Miguel, meanwhile, had dragged the unconscious Angus over to the van. Rafael, now freed of Jessica, jumped down and pulled out a pistol, a Browning automatic. Clicking the safety off, he urged Miguel, “Let me finish him!”
“No, not here!” The entire operation of seizing the woman and boy had gone with incredible speed, occupying barely a minute. To Miguel’s amazement, no one else appeared to have witnessed what had happened. One reason: They had been shielded by the two vehicles; also, fortuitously, there had been no passersby. Miguel, Carlos, Rafael and Luís had all come armed and there was a Beretta submachine gun in the van for use if they had to fight their way out of the parking lot. Now a fighting exit wasn’t necessary and they would have a head start on any pursuit. But if they left the old man behind—his head was bleeding profusely, with blood dripping to the ground—an immediate alarm would be raised. Making a decision, Miguel ordered, “Help me get him in.”
It was accomplished in seconds. Then, as he entered the van himself and closed the side door, Miguel saw he had been wrong about no witnesses. An elderly woman, white-haired and leaning on a cane, was watching from between two cars some twenty yards away. She appeared uncertain and puzzled.
As Luís moved the Nissan van forward, Rafael caught sight of the old woman too. In a single swift movement he grabbed the Beretta, raised it, and through a rear window was taking aim. Miguel shouted to him, “No!” He didn’t care about the woman, but the chances looked good that they could still get away without raising an alarm. Pushing Rafael aside and making his voice cheerful, Miguel called out, “Don’t be alarmed. It’s just part of a film we’re making.”
He saw relief and the beginning of a smile on the woman’s face. Then they left the parking lot and, soon after, Larchmont. Luís was driving skillfully, wasting no time. Within five minutes they were on Interstate 95, the New England Thruway, heading south and moving fast.
12
There had been a time when Priscilla Rhea possessed one of the sharpest minds in Larchmont. She had been a schoolteacher who pounded into several generations of area youngsters the fundamentals of square roots, quadratic equations, and how to discover—she always made it sound like the search for a holy grail—the algebraic values of x or y. Priscilla also urged them to have a sense of civic responsibility and never to shirk their obvious duty.
But all of that was prior to Priscilla’s retirement fifteen years earlier, and before the toll of age and illness slowed her body, then her mind. Nowadays, white-haired and frail, she walked slowly, using a cane, and had recently described her thought processes, disgustedly, as “having the speed of a three-legged donkey going uphill.”
Nevertheless Priscilla was exercising her thought processes now, moving them along as best she could.
She had watched two people—a woman and a boy—being taken into what looked like a small bus, apparently against their will. They were certainly struggling and Priscilla thought she’d heard the woman cry out, though about that she wasn’t sure, her hearing having deteriorated along with everything else. Then another person, a man who seemed unconscious and hurt, was lifted into the same small bus before it drove away.
Her natural anxiety at seeing this was immediately relieved by the shouted information that it was all part of a film show. That made sense. Film and television crews seemed to be everywhere nowadays, photographing their stories against real backgrounds and even interviewing people for TV news, right on the street.
But then, the moment the little bus had gone Priscilla looked around for the cameras and film crew which should have been recording the action she had watched, and for the life of her she couldn’t find any. She reasoned that if there had been a film crew, it couldn’t possibly have disappeared that fast.
The whole thing was a worry Priscilla wished she didn’t have, in part because she knew that perhaps she was all mixed up in her mind, the way she had been some other times. The sensible thing to do, she told herself, was go into the Grand Union store, do her bit of shopping and mind her own business. Just the same, there was her lifelong credo of not shirking responsibility, and perhaps she shouldn’t, even now. She only wished there were someone handy whom she could ask for advice, and just at that moment she saw Erica McLean, one of her old pupils, also on her way into the supermarket.
Erica, now a mother with children of her own, was in a hurry but stopped to ask courteously, “How are you, Miss Rhea?” (No one who had ever been a pupil of Miss Rhea ever presumed to address her by her first name.)
