In another photo, a much younger Robert Lancaster—he looked about ten—was standing with a younger-looking Dalton Lancaster. They both wore hip boots and were standing calf-deep in the water of a fast-moving stream. Robert was grinning and holding a fly rod. Dalt was holding up a net that cradled a trout that couldn’t have been more than ten inches long. Robert’s very first fly-rod trout, maybe. A milestone for a boy, and a happy father-son moment.
Robert looked older in this photo than he was when his parents were divorced. I was glad to see that he and his father had spent some quality time together after Dalt and Teresa split.
Another photo showed Dalt and Jess with Jess’s sister, Kimmie, and Kimmie’s husband, Mike Warner. The four of them were sitting at a round outdoor table squinting and grinning into the sun. In the background was a harbor filled with boats rocking at their moorings and seagulls wheeling in the breeze. The two men wore captain’s caps at cockeyed angles. The women wore bikini tops. Highball glasses sat on the table in front of them. They all looked a little drunk.
Another photo showed Robert looking a few years younger than in his graduation picture. He and an older-looking boy were standing in the stern of an oceangoing fishing boat. Both of them were holding up good-sized striped bass and grinning like they’d just won the lottery. The seas in the background behind them were gray and choppy, and the horizon was slightly atilt, as if whoever took the picture was standing on a rocking deck.
I’d been fishing in weather like that. Sometimes you had all you could do just to remain standing on the slick deck. Casting in the wind was always a challenge. Seasickness didn’t plague me, but it wasn’t much fun to watch your partners puke over the transom.
Sometimes a harsh slanting rain and choppy seas would bring the big stripers out to play. That’s what I guessed had happened to Robert and his friend on the day this photo was taken. It reminded me of a time a few years earlier when I’d gone out with J. W. Jackson and a Martha’s Vineyard boat-owning friend of his. We’d motored over to the Elizabeths on the tail end of a September nor’easter, and we’d found the water churning with mixed schools of big stripers and bluefish.
Remembering that day, and gazing at this photo of Robert and his companion holding up the nice fish that they’d caught on a similar day, I could almost smell the wet salty sea air on my face and feel the deck rocking under my feet and hear the rhythmic slap-slap of the waves against the hull…
That’s when I got it.
That sound in the background on the kidnappers’ CD. I knew I’d heard it somewhere.
Waves slapping against the side of a boat.
When he was trussed up in duct tape reading his plea for the videocam, Robert was in the cabin of a boat.
The light that showed through the bedsheet wasn’t a cellar window. It was a porthole.
On the CD, the sound lasted only a minute or so somewhere in the middle of Robert’s recitation. That rhythmic slapping wasn’t caused by the persistent rolling waves of a storm. I guessed it was the wake of amassing boat.
We would have heard the rumble of the engines if the boat Robert was in had been moving. I figured it was moored, perhaps tied up at a dock, when he was reading and the wake came along.
It was probably the same boat that had been waiting under the bridge for a trash bag full of currency. Maybe I’d been that close to Robert when I delivered the ransom money. Maybe he’d been in the boat that picked it up.
I thought about it for a minute, then sat on Robert’s bed, took my cell phone out of my pants pocket, and dialed Charlie McDevitt’s number at his office in the federal courthouse in Boston.
When his secretary answered, I said, “Shirley, it’s Brady Coyne. I’ve got a serious emergency here. I need to speak to Charlie right away.”
“Why, Mr. Coyne,” said Shirley. “How lovely. We haven’t heard from you for much too long. I hope you’re going to take Mr. Charlie fishing. He needs to go fishing. He works so hard, don’t you know.”
“Well, actually—”
“And how are those dear boys of yours?”
“The boys are both well,” I said. “Joseph is in his second year at Stanford, and William is rowing boats for fly fishermen in Idaho. One of these days I’ll come by the office and show you some pictures. I bet your grandchildren are growing fast. But right now—”
“Like little weeds,” she said. “My Colleen had another one in April, a darling boy named Thomas David.” She hesitated. “A serious emergency, you say. Oh, dear. Let me interrupt him for you.”
I sighed. Shirley was a formidable guardian of Charlie McDevitt’s portal. She could go on and on.
A minute later, Charlie said, “I think you just set a new record for getting through to me. Shirley mentioned something about a dire emergency.”
“Dire is her word,” I said. “It’s a better word than mine, which was ‘serious.’ I hope you can tell me if Vincent and/or Paulie Russo own boats.”
“Boats? What—?”
“It would be better if you didn’t ask,” I said. “I know your people are surveilling the Russo family.”
“Sure. We’ve been watching them for years.”
“So do they own boats?”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “All those made men own boats. It’s an important status symbol among them. But if you want to hang on, I can try to be specific with you. All I gotta do is poke the right keys on my computer here.”
