by Harlan Coben
“Did they purchase hat rights from you?”
He thought about it. “I don’t think so.”
“The front of the hat is a quarter million. We can also sell the sides if you want. They’ll go for less. Maybe we’ll total four hundred grand. Your shirt is another matter.”
“Now just wait one minute here,” Zuckerman interjected. “He’s going to be wearing Zoom shirts.”
“Fine, Norm,” Myron said. “But he’s allowed to wear logos. One on the chest, one on either sleeve.”
“Logos?”
“Anything. Coca-Cola maybe. IBM. Even Home Depot.”
“Logos on my shirt?”
“Yep. And what do you drink out there?”
“Drink? When I play?”
“Sure. I can probably get you a deal with Powerade or one of the soda companies. How about Poland Spring water? They might be good. And your golf bag. You have to negotiate a deal for your golf bag.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re a billboard, Tad. You’re on television. Lots of fans see you. Your hat, your shirt, your golf bag—those are all places to post ads.”
Zuckerman said, “Now hold on a second. He can’t just—”
A cell phone began to sound, but it never made it past the first ring. Myron’s finger reached the ringer and turned it off with a speed that would have made Wyatt Earp retire. Fast reflexes. They came in handy every once in a while.
Still, the brief sound had drawn the ire of nearby club members. Myron looked around. He was on the receiving end of several dagger-glares, including one from Win.
“Hurry around behind the clubhouse,” Win said pointedly. “Let no one see you.”
Myron gave a flippant salute and rushed out like a man with a suddenly collapsing bladder. When he reached a safe area near the parking lot, he answered the call.
“Hello.”
“Oh, God …” It was Linda Coldren. Her tone struck the marrow of his bone.
“What’s wrong?”
“He called again,” she said.
“Do you have it on tape?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right ov—”
“No!” she shouted. “He’s watching the house.”
“You saw him?”
“No. But … Don’t come here. Please.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“The fax line in the basement. Oh God, Myron, you should have heard him.”
“Did the number come up on the Caller ID?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
She did. Myron took out a pen from his wallet and wrote the number down on an old Visa receipt.
“Are you alone?”
“Jack is right here with me.”
“Anybody else? What about Esme Fong?”
“She’s upstairs in the living room.”
“Okay,” Myron said. “I’ll need to hear the call.”
“Hold on. Jack is plugging the machine in now. I’ll put you on the speaker so you can hear.”
7
The tape player was snapped on. Myron heard the phone ringing first. The sound was surprisingly clear. Then he heard Jack Coldren: “Hello?”
“Who’s the chink bitch?”
The voice was very deep, very menacing, and definitely machine-altered. Male or female, young or old, it was anyone’s guess.
“I don’t know what—”
“You trying to fuck with me, you dumb son of a bitch? I’ll start sending you the fucking brat in little pieces.”
Jack Coldren said, “Please—”
“I told you not to contact anyone.”
“We haven’t.”
“Then tell me who that chink bitch is who just walked into your house.”
Silence.
“You think we’re stupid, Jack?”
“Of course not.”
“So who the fuck is she?”
“Her name is Esme Fong,” Coldren said quickly. “She works for a clothing company. She’s just here to set up an endorsement deal with my wife, that’s all.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth, I swear.”
“I don’t know, Jack.…”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“Well, Jack, we’ll just see about that. This is gonna cost you.”
“What do you mean?”
“One hundred grand. Call it a penalty price.”
“For what?”
“Never you fucking mind. You want the kid alive? It’s gonna cost you one hundred grand now. That’s in—”
“Now hold on a second.” Coldren cleared his throat. Trying to gain some footing, some degree of control.
“Jack?”
“Yes?”
“You interrupt me again and I’m going to stick your kid’s dick in a vise.”
Silence.
“You get the money ready, Jack. One hundred grand. I’ll call you back and let you know what to do. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t fuck up, Jack. I enjoy hurting people.”
The brief silence was shattered by a sharp, sudden scream, a scream that jangled nerve endings and raised hackles. Myron’s hand tightened on the receiver.
The phone disconnected. Then a dial tone. Then nothing.
Linda Coldren took him off the speaker. “What are we going to do?”
“Call the FBI,” Myron said.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I think it’s your best move.”
Jack Coldren said something in the background. Linda came back on the line. “Absolutely not. We just want to pay the ransom and get our son back.”
No point in arguing with them. “Sit tight. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Myron disconnected the call and dialed another number. Lisa at New York Bell. She’d been a contact of theirs since the days he and Win had worked for the government.
“A Caller ID came up with a number in Philadelphia,” he said. “Can you find an address for me?”
“No problem,” Lisa said.
He gave her the number. People who watch too much television think this sort of thing takes a long time. Not anymore. Traces are instantaneous now. No “keep him on a little longer” or any of that stuff. The same is true when it comes to finding the location of a phone number. Any operator almost anywhere can plug the number into her computer or use one of those reverse directories, and whammo. Heck, you don’t even need an operator. Computer programs on CD-ROM and Web sites did the same thing.
“It’s a pay phone,” she said.
Not good news, but not unexpected either. “Do you know where?”
