So far the party had been a smashing success. The women looked beautiful and the men were elegant in their tuxedos. The food was exquisite, and gracefully served, and, most importantly, the speeches weren’t too long. And now it was time.
The governor of the state of New York was to present the award to Luke and his team. It was their reporting that had largely curtailed the activities of Eddie Rivers and his thugs. It was only a matter of time, the governor remarked, before someone came forward with the evidence that would put him away for a long time.
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words,” the governor said, “so rather than telling you the kind of reporting Luke Thompson’s CNN team turned in, let’s watch the actual footage they captured, mostly with hidden cameras, from around the globe. I need to warn you that what you are about to see is disturbing, shocking, and very real. If you do not feel up to viewing it, this might be a good time to step into the lobby.”
Nobody moved.
After a moment, a huge screen slid down from the ceiling and the lights were dimmed. Fiona looked nervously at the spot where the video machines were, hoping Hayley would press the right button and not panic, as she had many times in the past. What she saw in that video booth shocked her.
Hayley’s eyes met Fiona’s, and a little smile spread across her face. Instead of the usual simple black jump suit and comfortable shoes she wore to every event, Hayley was wearing a gorgeous black-and-white outfit that was so chic it had to be couture. And on her feet were Christian Louboutins.
But that wasn’t the biggest shock of all. Gone was the insane blue wig and, in its place, Hayley’s hair had been perfectly styled into a sleek pixie cut.
“OMIGOD!!!” Fiona mouthed to her friend, but the message was lost as the huge screen filled with images of women and young girls being loaded into trucks in some faraway place.
There were sounds, shouts really, as someone was being ordered not to return until she had earned two hundred dollars. A girl, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen, was seen opening the door to the street, keeping her head down, so as not to show that her eye had been blackened.
Nude, or nearly nude, women were being pushed out on a stage to dance for a bunch of booze-swilling men, who clearly felt touching was permitted. For a price, anything was permitted. A naked young girl was swinging to and fro over the bar, in a red velvet swing. The camera zoomed in to the bruises that covered her body.
Luke’s narration, which accompanied the film clips, made it clear that one man, and one man alone, ran this worldwide network of human misery.
In the huge close-up on screen, Eddie Rivers didn’t look like the kingpin of a sex-for-profit ring. With his boyish good looks and easy charm, he could have been mistaken for the spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America. Yet he had run this seemingly impenetrable worldwide organization for twenty years without an indictment.
“One day, and soon,” Luke's voice said, “someone will have the courage to speak the truth, to put this man away.”
The lights began to come up, and the governor rose and introduced Luke to loud applause. Luke helped Fiona to her feet, so that she could share in this moment with him.
But the film did not stop.
The quality of the film changed, became a little grainy, but the image was clear. It played on the big screen above the beautiful couple, Luke and Fiona.
The scene was shot in the joint called the Velvet Swing.
A woman walked out of the dressing room, removed her robe and took her place in the swing. Her luscious body was naked except for a little silver belt with tiny bells attached. She began to swing, moving to the music, tossing her mane of blonde hair, seemingly lost in a different place and time, accompanied by the sounds of the little bells.
The film showed a man coming over to her section of the bar, smiling at her. He tossed some bills at her and blew her a kiss. The man was Eddie Rivers.
The woman was Fiona Chambers.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The press can elevate people to sainthood one week and, with great relish, send them to perdition the next. Good and evil have no distinction. The only criterion for public attention is do people care? And care they did about the unfolding saga of Fiona Chambers, the girl in the swing.
No one had reported seeing her after she fled the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel on the night of the big gala. But it was impossible to pick up a newspaper or watch television without seeing her image, and dissecting the terrible incident at the award dinner.
Was she, as it seemed on the DVD, the girlfriend of sex-trade kingpin, Eddie Rivers? Or had she somehow been coerced into participating in his crime empire?
Had that meeting on the train between Fiona and Luke been accidental? Or did Mr. Rivers somehow have a hand in setting up the encounter, to discredit the reporter before his grand jury hearing?
Some people went so far as to speculate that the whole train crash was sabotage, planned to throw the couple together. But most people had enough sense to figure out that no one could have predicted the outcome of a passenger train hurtling off a precipitous cliff.
Everyone assumed that Eddie Rivers had somehow been behind the tape. But it was such a good story, most people didn’t care.
It was a late morning, five days after the disastrous gala at the Plaza. Satellite trucks lined the graceful streets of the historic district of Chelsea. Reporters loitered, a passerby gawked, cops directed traffic with lazy indifference.
Hayley pushed her way through the crowd of reporters and photographers who were clustered outside Luke’s apartment. She kept her head down, her eyes straight ahead until she was inside the building.
She pushed the elevator button, then changed her mind and raced up the stairs. She assumed the elevator had been bugged and outfitted with hidden cameras.
“Luke, let me in! Luke, it’s Hayley.”
The door opened a crack. Hayley slipped inside Luke’s apartment carrying a bag of takeout food.