I waited for a couple of minutes, and then Charlie said, “Okay. Not sure what you’re after, but here’s what I got. Vincent owns a forty-nine-foot yacht that he keeps moored down in Boca Raton. That’s a lot of boat for a shriveled up old godfather. It’s not just a status symbol. It’s a serious phallic symbol. Young Paulie’s got a cabin cruiser about half that size tied up in a marina in Scituate. He wouldn’t dare have a bigger dick than his old man. We keep a close eye on both boats. The magic of GPS. Our eyes in the skies. Beep their electronic reports to our satellites, thence directly to our computers. Our watchers sit in air-conditioned offices eating pizza and tracking hundreds of boats and automobiles and private planes. Be nice to nail one of the Russos transporting bales of weed or crates of AK-47s or something. Actually, though, neither Russo is what you’d call an enthusiastic seaman. They hardly ever go aboard their boats, and when they do, it’s for social or business purposes, not for actually sailing o’er the bounding main. We got both boats bugged, too, of course.” He hesitated. “This what you were looking for?”
“What about their goombahs and compadres?”
“You mean do they have boats?”
“Well, yes. Or do they use the Russos’ boats?”
“It would take some more poking around to tell you who owns what,” he said. “But like I said, we always know where the Russo boats are, and if any other persons of general or specific interest connected to the Russos owns a boat, we probably got an eye on it, too.”
“Vincent’s is in Florida, you said.”
“Yes. Boca Raton. They use it for parties. Bimbos in bikinis and politicians in blazers, mostly.”
“What about Paulie’s boat in Scituate?”
Charlie was quiet for a minute. “You didn’t enjoy my clever conceit about status and phallic symbols?”
“I did,” I said. “It’s not original, but in this case it’s particularly apt. But—”
“Maybe this is the place where you tell me what the hell is going on, old buddy.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“The other day you mention kidnapping,” he said, “and today you mention the Russo family, and I’m not supposed to worry?”
“I can’t talk about it,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “I figured that out all by myself. Okay, so what do you specifically want to know?”
“I’d like to know where Paulie Russo’s boat was Tuesday night, Wednesday morning.”
“This past Tuesday, you mean? Day before yesterday?”
“Yes. Can you look that up?”
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“Sure. Logged directly into our computers from the GPS. Just gotta find the file. Hang on a sec.” A minute later he said, “Okay. Here we go. Paulie’s boat was right there at its mooring. Been there since May when they took it out of dry dock and put it in the water, except for one Saturday, Memorial Day weekend, it was, when Paulie took two blond women, neither of them his wife, out for a ride down to Provincetown and back.” He hesitated. “Am I helping you at all?”
“Sure,” I said. “You always help me. You’re telling me Paulie Russo was not out in his boat Tuesday night.”
“I don’t know where Russo was,” said Charlie. “I can only tell you where his boat was. I mean, he could’ve been out in somebody else’s boat. I’m not sure what you’re after here.”
“Me, neither,” I said. “How close do you guys watch Russo’s goons?”
“Russo’s got a lot of goons working for him, Brady. He’s got more helpers than we do, I think. They come and go, you know? Anyway, actually watching them, tailing and surveilling them, is pretty labor intensive. So the answer is, it depends.”
“I understand.”
“I can check and see if we got anything unusual going on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, if that’d help.”
“It would. I’d appreciate it.”
“It’ll take a while. That stuff, unlike the electronic stuff on the boats and cars, is inputted by hand, and they don’t necessarily keep up with it. I’ll have to talk to some people, twist a few arms, access some restricted files.”
“There’s a platter of Marie’s deep-fried calamari in it for you.”
“Ah, you don’t need to do that. But, since you mention it, okay. It’s a deal.”
“So how long is a while?”
“Don’t know if I. can do better than a couple of days. That okay?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But—”
There was a beep in my telephone.
“Charlie,” I said, “I’ve got a call coming in. I better get it.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’ll be hearing from me.”
“I appreciate it, old friend.”
“Calamari,” he said.
I hit the button on my phone and said, “Yes?”
“This is Adrienne Lancaster,” she said. “You were right.”
Twenty-three
“WHAT WAS I RIGHT about?” I asked Judge Lancaster. “They want more money.” She blew out a loud, injudicious breath. “You were right about that. But you were wrong about the amount. This time they want five hundred thousand.”
“Only half a million.”
“Yes,” she said. “Only.”
“What did they say about Robert?”
“I talked to Robert.”
“You did? You had a conversation with him?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Well, not exactly a conversation. I said I wanted to speak with my grandson, and they put him on the phone, and he said hello. I asked if he was all right, and he said he was okay. Then they took the phone away from him.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Certainly. I know Robert’s voice. He sounded terrible. But it was he.”
“Terrible how?”
“Groggy,” she said. “Raspy. I could barely hear him.”
“Like he was sick?”
“Yes. Weak. Disoriented.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a relief just to know he’s still alive. So start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”
“This was just a few minutes ago. I called you right away. I was in my chambers, at my desk, where I am now. My morning recess. I was eating my yogurt and going over some papers and trying not to think about all of this horror, and my cell phone vibrated. I had it in my pocket so I wouldn’t miss any calls, as we agreed. I usually leave it in my purse in my chambers, but this morning I kept it with me in court. So I took it out of my pocket and looked at the screen. The call was coming from Robert’s cellular phone. I thought, Oh, how wonderful. He’s calling me. He’s all right. They’ve let him go. But it wasn’t Robert. It was some other voice telling me he needed more money.”
