I weigh the possibilities and listen, counting the cars and people as they pass. Not many. If I slouched down, I could sleep on the bench and no one would bother me. No one would likely see me.
I return to the street and look left, then right, getting my bearings. The road is a cut-through, one that people take when jumping between the two main roads. Maybe on her way here, or on her way back, someone she knew—her husband or a friend—saw her walking and stopped. Offered her a ride. Opened the trap door they would later push her down.
I quicken my steps, aware that the sun is starting to sink in the sky. I don’t want to drive in the dark, not with my bad eyes. I make it back to her street and am passing the neighbor’s house when I detour back up the front steps and try her door once more. This time, it opens immediately and I’m met by a birdlike woman with white hair and darting, suspicious eyes. “Yes?” She keeps the door half-closed, so I can see only the edge of her face. Behind her, there are stacks of boxes and papers, and the faint odor of cat urine hits my nose.
“I’m Leonard Thompson, formerly of the LAPD.” I take off my hat, which Marcella used to say makes me look nicer.
“Formerly?” She squeaks when she speaks.
“I’m retired, but I was a close friend of your neighbor’s, Mrs.Smith.”
“Are you here about my call?” She edges the door a hair wider and pops her head out, craning her neck to look around me and at the street. “Where are the others? Are they coming?”
“What call?” I step back so that she can get a better look.
“The call about the boy,” she snaps and steps onto the porch and pulls the door tight behind her. She’s wearing a LeBron jersey and green pajama pants, and I try not to stare at her feet, which are bare, with toenails so long they curl into ringlets at the ends. She points toward Lillian’s house. “The teenager. Two men came and took him, just a few hours ago. I’ve called three times about this.”
“Took him?” I repeat cautiously, and I’m not entirely surprised that no one has shown up yet. According to Gersh, she called 911 forty-three times last year, to report litterers, dogs off leashes, seat-belt violations, suspicious characters, and the belief that her next-door neighbors were selling drugs. They weren’t. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that two guys went around to the back of the house and, five minutes later, walked out with him and put him in the back seat of their car. And he was scared. I could see from here, the way he was walking, like if he moved wrong, they were going to hurt him.” She nods, her arms crossing over her chest, and I believe her.
“What can you tell me about the men? Do you remember what they were wearing?”
She smiles, and if she could have cackled, she would have. “I can do better than that. I took a picture.”
Rosa Bertawich took six photos, and all of them are worthless, save one, which shows the vehicle that the two men and Jacob got into: a white Nissan Altima with black tinted windows. The smaller of the two men took the driver’s seat, while the other got in the back seat, with the teenager. Rosa was right to be concerned. Even in the still frames of a photo, you can see that Jacob is in trouble, his posture stiff, his face pale and afraid. I have her text the photos to me and step out on her porch to call Gersh.
CHAPTER 68
LILLIAN
They sit Mike down at the computer and point at the keyboard and mouse and wait. Silence falls and it feels like everyone is holding their breath, staring at him, waiting on him. For what?
“Make the transfer.” This is not Aerosmith or Tank Top; this is a new man, dressed in a nice white golf shirt and pleated shorts. He looks like a businessman: an expensive watch on his wrist, straight white teeth, and a clean-shaven face with a fresh haircut. Subtract the extra forty pounds he’s carrying, and he could be a menswear model, posed by a smiling child, someone I would trust to give me directions or accept an offer from to fix my flat tire. My judgment is off, because he appears to be in charge, and Mike is obeying him as if he were holding a gun to his head, which he isn’t.
“I can’t.” Mike’s hands are on the keyboard, but they aren’t moving, and the look that he sends Jacob’s way terrifies me. It’s apologetic, like Mike can’t get them out of this, like this is the end. But that can’t be right, because Mike always has contingency plans, always. Even if we don’t have the insurance money yet, surely our 401(k)s, our home equity, the balances in his whole-life policy—surely there’s enough there to buy him some time, to give him a week or two to come up with more. And we know people. Sam would pitch in, and Mike has otherfriends, rich friends, who would loan some money if it meant saving Jacob’s and Mike’s lives.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” The businessman leans over Mike and stares at the screen. “That’s the account, right there. So move it.”
“I don’t know the private key. I have the address, but not the key.”
The man’s grip on Mike’s shoulder tightens and my husband winces. “Who has the key?”
Mike closes his eyes and exhales. I’ve never seen him like this. My husband is always in control, always confident. It’s annoying, the consistency of his self-assuredness—but now I want it back. I want his cocky, smug look, his know-it-all tone, his condescending overexplanation of concepts that are dumbed down to an elementary level. I want that Mike back and this one gone. “I’m trying to find the key now.”
Aerosmith brings another chair out, and the businessman sits in front of Mike and leans his elbow on the table. “Explain this to me, Mike.”
Yes,I beg.Please, explain this to us.
“I couldn’t store the key in a digital wallet, or anything connected to the web, due to security risks or potential government seizure. The safest place to put it was old-school—pen and paper, which was a storage system that I’ve used for Colorado since we first moved to Bitcoin.”
There is complete silence as Mike pauses, and if he expects a nod and murmur of understanding, he doesn’t get it. “I also needed something portable that could be easily moved in case of emergency. Something that could be protected in an instance of fire or flooding.” He glances at Jacob, who looks like he’s going to be sick. “So I hid the key in a box with a bottle of liquor, and stored it in a safe in our pantry.”
Oh no.
“The liquor had sentimental value, and we’d planned to open and drink it on our twentieth wedding anniversary—”
The man in the golf shirt cuts in. “Get to the point.”