His next call was to Warren.
“We are on our way back,” Grover said when Warren answered, out of breath. “We are definitely going to need some help getting the watcher back into his vehicle. After all the excitement, he’s sleeping rather soundly.”
“No problem,” Warren said. “We’re all here playing basketball as usual. Did you get what you needed?”
“I believe we did,” Grover said. “He was very accommodating.”
“Good,” Warren said. “How long before you’ll be back here?”
“I’d say thirty to forty minutes. Saturday traffic is a relative breeze. We’re coming in from Woodside.”
“See you then,” Warren said and hung up.
Twenty minutes later Colt turned onto Laurie and Jack’s street. He pulled up directly behind Duane’s van to limit the exposure of the group carrying Duane and putting him back in his vehicle. Grover jumped out as soon as Colt came to a halt. To avoid attracting too much attention, Grover jogged over to the basketball court instead of shouting from across the street. He waited for a play to be over before calmly calling through the chain-link fence to get Warren’s attention.
“Flash and I will be right there,” Warren said once he saw Grover waving at him.
With four people involved, there was no problem moving Duane from where he’d been rolled up in the carpet in the back of the van to his vehicle. At Grover’s insistence, he was put in the driver’s seat and draped over the steering wheel.
“He’s really out,” Warren commented. “What did you give him?”
“A drug called Versed,” Grover explained. “And he’s about to get some intramuscular Valium. We want him to sleep for a good long time but make it look like he’s drunk himself into a stupor.” Grover produced a bottle of vodka from the van, and with Colt rousing him, Grover forced the man to take a mouthful of liquor, most of which dripped down the front of Duane’s shirt. “Perfect,” Grover said. He replaced the bottle’s cap and then tossed the half-full bottle onto the front passenger seat. “If his accomplices come looking for him, they’ll find him acting drunk but never guess he’d been dragged off and treated with a tongue-loosening drug.”
“But he’ll remember himself.”
“No, he won’t,” Grover said with assurance as he gave Duane the Valium in his upper arm cavalierly, injecting it directly through his shirt. “Not only does Versed make one particularly talkative, it causes retrograde amnesia. He’ll be lucky to remember getting up this morning.”
“Very slick,” Warren said.
“Could you guys keep your eyes on this vehicle? I’d like to know if his accomplices do show up. I’d also like to get any license plates if it could be done without arousing any suspicions. I don’t want them to know we know they’ve been here.”
“Until when do you want us to watch it?”
“At least until two or three a.m., but I know that’s asking a lot. Yet I’d appreciate it, as long as you guys have the manpower and inclination to do it.”
“Not a problem,” Warren said. “Those bastards killed my cousin and have Laurie and Jack’s toddler. I’d stay up all night myself. We’ll be using the court until early evening. After that, I’ll have the guys who’d been scheduled for today, but weren’t used, watch tonight.”
“With the proviso they don’t let themselves be seen. This point is truly important. If kidnappers feel they are being watched or followed, they get very antsy, which invariably puts the victims in extreme jeopardy. If they start feeling the authorities are closing in, the kidnappers kill their victims and dispose of the bodies, never to be found.”
“Understood,” Warren said simply, and he did.
After leaving the neighborhood and before heading out to Whitestone, Grover and Colt drove down to Midtown to visit the home office. CRT occupied an entire floor on East 54th Street. It was usually a beehive of activity, but since it was a Saturday and since ten of the thirty-nine partners were currently away running ten active cases in eight countries, the place was mausoleum-like.
“Robert told me to say he would be in the lunchroom,” Beverly had said when Grover and Colt first appeared. The so-called lunchroom was a windowless affair more suited for storing cleaning supplies than for serving as a snack room. There were several vending machines and a space for the communal coffee machine. Robert was alone, nursing a coffee while working on his laptop.
“Did you have any luck?” Grover asked.
“Not a lot but some. First, I did have luck with the assessor’s office, which, I might add, was a great idea on your part. They had a rudimentary site plan and better floor plans, as the estate went through a major renovation and reassessment after the current owner bought it about a decade ago.”
“Are you using the word estate literally or figuratively?”
“Literally. There’s over an acre, which is big for the area, with a pool, a tennis court, and a pier.”
“So it’s waterfront property?”
“Yes. It has four hundred feet of frontage on the East River. The house is almost ten thousand square feet, and pretty much covers the site except for the pool and tennis court. In my mind, that’s an estate.”
“I agree,” Grover said. “Let’s see the plans.”
Robert had printed out the plans from the assessor’s office on eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch paper. Colt kept the site plan but immediately handed the floor plan back. “Double the size of the copy. I might have to search for the child, and I need to know the house like the back of my hand.”
“I also have a street map of the town,” Robert said, handing that over as well before running off to enlarge the floor plans.
“Uh-oh,” Grover said after a brief look at the map. Robert had the location of the house marked with a red cross. “It’s on a dead-end street.”
“That’s not a problem,” Colt said. “We’ll approach from the water. We certainly don’t want to be hemmed in by a dead-end street.”
“Approach in what? You are not going to get me in the water again, no way.” About ten years previously, Colt had insisted on using scuba gear to approach another waterfront property in Cartagena, Colombia.
“We’ll rent something like a Zodiac and pull in under the pier. There has to be a marina out there in the area.”
“How did you do researching the owner?” Grover asked Robert when he came back with the blow-ups.
“Not good. It’s listed as being owned by a Panamanian financial company who pays the taxes and utilities. But when I tried researching the Panamanian company, I found it was owned by a Brazilian company, et cetera. You know the story.”
“Shell companies,” Grover said with a nod. “Another sign that this kidnapping involves organized crime.”
Colt checked his watch. “Grover, it’s after two! We have to get our butts out to Whitestone, especially now that we need to locate a boat. And I’m going to need time to put together an operational kit for tonight.”
“All right, let’s do it,” Grover said. “Robert, if you learn anything more about the house or its owner, give me a call on my mobile. This exercise has to go down tonight, so do what you can!”
“Will do,” Robert said.
“Also, Robert,” Colt said, “have you seen anybody from logistics this morning?” Logistics at CRT really meant one man. His name was Curt Cohen, and he was a master of the procurement and maintenance of just about anything in the world, particularly in the arena of electronics and weapons: anything and everything a risk management, ex-Special Forces agent would need to carry out his or her mission as a kidnap consultant.