But I couldn’t, so I took another swallow, surrendering, and all I could think of was how certain the Parka Man had sounded when he told me he would know if I talked to the cops, how he knew people, how I should lie to them. They expected that, he’d said, and Hoffman had echoed him just the night before, already used to my string of lies.
When I thought about it some more it made me bring the bottle down and backpedal from the window.
I was crazy, I had to be wrong, but when I took the Quicks away from the equation, put the spying and the cameras and the pictures all to one side and Mikel and Tommy and the kidnapping on the other, it made even more sense. It explained why Tommy had been so worried for me, why he’d tried to warn me after Mikel’s funeral, and why he hadn’t given Hoffman and Marcus anything when he’d been arrested. It explained how Parka Man could get into my house, not once, but twice, how he could deactivate my alarm without me or anyone else knowing.
Why the Parka Man was doing what he was doing, I had no idea.
But now I knew who he was, I was certain. If I could find him, if I could find where he had Tommy, then there might be a chance. I had to make a plan, to come up with a plan. All I needed was a little time.
Then the phone started ringing, and there was no time left.
CHAPTER 37
“This is going to be real simple,” the Parka Man said when I answered the phone. “Simple and quick. You want your daddy, I want my money. The sooner we finish, the happier we’ll both be.”
“I want proof he’s alive,” I said. “I want to hear him tell me he’s all right.”
“In a moment. Right now, you’re going to listen carefully to the following instructions.”
It felt like his words were swimming around in my brain, and I didn’t know if it was the alcohol or the fear or the still-fresh realization of who he really was. The thought that I would accidentally blurt out his name came over me, and I knew that if I let it slip, Tommy was as good as dead.
“First thing you do is lose the cops,” he said. “I don’t care how you do it. Once you break the tail, you get on the MAX, you take it out to PDX. Just ride it straight out there, don’t talk to anyone. Get off at the airport, then you take a cab, you go to downtown. You’re getting out at the corner of Northeast Everett and Third. There’s a bar, midway down the block. You go in there. At three o’clock, exactly, you get yourself a drink from the bar.”
“MAX, airport, Everett and Third, bar, drink. Then what happens?”
“Be there and find out. And be there without company, or it’s off, and your daddy never sees the light of day again.”
It was the way he kept repeating it, as if I hadn’t understood it, as if I hadn’t lived the past three days with the fear of what he’d do to Tommy in my heart and head at every moment.
“I’ve got your cash,” I said. “Now you put him on, you cocksucker, you let me hear his voice, right now, or you get nothing.”
He chuckled. “You sure you want to make that threat?”
“You want the money, asshole?”
There was another chuckle, but not as amused, this time, and then a rustle. I heard labored breathing.
“Tommy?”
“Miriam?” His voice was thin, as if he’d gone without water.
“God, are you all right?”
Another rustle, and the Parka Man came back.
“Three o’clock,” he said, and hung up.
For almost five minutes after he had cut the connection, I just stood in the kitchen, just stood there, thinking. Trying to find a way to get what I wanted, what I needed, without getting myself and my father killed. Because it was clear, so clear now, what he was going to do, what he had to do, if I was correct.
If Tommy knew who the Parka Man was, if Tommy knew he’d killed Mikel, then Tommy was dead as soon as he had the money. Which meant that by the time Tommy got in Charon’s line, he’d find that his daughter was already crossing the Styx; no way in hell was this guy going to let me live after he had the cash. If he was going to tie up his loose ends, he’d tie all of them up, and that meant me, too.
For a morbid moment, I wondered if he’d try to make my death look like an accident. How hard would it be? Musicians die with changes in the seasons, and it wasn’t as if I’d been living a very clean life. Maybe that was why he was having me come to a bar. Pour a bottle down my throat, the rest would be easy.
Maybe I’d get a tribute album, or fan pilgrimages to my grave.
Chapel’s office was downtown, I remembered. I’d have to cover a couple blocks on foot to do what I wanted to do, but it was possible, and if everything went well, it wouldn’t blow the schedule.
I grabbed the backpack, stuffed full, and the Taylor in its case, and went out to the garage, trying to get into the Jeep without Marcus or Hoffman getting a look at what I was doing, struggling with the weight. At first, it seemed like taking the car wasn’t maybe the best idea, that perhaps I could try to go it on foot. But the way Hoffman and Marcus had always been covered, the way there’d never been a gap in the surveillance in front of my house, made me think that there were probably cops out back, too. They wouldn’t have been doing their job if they were only watching the front door.
So I’d stick with the cops I knew. After all, they’d come this far with me.
It was twenty-six minutes to one when I pulled out, heading downtown, jockeying with the lunch hour traffic. I didn’t try to switch lanes or speed up or slow down, nothing to get them worried. It didn’t matter; they were already worried, and the one time I caught them close behind me, close enough to see them reflected in my rearview mirror, Marcus was grim behind the wheel, and Hoffman was again on her radio.
If there were others following me, I couldn’t spot them. Another thing I couldn’t control.
We crossed the river on the Steel Bridge, and it started to rain, spatters on my windshield that the wipers couldn’t quite cope with, as if it wasn’t sincere enough to require their best efforts. I turned at the light on Broadway, then again on Market, and pulled into the underground garage at Chapel’s building. When I took my ticket from the dispenser, I could see the Ford idling near the top of the ramp.
Come on, I thought. Follow me.
The bar went up, and I pulled forward, winding farther down, past rows of parked Beemers and Lexi and Acuras, then through a forest of SUVs. I found a space on the lowest level near the elevator bank, got out with my backpack, and locked up.
There was no sign of the Ford.
This is not going to work, I thought, as I got into the elevator. I am fucked, and this is not going to work.
My hands were shaking when I punched the button for the tenth floor. I had to shove them into my pockets to keep them out of sight, and when the elevator stopped in the lobby, I was glad that I’d done it.
Marcus and Hoffman got on the elevator.
“This is a surprise,” I said.
They didn’t answer, just went to the back of the car, fitting in behind me. It was funny in its own way, how none of us was even bothering to pretend anymore.
We rode another four floors, and the car stopped once more, and two men in nice suits got on, talking anxiously about what the market had done in Japan that morning. They got off again at seven, and when the doors were again closed, I turned to face Hoffman.