by Harlan Coben
About three blocks before the stadium, Crusty pulled down a side road. He threw his pickup into park and got out running. Myron once again debated calling Win for backup, but it was pointless. Win was at Merion. His phone would be off. He wondered again about last night and about Esperanza’s accusations this morning. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was, at least partially, responsible for what Win did. But that wasn’t the point. He knew that now. The truth, the one that scared Esperanza too, was far clearer:
Maybe Myron didn’t care so much.
You read the papers and you watch the news and you see what Myron has seen and your humanity, your basic faith in human beings, begins to look frighteningly Pollyanna. That was what was really eating away at him—not that he was repulsed by what Win did, but that it really didn’t bother him that much.
Win had an eerie way of seeing the world in black and white; lately, Myron had found his own gray areas blackening. He didn’t like that. He did not like the change that experience—seeing the cruelty man inflicts on man—was forcing upon him. He tried to hold on to his old values, but the rope was getting awfully slick. And why was he holding on, anyway? Was it because he truly believed in these values, or because he liked himself more as a person who believed?
He didn’t know anymore.
He should have brought a gun. Stupid. Still he was only following some grunge-ball. Of course, even a grunge-ball could fire a gun and kill him. But what choice did he have? Should he call the police? Well, that would appear a bit extreme based on what he had. Come back later with a firearm of some sort? By that time, Crusty could be gone—along with Chad Coldren maybe.
Nope, he had to follow. He’d just be careful.
Myron was not sure what to do. He stopped the car at the end of the block and got out. The street was crowded with low-rise brick dwellings that all looked the same. At one time, this might have been a nice area, but now the neighborhood looked like a man who’d lost his job and stopped bathing. There was an overgrown, faded quality to it, like a garden that no one bothered to tend anymore.
Crusty turned down an alleyway. Myron followed. Lots of plastic garbage bags. Lots of rusted fire escapes. Four legs stuck out of a refrigerator box. Myron heard snoring. At the end of the alley, Crusty turned right. Myron trailed slowly. Crusty had gone into what looked like an abandoned building through a fire door. There was no knob or anything, but the door was slightly ajar. Myron reached in with his fingers and pried it open.
As soon as he crossed the musty threshold, Myron heard a primal scream. Crusty. Right in front of him. Something swung toward Myron’s face. Fast reflexes paid off. Myron managed to duck enough so that the iron bar only clipped his shoulder blade. A quick flash of pain bolted down his arm. Myron dropped to the ground. He rolled across the cement floor and stood back up.
There were three of them now. All armed with crowbars or tire irons. All with shaved heads and tattooed swastikas. They were like sequels to the same awful movie. The Crusty Nazi was the original. Beneath the Planet of Crusty Nazi—the one on his left—was smiling with idiotic glee. The one on his right—Escape from the Planet of Crusty Nazi—looked a bit more frightened. The weak link, Myron thought.
“Changing a tire?” Myron asked.
The Crusty Nazi slapped the tire iron against his palm for emphasis. “Gonna flatten yours.”
Myron raised his hand in front of him with the palm facing down. He shook it back and forth and said, “Eh.”
“Why the fuck you following me, asshole?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. Why the fuck you following me?”
“Who says I’m following you?”
There was momentary confusion on Crusty’s face. Then: “You think I’m fucking stupid or something?”
“No, I think you’re Mr. Mensa.”
“Mister what?”
Beneath the Planet of Crusty Nazi said, “He’s just fucking with you, man.”
“Yeah,” Escape chimed in. “Fucking with you.”
Crusty’s wet eyes bulged out. “Yeah? Is that what you’re doing, asshole? You fucking with me, huh? Is that what you’re doing? Fucking with me?”
Myron looked at him. “Can we move on please?”
Beneath said, “Let’s fuck him up a little. Soften his ass up.”
Myron knew that three of them were probably not experienced fighters, but he also knew that three armed men beat one good man on almost any given day. They were also a bit too jittery, their eyes as glazed as morning doughnuts. They were constantly sniffing and rubbing their noses.
