by Harlan Coben
“Old.”
“Grampa-ville.”
“Like, at least twenty.”
“Height?” Myron asked. “Weight?”
“Six feet.”
“Yeah, like six feet.”
“Bony.”
“Very.”
“Like, no ass at all.”
“None.”
“Was anybody with him?” Myron asked.
“As if.”
“Him?”
“No way.”
“Who would be with a skank like that?”
“Just him by that phone for like half an hour.”
“He wanted Mindy.”
“Did not!”
“Wait a second,” Myron said. “He was there for half an hour?”
“Not that long.”
“Seemed a long time.”
“Maybe like fifteen minutes. Amber, like, always exaggerates.”
“Like, fuck you, Trish, all right? Just fuck you.”
“Anything else?” Myron asked.
“Beeper.”
“Right, beeper. Like anybody would ever call that skank.”
“Held it right up to the phone, too.”
Probably not a beeper. Probably a microcassette player. That would explain the scream. Or a voice changer. They also came in a small box.
He thanked the girls and handed out business cards that listed his cellular phone number. One of the girls actually read it. She made a face.
“Like, your name is really Myron?”
“Yes.”
They all just stopped and looked at him.
“I know,” Myron said. “Like, ultra lame-o.”
He was heading back to his car when a nagging thought suddenly resurfaced. The kidnapper on the phone had mentioned a “chink bitch.” Somehow he had known about Esme Fong arriving at the house. The question was, how?
There were two possibilities. One, they had a bug in the house.
Not likely. If the Coldren residence was bugged or under some kind of electronic surveillance, the kidnapper would also have known about Myron’s involvement.
Two, one of them was watching the house.
That seemed most logical. Myron thought a moment. If someone had been watching the house only an hour or so ago, it was fair to assume that they were still there, still hiding behind a bush or up a tree or something. If Myron could locate the person surreptitiously, he might be able to follow them back to Chad Coldren.
Was it worth the risk?
Like, totally.
9
Ten o’clock.
Myron used Win’s name again and parked in Merion’s lot. He checked for Win’s Jaguar, but it was nowhere to be seen. He parked and checked for guards. No one. They’d all been stationed at the front entrance. Made things easier.
He quickly stepped over the white rope used to hold back the galley and started crossing the golf course. It was dark now, but the lights from the houses across the way provided enough illumination to cross. For all its fame, Merion was a tiny course. From the parking lot to Golf House Road, across two fairways, was less than a hundred yards.
Myron trudged forward. Humidity hung in the air in a heavy blanket of beads. Myron’s shirt began to feel sticky. The crickets were incessant and plenteous, their swarming tune as monotonous as a Mariah Carey CD, though not quite as grating. The grass tickled Myron’s sockless ankles.
Despite his natural aversion to golf, Myron still felt the appropriate sense of awe, as if he were trespassing over sacred ground. Ghosts breathed in the night, the same way they breathed at any sight that had borne legends. Myron remembered once standing on the parquet floor at Boston Garden when no one else was there. It was a week after he had been picked by the Celtics in the first round of the NBA draft. Clip Arnstein, the Celtics’ fabled general manager, had introduced him to the press earlier that day. It had been enormous fun. Everybody had been laughing and smiling and calling Myron the next Larry Bird. That night, as he stood alone in the famed halls of the Garden, the championship flags hanging from the rafters actually seemed to sway in the still air, beckoning him forward and whispering tales of the past and promises of what was to come.
Myron never played a game on that parquet floor.
He slowed as he reached Golf House Road and stepped over the white rope. Then he ducked behind a tree. This would not be easy. Then again, it would not be easy for his quarry either. Neighborhoods like this noted anything suspicious. Like a parked car where it didn’t belong. That had been why Myron had parked in the Merion lot. Had the kidnapper done likewise? Or was his car out on the street? Or had someone dropped him off?
He kept low and darted to another tree. He looked, he assumed, rather doofy—a guy six feet four inches tall and comfortably over two hundred pounds darting between bushes like something left on the cutting room floor of The Dirty Dozen.
