded by musty old unread books. Slatten stood, military style, at ease, with his hands clasped behind his back. Van Buren folded his hands over the small paunch at his beltline.
“I’ll have a Scotch, straight up,” Van Buren said.
Slatten stiffened, then got the drink and set it down as American Outrage began with its dour notes and dramatic smash-cut images of celebrities mixed in with floods, fires, victims, blood, and guns. Then Nancy Riordin appeared on set with a picture of Van Buren—from a black-tie affair, laughing and raising a glass of champagne—filling the screen behind her.
“Are the Van Burens, one of America’s oldest, proudest, and richest families, about to fall?” she said with a pained expression, as the screen changed to a schoolboy picture of Sam Carlson. “This boy may be the key to a scandal involving sex, drugs, stolen children, organized crime, and American royalty.”
Van Buren gripped his glass and watched, sniffing from time to time. Somewhere in his brain he realized that the tendons in his fingers had begun to ache. When the segment ended, the glass shattered in his hand. Van Buren sucked the blood from his finger, trying to stem the flow.
73
JAKE LAY IN HIS SHIRTSLEEVES AND SLACKS, staring up at the crystal chandelier above the bed and the rainbow flecks that the dying sun cast across the ceiling. In his pants pocket, he rattled his keys against the makeup container. As promised, there had been a knock at the door and one of Slatten’s goons handed in his clothes. The green suit had been cleaned, mended, and pressed. The Ferragamo shoes shined. The shirt had just the right amount of starch in the collar.
Jake had already tried the windows and the door. There was a phone in the room, but it was dead. His was gone. Below, in the yard, he’d watched one of Slatten’s boys pacing little figure eights on the lawn.
His gut twisted tighter with every passing minute of helpless waiting. His mind ran down the list of stories he’d broken over the years. A director at the Justice Department with a teenage daughter who turned tricks to pay for his assassination. A woman whose twin sister disappeared after playing a joke on her boyfriend. The wife of a soldier accused of the rape and murder of a civilian in Kuwait. Parents of a teenage boy killed by police after a department store shooting spree with blanks in his gun. People caught unwittingly in a spotlight they never asked for, never imagined, and wanted to get out of.
He wondered if any of the subjects of his journalism would empathize with his situation. He wondered if any of them even could.
At quarter till eight, he got up and began to pace the room. It was just after the hour when the lock clattered and Slatten’s face appeared.
“Time,” he said.
Jake put on his suit coat and followed Slatten out into the hallway. A crimson carpet ran down its center and several suits of armor stood at intervals beneath the heavy carved wooden beams. Old oil paintings in gold ornamental frames hung every few feet along the paneled walls.
They descended a grand carved wood staircase lined with portraits of men and women in white powdered wigs. Below, Jake caught sight of a maid in a black uniform with a white apron disappearing down a hallway. They went in that direction and stopped in front of two massive hand-carved doors. Slatten slid them apart and waved Jake in.
The room was enormous, longer than it was wide, with thick wooden beams exposed like the ribs of an inverted ship and knobbed with something like acorns gilt with silver leafing. Three towering windows ran along one wall, arched, mullioned, and dressed in twenty-foot velvet drapes. Between them stood Corinthian pedestals bearing white marble busts, quite possibly Rodins.
Jake had seen opulence before in his work. Not the champagne fountains of South Florida drug dealers. Not the glass garages of professional athletes, glittering with the chrome of two dozen classic automobiles. Old money. European castles. Blue diamonds. Money that didn’t need an uptick in the market. Money untouched by the IRS, not because it had been laundered or written off to some bogus business expense, but because it had never entered this country in the form of currency, but rather in the form of priceless paintings, furniture, and sculptures.
This was that kind of money.
A huge silver candelabra glittered in the center of it all, suspended like a radiant star with more than a hundred single flames illuminating the intricate metal filigree. At the head of a long table Van Buren sat, thin and aged, dressed in a dark suit, wrinkled from a day of work, with a burgundy bow tie, and talking on a cell phone. Next to him, on the right-hand side of the table, was a second place setting.
“Go ahead,” Slatten said, and slid the doors shut.
Jake focused on the congressman and closed the gap. Light from the candles glittered off Van Buren’s glasses, hiding the content of his eyes until Jake stood directly in front of him. Van Buren ac
ted surprised to see him, told the person on the phone that he had to go, and stood, smiling and extending his hand to Jake.
Jake looked at it, long-boned and liver-spotted with thick knots of tendon strapped across the knuckles, then he stared into Van Buren’s brown eyes until the congressman blinked. In the air, the congressman’s breath hung, plagued by the hint of a broken sewage line. Jake wondered if Van Buren was too arrogant to care, or if his life was simply devoid of anyone who might clue him in to the smell.
“You want to let me use that phone so I can call my son?” Jake asked.
Van Buren retracted his hand, joining it with the other. Two parallel rows of perfect white teeth disappeared beneath thin, pale lips. He cleared his throat and, settling himself down again, said, “Why don’t you sit down?”
“I’d like to call my son,” Jake said, drawing back his shoulders and tightening his jaw.
“Everything in time, Mr. Carlson,” Van Buren said in a voice rich with guile, the voice of a politician lusting for power or a billionaire accustomed to buying it.
Van Buren motioned to the chair.
“You think I’m just going to go along with your charade?” Jake said. “This guy Slatten? What rock did you find him under?”
“I’m trying to understand you,” Van Buren said. “Please, you should sit. You’ll feel better if you eat. We can start with the salad.”
Jake looked at the glimmering china plate. On it, dark mixed greens were tossed in a creamy dressing. Jake’s mouth watered uncontrollably. He sat down, picked up his fork, and shoveled a mouthful in.
“Creamy shallot,” Van Buren said, picking up his own fork. “The dressing.”
Next to the water glass was a glass of red wine. Jake took a drink, warming his insides while hints of dark fruit and cinnamon lingered in the back of his mouth. Bald hunger overran his other emotions. He wolfed down the rest of the salad—light and refreshing—and when he finished, Van Buren set his fork down. Within seconds, two stone-faced servants appeared. One cleared the salad plates and the other replaced them with wide bowls of saffron steamed mussels before pouring more wine. Jake’s nostrils flared at the scent.
