Lawrence Block - A Walk Among the Tombstones

At first Yuri didn’t get what all the fuss was about. So somebody at Chaverim made a mistake, and two cars went instead of one, and the second driver made the trip for nothing. How was that something to call him about? Then he began to realize that something out of the ordinary was going on. He got as much information as he could from the dispatcher, said he was sorry if there had been any inconvenience, and got her off the line.

Next he called the school, and when he spoke with Miss Severance and heard about the call from his assistant, Mr. Pettibone, there was really no question about it. Someone had managed to lure his daughter out of the school and into a van. Someone had kidnapped her.

At this point the Severance woman also figured it out, but Landau dissuaded her from calling the police. It would be best handled privately, he said, improvising as he went along. “Relatives on her mother’s side, extremely Orthodox, you could call them religious fanatics. They’ve been after me to pull her out of Chichester and send her to some crazy kosher school in Borough Park. Don’t worry about a thing, I’m sure she’ll be back in your school tomorrow.”

Then he hung up the phone and started to tremble.

They had his daughter. What did they want? He’d give them what they wanted, the bastards, he’d give them anything he had. But who were they? And what in God’s name did they want?

Hadn’t someone said something just a few weeks ago about a kidnapping?

He remembered, then, and called Kenan. Who called me.

Yuri Landau had the penthouse apartment in a twelve-story brick co-op on Brightwater Court. In the tiled lobby, two thick-bodied young Russians in tweed jackets and caps braced us as we entered. Peter ignored the uniformed doorman and told the others that his name was Khoury and Mr. Landau was expecting us. One of them rode up with us in the elevator.

By the time we got there, around four-thirty, Yuri had just received his first call from the kidnappers. He was still reacting to it. “A million dollars,” he cried. “Where am I going to get a million dollars? Who’s doing this, Kenan? Is it niggers? Is it those crazies from Jamaica?”

“It’s white guys,” Kenan said.

“My Luschka,” he said. “How could this happen? What kind of a country is this?” He broke off when he saw us. “You’re the brother,” he said to Peter. “And you?”

“Matthew Scudder.”

“You been working for Kenan. Good. Thanks to both of you for coming. But how did you get in? You walked right in? I had two men in the lobby, they were supposed to—” He caught sight of the man who had come up with us. “Oh, there you are, Dani, that’s a good boy. Go back down to the lobby and keep an eye out.” To no one in particular he said, “Now I post guards. The horse is stolen so I lock the barn. For what? What can they take from me now? God took my wife, the dirty bastard, and these other bastards take my Luddy, my Luschka.” He turned to Kenan. “And if I post men downstairs from the time you called me, what good does it do? They get her out of school, they steal her away under everybody’s nose. I wish I did what you did. You sent her out of the country, yes?”

Kenan and I looked at each other.

“What’s this? You told me you sent your wife out of the country.”

Kenan said, “That was the story we settled on, Yuri.”

“Story? Why did you need a story? What happened?”

“She was kidnapped.”

“Your wife.”

“Yes.”

“How much did they hit you for?”

“They asked a million. We negotiated, we settled on a lower figure.”

“How much?”

“Four hundred thousand.”

“And you paid the money? You got her back?”

“I paid.”

“Kenan,” he said. He took him by the shoulders. “Tell me, please. You got her back, yes?”

“Dead,” Kenan said.

“Oh, no,” Yuri said. He reeled as if from a blow, threw up an arm to shield his face. “No,” he said. “Don’t tell me that.”

“Mr. Landau—”

He ignored me, took Kenan by the arm. “But you paid,” he said. “You gave them an honest count? You didn’t try to chisel them?”

“I paid, Yuri. They killed her anyway.”

His shoulders sagged. “Why?” he demanded, not of us but of that dirty bastard God who took his wife. “Why?”

I stepped in and said, “Mr. Landau, these are very dangerous men, vicious and unpredictable. They’ve killed at least two women in addition to Mrs. Khoury. As things stand, they haven’t got the slightest intention of releasing your daughter alive. I’m afraid there’s a strong possibility that she’s already dead.”

“No.”

“If she’s alive we have a chance. But you have to decide how you want to handle this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could call the police.”

“They said no cops.”

“Naturally they’d say that.”

“The last thing I want is cops here, poking into my life. As soon as I come up with the ransom money they’ll want to know where it came from. But if it gets my daughter back… What do you think? We have a better chance if we call the cops?”

“You might have a better chance of catching the men who took her.”

“To hell with that. What about getting her back?”

She’s dead, I thought, but told myself that I didn’t know it, and that he didn’t have to hear it. I said, “I don’t think police involvement at this stage would increase the chance of recovering your daughter alive. I think it might have the opposite effect. If the cops come in and the kidnappers know about it, they’ll cut their losses and run. And they won’t leave the girl alive.”

“So fuck the cops. We’ll do it ourselves. Now what?”

“Now I have to make a phone call.”

“Go ahead. Wait, I want to keep the line open. They called, I talked with him, I had a million questions and he hung up on me. ‘Stay off the line. We’ll get back to you.’ Use my daughter’s phone, it’s through that door. Kids, on the phone all the time, you could never reach the house. I had that other thing, Call Waiting, drove everybody crazy. All the time clicking in your ear, telling this one to hold on, you have to take a call. Terrible. I got rid of it, got her her own phone, she could stay on it all she wanted. God, take anything I got, just give her back to me!”

I called TJ’s beeper and punched in the number on the Landau girl’s Snoopy figural phone. Snoopy and Michael Jackson both seemed to play key roles in her personal mythology, judging from the room’s decor. I paced, waiting for my call, and found a family photo on the white enamel dressing table, Yuri and a dark-haired woman and a girl with dark hair that fell past her shoulders in cascading ringlets. Lucia looked to be about ten in the photo. Another photo showed her alone, older, and looked to have been taken last June at graduation. Her hair was shorter in the more recent photo and her face looked serious and mature for her years.

The phone rang. I picked it up and he said, “Yo, who wants TJ?”

“It’s Matt,” I said.

“Hey, my man! What’s goin’, Owen?”

“Serious business,” I said. “It’s an emergency, and I need your help.”

“You got it.”

“Can you get hold of the Kongs?”

“You mean right away? They sometimes hard to reach. Jimmy Hong got a beeper, but he don’t always have it with him.”

“See if you can get him and give him this number.”

“Sure. That’s it?”

“No,” I said. “Do you remember the laundromat we went to last week?”

“Sure.”

“Do you know how to get there?”

“R train to Forty-fifth, a block to Fifth Avenue, four, five blocks to the wishee-washee.”