The Trophy Wife (32 page)

“We had no choice,” Helen Restivo explained. “We could have gotten her killed and maybe caused serious problems for a very important bank.”

“So the former police commissioner of New York turns to you and your half-assed amateurs instead of the police. And then you guys run an investigation in my area without bothering to let me know.”

“Don't you see. If this had gotten out …”

“Oh, that's it,” the lieutenant interrupted. “Hogan figured a bunch of idiots breaking into office buildings, grabbing files without a court order, and interrogating innocent citizens would be more secure than a professional police force.”

“I didn't mean that!” Helen snapped.

“I don't give a damn what you meant,” Borelli screamed, “because you have to be too stupid to worry about. It's Andrew Hogan that pisses me off. He's a pro and he ought to know better. All I'm going to do with you is toss you in the lockup and then wait for Hogan to come and claim you.”

“Dammit, do whatever you want with me.” Helen was on her feet leaning across the desk. “But get your people out on the street. This lady is only a couple of blocks from here and she's going to get killed unless we find her.”

Borelli's eyes blazed into hers and then dropped slowly to Helen's hands, which were resting on his desk. He noticed the space where two of her fingers used to be. Helen followed the state trooper's focus and instinctively pulled back the wounded hand. “I lost them making an arrest,” she said as she settled back into her chair. “I used to be a cop.”

His expression changed from anger to a curious respect. ‘Tell me again about this lady,” he said.

Helen had been making slow, workmanlike progress. She had gotten the photographs—license-type mug shots—from friends in the New York City Police Department who had processed the fingerprints from the van. She had made photocopies, which were even less detailed that the originals, and had her people show them around the neighborhood of the house they had visited. She had gone to the local police to enlist their help.

Her problems had begun when the local police, who were ill equipped to investigate anything more than a lost dog, contacted the troopers for help. Borelli didn't like learning about felonies a week after they had been committed. Next, the business manager of the Urban Shelter had called the police to ask who authorized the search of his records. No one that Borelli could tell him about! Then, minutes later, one of her people had buttonholed a derelict in a doorway and shown him the photo of Rita. The derelict turned out to be a trooper who was on a surveillance assignment. Now Helen was about to be jailed in the local state police barracks and troopers were combing the neighborhood looking for the rest of her operatives.

“You should have come to me right from the start. Day one! The first time you heard about a kidnapping. Then we could have given you a hand. Now what am I supposed to do? Give you a hand breaking into some other offices? You want my help in hassling a few more private citizens?”

“There were very important reasons why we couldn't involve police …”

“More important than doing things legally,” Borelli interrupted.

Helen slumped down in defeat. Lieutenant Borelli had all the questions and she didn't have any decent answers. Of course they should have gone to the police. Certainly they should have gotten search warrants. There was no acceptable explanation for apprehending citizens and trampling all over their rights.

“Lieutenant,” she said softly, “take all the time you want to kick my ass around here. But we probably have only a few hours to save this lady … if she's not dead already.”

For the first time since she had been brought into his office, the trooper seemed sympathetic.

“Those two photos,” Helen continued, pointing to the copies that the troopers had taken from her, “are the people who are holding her. The lady owns the van that the victim was dumped into. The man is the one who drove it to the mall to pick up the ransom. They used to live three streets from here. We figure they're still in the neighborhood.”

Borelli lifted the pictures from his desk. “These aren't very good.

“They're not even accurate,” she told him. “The guy we chased through the parking lot didn't have a moustache. And the lady is a con artist. She probably has as many looks as she has names.” Then she added, “The problem is that they're all we have.”

Borelli picked up his phone and dialed an extension. “Get in touch with the photo lab,” he ordered. “We're going to need a rush job. Super rush.”

“My people?” Helen mouthed softly.

He nodded and then said into the phone, “And tell our cars to leave the freelancers alone for the time being. We can use all the help we can get.”

