'Who are you?'
'Nobody.'
He went to the boy. The kid's eyes were bleary. He looked flushed and his skin was hot. Fever. A wad of bloody gauze encased his left hand. Jack pulled the gag from his mouth.
'Where's my dad?' he said hoarsely. Not Who are you? or What's going on? Just worried about his dad. Jack wished for a son like that someday.
'On his way.'
He began untying the boy's wrists. Soon he had help from Barbara. A moment later, mother and son were crying in each other's arms. He found their clothing and handed it to them.
While they were dressing, Jack dragged Hollander over to Barbara's mattress and stuffed her gag in his mouth. As he finished tying him down with her ropes, he heard someone pounding on the downstairs door. He ushered the woman and the boy out to the landing. His thigh throbbed as he went down and found Munir frantic on the sidewalk.
'Where-?'
'Upstairs,' Jack said.
'Are they-?'
Jack nodded.
He stepped aside to allow Munir past, then waited outside awhile to give them all a chance to be alone together. Five minutes, then he returned upstairs. It wasn't over yet.
He found them huddled on the landing in a group hug. Now came the tough part. He was in a bad position here.
'Okay. Decision time.' They looked up. 'Robby needs a doctor. But there's not an ER in the city that won't be phoning in a child abuse complaint as soon as they see that hand.'
'He was abused.' Barbara's eyes blazed. 'But not by us.'
'I know a doctor who won't say anything to anybody.'
Because he couldn't. Doc Hargus's license had been on permanent suspension for years.
'But can he reattach Robby's finger?' she said.
Jack shook his head. 'That's beyond him, I'm afraid.'
Beyond anyone, Jack thought.
He'd read somewhere that the last thing you wanted to do with a severed anything was freeze it. Keep it cold, yes, but freezing killed the cells. The finger was most likely already a goner by the time Munir received it. He thought he'd done the right thing, but sticking it in his freezer had been the coup de grace.
Jack couldn't tell these people that. They wouldn't believe it, wouldn't want to hear it, needed to give their boy every chance at a full complement of fingers.
Munir straightened. 'He needs a hospital, the best surgeons. And now I'm free to tell the police everything.'
And that would start officialdom down a road that might lead them to Jack. He clenched his jaw. This was why he stayed the hell away from kidnappings.
'Except about me, okay? I don't exist. You've got two victims who can testify against him, you have the recordings of his threats-an airtight case against the bastard. You don't need me.'
Munir nodded. 'I owe you… everything. Without you-'
'But that's taken care of. Now your so-called justice system goes to work. It doesn't know about me. I'd like to keep things that way.'
'Of course. Anything you say. I am forever in your debt.' He looked back at the closed door of 2D. 'I still cannot understand it. Richard Hollander… how could he do this to me? To anybody? I never hurt him.'
'You fired him,' Jack said. 'He's probably been loony tunes for years, on the verge of a breakdown, walking the line. Losing his job just pushed him over the edge.'
'But people lose their jobs every day. They don't kidnap and torture-'
'I guess he was ready to blow. You just happened to be the unlucky one. He had to blame somebody-anybody but himself-and get even for it. He chose you. Don't look for logic. The guy's crazy.'
'But the depth of his cruelty…'
'Maybe you could have been gentler with him when you fired him,' Barbara said.
The words sent a chill through Jack, bringing back Munir's plea from his first telephone call.
Please save my family!
Jack wondered if that was possible, if anyone could save Munir's family now.
It had begun to unravel as soon as Barbara and Robby were kidnapped. It still had been salvageable then, up to the point when the cleaver had cut through Robby's finger. That was probably the deathblow. Even if nothing worse had happened from there on in, that missing finger was going to be a permanent reminder of the nightmare, and somehow it would be Munir's fault. If he'd already gone to the police, it would be because of that; since he hadn't, it would be his fault for not going to the police. Or for firing Hollander in the first place. Munir would always blame himself; and deep in her heart Barbara would blame him too. Later on, maybe years from now, Robby might blame him too.
Because there'd always be one too few fingers on Robby's left hand, always that scar along the margin of Barbara's nipple, always the vagrant thought, sneaking through the night, that Munir hadn't done all he could, that if he'd only been a little more considerate before the kidnapping, had been just a little more cooperative after, Robby still would have ten fingers.
Sure, they were together now, and they'd been hugging and crying and kissing, but later on Barbara would start asking questions: Couldn't you have done more? Why didn't you cut your finger off when he told you to?
Even now, Barbara was edging into the possibility that Munir could have been gentler when he'd fired Hollander. The natural progression from that was to: Maybe if you had, none of this would have happened.
The individual members might still be alive, but Munir's family as a viable unit was still under the gun.
And that saddened Jack. It meant that Hollander might still win.
Barbara hugged Robby against her side. 'We need to get to the hospital. Now.'
Jack said, 'You can flag a cab on the street.'
As they started for the stairwell, Munir held back.
'I must speak to him. I have to ask him why.'
Jack wondered if talk was all he had in mind.
'Sure. Go ahead. We'll hold the cab for you.'
Jack led Barbara and Robby down to the steel front door. He grabbed a takeout menu flier from the floor, wadded it up, and stuffed it in the door's latch hole.
Might want to give the place a once-over before the cops arrived.
Took a couple of minutes, but finally a cab cruised by and he flagged it. As Barbara and Robby slid into the rear, Munir stumbled from the building looking dazed.
Had Hollander escaped?
'What's wrong?'
'That is not Richard Hollander.'
'Then who is he?'
'I have never seen that man before in my life.'
15
Dawn stepped off the private elevator into Mr. Osala's duplex. She felt totally dazed and knew she looked like some sort of mental patient in her bathrobe and borrowed scrubs from the surgicenter. After she'd come to a couple of hours ago, they'd checked her over to see if she was all right, then stuck her in a cab. Lucky the doorman, Mack, recognized her and keyed her up in the elevator, or she'd never have been able to return.
She felt totally awful and weird. She'd been trying to get out of this place for like nine months, and now that she had her chance to take off, she didn't. She'd never thought she'd look at this place as home, but that was what
