Then on Monday—the twelfth—my youngest disappeared for half a day. I know that to you, the place appears a bedlam of people and children, but I assure you, my children do not wander off—there are too many dangers on a place like this, mechanical and natural, to allow a casual attitude toward that. J was the one to discover her missing, and came running into the kitchen where I was working, white of face and trembling too hard to get out words. I finally understood that J had seen my daughter at the edge of the far field, talking with a stranger, yet when J ran out to be sure all was well, child and stranger were gone. J was convinced that my daughter had been kidnapped.
My immediate impulse—to call in the police—would, I knew, inevitably bring about questions about J’s history. I was also aware, even in the concerns of the moment, that considering J’s own history, the idea of kidnapping could be a more automatic assumption than it would be for the general population of children that age. Nonetheless, if my girl had actually been abducted, even if she merely had met with accident, there would be no time to waste. So instead of phoning for the police, I sent out my family and called our neighbors. Within ten minutes we had more men and women than the police could have brought to bear, all of us beating the bushes for her.
We found her in less than an hour, unharmed but for some scratches on her arms from the blackberries she had been picking when the man appeared. For there was a man, that much was clear; however, a four-year-old’s powers of description and communication are inadequate for much more than that. He had light hair, wore a necktie and sunglasses, was maybe as tall as my husband, and told her he had found some kittens and needed her to help rescue them. She assures me he did not touch her, except once to help her over a ditch, and I could see no sign that her clothing was disturbed, nor her state of mind—and I assure you, had some strange man tried to do more than walk with her through a field in order to show her kittens, I have no doubt that I would see the result in my daughter. Her greatest distress is that the man had left her before he could show her where the kittens were, so that she thinks the poor things are now out there alone.
But the most peculiar element, and the one that J seems to find ominous, is that before the man left her, he told her to say hello to “her new cousin J.” If she was even a year older and told me this, I would believe that the man actually knew J’s name, and would indeed worry. But she is so young, she doesn’t know the difference between what the man said and how she interpreted it. He might easily have said something along the lines of, “Say hello to your brothers and sisters,” and when she added that she also lived with a new cousin, J, he could have repeated the name, and that was what lodged in her mind.
You see my dilemma? There was a man, someone my daughter did not recognize, who led her away and then turned her loose unharmed. Everything else is uncertain (except the necktie—that foreign object I am sure she could not have invented!) and I would hate to introduce another disruption in J’s life on the merest suggestion that a threat has appeared. I would almost be tempted to resort to nothing but a regimen of extreme watchfulness on the part of the adults here, were it not for J’s extreme state of mind.
J is frightened—no, terrified to the point of incapacity, and although I cannot get any details from the child, it is clear that it is not so much for J’s own safety that the fear lies, but for ours. In fact, J’s immediate response to my daughter’s story was to offer to pack and leave, lest trouble plague our door. It is a most generous and responsible reaction, but of course, we cannot have it. I have told J I would write to you immediately, and ask for your advice.
I believe what troubles J is the possibility that the father may have discovered where his child went, and be out to exact revenge—a fear, I would say, akin to that raised by the airplane you two saw that last day. My friend, I know it is asking a great deal of you in your current state, having moved on from us and our problems, but if you could simply check on the father’s whereabouts—or arrange to have someone reliable check for you—and make certain that he has remained in place during the past week, it would go far to soothe J’s worries. And, frankly, my own—fear has a terrible contagion to it, does it not?
Until we hear from you, my husband and older son will remain doubly vigilant, and J will not be allowed out of our sight. (J, in the meantime, refuses to go very far from my young daughter, and seems to take her safety as a personal responsibility.)
Again, I regret having to ask this of you. And in case you think I am asking to be relieved of J, I say vehemently that I will not permit you to remove the child unless it becomes a clear and immediate necessity.
With respects and well wishes,
Rachel
Yes, he thought, Rachel had omitted her surname through concern for security; why else never give Jamie’s name, or even his sex? She was taking as few chances as possible, revealing nothing that might lead back to her family were the letter to be intercepted. He read the letter a second time, folded it away, and stood. His bones ached, he thought.
And Rae wasn’t going to be happy.
He handed Rae the letter, and went back outside so as not to watch her while she read it. The pages rustled, a passing boat trailed happy voices in its wake. It seemed to take her a long time; Allen spent most of it thinking about fingers, and trust, and vulnerability: the insane lengths adults will go to in teaching their children self-respect.
When Rae came out, she laid the letter on the rustic table under the window and sat in the other chair.
“You’ll have to go away for a while.” It was not a question.
“I’m afraid so.”
“We leave Sunday.” For Japan, in six days: Allen already had his ticket.
“I might only need a day or two. If it turns out, as I expect, that the father has a clear alibi for last Monday, then that will be the end of it. There’d certainly be no reason for me to go to Montana—that would only disturb the boy further. All I need to do is reassure him, and Rachel, that they’ve just got a potential neighborhood problem, not one imported from California.”
“But it could be longer.”
“It could,” he admitted.
