by Al Roker
“I did, on the cab ride here. Wound up with her voice mail. Good recovery, by the way.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly … Why do you suppose they took your friends?”
“I have no idea. It can’t have been anything planned. We decided to go to Gallagher’s place on the spur of the moment. Either somebody was watching the apartment or it was just our bad luck.” But an egotistical, if not paranoid, reason did come to mind. Felix could have decided to take them just to put me on the spot.
A.W. got out his phone.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Calling Lee. I have to report this, Billy.”
“She’ll bring in the police, right?”
“She’s not big on that. She’d rather we clean up our messes ourselves. But we now have a kidnap situation involving a celebrity, so I don’t know.”
“Calling in the cops won’t accomplish anything except to get me arrested,” I insisted. “The doorman at Rudy’s building, a nice guy who helped me, will lose his job.” I got to my feet. “And I don’t think it’ll help Gin and Ted.”
“If I don’t call her, I’ll lose my job,” he said.
“Your job, as I recall, is to care for my well-being,” I said. “That won’t be served if I wind up in the slam.”
He looked at the phone in his hand.
“Lee might go along with keeping the police out,” he said.
I was weary, but the aspirin had done some work, reducing the ache to a mild throb. Or maybe it was the thought of Lee Franchette. … “Why don’t I invite her here for a talk,” I said, removing the white display handkerchief from my jacket pocket and handing it to him, “while you try and remove your new girlfriend’s lipstick?”
Chapter
FORTY-TWO
Lee Franchette arrived looking as if she’d just awakened from a beauty nap. Judging by the combative stance and the flashing green eyes, she’d been hoping for a rest of longer duration.
“Well, here I am, Chef Blessing. What is so important?”
“Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got a forty-year-old cognac—”
“I accept the fact that you are charming and a good host, chef. My usually dependable agent is proof of that.”
Behind her, A.W. slumped and dropped onto a chair.
“But it is nearing one a.m.,” Lee continued. “I’ve had a very full day. I’m tired and a bit out of sorts. So let us cut to the chase. What is it you want?”
“First, about A.W.,” I said. “It would be a mistake to blame him for not keeping me on a tighter leash—”
“I have no intention of blaming A.W.,” she interrupted. “What happened is in no way his responsibility. Your life has been threatened by a world-class assassin. A.W. had no reason to suspect you might be foolish enough to leave these premises without him. Are you suicidal, chef?”
“No. On the contrary. I enjoy my life, such as it is. And I enjoy freedom, which is why I asked you here. Why don’t we sit down”—I pointed to my prize piece of furniture, a Goetz sofa of ebonized oak wood and ultra-comfortable cushions covered in Herman Miller Aztec material—“and I’ll try to explain.”
Lee removed her shiny black knee-length coat and draped it on a chair. That left her in a white silk blouse with a spread collar, tight faded jeans, and black running shoes with red stripes.
She descended gracefully onto the sofa. As I sat beside her, she stared at me. “What’s that greasy mess behind your ear?” my goddess asked, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
“Um … Neosporin,” I said. “I … was hit … knocked out.”
“I was hoping for a more detailed account,” she said.
I nodded, untied my tongue, and told her about our visit to Rudy Gallagher’s and its unfortunate consequences. When I’d finished, she shifted her glance from me to the carpet.
She sat there in silence for nearly a minute. I looked at A.W., who raised his shoulders in a quick shrug.
Lee Franchette’s emerald eyes were suddenly focused on me again. It was like the hard drive in her brain had re-engaged and she was ready. “So rather than have A.W. merely report this information by phone, you wanted a face-to-face. Why?”
“Surely you’ve looked in a mirror,” I said.
“Another time, I might be flattered,” she said. “Right now, I expect a serious answer.”
“I was concerned you might go to the police,” I said.
“Why would I do that, when that’s precisely what your attacker would want?”
