Robert Crais - Hostage

“They’re doing it.”

“Nuh-uh. Stop saying that.”

“Can’t ya hear’m? They’re doin’ the nasty. Let’s go see.”

They had lived in more apartments than Dennis could remember, some for just a week or two, once for almost a year; dingy places with stained ceilings and toilets that ran. Flo Rooney usually worked a job, once she worked two, and more than once she had none. There was never enough money. Flo was a short woman with a body like a bowling ball, Q-Tip legs, and bad skin. She liked her gin and smelled of Noxzema. When she got in her mopes and had too much gin, she would bitch to the boys that she didn’t have enough money to keepthem, that she would have to put them in a home. Kevin would cry, but Dennis would pray: Please, please, put me in the fuckin’ home. It was always about money .

Dennis shoved Kevin toward their mother’s bedroom door. Both boys were trying to be quiet because she was with a man she had brought home from the bar. This month she was working as a barmaid, next month it would be something else, but there was always a man. She called them her “little pleasures.” Dennis called them drunks .

“Don’t ya want to see’m doin’ it?”

“No!”

“You said you did! Listen to what he’s doin’ to her!”

“Dennis, stop! I’m scared!”

The scent of sweat and sex hung sharp in the air, and Dennis hated her for it. He was jealous of the time she gave them, and humiliated by what she let them do, and by what she did to them. He was ashamed, but at the same time excited. Her gasping, grunting curses drew him .

He pushed Kevin again, this time more gently .

“Go on. Then you’ll know.”

This time Kevin went, creeping to the door. Dennis stayed on their sleeper couch, watching. He wasn’t sure why he was pushing Kevin so hard to see; maybe he wanted Kevin to hate her as much as he did. With their father on the bum and Flo working, Dennis usually had to see after his younger brother, making their breakfast and getting them to school, seeing that Kevin got home okay and making dinner. If Dennis had to be Kevin’s father and mother, there wasn’t room for another. Maybe that was it, or maybe he just wanted to punish her .

Kevin reached the door and peeked inside. Dennis knew that something nasty was going on because he could hear the man telling her what to do. She hadn’t even bothered to close the door .

Kevin watched for the longest time, and then he stepped into the door, right out in the open where their mother could see .

Dennis whispered loudly

“Kev!”

Kevin sobbed, then began to cry .

Inside the room, the man yelled, “Sonofabitch! Get the hell outta here!”

Kevin stumbled backward as the man came lurching through the door, naked except for a huge glistening erection. He was carrying his jeans .

“I’ll teach you to watch, you little shit!”

He was a big man, his body white and arms dark, coarse and hairy with tattoos on his shoulders and a loose flabby gut. His eyes glowed bright red from booze and pot. He stripped a thick leather belt from the jeans, then chased after Kevin, swinging the belt. Its buckle was a great brass oval inlaid with turquoise. The belt came down, cracking across Kevin’s back, and Kevin screamed .

Dennis drove into the man as hard as he could, flinging punches that had no effect, and now the belt was his, snapping across him over and over and over until all his tears were gone .

She never came out, and after a while the man went back into the room. Her little pleasure .

“Dennis?”

Dennis cleared his eyes, then slid off the bar stool.

“Be quiet, Kevin. I’m not leaving here until I can take that cash.”

Dennis went back to the office and unplugged the phone. There was no point in talking to the cops until he knew what to say. He wanted the money.

KEN SEYMORE

The Channel Eight news van was parked at the edge of the empty lot. The reporter was a pretty boy, couldn’t have been twenty-five, twenty-six, something like that, who got off telling everyone he went to USC. Trojan this, Trojan that, God’s a Trojan. A Trojan was a fuckin’ rubber, but Seymore didn’t say that. The reporter pool complained all evening because there were no toilets; the local cops promised that a honey-wagon was coming out, but so far, zip.

Seymore asked the guy if it would be all right to step behind their van, take the lizard for a walk.

The pretty boy laughed, sure, but watch where you step, they got a regular lizard trail back there. Dick. Seymore thought he was the kind of guy who ordered chocolate martinis.

Seymore stepped behind the van where no one could see him and did two spoons of crank. It hit the top of his head like a blast of cold air and made his eyes burn, but it kept him awake. It was after two and all of them were fighting the hours. Seymore noted that the Asian chick with the hot ass kept ducking into her SUV and had a fine set of the sniffles to show for it. A regular one-woman Hoover convention.

Coming out from behind the van, Seymore saw the Channel Eight reporter conferring with his producer and cameraperson, a man with hugely muscled arms. They looked excited.

Seymore said, “Thanks, buddy.”

“No problem. You hear? They’re getting one out of the house.”

Seymore stopped.

“They are?”

“I think it’s the father. He’s hurt.”

A siren spooled up, and they all knew it was the ambulance. Every camera crew in the lot hustled to the street in hopes of a shot, but the ambulance left from a different exit; the siren grew louder, peaked, then faded.

Seymore’s phone rang as the siren dopplered away. He answered as he walked away, lowering his voice but unable to hide his irritation. He knew who it was; he started right in.

“Why the fuck I gotta hear this from a reporter? Fuckin’ Smith comes out, forchrissake, and I gotta learn about it last?”

“Do you think I can get to a phone any time I want? I’m right out front in this; I have to be careful.”

“All right, all right. So tell me, was he talking? The guy here says he was hurt.”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get close enough.”

“Did he have the disks? Maybe he had the disks.”

“I don’t know.”

Seymore felt himself losing it. Fuckups like this could cost him his ass.

“If anyone should know, it’s you , goddamnit. What the fuck are we paying you for?”

“They’re taking him to Canyon Country Hospital. Go fuck yourself.”

The line went dead.

Seymore didn’t have time to get pissed about it. He called Glen Howell.

Friday, 11:36 P.M.

Pearblossom, California

MIKKELSON AND DREYER

It was late when Mikkelson and Dreyer found Krupchek’s trailer, a thirty-foot Caravan split at the seams, waiting for them at the end of a paved road in Pearblossom, a farm community of fruit orchards and day workers in the low foothills at the base of the Antelope Valley. That was Mikkelson’s notion when they finally found the damned place, that it was waiting, wide, flat, and dusty, the way a desert toad waits for a bug.

Dreyer swiveled the passenger-side floodlight and lit up the place. Somewhere under the dust, it was pale blue going to rust.

Dreyer, more cautious by nature, said, “You think we should wait for Palmdale?”

Mikkelson, anxious to get inside, said, “Why’d we go to the trouble of getting the warrant, if we’re gonna wait? We don’t have to wait. Leave the light.”