But what choice did he have?
He couldn’t just casually walk down the street. The kidnapper might spot him. His whole plan relied on the fact that he could spot the kidnapper before the kidnapper spotted him. How to do this? He really did not have a clue. The best he could come up with was to keep circling closer and closer to the Coldren house, looking out for, er, uh, something.
He scanned the surroundings—for what, he wasn’t sure. Someplace for a kidnapper to use as a lookout spot, he guessed. A safe place to hide, maybe, or a perch where a man with binoculars could survey the scene. Nothing. The night was absolutely windless and still.
He circled the block, dashing haphazardly from one bush to another, feeling now very much like John Belushi breaking into Dean Wormer’s office in Animal House.
Animal House and The Dirty Dozen. Myron watched too many movies.
As he continued to spiral closer to the Coldrens’ residence, Myron realized that there was probably a good chance that he’d be the “spottee” rather than the “spotter.” He tried to hide himself better, to concentrate on making himself become part of the night, to blend in to the background and become invisible.
Myron Bolitar, Mutant Ninja Warrior.
Lights twinkled from spacious homes of stone and black shutters. They were all imposing and rather beautiful with a tutelary, stay-away coziness about them. Solid homes. The third-little-piggie homes. Settled and staying and proud homes.
He was getting very close to the Coldren house now. Still nothing—not even a single car parked on the roads. Sweat coated him like syrup on a stack of pancakes. God, he wanted to take a shower. He hunched down and watched the house.
Now what?
Wait. Be on the lookout for movement of some kind. Surveillance and the like was not Myron’s forte. Win usually handled that kind of stuff. He had the body control and the patience. Myron was already getting fidgety. He wished he’d brought a magazine or something to read.
The three minutes of monotony was broken when the front door opened. Myron sat up. Esme Fong and Linda Coldren appeared in the door frame. They said their good-byes. Esme gave Linda the firm handshake and headed to her car. Linda Coldren shut the front door. Esme Fong started her car and left.
A thrill a second, this surveillance stuff.
Myron settled back behind a shrub. There were lots of shrubs around here. Everywhere one looked, there were shrubs of various sizes and shapes and purposes. Rich blue bloods must really like shrubs, Myron decided. He wondered if they had had any on the Mayflower.
His legs were beginning to cramp from all this crouching. He straightened them out one at a time. His bad knee, the one that ended his basketball career, began to throb. Enough. He was hot and sticky and in pain. Time to get out of here.
Then he heard a sound.
It seemed to be coming from the back door. He sighed, creaked to his feet, and circled. He found yet another comfy shrub and hid behind it. He peered out.
Jack Coldren was in the backyard with his caddie, Diane Hoffman. Jack held a golf club in his hands, but he wasn’t hitting. He was talking with Diane Hoffman.
Animatedly. Diane Hoffman was talking back. Equally animated. Neither one of them seemed very pleased. Myron could not hear them, but they were both gesturing like mad.
An argument. A rather heated argument.
Hmm.
Of course, there probably was an innocent explanation. Caddies and players argue all the time, Myron guessed. He remembered reading how Seve Ballesteros, the Spanish former Wunderkind, was always fighting with his caddie. Bound to happen. Routine stuff, a caddie and a pro having a little tiff, especially during such a pressure-filled tournament as the U.S. Open.
But the timing was curious.
Think about it a second. A man gets a terrifying call from a kidnapper. He hears his son scream in apparent fright or pain. Then, a couple of hours later, he is in his backyard arguing about his backswing with his caddie.
Did that make sense?
Myron decided to move closer, but there was no straight path. Shrubs again, like tackle dummies at a football practice. He’d have to move to the side of the house and circle in behind them. He made a quick bolt to his left and risked another glance. The heated argument continued. Diane Hoffman took a step closer to Jack.
Then she slapped him in the face.
