I wasn’t sure what he was telling me. “You’re saying that after today you’re going to look a bit harder at Skouras?”
“People are always looking at Skouras,” he said. “But since you’re feeling guilty, throw me a bone. Answer just one question, totally unrelated to the rest of this.”
“No, you had your chance,” I said. “You already traded your information for a free lunch. Too late to change the deal now.”
“You sure that’s all the information you’re going to need? You don’t have to stay in my good graces in case of follow-ups?” He cocked an eyebrow.
“Fine,” I said, making my voice sound more impatient than I really felt. “One question.”
“The school you went to back east, the one that didn’t work out, was that Annapolis or West Point?”
“I… yes. How the hell did you know that?”
He’d turned serious. “I observe people, Hailey. I always knew you were something more than you let on. So it made sense that the school wasn’t any State U. But at the same time, I didn’t get Ivy League vibes. That left one of the military academies.”
I nodded. “It was West Point.”
“Why didn’t you finish?”
“I almost did.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me about that someday.”
“No. Sorry,” I said. “I just don’t talk about that. Don’t take it personally.”
That afternoon, I called Serena to tell her what I’d learned. When I was done, she said, “You’re thinking that the guys in the tunnel were gangsters.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “They were obviously well-funded and disciplined.”
“So it sounds like you shoulda searched Nidia’s suitcase,” said Serena. “She took something from that rich guy.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Think about it: If they just wanted an object, they’d have taken it from the car, shot her, and left her where they left me.” I smiled, though she couldn’t see my face. “She had something, though.”
“Stop giving me an IQ test over the phone and tell me what it was.”
“Something that belonged to her and Adrian both,” I added.
There was a brief silence on the line. Then Serena said, “No way, prima. She was still getting over her boyfriend dying.”
“Grief in itself can make people do funny things,” I said. “I’m not saying she fell in love with Adrian, but there was something between them. She got a little weepy talking about his death. I thought it was because it reminded her of her fiancé. And she was thin except for her belly, and she was nursing ginger ale a lot in the car, to settle her stomach. Pregnancy makes women more prone to nausea. Not just in the morning, but anytime. None of this registered with me then, because I was used to thinking of her in a certain light, as a virgin-slash-war-widow, since the first time I heard her name.”
“Say you’re right,” Serena said. “How would the grandfather find out, if he and his son didn’t talk?”
“Fathers and sons tend to talk over deathbeds,” I said. “Probably Adrian asked his father to take care of Nidia and the baby financially. A guy like Tony Skouras would probably react in one of two ways to that kind of news. Either he’d be appalled at the thought of having a half-Mexican grandchild and refuse to acknowledge Nidia’s baby at all, or he’d embrace the fact that this is the only grandchild he’d ever have, and want full control of its upbringing. He doesn’t strike me as the type to write support checks and let his grandchild be raised Mexican in working-class Mexican neighborhoods.”
“Damn,” Serena said. “All that for a kid? Most of the guys I know run away from their responsibility to a baby.”
“This is a lot different,” I said. “Skouras isn’t just trying to build a fortune, he’s been trying to build up his family again, after the troubles in his homeland. Everything that Skouras has amassed, the money and influence-what’s the point if it all just disperses into the hands of strangers?” I paused. “That explains why he took the full-control route. He must have told Nidia he wanted his grandkid, and she freaked and ran away. We know the rest. In a way, this is good news. Because if Skouras wants the kid, then Nidia is still alive. She’s only about six months’ pregnant by now.”
“Oh, God, she’s living like… he’s got her…”
“Don’t trip,” I said. “It’s in his best interest to take care of her not just medically but psychologically. Trauma is very bad for pregnant women. He’d know that.”
“Until she gives birth,” Serena said. “Then what happens to her?”
“Well, he might feel that he’s too powerful and she’s too insignificant for her ever to get the American law to listen to her,” I said. “Maybe he’ll let her go.”
Serena was doubtful. “Wouldn’t it be safer for him just to kill her?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It would.”
twenty-four
Was there anything in my West Point training that could help me with the problem at hand? A criminal like Skouras wouldn’t operate like a conventional military enemy. He’d be more like a terrorist. But the times being what they were, we’d studied a bit about counterterrorism in school.
Terrorists lived among the general population. They didn’t wear uniforms. Sometimes you knew who they were but couldn’t prove it. You could watch them, but their actions looked innocent on the surface, and their communications were carefully coded. You couldn’t be sure who around them was a disciple and who was an innocent acquaintance. They attacked in small-scale but sometimes very deadly operations. They always needed money, and if you could disrupt their flow of funds badly enough, you could cripple their operation.
I knew how the Army would deal with a high-level terrorist: It would watch his home and track the movements of his vehicles with spy satellites capable of reading numbers off license plates. That didn’t help me. That was the difference between being the United States Army and a twenty-four-year-old with one gun. If anyone was going to be crippled by dwindling funds, it was me.
I could try to watch Skouras, but I doubted that would lead me to Nidia. Surely she wasn’t in his own home. It seemed unwise, in the first-place-anyone-would-look sense. And I just didn’t think he’d want her around, no matter how many rooms his place had. Home was where a guy like Skouras went to ground. It was where he locked out his complicated world and poured himself a Macallan. He wasn’t going to want a frightened teenage hostage in the next room.
Start over. You’re going at this wrong. Imagine you’re them, kidnapping Nidia. Start from the tunnel and go from there.
They shoot me, I lose consciousness and probably crash the Impala at a slow speed into the tunnel wall. They drag me out of the car, strip me of my ID, and take me outside the tunnel and shoot me, far enough off the road that no one is supposed to find me. That had been the important part of the story to me, but in terms of the kidnapping, it wasn’t relevant. I hadn’t been their objective. Nidia had been.
She might have been injured in the crash, though not badly. I hadn’t had enough time to work up any speed. So assume she was basically all right, maybe dazed. Either she got out and tried to run, or they reached in and got her. They put her in one of the cars and drove away. They also drove the Impala away and disposed of it, probably in a river or a lake. Again, not important to the story. Where was Nidia at that point?
Getting a Mexican without papers across the border would have been difficult. Illegal Mexicans crossed the border all the time, of course. They simply walked across at unguarded, unobserved areas or were smuggled across in trucks allegedly carrying consumer goods. But Nidia wouldn’t have been cooperative, and handling her roughly or drugging her would have been too risky; she was pregnant, and a healthy Skouras grandchild had been the point of the whole operation.