“And there isn’t anyone else who can do it.”
“I won’t know until I get down there. But I promise you, if I can get free of this, I will. And if I can’t by Sunday, I’ll take a later plane.”
She smiled, finally, and moved over to sit on his lap. The chair, which looked as ramshackle as the small table, creaked slightly under their combined weight, but Rae had built it, and he knew that even a pair of Sumo wrestlers wouldn’t end up on the ground.
“You like this boy,” she said.
“I guess I do, yes. He isn’t what you’d call likable, but he’s intense, and has a lot of inner strength.”
“He needs you.” It was a flat statement and difficult to argue with, although Allen made the effort, simply because he didn’t want her to think that this was going to be a common occurrence, his past life perpetually threatening to reach out and drag him back in. He didn’t want to think that himself.
But she cut short his protest. “Allen, it’s okay. It’s disappointing, but I’m not going to break into pieces. Sometimes things come up. Just come when you can. But can you let me know if you’re not going to make it back by Sunday?”
“I’ll try, sweetheart.”
So much for retirement, Allen mused, watching the summer tourist playground go past from Ed De la Torre’s boat. Good thing I haven’t cleaned out those storage lockers yet. Good thing I didn’t return my working cash to the bank.
Tools were basic, since it was no longer possible to travel with sophisticated electronic equipment on a plane. His most important tool was the money belt he wore around his waist, a strip of shiny brown leather that concealed ten thousand dollars inside its length, enough cash to buy him out of almost any emergency. But just what sort of disguise should he wear with that belt? Surely he could leave behind his smelly biker’s jacket—he would be maki
ng inquiries about a rich man’s whereabouts, not hanging around noisy bars. The other end of the spectrum, more like it, the Armani jacket a grateful client had thrust on him, and the silk shirt that looked like really expensive cotton.
He could only hope they hadn’t absorbed the smell of cat piss from the jacket they’d been stored with.
Back at the apartment, he arranged an assortment of plain and costly clothes in a leather garment bag (since a man in an Armani with luggage is less noticeable than one without) and put his laptop and various odds and ends into an equally showy carry-on. He even managed to snag a first-class ticket on the last flight to San Francisco, an hour’s drive from San Jose. He went by his club for a workout, then found a place that would cut his hair into the latest Harrison Ford style for older men, and had the gray touched up just enough to be deceptive. In downtown Seattle, he found a place that sold no-contract cell phones, and paid cash, adding a snug leather case to dress it up. He then ate dinner in a restaurant filled with men like himself, executives on expense accounts, studying their mannerisms, getting into the role.
The late flight was uneventful, the car reserved for him had no obvious rental company marks on it, and he stayed the night in a hotel halfway down the peninsula. In the morning, shaving the face under Harrison Ford’s hair in the mirror, he drank his tepid room service coffee and listened with one ear to the state of the world as presented by one of the San Francisco television stations. Wars and would-be wars, a juicy political scandal, a drive-by shooting in Oakland, a missing light plane, a fire in the Tenderloin, and to top it all off, the traffic was awful. Welcome to the twenty-first century. He rinsed off his shaving cream, splashed on a small amount of an aftershave that smelled of power, checked that his new haircut still presented the proper amount of tousle and that he hadn’t forgotten how to tie a necktie, and zipped up his garment bag. San Jose, here we come.
Chapter 24
Jamie’s father, Mark David O’Connell, worked for a company called Revista. When Allen had first heard the name it sounded to him like software, but it turned out to be investment strategy. Back in May, his inquiries had told him that the company was small, with seventeen employees, and that O’Connell was one of three partners.
Their offices were in one of the big new buildings along Highway 280. Allen had phoned the day before and demanded to speak with “Mark,” gave his name to the secretary as “Tony” (no surname), and grew highly indignant when the woman informed him with polite regret that “Mr. O’Connell” would be out of the office all week. By the time he’d hung up, he was satisfied that he had left her with the impression of yet another self-important dot.com asshole. So that today, when he showed up with that air of inborn good manners that could only come from someone who actually is important, she wouldn’t connect him with the rude upstart Tony. He parked in the newly resurfaced parking lot where the air already shimmered with heat, reached under his shirt to activate the wire he wore, and walked briskly up the steps of the glass-and-steel building.
The entrance foyer was air-conditioned down to frigidity, and Allen was glad he’d worn his jacket. He glanced down the directory board, saw that Revista was on the top floor, and joined a pair of women dressed in three inches of heel and the severe skirts made necessary by the belief that it was a man’s world, or at least a man’s firm. They got out at the sixth floor, a place as grim-looking as their expressions. Four floors up, Revista’s secretary was wearing a stark white shirt and an oatmeal-colored jacket, but, he noticed, she wore pants, and comfortable shoes. Mrs. Phillips (as the nameplate on her desk revealed) looked older than her voice on the phone had indicated, and somewhat softer around the eyes than Allen would have predicted. His distracted charm softened her further, to the point that it was actually she who apologized for any misunderstanding, telling him that the missing PDA he so eloquently bemoaned must have recorded his appointment not for tomorrow, but for the following Thursday, because Mr. O’Connell had taken the week off, and was not due in until Monday.
