“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth, I swear.”
“I don’t know, Jack.…”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“Well, Jack, we’ll just see about that. This is gonna cost you.”
“What do you mean?”
“One hundred grand. Call it a penalty price.”
“For what?”
“Never you fucking mind. You want the kid alive? It’s gonna cost you one hundred grand now. That’s in—”
“Now hold on a second.” Coldren cleared his throat. Trying to gain some footing, some degree of control.
“Jack?”
“Yes?”
“You interrupt me again and I’m going to stick your kid’s dick in a vise.”
Silence.
“You get the money ready, Jack. One hundred grand. I’ll call you back and let you know what to do. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t fuck up, Jack. I enjoy hurting people.”
The brief silence was shattered by a sharp, sudden scream, a scream that jangled nerve endings and raised hackles. Myron’s hand tightened on the receiver.
The phone disconnected. Then a dial tone. Then nothing.
Linda Coldren took him off the speaker. “What are we going to do?”
“Call the FBI,” Myron said.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I think it’s your best move.”
Jack Coldren said something in the background. Linda came back on the line. “Absolutely not. We just want to pay the ransom and get our son back.”
No point in arguing with them. “Sit tight. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Myron disconnected the call and dialed another number. Lisa at New York Bell. She’d been a contact of theirs since the days he and Win had worked for the government.
“A Caller ID came up with a number in Philadelphia,” he said. “Can you find an address for me?”
“No problem,” Lisa said.
He gave her the number. People who watch too much television think this sort of thing takes a long time. Not anymore. Traces are instantaneous now. No “keep him on a little longer” or any of that stuff. The same is true when it comes to finding the location of a phone number. Any operator almost anywhere can plug the number into her computer or use one of those reverse directories, and whammo. Heck, you don’t even need an operator. Computer programs on CD-ROM and Web sites did the same thing.
“It’s a pay phone,” she said.
Not good news, but not unexpected either. “Do you know where?”
“The Grand Mercado Mall in Bala-Cynwyd.”
“A mall?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Where in the mall?”
“I have no idea. You think they list it ‘between Sears and Victoria’s Secret’?”
This made no sense. A mall? The kidnapper had dragged Chad Coldren to a mall and made him scream into a phone?
“Thanks, Lisa.”
He hung up and turned back toward the porch. Win was standing directly behind him. His arms were folded, his body, as always, completely relaxed.
“The kidnapper called,” Myron said.
“So I overheard.”
“I could use your help tracking this down.”
“No,” Win said.
“This isn’t about your mother, Win.”
Win’s face did not change, but something happened to his eyes. “Careful” was all he said.
Myron shook his head. “I have to go. Please make my excuses.”
“You came here to recruit clients,” Win said. “You claimed earlier that you agreed to help the Coldrens in the hopes of representing them.”
“So?”
“So you are excruciatingly close to landing the world’s top golf protégé. Reason dictates that you stay.”
“I can’t.”
Win unfolded his arms, shook his head.
“Will you do one thing for me? To let me know if I’m wasting time or not?”
Win remained still.
“You know how I told you about Chad using his ATM card?”
“Yes.”
“Get me the security videotape of the transaction,” he said. “It may tell me if this whole thing is just a hoax on Chad’s part.”
Win turned back to the porch. “I’ll see you at the house tonight.”
8
Myron parked at the mall and checked his watch. Seven forty-five. It had been a very long day and it was still relatively early. He entered through a Macy’s and immediately located one of those big table blueprints of the mall. Public telephones were marked with blue locators. Eleven altogether. Two at the south entrance downstairs. Two at the north entrance upstairs. Seven at the food court.
Malls were the great American geographical equalizer. Between shiny anchor stores and beneath excessively floodlit ceilings, Kansas equaled California, New Jersey equaled Nevada. No place was truly more Americana. Some of the stores inside might be different, but not by much. Athlete’s Foot or Foot Locker, Rite Aid or CVS, Williams-Sonoma or Pottery Barn, the Gap or Banana Republic or Old Navy (all, coincidentally, owned by the same people), Waldenbooks or B. Dalton, several anonymous shoe stores, a Radio Shack, a Victoria’s Secret, an art gallery with Gorman, McKnight, and Behrens, a museum store of some kind, two record stores—all wrapped up in some Orwellian, sleek-chrome neo-Roman Forum with chintzy fountains and overstated marble and dentist-office sculptures and unmanned information booths and fake ferns.
In front of a store selling electric organs and pianos sat an employee dressed in an ill-fitting navy suit and a sailor’s cap. He played “Muskrat Love” on an organ. Myron was tempted to ask him where Tenille was, but he refrained. Too obvious. Organ stores in malls. Who goes to the mall to buy an organ?
He hurried past the Limited or the Unlimited or the Severely Challenged or something like that. Then Jeans Plus or Jeans Minus or Shirts Only or Pants Only or Tank Top City or something like that. They all looked pretty much the same. They all employed lots of skinny, bored teenagers who stocked shelves with the enthusiasm of a eunuch at an orgy.
There were lots of high school kids draped about—just hanging, man—and looking very, er, rad. At the risk of sounding like a reverse racist, all the white boys looked the same to him. Baggie shorts. White T-shirts. Unlaced black hundred-dollar high-top sneakers. Baseball cap pulled low with the brim worked into a nifty curve, covering a summer buzzcut. Thin. Lanky. Long-limbed. Pale as a Goya portrait, even in the summer. Poor posture. Eyes that never looked directly at another human being. Uncomfortable eyes. Slightly scared eyes.