“Slightly bewildered, my dear,” Priscilla said.
“Why, Miss Rhea?”
“Something I just saw … But I’m not sure what I saw.” I’d like to know what you think.” Priscilla then described the scene, which was still remarkably clear in her mind.
“And you’re sure there was no film crew?”
“I couldn’t see one. Did you, as you came in?”
“No.” Within herself, silently, Erica McLean sighed. She had not the least doubt that dear old Priscilla had been subject to some kind of hallucination and it was Erica’s bad luck to have come along just then and be roped in. Well, she couldn’t walk away from the old duck, for whom she had a genuine fondness, so she had better forget being in a hurry and do what she could to help.
“Just where did all this happen?” Erica asked.
“Over there.” Priscilla pointed to the still-empty parking slot next to Jessica’s Volvo station wagon. They walked to it together. “Here!” Priscilla said. “It happened right here.”
Erica looked around her. She had not expected to see anything significant, and didn’t. Then, about to turn away, her attention was caught by a series of small pools of liquid on the ground. Against the blacktop surface of the parking lot the liquid seemed dark brown. It was probably oil. Or was it? Curiously, Erica leaned down to touch it. Seconds later she looked with horror at her fingers. They were covered in what was unmistakably blood, still warm.
It had been a quiet morning in the Larchmont police department, a small but efficient local force. In a glass cubicle a uniformed desk officer was sipping coffee and glancing through the local Sound View News when the call came in—from a pay phone on the corner of Boston Post Road, a half block from the supermarket.
Erica McLean spoke first. After identifying herself she said, “I have a lady here, Miss Priscilla Rhea …”
“I know Miss Rhea,” the desk officer said.
“Well, she thinks she may have seen something criminal, perhaps some kind of abduction. I’d like you to speak to her.”
“I’ll do better than that,” the desk officer said. “I’ll send an officer in a patrol car and you can tell it to him. Where are you ladies?”
“We’ll be outside the Grand Union.”
“Stay there, please. Someone will be with you in a few minutes.”
The desk officer spoke into a radio microphone. “Headquarters to car 423. Respond to Grand Union store. Interview Mrs. McLean and Miss Rhea waiting outside. Code one.”
The answer came back, “Four twenty-three to headquarters. Ten four.”
Eleven minutes had now passed since the passenger van carrying Jessica, Nicholas and Angus had left the supermarket parking lot.
The young police officer, named Jensen, had listened carefully to Priscilla Rhea who was more confident in reporting for the second time what she had seen. She even remembered two additional details—the color of what she continued to call the “little bus”—a light tan—and the fact that it had dark windows. But no, she had not noticed a license number, or even if the license plates were New York’s or out-of-state.
The officer’s first reaction, though he kept it to himself, was of skepticism. Police forces were used to citizens who became alarmed about matters that turned out to be harmless; such incidents happened every day, even in a small community like Larchmont. But the officer was conscientious and listened attentively to all that was said, making careful notes.
His interest beg
an to mount when Erica McLean, who seemed a responsible, rational woman, told him about some splotches on the parking lot that looked like blood. The two of them walked over to inspect. By this time most of the liquid had dried, though there was enough that was moist to reveal it as red to the touch. There was no proof it was human blood, of course. But, Officer Jensen reasoned, it gave more credence to the story, more urgency too.
Hurrying back to where they had left Priscilla, they found her talking with several other people who were curious about what was going on.
One man volunteered, “Officer, I was inside and saw four people leave in a hurry—two men, a woman and a boy. They were in such a hurry that the woman left her shopping cart. It was full, but she just left it.”
“I saw them too,” a woman said. “That was Mrs. Sloane, the TV anchorman’s wife. She often shops here. When she left she looked upset—like something bad happened.”
Another woman said. “That’s funny. A man came to me and asked if I was Mrs. Sloane. He asked others, too.”
Now several people were talking at once. The police officer raised his voice. “Did anyone see what this lady”—he motioned to Priscilla—“calls a ‘small bus,’ color light tan?”
