The Gods of Greenwich (42 page)

“How’d you like me to Tase your baby?”

Rachel doubted Emily would scream. She doubted it would be necessary to fire. A simple, unequivocal threat and “Come with me” would do the trick. Rachel liked the mental image: two probes and 50,000 volts discharging into a swollen belly. The pregnant woman would seize, before tumbling backward into the ravine. And the polar bear, primed with twelve hot dogs, would finish the job.

Emi was walking west again.

*   *   *

Jimmy had not called. Emi was a knot. She wondered what was happening at LeeWell Capital. Whether James had convinced Cy about working together. How long it would take her father to find answers. She willed herself to go through the steps, to behave like everything was fine. She rubbed her bulging stomach and said, “I haven’t heard from you either, Yaz.”

On this crisp October morning, students all in school, there were few visitors to observe a pregnant woman cooing to her tummy. The moms with strollers and kids with snotty noses were nowhere to be seen.

The only other person on the path was an athletic woman power-washed in coal. She wore black gloves, black pants, and black lipstick that looked like a hostile makeover from a Goth. Ever the scientist, Emi Cusack wondered why so harsh. The inky colors clashed with the woman’s delicate features.

Emi reached into her purse and pulled out a cell phone. The woman in black stopped and looked over her shoulder, deliberating whether to retrace her steps back to the Mouse House.

“That’s weird,” muttered Emi, getting a busy signal at LeeWell Capital, staring at her phone with a confused look.

The Goth woman was walking again, drawing near, opting against the Mouse House. She was taking off her black gloves. She was holding something in her hands, something cute and pink. There was something on the back of her hand. White. Puffy. A scar.

The scar.

Emi turned and punched the numbers to James’s cell phone, petrified but in control. Just as she was about to punch the little green phone button, the icon that actually dialed the numbers, she heard a familiar voice:

“Emi Cusack,” the man called. “I thought you might be here.”

Relieved—she glanced at the smiling man and burst out, “I need your help.” She knew the voice but could not place it. Not yet, anyway. Emi felt the Goth woman crowd behind her.

“It’s Cy Leeser,” the man said, putting his arm on Emi’s shoulder, cheek-kissing her hello, smarmy as a can of WD-40. “What’s wrong?”

“What are you doing here?” Emi recoiled from Leeser’s touch. Shivers flossed her vertebrae. And she cursed herself for flinching. She wondered if Cy had noticed.

He did.

“You’re awfully jumpy,” observed Leeser.

Rachel, he realized, had been right. He could smell the pregnant woman’s fear. She was no different from the CEOs of his portfolio companies. An open book. Easy to read. Leeser berated himself for missing Cusack’s ruse earlier that morning.

“Don’t scream, sugar,” Rachel interrupted from behind, her voice matter-of-fact. “I’ll zap that baby into labor right here on the spot. I’m holding fifty thousand grade-A certified volts.”

“You wouldn’t.” Emi grabbed her stomach in horror, protecting Yaz by instinct.

“One peep,” the nurse grinned, “and I’m plugging a fifteen-foot extension into your umbilical cord.” She brandished the Taser to punctuate her words.

Emi’s eyes widened. Her jaw hung slack. She studied the puffy white scar on the back of Rachel Whittier’s hand. It was the same scar she had seen when Conrad Barnes hailed a cab with a woman forty years his junior.

“I was wrong,” Leeser acknowledged to Rachel.

“You’ve got some ’splaining to do,” Rachel told Emi. “Why didn’t your husband resign?”

“We talked to my dad over the weekend,” explained Emi, mustering whatever bravado she could find. “His people are running a check on eight of your insurance policies right now. It’s only a matter of time.”

“That’s a problem,” snapped Leeser. He looked stricken.

“I bet the authorities are on the way now,” Emi threatened, bold and brave and petrified to the core.

“Doesn’t matter,” Rachel noted, addressing Leeser and gliding with the predatory stealth of a big cat. “First Emily. Then her husband. It’s always the spouse, Cy. We stay on plan.”

“But Bianca’s back at my office with a marshall.”

“What’s that about?” asked Rachel. She prodded Emi in the stomach with the Taser, and the three began walking toward the bear pens.

“Bianca’s divorcing me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rachel repeated. “There are two people who can ID us. Maybe three if they really talked to Caleb Phelps. We need to check boxes one and two before we deal with anything else.”

