One-Way Ticket

by William G. Tapply

  In Woburn, the voice on the cell phone said, “Take Route 95 north. You will see the sign in about one minute.”

  “I know the exit,” I said, and when I came to it, I took it.

  A few minutes later, in Peabody, Route 95 took a jog to the left—north, paralleling the coast—and became a wide divided highway cutting through woods and fields, suburban developments, and farmland and fairgrounds, from Lynnfield to Danvers to Topsfield, heading toward the New Hampshire border, thence into Maine.

  The more distance I put between myself and Boston, the thinner the traffic grew. I kept my speedometer needle on 65. Now and then a ten-wheeler went slamming past me. Otherwise I had the highway to myself.

  Somewhere around Boxford I became aware of headlights behind me, and I realized that they’d been there for a while, hanging a couple of hundred yards back, moving in my lane at my speed.

  “Are you following me?” I said to the cell phone on the console.

  “You are doing well,” said the voice.

  “I’ve got to speak to Robert.”

  “Soon, Mr. Coyne.”

  “I need an assurance that he is all right.”

  “I assure you,” said the voice. “He is all right.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  The voice chuckled.

  If they had chosen the Massachusetts North Shore or coastal New Hampshire because they thought that taking me out of the city where I lived and worked would disorient and confuse me, they were mistaken. I knew these areas quite well. I’d spent a lot of time in and around the old port cities of Newburyport in Massachusetts and Portsmouth in New Hampshire. I’d driven the back roads, and I’d fished in the rivers and their estuaries, and I’d eaten in the restaurants. I had friends and clients who lived and worked in those cities and their suburbs.

  Of course, for all I knew, I might drive all night and end up in Canada.

  I passed the Newburyport exit, then crossed the bridge that spanned the Merrimack River.

  “Mr. Coyne,” said the voice suddenly.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “You will take the next exit,” he said. “When you come to the end of the ramp, bear right.”

  I did as I was told. A minute after I turned onto the road, I saw the headlights come down the ramp behind me. The signs didn’t make it clear, but I figured I was in Salisbury, which I knew was the next town north of Newburyport.

  As I approached the first intersection at the traffic lights, which by day was a busy commercial area with a boat dealer on the left and a Jeep dealer on the right and a strip mall straight ahead, I saw the headlights coming up behind me.

  “Go right at the lights,” said the voice.

  I put on my turn signal. The light was green. I turned right, and then the headlights behind me also turned.

  I was on a winding two-lane country road. There was no traffic except me and the car behind me, which remained about fifty yards back.

  “Ahead of you,” said the voice, “the road bends to the left and you will come to an iron bridge. You will stop halfway across the bridge. Do you understand?”

  “Of course I understand,” I said.

  “Pull your hand brake. Leave your motor running and your lights on.”

  “Yep.”

  A few minutes later I drove onto the iron bridge. I’d crossed this bridge many times. It was, I knew, a couple of miles east of the Route 95 bridge I’d just driven over. This one also spanned the Merrimack River, which separated Salisbury from Newburyport here, just a few miles upstream from the river’s estuary at Plum Island.

  I stopped halfway across and pulled on my emergency brake. The headlights in my rearview mirror stopped on the road just before the bridge.

  “Get out of the car,” said the voice. “Bring the phone with you.”

  “Where’s Robert?” I said. “I want to see him.”

  “One thing at a time. Do what I say.”

  “Let me speak to him, at least.”

  “This is not a negotiation, Mr. Coyne. Get out of your car now.”

  “Without Robert, you don’t get the money.”

  “I think you will agree,” said the voice, “that you are in no position to submit ultimatums.”

  “Ultimata,” I said. “Plural. From the Latin. It’s a neuter noun.”

  “In one minute,” said the voice, “if you continue to fuck around, you will hear a gunshot. Do you understand?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure. I understand.”

  I got out of my car and stood there on the bridge. The river gurgled beneath me. Here the Merrimack was a tidal river. The water below me was black, and judging by its sound, the tide was ebbing, and the river was emptying into the sea. The old iron bridge felt electric. It was vibrating under my feet from the power of the flowing water around its supports and abutments.

  The night air was cool on my face. It smelled damp and salty. My car and I were illuminated in the high beams of the car at the end of the bridge behind me. When I looked back at it, all I could see were the blinding headlights.

  “Go around to the passenger side,” said the voice, “and take out the bag of money. Hold it up so we can see it.”

  I did that.

  “Now,” said the voice, “drop it off the upstream side of the bridge.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Drop it over the railing. Do it now.”

  I went to the railing and looked down. Then I heard the soft burbling of a marine engine in low gear, just holding its place in the river currents, and I could see the glow of its lights under the bridge.

  I knew that once I let go of the money, I’d have no bargaining power. On the other hand, I hadn’t had any bargaining power from the beginning. It had always been a matter of trust.