“Needed,” I said.
“Yes. That was the word he used.”
“And he was using Robert’s phone.”
“Yes. That was smart. These people are clever.”
“This other voice,” I said. “Did you recognize it?”
“It was all tinny and distorted. It kind of echoed, as if his head were in a trash can or something. Purposefully disguised, it seemed to me. I didn’t recognize it.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said that if we wanted Robert back it would cost five hundred thousand dollars more. He wants it the same as the other time. Twenties, fifties, hundreds. Used bills. He said they’d be in touch with you sometime tomorrow and you’d better have the money. He said if we contacted the police they’d kill Robert. I said I didn’t know how he expected me to get that kind of money on such short notice, he’d need to give me a few days, at least, and he sort of laughed and said no, it had to be tomorrow. I didn’t think it would do any good to argue or try to negotiate with him. Then I said I wanted to speak to Robert, and that’s when he put him on.”
“They’re going to call me, huh?” I said.
“That’s what the man said.”
“But he didn’t say when.”
“Just tomorrow sometime.”
“At which time he expects me to have the money?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Did he say which of my phones he’d use?”
“No,” she said, “he didn’t, and I didn’t think to ask.”
“Have you talked to Dalt?”
“Not yet,” Adrienne said. “You’re the first one I called. I should bring poor Teresa up to date, too.”
“You call Dalt,” I said. “I’ll talk to Teresa. Can you get the money?”
“In one day? I don’t see how. If it were a week, maybe even just a few days, I could.”
“Well,” I said, “you better see what you can do.”
“I will.” She hesitated. “So when is it going to end?”
“When we get Robert back.”
“Or…”
“We will,” I said. “We’ll get him back.”
She laughed quickly. “I wish I could be so confident.”
Me, too, I thought.
After I disconnected with Adrienne, I sat there in Robert’s bedroom trying to get my thoughts organized. He was still alive. It looked like we had one day to get him back. After that, if the judge couldn’t come up with half a million dollars in used currency, I had a pretty good idea what would happen.
I picked up one of the photos I’d been looking at when Adrienne called. Jess, her sister Kimmie, Dalt, and Kimmie’s husband, Mike Warner, sitting together at an outdoor table looking drunk and happy. All four of them looked four or five years younger. I noticed it in the men more than the women. Their faces were less puffy, and their bodies looked slimmer and solider and more tanned. Mike wore a mustache in the photo. He didn’t have one now.
I put that photo down and picked up the one of Robert and his friend on the boat holding their fish. I wondered who’d been behind the camera and whose boat they were on.
The harbor, the captain’s caps, the fish, the ocean.
The sound of the wake of a passing boat slapping against a hull. The glow of light shining through a porthole. Robert duct-taped and imprisoned in the cabin of a boat.
The ransom money, tossed off a bridge, then retrieved from the Merrimack River… by somebody on a boat.
If not Paulie Russo’s boat… whose?
Paulie or one of his goons could have borrowed somebody else’s boat to retrieve the bag of ransom money under the bridge, of course. Otherwise, I had no brainstorms.
I picked up the photo of Robert and his friend with their fish and the one of the four adults sitting at a table outdoors by a harbor and took them downstairs.
Teresa was unlo
ading the dishwasher in the kitchen. When I walked in, she stood up, wiped her hands on the fronts of her jeans, and gave me a halfhearted smile. “So? Did you learn anything?”
“Judge Lancaster just called me,” I said. “She spoke to Robert a short time ago. She heard his voice.”
“He’s alive, then.”
“Yes.”
“But they’ve still got him.”
“Yes. But—”
“They’re asking for more money, is that it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Just like you said they would,” said Teresa.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m a genius.” I told her what Adrienne had told me.
“So she’s going to get the money?”
“She’s going to try,” I said, “but that’s a lot to raise in twenty-four hours, even for her. She’s not sure she can do it.”
“If she can’t…”
“We’ll get more time out of them,” I said. “They’ve got to know they’re being unreasonable. They want their money. We’ll get him back.”
Teresa went over and sat at the table. She looked out the window for a minute, then turned to me. “You really think so? You think we’ll get him back?”
“I do,” I said. I sat down across from her and put the two photos on the table.
She looked at them, then at me. “You took these from his room? How come?”
I pointed at the one showing the four grown-ups sitting at the outdoor table. “Do you have any idea when and where this was taken?”
“Not a clue. You can see that they’re all quite a bit younger. I always wondered why Robert framed it and kept it there on his shelf. He doesn’t have a photo of Sam anywhere.”
“What about this one?” I turned the photo of Robert and his friend with their fish so Teresa could see it better.
She nodded. “That’s Robert with his—cousin, I guess you’d call him. Jimmy. Jessica’s nephew.” She looked at me. “You know what happened to Jimmy?”
I nodded.
“He gambled, too, you know.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure there’s no connection.”
“Gambling is a connection,” she said. “Dalt gambled. It wrecked our marriage.” She shrugged. “Robert worshipped Jimmy. He always seemed like a good kid. Jimmy, I mean. He was several years older than Robert, but they got along like brothers. It was tragic, what happened to him. Robert took it very hard.”
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