FACETS (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS Book 6) (4 page)

Gritting his teeth, he carried the girl up the three steps to the front porch and propped her up while he unlocked the door. She sagged and he let her slump to the floor. Then he picked her up and carried her into the cabin, through the eat-in kitchen with its coal stove to one of the two bedrooms in the rear. Along the way they passed some Catalina Pony Bottle Tanks lying against a wall. Smaller than regular scuba air tanks, pony tanks were mainly used by expert divers, particularly in cave or night diving.

Unlike Willet’s bedroom, the windows in the one he now entered were boarded up, both inside and out. He lay the now-squirming girl on the metal-framed bed, which was bare except for a sheeted mattress and one pillow. The only other furniture in the room was a small chest of drawers purchased at a consignment shop. He reached into his pocket and took out a Swiss Army knife, opening the longest blade. The girl’s eyes widened. But he simply cut the bindings at her feet, which were bare. Her shoes had probably fallen off in the trunk of his car. With her legs untethered, the girl began to really struggle.

He slapped her face.

“Stop it!”

She stopped moving and glared at him. There were chains attached to each post at the end of the bed. The end of each chain contained a handcuff. He took one and attached it to her right ankle.

“Sit up.”

The girl did.

“Do you want me to untie your hands?”

She nodded, and he used the knife again. Her hands free, she tried to scratch his face, aiming at his eyes. But the drugs had robbed her of both speed and coordination. Besides, he expected it and easily slapped her hands away. Then he grabbed her throat and pushed her head down against the pillow, putting the point of the knife against her cheek.

“A little tiger, aren’t you?” he hissed. “Your mother’s daughter. But if you try anything like that again, I will cut up that pretty face of yours. Do you understand?”

She nodded. 

“The bed is bolted to the floor. If you try to get out of bed you may hurt yourself and you won’t accomplish anything. Your foot will never fit through the cuff. Do you want me to take the tape from your mouth?”

The girl nodded again.

“You can scream if you want. Get it out of your system. Look around. The room is soundproofed. And there is hardly anyone about.”

The man took hold of one end of the tape.

“This won’t be pleasant. But the faster the better.”

He ripped off the tape.

She did not scream. There were small streaks of blood on her lips. She put her right hand to her mouth. 

“Sorry. Good girl. I’ll get you some lip balm.”

She looked at him. There were tears in her eyes, but they were tears of pain from the tape being pulled off. This was a tough girl. Willet knew he would have to be careful how he handled her. She had to be handled firmly, but she could not be pushed too far, no matter how hopeless her circumstances. 

“What do you want? Is it money? My mother will pay you. We’re rich.”

He merely smiled. Her eyes flashed.

“She will never stop looking for me. And when she does, she will kill you.”

“She will never find either of us. Now sit tight. I’m going to run a bath for you and get you some clean clothes. And I suppose you will want to use the bathroom.”

He took her right hand in his.

“I almost forgot about this.”

Willet started to remove the Italian cameo ring that was the only jewelry she wore.

Alana curled her fingers and hissed, “No!”

He hesitated and with difficulty spread her fingers. The ring was flat, no sharp points. On its agate surface was an engraving of a mother holding a child.

“Did your mother give you this?”

“My grandfather. It was my grandmother’s. Please.”

“Will you behave?”

Alana Dallas nodded.

“Then you may keep it.”

CHAPTER 4 - OLD HOME WEEK

There is always a moment of seeming weightlessness during a martial arts session when one has enough time to contemplate how painful a landing will be.

Jake Scarne was experiencing just such a moment as he flew through the air, and expected the worst. And despite relaxing his body, as he was taught, that expectation was met.

The “thump” of his crash into the mat and his subsequent grunt of pain were loud enough to draw looks from other combatants in the Police Academy gymnasium. Flat on his back and with the breath momentarily knocked out of him, Scarne could only look up at the opponent who had so effortless parried his thrust and then flipped him through the air like a Frisbee.

“Are you all right, sir?” the young woman said as she hovered over him.

“Only his pride is hurt, sergeant,” Richard Condon said from where he was sitting in a chair next to the wall. “It’s not the first time he’s underestimated a woman.”

The female police instructor held out a hand and helped Scarne up. All around them men and women were fighting on nearby mats. There were plenty of thumps and grunts, but none, Scarne realized, came close to his.

“What was that?” he asked. “I thought I knew all the judo moves.”

“It’s called
nage waza
,” the instructor said. “It’s a variation of traditional judo, modified by Okinawans. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used it on someone who never saw it before. But the Commissioner told me not to hold anything back. He said you learned hand-to-hand in the Marines and would be insulted if I did.”

Scarne looked over at Condon, who merely smiled. The N.Y.P.D. Police Commissioner had a towel around his neck. He had already finished his bout with the instructor who, Scarne now realized, had treated her boss much more gently. Rank had its privileges.

