Gator A-Go-Go (3 page)

FORT MYERS

A
’73 Challenger sped away from City of Palms Park and made a hard left. Three baseballs rolled across the dashboard.

“What an excellent game!” said Serge.

Coleman unscrewed his flask. “What was the score?”

“Three.”

“I thought scores had two numbers, one for each team.”

“I don’t keep track of teams, just foul balls. My best game yet! And that was only seven innings. Imagine if I was allowed to stay for the rest, let alone back end of the doubleheader.”

“Those security guards were really mad.”

“Because of envy.”

“What about?”

“First, my foul ball collection. Second, I can outrun security. They
really
hate that. But it’s their own fault, not willing to leap from heights.”

“Maybe it was that last ball you got, diving over four rows into those people. It was raining popcorn.”

“It’s a
baseball
game. That’s what separates the sport from all others and makes it my favorite!”

“How so?”

“The entire stadium’s in play. Anyone who sits in the stands knows and assumes the risk: One second you’re munching a hot dog and hearing the magnificent crack of a Louisville Slugger, the next you’re hit with a frozen-rope line drive. Or me diving to catch it. Either way, you end up on a stretcher, covered in mustard. No better way to spend an afternoon.”

The Challenger slowed and circled a budget motel in the heart of downtown, walking-distance from the stadium. Litter, vacancy, lengths of fallen-down roof gutters stacked behind overgrown shrubs, rusty fence surrounding a drained swimming pool with a busted TV at the bottom. An unhinged sign dangled sideways by the office, saying they spoke French.

“We staying here?” asked Coleman.

“No.” Serge leaned over the steering wheel. “Another of my spring traditions.”

“What’s that?”

“Tourist protection. We’ve been getting a bad rap lately, because we deserve it. And I mean to fix that. Keep your eyes peeled for anyone wearing a Red Sox cap.”

“Why?”

“Because fans come down here for spring training, see magnificent tropical surroundings and think they can stay in just any ol’ budget motel. They don’t realize that wearing those baseball caps at certain accommodations is like stumbling through Central American guerilla strongholds with ‘Kidnap me’ signs on their backs.”

“But we stay at these kinds of motels.”

“Right,” said Serge. “We’re part of the problem.”

“I forgot about that.”

Serge rounded the back of the motel. “Oh my God! Shit’s on!”

BOSTON

The fifth-floor corner office had views of both the Hancock and the Prudential. Two computers running. Plus a small personal TV, which was against the rules.

Patrick McKenna had the biggest accounts. He decided to put in a couple hours on his day off, studying satellite photos from the Midwest. As the computer panned an image, his firm’s proprietary optical-recognition software tabulated parking lot occupancy and entered data on a spreadsheet. Large numbers for a Wednesday afternoon. Patrick closed the image and opened another, this one darker: Thursday, sunset. Numbers rang up again like a telethon tote board.

First impressions of Patrick McKenna were uniform: not impressed. Mainly it was his five-foot-six stature, but it was more. People told him he looked like Michael J. Fox with darker hair. Patrick had just turned forty-two, maintained his weight and was one of the few people at the company who placed his Rs in the correct parts of words. He disliked neckties, loud personalities and nonessential conversation. In fact, Patrick would have kept to himself entirely, except he was driven to support his family. He consciously forced himself to look others in the eye. He was a loner disguised as a people person.

As Patrick moved his mouse over the next satellite image, he wasn’t watching the computer. Because the Florida Marlins had the bases loaded on his personal TV.

A knock on the door.

Patrick hit the television’s remote. The channel changed to the second game of a Red Sox doubleheader.

His boss came in. He looked at the small TV, then Patrick. “Watching the Sox on company time?”

Patrick grinned sheepishly.

“Got the game on in my office, too,” said the supervisor. “One of these days I’m going to have to get to Fort Myers for spring training. Numbers?”

Patrick swiveled his chair toward the computer. “Solid. As long as they continue holding, but I’m sure they will.”

