Trapped (17 page)

Manning’s personal business and we’re way too scared to go

to the cops. Does that work for you, Sal? Can you sell that?”

The man stares up at him. “You serious?”

“It’s the smart move.”

“What about my piece?” he says, pointing with his chin.

“The Sig? You get it back.”

“And this?” he asks, indicating his crippled shoulder.

Shane grins. “You smacked me so hard it fractured a bone.

You don’t know your own strength. Bruise your knuckles on

something, make it convincing.”

Sal has a strange look on his face. Takes a moment for me

to decipher it as a smile. “I could bruise it on your face,” he

suggests. “Make it real.”

“Trust me,” Shane says. “You don’t want to do that. Now

take off your shoes and socks.”

27. Call For Edwin Manning

Funny how life changes in a blink. One day your five-year-

old is happy and healthy, the next she’s got cancer. The day

after that she’s flying off with a boyfriend you never heard

of, and two minutes later you’re holding a Nike sneaker with

a pistol shoved into a white cotton sock.

Or that’s how it seems, everything rushing by so fast I

can’t get a grip, can’t make sense of what’s happening. And

oh, I really do have the gun in the sneaker, sock and all.

“Here it is,” Shane says, indicating a new Chevy sedan in

the rental car row.

I place the loaded Nike beside the rear left tire, as prom-

ised. Shane’s rather clever means of hobbling our assailant,

who will be limping along behind us, trying to keep his fat

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and tender feet from burning on the hot tarmac. One as-

sumes he will retrieve his shoes and his socks and his

weapon, although not the actual bullets, which Shane has

thoughtfully removed. By then—I picture bad-boy Sal

jumping up and down with rage, his belly jiggling furi-

ously—we’ll be long gone, melting into traffic. Or that’s

the plan.

“Hope you know what’s going on, because I sure don’t,” I

protest, scooting gingerly into the hot leather seats of the big

Lincoln. “What if that creep helped kidnap Kelly? Shouldn’t

we have him arrested? Or torture him or something?”

That elicits a full-throated chuckle from the man in the

driver’s seat. “Torture? You wouldn’t object?”

“If he knows where Kelly is, I’ll torture him myself!”

Shane eyes me in the rearview as he fires up the engine,

adjusts the AC. “I’ll take care to remain on your good side,”

he says thoughtfully. “Let’s get rolling, then I’ll explain.”

The expressway is clotted but steady—my ever-cautious

driver has no trouble staying well under the speed limit, un-

fortunately. Must admit I do keep checking out the back

window, fighting this weird idea that our bent-nosed assai-

lant will come running down the median in his bare feet,

waving his gun, seeking revenge for his humiliation.

Once we’re well clear of the airport, Shane says, “Okay.

Remember I mentioned that Edwin Manning made his for-

tune with a hedge fund? It’s called the Merrill Manning

Capital Fund. Merrill was his wife’s maiden name, and that’s

where the money originally came from.”

“So he’s loaded. We already knew that.”

“There’s rich and there’s superrich,” Shane points out.

“Manning Capital is a private hedge fund, as private as the

law allows. It has five billion dollars in assets. Management

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Chris Jordan

fees on a fund like that would be something like thirty million

a year, plus twenty-five percent of the profit. So Edwin

Manning is probably pulling down two or three hundred

million a year, maybe more.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

“And what, he gambled it all away? That’s why he knows

that creep from Atlantic City?”

“Not exactly. The fund he runs—the fund he owns, for all

practical purposes—is the single largest private investor in

the gaming industry. That’s their specialty. Online gambling,

casinos, real estate associated with casinos. If someone is

wagering money, chances are Manning Capital has a piece

of the profit.”

I’m stunned. It’s hard to imagine the frightened little man,

cowering all alone in his empty house, as some sort of

gambling mogul. “You mean Manning’s a gangster?” I ask.

“Like the godfather or Tony Soprano?”

“Not a gangster,” Shane says, shaking his head. “An

investor.”

“What’s the difference?”

Shane laughs. “One goes to prison, the other doesn’t.”

My friend Fern likes the slots. Not me. I hate the idea of

putting money in a machine that doesn’t stitch things

together, so I never participated. Truth is, I’ve never actually

been in a casino, not in New Jersey, not in Connecticut, not

anywhere. I don’t buy lottery tickets. With me it’s not a re-

ligious or moral objection, it’s about years of being careful

with every penny, apportioning this much for groceries, that

much for a car payment, medical insurance, so many dollars

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for school expenses. Plus, you win a game of cancer, roll the

bones with death, everything else pales.

Heading back to Valley Stream, Shane does his best to bring

me up to speed. All the things he was doing while I slept, and

after Monica Bevins came by. How Kelly’s prints may be

present in Seth’s Porsche, and that’s why it was important to

have the vehicle impounded—it will help build a case for inter-

vention. How, exactly, the FBI runs a so-called shadow inves-

tigation. No agents will approach Edwin Manning directly, but

in all other ways the full investigative weight of the agency will

come to bear, with a special emphasis on the financials. Finan-

cials being the money that flows to and from Mr. Manning.

According to Shane, the financials are the key.

“He withdraws a large amount of cash, we’ll know it

before the teller stops counting. If he wires money to, say,

an offshore bank, we’ll know that, too.”

“You think this has something to do with gambling?

That’s why his son was kidnapped? Or is it just because

Manning is rich?”

“Dunno,” says Shane. “Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe

we’re completely off base about a kidnapping and Seth and

your daughter hijacked daddy’s private plane and are out there

sightseeing.”

“You believe that?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Shane admits. “Edwin Manning isn’t

worried about his boy borrowing the company plane. Some-

body scared the hell out of him.”