Allen patted his coat pocket for the third time, caught himself, and gave her a rueful smile. “It’s terrible, being dependent on these things. I mean, I downloaded all my appointments about a week ago, but the thing went missing between the time I made the appointment and that night when I went to plug in my laptop. I’ll have to buy a replacement, but I keep hoping that someone’s going to call and say they’ve found it. I can’t even remember the restaurant I met your boss in, that should tell you what kind of shape my head is in.”
“Do you remember what day it was?”
“Not exactly, just the first part of last week. Nice place, I do remember that, Chinese or Japanese, something Asian. I wasn’t paying much attention, tell you the truth. Someone else was taking me there, and introduced us.”
“Could it have been a Korean restaurant?”
“It was spicy,” Allen said helpfully.
“Try Kim’s,” she said. “He eats there a lot. He used to anyway, before . . . well, I don’t suppose there’s any reason not to tell you. Mr. O’Connell’s son was kidnapped three months ago.” Allen made the requisite noises of distress and disbelief; Mrs. Phillips went on to say that the boy was twelve and no ransom had ever been asked. “Mark—Mr. O’Connell—was absolutely devastated. He’s just beginning to get back to normal. So he may have started having lunch at Kim’s again.”
“I don’t suppose you know if he was there a week ago?”
“I wouldn’t have any way of knowing.”
Allen looked at her. “Sorry, I thought you were his secretary.”
“More a receptionist and answering service,” she told him. “Actually, I work for half a dozen small companies and individuals, people who don’t need a full-time phone service. They stop in or call for messages, come here when they need to meet clients.”
“You mean, there’s not really such a thing as Revista?”
“Sure there is. It’s just not the kind of business where Mr. O’Connell needs to spend a lot of time in the office. He’s mostly on the road. Or in the air—he has his own plane.”
“But he does have an office here?”
“Oh yes. I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you this, you being a potential client and all, but really, there’s no point in keeping up a lot of show, is there? I mean, if you think about it, it’s better to have a higher return for the client than a set of offices with expensive furniture and an art collection.”
“Makes sense to me.” Allen gave her an amiable grin, wondering what the hell had happened to the other sixteen employees who were on the records—and the other two partners. “Well, thanks for your help. I’ll phone Kim’s and see if they found a PDA. A week ago Monday?” he said, as if he’d suddenly thought of something. “Could it have been Monday, I think that was the twelfth, that I met him?”
“I don’t work Mondays, so I wouldn’t know if Mr. O’Connell was here or not. Would you like to leave a message for him, when he comes in?”
“Why don’t I just leave you my card, and I’ll try to reach him next week? I’m going to be out of communication for a while, myself.”
The slip of heavy card stock he gave her held an imaginary name and the address of an abandoned warehouse in Santa Monica. He thanked her and went back to his car, where he retrieved the miniature tape and labeled it, his mind working furiously.
Back in May, running his searches on O’Connell and his son, he’d never thought to look further than the man’s financial statements and the business description that was on the public records. O’Connell had appeared so clean, Allen never suspected that Revista was a front, its most substantial asset the secretary, a sixth of whose services the company hired each month along with meaningless conference rooms. And an office, although Allen would have bet one of Rae’s tables that a search of the office would reveal about as much as a search of a furniture-store window display.
So what the hell was Mark O’Connell selling, if not investment strategies?
And if he’d told his semi-secretary that his son had been kidnapped, why hadn’t he also told her that the boy was actually a runaway? Surely Jamie’s letter had reached him?
Not for the first time, Allen wished he was a cop, to whom many investigative doors would open at the flip of a badge. Alice’s group did have one or two pet police officers, but none around here, and they had to be used sparingly. He had no way of knowing if the local police department was already investigating O’Connell for some kind of fraud, or if they remained in blissful ignorance, and he could think of no immediate means of finding out. He did remember that Alice knew someone on one of the newspapers in the Bay Area; that might give him an in.
He passed the afternoon (his Armani-and-silk exchanged for more workaday Levis-and-cotton) in a public library very like that in which he had first watched deadboy, alternating between the computer lab and back issues of the local papers. He learned from the latter that Mark O’Connell was a partner in the investment firm Revista, that his son Jameson was a difficult student whose fellow students and teachers spoke of him primarily as keeping to himself, and that this was the third adolescent boy who had vanished on his way home in the past fourteen months. That scanty information was for Saturday, the day after Jamie vanished; Sunday’s paper had another article, this one with a snapshot of Jamie in jeans and sneakers, standing in front of a rock, with no discernible expression on his face. There was also a sidebar article concerning the other two boys who had disappeared, with photographs that bore only the most superficial resemblance to each other. Mark O’Connell had read a statement to the press, saying simply that he was too distraught to answer questions, but that he was praying that whoever had taken his son would turn him free unharmed, as the boy was all he had left in life.