“Yes, I saw that,” the first man said. “It pulled into the lot as I was walking to the store. It was a Nissan passenger van.”
“Did you notice the license plate?”
“It was a New Jersey plate, but that’s all I saw. Oh, one other thing, it had dark windows—the kind of glass where you can see out, but can’t see in.”
“Hold it!” the officer said. He addressed the growing crowd. “Any of you who have more information, and those who’ve given me some already, please stay. I’ll be right back.”
He jumped into the white police cruiser he had parked alongside the supermarket and grabbed the radio mike.
“Car 423 to headquarters. Possible kidnap at Grand Union parking lot. Request help. Description of suspect vehicle: Nissan passenger van, color light tan. New Jersey plates, license unknown. Dark windows, believed one-way glass. Three persons may have been seized by unknown occupants of Nissan van.”
The officer’s transmission would be heard by all Larchmont police cars as well as those in neighboring Mamaroneck Town and Mamaroneck Village. The headquarters desk officer, through a “hot line” phone, would automatically alert all other police forces in surrounding Westchester County and the New York State Police. The New Jersey State Police would not, at this point, be informed.
Already, at the supermarket, two sirens could be heard from other approaching police cruisers responding to the request for help.
Nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since the Nissan passenger van’s departure.
Some eight miles away, the Nissan van was about to leave the I-95 Thruway and enter a maze of streets in the Bronx.
From Larchmont, Luís had made good progress heading south. He had been driving at five miles above the legal speed limit, which most motorists did—a good speed but not fast enough to attract attention from any cruising State Police. Now, Thruway exit 13, an intermediate objective, was ahead. Luís eased into a right-hand lane to take the turn. Both Luís and Miguel had been looking behind for signs of any pursuit. There was none.
Just the same, as they left the I-95 Miguel urged Luís, “Move it! Move it!” Since the departure from Larchmont, Miguel had been wondering if he had made a mistake in not letting Rafael kill the old woman on the parking lot. She might not have believed the phony story about what she had seen being part of a film. By now she could have spread the alarm. Descriptions could be circulating.
Luís was pushing his speed, going as fast as he could on the roughly paved Bronx streets.
Baudelio, since leaving Larchmont, had several times checked vital signs of their two sedated captives, and all appeared to be well. He estimated that the drug midazolam which he had administered would keep the woman and boy unconscious for another hour. If it didn’t he would give them more, though he preferred not, since it might delay the much more complex medical task needed at the end of this journey.
He had also stanched the bleeding of the older man and applied a dressing to his head. The old man was now stirring, slight moans escaping him as he neared a return to consciousness. Anticipating possible trouble, Baudelio prepared another hypodermic of midazolam and injected it. The stirring and moans subsided. Baudelio had no idea what would happen to the old man. Most likely Miguel would shoot him and dispose of the body in a safe place; during his association with the Medellín cartel, Baudelio had seen it happen often. Not that he cared one way or the other. Caring about other human beings was an emotion he had long since discarded.
Rafael had produced some brown blankets and he and Carlos, with Baudelio watching, wrapped the woman, boy and old man in one each, so that only their heads protruded. In each case sufficient blanket was left folded at the top so it could be turned back to cover the face when the three were removed from the Nissan van. Carlos tied each rolled bundle with a length of cord around the middle so that in transit it would resemble nothing more than a piece of conventional cargo.
Conner Street in the Bronx, which they had reached, was desolate, gray and depressing. Luís knew where he was going; in rehearsals for today they had traveled the route twice before. At a corner with a Texaco station they turned right into a semideserted industrial area. Trucks were parked at intervals, some looking as if they had been there a long time. Few people were in sight.
Luís brought the van to a halt against a long, unbroken wall of an unoccupied warehouse. As he did, a truck that had been waiting on the opposite side of the street pulled across and stopped slightly ahead of the Nissan. The truck was a white GMC with a painted sign, “Superbread,” on either side.