“The Grand Mercado Mall in Bala-Cynwyd.”
“A mall?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Where in the mall?”
“I have no idea. You think they list it ‘between Sears and Victoria’s Secret’?”
This made no sense. A mall? The kidnapper had dragged Chad Coldren to a mall and made him scream into a phone?
“Thanks, Lisa.”
He hung up and turned back toward the porch. Win was standing directly behind him. His arms were folded, his body, as always, completely relaxed.
“The kidnapper called,” Myron said.
“So I overheard.”
“I could use your help tracking this down.”
“No,” Win said.
“This isn’t about your mother, Win.”
Win’s face did not change, but something happened to his eyes. “Careful” was all he said.
Myron shook his head. “I have to go. Please make my excuses.”
“You came here to recruit clients,” Win said. “You claimed earlier that you agreed to help the Coldrens in the hopes of representing them.”
“So?”
“So you are excruciatingly close to landing the world’s top golf protégé. Reason dictates that you stay.�
��
“I can’t.”
Win unfolded his arms, shook his head.
“Will you do one thing for me? To let me know if I’m wasting time or not?”
Win remained still.
“You know how I told you about Chad using his ATM card?”
“Yes.”
“Get me the security videotape of the transaction,” he said. “It may tell me if this whole thing is just a hoax on Chad’s part.”
Win turned back to the porch. “I’ll see you at the house tonight.”
8
Myron parked at the mall and checked his watch. Seven forty-five. It had been a very long day and it was still relatively early. He entered through a Macy’s and immediately located one of those big table blueprints of the mall. Public telephones were marked with blue locators. Eleven altogether. Two at the south entrance downstairs. Two at the north entrance upstairs. Seven at the food court.
Malls were the great American geographical equalizer. Between shiny anchor stores and beneath excessively floodlit ceilings, Kansas equaled California, New Jersey equaled Nevada. No place was truly more Americana. Some of the stores inside might be different, but not by much. Athlete’s Foot or Foot Locker, Rite Aid or CVS, Williams-Sonoma or Pottery Barn, the Gap or Banana Republic or Old Navy (all, coincidentally, owned by the same people), Waldenbooks or B. Dalton, several anonymous shoe stores, a Radio Shack, a Victoria’s Secret, an art gallery with Gorman, McKnight, and Behrens, a museum store of some kind, two record stores—all wrapped up in some Orwellian, sleek-chrome neo-Roman Forum with chintzy fountains and overstated marble and dentist-office sculptures and unmanned information booths and fake ferns.
In front of a store selling electric organs and pianos sat an employee dressed in an ill-fitting navy suit and a sailor’s cap. He played “Muskrat Love” on an organ. Myron was tempted to ask him where Tenille was, but he refrained. Too obvious. Organ stores in malls. Who goes to the mall to buy an organ?
He hurried past the Limited or the Unlimited or the Severely Challenged or something like that. Then Jeans Plus or Jeans Minus or Shirts Only or Pants Only or Tank Top City or something like that. They all looked pretty much the same. They all employed lots of skinny, bored teenagers who stocked shelves with the enthusiasm of a eunuch at an orgy.
There were lots of high school kids draped about—just hanging, man—and looking very, er, rad. At the risk of sounding like a reverse racist, all the white boys looked the same to him. Baggie shorts. White T-shirts. Unlaced black hundred-dollar high-top sneakers. Baseball cap pulled low with the brim worked into a nifty curve, covering a summer buzzcut. Thin. Lanky. Long-limbed. Pale as a Goya portrait, even in the summer. Poor posture. Eyes that never looked directly at another human being. Uncomfortable eyes. Slightly scared eyes.
He passed a hair salon called Snip Away, which sounded more like a vasectomy clinic than a beauty parlor. The Snip Away beauticians were either reformed mall girls or guys named Mario whose fathers were named Sal. Two patrons sat in a window—one getting a perm, the other a bleach job. Who wanted that? Who wanted to sit in a window and have the whole world watch you get your hair done?
He took an escalator up past a plastic garden complete with plastic vines to the crowned jewel of the mall: the food court. It was fairly empty now, the dinner crowd long since gone. Food courts were the final outpost of the great American melting pot. Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Middle Eastern (or Greek), a deli, a chicken place, one fast food chain like McDonald’s (which had the biggest crowd), a frozen yogurt place, and then a few strange offshoots—the ones started by people who dream of franchising themselves into becoming the next Ray Kroc. Ethiopian Ecstasy. Sven’s Swedish Meatballs. Curry Up and Eat.
Myron checked for numbers on the seven phones. All had been whited out. Not surprising, the way people abused them nowadays. No problemo either. He took out his cellular phone and punched in the number from the Caller ID. A phone starting ringing immediately.
Bingo.
The one on the far right. Myron picked it up to make sure. “Hello?” he said. He heard the hello in his cellular phone. Then he said to himself through the cellular, “Hello, Myron, nice to hear from you.” He decided to stop talking to himself. Too early in the evening to be this goofy.
He hung up the phone and looked around. A group of mall girls inhabited a table not far away. They sat in a closed circle with the protectiveness of coyotes during mating season.