Her answer surprised me. “Yeah,” I said. “I just wasn’t sure …”
“Wasn’t sure I’d understand the situation? I am not an idiot.”
Even though I could detect no hint of an accent, her precise manner of speech made me think that English was not her first language. “There is only one possible reason your friends were removed from the crime scene. To incriminate you.”
“What about ransom?” A.W. asked. “Ms. McCauley is the fifteen-million-dollar woman.”
“That may be a secondary reason,” Lee said. “But if it were the prime reason, they would have left Mr. Parkhurst and taken our client, since his redeemable value is considerably higher than Mr. Parkhurst’s.”
“And they wouldn’t have bothered calling in the police,” I said.
“Correct,” she said. “Their intent was to add to your woes, chef. Which is what we are trying to avoid.”
“What happens now?” I asked. “Gin and Ted are out there somewhere, probably with a guy whose business is murder. How do we find them?”
“We don’t,” Lee said. “This is not Deadwood, chef. It’s New York City. And they could be in a suburb or out of the state by now. The only reason I would consider the police is because of their informants. Someone may have seen something. But my feeling is that it is too late for the police to be of any practical use. By now these miscreants have realized you have escaped arrest. I can think of no reason why they would kill your friends, unless they believe the deaths could be attributed to you somehow. It seems more likely they will settle for some other way of using them. Or, best scenario, they will release them.”
“So all we do is stay put,” I said.
“Exactly,” she agreed. She cocked her head and seemed to be studying me. Not with distaste this time. A slight smile brightened her exotic, exquisite features. “You know, I do think I would like that cognac now.”
I went down the night-lighted stairs, through the dark and silent restaurant, and into the bar, where, in the glow of the bubbling neon sea-horse clock, I grabbed a half-filled bottle and three snifters and carried them back to the office.
Lee was roaming about, looking at plaques and photos on the walls. I placed glasses on the desk, removed the bottle top, and was starting to pour when A.W. appeared with his overnight bag.
“Going somewhere?” I asked.
He looked toward Lee.
“No sense both of us doubling the hours,” she said. She was studying an autographed photo of the first great television chef, Julia Child, taken just after she had been presented the French Legion of Honor award. I’d picked it up at an auction.
“So … do I come back tomorrow evening?” A.W. asked Lee.
“I can’t think why not,” she said, turning to face him. She smiled. “Sleep well.”
“You, too,” he said, then winced, realizing that the reply may not have been entirely appropriate.
“That will be up to our villain,” she said. “I expect we may be hearing from him shortly.”
“Then maybe I should …”
“Go,” she ordered.
A.W. looked at me, bemused, and gave me a two-finger salute.
“See you tomorrow,” I said, equally bemused, and watched him make his exit.
I finished pouring the cognac.
“Is that for me?” Lee asked, indicating one of the snifters.
“Of course,” I said. “But they say we should let it breathe a half-minute for each of its years.
”
“How boring,” she said, walking toward me to claim the glass. I lifted mine, trying to think of a toast that would be provocative but not totally obvious.
But she was walking away, toward the hall leading to my living quarters. “I assume, chef, that your bedroom is in this direction.”
“Let me show you,” I said, moving toward her. “And all things considered, ‘chef’ seems a little formal, don’t you think? Call me Billy.”
“Don’t make too much of tonight, chef,” she said. In her thick rubber soles she was almost my height. I put my arm around her waist and led her down the hall, wondering exactly what to make of it.
She stopped suddenly, turned, and pressed against me. “Oh, hell,” she said, and we kissed. A good long kiss.
I guessed our cognacs would be getting more time to breathe than they really needed.
Chapter
FORTY-THREE
It was barely dawn when I felt someone shaking the bed.
“Huh. What … Lee …?”
I blinked awake and saw Bettina Noor standing bedside, looking at me with open-eyed surprise. “Lee … left hours ago,” she said.
“Oh. Must’ve been dreaming,” I croaked. Judging by her expression, she was stunned by the probability that her supervisor and I had engaged in a relationship more intimate than professional.