“Any word from Fiona?” he asked, sliding the chain on the lock and returning to his media center. He had been working the phones, the Internet, checking sources non-stop since he made his escape from the ballroom.
He was a world-class reporter, following a story, and he wasn’t about to stop until he found the truth. Whatever that might be.
“Nothing.” Hayley took the bag to the kitchen, and started arranging things on a dinner plate. Instead of her usual mishmash of clothes, she was dressed in a chic black linen suit, with a jacket fitted to show off her tiny but perfect body. The chic pixie cut still supplanted the blue wig but Luke noticed none of this. She felt certain that one day he would, and like what he saw.
She looked in the fridge and found the plate she had made last night. It was untouched. “Luke, you’ve got to eat. You look like hell.”
Luke hadn’t shaved since the night of the gala dinner. Dark circles ringed his eyes, his face was pinched by pain. “I’m going to find her. Someone can’t just disappear off the face of the earth.”
Hayley looked at the floor and said nothing.
“What?”
She walked away, not looking at him. He followed, and grabbed her by the arms, a little too roughly, causing her to wince.
“Sorry. Sorry, Hayley,” he said. “But if you know something, tell me. Please.”
Hayley appeared troubled, and she responded, “I hate to even think it, Luke, let alone say it. But I know one person who could help someone disappear without a trace.”
Luke stared at her. “Eddie Rivers? Are you saying Eddie Rivers had Fiona kidnapped?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. What good would that do him?”
“Then what—” Luke stopped, suddenly understanding. “Are you saying he’s helping her? That they’re friends?”
Hayley allowed herself to look pained, choosing her words cautiously. “I don’t know what is true and what’s not. I only know what I saw on that tape.” She walked to the window and looked down at
the throng of reporters camped outside the window. “Well, that’s not exactly true.”
“Hayley, I don’t know how he did it, but that film was faked. You can create anything these days because of modern technology. Someone working for Rivers doctored that tape to discredit me and Fiona. They made it look like it was her in the swing. But you and I know better. She would never, ever—”
Hayley held up her hand. “It was her, Luke. I know that for a fact.” Tears welled up in her eyes. She’d always had this ability to cry at will. It was a talent she had used often, and to good effect in her days on the streets. “I saw her in the Velvet Swing, doing…that.”
“I don’t believe you,” he exclaimed, staring at her coldly.
“Do you think I’d lie about something like that?” Hayley was indignant. “About my best friend in the world?”
“Start talking, Hayley. Now!” Luke commanded, his anger surfacing.
Hayley walked out on the terrace and watched the barges moving down the Hudson. Luke followed, and stood listening as her well-rehearsed memories were told in a carefully modulated voice. She knew how to make fraudulent words sound real.
“It was years ago, when we first got to New York. Fiona and I had stumbled into the job at the Velvet Swing, but we were both dying to get out of it.” She paused. “Well, I was, and I thought Fiona felt the same way. But Mikey had been…you know, in and out of scrapes as usual. I needed every penny I could get my hands on to bail him out.”
“So you didn't quit?”
“That’s why I stayed. And I just assumed Fiona didn’t want me to be there by myself.”
It was all Hayley could do to keep herself from glancing at Luke, to see how her story, partially true but also slanted, was playing out. Somehow she concentrated on the river, and avoided his penetrating looks.
“I don’t think I want to hear any more, Hayley.”
“You need to know the truth, Luke. Then you can decide for yourself whether or not she’s been playing you. And me.”
Luke studied her. “Hayley, I’ve known you since you were little. I don’t think I ever remember anyone playing you. Usually, it was the other way around.”
A flash of anger streaked across Hayley’s face. “Forget it, Luke. Apparently you choose to believe Fiona is some sort of goddess, above and beyond the likes of me. You’d rather hang onto your distorted version of her than hear the truth.”
She turned swiftly, and went back into the room.
“Hayley, calm down! We’re both just hanging by a thread here. I know you love Fiona as much as I do,” he said, following her inside.
Hayley wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him.
Luke sat down in one of the vintage leather chairs that flanked the couch. “Tell me what you saw.”
“I decided I needed to get out of that place. Mikey was coming around more and more, and I knew sooner or later he’d get sucked into something.”
“Always a good bet,” Luke muttered.
Hayley gave him a hard look, but did not react. “So I went to the club on a Saturday to pick up my check. And that’s when I saw Fiona. In the swing. Like you saw her on film, smiling at Eddie. He was hovering around, leering at her like he’d never seen a naked woman before. Naturally, he’d had a thing for her, from the first day we started working there, just like everyone else did.”
Luke sat hunched in the chair, staring at his hands. “What did she say? When you asked her about it?”
“I waited till she got home the next morning. When I asked her why, she just looked at me as if she didn’t even see me. And then she walked out of the apartment. She didn’t come back for two days.”
Hayley sat down next to Luke, and took hold of his hand. “I never spoke of it again. Until today.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?” Hayley asked.
“Okay, why? I believe you. But if she did that, she must have had a very good reason.” The look on Luke's face belied his words. This new revelation had been very hard for him to hear.
