Finder's Fee

by Alton Gansky

  “You think that’s going on here?” Judith said.

  “In a way. He has two clinics on the east coast — Boston and Miami; three on the west coast: two in San Diego and one in Los Angeles.” Luke looked to Ida. “You say you dealt with Zarefsky directly?”

  “Yes. He did everything. He and his nurses.”

  Judith began to sort the information in her mind. “Okay, we know Abel had his picture taken at a house in La Jolla, that the house is owned by a Dr. Zarefsky, and that it was he who treated Ida.”

  “Right,” Luke said. “We also know that Zarefsky is tied to a biomedical research firm specializing in infertility problems. What we don’t know is if Abel is still at the house and why he was taken in the first place.”

  Frustration mingled with weariness and Judith wished for her home, her bed, and her comfortable and well-known surroundings. Things seemed surrealistic and not quite right, like an old tape recorder playing an audiotape a touch too slow. The sofa beneath her, the humming of the fan in Luke’s laptop, distant voices of other temporary residents in the hotel told her that all remained real. She wished it weren’t so.

  “How do we get my son?” A new edge had become evident in Ida’s voice.

  “I have no idea,” Luke said. “The house has a cliff to the rear, and best I can tell from this photo, a large wall and gate along the road. Certainly there must be security cameras and probably guards. I can’t imagine them taking Abel and not providing some protection. The houses on either side are bound to be as secure. The only possible way in is from the beach side, but that doesn’t look likely. The cliff looks too high to climb and even if I were an experienced climber, I’m sure I’d have trouble with the loose soil. It’s beach geology. Even if someone like me could make the climb it wouldn’t solve the problem of electronic security and guards.”

  “We can’t give up,” Ida said. “He needs me. He’s just a boy.”

  “I know.” Luke studied the image on the monitor. Perhaps, Judith thought, to avoid making eye contact with a distraught mother.

  “I wonder …” Judith trailed off.

  “What?” Luke and Ida spoke in unison.

  “If we can’t get in, maybe we can get them to come out.”

  Luke looked into Judith’s eyes and she realized it was the first time he had done so. She felt an odd sensation.

  “Judith Find, you are a brilliant woman.”

  “What have you got on your mind?”

  Luke smiled. “Did I see a shopping mall nearby? I’m going out for a bit. I’ll be back.”

  There was little to see. Judith, Luke, and Ida drove along La Jolla Farms Road and passed the house they had seen from the satellite photo downloaded from the Internet. A seven-foot high wall clad in rough, white, Spanish-style stucco ran the length of the front property line. Centered in the wall was an ornate wrought-iron gate backed with a black metal mesh, designed to keep prying eyes from gazing onto the lot and at the house. A black metal box on a steel post sat a few feet in front of the gate and to the left side of the drive — the perfect distance for a person in a car to stop, enter a code, and drive in when the gate opened. The setting sun and encroaching darkness made observation tricky.

  “Such is the price of having a mansion on the beach,” Judith said. “All these houses are behind locked gates.”

  “How open is your home?” Luke asked.

  “I didn’t say they were wrong, just that everything has a price.” She and Luke met eyes. Nothing more needed to be said.

  “Not too slow.” Luke sat in the front passenger seat. He had wanted to be free to observe as much as possible. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Everyone is driving slow, Luke. This is tourist territory.” In the rearview mirror, Judith could see Ida sitting as close to the door as possible. She gazed through the window at the wall that hid the house where her son was being held. Judith felt certain that if she slowed the car too much, Ida would leap from the moving vehicle and attempt to scale the wall.

  Luke, however, had ceased gazing at the barrier. His eyes scanned the road ahead. “Not much room on the sides of the road. We’ll just have to make do.”

  “What now?”

  “We put your plan in action. Let’s find the nearest pay phone.”

  Luke took a deep breath and waited. The fact that the phone rang three times before being answered surprised him.

  “Nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency.” The woman sounded bored.

  Luke began to pant. “I was … I mean, gunshots … La Jolla Farms Road … I heard screaming too.” He gave the address.

  “You heard gunshots, sir?”

  “That’s right. Three, maybe four. I don’t know. I was just driving by … you know … looking at all the fancy houses when I heard a scream and the bang, bang, bang. You had better hurry. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  “I notice you’re calling from a pay phone — ”

  Luke expected that. There’s no blocking caller ID with the police. “Yeah, my cell phone is dead. Stupid piece of junk. Dies on me all the time.”

  “May I have your name, sir?”

  “Um, sure … No. Forget it. I don’t want to be involved. I just thought you should know.”

  “I need your name, sir.”

  Luke immersed himself in the role even more. “Look, lady. Send someone or don’t. It’s on your conscience. I’ve done the right thing.” He hung up and returned to the car.

  “Do you think it will work?” Judith said as Luke reentered the car.

  “It should, but we’re not done. It’s your turn.”

  “Mine?”

  “The cops are going to call the residence. Someone there will answer and say, ‘No, everything is fine.’ But if the cops get more than one report of a shooting they’ll have to investigate and want to talk to someone face-to-face. We need you to make the same kind of call.”

