by Andrew Grant
George cut the plastic tie, shoved it in his pocket along with the scissors, and led the way around toward the garage. Julianne followed. Patrick walked next to her, but I lagged behind. When they turned the corner I dodged back to the wooden shelves by the far wall. I started just beyond the spot where the passenger had lunged at me earlier, slipped my hand underneath, and slid it back toward the cages. After eighteen inches my fingers touched something round and metallic. It was the barrel of the passenger’s. 45. He hadn’t gone back for it. Or he hadn’t seen where it went.
I pulled the gun out. It was scratched and dusty, with clumps of gray fluff caught all around the trigger guard. I blew them away, stuck the barrel into the waistband at the back of my jeans, and started moving toward the garage. I caught up with the others before they were even through the door.
George popped the black sedan’s trunk with the remote and turned to Julianne, looking a little sheepish.
“That better be for the luggage,” she said.
George looked down at the floor. I shook my head.
“Oh, man,” she said. “Why do we have to ride in there? I hate it.”
“Sorry, Julianne,” I said. “We don’t. You do.”
“What? Why me?”
“Think about it. They couldn’t let you go if you’d seen where this place is. You could lead people back here.”
“What about you? How come you can see it?”
“Bring the police here, and I’m in as much trouble as these guys. It’s part of the deal.”
“What deal? You’ve done a deal with these people? David, what were you thinking?”
“Staying alive has a price, Julianne. Like it or not. I just found a way to pay it. For both of us. All you have to do is get in. That way, you’re forty-five minutes from freedom. Otherwise, you’re back in the cage.”
“But does it have to be the trunk? I really, really hate it in there. Don’t you have a car with black windows or something?”
We both looked at George.
“Sorry,” he said. “Black windows stop you looking in. Your problem’s looking out.”
Julianne sighed, went to the back of the car, and put her hand on the rear fender.
“I’m not climbing in on my own,” she said.
George was closest. He did the honors.
Patrick drove. George had offered me the keys, but I declined. I wanted to get a good look around the neighborhood. I had the feeling I might need to return.
A gold Lexus SUV was waiting for us at the mouth of the driveway. I could see two people inside. Presumably a couple of Lesley’s guys, sent to keep an eye on us. Then two more came up behind us in a black Grand Cherokee and we sat in line for a moment, penned in, until the Lexus pulled away.
The road near the house was narrow and uneven with a steeply domed center. There were no lights or markings, and tall trees were densely packed in on both sides. It was like driving through woods, except for the untidy festoons of power lines and telephone wires hanging down from rough poles that sprouted at unequal intervals from the shoulders. They gave the whole place a temporary feel, like it hadn’t been properly finished.
“So which part of France are you from?” I said, to break the silence.
“I’m not from France,” Patrick said. “I’m from Algeria.”
“Lesley said you were French.”
“No. I speak French. And I moved to Paris when I was a kid. My brother was a footballer. A pretty good one. Scouts from PSG spotted him. The club paid for my whole family to move there.”
“Excellent. Did he make it?”
“My brother? No. Broke his leg. In a training match. Had operations, physical therapists, everything. But he wasn’t the same. Never played for the first team. Never even made it to the bench.”
Patrick slowed as we approached a crossroads. The Lexus made a right turn. We followed. This road was smoother, and after half a mile it became much straighter and broader. The trees thinned out on both sides and then gave way to a row of neat, white-painted buildings. There were shops, restaurants, a couple of real-estate offices, and in the center, a fire station. The doors were open and inside a guy in uniform was standing around drinking coffee while two others polished the brass on a pair of old-fashioned fire trucks.
“Worried about tomorrow?” Patrick said.
“Not really,” I said. “Well, maybe a little.”
“What bothers you? The death of Varley?”
“No. Not him. It’s us I’m thinking about. Whether the FBI believes my story. How you’re going to get out of the building.”
“OK. Listen, David. I’ve been thinking about these things, as well,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket and handing me a piece of paper. “Here’s an address. It’ll pan out if they check. Tell them that’s where the kidnappers took you. You heard the guards talking, one was boasting about last night… you fill in the rest.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Might just do that.”
“And the FBI building. You’ve been there. What can I expect?”
“Finding an exit’s the main problem. The first-floor windows don’t open, the ground floor’s boarded up tight, and the only way out is through the garage. Today they had four guys on it, and a backup van outside. Tomorrow there could be more, given what happened.”
“That’s not so bad. Have faith, David. I’ve lived through worse. This thing is going to work out.”
The last building we passed in the little town was a police station, also painted white. It was a small place. Only a single story. A light was on in one of the rooms and a patrol car was sitting on the gravel forecourt outside. Patrick saw it and instinctively checked his speed.
A quarter of a mile farther on we came to a broad stretch of road with streetlights and white lines. An angular concrete bridge crossed over, carrying some kind of highway. A pair of heavy trucks lumbered across as we approached. We emerged at the far side and followed the Lexus up the southbound on-ramp, easing carefully around the tight curve at the top.