The sound sliced through the night like a scythe. Myron froze. Diane Hoffman shouted something. Myron heard the word bastard, but nothing else. Diane flicked her cigarette at Jack’s feet and stormed off. Jack looked down, shook his head slowly, and went back inside.
Well, well, Myron thought. Must have been some trouble with that backswing.
Myron stayed behind the shrub. He heard a car start in the driveway. Diane Hoffman’s, he assumed. For a moment, he wondered if she had a role in this. Obviously she had been in the house. Could she be the mysterious lookout? He leaned back and considered the possibility. The idea was just starting to soak in and settle when Myron spotted the man.
Or at least he assumed it was a man. It was hard to tell from where he was crouched. Myron could not believe what he was seeing. He had been wrong. Dead wrong. The perpetrator hadn’t been hiding in the bushes or anything like that. Myron watched now in silence as someone dressed completely in black climbed out an upper-floor window. More specifically—if memory didn’t fail him—Chad Coldren’s bedroom window.
Hello there.
Myron ducked down. Now what? He needed a plan. Yes, a plan. Good thinking. But what plan? Did he grab the perp now? No. Better to follow him. Maybe he’d lead him back to Chad Coldren. That would be nice.
He took another peek out. The black-clad figure had scaled down a white lattice fence with entwined ivy. He jumped the last few feet. As soon as he hit the ground, he sprinted away.
Great.
Myron followed, trying to stay as far behind the figure as possible. The figure, however, was running. This made following silently rather difficult. But Myron kept back. Didn’t want to risk being seen. Besides, chances were good that the perpetrator had brought a car or was getting picked up by someone. These streets barely had any traffic. Myron would be bound to hear an engine.
But then what?
What would Myron do when the perp got to the car? Run back to get his own? No, that wouldn’t work. Follow a car on foot? Er, not likely. So what exactly was he going to do?
Good question.
He wished Win were here.
The perp kept running. And running. Myron was starting to suck air. Jesus, who the hell was he chasing anyway, Frank Shorter? Another quarter mile passed before the perp abruptly veered to the right and out of view. The turn was so sudden that for a moment Myron wondered if he’d been spotted. Impossible. He was too far back and his quarry had not so much as glanced over his shoulder.
Myron tried to hurry a bit, but the road was gravelly. Running silently would be impossible. Still, he had to make up ground. He ran high atop his tiptoes, looking not unlike Baryshnikov with dysentery. He prayed nobody would see him.
He reached the turn. The name of the street was Green Acres Road. Green Acres. The old TV show theme song started in his head, like someone had pressed buttons on a jukebox. He couldn’t stop it. Eddie Albert rode a tractor. Eva Gabor opened boxes in a Manhattan penthouse. Sam Drucker waved from behind the counter of his general store. Mr. Haney pulled his suspenders with both thumbs. Arnold the pig snorted.
Man, the humidity was definitely getting to him.
Myron wheeled to the right and looked ahead.
Nothing.
Green Acres was a short cul-de-sac with maybe five homes. Fabulous homes, or so Myron assumed. Towering shrub walls—again with the shrubs—lined either side of the street. Locked gates were on the driveways, the kind that worked by remote control or by pushing a combination in a keypad. Myron stopped and looked down the road.
So where was our boy?
He felt his pulse quicken. No sign of him. The only escape route was through the woods between two houses in the cul-de-sac. He must have gone in there, Myron surmised—if, that is, he was trying to escape and not, say, hide in the bushes. He might, after all, have spotted Myron. He might have decided to duck down somewhere and hide. Hide and then pounce when Myron walked by.
These were not comforting thoughts.
Now what?
He licked the sweat off his upper lip. His mouth felt terribly dry. He could almost hear himself sweat.
Suck it up, Myron, he told himself. He was six-four and two hundred and twenty pounds. A big guy. He was also a black belt in tae kwon do and a well-trained fighter. He could fend off any attack.
Unless the guy was armed.
