Trapped

“In my estimation Edwin Manning is desperate,” he says carefully, gauging my reaction. “He’s making it up as he goes along.”

Desperate, frightened, lost. That was my impression, too.

“I’ve seen parents behave like that, many times.” Shane says. “Not the sneaking-around part, exactly, but the frightened-out-of-their-wits part. He’s sick with worry, just like you.”

“Because his son took off with my daughter?” I ask, dreading the answer.

Shane says, “Or because his son has been abducted, and he’s been warned not to contact the police.”

18. Calling All Fathers

It’s after midnight and Ricky can’t sleep. Lying a foot or so from Myla on the custom king, he just can’t make it happen. Too many things going on. His sleep button is stuck and the pills no longer work. White man’s medicine, all it does is slow his thoughts a few miles per hour, not nearly enough to let his mind rest.

Only thing to do when this happens, he decides, is get up, keep moving. Forward motion pushes all the crazy thoughts to the back of his head, prevents them from bouncing. Saved by gravity or momentum, or whatever the hell it is.

Ricky slips out of bed, leaves Myla sleeping like a curled-up kitten, a slender hand draped over her eyes. He prowls his new house in the dark, naked. Bare feet cool on the tiles, walking a circuit that takes him through the kitchen, into the hallway, past the three bedrooms he furnished for his children, around through the entertainment alcove, and back into the dining room. Sodium lights coming though the slats like knife-cuts on the tile floors.

Step on a crack, he’s thinking, break the motherfucker’s back.

On his third circuit Ricky leans into Tyler’s room. Disney World poster, bed like a race car, brightly painted. No Tyler tonight. Sometimes there’s a shape in the bed that might be his little boy, but not tonight. Decides not to check on Alicia and Reya because the girls will be with Tyler, all three together, forever and ever, amen.

The new house, big as it is, is too small to contain him. In the laundry room he slips into a pair of elastic-waisted, cotton gym shorts, heads into the four-bay garage. No shirt, no shoes, he loves the feeling of air on his skin, believes he can soak up oxygen, make himself stronger. He decides, on impulse, to leave the Beemer and take Myla’s new convertible Mini Cooper. Pushes the driver’s seat as far back as it will go, his big arms cocked over the sides. Thinking he must look like one of those Shriners driving a toy car for the kids. All he needs is the funny hat.

Ha, ha, ha, he laughs all the way to the airstrip. Not quite to the airstrip, actually, because the ruts and potholes on the final approach are bigger than the Mini. So he parks the little car in the brush, goes the last couple of miles on foot, snorting great drafts of muggy, night-swamp air though his flaring nostrils. The odor of ancient muck, animal scat and the thin, delicious scent of slow-moving water. Thinking, this is how the old-timers did it, hunting more or less naked, alive to the world, paying attention with all the nerves of their bodies.

Ricky feels power flowing into him, and a soothing calmness that slows his brain, stops it from spinning like an off-kilter gyroscope. When he emerges into the clearing he instantly clocks the beautiful Beechcraft exactly where he left it, wings glinting with the light of distant stars. Not far away the jacked-up, fat-wheeled Dodge Ram lurks next to the camouflaged hangar. The toothy front grill makes the truck look like a shiny steel cougar ready to pounce.

“Roy!” Ricky bellows, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Dug! Roydug! Roydug! Roydug!”

Amused by putting their names together, the swamp-cracker twins who have sworn him allegiance in exchange for the new truck and whatever crumbs may dribble their way. Roy is the brains of the family, meaning he doesn’t drool overmuch. Whereas Dug, his very name apparently misspelled by his illiterate, white-trash mammy, young Dug seems to be missing about half his puzzle.

Ricky always deals with Roy, for obvious reasons, but this time it’s Dug who comes lurching out of the truck, swollen eyelids crunchy with sleep.

Upon seeing Ricky he stammers, “Um-um. Yeah hey what?”

Bare chested, bare-legged Ricky Lang coming out of the dark, chanting his name, it’s like being awakened by a hard slap in the face. An experience not entirely unknown to Dug, whose late and unlamented pappy was notoriously ill-tempered and free with his hands.

“Where’s Roy?” Ricky wants to know.

Dug is looking around, wondering how the man got here. A little segment of his brain wondering if maybe the crazy Indian really can fly without benefit of aircraft. Materializing like a ghost with Dug’s name in his mouth.

“Um-um,” says Dug.