“Good. They’ve been calling.” The boss walked back to the doorway. “Think you’ll finish by tomorrow?”

“Today.”

“I’ll let them know.” The door closed.

Patrick tapped his keyboard through time: Friday morning, noon, evening, then three more Saturday images and four on Sunday. Sure enough, the numbers remained strong.

A spreadsheet filled. Patrick saved the file and attached it to an e-mail. He pressed the send button. “Western Indiana, hello, Big Mart!”

Then he opened another file. This time the computer superimposed a template with overhead images of vehicles, like World War II silhouette cards used to identify enemy and Allied aircraft. Except this program contained a database with more than ten thousand permutations of automotive make, model and year. Patrick had personally spearheaded the software’s development. The corner office followed. His company was DPX Technologies Inc. The initials didn’t stand for anything, but a consulting agency said
its
computer determined the letters were the combination that potential customers responded most favorably to, especially the X.

Aerial shapes on the computer flickered rapidly. With each positive match, a tiny car in the parking lot stopped flashing and turned red. Patrick watched the hits climb until they stopped at a record 81 percent recognition. “Yes!” He opened the next day’s image . . .

The Red Sox reached the seventh-inning stretch; local news filled the gap: “
Authorities received a break this morning in the case of a missing Boston freshman and released this security video from inside a local department store, where she can be seen leaving at three
P.M.
with two shopping bags . . .
”

“Shoot!” said Patrick, remembering his neglected Marlins game. He grabbed the remote to change the channel. He stopped and turned up the volume instead.

“
. . . A second surveillance camera picks her up outside as she loads the bags in the trunk of her Hyundai Sonata, which was found by police with the key still in the driver’s door. Unfortunately, the vehicle was at the edge of camera range, and the location of her abductor is just out of view. All we can see is the assailant’s arm . . .
”

Patrick sat intently through the rest of the report. When the Sox came back, he shuffled feet on the floor, wheeling his chair across the office to a second computer. He opened files from another client.

Ten minutes later, the door to a fifth-floor corner office opened. Patrick emerged into cubicle land. “We got a VCR machine around here?”

FORT MYERS

The Challenger sat clandestinely in the back of a budget motel parking lot.

“See that old guy with the cane and baseball cap?” asked Serge.

“Yeah,” said Coleman. “He’s talking to that dirtbag. So what?”

“This is how it always starts.” Serge shook his head. “They exploit the open friendliness of our fine visitors, who don’t realize Florida is still the Wild West.”

“What if he’s a nice dirtbag?” asked Coleman. “Most of my friends are.”

“You’re right,” said Serge. “Dirtbags are people, too. We’ll sit here and see what develops so I don’t jump to conclusions and barge in waving a gun like at that bridal shower.”

They sat.

Coleman turned an empty can upside down. “I’m out of beer.”

“Not now.” Serge leaned over the steering wheel. “Something’s happening.”

“What is it?”

“The old dude’s inviting that dirtbag into his room. This is the takedown. Roll!”

Serge ran across the parking lot and pressed himself against a wall.

Coleman came up behind. “Anything happening yet?”

“Don’t know.” Serge crept forward and placed an ear to the door.

“What do you hear?”

“Too quiet,” said Serge. “That’s a bad sign. We’re going in!”

Serge pulled a chrome .45 automatic from under his tropical shirt, took a step back and kicked the door open.

“Freeze, motherfucker. The nightmare is over. Serge is on the case!”

Two stunned men looked up from a small table, where they had been drinking soda and playing cards.

“I-I-I just got paid,” said the dirtbag, removing his wallet with a shaking hand. “You can have it all!”

The old man in the Red Sox cap removed a wristwatch. “It’s gold. Just don’t hurt us!”

“Hurt you?” said Serge. “I’m here to
protect
you.”

Speechless.

“What’s the matter?” asked Serge. “You don’t look so good.” He noticed their eyes on his gun.

