“Why don’t we sit down,” I said and Gennaro just nodded, but didn’t really move. It was as if he was in a trance and needed someone to give him even the most rudimentary cues so he’d know what to do with himself. So I said, “Why don’t we sit down on one of the nine sofas?”
Gennaro nodded again and made his way toward an L-shaped taupe sofa that was positioned so that it faced out toward the sea. He dropped into the corner of the L, like he was being punished, and just stared out the window. I pulled a chair up and sat across from him and motioned for Sam to join me, which meant he had to pull himself away from the Utopias, which he’d just discovered.
“So,” I said, once Sam was beside me, “tell me your problem.”
Gennaro reached into his pocket, pulled out an iPhone and handed it to me. “Two days ago,” Gennaro said, “I received that message in my e-mail.”
The e-mail contained a link to a Web site, which when opened began running a surveillance video of Maria Ottone and her young daughter, Liz. For about twenty seconds, it just watched them sleeping in what looked to be a stateroom on a boat. It then cut to a shot of them eating lunch, another of them sunning themselves on the deck, their daughter playing with a Barbie, and again it cut to a shot of Maria showering, the focus getting closer and closer on Maria’s face until you could see the small freckles along her jawline, the fine skin on her cheekbones, the flick of her tongue when a long piece of her hair found the corner of her mouth. It then began running other clips, just a few seconds of the mundane, enough to let whom-ever was watching know that they were observing Maria and Liz at every single moment.
“Where is your wife?” I said. The images were still flitting past. There was no sound on the video. Just the images in silence, which somehow made them all the more disturbing.
“She’s on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic,” he said.
“Whose boat?”
“Her boat. Our boat. One of the family’s boats. She’s on her way from Italy to here. She hates to fly.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her?”
“Thirty minutes ago.”
“And she’s fine?”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ve done everything they’ve asked.” His eyes were getting red again.
Crying women make me uncomfortable. Crying children make me feel self-conscious. Crying men make me want to shower with my clothes on.
“How did they contact you?”
“Two, three minutes after I logged onto the Web site, the phone began ringing. I didn’t pick it up right away, because I didn’t know what I was looking at. I mean, that’s my wife. That’s my daughter. I couldn’t put it together.”
“I understand,” I said.
“So it could have been five, ten minutes later that I finally picked up. I don’t know how many times they called.”
“Was it a man or a woman on the phone?”
“I couldn’t tell,” he said. “The voice sounded strange. Like that guy in the wheelchair.”
“Ironside?” Sam said.
“The scientist. The smart guy.”
“Stephen Hawking?” I said.
“Like that. Like it was coming through a computer.”
It used to be that only the most sophisticated governments had access to spy technology, but today anyone with a decent laptop and access to an Office Max can employ entry-level spy craft. The entire Cuban Missile Crisis could have been averted today using Google. Any twelve-year-old can download voice-changing software for free on the Internet. The difference now is not the technology, but about how savvy you are in using it.
“Hold that thought,” I said to Gennaro. I turned to Sam. “You trace this Web site?”
“It’s a pro job,” Sam said. “Registered through a company in Qatar to Neil Diamond.”
“He’ll be easy to find.”
“His Web site says he’s doing ten sold-out nights in Las Vegas. I could be there in five hours, grab him during ‘Sweet Caroline.’ ”
“He might be a patsy. What else?”
“They used open-source software on the design, so there’s no technology fingerprint on it. It’s a secure site, so only following the embedded link here will get you to it. The video is on a continuous loop. Gene here says they’ve been adding new stuff to it every day.”
“Any way to hack into the code and see who else is viewing it? Get an IP number or a country code? Anything?”
“I already poked around, but the encryption is first-rate,” Sam said. “We’re working with experts here.”
“You have someone you could show it to?” I asked. Sam always has someone he can show things to. He collects people and favors like lint.
“I’ll talk to a buddy of mine.”
I turned back to Gennaro. “Okay,” I said. “How much do they want?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“They said if I didn’t lose the Hurricane Cup, they’d kill Maria and Liz.”
4
Provided you’re not a serial killer, sociopath or pederast, if you’re in the business of kidnapping people, it’s usually for one of three reasons:
You want money.
You have political, religious and/or world-domination plans.
You are out for revenge.
In Mexico, kidnappings are up 30 percent since the drug dealers have had a loss of revenue recently because of a saturated market, so they’ve started to diversify into other business opportunities. The advantage of kidnapping someone is that there’s very little competition. You want someone, you just take them.
The only legit reason you’d fix a sporting event would be for monetary gain-not even Raiders fans would kidnap a woman and a child to ensure victory, so it didn’t stand to reason that the millionaires who wagered on the yacht races would be willing to be criminally fervent.
You kidnap a member of the Ottone family, you want something, even if you say you want nothing.
“Tell me exactly what they said,” I said to Gennaro.
“They told me that they had my wife and daughter, that they were on the boat with them, watching them, and that if I followed the rules, nothing would happen. If I pulled out of the race, or won it, they’d kill them both. All I had to do was lose the Hurricane Cup and no one would be the wiser.”
“So then you should lose the Hurricane Cup,” I said. “And you should put your expatriate tax dollars to work and call the FBI.”
“It’s not that simple,” Gennaro said. He got up from the sofa abruptly, opened the sliding glass door and stepped out to the terrace, where he stood with his back to Sam and me while he looked out over the ocean. His hair was whipped by swirling winds-on the fortieth floor, you can’t really expect it all to be perfect, can you? — and I could also see that his polo shirt was rippling against his skin. It just didn’t look all that pleasant out there. So I didn’t get up.
“You gonna go out there, Mikey?”
“He’s the second person to get up from me in the middle of a conversation today.”
“Sounds like your mother had good reason,” Sam said.
“Really?”
“You know what they say in the SEALs,” Sam said. “A cup of sugar is easier to swallow than a cup of anthrax.”
“I don’t recall hearing that.”
“Maybe it was a cup of dimethylmercury. Anyway, sentiment here is the rule of the day.”
“I shouldn’t have to interrogate our own clients, Sam.”
“Rich people aren’t like you and me, Mikey. They like to be served. Makes them remember what it was like having serfs.”
“Fine,” I said. “But if he gets dramatic on me again, I’m leaving.” Sam and I walked outside and stood on either side of Gennaro, in case he decided to jump, or in case I decided to throw him off. He turned and looked at us both with what could only be described as dispassion, as if we were somehow ruining his moment.
“Gene, why don’t you tell Mikey about your mitigating circumstances?”
Mitigating circumstances never sounded like good news. Invariably, it was the sort of thing that meant I was going to get shot at.