Suzy's Case: A Novel (36 page)

There, that’s better. Bitching about your circumstance can do that. It’s time to wake up and attempt escape. I open my eyes to darkness. The nonmedical term would be
pitch-black
. My ankles are still tied together, and my hands are secured in back of me. The hair is being ripped out of my wrists, leading me to believe that some form of adhesive tape has been used to bind me. Most likely medical tape, but definitely not ouchless. It’s obvious I’m not escaping from this easily, if at all. Time to pray for another divine intervention. I’m definitely in the trunk of a car—and it’s akin to a soundproof chamber. I can’t hear a thing. Maybe my ears are taped, although I don’t recall seeing anyone’s ears taped in any of the kidnap movies I’ve ever seen. Maybe I’m just parked in some desolate area only to be found as a cadaver years from now when the car is towed to a junkyard for crushing. News of my finding solves “The Case of the Missing Lawyer.” The insurance companies will have to pay my wife the proceeds of my life policies since the rumor I ran away to Bali with an underage girl has by now been disproved. With the money, she purchases our local tennis club and ups her court hours from five a day to seven, and hires two more handsome pros from Argentina. The unsuspecting junkyard owner will get his fifteen minutes of fame. I hope it’s not Fred Sanford, because he’ll be traumatized if he is the one to find me.

Wait. I hear something. It sounds like footsteps, thereby demonstrating the trunk’s not as soundproof as I thought. Someone is approaching. I’m able to move my legs into position, and I kick the trunk lid hard three times.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The sound echoes as I nail it with what’s left of my walking boot. The footsteps continue and stop behind the trunk. I’m not sure if I should kick again. If it’s Smith coming to finish the job, I’ll want him to think I’m still out cold.

Suddenly there’s a male saying, “I know you’re in there. I’m here to get you out. Move to the back of the trunk. I’m going to bust it open.” I shimmy as far back as I can, which is about seven inches. I hear the clanking of metal hitting metal, strike after strike. After the sixth wallop, I hear the sound of metal being wedged between metal. A metal bending sound picks up where the wedging left off, then the trunk bursts open with the energy of a cork popping out of champagne.

The first thing I realize is that I can’t see a thing: I’m blindfolded. The next thing I realize is how good it is to take in fresh air. Nice. I take three deep breaths in through my nose and out through my nose. I have no other option. I hear the voice again. “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth, but keep quiet.”

I feel him trying to peel the edge of the tape. He finally gets the corner up and rips it off with one swift pull, the way my mom used to take off my Band-Aids. I take in a huge gasp of air. I realize I can inhale twice the volume of air through my mouth than I can through my nose. Even nicer.

“Let me help you out of there,” my rescuer firmly states, “but like I said, keep quiet. No questions.” Somehow I take his meaning as “I want to help you, but I’ll hurt you if you don’t comply.” I feel him curl one arm underneath my knees and the other under my back, the way a groom carries a bride. How romantic. I note his arm and hand size are tiny and wonder if he’s really strong enough to lift out my two-hundred-thirty-four-pound body. I am lifted up and out and stood against the car in one swift efficient motion. He’s strong. I feel myself being steadied with hands at my shoulders.

“You good?”

“I’m good,” I reply. He lets go. I realize from the direction of his
voice I must be much taller than him. I also realize at this moment that my rescuer’s disguising his voice. “Thanks,” I say in his direction. “Can you take my blindfold off now, please?”

“I told you, no questions! Can’t do that.”

“For the same reason you’re disguising your voice and ordering me to keep quiet?”

“Exactly.”

Despite my instructions otherwise, I pose another question. “What now?”

To my surprise, he answers me. “What now? I’ll tell you what now. I’m gonna cut your hands and ankles free, then I’m walking out of here. You’re gonna count down from a hundred so I can hear you. If I see you take that rag off your eyes before you’re done, you’re gonna get capped, making this rescue shit very counterproductive.” He sticks what feels like, and what I imagine tastes like, the barrel of a gun into my mouth. “Got it?”

“Got it.” I garble. He withdraws the gun, leaving my mouth filled with a grimy metal residue and oily aftertaste. “Then?” I ask.

“Then? Then you’re gonna take your rescued, broken ass home, rest up, and after that go about your business. This shit never happened. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“So start counting.”

I commence counting backward as I hear his footsteps vanish into the distance. I realize as I make my way down through the eighties that it’s difficult to think of other things while in the midst of a countdown, or maybe my recent experiences have compromised my ability to mentally multitask. As soon as I hit zero, I know exactly what my first thought’s going to be, even if I lack the ability to think it while counting down.

I get to three … two … one, and here’s what my first thought is: I bet I’m the first person in history to be rescued and threatened with death by my rescuer simultaneously. I take off the blindfold and see I’m in a parking garage leaning on the back of a silver Mercedes-Benz with a mangled trunk lid and MD plates that read
HCT HGB
. Those are
the abbreviations for
hematocrit
and
hemoglobin
. No doubt it belongs to my friends, the Smiths. I recognize the garage as the one where I parked that first time, with Otis.

I gimp for the brightly lit
EXIT
sign and feel anxious, like I’m not going to make it. I walk up the stairs, trying not to bear weight on my bad ankle, and out onto the street. I experience an immediate rush of freedom. It quickly dissipates when I see the Smith Pavilion directly in front of me.

I have a decision to make, but before I do, I better call home. I reach into my suit jacket pocket and my cell phone is exactly where it’s supposed to be. I look at the date and time and realize I’ve been kidnapped for only about three hours. It’s one in the morning. According to my call log I’ve missed three calls, all from my wife, five minutes apart. Tyler also sent me a text message and an email, which I read, then I listen to my three voice mails, also from Tyler. They all communicate the same thing: don’t forget to take the dogs out when you get home and, second, where are you?

