Last year, Mary and Parker had the family over for their tenth anniversary. The girls and their mom were giggling over something that turned out to be scandalous by their standards: Mary had gotten a tattoo. Of course, after hearing the explanation, it turned out to be more charming than titillating. She and Parker had gotten each other’s names tattooed on their ring fingers to celebrate the occasion.
“Hurt like hell!” Mary said at the time.
The lady in the trunk is wearing a wedding band that looks exactly like Mary’s. I take another deep breath, prop the trunk open with my left hand, reach into the trunk with my right, and tug on the woman’s wedding ring until I see the tattoo under it that says, “Parker.”
I slam the trunk shut so hard that something breaks and it springs back open slightly. I fall on it, face first. My hands begin shaking uncontrollably. I press them against the hot metal to hold them still. The heat from the metal burns my forehead. I can feel my heart beating in my ears. I try to stand and feel my knees buckle. My stomach lurches, and this time, I can’t hold it back. I vomit hard on the street behind Mary’s car.
Then something hits Mary’s back window just above my head, and an explosion of glass slams into the back of her car, followed by the sound of a gunshot and then another and another! I look up and see four men—not policemen, not actors, not gangsters, but midgets, four of them—running toward me with guns drawn, firing.
Chapter 15
I run to the driver’s side, fumble in my pocket for the key, and— bam!—Mary’s backseat window, street-side, sends a shower of glass fragments raining through the cabin. Shards of glass are everywhere, including the back of my right ear and neck. I force the car onto the street, smashing the rear of the car parked in front of me. I’m pedal to the metal, but Mary’s Celica is a far cry from my Audi. Still, I’m barreling down Reece, toward the camera truck and puzzled crew and cast members who are trying to jump out of my way. I brake hard to keep from hitting someone. Several shots ring out in unison and hit something metal behind me, making a rat-a-tat machine-gun sound. I glance at the rearview mirror and can’t see anything behind me. Another rat-a-tat sound makes me aware I owe my life to having broken the trunk latch moments ago. It had risen up and caught the bullets that were meant to strike the back of my head. Feeling lucky again, I lurch forward and put Seneca Park behind me.
I’m racing down Reece in a Celica with Mary’s dead body in the trunk—the wide-open trunk! I don’t want to get stuck like this at a busy traffic intersection, so I slow down, take a side street for a block, turn right again, and head back toward the park.
No one on earth expects me to do this, right?
I stop and park a couple of cars away from the corner of Cannons Lane and Rock Creek, not far from where the gangsters parked their limo this morning. I take off my left shoe and sock, place the sock on my right hand, and begin wiping down every surface I might have touched in the front seat. I get out of the car and do the same there, wiping down everything including the wheel well, roof, and top of the trunk. I even wipe down Mary’s ring before lowering the broken trunk.
I hear some animated elfin chatter up ahead and see the four midgets—the ones who’d shot at me moments earlier—thirty yards away, laughing and high-fiving each other before climbing into a waiting limousine and driving off.
I’d understand if they’d hit me or killed me or stopped me. But they’d only succeeded in scaring me off.
I put my sock and shoe back on and walk the two blocks back and one block over to my Audi. No one’s blocking me this time. I climb in, back the car out, and start driving to Karen Vogel’s condo.
A shrill noise explodes from under the driver’s seat, and I’m so startled I nearly crash the car.
It’s a cell phone—not my cell phone, mind you, but a new one that’s hidden under the driver’s seat, the same place they’d hidden the photo of Rachel this morning. Only it’s the loudest cell phone ever built. It could wake the dead.
I click the “talk” button. It’s the gangster.
“We got your lady with us,” he says.
“You’ll never believe where we found her. Hey, she seems upset. She doesn’t want me to tell you where we found her. Funny, huh?” “Leave her out of this!” I scream. “What the fuck’s going on here? What do you want from me?” “You like, you can talk to her now. But only for a second.” I hear a muffled sound as the phone is being passed, and then a voice shouts, “Sam! Oh my God, these men—” I feel like I’m on a hundred-mile-an-hour roller coaster to hell, with Stephen King at the controls. The voice isn’t Karen’s. Then I hear a scream. … not Karen Vogel’s scream … Rachel’s. The voice and scream are Rachel’s. They’ve kidnapped—are kidnapping—my wife.
“Oh God! Please!” I shout. “Let her go. I’ll do anything. I swear to God,
“Sam, you sound like you’re ready to talk. So what I want, you go home now, go home, get on your … whatcha call … Web site, wait for my call.”
“Look,” I tell him, “let Rachel go, you don’t need her. If this is about the money, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll give you the codes. I’ll give them to you right now. Just let her go.” “You got the codes memorized?” “I do.” “All of them?” “All of them.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line while he thought about it. Finally, he says, “Go home, Sam. We’ll call you soon.”
I hear the sound of Rachel struggling in the background. “Rachel!” I yell.
Then I hear a couple of sharp sounds, and Rachel emits a bloodcurdling scream that sickens me to the core. I’m trembling with fury and helplessness, thinking about that Mr. Clean motherfucker putting his hands on my wife. “Rachel!” I yell again but realize I’m speaking into a dead connection.