“Um-um, where’s he at?” Ricky demands. Standing close so the stammering white-bread can smell the feral stink of him, the swamp and danger on his breath.

Dug is afraid of Ricky—any sane individual smaller than King Kong would be afraid of Ricky Lang, who exudes a kind of steroid strength from the top of his bowl-cut hairdo down to his splayed feet—but Dug is even more afraid that he’ll react the wrong way, ruin everything for Roy. Not knowing what to do, fearing the wrong reaction, he’s reduced to stammering, making um-um noises while his brain sorts out the options.

Strangely enough, Ricky seems to understand what’s going on with Dug—the obvious strain of having to think—and steps back, giving him room to work it out.

“Roy,” Dug finally says, savoring the name. “He gone to check on the girl. I’m guardin’ the airplane.”

Giving it the swamp-cracker pronunciations, two words, era plane.

“Left you the truck,” Ricky observes. “What’s he driving?”

Dug has to think about it, then carefully assemble the words. “Four-wheeler. One in the shed?”

That sets Ricky back on his bare heels just a little, because he has always intended the four-wheeler to be a present for his children, eventually. Purchased on a whim months ago, with nobody’s birthday pending anytime soon, he’d decided to store it at the airfield until they were old enough to drive the thing. Picturing Tyler gleeful as he guns the engine, spins the fat wheels. Tyler screaming.

Ricky takes a deep breath, swallows his rage, saving it for later.

“Took the wheeler, did he?” he says pleasantly, showing his teeth.

Dug nods deliberately and with enthusiasm, as if grateful for any question that doesn’t require a verbal response.

“Where’s that cell phone at, Dug? The one the girl had. Did Roy leave it with you?”

Dug nods again. Two in a row.

“Give it over, I need to make a call,” says Ricky, holding out his big fist, opening his blunt fingers.

Dug hurries to the truck, returns with the sporty little Razr cell phone, places it carefully into the palm of Ricky’s hand. Takes a step back, waiting.

“Battery, Dug,” says Ricky, ever so softly. “I need the battery, too.”

Back to the truck like a two-legged retriever. Actually Ricky’s pleased that the twins remembered to remove the battery, as instructed. Ricky knows all about surveillance and triangulation, and how an active cell phone can be a homing device.

He assembles the phone, fires it up, waits until the signal bars are glowing. Then thumbs the redial button, watches the familiar number march across the little blue screen.

“Yo, Edwin,” Ricky says jovially, his free hand slipping into his gym shorts, adjusting his genitals. “You still up. Me again, yeah. What’s a matter, can’t sleep? You call the cops yet? No? FBI? CIA, Wackenhut, Pizza Hut, whoever? No? You swear? Oh that’s good, I believe you. You’re pretty smart for a white dude. Yeah, I’m down with you, bro. We can figure a way out of this, we put our brains together and think real hard. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I know you’re worried about your son. I know that. You should be worried. If we can’t work this out, if you can’t help me, I’ll be forced to cut off your boy’s ears and his nose and his fingers and little white pecker, and then FedEx him to locations around the world.”

The FedEx stuff is pure improvisation, something he heard in a movie or on TV. Ricky has already decided that when the time comes the body will go into the swamp, clean and simple and forever. But who knows, FedEx might work for the smaller appendages.

Ricky loves this part, deciding who lives, who dies, who gets the power, who shrivels like an earthworm in the sun.

“Calm down, Edwin,” he says. “Concentrate on figuring out how to get me what I want. You’ve got twelve hours before I start cutting.”

19. The Taste Of Dirty Pennies

Men, most of them, seem to think that when a woman cries she’s signaling weakness, falling apart. But sometimes crying is just what you do to relieve the tension. Guys scream or sweat or kick the cat. We cry. There’s this old movie with Holly Hunter, she’s the producer of a TV news show, and she starts the day by sitting at her desk and crying her eyes out for about thirty seconds. Then she’s good to go.

I’m having a Holly Hunter moment. The forbidden word abducted is spoken and I’m a fountain, sobbing so hard it hurts in my ribs.

Give him credit, Randall Shane doesn’t try to comfort me or offer a shoulder to cry on. He sits back and gives me time, and when I’m finished blowing my nose he simply continues where he left off.

“It’s a theory and therefore by definition it could be wrong,” he says. “But I think we have to proceed on the assumption that Edwin Manning believes his son is in peril. Therefore we have to assume your daughter is also in peril, until we hear otherwise. Does this make sense to you, Mrs. Garner?”

