Once he was inside, Walter’s eyes began darting about, looking for a face that would fit the voice he had come to loathe. He thought he would recognize it the instant it came into view. But all he found was confusion. There were men of every conceivable size and shape, bobbing on a sea of hurrying women. They all looked lost and confused. There was not one menacing expression. He kept moving through the store, toward its back doors, which connected to the interior of the mall. He carried the briefcase out in front of him where he thought it would be more easily seen.
Mike walked up the CC aisle, his head down, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. He kept his eyes centered so that he would seem to be uninterested in anything that was around him. But all his attention was on his peripheral vision. He was looking at each car he passed, checking to be sure that there wasn’t anymore seated inside or crouched between cars. He walked by Walter’s parked car as if it weren’t even there, but in reality he searched very carefully to make sure that no one was loitering anywhere near it. He stopped near the end of the aisle, waited for a cluster of shoppers, and then joined in with them in walking back toward the stores. He took the cap off and slipped it under the edge of the sweater, then stood up tall and let his hands swing freely. The simple changes gave him a very different appearance.
Once again, he ignored the car as he passed, but carefully cased the area. His spirits were rising. No one had followed Walter’s car into the mall or through its parking lot. And no one was near it now. The $50,000 was only a few seconds away.
Mike went back into the store and quickly spotted Walter, who was shifting from foot to foot near the main door, seemingly offering the case to everyone who walked by. Jerk, Mike thought to himself, sneering visibly. He lifted a wind-breaker from a display rack and carried it to a cashier. He had already tried it on, so that he was able to wear it as soon as she had given him his change. A final glance back confirmed that Walter was still waiting to be contacted. He had stepped through the doorway and was looking up and down the inside mall, waiting for someone to approach.
In the new identity that the windbreaker provided, Mike went out into the parking area. He stood for a moment on the edge of the curb, straining to see if there was anyone else watching the aisle of cars. Satisfied that it was safe, he started down the CC aisle.
It should be a very simple pickup. His van was already parked in the aisle, only three spaces from where Walter had finally settled. He would just step to the back door of Walter’s car, pull it open, and reach down for the package of cash. Then, only a few steps later, he would be driving away in his own van.
This time he didn’t try to hide his interest in the parked cars. He looked carefully out over the sea of steel roofs, searching for a face that was looking back. As he neared the parking stall he bent low so that he could look into the windows for someone waiting nearby. There was nothing. Everything seemed normal. It was just as he planned. Walter Childs had been too terrified over what might happen to his wife to even think of involving the police. He had come to market like a little lamb, hoping that the ax stroke wouldn’t hurt too much.
Mike moved past Walter’s car until he was right in front of his own van. Then he turned quickly and strode back, turning into the narrow space between cars. He couldn’t help but smile at the unlocked rear door and when he pulled it open, he saw the paper-wrapped package, exactly as he had imagined. He reached across the seat and had his fingers looped through the string.
“Freeze!”
The word was shouted from behind him.
Mike backed out of the car, leaving the package.
“Stay right there.” The words came from a solid-looking man in a business suit who was approaching from the front of the car. All around him, Mike could hear car doors slamming, footsteps running, and voices shouting. He did an instant pan of the area. Another man was approaching from a car that was parked on the other side of the aisle. And there were two others converging on him, one from the direction of the stores, and the other from the very end of the row of parked cars. They had him surrounded!
He set his feet squarely and grasped the open door firmly as he watched the closest of the men approach from the front, moving between the cars. The instant he came into range, Mike swung the door with all his strength. The quick movement caught the man off guard and the sudden impact sent him sprawling. Mike slammed the door shut and then kicked out viciously, nailing the man squarely in the groin. Then he stepped over him, ducked between the cars, and bolted out into the adjacent parking aisle.
“Stop! Stay where you are!” The screams seemed to be coming from all around him. He raced toward the stores, putting two of the men behind him. The only one who was ahead was the man who had been coming up the aisle from the mall buildings and he would have to cut through two parking rows in order to cut Mike off.
He reached into his pocket as he ran, pulling out the snub-nosed revolver. Then he waved it toward the man who was attempting to intercept him.
“He’s got a gun!” the pursuer screamed, and then he flung himself to the ground in the protected space between parked cars. Mike knew he was going to be the first through the doorway.
The parade of shoppers had been slow to react. Only a few heads had turned at the first order to freeze. Several more had stopped to look around when the shouting began. But women had begun to scream when Mike broke out from among the cars, running at top speed. They began to scatter the instant he had brandished the pistol.
As he ran, the shoppers dove away from him, women clutching their children to save them from the madness. The mob parted like the Red Sea, giving him a clear path to the front doors that slid open automatically. At the same time, the fleeing shoppers created barriers to the men in pursuit. People backing away from Mike collided with those giving chase. One of Helen Restivo’s detectives tripped over a baby stroller and tumbled head over heels along the pavement. Another had to pull up abruptly to keep from running over an ancient woman who was shuffling behind her aluminum walker.
“Halt! Halt or I’ll shoot!”