“Cy, what’s wrong with you?” gasped Emi. “There’s no way out.”

“Let me worry about that,” scoffed Rachel.

“Why, Cy?” Emi was looking for compassion, somewhere, anywhere.

“It is what it is,” Leeser replied, treating Cusack’s wife like just another trade.

“Where are we going?” asked Emi.

“Leave the questions to me,” ordered Rachel, “and tell us about the polar bears, Emily. You can personalize our tour.”

“What smells like hot dogs?” asked Leeser.

Rachel started to answer. But the sounds of Louis Armstrong stirred the poison air. He was singing “La Vie en Rose.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

HUTCHINSON PARKWAY
 …

“Come on,” screamed Cusack.

He pounded the steering wheel of his Beemer. Both fists. Traffic on the Hutch had slowed to a crawl. The construction just ahead, backhoes and orange pylons closing off lanes, snared all drivers heading south. Beefy guys in hard hats everywhere.

Cusack had no cell phone. He had no proof anything was wrong. But he knew. He knew beyond all doubt. Something had gone bad. And Emi would not recognize danger until it was too late.

What in the dense hell was I thinking?

Great clouds of black smoke belched from the Beemer. Back on I-95, when the speedometer needle had edged over 110 miles per hour, the engine went “clack.” Now his ancient Beemer, a relic from the last century, coughed and sputtered with a noise resembling “Woo, woo, clack. Woo, woo, clack.” The engine clanged with a death rattle all its own.

“Come on.”

Cusack eyed the heat gauge on the dashboard. The needle wasn’t touching
H
for hot, not yet anyway. But the pointer headed in that direction.

He checked the rearview mirror. Black fumes ballooned from his engine’s exhaust. Cusack eyed Shannon through all the smoke. The white Audi trailed two cars back, stuck in traffic just like everyone else.

Up ahead, a police officer waved traffic past orange-and-white sawhorses with blinking yellow lights. There were only three cars until the end of construction. Only three cars navigating through orange pylons that turned two lanes into one. The drivers slowed anyway, rubbernecking at the road repair. The cop, skinny as a rail, with black sunglasses, blew his whistle and flapped his arms like a maniac. He commanded drivers to get moving.

Two cars. Cusack rolled down his window. One car.

My turn.

Cusack almost floored the gas pedal. His Beemer would launch from the snarl, shoot forward like water through the nozzle of a hose. He held back, though, eased down on the brake and leaned out the window. The engine pounded with the woo-woo-clack noise.

“Move, move, move,” the officer screamed, fierce in his black aviator sunglasses.

“See that white Audi two cars back?”

“What about it?” the officer hissed.

“The driver’s got a gun.”

“What are you talking about?” Alarm registered in the cop’s voice.

“Big black guy. He was waving a forty-five at me on I-95. Tried to force me off the road.”

“Are you sure?”

“Call for backup,” instructed Cusack. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

“Pull over.” The cop pointed to the breakdown lane.

“Fuck you,” snorted Jimmy. “The guy’s got a gun.”

This time Cusack gassed the Beemer, which burst forward like a howitzer’s shell. From his rearview mirror, he watched black exhaust blanket the trooper. Even through the haze, he saw the cop unhook a latch holding his pistol.

On the open road Cusack’s Beemer rumbled forward. It gained speed. Sixty, seventy, eighty miles per hour—the engine rattled like it would explode, growing louder and more fierce as the pistons pumped. The needle on the thermometer hit
H,
and then some. Steam poured from the hood.

Woo, woo, clack.

Cusack did not care. He planted his foot on the throttle, forcing his car to dig deep. Only three miles to parking lot B at the Bronx Zoo. Smoke poured from the exhaust. It billowed from the hood, where the wipers hid. Shannon was nowhere in sight. Cusack was flying.

Until he wasn’t.

The Beemer’s engine was losing power. Up ahead, Cusack could see exit six. He could see parking lot B. He would run the last half-mile. He pulled into the breakdown lane and looked in his rearview mirror, making sure he could open the car’s door. What he saw horrified him.

Shannon was back. The human Mack truck parked just behind the blue Beemer. He burst from his white Audi and ran toward Cusack.

Jimmy sprang from his car and crouched in a boxer’s stance. Circling. Ready to throw a haymaker. On the highway, cars raced past the two men. When Shannon and Jimmy were no more than five feet apart, one car full of college students thundered past the two men.