I nod miserably. “Unfortunately, yes. I was thinking the same thing myself. Guess I didn’t want to admit it.”

“Then we’re in agreement?”

“I guess,” I say. “Does that mean we go to the cops? Tell them what we suspect?”

Shane shakes his head. “We’re not quite there. We need to know why Manning hasn’t called in the Feds. Why he’s so terrified that he’s prowling his own yard in camouflage. Once we’ve resolved that, once we have an indication that your daughter is in danger, we’ll notify the local authorities and they’ll contact the FBI. That’s how it’s done.”

“How do we find out? He won’t talk to us.”

In the dark his smile is tight, resolute. “I’ve got an idea,” he says.

Second time around, getting inside is easy. Shane’s idea is to push the button on the intercom and say, “Let us in, Mr. Manning, or I’ll call my colleagues at the FBI. The assistant director in charge of kidnapping is Monica Bevins and I have her on speed dial. Count of three. One … two.”

And just like that, the gates slid open. As we roll up the long, curving driveway, I ask Shane if he really has a Monica Bevins on speed dial, and if she’s really an agent-in-charge.

“Yes to both,” he says. “And yes, I’m fully prepared to make the call.”

“And they let you assist clients like me? The FBI?”

“Can’t stop me. I’m a civilian.”

“But you’ve got, like, all these connections to the agency, right?”

“Some useful connections, yes.”

“And this is what you did before you retired, you found missing children?”

His eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. He gives me an odd look, like I’m a kid asking too many questions at the wrong time. “No,” he says, “not exactly. I assisted with a number of kidnap cases as an agent on general assignment. At the time it wasn’t my specialty.”

At this point I’m too numb to be shocked by this revelation. “No? What did you do?”

“Electronics, surveillance gear, mostly hardware stuff. Gear and gizmos. Later I helped develop a software program for rapid fingerprint recognition.”

“You really were a computer geek? That’s what you did in the FBI?”

“Pretty much,” he admits.

What was I thinking, that he’d shot John Dillinger and smoked out terror cells? “So how’d you get into this line of work?”

“Long story,” he says. “Maybe later.”

Secrets. Apparently Randall Shane has a few of his own.

We’ve arrived at what appears to be the main building, having passed several low, modern outbuildings. Carriage house, guest cottage, maintenance shed, all very Long Island estate. Lush, illuminated landscaping that looks au naturel but isn’t, believe me. It’s all very tastefully planned, very big money.

The main structure is an artful arrangement of steel beams and smoked glass and daring architectural angles. Must be a million precisely weathered cedar shingles keeping out the rain. The property taxes probably exceed my yearly income. No wonder the owner has, apparently, been targeted for extortion—he’s got a lot to give.

Kelly’s boyfriend or flight instructor, whatever the hell he is, how did this happen? How did she find herself in this particular world?

Shane sets the parking brake and we get out. Lights come on, illuminating a wide, elaborately shingled portico. The oversize door opens—opaque green-glass panels set in a brushed-steel frame—and Edwin Manning staggers out, dressed more or less as we last saw him, with the exception of his face, which has been recently washed.

“Who are you?” he wants to know. Then he adds, in a voice so faint it seems to fade away, “Leave me alone. Just please leave me alone!”

He trips, falls to his knees, his skinny chipmunk face slick with tears. The poor man is a mess. Shane and I help him to his feet, each taking a black-clad arm. He doesn’t weigh all that much and I can feel his pulse pounding, as if his whole body is being struck like a gong.

He is, I realize, scared nearly to death, and that makes me even more frightened.

“My daughter,” I tell him urgently. “That’s all we want, my daughter back. Whatever else happened, I don’t care.”

Manning staggers like a drunk but there’s no smell of alcohol. He’s exhausted and stressed to the point of falling down. Not quite there yet myself, but I can see it coming if Kelly isn’t home by, say, this time tomorrow.

Once when Kelly was about ten, a year or so after her last treatment, she accompanied me on a house call, what I call a catalog call because it’s all about looking at photos of designs and fabric samples—satins, silks, laces and finishes. Lots of catalogs, lots of possibilities. Long drive to Montauk, a very successful novelist’s waterfront “cottage.” Won’t mention her name because I don’t want to be sued, but the bride-to-be (marriage number three) made all of her money writing sexy stories about rich divas and had either become one herself or started out that way. A very unpleasant person to deal with, unless you happened to be a fellow celebrity, in which case it was kiss-kiss-oh-I-missed-you-so-much.