Hayley withdrew her hand, and sat staring at him. The seeds had been planted; she knew Luke too well to push. “Well, when you figure out what that reason is, I wish you’d let me know. It’s caused me a lot of sleepless nights,” she murmured quietly.
Rising, she kissed him lightly on the head, let herself out of the apartment and bounced down the stairs two at a time. The sunlight was bright as she pushed her way through the paparazzi. There was a smile on her face when she headed down the street.
How was it that she had not noticed before what a beautiful day it was?
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Professor Chambers, I love your daughter. I don’t know what the answers to all these questions are, but I do know there are some. I won’t stop looking until I get to the truth.”
Fiona’s father had taken the call in the study of the brick-and-stone cottage where he still lived, years after he had retired from teaching. He was the unofficial student advisor at the college, in matters of ethics and life’s questions. This problem with his own daughter, however, had been a struggle for him. She had refused to discuss any of it with him.
“I’ve told you, Mr. Thompson, Fiona is a strong young woman. If there are indeed answers to your questions, I’m sure she will share them with you when the time is right.”
“In other words, you won’t help me, Professor?”
“It’s not in my power to do that,” Fiona’s father answered.
“Is she there? You never answer directly.”
Professor Chambers looked out of the French doors to the rose garden, where his only daughter was cutting back the first blooms. “Even if Fiona were in the room with me, which she is not, what difference would it make if she chooses not to talk to you?”
Professor Chambers held the phone out to Fiona, who had walked in, with an armload of roses. She shook her head, but moved closer to her father so she could hear Luke.
Luke’s voice was ragged from strain. “You could tell her I love her. You could tell her that nothing can, or will ever, change that. And that she needs to trust me enough to let me help her find a way out of this. You could tell her all that. If you happen to see her.”
Fiona listened to Luke’s impassioned speech, listened as her father disconnected the call.
“He seems a fine man, Fiona.”
“He is.”
“Are you sure the course you’ve chosen is the correct one?”
“Dad, when you give someone your word, you keep it. You’ve been drilling that into my head since I was three.”
“There is a larger ethical question, however, Fiona. Are you morally bound to keep a secret for someone without morality?”
Fiona studied him. “Are you?”
“That’s for you to decide, my dear.”
“Argh!” Fiona hurled herself into a chair in frustration. “Why couldn’t you just have taught math!”
They sat there in silence, looking for simple answers to complicated problems. “Are the reporters still out there?” Fiona asked.
“They left about an hour ago. I heard on the news someone bought a plane ticket in your name out at Kennedy. I should imagine they are rushing through Queens about now.”
“Dad, did you do that?” Fiona focused on her father’s face, frowning.
“I see nothing wrong with it. You might want a trip to Montreal one day.”
Fiona smiled for the first time in days, and moved to hug her father. “Pretty tricky, aren’t you?”
He hugged her back. “I have my moments.”
The ringing of the phone made her jump. Fiona got up. “It’s probably Luke again. I’m not here.”
Professor Chambers gave her a curious look, and answered the phone. He held up his hand to stop Fiona from leaving the room. “You’d better take this! It’s Hayley. I think she’s in trouble.”
Fiona could hear Hayley’s sobbing half way across the room. She grabbed the phone.
“Hayley,
what is it?”
Hayley was so hysterical she could hardly get the words out. “They're going to kill me. Please, please help me!”
“Where are you? Who’s going to kill you?”
“There’s a car out in front of your dad’s house. If you don’t get in it and come, they’ll kill me. Mikey too.”
“What are you talking about? Try to stop crying. I can’t understand you.”
Hayley’s sobs were silenced by a hard slap. A man’s voice, polished, strong, and condescending, came on the line.
“Miss Chambers, it’s been a long time.”
“Who is this?!”
“Now you’re hurting my feelings. I certainly haven’t forgotten you. And now all of America knows how lovely you are.”
“Eddie Rivers!” Fiona spat the words out like a curse. “What have you done to Hayley?”
“Nothing, yet,” he purred. “But if you care about your little friend you’ll get into the car that’s waiting for you in front of Daddy's house.”
“How did you find me?”
“Fiona, honey, don’t insult my intelligence. Get in the car if you want Hayley and her brother to live to see tomorrow. Although, actually, I don’t know why anyone would care, one way or another.”
TWENTY-NINE
The Velvet Swing looked very much the same at three in the afternoon as it did at three in the morning. Women with surgically enhanced breasts swayed in a desultory dance in their cages. The favorite of the moment swung tantalizingly close to the customers in her velvet swing. Businessmen hunched at the bar, drinking watered-down booze, checked their phones between lap dances.
No one bothered to look up when the young blonde woman was whisked in through a back door and down a flight of stairs, to a place that neither light nor sound could penetrate. A door to an inner room was pushed open and only then could Fiona hear the sobs from Hayley, who was tied to a chair.
Her suit was torn, she wore one shoe, and there was dried blood on her mouth and chin. Fiona hurried across the room to her. Tears ran down Hayley’s cheeks, one of which was swollen from a beating.