The Trophy Wife

by Diana Diamond

  Get hold of yourself, she chided. Anyone could look suspicious. If she were confident she could watch the bank without being recognized, then professionals would be even more difficult to recognize. She and Walter were both certain that a bonded courier would be the likely choice to pick up the money. She was looking for a courier who was prepared to walk down the street with $100 million in Folonari bearer bonds. She could expect a briefcase, probably chained to his wrist, a businesslike sedan that would wait at the curb, and jacketed driver, probably armed, who would be actively scanning the crowd.

  Angela turned at the corner, crossed over, and headed back past the bank on the opposite side of the street, toward the import outlet where she would spend an hour examining cameras. She would select a display case just inside the open warehouse doors, giving her a vantage point that looked directly across at Folonari, with enough height to see over the heads of the shoppers.

  Then, she saw him. It was the weasel of a man who had followed her into the first-class lounge and had waited outside the Boca Raton industrial park. He had replaced his wire frames with sunglasses and his business suit with a more casual costume. But, like the one in front of the bank, he was in a freshly unfolded sports shirt and heavy dark shoes. He was looking away from her, but his head was slowly panning in her direction. Angela turned away and moved into a souvenir shop to get off the street.

  There were two of them, probably with their car parked at the edge of the shopping district. If the pickup man came on foot, they would have no trouble following him. If he came by car, the car would move at a snail’s pace until it reached the main beachfront road. One of them could walk beside the courier’s car. The other could run ahead to have their car ready. Or maybe they had no intention of allowing anyone to get back to a waiting car. They could just as easily take their man in the bank doorway.

  Angela smiled. So that was why Walter had transferred only $10,000. He was going along with Hogan’s scheme to catch the kidnapper. He had simply used the ten thousand to create an account. His real intention was to see who came to claim the money. He wasn’t planning to ransom Emily at all!

  She looked back into the street and found that neither of the lookouts seemed to be interested in her direction. Casually, she sauntered out into the middle of a throng of shoppers and moved away from the man she had recognized. Then she ducked into the sidewalk cafe and took a table just inside the building. She could sit unobserved, but still watch the bank and the man stationed in front of it.

  Half an hour dragged by, spent sipping bottled water so that she could hold her place at the table. She was beginning to wonder what had gone wrong that the courier hadn’t shown up. Could the courier service be connected into the bank? Had they learned that only a small amount had been transferred and decided to wait for new instructions?

  Angela had waited long enough. Nothing was going to happen and she didn’t want to linger any longer around people who could identify her. She counted out the change for her bill, stacked it on die table, and was just about to abandon the watch when the car she was waiting for appeared. It came down the side street next to the bank and turned into the dense parade of shoppers. Carefully, it edged up to the curb. She could see two men behind the darkened windshield and watched the reaction of the man keeping watch at the front door as he made a point of wandering away from the his post without glancing back at the car.

  One man got out. He looked in both directions, then moved to the door of the bank, turning his shoulders as he pressed through the crowd. There was no mistaking him. The gray, summer-weight suit stood out like a lighthouse, even though it was worn over an open-collar white shirt. The briefcase was a thick, case-file size. All she could see of the man who remained behind the wheel was his silhouette. He was leaning back, away from the windshield, disguised by the black tint of the side window.

  The little man who had been posted on her side of the street suddenly appeared, moving into her view as he crossed the street behind the car. He then sauntered past the parked car and went into the bank’s front door. Angela allowed herself a smile of satisfaction. She had called it right. One had gone to the end of the street where the car would have to pass. The other had moved into the bank and was ready to follow the courier. Andrew Hogan; she thought, needed to be more original. His operatives were being a bit too obvious.

  The minutes dragged by slowly. She had expected the courier to return within a few moments. All he had to do was count the bonds and sign a receipt. Unless he knew the amount that he was supposed to pick up; then, he probably would have called his office for instructions when the account contained only a fraction of the amount.

  But he was seemingly at ease when he emerged from the building, moving straight to the car without examining his surroundings and disappearing inside. Instantly, the car eased from the curb, forcing itself into the human traffic. In another instant, the man who had followed her to Florida came out of the bank and began moving along the far sidewalk, keeping in the sedan’s blind spot. Angela stepped out and began following on her side of the street.

  At first, she moved very quickly, darting in and out of the shoppers. But she realized that, even at a slow pace, she would move ahead of the sedan. She had to hang back in order to keep the car in front of her. She glanced across the street at the man making his way down the other side. He now had one hand raised to his head and was talking into a small radio or telephone, perhaps alerting another member of the team that the car was on its way. Ahead, she could see the line of taxis waiting to take shoppers back to their hotels and beach houses. It would be easy for her to jump into a cab and have him follow the car that the man across the street would undoubtedly get into.

  The courier’s sedan was near the end of the street, about to break free from the crowds. Angela picked up her pace, knowing that she had to be at the cabstand before the car was able to accelerate away. But when she glanced back to her right, the man across the street had vanished. She suffered a split second of panic as she realized that Hogan’s agents weren’t following the script she had assumed. But what did it matter? She still had to get to a taxi before the courier’s car left the area.