Two words: Coked up. Or Nose Candy. Or Toot Sweet. Take your pick.
Myron’s best chance was to confuse and strike. Risky. You wanted to piss them off, to upset their already-tipsy equilibrium. But at the same time, you wanted to control it, to know when to back off a bit. A delicate balance requiring Myron Bolitar, darling of the high wire, to perform high above the crowd without the benefit of a safety net.
Once again Crusty asked, “Why the fuck you following me, asshole?”
“Maybe I’m just attracted to you,” Myron said. “Even if you don’t have an ass.”
Beneath started cackling. “Oh man, oh man, let’s fuck him up. Let’s fuck him up good.”
Myron tried to give them the tough-guy look. Some mistook this for constipation, but he was getting better at it. Practice. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Oh no?” It was Crusty. “Give me one good reason why we don’t just fuck you up. Give me one good reason why I don’t break every fucking rib in your body with this.” He raised the tire iron. In case Myron thought he was being too subtle.
“You asked before if I thought you were stupid,” Myron said.
“Yeah, so?”
“So do you think I’m stupid? Do you think somebody who meant you harm would be dumb enough to follow you in here—knowing what was about to go down?”
That made all three of them pause.
“I followed you,” Myron continued, “as a test.”
“What the fuck you talking about?”
“I work for certain people. We won’t mention names.” Mostly, Myron thought, because he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. “Let’s just say they are in a business you guys frequent.”
“Frequent?” More nose rubbing. Toot, sweet, toot, sweet.
“Frequent,” Myron repeated. “As in occurring or appearing quite often or at close intervals. Frequent.”
“What?”
Jesus. “My employer,” Myron said, “he needs someone to handle certain territory. Somebody new. Somebody who wants to make ten percent on sales and get all the free blow they can.”
Eyes went buggy.
Beneath turned to Crusty. “You hear that, man?”
“Yeah, I hear him.”
“Shit, we don’t get no commission from Eddie,” Beneath went on. “The fucker is so small-time.” He gestured at Myron with the tire iron. “This guy, man, look how fucking old he is. He’s gotta be working for somebody with juice.”
“Got to be,” Escape added.
The Crusty One hesitated, squinted suspicion. “How did you find out about us?”
Myron shrugged. “Word gets around.” Shovel, shovel.
“So you was just following me for some kinda fucking test?”
“Right.”
“Just came to the mall and decided to follow me?”
“Something like that.”
Crusty smiled. He looked at Escape and at Beneath. His grip on the tire iron tightened. Uh-oh. “Then how the fuck come you were asking about me last night, huh? How come you want to know about a call I made?”
Uh-oh.
Crusty stepped closer, eyes aglow.
Myron raised his hand. “The answer is simple.” They all hesitated. Myron took advantage. His foot moved like a piston, shooting out and landing squarely on the knee of the unprepared Escape. Escape fell. Myron was already running.
“Get the fucker!”<
br />
They chased, but Myron had already slammed his shoulder into the fire door. The “macho-bullshit” part of him, as his friend at the Court Manor Inn had described it, wanted to try to take them on, but he knew that would be foolhardy. They were armed. He wasn’t.
By the time Myron reached the end of the alley, his lead was only about ten yards. He wondered if he’d have enough time to open his car door and get in. No choice. He’d have to try.
He grabbed the handle and swung the door open. He was sliding in when a tire iron whacked his shoulder. Pain erupted. He kept rolling, closing the door. A hand grabbed it, offered resistance. Myron used his weight and leaned into the pull.
His window exploded.
Glass tinkled down into his face. Myron kicked his heel through the open window and hit face. The grip on the door released. He already had the key out and in the ignition. He turned it as the other car window exploded. Crusty leaned into the car, his eyes blazing with fury.
“Motherfucker, you’re gonna die!”
The tire iron was heading toward his face again. Myron blocked it. From behind him, he felt a sharp blow connect with his lower neck. Numbness ensued. Myron shifted into reverse and flew out of the spot, tires squealing. Crusty tried to leap into the car through the broken window. Myron elbowed him in the nose and Crusty’s grip eased. He fell hard to the pavement, but then he jumped right back up. That was the problem with fighting cokeheads. Pain often does not register.