Of the food stands, Sven’s Swedish Meatballs had the best view of the phone. Myron approached. Two men worked the booth. They both had dark hair and dark skin and Saddam Hussein mustaches. One’s name tag read Mustafa. The other Achmed.
“Which one of you is Sven?” he asked.
No smiles.
Myron asked about the phone. Mustafa and Achmed were less than helpful. Mustafa snapped that he worked for a living, and didn’t watch phones. Achmed gestured and cursed him in a foreign tongue.
“I’m not much of a linguist,” Myron said, “but that didn’t sound like Swedish.”
Death glares.
“Bye now. I’ll be sure to tell all my friends.”
Myron turned toward the table of mall girls. They all quickly looked down, like rats scurrying in the glare of a flashlight. He stepped toward them. Their eyes darted to and fro with what they must have thought were surreptitious glances. He heard a low cacophony of “ohmygod!ohmygod!ohmygod!he’scomingover!”
Myron stopped directly at their table. There were four girls. Or maybe five or even six. Hard to say. They all seemed to blend into one another, into one hazy indistinct mesh of hair and black lipstick and Fu Manchu–length fingernails and earrings and nose rings and cigarette smoke and too-tight halter tops and bare midriffs and popping gum.
The one sitting in the middle looked up first. She had hair like Elsa Lancaster in The Bride of Frankenstein and what looked like a studded dog collar around her neck. The other faces followed suit.
“Like, hi,” Elsa said.
Myron tried his most gentle, crooked smile. Harrison Ford in Regarding Henry. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
The girls all looked at one another. A few giggles escaped. Myron felt his face redden, though he wasn’t sure why. They elbowed one another. No one answered. Myron proceeded.
“How long have you been sitting here?” he asked.
“Is this, like, one of those mall surveys?”
“No,” Myron said.
“Good. Those are, like, so lame, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s like, get away from me already, Mr. Polyester Pants, you know?”
Myron said “uh-huh” again. “Do you remember how long you’ve been sitting here?”
“Nah. Amber, you know?”
“Like, we went to the Gap at four.”
“Right, the Gap. Fab sale.”
“Ultra sale. Love that blouse you bought, Trish.”
“Isn’t it, like, the total package, Mindy?”
“Totally. Ultra.”
Myron said, “It’s almost eight now. Have you been here for the past hour?”
“Like, hello, anybody home? At least.”
“This is, like, our spot, you know?”
“No one else, like, sits here.”
“Except that one time when those gross lame-os tried to move in.”
“But, like, whoa, don’t even go there, ’kay?”
They stopped and looked at Myron. He figured the answer to his prior question was yes, so he plowed ahead. “Have you seen anybody use that pay phone?”
“Are you, like, a cop or something?”
“As if.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“He’s too cute to be a cop.”
“Oh, right, like Jimmy Smits isn’t cute.”
“That’s, like, TV, dumb wad. This is real life. Cops aren’t cute in real life.”
“Oh, right, like Brad isn’t totally cute? You, like, lov
e him, remember?”
“As if. And he’s not a cop. He’s, like, some rent-a-uniform at Florsheim.”
“But he’s so hot.”
“Totally.”
“Ultra buff.”
“He likes Shari.”
“Eeeuw. Shari?”
“I, like, hate her, you know?”
“Me too. Like, does she only shop at Sluts ‘R’ Us, or what?”
“Totally.”
“It’s, like, ‘Hello, Dial-a-Disease, this is Shari speaking.’ ”
Giggles.
Myron looked for an interpreter. “I’m not a cop,” he said.
“Told you.”
“As if.”
“But,” Myron said, “I am dealing with something very important. Life-and-death. I need to know if you remember anyone using that phone—the one on the far right—forty-five minutes ago.”
“Whoa!” The one called Amber pushed her chair back. “Clear out, because I’m, like, gonna barf for days, you know?”
“Like, Crusty the Clown.”
“He was, like, so gross!”
“Totally gross.”
“Totally.”
“He, like, winked at Amber!”
“As if!”
“Totally eeeuw!”
“Gag city.”
“Bet that slut Shari would have Frenched him.”
“At least.”
Giggles.
Myron said, “You saw somebody?”
“Serious groatie.”
“Totally crusty.”
“He was, like, hello, ever wash your hair?”
“Like, hello, buy your cologne at the local Gas-N-Go?”
More giggles.
Myron said, “Can you describe him to me?”
“Blue jeans from, like, ‘Attention, Kmart shoppers.’ ”
“Work boots. Definitely not Timberland.”
“He was, like, so skinhead wanna-be, you know?”
Myron said, “Skinhead wanna-be?”
“Like, a shaved head. Skanky beard. Tattoo of that thing on his arm.”
“That thing?” Myron tried.
“You know, that tattoo.” She kind of drew something in the air with her finger. “It kinda looks like a funny cross from, like, the old days.”
Myron said, “You mean a swastika?”
“Like, whatever. Do I look like a history major?”
“Like, how old was he?” Like. He’d said like. If he stayed here much longer, he’d end up getting some part of him pierced. Way.
