"Don't tell me that."
"Mr. Landau—"
He ignored me, took Kenan by the arm. "But you paid," he said.
"You gave them an honest count? You didn't try to chisel them?"
"I paid, Yuri. They killed her anyway."
His shoulders sagged. "Why?" he demanded, not of us but of that dirty bastard God who took his wife.
"Why?"
I stepped in and said, "Mr. Landau, these are very dangerous men, vicious and unpredictable. They've killed at least two women in addition to Mrs. Khoury. As things stand, they haven't got the slightest intention of releasing your daughter alive. I'm afraid there's a strong possibility that she's already dead."
"No."
"If she's alive we have a chance. But you have to decide how you want to handle this."
"What do you mean?"
"You could call the police."
"They said no cops."
"Naturally they'd say that."
"The last thing I want is cops here, poking into my life. As soon as I come up with the ransom money they'll want to know where it came from. But if it gets my daughter back… What do you think? We have a better chance if we call the cops?"
"You might have a better chance of catching the men who took her."
"To hell with that. What about getting her back?"
She's dead, I thought, but told myself that I didn't know it, and that he didn't have to hear it. I said, "I don't think police involvement at this stage would increase the chance of recovering your daughter alive. I think it might have the opposite effect. If the cops come in and the kidnappers know about it, they'll cut their losses and run. And they won't leave the girl alive."
"So fuck the cops. We'll do it ourselves. Now what?"
"Now I have to make a phone call."
"Go ahead. Wait, I want to keep the line open. They called, I talked with him, I had a million questions and he hung up on me. 'Stay off the line. We'll get back to you.' Use my daughter's phone, it's through that door. Kids, on the phone all the time, you could never reach the house. I had that other thing, Call Waiting, drove everybody crazy. All the time clicking in your ear, telling this one to hold on, you have to take a call.
Terrible. I got rid of it, got her her own phone, she could stay on it all she wanted. God, take anything I got, just give her back to me!"
I CALLED TJ's beeper and punched in the number on the Landau girl's Snoopy figural phone. Snoopy and Michael Jackson both seemed to play key roles in her personal mythology, judging from the room's decor. I paced, waiting for my call, and found a family photo on the white enamel dressing table, Yuri and a dark-haired woman and a girl with dark hair that fell past her shoulders in cascading ringlets. Lucia looked to be about ten in the photo. Another photo showed her alone, older, and looked to have been taken last June at graduation. Her hair was shorter in the more recent photo and her face looked serious and mature for her years.
The phone rang. I picked it up and he said, "Yo, who wants TJ?"
"It's Matt," I said.
"Hey, my man! What's goin', Owen?"
"Serious business," I said. "It's an emergency, and I need your help."
"You got it."
"Can you get hold of the Kongs?"
"You mean right away? They sometimes hard to reach. Jimmy Hong got a beeper, but he don't always have it with him."
"See if you can get him and give him this number."
"Sure. That's it?"
"No," I said. "Do you remember the laundromat we went to last week?"
"Sure."
"Do you know how to get there?"
"R train to Forty-fifth, a block to Fifth Avenue, four, five blocks to the wishee-washee."
"I didn't realize you were paying attention."
"Shit," he said. "Man, I allus payin' attention. I's attentive."
"Not just resourceful?"
"Attentive an' resourceful."
"Can you get out there right away?"
"Right now? Or call the Kongs first?"
"Call them, then go. Are you near the subway?"
"Man, I always be near the subway. I talkin' to you on the phone the Kongs liberated, Forty-third an'
Eighth."
"Call me as soon as you get out there."
" 'Kay. Somethin' big goin' down, huh?"
"Very big," I said.
I LEFT the bedroom door open so that I could hear the phone if it rang and went back into the living room. Peter Khoury was at the window looking out at the ocean. We hadn't talked much on the drive, but he'd volunteered the information that he hadn't had a drink or a drug since the meeting I'd seen him at.
"So I got five days," he said.
"That's great."
"That's the party line, isn't it? One day or twenty years, you tell somebody your time and they tell you it's great. 'You're sober today and that's what counts.' Fucked if I know what counts anymore."
I went over to Kenan and Yuri and we talked. The bedroom phone didn't ring, but after perhaps fifteen minutes the one in the living room sounded and Yuri answered it. He said, "Yeah, this is Landau," and glanced significantly at me, then tossed his head to get the hair out of his eyes. "I want to talk to my daughter," he said. "You got to let me talk to my daughter."
I went over and he handed me the phone. I said, "I hope the girl's alive."
There was a silence, then, "Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm the best chance you've got of making a nice clean exchange, the girl for the money. But you'd better not hurt her, and if you're playing any games they better get called right now on account of rain.
Because she has to be alive and well for the deal to happen."
"Fuck this shit," he said. There was a pause and I thought he was going to say more, but he hung up.
I reported the conversation to Yuri and Kenan. Yuri was agitated, concerned that I was going to screw things up by taking a hard line.
Kenan told him I knew what I was doing. I wasn't sure he was right, but I was glad for the support.
"The important thing right now is to keep her alive," I said. "They have to know that they won't be able to rig the exchange on their terms, without even demonstrating that they've got a living hostage for us to ransom."
"But if you make them mad—"
"They're already madder than hatters. I know what you're saying, you don't want to give them an excuse to kill her, but they don't need an excuse. It's already on their agenda. They have to have a reason to keep her alive."
Kenan backed me up. "I did everything their way," he said.
"Everything they wanted. They sent her back—" He hesitated, and I finished the sentence mentally: "in pieces." But he hadn't shared that aspect of Francine's death with Yuri and didn't do so now. "— sent her back dead," he said.
"We're going to need cash," I said. "What do you have? What can you raise?"
"God, I don't know," he said. "Cash I got damn little of. Do the bastards want cocaine? I got fifteen kilos of slab ten minutes from here."
He looked at Kenan. "You want to buy it? Tell me what you want to pay me."
Kenan shook his head. "I'll lend you what I got in the safe, Yuri.
I'm in the bucket already waiting for a hash deal to fall apart. I fronted some money and I think it was a mistake."
"What kind of hash?"
"Out of Turkey via Cyprus. Opiated hash. What's the difference, it ain't gonna happen. I got maybe one hundred large in the safe. Time comes I'll run back to the house and get it. You're welcome to it."
"You know I'm good for it."
"Don't worry about it."
Landau blinked away tears, and when he tried to speak his voice was choked up. He could barely get the words out. He said, "Listen to this man. I hardly know him, this fucking Arab here, he's giving me a hundred thousand dollars." He took Kenan in his arms and hugged him, sobbing.
The phone rang in Lucia's room. I went to answer it.
TJ, calling from Brooklyn. "At the laundromat," he said. "What I do? Wait for some white dude to come in an' use the phone?"
"That's right. He should get there sooner or later. If you could park yourself at the restaurant across the street and keep an eye on the laundromat entrance—"