All three men ran for the pickup, but Myron already had too big a lead. The battle was over. For now.
16
Myron called in the pickup truck’s license plate number, but that was a dead end. The plate had expired four years ago. Crusty must have taken it off a car in a dump or something. Not uncommon. Even petty crooks knew enough not to use their real plates when committing a traceable crime.
He circled back and checked the inside of the building for clues. Bent syringes and broken vials and empty bags of Doritos lay scattered about the cement. There was also an empty garbage can. Myron shook his head. Bad enough being a drug dealer. But a litterbug?
He looked around a bit more. The building was abandoned and half-burned out. There was no one inside. And no clues.
Okay so what did this all mean? Were the three cokeheads the kidnappers? Myron had a hard time picturing it. Cokeheads break into houses. Cokeheads jump people in alleyways. Cokeheads attack with tire irons. Cokeheads, by and large, do not plan elaborate kidnappings.
But on the other hand, how elaborate was this kidnapping? The first two times the kidnapper called, he didn’t even know how much money to extort. Wasn’t that a little odd? Could it be that all this was merely the work of some out-of-their-league crusty cokeheads?
Myron got into his car and headed toward Win’s house. Win had plenty of vehicles. He’d switch for a car without smashed windows. The residual damage to his body seemed to be clearing up. A bruise or two but nothing broken. None of the blows had landed flush, except the ones to his car windows.
He ran several possibilities through his head and eventually managed to come up with a pretty decent scenario. Let’s say that for some reason Chad Coldren decided to check into the Court Manor Inn. Maybe to spend some time with a girl. Maybe to buy some drugs. Maybe because he enjoyed the friendly service. Whatever. As per the bank surveillance camera, Chad grabbed some dough at a local ATM. Then he checked in for the night. Or the hour. Or whatever.
Once at the Court Manor Inn, something went awry. Stu Lipwitz’s denials notwithstanding, the Court Manor is a sleazy joint patronized by sleazy people. It wouldn’t be hard to get in trouble there. Maybe Chad Coldren tried to buy drugs from Crusty. Maybe he witnessed a crime. Maybe the kid just talked too much and some nasty people realized that he came from money. Whatever. The life orbits of Chad Coldren and the Crusty Nazi’s crew dovetailed. The end result was a kidnapping.
It kinda fit.
The key word here: kinda.
On the road toward Merion, Myron helped deflate his own scenario with several well-placed puncture holes. First of all, the timing. Myron had been convinced that the kidnapping had something to do with Jack’s return to playing the U.S. Open at Merion. But in his Crusty-orbit scenario, the nagging timing question had to be written off as mere coincidence. Okay, maybe Myron could live with that. But then how, for example, had the Crusty Nazi—stationed at a mall pay phone—known that Esme Fong was in the Coldren house? How did the man who climbed out the window and disappeared on Green Acres Road—a person Myron had been sure was either Matthew Squires or Chad Coldren—fit into all this? Was the well-shielded Matthew Squires in cahoots with the Crusties? Or was it just a coincidence that the window man disappeared down Green Acres Road?
The scenario balloon was going ssssss in a very big way.
By the time Myron got to Merion, Jack Coldren was on the fourteenth hole. His partner for today’s round was none other than Tad Crispin. No surprise there. First place and second place were normally the final twosome of the day.
Jack was still playing well, though not spectacularly. He’d lost only one stroke off his lead, remaining a very comfortable eight strokes ahead of Tad Crispin. Myron trudged toward the fourteenth green. Green—that word again. Everything was so dang green. The grass and trees, naturally, but also tents, overhangs, scoreboards, the many television towers and scaffolds—everything was lush green to blend in with the picturesque natural surroundings, except, of course, for the sponsors’ boards, which drew the eye with all the subtlety of Vegas hotel signs. But hey, the sponsors paid Myron’s salary. Be kinda hypocritical to complain.
“Myron, sweetheart, get your wiggly ass over here.”