He disconnected and then dialed another number. “Where's my call to Andrew Hogan?” he barked. Then his lips curled in disgust. “Of course he's not in his office. It's Saturday. Maybe you ought to try his house.” There was another pause and then Borelli's eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Well now, you ought to be able to find his address. You're a detective, aren't you.” He slammed the phone down, embarrassed that a fellow officer had witnessed the exchange.

Helen stood up long enough to write Andrew's cell phone number on Borelli's desk pad. “You can get him here,” she said, and then added, “thanks for giving me another chance.”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “But it's the lady's chances that I'm worried about.”

* * *

“Payback time!” Mike announced from the top of the stairs. He closed the door behind him and came down the basement steps slowly. “Your old man decided to keep his money and give you away instead. So, I guess you owe me fifty thousand big ones. How are you figurin' on working it off?” He was chuckling in anticipation of the terrified eyes that would greet him.

“No problem,” Emily's voice fired back. “It'll only take a few seconds to give you all you can handle.”

He stopped in midstride. The sneer disappeared from his curled lips. He bent down so that he could see into the room and make certain that she was still shackled to the bed. “Saucy little bitch,” he said, striving to recapture his usual bravado. “I'm goin' to take my time with you.”

Emily laughed. “Take your time? Little boys like you don't know how to take their time. You better hurry before you lose it all down your leg.”

His contemptuous cool melted in a blaze of anger. “Keep up the lip, lady. You're gonna get it good!”

“You're all talk, sonny. You haven't got anything!”

His face went red, his eyes narrowing to slits. “You shut your fuckin' mouth.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Is it over already? I hope it was good for you.”

Mike screamed like a soldier leaping out of a trench. He flung himself on Emily, one hand on her throat, the other ripping at the top of her nightgown. His teeth flashed like sabers as they went for her breast.

Emily pulled a wooden rung out of the sprung headboard and whipped it like a forehand smash across the back of his head.

“Ahhh!” Mike's face came up from her body just in time to see Emily's two-handed backhand. It hit him squarely under the right eye. He tumbled backward from on top of her and had to grab the corner of the mattress to keep from rolling onto the floor.

Emily pulled her knees up and fired a kick into his throat,
launching him over the back of the bed. She jumped up, part of the headboard still chained between her hands. Mike was still rolling on the floor, trying to get his balance while at the same instant trying to stem the flow of blood from his face. She raised her arms and shattered the headboard remnants across his back. Her swing had been awkward and she had not struck solidly. But it was enough to knock him flat on the floor. Emily ran around him and bolted for the stairs.

“You're dead meat,” his agonized voice screamed behind her. She stole a glance back as she reached the steps. Mike had recovered to all fours and had already begun stumbling after her. When she was at the middle of the stairs, she heard him reach the first step. He was gaining, but that didn't matter. All she had to do was reach the door and close it in his face. Then she would have all the head start she needed.

Her hand was on the knob, twisting and pushing. But the door was heavy; a metal-covered fire door mandated by an obsolete building code. It moved slowly. Emily threw her weight against it and began squeezing through the opening as it widened. She was halfway through when Mike's hand caught the hem of her gown.

For an instant, they hung in balance. One more step and she would be able to throw her weight against the back of the door. Then, if she could just close the bolt, she could leave him holding the gown from the other side. But Emily couldn't plant the one more step that she needed. She was still in the space between the door and the jamb, and a fraction of an inch at a time she was being pulled backward.

She turned abruptly and punched with her fist, smashing her fingers against the top of his head. She slashed with the chain that hung from her wrist. She tried to kick, but the twisted gown bound her legs. And then Mike's other hand got a grip on her hair. Her fingers slipped off the doorknob.

She spun around and saw the rage in Mike's bloody face. And then she was flying. She was lifted off her feet and tossed like a rag doll down the well of the stairs. She hit two steps from the bottom and then she flipped forward, crashing against the painted cement floor.

