“No, see if you can follow me,” I told him. Patty stood up and backed up to a closet, which she opened with her left hand. Still no clear path to the trailer door. “Patty here is a hired gun. Literally. She kills people for a living. You’re not an actress at all, are you, Patty?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she rummaged through a shelf of what appeared to be exercise equipment while still training the pistol on Dad and me. She found something I couldn’t see and pulled it out. I saw a flash of green. “Oh, look at that,” she said.
“See,” I said to Dad, “you said Dray’s meetings on set were like an audition. Heather Alizondo said the same thing, even though she didn’t share your theory about him trying to find a sobriety sponsor. You were wrong about that, Dad, sorry.”
“I’ll live.” Then he looked at Patty. “Well…”
I knew I wouldn’t hear a siren, but I wasn’t hearing anything outside, and it was starting to bug me. “Anyway, it got me to thinking. Dray wasn’t in a position to audition actors for the show, and even if he was, these people didn’t seem to fit the bill. There was a new one every day. They weren’t all gorgeous women, so he wasn’t just trying to find his next conquest, if what I hear about his preferences is accurate. So what could he have been auditioning people to do?”
“Sit in this chair,” Patty said, pointing to one of the wooden kitchen chairs by the table.
I didn’t see any upside in following her orders, so I ignored her entirely. “At first I thought Dray was trying to find some security people because Heather said everyone who came to see him had a gun. But he didn’t have to be secretive about that, and these meetings always seemed to be held away from everyone else. Dray never told anyone what they were for.”
“I said, ‘Sit in this chair,’” Patty repeated, perhaps on the assumption that I hadn’t heard her. “Now.”
“I don’t think so,” I answered, and turned back toward Dad. “I recognized her voice when she spoke at the memorial service, but I couldn’t place it. Then I heard Barney say something and I realized he sounded like the woman at the service. And that meant he sounded like Patty, because she trained him.”
“Now,” Patty repeated. I didn’t respond to that either.
“And then I remembered something Dray had asked me the day I was on set that seemed odd. He asked if Barney was the only reason I was there. And he never got to follow up, so I never got an explanation. But I think now that Dray was depressed and suicidal, and was covering up. He’d hired someone to kill him through a third party and they said she was the bird trainer. He was wondering if it was me.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think so?” Patty demanded. “I’m holding the gun.”
“Yeah, and if you wanted to shoot me, you would have done it already,” I told her. “You want to tie me to a chair and find a way to dispose of us? I’m not going to help you.”
“So Dray Mattone wanted to die,” Dad said, picking up my thread and trying to distract Patty, who stepped forward. “What does that have to do with the people on the set?”
“He was auditioning them,” I answered. “He was trying to find a connection to someone who could supply a hired assassin.”
This time Dad looked genuinely surprised. “Why?”
“Do you want to explain, or should I go on?” I asked Patty.
“You should get in the chair,” she said, and then pointed the gun at Dad. “Unless you want me to shoot him.”
Game, set, and match.
I stood up and walked to the table. But if I kept the conversation going, I might still be able to stall until the New York Police Department managed to amble their way from the nearest precinct to the trailer door. Where’s a cop when you need one?
“Dray didn’t like guns and had been adamant about it in the press,” I said. “He might not have been the type to do himself in with pills or a rope. Maybe he wanted to make a statement about gun control as his last act. But he was trying to find someone who would shoot him with the gun Harve had gotten him from the set. And somehow he found our pal Patty here.”
“Sit,” Patty said. Apparently now I was her dog. She nodded in Dad’s direction again to reiterate her threat and it was effective.
I sat.
Immediately Patty produced a green exercise band she’d gotten from Dray’s closet and pulled my hands behind the back of the chair, where she began to tie them. Tightly. “Hey,” I said.
“Don’t fight it,” she said. That didn’t seem very productive. It’s like being arrested for resisting arrest. Who wants to be arrested? Isn’t it natural to resist?
And that was, finally, when I heard a shout from outside.
“NYPD!” It was Bostwick’s voice. He wouldn’t have just knocked because he’d have gotten a report from the studio security guy that people were being held in the trailer and he didn’t want to be right in the doorway if something happened. Cops protect themselves and that makes sense; they should. “Come on out of the trailer!” Bostwick had decided against the bullhorn, which I thought was also a good decision. It added the human touch.
But Patty wasn’t buying. She finished tying me up and then looked at Dad. “Now you,” she said, and gestured toward another hard kitchen chair with the gun. “Sit.”
Dad sat and she began tying his hands to the chair with a blue exercise band I hadn’t seen before.
“Police!” Bostwick shouted. “You in the trailer, come on out!”
And that’s when I got scared, because Patty’s reaction was not what I expected when she heard the cops were outside. She smiled. That couldn’t be good.
“Why aren’t you answering?” Dad asked her. “What do you expect to gain this way?”
Patty stood up, having completed her task, and put the gun on the sofa across the room because she wouldn’t be needing it immediately. Then she turned and answered the first question we’d asked of her since I’d stupidly launched myself into the trailer.