Norm Zuckerman beckoned Myron forward with a big wave. Esme Fong stood next to him. “Over here,” he said.
“Hey, Norm,” Myron said. “Hi, Esme.”
“Hi, Myron,” Esme said. She was dressed a bit more casual today, but she still clutched at her briefcase like it was a favorite stuffed animal.
Norm threw his arm around Myron’s back, draping the hand over the sore shoulder. “Myron, tell me the truth here. The absolute truth. I want the truth, okay?”
“The truth?”
“Very funny. Just tell me this. Nothing more, just this. Am I not a fair man? The truth, now. Am I a fair man?”
“Fair,” Myron said.
“Very fair, am I right? I am a very fair man.”
“Let’s not push it, Norm.”
Norm put up both hands, palms out. “Fine, be that way. I’m fair. Good enough, I’ll take it.” He looked over toward Esme Fong. “Keep in mind, Myron is my adversary. My worst enemy. We’re always on opposite sides. Yet he is willing to admit that I’m a fair man. We straight on that?”
Esme rolled her eyes. “Yes, Norm, but you’re preaching to the converted. I already told you that I agreed with you on this—”
“Whoa,” Norm said, as though reining in a frisky pony. “Just hold the phone a sec, because I want Myron’s opinion too. Myron, here’s the deal. I bought a golf bag. Just one. I wanted to test it out. Cost me fifteen grand for the year.”
Buying a golf bag meant pretty much what it said. Norm Zuckerman had bought the rights to advertise on a golf bag. In other words, he put a Zoom logo on it. Most of the golf bags were bought by the big golf companies—Ping, Titleist, Golden Bear, that kind of thing. But more and more often, companies that had nothing to do with golf advertised on the bags. McDonald’s, for example. Spring-Air mattresses. Even Pennzoil oil. Pennzoil. Like someone goes to a golf tournament, sees the Pennzoil logo, and buys a can of oil.
“So?” Myron said.
“So, look at it!” Norm pointed at a caddie. “I mean, just look at it!”
“Okay, I’m looking.”
“Tell me, Myron, do you see a Zoom logo?”
The caddie held the golf bag. Like on every golf bag, there were towels draped over the top in order to clean off the clubs.
Norm Zuckerman spoke in a
first-grade-teacher singsong. “You can answer orally, Myron, by uttering the syllable ‘no.’ Or if that’s too taxing on your limited vocabulary, you can merely shake your head from side to side like this.” Norm demonstrated.
“It’s under the towel,” Myron said.
Norm dramatically put his hand to his ear. “Pardon?”
“The logo is under the towel.”
“No shit it’s under the towel!” Norm railed. Spectators turned and glared at the crazy man with the long hair and heavy beard. “What good does that do me, huh? When I film an advertisement for TV, what good would it do me if they stick a towel in front of the camera? When I pay all those schmucks a zillion dollars to wear my sneakers, what good would it do me if they wrapped their feet in towels? If every billboard I had was covered with a great big towel—”
“I get the picture, Norm.”
“Good. I’m not paying fifteen grand for some idiot caddie to cover my logo. So I go over to the idiot caddie and I kindly tell him to move the towel away from my logo and the son of a bitch gives me this look. This look, Myron. Like I’m some brown stain he couldn’t rinse out of the toilet. Like I’m this little ghetto Jew who’s gonna take his goy crap.”
Myron looked over at Esme. Esme smiled and shrugged.
“Nice talking to you, Norm,” Myron said.
“What? You don’t think I’m right?”
“I see your point.”
“So if it was your client, what would you do?”
“Make sure the caddie kept the logo in plain view.”
“Exactamundo.” He swung his arm back around Myron’s shoulder and lowered his head conspiratorially. “So what’s going on with you and golf, Myron?” he whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not a golfer. You don’t have any golf clients. All of a sudden I see you with my very own eyes closing in on Tad Crispin—and now I hear you’re hanging out with the Coldrens.”
“Who told you that?”
“Word gets around. I’m a man with tremendous sources. So what’s the deal? Why the sudden interest in golf?”