“Fight, fight, fight!” they hollered out the window.

“That was a cute trick back there,” yelled Shannon, his bass tones cutting through the din.

“I don’t have time for you,” Cusack yelled back.

“In my car,” the big man ordered.

“Get away from me,” yelled Cusack, turning toward the parking lot. “Before I kick your ass.”

Shannon grabbed Cusack’s shoulder.

Jimmy whirled around, cocked his arm, and threw a knockout punch from the ghost of Jack Dempsey. He aimed at the big man’s face, at the gapped teeth that looked like a broken zipper.

Shannon hardly moved. Did not flinch. With his massive left paw of a hand, he caught Cusack’s fist and absorbed every ounce of power like a sponge.

“Knock it off,” Shannon ordered. He controlled Cusack with his left hand, crushing Cusack’s fist like a vise, bending back the wrist, bringing the smaller man to his knees.

“My wife’s in trouble,” Jimmy gasped, uncertain what to say, bending lower and lower under the big man’s power.

Shannon eased his grip, allowing Cusack to stand. “I know.”

“Say what?” asked Cusack. He was confused. Shannon was no longer crushing his hand.

“Get in the car.”

“I need to help Emi.”

“We’ll reach her faster if you get in my car.”

“Who the hell are you?” Cusack demanded, heading toward Shannon’s Audi.

“I’m the cavalry. But you can call me Daryle Fucking Lamonica.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

HOLD ME CLOSE AND HOLD ME FAST
 …

“Hello.” Leeser answered Cusack’s cell phone, silencing the Louis Armstrong ringtone.

Nothing.

“Hello.”

Nothing.

Leeser scrutinized Emi, his eyes like slits, hers round and ripping with the “guilty” look of a mug shot. He clicked off the phone and reached out his hand, palm up. “Let’s have it.”

“What?” She pretended not to understand.

Rachel reached into Emi’s coat pocket and pulled out the phone. Emi had punched in Cusack’s number before Cy and Rachel nabbed her. She pressed the Dial button, cell phone buried in her pocket, and connected with a nightmare.

“See what I borrowed from your better half.” Cy flashed Cusack’s BlackBerry. His coal eyes glowed, more from anxiety than triumph. His long black hair, always so carefully coiffed, had gone on strike. It dangled in his face, ruffled and askew.

“Where’s James?”

“Waiting his turn,” gloated Rachel.

“We need to move.” Cy glanced at his watch and then scanned the paths. Nobody was in sight. He was nervous. Anxious to move along. Field operations were never his thing.

Emi tried to stall. Anything to buy time. Anything to attract attention. But how? She dragged her feet, lumbered from the weight of her pregnancy.

Rachel poked Emily in the ribs with the Taser. “Stop acting like a seal.”

“I need to pee,” snapped Emily. It was the only excuse that came to mind.

Leeser rolled his eyes.

“Keep walking,” instructed Rachel. “You’ll pee your brains out in the polar bear pen. The bladder’s the first thing to go.” The familiar instincts had returned. Rachel was toying with her prey.

“I need a bathroom,” Emi insisted.

“Shut the fuck up,” Leeser barked, his voice taught and strained. “Or I’ll fucking zap you myself.” He looked left, right, and checked everywhere. Fieldwork was not his thing.

Rachel shrugged her shoulders. “I really wanted a primer on the polar bear.”

“Let’s get this over with,” snapped Leeser.

*   *   *

Shannon roared past parking lot B, thirty miles per hour too fast. The Audi rumbled up to the admissions gate, scattering visitors left and right. Cusack and the big man bounced out of the car and raced through the zoo’s entrance.

“What’s wrong with you?” a woman scolded. She was pushing a stroller.

“Hey, what are you doing?” yelled one of the attendants. She was dressed in a zoo uniform. “You can’t park here.”

“Take care of it,” Shannon shouted. Never breaking stride, he flipped his keys to the uniformed woman.

“This isn’t valet parking,” she barked, snatching his key ring from the air.

“Call the police,” screamed Shannon. “We need help fast.” He never stopped. Never broke stride. He hurdled the turnstile, hundred-meter style, leading into the Bronx Zoo.

“Do you know Emi Cusack?” Jimmy asked an attendant.

“She’s the scientist,” she replied. “Pregnant, right?”

“Have you seen her?”

“She works at the World of Reptiles.”

“I know,” Cusack responded, unable to mask his annoyance. He broke into a run.