“Leverage,” she said, pointing at us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Being threatened at gunpoint is not an experience I would recommend. It’s frightening and somehow insulting at the same time. It brings with it the threat of injury or death even as it mocks you for being stupid enough to get into this situation to begin with.
But being a hostage is just a big drag.
Bostwick repeated his order to come out of the trailer three more times before Patty responded. He actually asked to be let inside and she laughed, but not loudly enough that he could have heard her. It wasn’t until the phone rang—who knew these trailers still had landlines?—that she sat down at the table between Dad and me, seemed to set herself, and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” Patty might just as well have been talking to her podiatrist. She listened for a good while. “Oh, I don’t think that will be possible.” She replaced the receiver and looked at us. “They wanted to talk to you.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said. “It’s not like I have something better to do.”
“You’ll talk to them when I want you to talk to them,” she answered, and this time I was sure she wasn’t going to be baking me cookies anytime soon.
It was like that for an hour. We sat silently for much of the time while there were clear sounds of scurrying police officers outside the trailer, no doubt frustrated with the inability to talk to anyone or see inside to figure out what was going on. Otherwise they might have been just as bored as the rest of us.
When I got tired enough of the quiet, I said, “The part I don’t get is why you dropped all those clues, Patty. You were hired to shoot Dray. And you knew you were going to do it. What was with the fake pregnancy letter? How come you wanted to draw attention to yourself? You even signed your name.”
Patty sighed a little impatiently and rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
“What makes you think that’s even close to being her name?” Dad said. “The cops already know her as Patrice Columbo, and I’m willing to bet she ha
s three or four more stashed away somewhere.”
That had more implications than I had anticipated. I looked back at Patty even as the footsteps outside receded, which meant the cops were planning a move. “You mean somebody set her up? She really wasn’t supposed to be known as Patty Basilico and they made her take the name because they could plant those letters and lead the cops to her? You’re a professional, Patty. How’d you let that happen?”
She dropped her hands loudly from her chin to the table and used them to push up to a standing position. “I never should have taken the job,” she said. “It was way more trouble and risk than it was worth.”
“Then why did you?” Dad asked. He can give words the kindest inflection when he really wants someone to talk to him.
Patty made a slight moaning noise and looked around the trailer, but not at Dad or me. “I was a fan,” she said quietly.
“Of Dray’s?” That seemed … a trifle odd.
But she nodded. “I’d seen him in everything he ever did, even the early stuff, even Doctor Acula. Now he was in such pain and he so wanted it to be taken away. I never get sentimental about my work; I just can’t. But this one time I let my guard down and look what happens.” She swept her hand around the trailer as if complaining that I’d forced her into taking Dad and me hostage in a luxurious star’s accommodation.
The thing about being a hostage is that after the initial shock and fear wear off, it’s just boring. You’re not involved in the negotiations taking place (and in this case, there were no negotiations taking place, which made me wonder what Patty’s plan might be), you’re pretty sure your life isn’t in danger until something happens, and if, like us, your hands are tied, you can’t even play cards. My arms were pretty numb.
When I’m immobilized like that—to be fair, I’d never been immobilized like that before, but if I got sick and needed to stay in bed for a stretch, maybe—my mind goes into overdrive. And it occurred to me that people who take hostages never get what they want. Have you ever heard of a hostage taker getting the helicopter to the airport, the fifty million dollars in untraceable bills, and the transport to a tropical island that doesn’t extradite? Neither have I, because that doesn’t ever happen.
I decided not to mention that to Patty because my hands were still tied and she still had the gun.
“Why the disguise?” Dad asked, now that Patty seemed to be taking questions. “Everybody on the set knew you as the parrot’s owner. Why did you need the wig and makeup, and why accuse Mannix at the memorial service?”
I already thought I knew the answers to those questions. “She put on the disguise to create a separate persona, someone who could have done the murder and was definitely not Patty Basilico,” I said. “That was before she realized someone was putting a good deal of effort into proving Patty had shot Dray. And I think the scene at the memorial was to get the cops to look more closely at Les Mannix for the killing. Do you think he’s the one who left the letters? Did you even write the letters?”
“Les Mannix didn’t hire me,” Patty said. “Dray Mattone hired me. The only way to know who is setting me up is to know who Dray told about our arrangement. Because I sure didn’t tell anybody.”
When the knock on the trailer door came, it was loud and unsettling. Dad and I both started in our seats at the sound. Patty didn’t jump. She turned her head toward the door slowly and smiled.
“Yes?”
“This is Sergeant Joe Bostwick of the NYPD,” came the voice.
Patty chuckled. “We’ve met,” she said loudly enough to be heard through the door.
“Suppose I come in so we can talk about what you want,” Bostwick said.
“Suppose I shoot the two people in here if you even try to open that door.”
“How can we alleviate the hostage situation?”
Patty shook her head with a little smile. “Alleviate,” she said in a normal speaking volume. “Two people in here going to die and he wants to alleviate.” Then, louder, toward the door: “I want a big truck to come and haul this trailer wherever I want to go.”
There was something of a pause. Bostwick’s voice sounded a little perplexed when he responded. “You know that’s not possible.”