“Oh,
that.
” He tucked it back in his pants. “Sorry for the misunderstanding. Think I’ve got the wrong room. Was looking for the one where someone had a huge knife at his throat. Enjoy your card game.”

Serge closed the door and headed back to the Challenger. “Shit!”

“What is it?” asked Coleman.

“Not sure, but I’m guessing I just made things worse image-wise.” Serge climbed in the car and sagged. “If only there was some way I could make it up, so he’ll forget all about the gun and go back to thinking Florida is fairyland.”

Serge stared at the center of the steering wheel in concentration. An index finger suddenly rose. “Got it!” He grabbed a baseball off the dashboard. “I’ll give him an authentic souvenir—this one was hit by David Ortiz, I think. Fuck it; I’ll just say it was. He’ll be so tickled to see me!”

“But I don’t think—”

Serge was already out of the car, running across the lot. Without breaking stride, he kicked the door in again and thrust the treasure over his head. “Have I got a surprise for you!”

Silence.

The ball bounced on the terrazzo floor, rolling through scattered playing cards and spilled soda cans.

Serge whipped the gun from under his shirt. “Don’t make any sudden moves. Now slowly, take the knife away from his throat.”

BOSTON

P
atrick’s face was practically against the computer screen when the knock came.

His boss walked in. “Usually when people want to see me, they come to
my
office.”

Patrick waved him over without looking up. “Check this out.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Know the missing freshman?”

“Of course. Been all over the news.”

Patrick spun his chair toward the TV.

“Where’d you get a VCR?”

“Barney had one.” Patrick hit play. “They’ve been running the surveillance tape every half hour.”

“I saw that thing. Chilling.”

“They actually recorded her being grabbed.”

“Can’t imagine what her parents are going through. What’s it got to do with us?”

Patrick switched the grainy, black-and-white footage to slo-mo. “Okay, this is it. She walks around to the driver’s door and gets out her keys . . .”

“Patrick, is everything all right?”

“. . . Keep watching. Here’s where the passenger door on the next car opens, and the guy grabs her and pulls her out of view.” He stopped the tape.

The boss waited a moment. “So?”

“Police caught a break. Or half of one. The edge of the surveillance camera’s perspective is right next to her vehicle. The only thing we see of the abductor is his arm. If the camera had been turned just a few degrees to the left . . .”

“That’s what everyone’s talking about,” said the boss. “Again, what’s it got to do with us?”

Patrick spun back to the computer and pulled up an image. “Remember the Kitchen and Linen account?”

“Yeah, it’s late.”

“I knew the shopping center on TV looked familiar.” He pushed his chair out to create room.

The boss leaned closer. “Don’t tell me a satellite got the kidnapping.”

“No. Odds would be astronomical.” Patrick tapped a spot on the screen. “But right here. The satellite pass was an hour before the time stamp on that surveillance video.”

“And?”

“Here’s her Sonata. Our software confirmed it. The vehicle next to hers is an ’05 Ford Ranger.” Patrick zoomed the image back and pointed at the top of the screen. “Shopping center’s right by this entrance ramp to the turnpike. That would be the logical getaway. Toll booth probably has a picture of the license plate.”

“What are you, Columbo now?”

“I know it’s a long shot. He could have left a different way. And the Ford might not even have anything to do with it. Maybe it was just in the same parking space and left before the kidnapper arrived.” He picked up the phone. “Still, if I was her parents, I’d want the police to know.”

FORT MYERS

Six
A.M.

A ’73 Dodge Challenger with a keyed driver’s door took an underpass to the east side of I-75.

Bulldozers and mounds of burned trees lay on one side of the road; a golf course was already in business on the other.

No traffic at this hour. The Challenger rolled through woods with F
OR
S
ALE
signs offering five hundred acres and up. Another bulldozed clearing. Then a dense thicket of identical houses and screened-in pools around a man-made pond. A fountain that sprayed during daylight was still.

Developer world.