Anyhow, Kelly’s eyes got big when she saw the house and the beautiful setting on the grassy dunes, and I could tell she longed to live in a place like this rather than in boring old suburban Valley Stream. Couldn’t blame her. The writer’s cottage looked like a Laura Ashley catalog cover, the one where Ralph Lauren is visiting, and all the children are perfectly chic. Not that there were any children present other than Kelly. The rich bitch had kids from earlier marriages, but they were all grown-up and not speaking to her.

Kelly wandered from room to room as the bride-to-be-again checked out flattering designs and bosom-enhancing brocades. As I soon discovered, the lady liked to vent on the “little people,” meaning employees or contractors, and she included me as one. Contractors were scum, painters were scum, plumbers and electricians were scum. Everybody who worked on her house was scum or stupid or worthless. She said so on David Letterman. Failing to mention that she changed her mind every other minute, made ridiculous demands, then complained when it took longer, cost more. I had already decided that I’d have a scheduling conflict that would prevent me from adding her to my client list, but didn’t quite know how to get out of there without having my head bitten off. So I went along, going through the motions, suggesting possible ensembles that might work—most every suggestion dismissed as “stupid”—absorbing abuse from a woman I’d just met and hadn’t said boo to.

When we finally escaped, a mile or so down the road, Kelly touches me on the hand and asks why that lady is so horrible. All I can do is shake my head and tell her that for some people money is like a poison. It makes them sick in the head. Kelly, ten years old, she looks me in the eye and goes, “That woman was always horrible, Mom. She was born that way. Tell her to take her wedding gown and put it where the sun don’t shine.”

Ten. I laughed till I cried. Right now, exhausted and shaky and ready to fall apart for at least the third time, I’m wondering if she ever set foot on the Manning estate, and if so, what she thinks of it, of them.

“Are you alone, sir?” Shane wants to know.

We’ve entered something like a glass hut with a high, cathedral ceiling vented with skylights. Canvas-bladed ceiling fans hang like monstrous white bats. Manning staggers to the right, bringing us to a living space. Cherry floors set in a herringbone pattern, stark leather couches, steel-and-strap chairs, lots of bookcases filled with books. Look like real books, too, not designer touches.

“Anybody here?” Shane asks, persisting. “Family, staff? Anybody at all?”

Edwin Manning has collapsed into one of the custom designer chairs, buried his face in his hands. When he looks up again he seems to have gained some resolve. His voice is hoarse, froglike, as if an invisible hand is gripping his throat. “Nobody,” he croaks. “Sent everyone away. I’m entirely alone.”

“Where’s your wife? Seth’s mother, where is she?”

The little man snorts, shakes his head. “Dead. Died when he was twelve. I never remarried.”

“Other children?” Shane asks.

“Just Seth.” He looks up, focuses on Shane. “If you call the FBI, or anyone else, he’ll die. Is that understood? He’ll die quite horribly. That’s really all I can tell you.”

Shane indicates that we should both sit. Put us on a level with Edwin Manning. Have a look into his sad, red-rimmed eyes, see what we can see.

“Has your son been abducted?” Shane asks, point-blank. “Is he being held for ransom? Is this about money?”

Manning shakes his head, clears his throat. “I can’t talk about it, not to you and not to anyone,” he says, as if reciting from a script. “That was made crystal clear. I have to do exactly what they say or he’ll die.”

Shane sits back, digesting Manning’s strangely laconic response. So far, almost every sentence ends in “die,” or contains the word “death” or “kill,” and yet the big guy doesn’t look the least bit discouraged. To the contrary, he has the slightly satisfied expression of a man whose assumptions have been confirmed.

“Okay,” Shane says. “We’ve established there is an abduction in progress, and that you believe your son’s life to be in danger. Have you received proof of life? An indication that Seth is still alive?”

Manning breaks eye contact, such as it is. His small, delicate jaw juts forward. “Stay out of this,” he says. “I read your card. If you’re former FBI you know what can happen.”

“What about Kelly?” I demand. Somehow I’m on my feet, trembling with anxiety and agitation. “Is she with your son? Is that what happened? Has she been kidnapped, too?”

Manning rubs his temples, avoids looking at me. “Never heard of her,” he says. “Seth never mentioned anyone by that name.”

For the first time I get a strong sense that he’s lying. He may not have met my daughter—what adult male brings home an underage girl to meet his daddy?—but he’s heard of her for sure. Mos def, as Kelly would say.