“Why not? The thing’s on wheels and it has all the amenities. Get a truck. I’ll wait.” She seemed amused. Clearly she knew what she was requesting was unreasonable. What was she waiting for?
I decided to take matters into my own mouth. “She has the two of us tied to chairs, Joe!” I shouted. “She has a gun!”
“Who’s in there besides you, Kay?” Bostwick yelled before Patty could tell me to shut up. Or shoot me. To be honest, she didn’t make a move to do either.
“My father!”
“Jay Powell!” Dad yelled. In case Bostwick thought I meant my other father.
“That figures,” I heard Bostwick say.
Patty picked up the gun again. She didn’t exactly point it at either of us, but the effect was clear and successful. I stopped talking.
Well, I stopped talking to Bostwick, anyway. “I don’t get what you’re doing,” I told Patty. “You can’t just walk out. They’re not going to go away, but you’re not making demands and you’re not negotiating. What’s your exit strategy?”
It wasn’t a huge surprise that she didn’t answer me. Instead she checked the tightness of the bands on our arms—which I could have told her was plenty sufficient—and then disappeared into the closet from which she’d previously gotten the exercise bands. She left the door open, but both Dad and I were positioned so we were facing away from the closet. I could hear things jostling but had no idea what was going on in there.
When I heard footsteps coming out of the closet I tried to turn toward the sound, but suddenly there were hands on either side of my head holding it still. “Just a second,” Patty said calmly, back to her den-mother voice. “This won’t hurt.”
Those were the words that scared me the most.
Within seconds there was something—I could only guess duct tape, the current gag of choice—on my mouth and it wasn’t coming off. The hands holding my head still were gone and I saw Patty doing the same thing to Dad before he could comprehend what he was seeing and alert the cops.
Patty was wearing an NYPD uniform. It was a little too small for her but she didn’t look all that out of place.
“Wasn’t it nice of old Dray to leave me something to wear?” she asked. “I guess one of his girlfriends was playing a cop on the show, huh?”
Dad and I couldn’t answer but we did grunt a bit, which did no good at all. Patty put the gun she was carrying—one that came from the prop department, meaning it was suitable for a New York cop—in the holster. “Pretty authentic,” she said, probably to herself.
From outside I heard Bostwick again, but from farther away. “Plug your phone back in so we can talk, Patrice!” But I knew now that wasn’t going to help.
She took her cell phone, which had been lying turned off on the table, and put it on the floor of the trailer. Then she stomped hard on it and smashed it into a large number of pieces.
“It’s been nice,” she said to us.
Patty looked around the trailer as if deciding after a long sales process whether she wanted to buy it. She walked over to Barney’s cage and opened his gate. She stuck her finger in and petted his feathers.
“You really are a nice guy,” she said. “Find a way out, okay?”
“Put down the gun!” Barney said.
Patty laughed. “It’s in the holster, silly.” When she walked away from the cage she actually looked a little sad and she left the cage door open. She went into the small galley kitchen the trailer had for snacks or something and I couldn’t see her for a minute. But I could smell something.
Cooking oil. Which can be used as an accelerant.
I tried that thing you see in movies where the person tied to a chair walks the chair to the other person so they can untie each other. But my leg muscles barely responded
to my commands and all I could do was raise myself up an inch or two. I tried to tell Dad what I was thinking, but he’d clearly gotten the message himself and was doing exactly what I was doing, with exactly the same degree of success.
Barney flew out of his cage even before Patty reappeared. He flew up to the ceiling and perched finally on a window cutout. I hoped none of the cops would fire in when they saw him, and there was no immediate action from outside. I did hear someone yell, “It’s a bird!” I expected, “It’s a plane!” to be next, but there was no further conversation I could hear.
Instead I was looking directly at Patty, who did not seem concerned with Dad and me at all, but since I didn’t smell smoke I took her indifference as a good sign.
She walked to a spot in the “living space” of the trailer, where I guess Dray had entertained—and I didn’t care to think about what that meant—and seemed engrossed with examining the carpet. She finally found a particular spot to the outer side of the trailer, which would translate to the back, and dropped to her knees.
When she ran her hands over the carpet Patty found the mechanism she was looking for and pulled. Sure enough a trapdoor opened and she moved the hatch to one side so she could put herself through. In her NYPD uniform, indistinguishable from the real ones among the many cops outside, she’d be able to slip away completely undetected. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
As she lowered herself down she pulled a lighter from her hand and lit part of the carpet. It caught fire and started almost immediately to spread the flames away from the hatch, which was feeding it with a breeze.
“Goodbye,” Patty said, her voice as calm and cheery as if she were selling Mary Kay door to door.
Then she dropped down out of sight and all I could see was her hands reaching up to replace the hatch and keep the spreading flames inside.
“Can’t kill a zombie!” Barney said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“What’s going on in there?” Bostwick sounded frustrated but not alarmed. He hadn’t smelled smoke yet. By the time he did, there would be very little chance of getting Dad and me out of the trailer alive.
Bird, Bath, and Beyond Page 23