Mike didn’t even bother looking back over his shoulder. Go ahead, fucker, he laughed to himself. Shoot up a shopping mall. Kill a couple a dozen brats. He was right. No shots followed the threat.
And then he was inside, looking at the terrified faces of shoppers who had heard the commotion outside and turned just in time to see the danger rushing toward them. Again they pulled away, leaving him a zigzag path between the clothing racks and the dummy displays. He ran like a halfback, cutting back and forth, finding the best path to the inside door. Directly ahead of him, Walter was turning back into the store from the mall corridor, still carrying the leather briefcase out in front of him.
Walter never made the connection. With the store exploding in screams and a man rushing toward him, he might have assumed that the commotion was connected to the ransom money he had left in the car. But he was expecting to be approached by Emily’s kidnapper who would want everything kept quiet and inconspicuous. There was no reason why the ransom payment should turn into a riot, or why his contact should be running for his life. His immediate assumption was that he had wandered into a burglary, or that he was in the path of a shoplifter. Walter did what everyone else in the store was doing and dove to safety behind a display of slacks. He didn’t even notice Mike’s face when the man flashed by.
Another man ran through the parking lot door in full pursuit, slowing only to glance around and assure himself that the kidnapper had continued out into the center of the mall. He darted though the same aisle that Mike had created and then out into the main corridor.
The commotion told him instantly which way the fleeing suspect had gone. Heads were turned toward the central plaza of the mall that connected the walkways into the numerous shopping areas and served the escalators that climbed up into the higher floors. Dozens of storefronts surrounded the main plaza and together with the aisles, elevator banks, and ascending stairways they created an enormous baz
aar. He charged ahead, yelling at the people he passed, “Where did he go? Where is he?” Faces looked back blankly. Voices called contradictory directions. The kidnapper might be right in front of him, perhaps only twenty paces away, but he had effectively vanished.
Another of Restivo’s men raced out into the central aisle and followed the screamed confusion into the plaza. Together, the two men started down aisles and poked their heads into store after store. Then one of them found the dark blue wind-breaker that Mike had just purchased lying abandoned under a resting bench. Their man had already changed his looks. There was every chance that he had escaped through their fingers.
Walter saw the light when Andrew Hogan and Helen Restivo came through the parking lot door and strolled through the store toward the mall. The man running must have been the kidnapper. The men in pursuit were working for Hogan. Somehow, they had followed him and then made their move to capture his contact. He followed Hogan and the woman toward the plaza where the frantic, troubled expressions of the pursuers confirmed his mounting fear. They had blown it again! The man who had threatened to hack Emily into pieces had made his escape. Now, there was nothing to stop him from making good on his threat.
“You son of a bitch! You bumbling son of a bitch!” Hogan turned to the voice and Walter dropped the briefcase so that he could aim a punch at Hogan’s mouth. Andrew ducked and then wrapped a bear hug around Walter and dragged him out of the aisle.
“Take it easy, Walter. Take it easy,” he consoled.
“You bastard. How did you get here? Why did you come? You’ve fucked up everything. You’ve killed her.”
“He won’t get away, Walter.” Andrew kept repeating. “We’ve got the doors covered. There’s no way he can get out of here.”
Walter calmed enough to get control over his urge to kill Andrew Hogan. “Who told you. Who told you about the meeting?”
“We’ve got your phones covered,” Hogan explained, still holding on to his bear hug. “We heard his threats and we were monitoring your car phone.”
“Jesus Christ.” Walter twisted out of Andrew’s grip just as Helen Restivo ran up. “Someone thinks they saw him run out one of the plaza doors. It leads out to the yellow lot. My guys are on it!”
Walter yelled into Helen’s face. “Like they were on it in Grand Cayman, you idiot.” Then he turned back to Hogan. “There are thousands of people out there. You’re never going to pick him out of the crowd.”
“His car is probably parked near Walter’s car,” Hogan said to Helen.
“We got another guy out there,” Helen answered. “There’s a van that fits the description of the one that Emily was dropped into.”
Walter couldn’t keep his rage bottled up. He screamed at Helen, “His car could be anywhere. He could be in it already, driving back to wherever he’s keeping her.” Then he looked fiercely at Andrew. “And you know what he’s planning to do once he gets there.”
* * *
“He brought the cops,” Mike kept repeating to himself. “The mother brought the cops.” He had peeled off his jacket as soon as he turned into the center aisle, thrown it under the bench, and then walked into the plaza. Only a few of the people who had seen him run out of the store kept following him. To others, he had suddenly become a faceless part of the crowd. He had walked out one of the plaza doors and into the yellow parking lot just as the witness had described. But he walked along the side of the building and then back in through another door only a few seconds later. Once inside, he had picked a direction opposite from the one from which his pursuers had come, walked into the aisle, and then turned almost immediately into a sporting goods store. He was calmly examining sets of barbells while confusion rippled through the corridor outside.
After several minutes he left the store and continued away from the plaza. At the next bank of elevators, he rode up to the third floor. Then he strolled back past the central plaza and stepped into a music store. He spent half an hour playing records by artists he had never heard of and then took an escalator back into the plaza. As he walked out into the blue parking area, he knew that he had escaped.
