"This is a time for complete honesty," Paul said to his son. To me, he continued: "You know, my chief pleasure in life is when guests leave happy. I know, you probably don't believe that, do you?"
"I do."
"Or when they write me or e-mail me to say what a good time they had. It makes me feel like a host at a great dinner party. And now…this."
"Some dinner party."
"I don't know what I could have done differently."
"There's nothing you could have done," I said.
He seemed to consider that for a few seconds; he looked unconvinced. "Once he gets the ransom…We're not getting out of here alive, are we?"
I didn't reply.
He closed his eyes. "Dear God."
"That doesn't mean we can't try to do something."
He nodded for a long time. "You know any Hindu mythology, Jake?"
"I'm afraid not."
"There's a story. A Hindu myth. About a king who's given a curse. He's going to die in seven days from a snakebite. And you know-when he hears this curse, he feels…serene. Joyful."
"Oh yeah?"
"See, he knows he's got seven days to live. Seven days to prepare for his death. To devote to the contemplation of Krishna. To prepare for his departure for the spiritual world. He's filled with joy, Jake, and you know why? Because we're all under a sentence of death, and none of us knows when death will come to us. But he knows, you see. He knows. He knows he's going to die, and he's accepted it."
I paused just long enough for him to think I was mulling all this over. "No offense," I said, "but I'm not a Hindu."
I waited for Travis to pass by again.
A thought had occurred to me, and I shifted around to Danziger.
"If we have kidnap-and-ransom insurance," I said, "doesn't that mean we have some firm on retainer that specializes in rescuing hostages?"
Danziger smiled: rueful, not condescending. "That's only in the movies. In the real world, very few risk-management firms actually do retrievals. They do hostage negotiation with the kidnappers and make the payment arrangements. But this isn't a ransom situation. Russell's too smart for that. He knows what he's doing." Danziger paused. "He does seem to know an awful lot about how this all works."
"So do you."
"It's part of my job. At Hammond, the controller is also what they call the 'risk manager.' That means I work with Ron Slattery and Geoff Latimer to arrange for all the special risk insurance coverage. Told you I'd put you to sleep if I told you too much about what I do." He seemed distracted, looked at Grogan. "How does he know so much about K &R, do you think?"
"I've been wondering the same thing," Grogan said. "You remember when Latimer told us about this security firm in California he thought we might want to have on retainer? Some law school classmate of his founded it or ran it, maybe?"
"Right!" Danziger said. "They did recovery and retrieval, not just hostage negotiation. A lot of child abduction cases, I remember-divorces and such. One of their employees got arrested in South America on a child recovery case he was working, charged with kidnapping under the international treaty agreements. Did a couple years in prison in the U.S. That pretty much cooled me on them."
The two men exchanged glances.
I said, "You think that's Russell? That guy?"
Danziger shrugged. "How else could Russell know so much?"
"What do I know so much about?"
A voice with the grit of fine sandpaper.
Russell.
I looked away, stared at the log walls. I didn't want to catch his eye. Didn't want him to notice that I'd moved.
My heart hammered.
"I know a lot of stuff," he said. "Like the fact that you were sitting over there before."
I looked at Russell, shrugged nonchalantly.
"I think you and I need to have a talk, Jake," he said. "Right now. Where's the cook?"
A small woman with a big mop of unruly curly hair, who'd been dozing against the stone side of the fireplace, looked around and said, "I'm the chef."
"Man, I never trust a skinny cook," he said. "How's your coffee?"
"My coffee? We have Sumatra and Kona-"
"How about java? You got java? I'd love a big pot of coffee. Nice and strong."
She looked at the manager, frightened. He nodded.
"He's not the boss anymore, babe," said Russell. "I am. Now, my friend Verne is going to take you into the kitchen while you make us some coffee."
"How do you like it?" she said. "Cream? Sugar? Splenda?"
"Now you've got the right attitude. I like it black. Those artificial sweeteners will kill you."
44
After I'd been at Glenview a few months, Mom was allowed to visit.
She looked like she'd aged twenty years. I told her she looked good. She said she couldn't believe how I'd changed in a few short months. I'd gotten so muscular. I'd become a man. It looked like I was even shaving, was that possible?
Most of her visit we sat in the molded orange plastic chairs in the visitor's lounge and watched the TV mounted high on the wall. She cried a lot. I was quiet.
"Mom," I said as she was leaving. "I don't want you to come here again."
She looked crestfallen. "Why not?"
"I don't want you to see me in here. Like this. And I don't want to remember why I'm here. I'll be out in a year or so. Then I'll be home."
She said she understood, though I'll never know if she really did. A month later, she was dead from a stroke.
45
The screened porch was cool and breezy. It had a distinctive, pleasant smell-of mildewed furnishings, of the tangy sea air, of the oil soap used to wash the floor. It was obviously not a place that saw much use.
"Come into my office," Russell said. He'd taken off his tactical vest and had put on a soiled white pit cap that said DAYTONA 500 CHAMPION 2004 on the front and had a big number 8 on the side.
The moon, fat and bright, cast a silvery light through the screens. The sky glittered with a thousand stars.
He pointed to a comfortable-looking upholstered chair. A glider, I found, when I sat in it. He sat in the one next to it. We could have been two old friends passing the time in relaxed conversation, drinking beers and reminiscing.
Except for his pewter gray eyes, flat and cold: something terribly detached about them, something removed and unnerving. The eyes of a sociopath, maybe; someone who didn't feel what others felt. I'd seen eyes like his before, at Glenview. He was a man who was capable of doing anything because he was restrained by nothing.
I felt a cold hard lump form in my stomach.
"You want to tell me what you were doing out there?" he said.
"Trying to help."
"Help who?"
"I was passing along word from the CEO."
"Word?"
"To cooperate. Telling the guys not to cause trouble. To just do whatever you say so we can all get out of here alive."
"She told you to walk over there to tell them that?"
"She prefers e-mail, but it doesn't seem to be working so well."
He was silent. I could hear the waves lapping gently against the shore, the rhythmic chirping of crickets.
"Why'd she ask you?"
"No one else was crazy enough."
"Well, you got balls, I'll give you that. I think you're the only one out of all of them who's got any balls."
"More balls than brains, I guess."
"So if I ask Danziger and Grogan what you were talking about, they're going to tell me the same thing."
The hairs on the nape of my neck bristled. "You're good with names, huh?"
"I just like to come prepared."
I nodded. "Impressive. How long have you been planning this?"
I registered a shift in his body language, a sudden drop in the temperature. I'd miscalculated.
"Am I going to have trouble with you?" he said.
"I just want to go home."
"Then don't be a hero."
"For these guys?" I said. "I don't even like them."
He laughed, stretched his legs out, yawned.
I pointed to his cap, and said, "I saw that race."