She was studying the bed. With a groan, I sat up. At the sight of my naked chest, she looked away. “We have to go,” she said. She seemed disillusioned.
“Go where?” I asked. “What time is it?”
“Seven-forty-two.” She was heading for the door. “We have to drive to the WBC building. Hurry.”
“Why?” I asked, throwing back the covers and easing onto the carpet. My headache had returned, in high-def. “It’s Sunday, the day of rest. I don’t work today.”
“This is not about work,” Bettina said, her back to me. “Ms. Franchette just notified me that ransom instructions regarding your friends have been received. Your presence is requested, immediately, in the network conference room.”
Within fourteen minutes, I was sliding onto the passenger seat of her gray Camry hybrid, a considerably more comfortable vehicle than I’d imagined. And certainly more spick-and-span than Joe’s rolling dustball.
Not that I was in any condition to be thinking about cleanliness. I’d performed only the most basic hygienic necessities. I felt unclean, uncomfortable, emotionally perplexed, coffee-starved, and ill-prepared for whatever awaited us at the Glass Tower.
Bettina, on the other hand, looked fresh as a daisy, a disdainful, determined daisy, as she drove at upward of seventy mph through the slowly filling Manhattan streets. What usually took Joe twenty minutes on the best of mornings, she accomplished in twelve, roaring up to the underground parking gate, clicking it open with a wireless device, zooming in, and braking in an empty slot within ten yards of the elevator bank.
“Before we go up, I should convey a message from … Ms. Franchette,” Bettina told me. “She advises you to say nothing about your involvement in the events leading to the kidnap. If it should come out, do not deny it. But don’t mention it otherwise.”
“Did she happen to say why?”
“I believe it is because you are still under the shadow of Mr. Gallagher’s murder and she would prefer to minimize your participation in an incident involving his apartment,” she replied. “I am surprised you and she did not already discuss this last night. Presumably you were otherwise occupied.”
I was thinking of how to politely phrase the suggestion that whatever had or had not transpired the previous night was none of her goddamned business when she said, “I apologize. I have not the right to subject you and Ms. Franchette to my standards. Please forgive me.”
I wasn’t sure I forgave her for that backhanded apology, but I took the easy way out and nodded my forgiveness. “I guess we’d better get upstairs,” I said.
“My instructions are to wait here for you,” she told me.
“Okay,” I said. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Chapter
FORTY-FOUR
Four people were in the conference room. The commander was seated at the far end of the table, his white hair sticking up in cockatoo fashion. The collar of a yellow pajama top with powder-blue piping showed behind the open neck of his starched white dress shirt. I guessed he was still wearing the matching pajama bottoms under his gray woolen trousers. Lee sat at his right, looking lovely and relaxed in an ivory silk shirt and black slacks. Trina Lomax, on the commander’s left, was in jogging gear, her skunk hair tucked under a Yankees baseball cap. Gretchen, in slacks and a tight T-shirt that read I’D RATHER BE WATCHING WBC, stood by the coffee urn, pouring what I guessed was not her first cup of the morning.
“Billy, finally,” she said. “Billionaire Blend?”
“Oh, thank you, yes,” I said, not ignoring the display of bagels and pastries.
I selected a Danish and took it and my coffee to an empty chair beside Lee. She gave me a smile that made the day seem a little more tolerable. I took a sip of coffee and saw that Gretchen was staring at me, then at Lee, and frowning.
I like to think of myself as a man of the world, but, in fact, I’m probably too much of a romantic to qualify. A player I am not. So being in the same room with two beautiful women I’d known intimately left me with mixed emotions. Male pride, of course. But also regret, as if, by spending the night with Lee, I’d closed the door on whatever Gretchen and I had shared. A foolish notion, I told myself, since that door should have been slammed shut, with a padlock or two slapped on for good measure, when she threw me over for the arrogant horndog Rudy. And as for any kind of relationship with Lee—she’d made it abundantly clear that that door was never going to open.