Now that he wasn’t afraid of capture, he could give full vent to his rage. The lying little bastard went to the cops, he repeated over and over to himself. He didn’t come to pay the ransom. He came to be a hero! He heard himself say, “I’ll fix his ass so he’ll never forget it.”
As he walked down the aisles of cars, he looked for a discarded clothing hanger and for a specific compact car model that he knew would be easy to steal. Minutes later, he was dropping a hooked wire hanger down beside the driver’s window of a Ford Escort. In another few minutes, he was out on the parkway, headed back to the woman whose husband had taken him for a fool. “You’re gonna pay,” he kept mumbling. “Christ, but I’m going to make you pay.”
* * *
Walter sat across from Andrew in a mall coffee shop. He had calmed down enough so that he could steady the cup if he held it in both hands. But he was still unable to form the words of a complete, logical thought.
“He just … took a car …?” Walter mumbled in an intonation that made it a statement of wonder.
“We don’t know that,” Andrew said patiently. “There are probably a dozen cars stolen out of these lots every day. There’s no reason why this one is connected with our man.” The statistic was close to true, but was irrelevant to their situation. They both knew the instant that the stolen car was reported that Emily’s captor had slipped out of their trap.
Walter’s eyes stared blankly over the rim of his cup. He sipped the coffee without tasting it and heard Andrew Hogan’s voice without understanding it. “Just walked out … and took a car … and drove away,” he allowed. He shook his head slowly.
“Maybe,” Andrew said. “There’s a chance he’s still inside. But I think it’s obvious that Emily is being held somewhere in the area. We’ve alerted all the local police forces with a description of the car. Something is bound to turn up.”
Walter suddenly exploded, hissing his words loudly enough to turn heads all around the coffee shop. “If you just let me pay the money. I wanted to pay the money.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Hogan answered more quietly. “He wouldn’t have turned Emily loose. It isn’t his call to make.”
“You don’t know that. You’re guessing. You’re gambling with her life.”
“Walter, for God’s sake. We know this guy is only minding her. It’s not his operation. He was just trying to shake you down for a little money for himself.”
“It was the only chance that Emily had left You screwed up the major deal in the Caymans. And now you trampled all over this one.”
“You’re right,” Hogan allowed glumly. “I shouldn’t have tried to handle this on my own. I should have gone right to the chairman.”
Walter had no sympathy for Andrew’s misgivings. “She was right,” he said quietly. “It couldn’t have been worse if you wanted to destroy me.” He looked up from his daze and focused clearly on Hogan. “Andrew, I want you to back away from this whole affair. Just leave me alone. If I get another chance, let me do what I think best.”
Hogan thought and then nodded. “I’ll keep looking, Walter. But I won’t interfere with you. On Monday, we’ll go to Hollcroft. I’ll take full responsibility for the delay.”
Helen charged into the coffee shop, looked around, and then darted between the tables until she was standing next to Hogan. “That van out in the parking lot. We ran the registration. It belongs to a woman named …” Helen stopped to consult a slip of paper she had pushed into her jacket pocket “… a woman named Rita Lipton.”
Hogan nodded his approval but with no particular enthusiasm. They were looking for a man, not for a woman. And the van’s only crime was that it had remained parked near the spot where Walter had been ordered to park.
“Here’s what’s interesting,” Helen went on. “The address is only about ten minutes from your house, Walter.”
Hogan’s head snapped up, his grim expression suddenly enlivened. “Screw due process,” he said to Restivo. “Break into the van and see what you can find.”
She smiled. “It won’t be hard. The damn thing isn’t locked.”
“What’s she talking about?” Walter Childs asked, slowly recovering from his stupor.
“There’s a van parked near your car that sort of fits the description of the one that your wife was left in. It’s been there all day. It could be the one that our guy used to get here.”
Walter’s eyes were suddenly alert. “Whose is it? Do we know?”
“A lady named Rita Lipton. Does the name mean anything to you?”
Walter searched his memory, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so. Maybe if I knew more about her.”
Andrew Hogan snatched up the check. “You will in just a few minutes.” Walter followed as Hogan rushed to the cashier.
Walter was sorry he had decided to drive himself. Andrew Hogan had tried to push him into the backseat of Helen Restivo’s car for the journey. But once he realized that the address they were heading toward was only a few minutes from his home, it made sense for him to take his own car. Now he was sitting ramrod erect, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, trying to keep up with Restivo and Hogan as they wove through traffic at better than eighty miles and hour.
He was doing his best to close the space. When Helen darted out to the fast lane, her headlights flashing to scatter the traffic ahead, Walter followed. But then, somewhere up the line, a car refused to give ground. Restivo rocketed into the middle lane, leaving Walter hung up on the outside. Then, well up ahead, Restivo’s car snapped into the slow lane. About the time Walter found an opening and began to gain in the center lane, the car he was trying to follow bolted across the center lane and back into the high speed traffic that Walter had just left. Finally, he decided to take his eyes off Helen Restivo and simply drive as quickly as he could, making whatever lane changes were available. That gave him his best speed and the chances of his racing past Helen and Andrew were too small to even consider.
The Trophy Wife Page 22