I hit my speed dial. On the tenth ring she picks up. “Don’t forget to take the dogs out!”

“I won’t.”

“Now, where the fuck are you and why didn’t you call?” she barks.

“Honey, I’ll give you the details later, but in short, I was drugged, kidnapped, and locked in the trunk of my expert’s car, then was rescued by some unknown hero who disguised his voice and threatened to kill me.”

She pauses. “You expect me to believe that? Just don’t forget to take the dogs out!”
Click.
I’ll deal with her later.

Back to the decision of what now. I can call the police and get the authorities involved, which is the obvious option. I can go home and call the cops in the morning. I can go back upstairs and confront my abductor, in the spirit of a caped crusader. Or, as my rescuer advised, I can take my broken ass home, rest up, then go about my business like this shit never happened. This last option is against my nature and would be the most difficult thing for me to do.

Before I get a chance to decide, my decision is made for me by the
sound of a loud bang. A gunshot. From somewhere close by. I instinctually begin running, thinking maybe my rescuer has morphed into a killer. By the time I’ve run two blocks my ankle boot has completely crumbled to pieces under my foot and fallen off. The only piece left looks like a big plastic ankle bracelet. As I finish my third block, I feel like a criminal fleeing from a crime scene—from which flight a jury would be inclined to impute guilt. This, despite having done nothing wrong and, in fact, having been the victim of a crime myself. Blame my upbringing.

I duck into the first open establishment I come by on block four. I sit, exhausted, on the first bar stool near the door and suck in air. I’m facing the street and watch as a police car races by the window, its siren blasting. “Bartender, two shots of tequila, please. One for me and one for my friend.” I point to the lost soul sitting next to me. Aside from us, the place is empty.

“Coming right up,” the bartender replies.

The guy beside me raises an almost empty glass in my direction. “Thanks for the drink, buddy. I wonder what the police activity is all about.”

“Search me.”

The bartender puts our shots down. “No last call tonight. We’re closing now. These are on the house.”

I throw back my shot, ignore my craving for asparagus, pick myself up, and limp into the takeout next door with the immediate intention of getting home. There’s only one customer in here, too. He’s a sumo-sized Asian, just paying for whatever’s in his brown paper bag.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but is that your cab parked outside?”

“Off duty,” he replies in a surly fashion.

I’m not deterred. “I’ll pay you two hundred fifty dollars cash and pick up the tab you’ve got there if you take me to Westchester, how’s that sound?”

“Good idea.” I like the way he likes my suggestion. I respect flexibility.

A
fter taking the dogs out, which was an event I had to cut short due to increasing ankle pain, I get three hours of sleep on the couch downstairs. I didn’t attempt sleeping in our bedroom and chancing waking Tyler. Plus, the stairway to my distorted heaven looked a mile long with my bum leg.

All joy is lost when I put my foot down on the floor from a seated position. The minor pressure rockets the pain from my ankle throughout my body as I realize the fracture is now unstable. I guess the endorphins running through my body last night masked the seriousness of my situation. I dread standing up, so attempt it slowly. And unsuccessfully.

Before I attempt to get up again I take an accounting of my mental state. I conclude I’m completely wasted, among other mental disabilities. But I already knew that. I’ll just have to suck it up, though, because I’ve got a lot of decisions to make this morning and need to stay focused.

I gingerly walk through the kitchen toward the mudroom to let the dogs out for their morning business, only to see a large lump of poop front and center. Otis is the culprit by the size of it. He never does that. The prospect of bending down to clean it at this moment sends pain to my ankle, but I’ll have to get rid of the evidence before Tyler sees it or she’ll have it in for me. I turn the corner where the mudroom and kitchen intersect, I open the door, and the dogs, two Yorkies and
Otis, escape into the beautiful morning. I stand there a few moments enjoying the gentle morning wind. Possibly there’ll be genuine calm to follow as the day proceeds. Frankly, however, I’m skeptical.

I slowly snake my way back to the kitchen using the mudroom sidewall for balance, intending to clean the poop and sip some coffee. I grab my cell off its charging station as I turn the corner into the kitchen to see I have two missed calls from Dr. Mickey Mack, both within the last hour. Maybe he’s anxious to tell me he found an alternate expert for Dr. Laura, which expert will now be my primary one, given the events of last night. The only way I can defeat defendant’s motion to dismiss Suzy’s case is by getting a new expert on board immediately, so I’m happy to see his calls. I hit Mick’s speed dial and he picks up on ring two.

“Crazy, huh?”

“Crazy, huh, what, Mick?”

“You don’t know?”

“Apparently not,” I say as the events of last night soar through my brain. “Out with it.”

“Your expert, the one we spoke about yesterday, the one you were going to see, Dr. Smith—her husband was found shot dead.” Wonderful. Now I’m a suspect! Place, time, opportunity, and motive can all be clearly established by some young DA who wants to make a name for himself on his first murder prosecution. And I got no alibi! I was locked up in the trunk of a car. Did I say wonderful? “You still there?” Mick asks.

“Yep, sure am. I think I should go, Mick. I’m considering calling the police. They may be looking for me and I don’t want them coming here. It would piss Tyler off.”

“Why would they be looking for you?”

“For questioning, I imagine.”

“Why would they question you? This Dr. Laura of yours confessed to putting a bullet into her husband’s head.” He stops talking and waits for my response. I am numb, surprised, and yet not surprised all at the same time. I heard that gunshot but never would have concluded this. He continues in light of my silence. “She ended her marriage the easy
way. No messy divorce, no asset allocation, no sale of home, no business valuation, and no mudslinging. Best of all, no scummy divorce lawyers. The one drawback—jail time.”

The implications of all this flood my brain. “I got to go, Mick. I have to find out where she is and go talk to her.”