Gretchen carried her coffee to the table and placed it beside her laptop computer. She plugged a cord into one of the computer’s USB ports, and almost immediately the large monitor at the far end of the room was filled with her inbox page. It contained a single piece of e-mail.
“Move it along, daughter,” the commander said.
“I’m doing that, Daddy,” Gretchen said in exasperation.
“The phone woke me at a little after seven this morning,” she continued. “An electronically disguised voice told me to look in my e-mailbox for ‘an interesting message’ from Felix. As you can see, it was sent at six-forty-five a.m.”
Nearly seven and a half hours after the kidnap.
At a mouse click, the e-mail sprouted into a message from “Felix” to “Gretchen Di Voss.”
In the space for a subject title was the instruction: “Left-click on the insert.”
Gretchen positioned the cursor to do that.
“Just a minute,” Lee said. “Click on ‘Felix’ and see the e-address he’s using.”
Gretchen obeyed and, to my dismay, I saw [email protected] flash on the screen.
They were all staring at me.
“That’s my address,” I said. “But I can assure you, at six-forty-five this morning I was not sitting at any computer.”
“I imagine our agent can testify to that fact,” Lee said. “Do you lock your computer here at the building?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “I rarely use it.”
“We’ll check it out,” Lee said. “Please continue, Gretchen.”
Gretch moved the cursor to the insert icon and left-clicked. Her computer’s media player took over, displaying a small, dark screen with a gray play arrow at its center.
“Make it bigger,” the old man ordered.
Mumbling to herself, Gretchen popped the screen to a size that filled the monitor. Then she clicked on the play arrow.
The scene went from black to a blurry, too-bright medium shot of a groggy Gin, posed against a mottled ivory wall, wincing at the lights or her damaged head or both. Clearly it was cold where she was. She was shivering in her light jacket and her breath was visible. At the moment, outside our b
uilding it was a gray sixtysomething degrees.
“Hold up the paper, please.” The speaker sounded like one of those infuriating, affectless, automated answering devices you get when you phone a customer-service line. The request finally penetrated Gin’s mental fog, and she raised her right hand, which was holding the front page of the Sunday New York Times, proof of her being alive and well, at least when the paper had hit the streets that morning.
“Read this.” A gloved hand thrust a sheet of paper toward Gin. She dropped the Times and took the sheet.
Ever the pro, even under those conditions, she scanned the sheet to make sure she understood what she was about to read. “‘Do not speak to the police,’” she began. “‘We have not been harmed. Our captor wants fifteen million dollars, the same amount as my well-publicized annual salary, or he will kill us. As the world knows, he has killed before.
“‘Later, I will provide you with details on where to wire the money. Notify my good friend, Billy Blessing, to be standing by. The arrangement for our release will involve him.’”
The screen went to blue and then, as Gretchen closed down the file, to black.
“Christ,” the commander said. “Fifteen mil, and they treat it as if it were carfare. That’s what all this blather about saving the economy has done. When you hear of trillions being thrown at failing banks and corporations, millions seem like loose change.”
“I do not see that you have a choice,” Lee said. “You know what Felix is capable of.”
“I have to agree with Lee,” Trina Lomax said. “Felix wouldn’t think twice about killing Gin and Ted.”
“Perhaps Mr. Parkhurst’s publisher would contribute part of the ransom,” Lee suggested.
“No way,” Trina said. “He’s closed down three of his twelve magazines and fired half of his staff. He’d think paying ransom would be self-defeating, because Ted’s death would let him avoid the possibility of severance pay. And it would sell magazines.”
“A man like that would probably not agree to keep the kidnapping a secret,” Lee said.
“Fifteen mil,” the commander repeated, running his long, pale fingers through his white hair. “Well, I suppose I must. Gretchen, get the new bank guy. …”
