Andrew gestured again toward the phone.
“Or to Mitchell whatever-his-name-is. He gets a hundred million he doesn’t need. And you get canned in disgrace.” Helen heard the voice of the man she was calling. She put her hand over the phone. “Please, Andrew. Don’t do this. You’re putting your own neck in a noose to ease Walter Childs’s conscience. For God’s sake, he doesn’t deserve it. He’s been screwing young ladies who can’t afford to say no.”
Hogan pointed impatiently toward the phone. “I’m not worried about his conscience. I’m thinking about my own.”
Helen shook her head in despair and gave the order. She had to repeat it before her man really believed what she was asking.
He paid the bill and then walked her to her car. She was going back to ringing doorbells. He was headed to the State Trooper barracks, hoping that the professional police had turned up something. He held her door open and then bent through the window.
“Helen, you knew what I meant, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“When I said I had never made a mistake with a woman and lived to regret it? Because it’s not true. I did make a mistake with you.”
Helen made a point of looking directly into his eyes. “The answer is still no, Andrew. There’s no way I’m ever going to get tied up with someone who feels responsible for me.”
The automatic window closed in his face and the car pulled away.
Walter was in a daze, numbed by the horrors of the past week. It was not that he had forgotten the miscalculations and blunders that he had made in his dealings with Emily’s jailer, nor that he could block out the thought of the pain he had probably caused her. It was simply a case of overload. There were too many tragedies for him to deal with rationally. So many of the structures that supported his version of reality had been undermined that he felt like the pathetic victim in a bad dream. He had lost control of his fate. All he could do was hope that he survived until the sunlight woke him in the morning. And then he would go on from there.
His family was finished. He had killed his wife and even if she managed to survive her ordeal, she would never forgive him. His children despised him. Somehow, he had nourished the hope that he could maintain a civil relationship with his old life even as he started a new one. But now he understood that could never be.
But even his new life was in jeopardy. He had broken faith with Angela, doubting her explanation of the events in Grand Cayman. And, if she were lying, then it was certain that she had broken faith with him. He loved her as much as ever, but he was no longer certain that she really loved him.
His career was in ruins. The chairman would already have good reason to doubt his judgment. And once he reached his office, there would be ample evidence to doubt his honesty. He was going to have to learn to live without the big office that he had coveted.
Walter drove out of the tunnel onto the West Side streets, headed uptown, and then cut across Central Park. The park road was strangely empty and the footpaths inviting to the Sunday morning joggers. The air was still, the grass tinted to a fresh spring green, and there were buds on the flowering trees. For a few minutes, there was beauty in Walter’s dismal world and he couldn’t help thinking how hopeful his life had seemed only a few days before. All he could do was salvage what was left. In a few minutes, he would collect the ransom from InterBank and pay it into the private account in Zurich. Maybe this would save Emily. Maybe it would save him. He was determined that this time there would be no tricks. This time he would be calling the shots, not Andrew Hogan.
He had thought over and over again of Angela’s comment that Hogan couldn’t possibly be causing more problems if he were trying. “Is there any reason why he’d want to destroy you?” she had asked. Any number of reasons, Walter had decided. He could count a dozen slights that he had inflicted on the former police commissioner without stretching his memory. Petty things, certainly. Correspondence ignored. Changes to procedure made without consulting Andrew’s department. Greetings in the elevator that were condescending rather than sincere. Hogan was a proud man who had reached the pinnacle of his career. Even the most accidental slights from the princes of banking could seem like expressions of disdain for his humble beginnings.
But none of this would justify his placing an innocent woman in danger. And that was what Angela had implied. She thought that Hogan was impeding Emily’s rescue just to keep Walter swinging in the wind. Unless they could find some other way to free Emily, there was no question that Walter would have to pay the ransom. And that, Hogan knew as well as anyone, would be the end of the Walter’s banking career.
He parked his car, walked to the bank’s main doors, and signed in with the security guards. The overhead lights were on throughout the executive floor, acknowledging that global banking had become a seven-day affair. Walter walked past Karl Elder’s suite of offices where two of the secretaries were at their desks, jumping at each command that boomed through his open inner door. Walter walked quietly by, trying to pass unnoticed. Karl always had time for long stories about his global affairs, boring at best and infuriating when there was work to be done. There was no time for stories now.
He was relieved that none of his staff had come in. Certainly, once he closed his door no one would bother him. But he was about to violate the trust of all his associates and he knew it would be easier if they were nowhere in sight. He slipped his jacket off and threw it at the sofa. Then he pulled down his tie, opened his shirt collar, and rolled his chair up to his computer terminal. At the touch of a key, his monitor lit up and after a few dialogue exchanges with the security menu, he typed in his personal authorization code. There were only eight code numbers that opened every door in the InterBank local area network, giving complete access to every file in the bank’s information vaults. Walter’s was one of them.
In rapid sequence, he opened the accounts in which he had parked the bank’s funds, transferring their balances into a single account. With each transaction, the amount in the designated account rose, until it finally flashed $100,000,000.00. In effect, he had packed the entire ransom into a single bag.