“So what do we do? How do we find Kelly?”

“I suggest we leave the determination of abduction up to

law enforcement for the moment, and concentrate on locating

the Beechcraft. Make sense?”

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Chris Jordan

“Yeah, but the man at the desk, he made it sound like that

plane could go anywhere,” I say, discouraged.

“Range of fifteen hundred miles,” Shane admits. “That

means with fuel stop or two it could be anywhere in North

America. But it’s not just anywhere, it had a specific desti-

nation. A destination yet to be determined.”

“You make it sound hopeless.”

“No, no,” he protests. “My bad. Not hopeless at all. We’ve

got the tail number. Airports, even small local airports, pay

attention to tail numbers. We’ll find it. And once we find the

plane, I promise you, we’ll find your daughter.”

Shane sounds so confident, so sincere. I would be more

comforted if I hadn’t heard him lie so convincingly earlier.

The big break is waiting for us at my house, on the kitchen

counter. On Shane’s laptop, to be exact, in the form of a

message from my cell phone company.

“What does it say?” I ask eagerly. “Have they found her?”

The big guy hunkers down, scrolling through a PDF file

of the current bill.

“Here we go,” he says softly, clicking on a line. “You

have relatives in Florida? Friends? Does she?”

“Kelly’s in Florida?”

“Her phone is. That last call you received, it originated

somewhere within range of a cell tower in western Dade

County.”

“Dade County?”

“Miami,” he says. And then his finger touches the screen,

“Hey, look at this. Several more calls have been made from

her phone, accessing the same cell tower. The most recent

was about ten hours ago.”

“She tried to call me?” I say, my heart slamming. “Why

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didn’t I get the call?” Then it hits me. “Oh! I was asleep!

What an idiot!”

Fumbling for my cell phone, wondering how I could have

missed it—I checked for messages first thing and there’d

been nothing. I’d been compulsively checking every fifteen

minutes all morning, still nothing. Stupid phone!

“No, wait,” Shane says, sounding intrigued as he switches

between windows on the screen. “The calls weren’t placed

to you. See this? The calls went to a number in Oyster Bay,

New York.”

He looks at me, eyebrows raised.

“Oh…my…God,” I say, as the implication slowly sinks in.

Can’t be true, no way.

“Interesting,” Shane says, easing back on the stool. “Your

daughter’s in the Miami area and she’s been calling Edwin

Manning. Now what do you suppose that means?”

28. The Man With A Plan

They say everybody has falling dreams—that’s why they

call it falling asleep. Trouble is, I’m wide-awake in my own

kitchen, but it feels like somebody shoved me out of a plane

without a parachute. Falling into the truly terrifying idea that

my beautiful daughter has become someone I don’t recognize.

Someone complicit in an extortion scheme, stealing money

from her boyfriend’s superrich dad. And if that’s true, if I don’t

know my own child, then nothing makes sense. In the end it’s

Randall Shane who reaches out with his long arms and

snatches me just before I hit the ground. Not that he knows it.

“There’s another, even more plausible explanation,” he

says, stroking his chin, lost in thought. “Maybe it wasn’t

your daughter who called Edwin Manning.”

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Chris Jordan

“You said it was her phone!”

“Exactly. But let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that

she and Seth were detained.”

“Detained?”

He flashes a grim smile, studies me with his sad and

handsome eyes. “I thought
detained
might be a nicer word

than
abducted
or
kidnapped.
And you look like you could use

a nice word. I had no idea a living person could look so pale.

Anyhow, let’s assume Kelly has been detained, okay? They

take her purse. They use her cell phone to call Manning.

Simple as that.”

Simple as that. Something to cling to, and also it makes

sense. I’d been stuck on the fact that Kelly’s phone is prac-

tically an appendage, and that therefore any calls from it

would originate with her, but that’s just stupid. No self-re-

specting kidnapper would let a victim keep her phone.

Victim? What am I thinking?

The idea of Kelly being a victim—first time I’d put that

horrible word and her name together—sends a shudder

through me. At the same time there’s no denying that I’m

vastly relieved that she need not be complicit just because her

phone has been linked to a crime. Then it hits me again, the

double whammy, would it be better if she’s a victim or the

criminal? Missing or runaway? Dead or alive? The whole

world spinning, demanding that I choose.

“You better sit down,” Shane is saying from a great distance.

He hands me a white paper bag. Where on earth did he

find this particular bag? Did he know it was left there for

exactly this purpose? I recognize it by the scent of the mint

chocolates it once held. Mint chocolates Kelly and I pre-

tended to fight over, sneaking them out of the bag when the

other wasn’t looking, a lovely game we like to play. Shane

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135

is insisting that I breathe into the bag, and it’s a while before

I’m back down to earth, breathing at a normal rate.

“Sorry,” I whisper, feeling ashamed.

“Anxiety attacks are allowed,” he says, pressing a glass of

water into my hands. “Drink this slowly. No gulping.”

“Happens,” I say.

“Yes, it happens,” he agrees. “Drink.”

I drink. Slowly my heart stops slamming. Whatever trig-

gered the episode fades into my bloodstream or back into my

brain, wherever it comes from. Truth? I’m no stranger to hy-

perventilating. Started when I was about twelve, just enter-

ing adolescence. Had my first period and fainted dead away.

My mother thought it was the shock of seeing my own blood,

but it was more than that, because for a while it happened

several times a month. Our family doctor gave me some

pills—mild tranquilizers—but the funny feeling they gave me

actually made me more anxious and so I stopped taking them.

I used to carry a paper bag in my purse for emergencies.

Nurses would find me puffing on the things in the hallways