Shane leans in closer. His whole body seems to come into sharp focus, as if to demonstrate that he could, if provoked, crush the smaller man like bug.

“Are you aware that your son originally made contact with Mrs. Garner’s sixteen-year-old daughter on the Internet? That he took her skydiving, and apparently gave her flying lessons, all without her mother’s consent?”

Manning shakes his head. “I can’t discuss this.”

Shane leans closer still. His voice becomes softer, but somehow no less forceful. “You are in deep trouble, sir. You are out of your depth. Let me help.”

“I can’t do that. Leave my house at once, both of you.”

“Tell me what happened,” Shane suggests. “I’ll take it from there.”

Edwin Manning suddenly erupts, shaking his head so hard he almost spins out of the seat. “Go away!” he insists. “I don’t know about your daughter,” he says, turning to me, meeting my eyes for the first time. “If she’s with Seth, they’ll kill her, too. Do you understand? You have to let me handle this. You must. It’s the only way.”

Shane’s hands are suddenly gripping my upper arms, pulling me away. Anticipating, almost before I quite know it myself, that I’m about to launch myself at Manning, scratch out his lying eyes.

“We’re leaving,” Shane announces. “If you change your mind, call me. I can help.”

Couple miles down the road, heading out of the millionaire enclave, Shane pulls over so I can throw up. Kneeling in the darkness by the side of the road, the taste of dirty pennies in my mouth. Shane keeping back, not tempted to hold my head, because he knows what’s going on, why this has happened.

It’s not fear that’s makes me sick. It’s anger.

20. In The Bunker

Twelve hundred miles to the south, Ricky Lang heads for the bunker. A concrete cube, ready-made and then buried under a load of dirt and gravel long before Ricky was born. Supposedly it dates from the Cuban missile crisis. Some crazy white man shit, blow the whole world to pieces. The way he heard, a Cuban contractor buried the thing, all in a panic, convinced Fidel was coming to town on a rocket. Kept his family there for a few weeks, then walked away, never looked back. Whatever, Ricky’s been familiar with the bunker since he was a kid, when he used to play hide the weenie with some of the trailer girls down there. The trailer park is long gone, but the bunker still exists and you never know when a secure location will come in handy. Especially one that cannot be detected from the air.

Ricky is keenly aware that any fool with a computer can Google a satellite image these days, check out your backyard, see if you mowed the grass. He’s made sure the Beechcraft is concealed in a hangar, that activity in and around the airfield is kept to a minimum. The place is probably still under some sort of minimum DEA satellite photo surveillance from the bad old days. Nothing to draw their attention now—he made it his personal business to clean up the tribal drug trade. Couple of the stubborn old farts thought it was still a going concern, had to be fed to the gators. The others soon saw the error of their ways, agreed to live on tribal income and whatever they’d managed to hide in the ground.

Gator bait was usually ripe chicken, but like they say, everything tastes like chicken once you take the skin off.

“Smells bad down there,” Roy warns him, approaching the bunker.

Ricky stops, looks Roy in the eye. “White shit smells different from people shit, you ever notice? One sniff, I can tell.”

“Oh yeah?” Roy responds, glancing away. “The boy don’t know whether he’s coming or going, or where he’s at.”

“Uh-huh,” says Ricky. “Dug, you bring them loppers?”

“Yeah, Chief,” says Dug, bringing up the rear, letting the big-branch loppers bump against his trouser leg. Seems to think carrying the loppers is some sort of game he can win, if only he can figure it out.

Ricky holds out his hand, stops Dug in his tracks. “Ain’t no chief to you,” he says. “I am chief to my own people, only to them.”

No surprise, Dug looks confused, seeking help from his brother, who shrugs as if to say Roll with it.

“You got the key?” Ricky asks. “Open says me.”

Ricky’s laughing as Roy fumbles with the key. Neither brother registering the humor in “open says me,” puns and wordplay not being their thing. Which, in Ricky Lang’s febrile mind makes the Whittle twins more amusing than the usual swamp crackers, a tribe he has made use of, and thoroughly mistrusted, for his entire life. Started out helping his father, Tito Lang, swap tanned hides for the whiskey the crackers made in their hidden stills. Saw the contempt in their colorless eyes—drunk Indians selling their birthright for the poison that would surely kill them. A poison self-administered, and no different in its outcome than the hot bullets so many of the people fired into their own brains as punctuation to their defiled lives.