  “But if I call from a pay phone it will look suspicious, and you know the state of our cell phones.”

  Luke reached into his pocket and removed an inexpensive-looking cell phone. “You’re going to use this.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “At the mall. These days a person can get almost anything at a major mall. This is a pay-as-you-go phone. No contract. No credit check. I buy the phone, prepay for a handful of minutes, and we’re good to go. Now make the call. Tell them that you were jogging by, but be quick about it. Too much time between calls will look suspicious.”

  “Then you drive. I don’t like talking on these things and driving strange streets at night.”

  They changed places and Judith dialed the phone.

  twenty-six

  Judith tensed as Luke pulled to the side of the road yielding to two black-and-white patrol cars barreling past with light bars tossing splotches of blue and red on the terrain. Pulling back onto the road, Luke continued on as they had done before until they had passed Zarefsky’s house. Judith looked at the side mirror on the passenger side of the rental car and saw the lights from at least two more police cars. Zarefsky was about to have his evening disrupted.

  As they passed, Judith could see the gate opening. “He’s letting the police in.”

  “That’s the beauty of living in a litigious society. The police receive an emergency call like the one we gave and if they refuse to show and the call turns out to be real, they get their socks sued off. We gave them enough cause to search the grounds. They don’t need a warrant if they have cause to believe a life may be in danger.”

  “Sometimes you frighten me,” Judith said.

  “Sometimes I frighten myself, but then again, society scares me more than anything else. I’m going to make a U-turn. I don’t have much time.”

  Luke did and pulled to the west shoulder of the road and stopped in front of another walled property. He reached for the door handle. “Wish me luck.”

  “Be careful,” Judith said.

  “Be caref
ul with my son,” Ida added.

  Judith watched as Luke strode toward the flashing lights fifty yards away and she felt sick.

  Luke’s heart tapped like a drummer on caffeine. He tried to calm it but despite a mental discipline he had long prided himself on, it continued to pound at an accelerated rate. As he approached, he saw three of the four patrol cars pull through the gate and down the long drive he had seen in the aerial photo. He walked with a casual gait, like a man on a peaceful stroll near the ocean, but he felt no peace. Not a man of great courage, Luke preferred the quiet of his home, his space behind locked doors, viewing the world through computer screen and television. Now here he walked toward what could only be an adventure that turned out badly. Still one foot preceded the other and he moved closer to the open gate, still not fully certain what he would do next.

  He thought about how stupid all of this had become. So what if he had a secret? What did he care if people knew? He couldn’t care less what others thought of him. He was a man of solitary existence, comfortable with his life and his choices. It would have been easier and probably wiser if he had told the Puppeteer what he could do with his threats.

  But he hadn’t. And he did care, as much as it galled him to admit it.

  Cars on the road slowed as drivers and passengers rubber -necked to see the action taking place on the most exclusive street in San Diego. He guessed their fears. You work hard, build or inherit some wealth, build a ten- or twenty-million dollar mansion overlooking the ocean, protect it with alarms and high walls, and still the police are needed. Wealth couldn’t buy safety, health, or privacy. There is always someone who can find a chink in your armor. Luke knew that now more than ever.

  He paused at the gate and looked for an officer. He didn’t know what police procedure would be followed in a case like this. Did they leave a man behind to guard the gate? He saw no one. Down the street he saw a fresh set of emergency lights approaching. Even at a distance he could see that it was an ambulance. A sensible precaution in light of the nature of the call.

  Acting like he belonged on the scene, Luke took a deep breath and stepped through the gate.

  “Do you trust him?” Ida’s voice came in a breathy whisper from the backseat.

  “Luke?” Judith gave the question thought. “I guess so. I haven’t had any choice so far. I’ve only known him since … lunch. That seems so long ago.” Since meeting Luke at Hutch’s in Ontario, she had traveled by car and plane, escaped an explosion, evaded the police, and now sat at the edge of a street not knowing what to do next. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

  “I could just walk up to the police and tell them that Abel is my son. They’d give him to me, wouldn’t they? Abel would verify it.”

  “They might but they’d have lots of questions, such as why you haven’t reported him missing, and why you didn’t go to the police in Fresno after your house was destroyed.”

  “I could tell them that Abel was just visiting Dr. Zarefsky and that I had come to pick him up.”

  The idea had crossed Judith’s mind but the three of them had been warned not to go to the police or the boy would die. As it was, they were skirting disobedience by faking a shooting call. If Ida had direct contact with the police then things might get worse. It didn’t matter now, the die was cast. “I don’t think they would buy it. Besides, there seems to be more at work here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’ve explained how Luke and I have come to be involved — forced to be involved. The man we call the Puppeteer seems to know a lot, things it should be impossible for him to know. He’s one factor. Your Dr. Zarefsky is another unknown. Someone has made an attempt on your life already. We have to be careful. We don’t know who to trust.”

  “If Luke gets Abel out, what will you do with him — with us?”

  “Do? We have no plans to do anything. We were told that if we didn’t do something, he would die. So we’re doing something.” The harshness of the comment rang in Judith’s mind. “I’m sorry. I could have phrased that much better.”