Inquiry would have shown there was no such product as Superbread. The truck was one of a total of six vehicles obtained by Miguel soon after his arrival, employing a fake rental agency as a front. The GMC truck had been used occasionally for the Sloane surveillance duty and otherwise for general use. As with other vehicles in the small fleet, the truck had been repainted several times, the legend on its sides changed too—all of it the handiwork of Rafael. Today the truck was being driven by the remaining member of the group, the woman, Socorro, who jumped down from the driver’s seat and went around to open the double rear doors.
At the same time the door of the Nissan van was opened and the rolled bundles, with all three faces covered, were quickly transferred by Rafael and Carlos to the GMC truck. Baudelio, having gathered up his medical equipment, followed.
Miguel and Luís were busy in the Nissan van. Miguel peeled off the dark, thin plastic sheets from the windows; they had been useful for concealment but were now an identifying feature to be disposed of. From beneath the driver’s seat Luís took a pair of New York State license plates he had put there earlier.
Going outside, and after looking around to make sure he was not observed, Luís removed the Nissan van’s New Jersey plates, replacing them with the New York plates. The process took only a few seconds because all of the group’s vehicles had special license plate holders, with one side hinged. The hinged portion could be lifted upward while the original plate was slid out and a fresh one put in. The side of the holder was then snapped back and held in place by a spring fastener.
Miguel, soon after his arrival in New York, had arranged through an underworld contact to buy a series of New York and New Jersey plates from vehicles no longer in use but on which license fees had been kept up to date.
The licensing systems of New York, New Jersey and most other states made it possible to get license plates for any vehicle long after it was totally dismantled and all of its parts discarded. All that a state registration agency cared about was receiving a license fee along with evidence—equally easy to obtain—that the nonexistent vehicle was insured. Neither the state agency nor the insurance company, which would renew an old insurance policy by mail as long as the required premi
um was tendered, ever required the vehicle to be produced.
Consequently in criminal circles a brisk business existed in such plates which, while illegal, were not on any police “hot list” and were for that reason worth many times their actual cost.
Miguel emerged from the Nissan van with the plastic sheets, which he dumped in an overflowing trash container nearby. Luís hurriedly brought the discarded New Jersey plates and stuffed those in too.
Luís then took over the wheel of the GMC truck which now contained the unconscious Jessica, Nicholas and Angus, as well as Miguel, Rafael, Baudelio and Socorro. After a swift U-turn they headed back to the Thruway and, within less than ten minutes after leaving it, were back on the I-95 in the new vehicle, continuing south.
Carlos, now driving the empty Nissan passenger van, also made a U-turn. He too went to I-95, but headed north. With the van’s appearance changed by removal of the dark windows and the substitution of New York for New Jersey license plates, it was now like thousands of others in normal use and unlike the description circulated by the Larchmont police.
Carlos’s assignment was to dispose of the Nissan passenger van and that, too, had been carefully planned. After three miles he left the Thruway, then continued north for twelve miles on secondary roads as far as White Plains. There he drove to a public parking garage, a four-story structure adjoining an indoor shopping complex—Center City Mall.
Parking on the third level, Carlos moved with apparent casualness through his next activities. Among shoppers parking nearby and getting in or out of cars, no one seemed remotely interested in him or the Nissan van.
First, Carlos wiped all obvious surfaces to make fingerprint detection difficult. That was in case the van was recovered by law authorities in its present condition. The next step was to ensure it wasn’t.
From a locker in the van’s interior Carlos withdrew a Styrofoam container. Opened, it contained a formidable quantity of plastic explosive, a small detonator unit with a release pin, two lengths of pliant wire and a roll of adhesive tape. With the tape he fastened the explosive and detonator behind the front seats, low down and out of sight. He ran wires from the detonator release pin to the inside handles of each front door. After fastening a wire to each handle with the door almost closed, he shut each door carefully, then locked it. Now, opening either door would pull the release pin from the detonator.