David Putnam - The Replacements

With my head still in my hands, I turned and looked at him. “Yeah, I did.”

“You try putting his nuts in a vise and twisting?”

“No, I left my medieval torturing devices in Central America.”

He reached over, took my right hand, and checked my knuckles. I jerked my hand away. “Stop it. We need to get the money.”

Someone knocked at the door. I jumped up and headed for the bathroom to hide. “You expecting anyone?”

Mack went to the door. “Chill out man, it’s only Barbara. When I saw my car-the one you parked right out front like some kind of in-your-face-asshole move-I called her. That was real ballsy, coming back here with the FBI a few doors down.”

I wanted to ask how it was different from when he did so, but didn’t have the energy.

He peeked out the window and then opened the door. Barbara Wicks slipped in. She spun around right into Mack’s arms as he closed the door. He hugged her as if one of them had been stranded for years on a desert island.

I backed up and sat back on the bed. I hadn’t seen them as a couple; it’d never crossed my mind. The irony . Not nine months prior, Mack had gunned down her husband, Robby Wicks, with an Ithaca Deerslayer 12-gauge shotgun. Mack kissed her like a ravenous lion, three days without food. She returned the same intensity. I needed to call Marie. I needed to talk to Marie. “You two want some privacy?” I asked.

They broke and half-turned away from one another, heads down a little, embarrassed. I no longer wondered how Barbara weaseled the information about where I had taken up residency in Costa Rica.

Barbara straightened her blouse and composed herself. She turned professional. “Sorry. Where are the kids?”

Mack answered for me. “He didn’t get them. Mabry still has them.”

Her eyes widened. “What? You had Mabry , what the hell happened, Bruno?”

“He tried, he really tried,” said Mack. “Mabry wouldn’t give up the kids.”

She looked at Mack, her eyes narrowed. “Let him talk.”

“We need to get the money,” I said. “He’ll give the children up once we get the money, I’m sure of it.”

“You’re sure of it?” she asked. “You’re sure of it? You know what the stats say about giving up the money?”

She’d turned her eyes to full intensity. I pulled the bed sheet over to cover my nakedness; I wore only BVDs. “What did I bring you here for?” she asked. “Didn’t we discuss this?”

Anger rose instantly. I stood and let the sheet fall. “Yeah, we discussed this, but I’m here to tell you, he wasn’t going to give the children up. I tried.”

“Bruno, how could you have tried if your hands are clean?” asked Mack.

“I used a gun.”

“You shot him?” asked Barbara.

I sat back down, ashamed of what I had done. “Yeah, I shot him.”

I told them all that had happened from the beginning and finished with, “And then he had me drop him off at a place he said was prearranged with a doctor waiting, some sort of underground doctor, off the radar. You see, he wasn’t going to talk. He had drugged himself with some sort of analgesic, to help him knuckle through the pain. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

By this time, Barbara had sat down on the bed next to me, Mack on the other side, like a couple of bookends, me in my BVDs.

Silence ruled the moment. Barbara finally said, “It’s not about the money, not entirely.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“The FBI has your picture,” she said. “They got it from the parking lot videocam at the mall. They got you holding a gun on Mabry and forcing him into the trunk. They now think you’re the main player. That you, not Mabry, took the kids. And that Mabry is your shill to take the heat.”

I stood and half-stumbled across to the bathroom, using the doorframe for support. I’d been set up-hard and deep.

Jonas had organized and planned his crimes with me as the epicenter. He’d somehow stayed several steps ahead of us. No matter what we tried, he had been able to predict our every move. Jonas came out of the penal system as a graduate with honors. No one I had ever chased had this intricate form of advanced planning. Up in the mountains he kept using “we.” Someone else had to be helping him.

Jonas had used my background against me. I was wanted for rescuing abused children from toxic homes and taking them to a safe haven down in Costa Rica. Now he’d made it appear as if I’d come back for more kids. He set the trap so the entire kidnap scenario fell back onto me. If successful, he could take the money, walk away, and leave me holding the bag of crimes against these children.

I had to get the children away from him. The big question: If the option arose, if I could get the children back unharmed, would I, in exchange for their freedom, go to prison? A large hole opened in my gut, cold and empty. I thought I would go to prison if it came right down to that horrible choice.

Barbara brought me out of my funk. “No way will they give him the money. If they can set up that scenario, the FBI might front a fake bag of money to take him down. But no way will they let a million walk. No way.”

Of course she was right. At least two of the kids were foster children recently adopted to middle-class parents without the means to raise tens of thousands, let alone a million.

“Jonas knows we can’t raise the money,” I said. “That’s why he said he wanted me to rob a bank. He’s either toying with me, or he wants to force me to commit felonies in the hopes I’ll get caught. But one thing is for sure, violent crimes are a component of his plan before he ends this.”

“He wants you to fail so you’ll go to prison,” Mack said. “That’s what this game is all about. He wants you in the joint forever.”

I nodded.

The way Jonas had set up the kidnapping and exchange left only one option for me. I needed the money to show to him. Then I’d force him to show me the kids before I handed over the money.

He wanted a million dollars in twenty-four hours. Where could I lay my hands on that kind of money in twenty-four hours? Money taken in a bank robbery averaged fifteen to twenty thousand from the tellers’ windows. Twenty thousand at a whack would take fifty banks. To get the big money all at once, you had to hit the vaults. To take down a vault, you needed a lot of advanced planning and a team. I had neither.

“You’re not going to do anything stupid to get the money,” Mack said. “You’re not going to play his game. Hello?” Mack got up, walked over and snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Bruno, earth to Bruno, are you in there? We’ll give him a fake drop, a fake bag of money, and follow him. It’s the only choice we have.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I think John’s right,” said Barbara. “You’re going to have to stay put for now. You can’t risk getting picked up. When you talked to him, did you at least get the name of the third child?”

“Eddie Crane. Jonas told me Eddie Crane, from Bell Gardens.”

Barbara took out her cell, speed-dialed, and waited. She said, “This is Chief Wicks, let me talk to the ASAC.”

We waited a few seconds, then she said into the phone, “Hi, Dan, the child’s name is Eddie Crane. Start off checking Bell Gardens. No, I can’t tell you where I got the information. I’m on my way to the ICC right now. Yes, all right. Thanks.”

“What’s the plan?” asked Mack.

Barbara looked at me. “How are you to contact Chicken Hawk when you have the money?” She’d taken to using the name designation assigned to Mabry by the FBI. I resisted the urge to look over at the drop phone Jonas handed me before we parted ways, the phone that now sat on the nightstand next to the one I’d purchased.