“I’m going to hit the showers,” Condon said. “After she finishes mopping the floor with you, I’ll be in the break room.”

“Try to leave me a donut,” Scarne said as Condon walked away.

Scarne turned to the female police officer, who stood silently shaking her sinewy arms at her side to loosen their muscles. She, like him, was barefoot, and wearing gym shorts and a blue tank top. Her breasts were flattened by an athletic bra, but Scarne could tell they were substantial for a woman of her stature, which he estimated was five-five, at most. Her calves were strong. She wore her brown hair in a tight bun and her features were just short of striking. But since she was wearing little or no makeup, Scarne decided that, dressed and made up, she would be. And high heels would do wonders for her legs. He, of course, wondered how she would be in bed.

“If she doesn’t kill me here,” Scarne thought, “maybe I’ll ask her out.”

“Thinking about that donut, sir?”

He smiled.

“Not exactly, Sergeant. Show me that Okinawan move again.”

She did, and this time Scarne managed to stay on his feet. For the next 15 minutes, he held his own against the woman, and even managed to throw her a few times. At the end of the session he high-fived the instructor, asked her to dinner and found out she was married with two kids. He headed to the showers.

***

Now dressed for the rest of the day in a blue sports coat, tan pants, light blue shirt and a red-stripe tie, Scarne walked into the break room. He went over to the counter where the coffee and boxes of donuts were. He fixed himself a coffee and grabbed a cinnamon cruller, then sat at a small gunmetal-colored table across from Condon, who was reading
The New York Times
as he ate. Next to the Commissioner was a brown paper bag.

“Stereotypes aside, Dick” Scarne said as he bit into his cruller, “how do you have the balls to serve donuts in a gym devoted to keeping cops in top shape?” He pointed at the bag. “And I can’t believe you are taking a couple for the road.”

Condon looked up.

“They’re for Tommy.”

Thomas O’Mara was Condon’s detective-driver, now waiting for his boss in front of the building. O’Mara rarely left Condon’s side when on the road, but Condon said that if anyone wanted to make a run at him inside the Police Academy, with hundreds of cops milling about, they were welcome to try.

“And to answer your question, it’s not worth staying in shape if you can’t eat a goddamn donut once in a while.”

With that, Condon walked over to the counter for another donut, maple-frosted donut with sprinkles. He was dressed for the rest of his day, in a three-piece blue suit, white button-down shirt and a red tie with little blue-and-gold “V’s” on it. Scarne knew the letters stood not for Victory, but for Villanova, Condon’s alma mater. He sat back down and turned a page in
The Times
.

Scarne shook his head.

“Maple I can understand,” he said, “but sprinkles?”

Condon laughed. A small, trim man with the build of a welterweight and a graying crew cut, he did not look his 60 years. Scarne knew the Commissioner worked out or ran every day but Sunday. Twice a week he went to the Fitness Training Center at the gleaming new $1 billion Academy in College Point, Queens. Scarne often joined him for the martial arts classes. As far as he knew, he was the only private investigator in New York City given access to some of the Department’s premier facilities, which in addition to the F.T.C. included a secret gun range in the basement of an old Borders bookstore on 21st Street and Sixth Avenue in the Flatiron District of Manhattan.

“Listen to this, Jake. There’s an article here about Ebola. They’ve been testing thousands of common drugs to see if any work against the virus. And one that shows promise is Zoloft.”

“The anti-depression drug?”

“Yeah. It also is used for anxiety disorders and panic attacks. Our shrinks sometimes prescribe sertraline, generic Zoloft, for cops after a shooting incident.”

“Well, if I got Ebola, I’d sure as hell be both depressed and anxious. How effective is it?”

Condon read for a moment.

“Only tried it on mice they infected with Ebola. In the control group all the mice died. But 7 out of 10 infected mice given the drug survived.  Fascinating.”

“Pretty good. That’s a lot of happy mice. Of course, when they take them off Zoloft, they’ll have to see how many of the mice kill themselves.”

Condon looked at Scarne.

“I think maybe you should see one of our shrinks.”

A couple of academy trainees entered the room. They headed toward the donut boxes but froze when they saw their Commissioner.

“Hello, boys,” Condon said genially. “On a break?”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, snapping to attention.

They glanced at Scarne, trying to place him. If he was with the Commissioner, he was presumably someone important.

“Plenty of yogurt and fruit in the fridge,” Condon said. “Gatorade, too. Got to replenish those electrolytes, you know.”

The trainees went to the refrigerator, feigned enthusiasm at what they found, pulled out some healthful snacks and then quickly left.

“Those poor bastards snuck in here to grab some donuts,” Scarne said, “figuring no one would be around and wham, they run into the Police Commissioner. The both looked like they saw Bigfoot. That was was cruel, even for you.”

“Enjoyable, though. And now there are more donuts for us.”