  Ida said nothing.

  Judith wished she hadn’t come to work that morning.

  Now on the other side of the wall, Luke could see the expansive grounds. He estimated the property covered five acres; trees, shrubbery, and other plantings covered the grounds. He could smell the salt air from the ocean and see half of the sun’s orange disk above the horizon. The sound of waves on the shore near the bottom of the distant cliff rumbled through the air.

  A desire to flee rose in Luke and he nearly yielded. Nothing about this made sense. He had become certain that at some point since rising from bed, his mind had left him. Maybe that was it. Maybe all of this was a dream and in a moment, the alarm would sound and he would put his warm feet on the soft carpet of his bedroom. No matter how much he wished it so, the current reality overpowered the fantasy.

  He wasn’t in bed. He wasn’t in his home. He stood on the side of a long drive that followed a gentle slope to a massive house with a copper-clad, mansard roof, green from weathering. Three of the police cars were parked on the circular drive, next to the entry, their lights flashing spots on the wall. Headlights added their illumination to the exterior house lamps. Two officers moved slowly along the perimeter of the mansion. Their guns were drawn. The front door stood open and warm, gold light poured from it like water from a fountain.

  Although he couldn’t see what transpired inside the home, Luke could guess. Whoever was home complained that no shots had been fired and that all this was a load of nonsense. Nonetheless, the police felt compelled to search. They had to. If they didn’t and it came to light later that someone had been wounded or killed, then the officers would be making their living as security guards. They would look in each room, interview every person present, and then, satisfied that they had been the target of a joke, leave, their mood spoiled for the week.

  Luke moved from the drive into a small stand of trees. The satellite photo he downloaded of the property flashed in his mind. The arrangement of buildings matched in every detail but one: a new structure, a single story of maybe a thousand square feet, stood near the pool. Guest quarters? Pool cabana? He couldn’t tell. It must have been built since the public access photo had been taken. It didn’t surprise him.

  He moved with prudence. Some considered him paranoid but he viewed himself as wisely cautious. It didn’t take paranoia to know that an estate this size had security cameras. His first task was to locate them. His second task was to wait for the opportunity to present itself — whatever that might be.

  Moving north, Luke made his way to a hedge that bordered a tennis court and crouched down, peering at the house through a small opening in the plants. To his right stood a large oak tree. Beneath it rested a stone picnic table and two benches, no doubt imported from Europe. Two uniformed officers exited the front door followed by a narrow man in beige slacks and a black sport shirt. Luke couldn’t see well from his vantage point but he could make out enough detail to know that the man matched the picture he had seen on the Cal-Genotics web page. He gazed at Dr. Alex Zarefsky whose body language made it clear he was an unhappy man.

  “Are you the one they’re looking for?”

  Luke jumped but managed to stifle a scream. The voice had come from his right and above his head. He looked up into the oak tree. A boy sat on one of the limbs.

  “You scared the life out of me,” Luke whispered then looked back toward the house. They hadn’t been heard.

  “Are you?”

  “No, son, I’m not.”

  “Someone said they heard gunshots. I overheard the police say that.”

  Luke couldn’t believe his luck. “You’re Abel, aren’t you?”

  “Able to do what?” The boy kept his voice low.

  Luke blinked. “What?”

  “You asked if I was able. I can’t answer unless I know what it is you want me to do.” He smiled. “It’s a joke.”

  “I get it,” Luke whispered. “How a
bout this: Abel, are you able to come down out of the tree?”

  The boy looked at him in a way that made Luke feel like his soul was under examination. “Okay.” With a speed that frightened Luke, the boy scampered quietly from the tree and knelt down by the hedge.

  Even in the dimming light, Luke recognized the youngster: same age, same hair, and same lavender eyes. He held out his hand. “Mr. Abel Palek, I presume. I’m Luke Becker and I’ve come to find you.”

  Abel shook Luke’s hand.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Abel said. “I knew someone would come.”

  “What are you doing in that tree?” Luke kept his voice low and glanced back at the house. The officers were enduring a tongue-lashing.

  “Dr. Z doesn’t want anyone to see me. He told me that I should hide if anyone came looking for me.”

  “But you spoke to me.”

  “Dr. Z has no truth in him. You do. Is my mother with you?”

  Luke wanted to ask what that meant but he didn’t have time. “Your mother is waiting for you not far from here. All I have to do is figure out how to get you out without being seen.” He let his eyes trace the way he came and back to the still open gate. As he did he noticed a black Mercedes SUV pull into the drive. He caught a glimpse of the driver — the man from Fresno.

  Abel grabbed Luke’s arm. “He’s not a good man. There is evil on him.”

  “I got the same impression when I first met him. Okay, when he reaches the house, we’ll head back up the drive — ”

  “No. It won’t work. They have cameras.”

  “We don’t have much choice, kid.”

  “I know a way. Follow me.”

  Sam Pennington stood by his boss as he ranted at the police officers. Pennington said nothing for awhile, then placed a hand on Zarefsky’s elbow and squeezed. “Dr. Zarefsky, the officers were only doing as their training dictates.”