In the meantime, I called Marcus. “Marshall, what did the police tell you?”
“The police? Oh, you know, the usual nothing. If she hasn’t turned up by tonight, I can file a missing-persons report.”
“Well, we’re not waiting.”
“Do you know anything?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I’ll tell you as soon as I do.”
I gave up on the woman in the Buick and drove on.
15.
The FBI’s Boston field office is located in One Center Plaza, part of the hideous Government Center complex, which some architects praise as “imposing” but most Bostonians consider a blight, a concrete scar on the face of our beautiful city. The only positive thing I can say about Government Center is that it once inspired a decent song by the proto-punk band the Modern Lovers.
When I got out of the elevator on the sixth floor, I saw a huge gold FBI seal on the wall and a Ten Most Wanted poster. In a small waiting area were a metal detector gate and a portable baggage X-ray machine, neither in use. A couple of receptionists sat behind bulletproof glass.
I pushed my driver’s license into a slot like a bank teller’s, and they made me surrender my BlackBerry. In exchange they gave me a badge that said ESCORT REQUIRED in red.
One of the women behind the glass spoke into a phone and told me someone would be out in a few minutes.
I waited. There was nothing to look at but a photo of the president, in a frame that hung askew on the wall, and an array of pamphlets advertising careers in the FBI. No magazines or newspapers. Without my BlackBerry I couldn’t check my e-mail or call anyone.
I waited some more.
After half an hour I went back to the lady behind the glass and asked her whether I’d been forgotten. She apologized, assured me I hadn’t been, but gave no explanation.
When they make you wait ten or fifteen minutes, it’s probably because a meeting is running late. When you’re past the forty-five-minute mark, they’re sending you a message.
It was close to an hour before the FBI guy emerged.
He wasn’t what I expected. He was a hulking guy who looked like he spent a lot of time pumping iron. He was entirely bald, the kind of shiny bald that takes work, requires a lot of shaving and waxing or whatever. He wore a knockoff Rolex, a gray suit that was too short in the sleeves, a white shirt too tight at the neck, and a regimental striped tie.
“Mr. Heller?” he said in a deep and rumbling voice. “Gordon Snyder.”
He offered me a hand as huge and leathery as an old baseball mitt, and shook way too hard. “Assistant Special Agent in Charge,” he added.
That meant he was one of the top guys in the FBI’s Boston office, reporting directly to the Special Agent in Charge. I had to give credit to my philandering congressman from Sarasota.
Snyder pushed the door open, then led me down a blank white corridor to his outer office, where a weary-looking secretary didn’t even look up from her computer as we passed. His office was large and overlooked Cambridge Street. A long desk, two computer monitors, a large flat-screen TV with the sound off, set to CNN. A round glass-topped conference table and a red leatherette couch. Two flags behind his desk on either side, the U.S. flag and the FBI’s light blue one. By government standards, this was an Architectural Digest spread.
He sat behind his perfectly clean glass-topped desk and hunched his shoulders. “I understand you work in the private sector these days, Mr. Heller.”
“Right.” I suppose that was his not-so-subtle way of letting me know he’d read a dossier on me.
“So what can I do for you?”
“I’m helping a friend look for his daughter,” I said.
He furrowed his brows sympathetically. “What’s the girl’s name?”
“Alexa Marcus.”
He nodded. The name didn’t seem to mean anything to him.
“Her father is Marshall Marcus. Hedge-fund guy in Boston.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventeen.”
He nodded again, shrugged. “And why’s this a matter for the FBI?”
“Given her father’s wealth and prominence-”
“She’s been kidnapped?”
“Possibly.”
“Well, is there a ransom demand?”
“Not yet. But given the circumstances and her own history-”
“So you’re saying the father’s concerned his daughter might have been kidnapped.”
There was something strange about Snyder’s expression. A look of confusion so exaggerated it was almost comic. Or maybe sardonic. “Huh. See, what baffles me, Mr. Heller, is why the Boston police never reached out to us.”
“They sure should have.”
“I know, right? Normally that’s the first thing they’d do, in a case like this. Kidnappings are FBI business. Gotta wonder why not.”
I shrugged. “Well, whatever the reason, if you could arrange to ping her phone-”
But Snyder wasn’t finished yet. “I wonder if the reason they never reached out to us,” he said with careful emphasis, “is that no one notified them about the missing girl in the first place. You think that might explain it?” He clasped his hands, looked down at his desk and then up at me. “See, Marshall Marcus never called it in to them. Interesting, isn’t it? You’d think he’d be all over the police and the FBI to locate his daughter, wouldn’t you? If it was my daughter, I wouldn’t wait two seconds. Would you?” His eyes pierced mine, his upper lip curled in disgust.
“He called the police,” I said again. “A couple of hours ago. Might not even be logged in yet.”
He shook his head and said firmly, “Never happened.”
“You have bad information.”
“We have excellent information on Marcus,” he said. “We know for a fact that neither he nor his wife placed a call to the police. Not from any of his four home landlines. Neither of his two cell phones. Nor his wife’s cell phone. Nor any landline at Marcus Capital.”
I said nothing.
He gave me a long, grave look. “That’s right. We’ve had Marshall Marcus under court-ordered surveillance for quite some time now. As I’m sure he knows. Did he send you here, Mr. Heller?”
Gordon Snyder’s eyes were small and deep-set, which made them look beady and insectlike. “Please don’t bother trying to deny the fact that you met with Marcus at his house in Manchester this morning, Heller. Is this why you’re here? Acting as his agent? Trying to check up on us, see what we’ve got on him?”
“I came here because a girl’s life may be in danger.”
“This is the same girl who had to be sent away to a special disciplinary school because of repeated behavior problems at her private school?”
I tried to keep my voice controlled, but it was all I could do not to lose it. “That’s right. After she was abducted. Stuff like that can really screw with your head. You don’t get it, do you? We’re on the same side here.”
“You’re working for Marcus, right?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Then we’re on opposite sides. We clear?”
16.
Alexa felt her heart thud faster and faster. She could hear it. In the terrible silence, where she could even hear her own eyelids blink shut, her heartbeat was like a kettledrum. She felt a prickly heat and a bone-deep chill at the same time, and she began to shiver uncontrollably.
“You can hear me, Alexa, yes?” said the tinny voice.
A wash of acid scalded her esophagus. She gagged, retched, felt as if she were going to expel her stomach through her mouth. A little vomit splashed on her damp shirt, settled back down her throat.
She needed to sit upright to empty her mouth, but she couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t raise her head more than a few inches. She couldn’t even turn to the side. She was trapped here.