  I assumed it was Paulie Russo who was calling the shots, although I’d been scrupulous not to hint at that to the voice on the phone. I sensed that it would be dangerous to suggest that I knew who had kidnapped Robert Lancaster. I guessed, in fact, that despite his efforts to disguise his voice, it was Paulie himself who’d been giving me my instructions from the car that had followed me all the way from Boston. Paulie was smart. He was capable of planning this elaborate scheme. He knew the word “ultimatum.”

  I had no choice but to assume that Paulie would keep his word. I believed that if I disobeyed him, he’d kill Robert. Paulie Russo had killed plenty of people. He did it easily.

  I was not confident that he’d return Robert unharmed even if I did what I was told. But like Vincent, his father, Paulie claimed to be a man of honor. Maybe that would translate into sparing Robert’s life if I continued to do everything he said. I had to hope so.

  I didn’t see that I had any choice.

  I lifted the bag of money over the rail and let go.

  The black bag disappeared into the darkness, and instantly a spotlight went on from under the bridge.

  I listened for the splash the bag would make when it hit the water, but the swish of the river currents around the bridge abutments and the burble of the boat’s engine beneath me muffled the sound.

  The boat’s spotlight was panning across the surface of the water.

  I put the phone back to my ear. “Okay?”

  “Good,” said the voice. “Well done.”

  “Now,” I said, “I assume you will give me Robert Lancaster. That was our deal.”

  “Now,” he said, “you will continue to do what I say.” A note of impatience, the first kind of emotion I’d detected since he first spoke to me, had crept into his voice. It sounded dangerous.

  The spotlight continued to pan the water under the bridge below me. Then the pitch of the boat engine grew suddenly louder. It had shifted gears and was, I assumed, moving to pick up the floating trash bag of money.

  “Now what?” I said into the phone.

  “Now you wait for my next instruction.”

  I waited for two or three minutes. Then the voice said, “Okay.”

  I
said, “Okay what?”

  “We have recovered the bag,” he said. “It appears to be as we agreed. Now you will turn around and drive home.”

  “What about Robert?”

  “Assuming that bag contains exactly what it is supposed to contain, and assuming you do not do anything foolish, you will be hearing from us.”

  “When?”

  “Within twenty-four hours.”

  “Let me hear his voice, at least.”

  “That is not possible,” he said. “From here on, Robert Lancaster’s life depends on you. Do you understand?”

  “Of course I understand.”

  “Good.” He paused. “One last thing.”

  “What?”

  “Throw your phone off the bridge.”

  “Are you—?”

  “Do it now, Mr. Coyne. Unless you want to hear a gunshot. Then go home.”

  I threw the cell phone over the bridge rail into the darkness. Then I climbed into my car, put it in gear, and drove away.

  The headlights followed me back over the dark, narrow roads to the southbound ramp onto Route 95, and they stayed about a hundred yards behind me as I turned onto the highway, heading back to Boston. According to the digital clock on my dashboard, it was twenty minutes after two in the morning.

  My first, dreadful thought was that I had signed Robert Lancaster’s death certificate. I tried to analyze it coldly, and that was still my conclusion. Robert’s captors had their money. It would be easier and safer for them to kill him than to let him go. If Robert were freed, they knew, we would go to the police, and Robert would be able to tell them things that would very likely enable them to track down his kidnappers.

  If they did release him, that’s what I’d insist we do. Which is why I doubted that they’d do it.

  As I drove along the empty highway, I kept going over it in my mind. What did I do wrong? I’d dumped a trash bag containing Judge Adrienne Lancaster’s quarter of a million dollars off a bridge, and I didn’t have her grandson. Surely I’d blown it about as badly as the situation could possibly be blown. But what could I have done differently?

  I reconstructed the entire sequence of events step by step, thinking of the options I’d had at each point, the choices I could have made, the roads I didn’t take.

  I could have disobeyed Dalt and Adrienne and gone to the state police or the FBI. In retrospect, I probably should have. Otherwise, I couldn’t isolate my mistake. Maybe I should have been more insistent with them, although at the time I wasn’t sure they were wrong. In any case, it would have been an ethical, if not pragmatic, mistake to disobey them. Robert was Dalt’s son. The quarter of a million dollars was the judge’s.

  As much as I tried to blame myself, I kept concluding that I’d done nothing wrong. It was the kidnappers who’d done everything right. They’d left no clues about their identity. From the beginning, they’d made it impossible to anticipate their next move.

  I wouldn’t have thought that Paulie Russo was capable of designing such a sophisticated plan and executing it with such flawless precision. Presenting his demands via a recording by the kidnap victim himself reading a script on an untraceable compact disc was clever. Communicating with me, their chosen go-between, on a prepaid cell phone made it impossible to trace their call. And then, when the drop was completed, having me dump the phone precluded tracing whatever evidence of their call the phone might’ve stored in its memory.

  Picking up the ransom money in a boat at two in the morning guaranteed their easy getaway. Who could have anticipated that they’d do that?

  All the way home I kept thinking about it and analyzing it, and I always came to the same conclusion. So far, at least, they’d committed the perfect crime.