  The door of a taxi at the rear end of the line opened in front of her. She started to step around it, hurrying toward the head of the line. Suddenly, hands reached from behind and locked on her arms. Before she could turn her head, she felt herself being pushed forward and into the arms of a man who was already inside the taxi. She had hardly hit the seat, when the man who had pushed her slid in next to her and closed the door behind him.

  “Who the hell … ?” Angela started. But then she recognized that she was being held immobile between the two men who had been watching the bank. “What do you assholes think you’re doing?”

  “Following the courier. Same as you,” said her friend from the first-class lounge.

  “Figured you’d appreciate a lift,” said the second man. “So just shut up and watch.”

  “You can’t do this,” she protested. “This is kidnapping.”

  “No, it’s bank robbery,” said the first man, “and it could get a little dangerous. So keep down and keep quiet.”

  The taxi had already pulled out of line and was no more than fifty feet behind the courier’s sedan, separated by a thinning group of shoppers. As Angela watched, the sedan found its opening and moved onto the shore road. Then it took a left turn toward the airport where her private plane had landed. Seconds later, the taxi maneuvered around the stragglers and turned after the courier car. The driver stayed a good way back in order to avoid being spotted.

  “Looks like they’re heading for the airport,” the guard to her right announced. The driver nodded. Then the guard turned to Angela. “Is that where you were going to meet them? At the airport?”

  “Meet who?” she countered, staring straight ahead.

  “We figured someone would come down to pick up the money.”

  “What money?”

  She noticed th
at the guard to her left was examining a photograph and, when she stole a glance, saw that it was the photo of her from personnel file. He glanced at the picture and then over at Angela. Then he chuckled. “Where did you get that outfit? You look like an idiot.”

  She kept staring straight ahead. “You’re the ones who are going to look like idiots when I pick you out of a lineup for assault. If you have half a brain between you, you’ll stop this car and let me out. You’re holding me against me will.”

  “They made us!” the driver suddenly announced and the taxi lurched forward, almost as if it had been hit from behind. The sedan had suddenly pulled out to pass a car ahead and was now rapidly accelerating away. The taxi shot up close to the car ahead and then leaned out across the center line. Angela saw a car coming directly at them and closing fast. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head into the seat back like a turtle squeezing into its shell. The engine downshifted and roared. Horns blared and tires squealed as the car lurched back across the dividing line. She expected the sound of tearing metal, but instead the horn blasted past, its pitch dropping as it vanished behind.

  “You bastards are crazy,” Angela shouted.

  “We don’t want you to miss your pickup,” the man to her right said.

  The taxi was moving so fast that it seemed to be hopping in a short series of flights and then leaning heavily when the road turned. The traffic sign for the airport exit rocketed past and seconds later they shot by the exit itself. Angela focused on the speedometer and saw the needle hovering around the 100 mark. Far ahead, she could make out the sedan, which still seemed to be pulling away from them.

  “Where’s he heading?” the guard on her left asked the driver.

  His shoulder hunched. “Search me. There are just a few roads ahead. He won’t be able to shake us.”

  “Just keep him in sight, then. Sooner or later he’s gonna run out of island.”

  The road, which had been well paved and protected with guardrails where it circled George Town, had deteriorated to a gravel path that was barely the width of two cars. The sedan ahead was forced to slow down and the taxi was catching up. Then, without warning, the sedan’s taillights flashed and the car turned sharply onto a nearly invisible road that ran south toward the sea. It was headed to a small colony of buildings that were at the water’s edge.

  The cab skidded into the same turn. When the sedan screeched to a stop, the taxi was only a hundred yards behind. The courier and his driver jumped out and raced into one of the buildings.

  “Stay here!” The man to her left ordered Angela. Her two captors sprung out the sides of the taxi.

  “Fuck you,” she shouted as she rolled out through the open door.

  She was running after her captors, glancing back at the taxi driver, who was trying to catch her from behind. The building was a dive shed, with displays of scuba equipment guarded by a wide-eyed clerk, who was powerless to interfere with the chase through the center of his store. The couriers were quickly through to the seaside entrance and out onto a wooden pier. They were trying for a dive boat, tied to the end of the dock, but Hogan’s two agents were right at their heels.

  “You ain’t going to make it,” one of pursuers called out. A second later, he had a pistol in his hand and fired two shots out into the water. While the shots were still echoing, the courier and his chauffeur skidded to a dead stop and fired their hands into the air. Hogan’s two men pulled up next to them. Seconds later, Angela and the taxi driver joined the conference. It was Angela’s first-class companion who took charge and steered the group off the pier, back into the dive shop. There, he flashed some credentials, which the owner barely acknowledged, and threw down a pile of twenties, which got the owner’s attention. Seconds later, they were all in the dive shop office, the door shut to assure their privacy.