True. Let’s face it. Fight training and experience were helpful, but they did not make one bullet-proof. Not even Win. Of course, Win wouldn’t have been stupid enough to get himself into this mess. Myron carried a weapon only when he thought it was absolutely necessary. Win, on the other hand, carried at least two guns and one bladed instrument at all times. Third world countries should be as well armed as Win.
So what to do?
He looked left and right, but there was no place much for anybody to hide. The shrub walls were thick and fully impenetrable. That left only the woods at the end of the road. But there were no lights down that way and the woods looked dense and forbidding.
Should he go in?
No. That would be pointless at best. He had no idea how big the woods were, what direction to head in, nothing. The odds of finding the perpetrator were frighteningly remote. Myron’s best hope was that the perp was just hiding for a while, waiting for Myron to clear out.
Clear out. That sounded like a plan.
Myron moved back to the end of Green Acres. He turned left, traveled a couple of hundred yards, and settled behind yet another shrub. He and shrubs were on a first-name basis by now. This one he named Frank.
He waited an hour. No one appeared.
Great.
He finally stood up, said good-bye to Frank, and headed back to the car. The perpetrator must have escaped through the woods. That meant that he had planned an escape route or, more probably, he knew the area well. Could mean that it was Chad Coldren. Or it could mean that the kidnappers knew what they were doing. And if that was so, it meant there was a good chance that they now knew about Myron’s involvement and the fact that the Coldrens had disobeyed them.
Myron hoped like hell it was just a hoax. But if it wasn’t, if this was indeed a real kidnapping, he wondered about repercussions. He wondered how the kidnappers would react to what he had done. And as he continued on his way, Myron remembered their previous phone call and the harrowing, flesh-creeping sound of Chad Coldren’s scream.
10
“Meanwhile, back at stately Wayne Manor …”
That voice-over from the TV Batman always came to Myron when he reached the steely gates of the Lockwood estate. In reality Win’s family home looked very little like Bruce Wayne’s house, though it did offer up the same aura. A tremendous serpentine driveway wound to an imposing stone mansion on the hill. There was grass, lots of it, all the
blades kept at a consistently ideal length, like a politician’s hair in an election year. There were also lush gardens and hills and a swimming pool, a pond, a tennis court, horse stables, and a horse obstacle course of some kind.
All in all, the Lockwood estate was very “stately” and worthy of the term “manor,” whatever that meant.
Myron and Win were staying at the guest house—or as Win’s father liked to call it, “the cottage.” Exposed beams, hardwood floors, fireplace, new kitchen with a big island in the middle, pool room—not to mention five bedrooms, four and half baths. Some cottage.
Myron tried to sort through what was happening, but all he came up with was a series of paradoxes, a whole lot of “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Motive, for example. On the one hand, it might make sense to kidnap Chad Coldren to throw off Jack Coldren. But Chad had been missing since before the tournament, which meant the kidnapper was either very cautious or very prophetic. On the other hand, the kidnapper had asked for one hundred grand, which pointed to a simple case of kidnapping for money. A hundred grand was a nice, tidy sum—a little low for a kidnapping, but not bad for a few days’ work.
But if this was merely a kidnapping to extort mucho dinero, the timing was curious. Why now? Why during the one time a year the U.S. Open was played? More than that, why kidnap Chad during the one time in the last twenty-three years the Open was being played at Merion—the one time in almost a quarter of a century that Jack Coldren had a chance to revisit and redeem his greatest failing?
Seemed like a hell of a coincidence.
That brought it back to a hoax and a scenario that went something like this: Chad Coldren disappears before the tournament to screw around with his dad’s mind. When that doesn’t work—when, to the contrary, Dad starts winning—he ups the ante and fakes his own kidnapping. Taking it a step further, one could assume that it had been Chad Coldren who had been climbing out of his own window. Who better? Chad Coldren knew the area. Chad Coldren probably knew how to go through those woods. Or maybe he was hiding out at a friend’s house who lived on Green Acres Road. Whatever.