  It should have made me feel a little better. But it didn’t. They had their money, and they still had Robert, and I was not an inch closer to recovering him than I’d been yesterday.

  Twenty-four hours, he said.

  What did that mean?

  I had no faith that it meant we’d have Robert back in a day.

  Most likely it meant that they hoped I’d do nothing for twenty-four hours but wait patiently and hopefully while they put time and space between themselves and me and Robert Lancaster.

  I wondered if I’d hear from them again.

  The headlights followed me back to the city, over the bridge and down the ramp and around the rotaries all the way to Charles Street, where they pulled to the curb and stopped with their high beams on as I turned onto Mt. Vernon Street. I wondered if they’d watch my house for the rest of the night. I found the idea unnerving.

  I wasn’t particularly frightened, though. They had no reason to do me any harm. I’d done everything their way, and I knew nothing.

  Not that they needed a reason for what they did.

  For the first time since she’d left, I was glad that Evie was on the other coast. I would certainly have been frightened for her if she’d been home.

  I parked in front of my house, locked the car, and went in. Henry was waiting inside the doorway. He stretched and yawned and wagged his stubby little tail. I scootched down so he could lap my face, and I hugged him against me. I told him he was a perfect pal and a paragon of patience.

  He was unimpressed with my alliteration. He shook himself and headed for the kitchen.

  I let him out the back door, then found a can of Coke in the refrigerator. I popped the tab and took a long swig.

  I noticed that the red message button on the kitchen phone was blinking. I dialed voice mail and was told that I had five messages.

  The first had come at 1:16. It was Dalt. “Where the hell are you?” he said. “I thought I’d hear from you by now. Call me, will you? I’m here at my mother’s. I don’t know if I can stand this much longer. I’m kinda going nuts.”

  The second call came fifteen minutes later. “Hey. It’s your sweetie.” Evie, in her unbearably sexy telephone voice. “It’s late there, isn’t it? I figured you wouldn’t mind if I woke you up. You okay?” She hesitated. “Hey. You gonna pick up the phone? No? Hm. Well, it’s just, I’m thinking of you, that’s all.” She paused. “You’re not going to pick up, I guess. Okay. Well, sleep tight. Love you.”

  The next three messages were all from Dalt. The last one came at three-thirty. It was now ten of four. “Brady,” he said, “for Christ’s sake call me. It doesn’t matter what time it is. Don’t worry about waking me up. Believe me, I’m awake. What the hell is going on, anyway?” There was a silence. Then he said, “Are you okay?”

  I sat down at the table with the phone in my hand. I didn’t want to talk to Dalt. But I had to.

  He picked up in the middle of the first ring. “Brady?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Oh, jeez. I’m a wreck.” I heard him blow out a breath. “So…?”

  “I don’t have Robert,” I said.

  “What? Jesus. What happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “They—the kidnappers—they said we’d hear from them within twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s not what I expected.”

  He was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “So what happened? What went wrong?”

  “I gave them their money. I did exactly what they said. Nothing went wrong. They just… they didn’t release Robert.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know. I just got back. I’m waiting to hear from them.”

  “But I thought…”

  “There was no way of knowing how they would play it,” I said. “I’m hoping that once they count the money, they’ll release him.”

  “Within twenty-four hours.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they will?”

  “I don’t know, Dalt. I’m sorry, man. I wish I could be more confident for you. I honestly have no idea what they’re going to do.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” he said. “They’re just buying
time.”

  “It’s very possible.”

  “Maybe we should have listened to you,” he said. “We should have gone to the police like you said.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “Who knows how that would have played out. No sense in second-guessing ourselves now.”

  “If we don’t get him back…”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “You didn’t do this. You’re not the criminal here.”

  He laughed quickly. “Easy for you to say.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” I said. “What’s done is done. We’ve just got to take it from here. Let’s wait and see how it works out. We’ll have to give them their twenty-four hours. They said I’d be hearing from them, and so far they’ve done everything they said they’d do.”

  “Sure,” he said. “You’re right.” He said nothing for a minute. Then he said, “So meanwhile, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Try to get some sleep, I guess,” I said. “Is Adrienne there? I’d like to talk to her.”

  “She took a pill and went to bed around midnight. Said she had to be in court in the morning.”

  “Well,” I said, “she’s keeping busy. It’s a good idea.”

  “You don’t think for one minute I’m going to go to the restaurant today, smile at the customers, count the oysters, do you?”

  “I guess not,” I said. “Call in sick and go to bed. I promise I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything.”

  “Maybe I’ll take one of my mother’s pills.” He hesitated. “Hey, Brady?”

  “What, Dalt?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do a very good job.”

  “You did the best you could,” he said.

  “Have you talked to Teresa?”

  He blew out a breath. “I should, shouldn’t I.”

  “I’m sure she’s as anxious as you are.”

  “You’re right. Of course she is. It’s just… we don’t talk much, you know?”

  “You want me to call her?”

  “No,” he said. “I should do it.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “You should.”