“I'll kill you,” Mike screamed as he charged down the stairs toward her. He twisted his fingers through her hair and dragged her to her feet. Emily slashed her fingernails across his face. He howled and then cracked a short, tight punch to the point of her chin. She felt her body go limp and tasted the nausea that she vaguely remembered from the drug. Then her world went black and vanished.

She had no sense of lost time. There was just his voice, which seemed to be echoing from the distance, screaming obscenities. But he couldn't be at a distance. She could feel his body pressing down on hers. His fingers were locked around her jaw, shaking her face from side to side. Light began to come back into her eyes and there was his face, soft and out of focus, yet distorted and grotesque.

She tried to push him off, but her arms wouldn't respond. She knew he was on top of her, his weight pinning her down. But that wasn't what suddenly terrified her. It was that her arms and shoulders had no feeling. They seemed disconnected from her brain. She thought she was paralyzed. “Oh God,” she managed to gasp.

“You like it, don't ya! Tell me how much you like it, bitch.”

Feeling was coming back into her body. She could feel a tingling in her fingertips.

He shook her face violently. “Tell me you like it!”

Then she realized what was happening. She was in the bed, her legs splayed apart, and he was pressing down between them. The nightgown was bunched up under her chin. She was being raped. “You love it, don't ya, bitch. It's what you've been wanting since you laid eyes on me.”

Emily began to laugh.

He was ridiculous, trying to look suave when his eye was black and the side of his face was a smear of clown's rouge. His bouncing made him look more like some sort of dashboard ornament than like a lover writhing in passion.

He stopped moving when he heard laughter. “Tell me you like it!” he screamed into her face.

“I can do better by myself,” Emily taunted.

His eyes went insane. “Oh yeah!” He bounded off her and nearly tripped over the trousers that were down across his knees. She was still laughing at the comedy he was creating as he pulled up his pants. “I'll take that fuckin' smile off your face.”

When he turned back to her, Emily saw the flash of the blade that sprung out of his hand. Then he was behind her, twisting her face to one side. He pressed down on her temple with the heel of his hand, driving her head into the mattress. There was an instant when the blade felt ice cold. And then, miraculously, it turned white hot. A warm ooze flooded across her cheek and into the corner of her mouth. She tasted her own blood.

“Let's see you do that by yourself,” he hissed. “Let's see what your old man thinks when he gets this in the mail.”

Her hand moved. She reached up to touch her face and realized she couldn't find the top of her ear. The overpowering sickness came back and she drifted back into the peaceful blackness.

Angela bent over the wash basin, combing the brunette coloring through her blonde hair. Then she stood up straight and laughed out loud at the image peering through the steamed-up mirror. Even she couldn't be sure who she was.

As soon as Walter had left, she had gone into action. She spent a good part of the afternoon erasing all her computer records, reformatting her disks over the files, and then erasing every record from her hard drive. Next she cleaned her file drawers, feeding the pages into a portable shredder and then dumping the shreds into a garbage bag.

She packed carefully, selecting only essential clothes that would fit into one small overnight travel bag along with her jewelry box. The designer knockoffs and fashionable casuals that hung in her closet got only a brief, nostalgic glance. She could replace them with designer originals if she wanted.

Next, she had taken the scissors to her hair, raising the length up from her shoulders to her ears and thinning out the top. And then she had applied the hair coloring, working it
down to the roots and rinsing it until the water in the wash basin ran clear. The results were hysterical. Her perfect face seemed suddenly too wide and the color of her eyes no longer seemed appropriate. Nothing worked with the wild hair that stood out from her scalp like fire-scorched grass.

Angela attacked with a curling brush and her hair dryer until she had a neat, if casually offbeat coiffeur. The new color, combined with an entirely different makeup palette, gave her a vastly different appearance. Walter could pass her in the bank lobby and would probably walk on for a few more steps before he made the connection. Andrew Hogan's Keystone Kops, who had met her only briefly, wouldn't recognize her at all.