In the funeral home parking lot he’d told Falco about Harry being missing, the reason he’d met Warren Ganz’s mother. Falco agreed with Torres: wait a few days and get Missing Persons on it.
“But what about Dawn?” Raylan said. “You think she really is psychic?”
“I think sometimes, anyway.”
“What if she can tell me where Harry is?”
“You mean using her clairvoyance?”
“It wouldn’t be enough to get a warrant and take a look, would it? The word of a psychic?”
“You’d still have to show probable cause, get into all that. I’d talk to her though, why not.”
“You think, if Harry was kidnapped, Dawn could be involved in some way?”
Falco had stared at him over the roof of the car before saying, “You think she’s stupid?”
Raylan wasn’t sure that was an answer but let it go. He said, “You mentioned you put a wire on her, for the meeting with Ganz? I’d like to hear it.”
“Anytime you want.”
Dawn wasn’t at the restaurant and the hostess hadn’t seen her all day. She was there yesterday, and the day before; Dawn hadn’t said anything about taking time off. Raylan picked up one of her Certified Medium & Spiritualist cards and rubbed it between his fingers walking back to his car. It didn’t tell him anything.
He did have a feeling she wasn’t going to be home, and when he reached the house on Ramona saw he was right. No red car in the drive. He went up to knock on the door and looked at the sign as he waited, at DREAM INTERPRETATIONS, PAST-LIFE REGRESSIONS. Pay to get regressed back to a coal mine and breathe that dust again. Raylan walked around the house looking in windows cloudy with salt mist, careful not to get stuck by palmettos. He looked into dim, dismal rooms, at the old worn-out furniture, the sofa he’d sat in and felt the springs, at watermarks staining the wall where the picture of Jesus and the children hung, and wondered if it depressed her to walk in the house. She could be helping Ganz as a way to get out of there.
Raylan didn’t feel like hanging around. He got in the Jaguar and drove up to Manalapan with the idea of staking out Ganz’s house for a while, see if anyone came or left…
And saw it happening before he even got there, as he came past groomed oleander toward the wall of trash vegetation marking Ganz’s property, saw Bobby Deo’s Cadillac pop out of the drive and turn north. Two guys in the car.
Now Raylan had to make a decision quick: follow or, with them gone, see about getting in the house.
Chip watched Bobby’s Cadillac on the television screen until the car was through the shrubs along the drive and out of view. Finally. He’d been waiting all morning for them to leave so he could talk to Harry.
Trying to hurry them along didn’t work. “You want to get the show on the road-isn’t that what you told me?”
Louis said they’d leave when it was time to leave. Louis dragging his feet, Bobby taking half the morning to get dressed, Ganz smoking weed. This was before the guy in the hat showed up on the patio and spoke to Louis and Bobby. Ganz lit another joint, sucked it down listening to Louis say the man was a United States marshal, with the star, with the gun on his hip under his coat. Could see it when he took out his I.D. But mostly the man was a friend of Harry’s, the reason he came. Chip toking, Louis saying the man’s seen how it is now, who’s who, and won’t have a reason to come back. By the time Louis finished Chip was worry-free, zonked on the weed, able to ask deadpan, “A U.S. marshal? He ride in on a horse?” Louis grinned while Bobby sat there with a bug up his ass as usual. Chip thinking, even if it was the same guy who spoke to Dawn, so what?
Wait some more, finally one o’clock before Louis said it was time and they left, the program now back on track in spite of interruptions, shit happening, revising the timetable, his two helpers thinking they knew more than he did. Why argue? If they wanted to speed up the program, get it done, fine. Chip thinking, telling himself, Go with the flow, man. Saying, You cool? Yeah, you’re cool. He felt it, full of his old confidence, in control…
Pushed a button on the remote, to switch the picture from the front drive to the hostage room upstairs, and stared at the picture for several moments-at the cots, the chains on the floor, trash, boxes of snacks-before he realized, Christ, Harry wasn’t there.
Ganz came up out of the sofa.
The black guy had stood behind him the whole time while he cut the blindfold off with scissors, so Harry didn’t get a look at him. All he knew for sure, it was the same guy who’d said the other night, “We do some business. Just me and you.” Harry had thought at the time the guy was putting on a Bahamian accent so his voice wouldn’t be recognized. This time the guy said, “Go on in the bathroom and clean yourself up. Man, you smell ripe.” And Harry realized what the guy had was the trace of a Bahamian accent, maybe left over from when he was a kid. The guy stood close breathing on him, Saying, “There’s a toothbrush in there, a razor, I believe anything you need.” The guy who wanted to do some business being nice to him. Making a play, it sounded like, to cut out the other guys-Harry pretty sure now there were three of them. He said, “I can’t take a shower with these chains on.”
“Do the best you can,” the black guy said. “Take a whore bath. You know what that is?”
“Before you ever heard of it,” Harry said.
The guy handed him a bathing cap to use as a blindfold, with instructions when to put it on, didn’t say anything about doing business, and left. Harry washed up and shaved; next thing would be to talk the guy into a shower and promote some clean clothes. He looked around his cell for the first time, the room bigger than he’d thought; looked at the windows covered with plywood and shuffled over to see if he could work the sheet free, but it was nailed onto the window frame.
Later on, Harry was coming out of the bathroom when he heard the key turn in the lock. The door swung open. Harry saw the look on the guy’s face, a different guy…
What Chip saw was the blindfold gone, something else covering his hair that Harry reached up and stretched down over his eyes: a rubber bathing cap, white with a yellow flower design that Chip’s mother used to put on when she swam in the ocean, years and years ago. He could see her wearing it.
Harry raised his arms as though to protect himself, saying, “I didn’t see you, okay? Honest to God, I didn’t. The other guy said it was okay to take it off when I went to the bathroom or if I was alone, but cover my eyes if anybody came in. I swear I didn’t see you.”
Chip said, “But you saw the other guy.”
“No, I didn’t, he was behind me. He told me to put the bathing cap on-it’s tighter’n hell and hot. Pull it down over my eyes I can’t see a goddamn thing.”
Chip said, “He tell you what you have to do?” and watched Harry lower his arms before he spoke.
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t say anything about getting out of here?”
Harry hesitated again. “No. Was he suppose to?”
“Sit down.”
He watched Harry stoop to pick up the chain and shuffle to the cot, used to moving this way. When he was seated, Ganz walked over and sat down next to him.
“Have you decided?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What it’s worth to you to get out.”
“Name it,” Harry said. “Whatever you want, if I’ve got it.”
“How about three mil?”
“You kidding? I don’t have that kind of money.”
Chip said, “You sure?”
“I know how much I’ve got put away, about two and a half, two hundred fifty thousand plus some interest.”