The “bag” was set down in a corner of the screen while a new series of communications began. Walter logged onto a high-speed data link that the bank owned, actually a fiber path to an earth station in Atlanta, and an uplink to an equatorial satellite that was in a parking orbit off the coast of Brazil. The satellite’s footprint covered the eastern two thirds of the United States, the northern half of Latin America, the North Atlantic, and Western Europe. One of Fassen Bank’s rooftop antennas was aimed directly at it.
Walter typed in the routing code that would link his account with the target account in Fassen Bank. Once again, the system demanded a code number, this one a special authorization required before any funds beyond a threshold amount could leave InterBank. Walter responded with a new number, generated by his secret cipher, which appeared as asterisks on the computer screens. He raised the ransom “bag” into the space reserved for the transaction source and then ordered the system to send.
Walter sat for a full minute, staring at the face of the screen. With a few keystrokes he had just changed his life forever and the enormity of the event was weighing on him. Technically, he was a thief. He had just robbed a bank. Not embezzled, or defrauded, or misappropriated, nor any of the gentle words used to describe white-collar crime. But robbed, just as if he had gone up to the teller’s window with a note and pointed the barrel of a shotgun through the glass. He had gone to the vaults, tossed the money into a sack, and carried it out of the bank building.
There was no doubt that he would be caught and probably no later than noon the following day. Karl Elder would notice the large transfer and come to ask for the details. If InterBank had just enriched Fassen Bank, he would want to take full credit for his generosity. Mitchell Price would find the transaction printed out as an exception to one of his computer security procedures. He would want a full explanation. S
ometime before noon, there would be a call from the president’s office. “Mr. Hollcroft wonders if you could spare him a moment?” the executive secretary’s voice would ask politely. And then, after the usual small talk about their weekends, Jack Hollcroft would say, “Walter, you sent money to Fassen yesterday and I’ll be damned if I can remember what’s involved.”
There would be inescapable guilt, but there would also be a measure of understanding. “It must have been a terrible ordeal, Walter. And how is Emily? Home? Feeling well? Nothing is more important than her welfare.”
But, of course, there was policy. An institution like InterBank had to follow procedures. That was the final defense for any mistake or transgression. Not following procedure eliminated any ambiguity that surrounded a misdeed. It was proof of guilt.
There would be nothing personal. No hard feelings and certainly no cries of anguish. After all, the damn money was insured by policies that were spread across the entire global reinsurance industry. But there would be no doubt that Walter had violated policy, which was the ultimate example of poor judgment. His was certainly not the hand that the directors would want on the tiller.
Walter started to button his shirt collar and then realized that proper bank attire was no longer important. He left it open and instead of pulling up the knot in his tie, he dragged it down and slipped it over his head. The lobby security guards couldn’t believe their eyes when he stepped out of the elevator in what appeared to be a sports shirt, his jacket folded casually over his arm.
He crossed the street, reclaimed his car from the parking garage, and drove uptown toward Angela’s apartment.
* * *
Emily sat on her haunches, looking at the print of the window formed by the stream of sunlight on the opposite wall. She was exhausted, from her climb through the space over the ceiling and then from spending the night pacing her tiny prison cell. But she couldn’t let herself sleep. Not when one of them would be coming down at any moment.
She had expected them long ago, when the daylight had first crept through the window. She had heard someone—Rita, she thought—moving around in the kitchen. It was hard to tell what was happening. In her new room she was no longer directly under the kitchen and the sounds were much harder to interpret. But she had guessed that it was Rita fixing breakfast and had braced herself for the onslaught she could expect once she came down the stairs and found her missing.
But then there had been voices. She heard continuous murmurs, interrupted by staccatos of shouting. And then the shouting had become continuous. At one point, she had been able to make out Mike saying, “Nobody’s goin’ to call! If they didn’t call on Friday, they’re not goin’ to call now.” The haggling grew more heated until Rita’s voice cut through with, “Maybe they didn’t find the van. Maybe no one is looking for us.” Seconds later, Mike had shouted, “You said yourself it was time to cut. Let’s just leave her and get out of here.”
There was a long period of quiet movement in the rooms above. The little bit of conversation was too soft for Emily to hear. She wondered about Mike’s insistence that “they just leave her.” More than likely, he didn’t want Rita to know what he had done to her. She prayed that Rita would agree, because if they left without checking on her, then she could use the swing of her chains to break the small cellar window. Then she could scream until someone came to her rescue.
“I’m bringing her some breakfast,” Rita’s voice shouted from above.
“No!” Mike yelled immediately from another part of the house. “Leave her. We’ve got to get out of here.”
She heard the door open and then Rita’s footsteps on the stairs in the other room.
“Don’t go down there!” Mike’s voice yelled. There was the pounding of his running footsteps.
“Jesus!” It was Rita screaming from the other room. “Jesus, what did you do to her?”
“Don’t go down,” Mike repeated. His footsteps pounded through the kitchen.
Rita’s voice yelled, “Her bed is all bloody. What did you do with her?”
Then Mike’s voice, “Where the fuck is she?”
“What did you do, cut her up?”
“She was here, in the bed. I left her here.”
“Drowning in her own blood, you goddamn thug?”