  The couriers were fiercely professional, unwilling to say anything about their assignment other than to refer Hogan’s people to their superiors at a downtown office. They were unimpressed when they were told that they were involved in a kidnapping. Many of the courier company’s clients were using the firm precisely to maintain their anonymity while they retrieved illegally gotten gain, so the threat that they might be involved in a crime came as no shock. But the courier who had gone into the bank was completely flabbergasted when Hogan’s man told him what was in the briefcase that was still locked to his wrist and exactly what had transpired inside the bank.

  “You guys have been had,” Angela’s traveling companion told them, “and the kidnapper who hung you out is here on the island. Where were you supposed to take the money?”

  “The airport …” the courier started to explain, but he was silenced by the threatening glance of the driver. The two men went silent, leaving Hogan’s people no alternative but to telephone the courier office and to take the entire party back to George Town to talk with their boss.

  “I’m not going with you,” Angela protested. “I have nothing to do with these two or whatever they’re involved in.”

  The grip of the man who had been following her was anything but gentle. “Why don’t you just tag along and see if anyone recognizes you?”

  The cash was impressive. There were 2,500 twenty-dollar bills neatly stacked in twenty five paper wrappers. Walter’s secretary had gathered it in a shopping bag from four different banks, dragging cash in and out of a waiting taxi, and praying that the bottom wouldn’t fall out of the bag in the middle of Park Avenue. Then she had brought it up in the elevator, realizing that no one cared what she had in the bag and musing how easy it would be to carry the same amount down in the elevator and out the front door. All day, she worked with amounts that ran into the millions or the tens of millions, counting up small fortunes with a few keystrokes on her computer terminal. The vast sums she worked with were vague and meaningless, like the numbers in the InterBank annual report or the frequently quoted total of the national debt. But $50,000 in twenties had a real presence. Joanne had swallowed hard as she stacked the currency neatly on the coffee table in Walter’s office. He had thanked her profusely, again forcing her to endure his lame excuse about a friend’s boat. As soon as she was out the door, he began to wrap it.

  It was a hefty package, a twelve-inch cube of plain brown paper secured with unbreakable tape and tied with a heavy cord. Walter lifted it. Twenty pounds, he guessed. He carried it to his closet and pushed it to the back corner of the shelf. No one would question him at the end of the day when he carried it down in the elevator. He would probably rest it on the guard’s desk while he initialed the sign-out sheet.

  He used his private line to dial Andrew Hogan’s office. “Any news?”

  “Nothing yet,” Hogan answered.

  “It’s been over an hour. They wouldn’t just leave it sitting there.”

  Hogan’s voice sighed with impatience. “We’ve got the cashier working for us and the street covered. If anyone shows up, we’ll know about it. They’re just taking their time. Wouldn’t surprise me if they had people watching the street themselves.”

  “You’ll call me?” Walter asked.

  “Soon as I hear something, you’ll be the first to know.”

  He sat at his desk, trying to shift his attention to the mountain of work that needed his input. But he couldn’t concentrate on anything except the ransom account in George Town. Andrew would have it under surveillance until someone came calling for it. Then, when he thought he had his man and was no longer interested in the paper account, Walter would send down the full $100 million.

  But would that buy Emily’s freedom? He had never even considered that she could fall into the hands of a psychopath like the man on the telephone. Just recalling the relish with which the smug voice had described her mutilation sent a chill up his back and into his hairline. Even if the man were paid in full for holding Emily captive, he might not obey an order to release her. No matter what happened in Grand Cayman, Walter was determined that nothing should interfere with his turning over the cash
he had pushed into his closet.

  He went to the locker room, changed into his gym shorts and sneakers, and then slumped into the exercise room where Mitchell Price was already sliding weights onto the bar. “Jesus, you look like hell,” Price said by way of a greeting. “Something wrong with the deutsche mark?”

  “Sound as a dollar,” Walter answered, completing the tired old joke. He climbed up onto the treadmill and set it for a warm-up jog.

  Son of a bitch, Walter thought, as he watched Price begin a series of shoulder shrug exercises. It would be Mitchell’s computers that would find the $100 million he had siphoned from dozens of accounts and trace it through to the Folonari Cayman branch. It would be Mitchell who would bring him up to the boardroom, confront him, and then listen to his lame explanations. And it would be Mitchell who would be knighted, while he was being led away in disgrace.

  He fought against the wretched hope that something might happen to Emily before he transferred the money. Something totally beyond his control that would leave him blameless. But die most logical something was that the madman who was holding her would kill her horribly. Nothing he could ever gain would be worth that. Walter wanted to be free of Emily. He didn’t want to live with her screams echoing in his brain. Nor was there any way he could refuse to pay. Angela had made it pretty clear that she could never marry him if he left Emily to die.

  He really had no choice but to play the affair through to the end. Transfer the money and then run away with Angela. That was certainly a future he could live with, if only he wouldn’t constantly hear Mitchell Price laughing from the chairman’s office.