Joseph Finder - Power Play

I was sent to solitary, informed that I would be brought up on charges of assault and battery. I'd be tried as an adult. Instead of getting out when I was seventeen, I wouldn't see the outside world until long after my twenty-first birthday-if, that is, I even survived.

And that was when a second remarkable thing happened: a posthumous gift from Pee Wee, his final clever move.

The lockdown wasn't even an hour old when someone found the note he'd left for me.

A few nights, pinned against the wall of his room, he'd found himself staring at the red pinpoint of light on the surveillance camera. Glover sometimes forgot to turn it off.

For Pee Wee it was simple to break into the D Unit command center, where the tapes were recorded and stored, where there was equipment to make copies. He'd sent tapes to the Division of Youth Services, the local newspapers, the local TV station. Smuggling out had been even easier, for him, than smuggling in.

That evening, I stood on my bed and watched through the tiny square of wire-reinforced glass as two police cruisers and one TV van pulled up the long driveway. Twenty minutes later, a couple of handcuffed figures emerged in the glare of the xenon arc TV spotlights. One was a gray-haired man with rimless glasses and a perfectly pressed shirt. The other was Glover, almost unrecognizable, unable to walk. He was carried by three policemen.

Wayne came in with a mop and a bucket full of suds. The two frightened cleaning girls-Bulgarians who'd come here for the summer to work-dutifully mopped up the blood. Russell had ordered them to the front, and Travis had untied their restraints, and at first they'd stood there shaking and weeping, probably thinking that they were next. Russell pointed out a dark red blood splatter on the rug and told them to clean that up, too. As if he didn't want to leave the place a mess when all this was over.

By now the hostages had settled down into a dazed, terror-stricken stupor, almost a trance state. No one spoke. No one even whispered. Ali was crying softly, and Cheryl stared grimly into space.

"What do you want us to do with the bodies?" Wayne asked in an unexpectedly soft voice, as he and Travis lifted Grogan.

"Take 'em out in the woods," Russell said. "Maybe the grizzlies will eat 'em."

Travis glanced furiously at his brother but said nothing.

Russell reached down, took Danziger's arms, and tried to pull the body up-I guess he was going to attempt a sort of fireman's carry-but then suddenly let go. Danziger's body slid to the floor while Russell wiped his hands on his pant legs: There was blood everywhere.

Then he grabbed Danziger's ankles and dragged him across the floor.

It left a long red smear.

At the threshold of the room he stopped. "Was my lesson clear enough?" he said.

No one answered.

Only one of the kidnappers remained in the room now: Buck, the one with the black hair and goatee. He sat slumped in his chair, looking pensive. His.44 Magnum lay on his right thigh, his right hand on top of it.

The manager was crying silently. He was lost in grief and shock, along with so many others in the room.

Cheryl was the first to speak. "Someone told him," she whispered.

Silence.

"Was it you, Kevin?" she asked softly.

"How dare you-" Bross erupted, spittle flying.

"He could have gotten it out of Danziger himself," I said. "That's the point of all these 'interviews'-playing us off against each other."

Lummis was gasping for breath, wincing, his face deep red.

"Hugo, for God's sake, what is it?" said Barlow.

"I'll be-fine," Lummis gasped. "Just-need to-to try to calm down."

Buck looked up, stared for a few seconds, then seemed to lose interest. Muffled, angry voices came from the next room: Russell and his brother, I guessed, arguing in the screened porch.

I cleared my throat, and the manager looked up at me with redrimmed eyes.

"We need to get help," I said.

He blinked away tears but said nothing.

It was obvious, to me at least, that cooperating with Russell and his guys would only get us killed. We had to contact someone, anyone, in the outside world. Even if no one else would do anything, at least I would.

"Where do you keep your sat phone?"

It took him a few seconds to respond. Clumsily, he tried to wipe the tears from each eye with the backs of his bound hands. He looked hollow. "My office," he whispered. "But that crazy guy-Verne?-asked me about it and made me give him my office key."

"That's not the phone that Russell was using, was it?"

He shook his head. "Mine's an older model. He just must have taken mine so no one else could use it."

"Your office-you keep it locked?"

He nodded. "But they took the key, I told you-"

"I understand. What happens if you misplace your key?"

"You mean, do I hide a spare somewhere?" He nodded. "Under the base of the lamp on the legal bookcase outside my office door. An old skeleton key. Opens every damned door in this old place-real high-security, huh? But I told you, he took the sat phone."

"That's all right. There's other ways."

Ali, watching us talk, said: "The Internet."

"Right. They obviously haven't cut the line if they're planning on using it to do the wire transfer."

"Landry, you see that guy in the front of the room? There's like five guys with guns out there. You've really lost it."

I looked toward the window.

Two silhouetted figures in the silvery moonlight struggled with a body, moving in the direction of the forest.

"But Russell-"

"I have a feeling that Russell told his brother he was only going to put a scare into Danziger and Grogan. Not bullets in their heads. As long as we can hear them arguing, we can count on them being distracted in the screened porch."

"And this guy?" She glanced at Buck.

I explained.

"Are you out of your mind?" she said.

You lost your mind?" Dad said.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Trying to rip me off? You didn't really think you could get away with it, did you?"

Suddenly he had the crook of his arm around my neck and was squeezing hard. I could smell his Old Spice, his boozy breath.

"Hey!" I felt the blood rush to my head, bright spots swimming. "Cut it out!"

"We can do this the hard way or the easy way. Up to you. Which it gonna be?"

I tried to pry his arm loose, but he was much stronger. I was thirteen, tall and scrawny. Everything was bleaching out.

On the bulging muscle of his upper arm, the Marine Corps tattoo: an eagle, a globe, an anchor, a circle of stars, "USMC" in Old English lettering. I noticed the imperfections, the fuzzy lines, the blotches of green-black ink.

"You know how easy I could break your neck?"

"Let go!"

"Either you're gonna give me back the fifty bucks, or I'm gonna break your neck. Which it gonna be?"

I'd taken the money from the cigar box in his dresser to buy a bus ticket and get the hell out of the house. A cousin was at college in Bellingham, Washington. I figured the fifty dollars would get me at least halfway across the country, and I'd beg or borrow or steal the rest. Once I showed up at Rick's apartment, he wasn't going to turn me away. The worst thing was leaving Mom alone there with Dad, unprotected, but I'd pretty much given up on her. I'd begged her to leave, and she wouldn't. She wouldn't let me say anything to Dad. "Just stay out of it, sweetie," she'd said. "Please, just stay out of it."

Finally, I gasped, "All right!"

Dad loosed his grip, and I sank to the floor.

He held out his hand, and I fished the crumpled bills from the back pocket of my jeans. Tossed the wad onto the wall-to-wall carpet.

He smiled in triumph. "Didn't I teach you nothing? What kind of pussy are you, can't defend yourself?"