“The ceilin’. She went out through the bathroom ceilin’…”
“It looks more like you stuffed her down a drain. What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“Will you shut up and help me find her?”
“She couldn’t have gone anywhere. That ceiling just leads to the furnace room. What in hell did you do to her?”
“She’s in the furnace room,” Mike yelled and she heard his footsteps racing up the stairs.
Emily moved quickly and took up her position, pressed to the wall behind the locked door. It was only seconds until she heard hurried footsteps outside and then the sound of the garage door opening. She set her weight as if she were positioning to hit a hard, cross-court backhand. Her body was coiled and her fingers were wrapped around the shackle chains that hung from her wrists.
A dead bolt slid on the outside of the door. The knob turned and the heavy door swung open. Mike stepped into the room, leading with the pistol that he held in his hand.
She started her backhand, beginning low near the floor and whipping her arm around and upward in a topspin motion. The chain followed like a whip the handcuff at its end picking up momentum. It was nearly whistling when it struck Mike on the side of the head with a sharp, metallic crack. His head snapped sideways and the gun clattered to the cement floor. Then he sagged against the hot water tank and slid down the face of the tank onto his knees. His vacant eyes circled toward Emily and tried to focus.
This time both chains came from directly overhead. She had jumped out next to him and was bringing both hands down as if she were aiming a sledge at a log splitter. The cuffs hit the tall wave across the crown of his head. Mike didn’t make a sound. He simply fell forward and landed on his face.
Emily bent down and picked up the gun. She was holding it in both hands when she stepped through the door and out into the garage and came face-to-face with Rita. The two women stared at each other.
“Turn around,” Emily ordered.
Rita was shocked by Emily’s battered condition. She reached out to help, but stopped suddenly when she saw the gun, its muzzle bouncing around in Emily’s trembling hands.
“Be careful with that. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Emily laughed at the irony. She had been hurt terribly. “Turn around and walk slowly back up into the house. I’ll be right behind you.”
Rita hesitated. “You won’t shoot me.”
“I don’t want to,” Emily said in precisely clipped words. “But if I have to leave you behind me, I’m going to make sure that you can’t come after me.” She steadied the gun and then lowered it until it was aimed at Rita’s knees.
“No,” Rita said instantly. “I’ll go.” She turned slowly out of the garage and went to the steps that led down from the side of the house. Emily followed a few paces behind.
The house was an old, wooden-frame structure, facing the blank back wall of an industrial building that was directly across the street. Farther down the road, there were a few other houses, all tired and in need of repair. Mike and Rita could have shouted at each other forever and Emily might have screamed her head off. There was no one close enough to care.
The layout was pretty much as she had pictured it. The basement room where she was held had once opened out into the garage. But that opening, along with the heating plant, had been walled off, creating a separate furnace room that accessed the garage. When she had crawled over the drop ceiling, she had found her way into the other part of the basement.
Rita went into the house, holding the storm door just long enough for Emily to catch it. They crossed a hallway with a linoleum floor and then walked into a sparsely furnished living room.
“Where�
�s the telephone?” Emily demanded.
“In there!” Rita nodded toward the kitchen and Emily waved her ahead with the barrel of the gun. She went in slowly and hesitated near the door.
“All the way in. Get over there. By the stove.”
She did as she was told, clearing the center of the room.
Emily glanced around and spotted the door that opened to the basement steps. She circled around close to the walls, keeping as much distance as possible between herself and the other woman. She slipped the bolt, eased the door open, and then moved back into the center of the kitchen.
“Go downstairs into the basement,” Emily said. “And close the door behind you.”
Rita moved carefully, never taking her eyes off the gun. “Listen, I’m not the one who hurt you. I was just watching you.” Her voice oozed sympathy. Rita was a con artist for any occasion.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to lock that door, call the police, and give them this address. Then I’m going to sit down and wait. But if either of you come up into the room, I’m going to do my best to shoot you.”
Rita was in the doorway. “What about Mike?” she asked. “Is he going to be all right?”
“You know what, Rita? I don’t give a damn. And neither should you.” Emily reached across her and slammed the door shut. She reached for the bolt.
Suddenly she was slammed back against the wall, the pistol driven into her stomach so that it knocked her breath away. The door had snapped back, into her face, and right behind it came Rita, moving like an athlete. She grabbed the gun and tore it out of Emily’s hands, sending it skidding across the kitchen floor. Then she took Emily around the neck and began banging her head against the wall.
It took Emily a long second to react. As soon as she had closed the door, Rita had hurled it open from the other side. Before she knew what had hit her, she was being pounded. Her rage flashed and she swung her hands up inside Rita’s arms, grabbed her face, and then pushed her thumbs into her eyes. Rita pulled away, screaming in pain, giving Emily the room she needed to hurl a roundhouse right squarely into Rita’s jaw. Then she pushed with both hands, driving the shrieking woman back through the open door. But before she could slam it shut, Rita came charging back, this time with her head down. She flung Emily backward, away from the door and out into the kitchen. For an instant, they stood on opposite sides of the room, staring furiously at each other. Simultaneously, they saw the discarded pistol that lay between them.
The Trophy Wife Page 27