Patrick slotted back in line and our little convoy drifted up to a steady sixty. The leather upholstery was soft and supple, and I sank into it like I was sitting in an old armchair. The car wasn’t much to look at, but I had to admit it was comfortable. Certainly a step up after Lesley’s dog cage or the jail cell. The interior was warm, too, and the gentle swaying motion was relaxing. The radio was off so the only sound was the wheels drumming rhythmically against the joints in the pavement, reeling in the miles between us and the city.
I did work hard on staying awake after that, but maybe not quite hard enough. I felt my eyes slowly creep shut, and they stayed that way for twenty minutes before Patrick nudged me in the ribs and pointed at something through the windshield.
“Look,” he said. “Your trick worked. Lesley didn’t think it would.”
The road ahead of us broadened out so that you could choose which tollbooth to line up at before using the bridge across to Manhattan. But Patrick was pointing to the other side of the highway. Over there, drivers leaving the city crossed the river before parting with their cash. That meant we couldn’t see the lines of vehicles, but we got a good look in through the backs of the booths.
“See?” Patrick said. “Two people.”
He was right. There were two people in each booth. One sitting down, operating the equipment. And another standing up, silhouetted against the oncoming headlights. The shape of their headgear was unmistakable. They were police officers. I checked the booths on our side. It was harder to see in, but each one definitely had only a single occupant.
“Nice job,” Patrick said. “Telling them you were still in the city. Smart. They’re looking for you getting out, not back in. Keep it up, and you can work with me again.”
“I’m flattered,” I said. “But before you kiss me, what’s she doing?”
There was one officer on our side of the road, weaving her way through the traffic in the general direction of the central divider. Her progres
s was slow and erratic, and I saw she was handing out leaflets from a satchel she was carrying over her shoulder.
“What do you think they are?” Patrick said. “Takeout menus?”
“Hope so,” I said. “I’m starving. Let’s get one.”
“You can eat at the hotel, if we ever get there,” he said, pulling into the next lane and slipping into the shadow of the Lexus. “Let’s hope these guys figure out what we’re doing. They’re not the sharpest tools in Lesley’s shed, if you know what I mean.”
We crept steadily forward, hidden from the officer’s view, until we were only two cars away from the barrier. Then the Lexus stopped moving. The car at the front of their line was having a problem. Patrick held back as long as he could, but the traffic was building up behind us. Someone honked their horn. Attention was all we needed, so Patrick lifted his foot off the brake and let the car nose ahead, into the open.
I looked over to the left, expecting the officer to be several lanes away. But she wasn’t. She’d turned around and was heading back in our direction. We rolled another half car’s length forward, and she reached the lane next to the Lexus. She handed a leaflet to a gray-haired guy in a pickup and kept moving, straight toward us. She was heading directly for Patrick. And we were boxed in. A sign near the booth said drivers would be fined for reversing in the line. Fat chance. There was nowhere for us to go.
The officer was barely three yards away. The next leaflet was half out of her satchel. I could see my own eyes staring back at me from a black-and-white photo in the center of the page when Patrick suddenly reached down in front of me and opened the glove box. He started to rummage around inside it, urgently searching for something.
Patrick’s lost it, I thought. He’s got a gun in there.
My fingers were curled around the door handle, starting to pull, when the officer abruptly veered away to her right. She was moving purposefully now, heading for the back of our car. I thought of Julianne. She was still locked in the trunk. Had she found a way to call for help without Patrick or me realizing?
I looked around, and saw the driver of the Lexus had lowered his window. He was leaning out, beckoning to the officer. She walked over and handed him a leaflet. He examined it for a moment, then passed it to his passenger. They started arguing over it, each one pointing to things on the page. They continued to squabble until the car in front of us had cleared the barrier and we started to move again. I saw the driver finally shake his head, crumple up the leaflet, and let it drop behind his seat. He held the officer’s eye for a moment, shrugged, and then flashed her an apologetic smile.
Patrick hauled himself upright before we picked up too much speed. His right hand was hanging on to a white plastic object he’d retrieved from the glove box. It was about three inches square and one side was covered in shiny silver indentations. As we approached the booth he held it up to the windshield, just below the mirror, and the barrier immediately whipped up out of our way.
“What is that thing?” I said. “Is it legal?”
Patrick nodded toward a board marked THIS LANE-NO CASH-E-ZPASS ONLY. Then he moved his thumb and I saw a matching logo on the white side of the square.
“Why keep it hidden, then?” I said.
“It’s not hidden,” he said. “It fell off. No one stuck it back on yet.”
FIFTEEN
I knew the hotel was good-I’d stayed there before-but I wasn’t going back for their service. I knew it was handy for our meeting the next day, but I wasn’t worried about how far we’d have to drive. I’d have chosen the place anyway, whatever it was like and wherever it was located. Because, for that one night, I needed something else more than I needed comfort or convenience. I needed a garage. A particular kind. It had to be underground, away from prying eyes. And, unusually for what I’d seen of New York, one where we could park our own car.
The machine controlling the entrance barrier had developed a fault, causing it to display its instructions in German. Patrick pointed to its small LCD screen and rolled his eyes in disgust.