***

Scarne reached his office at Rockefeller Center by 9 AM. Evelyn Warr, his efficient and doting manager, smiled as he walked in. Not for the first time Scarne wondered why he bothered with other women when one of the most lovely and caring he’d ever met greeted him every working day. Of course, he knew the answer. He’d made a determined run at her early in their association, when she was between lovers, and she had politely, but firmly, fended him off. The sexual tension between them was strong, but so was the realization that it was better left unsatisfied. The man Evelyn had planned to marry was killed on 9/11, and while she had affairs since, it was obvious that her heart was still buried at Ground Zero. Scarne did not want to compete with that memory, and Evelyn knew enough about her boss to know that he, too, was damaged goods.

Noah Sealth, the former Seattle homicide cop who was now a partner in the agency, was sitting on the edge of his desk with an amused look on his dark face.

“You have visitors, Jake,” Evelyn said in her lingering British accent, which made Scarne’s investigative business sound more classy than it probably was. “I put them in the conference room and set out some coffee and crumpets.”

To Evelyn, a breakfast pastry, whether donut or Danish, was a crumpet.

“Who are they?”

“Maura Dallas and her bodyguard,” Sealth said.

Scarne drew a blank on the woman’s name, until “bodyguard” registered.

“What’s she doing in New York? She’s West Coast mob.”

“Wouldn’t tell us,” Noah said. “Wanted to wait for you.”

“You want to sit in?”

“Wouldn’t miss this for the world. I’d like to sell tickets.”

Both men walked to the conference room and opened the door. A woman was standing by a window, looking down at the city. She turned.

Maura Dallas was sipping from an 1895 Limoges tea cup that was part of a service Evelyn reserved for important guests. Her left pinkie was delicately extended. The saucer that went with the cup was sitting at the head of the English mahogany library table, also an antique, which Evelyn had only recently discovered on eBay. The conference room’s original and much smaller table, which like many things in the office suite once belonged to Scarne’s grandfather, now sat in Sealth’s office. All the new furniture and such nick-knacks as the Limoges set, not to mention the office renovation that carved out his partner’s office, had cost Scarne a pretty penny. But thanks to a series of high-profile and lucrative cases, business was good. And with one of the nation’s wealthiest women sipping coffee in his conference room, it looked like it might get even better. 

The man with Maura Dallas was not drinking coffee. He stood leaning against the bookshelves that lined one wall and was watching the door, which Sealth closed behind him. The big black investigator then took up a position opposite from the bodyguard and stood in front of a large wooden-framed Mercator map of the world, dated 1939. The two men started at each other. For his part, Scarne walked over to Maura Dallas and extended his hand.

“I’m Jake Scarne, Ms. Dallas. I understand you wanted to see me.”

Her hand was warm and firm.

“I apologize for dropping in unannounced,” she said. She smiled thinly. “I find that, for obvious reasons, it is often best.”

Scarne had seen many of her photos in the media, none of which had done her justice. In person, she was very beautiful. He knew she was in her mid-to-late 40’s, but the tiny age lines around her mouth and eyes did not detract from that beauty. Her dark hair flowed to her shoulders. She had high cheekbones and a rather wide, sensuous mouth and a strong chin. Her eyes were brown, with a greenish tint. But he saw something else in her face. A tenseness.

“Please sit,” he said, as he went the pot that was on a small table in the corner of the room. “Can I refresh your coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

Scarne held up the pot and looked first at Sealth and then the other man, who both shook their heads. He poured coffee into a ceramic mug, which had a New York Yankees logo on its side. There was another mug with a Seattle Mariners logo on the table. Evelyn Warr knew that neither Scarne nor Seath would be caught dead drinking coffee from a Limoges cup. The plate of “crumpets” next to the coffee pot lay untouched. Scarne sighed and left it that way. He poured cream into his coffee, added sugar, and sat at the table. Maura Dallas was in the seat he normally took, at the head, but he wasn’t about to tell her to move. Her bodyguard might shoot him.

“Now, Ms. Dallas, what brings you to New York.”

She looked past him to Noah Sealth.

“I would prefer to speak to you in private, Mr. Scarne.”

Scarne cocked his head at the bodyguard.

“What about him?’

“Vincent can stay. We have no secrets.”

“Same with Noah and myself. He has a lot of experience on the West Coast, probably with your family. Isn’t that right, Noah?”

“Seattle homicide,” Sealth said. “I know Vinnie.”

“I thought there was something between you two,” Maura Dallas said. She looked at Scarne. “I don’t have a choice?”

“Regretfully, no.”

“I usually get what I want.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“But not this time?”

Scarne just smiled and took a sip of his coffee. It was very good. There was a coffee machine in Scarne’s office given to him by an old client. It looked like the Mars Rover. Scarne’s first attempts had yielded something that could have been spread on toast. But Evelyn had mastered the contraption to the point where people in other offices on Scarne’s floor made excuses to stop by for a cup of her java.

Dallas looked at the two men who were standing.

“Why the hell don’t the both of you sit down. You are making me nervous.”