Джеймс Паттерсон - The Midwife Murders

A few minutes later track 17 begins discharging passengers. Estimated count? Fifty people. I push my way into the crowd and scan for Willie. The crowd thins down, and I don’t see him. I do what any normal mother would do: I panic and picture myself sobbing to Big Lucy that “I should never have listened to you! I should never have let him take the train alone!”

So maybe this is not my lucky day at all. I walk toward the train. I’m about to panic, but I know that in thirty seconds, if there’s no Willie, I’ll start yelling at everyone in sight. Then …

“Hey, Mom,” comes the familiar shout.

Thank you, God. I’ll be a good person from now on.

I turn to my left, the direction of Willie’s voice. He is standing in the doorway of one of the train cars.

Behind him is a very pretty girl of about seventeen. Her black hair is tied in a ponytail. She wears a white T-shirt with the logo of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and her smile is beautiful and broad. She is holding Willie’s hand. With her free hand she pulls a wheelie suitcase.

Willie breaks away from the girl when he sees me. We hug and kiss and exchange the usual: “How was the trip?” “Good. I had a tuna sandwich.” “How was the time with Grandma?” “Great. Uncle Cab and I played more Call of Duty. I always won.”

And then Willie says, “This is my friend Diane. I was in the bathroom, and she helped me.”

“Were you sick?” I ask.

“No, I was stuck,” says Willie.

Diane, whose voice is as sweet as her face, explains, “I was leaving the train just now, and I heard this little voice coming from somewhere I couldn’t quite place.”

“It was me,” offers Willie.

“It was coming from the bathroom. I guess Willie might have done something with the lock,” she says.

“You always tell me to lock the door, Mom, in a public place,” Willie says.

Diane says, “Your mom is absolutely right. Anyway, we found a conductor, and he had this little doodad that unlocked it, and here we are. A little late but present and accounted for.”

“Diane is the only person I talked to on the train except for the man who sold me the sandwich and a Kiwi Strawberry Snapple.”

“Willie’s a good boy, Ms. Ryuan,” Diane says. “You’ve got him well trained.”

I ask Diane if she lives in New York.

“Bed-Stuy, in Brooklyn,” she says. “Right near you.”

“I told her we live in Crown Heights,” says Willie.

“I’ll treat us all to a cab,” I say.

Diane goes through the proper “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”

Willie goes through the predictable “Oh, come on, of course you can.”

And I say the obvious “I insist.” Then I order an Uber.

I look at the screen on my phone, and the price is so high that I can’t help but say, “My God. They want ninety dollars!”

“Surge pricing,” the ever-smart Willie says.

“Why don’t we just take the number 3 train to the Kingston stop?” says Diane. “We can get it just downstairs.”

“Awesome,” says Willie.

I tell our new friend Diane that Willie is the only kid in New York who prefers the subway to a taxi.

“I sort of agree,” she says. “The subway’s the fastest … if it’s on time.”

“And that’s a big if,” I say. Then I add, “I suppose we have to go back upstairs to the big station area for the subway entrance.”

Immediately Willie says, “No. Look. There’s the number 2 train.” He points to a sign that indicates where the 2 and 3 trains stop.

“Go left at the short passageway next to the Auntie Anne’s Pretzels,” Diane says. “It’s faster. As long as we don’t stop for a pretzel.”

“I can’t make any promises,” says Willie.

The tunnel bears right. It seems to become a little darker. Two teenage guys pass us, obviously in a hurry. The tunnel has very few people in it, and ahead of us is a sign that says DOWNTOWN, WALL STREET, BROOKLYN. We head toward that sign. On our left is an open metal door. I wouldn’t notice that door except for the loud groaning coming from inside.

Diane speaks, her voice full of urgency, “Oh, my God. It looks like somebody’s hurt.” She stops. All three of us walk through the door into what appears to be a small storage room. A man, possibly a homeless person, is lying on the ground. To my surprise Diane yells, “Fuck, man. This guy is bleeding.”

Did she just say fuck ?

The door slams. The lights flicker. Then Willie yells, “Mom. No lights.” And immediately a deep hard pain spins across the front of my head.

“Mom!” I hear. I fall on top of the homeless man, who squirms out from beneath me.

“Somebody got the kid?” the man shouts.

I hear Diane’s voice. “I got the boy.” The front of my head is throbbing. Blood drips into my right eye and nose. My eye burns. I taste the blood. Then the room is flooded with light.

The homeless man doesn’t look very homeless anymore. He is standing. He’s a big guy—football-lineman-size. He wears a crisp white shirt and black pants.

Then I see Diane. She has an intense hammerlock on Willie.

“Let go of him,” I shout.

Willie struggles. He’s a tough, wiry little guy, but he is, after all, just a little guy.

“Let go,” I yell, but then the big asshole grabs me tight around my waist with one arm. With his other hand he turns my purse upside down and empties its contents onto the floor.

“Pick up the wallet and give it to me,” the man says, and now I see that he is holding a very small pistol against my ribs. For all I know it’s really a toy, but I’m not about to test that theory.

He loosens his grip on me and I bend down but with the gun still jammed against me. I lift my fake-alligator wallet—stuffed with credit cards and coupons and photos and notes and, of course, two hundred dollars fresh from the ATM machine—and I hand it to him.

“Give me those pills,” the guy says. He’s pointing to two CVS prescription bottles. One is a bottle of Lexapro, an antidepressant that every other person in New York City takes. The other is Lipitor, an anticholesterol medication.

“These won’t do any good for you,” I say about the Lipitor.

“Give me the goddamn pills. We’re not a team, you and me.” He pulls the necklace from my neck—a cheap yellow Murano glass bauble on a five-dollar chain. Then he shouts, “Go.”

Diane lets Willie out of her grip. The door opens and closes within seconds. The room is plunged into almost complete darkness.

Willie and I hug each other. I cry a little. Willie doesn’t.

I say, “Are you okay?”

Then he says, “Are you okay?”

How can we possibly be okay, but of course we both tell each other that we’re fine.

I yank out my cell phone from my jeans pocket. I call Blumenthal.

“I think these people may have something to do with Orlov,” I tell him.

Of course he thinks I’m wrong. “Listen, Lucy. I’m not trying to play down the fact that you were in danger, and your son was in danger, and … but anyway, what happened to you has been going on for a few weeks at Penn and Grand Central and Port Authority. These muggings. They get a kid, and then they hijack the kid, and if the kid is traveling with a woman, they … you get it.”

Willie opens the door to the unlighted room, the room where he and I were just mugged. Three officers immediately crowd their way in. Two of them have their guns drawn.

I speak into the phone. “The cavalry is here,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Blumenthal. “I notified them about a minute ago.”

“Can I ask what you all are doing about these ‘Welcome to New York’ muggings?”

“All I can say is that we’re doing our best, Lucy,” Blumenthal says.