“Sure you’re not French?” I said.
He took a ticket anyway and then coasted down the ramp, running wide at the bottom to avoid adding to the scrapes of paint on the white concrete wall.
The space we’d entered was smaller than the FBI’s garage-about half the size-but it was cleaner and brighter. The fluorescent lights were closer together, casting no shadows on the shiny gray floor, and the regimented layout of pillars and parking bays was a million miles from the color and chaos of the city streets we’d just crawled through.
Most of the other vehicles were crammed in together at the far end, close to the elevator that led up to the hotel itself. A few cars and SUVs had spilled over into the center section, but farther out the garage was almost empty. The corner opposite the ramp-where people would have the farthest to walk-was completely deserted.
It looked perfect.
Patrick headed for the space at the end of the last row. He swung the car into some empty bays on the other side of the aisle then snaked backward, stopping with the rear fender about four feet from the wall. That left the hood hanging out over the white line, but Patrick didn’t seem worried. He just rolled up his window, switched off the engine, and leaned down to unlock the trunk. I checked my watch. It was seven minutes past nine. Just shy of twelve hours since the detectives had disturbed me in my cell.
Julianne was lying on her left-hand side, curled up in a ball, with her back to the rear of the car. Her arms and legs were pulled in tight and she showed no reaction when I lifted the trunk lid. There was no sign of her even breathing, and her skin looked like perished rubber in the harsh artificial light.
She didn’t look any better when the Jeep arrived, three minutes later. It pulled in next to us, close to Patrick’s side of the car, and kept easing backward until its rear fender was nudging up against the concrete, boxing us in tight.
“Come on, Julianne,” I said, reaching down into the trunk and gently shaking her shoulder. “We’re here. Time to get out.”
“Wait,” Patrick said. “Leave her. Let her wake up on her own.”
I couldn’t see why. I’d known stowaways to recover slowly before, but only when they’d been drugged or wounded, or we’d had some kind of incident en route. Nothing like that had happened to Julianne. She’d been in the trunk twenty minutes longer than I had, earlier in the day, but that was because of the traffic. It was nothing traumatic. There was no reason for her to just lie there, increasing the chances of us being compromised.
I shook her again and after a few seconds her arms loosened and her head began to appear, like a tortoise emerging from its shell. She craned her neck around and gradually started to take in her surroundings-the trunk lid, the garage walls, the Jeep. And me.
“David,” she said huskily. “This is your fault.”
Julianne refused any help climbing out of the trunk, but she did take my arm as we set off toward the cluster of cars surrounding the elevator. She was still looking a little green and crumpled, and her stride was shorter and stiffer than it had been at the house. The farther we walked the harder she leaned on me, but however much weight I took, it didn’t make her speed up or move any more easily. The opposite, if anything. Patrick and the guys from the Jeep were pulling way out in front of us, despite changing course slightly to pass the Lexus, which had finally appeared in a space away to our left.
“What happens now?” she said quietly.
“Not much,” I said. “We check in. Get a meal. Then some rest.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Take it easy. Have a lie-in.”
“What’s a lie-in? What are we lying about? Who to?”
“No. Lie in bed. Stay asleep. I’ll see you around lunchtime.”
“You want me to sleep in? Why? What will you be doing?”
“Helping Patrick with something.”
“What you agreed with those people? To make them let us go?”
“Right.”
“Are you OK with it, what they want you to do?”
“I’m fine.”
“Is it something bad?”
“Not entirely. Neutral, overall, I’d say.”
“But something big? It must be big, to trade for our lives.”
“Just something they can’t do on their own.”
“David, this feels wrong. I don’t know what they want, but they’re bad people. You had a gun to your head, back then. Now it’s different. No one would blame you if you didn’t go through with it.”
“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. It’ll come out fine.”
“Are you sure? We could make a run for it. You and me. Ditch these guys and hide out somewhere, till we figure out how to make it right with the police.”
“Sorry, Julianne. It wouldn’t work, with the police. It has to be done this way. But trust me. By lunchtime tomorrow, it’ll all be over.”
The automatic announcements in the elevator had also reverted to German, which did nothing to improve Patrick’s mood. He stood in the corner and muttered to himself for the few seconds it took us to reach the ground floor. The doors hadn’t even fully opened before he pushed past me and veered away to the right, heading for the reception desk. Julianne and the other guys moved more slowly, taking a moment to adjust to their new surroundings. Stepping into such a bright, uncluttered space was quite a change after the cramped elevator car.
A row of abstract tapestries hung below the high windows to our left. They provided the only color or texture in the place, standing out vividly against the smooth white marble walls and floors. They were also the only things in there that weren’t strictly necessary. It was a large area, but everything else in it had a practical purpose-the counter where Patrick was standing, a second bank of elevators ahead of us serving the bedrooms, glass double doors on either side leading to the bar and restaurant, and an exit to the street farther down on the right. No space had been wasted on seating areas or display cabinets or porters’ stations. The result obviously wasn’t to Julianne’s taste-I felt her shiver as she took it all in-but I liked it. It made the place seem focused and purposeful.