Serge turned off the highway and wound through residential streets that weren’t on the map yet. Only one completed house for every dozen lots. In between, fire hydrants, concrete footers and new streetlights waiting to be wired into the power grid.

Someone was awake in one of the homes, reading a book upstairs. Others had cars in driveways. Serge studied each passing residence. Nothing he liked. The Challenger drove on. More isolated homesteads. More checkmarks in the negative column.

The Challenger reached the back of the future subdivision and rounded a broad cul-de-sac with surveyors’ stakes. Serge parked and studied the last house three lots up. No cars or other signs of life, but the porch light was on, which meant electricity, essential to his science project. A rolled-up garden hose hung from its cradle by the back fence. The mailbox: T
HOMPSON
.

Owner-occupied. Excellent.

Just one last thing. Serge got out of the car without closing the door and tiptoed to the mailbox. He opened it. Full.

Serge ran back, started the car and whipped up the driveway. “Coleman!” Shaking his pal’s shoulder with a hand holding a pistol.

“We’re here!”

Snoring.

“Wake up!” Serge jabbed him in the cheek with the gun.

A groggy Coleman startled. Another jab with the pistol. A loud groan. Coleman’s eye blinked and stared into the barrel of a huge gun. He grabbed his heart. “Thank God! I was having a nightmare I was out of dope.”

Thuds from the trunk.

Coleman found some potato chips in his pocket. “I wish they’d stop all that racket.”

“It will soon be peaceful in the jungle.” Serge aimed a rectangular plastic box at the house.

“What’s that?”

“Garage door opener.” Serge turned a knob.

“I didn’t know garage openers had dials. Or were that big.”

“Mine’s the only one.” More intricate twisting. “I bought a regular opener, extracted the gizzards and made a trip to my beloved RadioShack. Then I rebuilt the components inside a blank electronics box. All other openers have a button you temporarily press, so I soldered the power circuit to this on-off toggle switch, allowing continuous transmission. Also, openers only broadcast on a single, fixed frequency, which I bypassed with a variable gang capacitor attached to this dial, permitting me to tune it like a radio across the entire garage bandwidth.”

“Variable gang?”

“Long explanation.” The dial rotated farther. “But a childhood of building crystal radios put me in the kill zone.”

Crunch, crunch.
“The door isn’t opening.”
Crunch.

“What are you eating?”

“Potato chip pieces and lint.”

More careful tuning. “If my guess is correct . . .”

A quiet mechanical grinding in the night.

“It’s opening,” said Coleman. “It works.”

Serge grabbed his drugstore shopping bags and a broom. “Justice is afoot.”

The trunk lid popped open. Whining from two bound and gagged hostages.

“My manners,” said Serge, reaching over them for a small toolbox. “Forgot the formal introduction . . . Tourist-robbing motel dirt-bag, meet not-pulling-over-for-fire-truck horn-honking car-keyer, and vice versa . . . Eeny, meeny, miney, mo—which social goiter has to go?”

“What are you doing?” asked Coleman.

“Choosing.”

“Why not do both?”

“Want to save one for dessert. It’s like when fortune shined on me as a little kid and I found myself with two Reese’s peanut butter cups. I’d always hide one for later to make the magic last, but they always melted in my underwear.”

“That still happens to me.”

“. . . My . . . mother . . . said . . . to . . . pick . . . the . . . very . . . best . . . motherfucker . . . and . . . you . . . are . . . it! . . . Coleman, give me a hand with the dirtbag.”

After a forced gunpoint march, the would-be robber was flung down on cold cement. Serge flicked the toggle on his plastic box. The garage door lurched and cranked back down behind them.

“Coleman, hit that light switch on the wall.”

The hostage squinted in sudden brightness. Then puzzlement at the ensuing flurry of activity.

Serge dragged a ladder to the center of the garage, then climbed up with pliers and metal snippers. He stretched a tape measure along the lifting chain of the garage opener’s motor. Bending and cutting. Twisted links of broken chain bounced on the floor. He grabbed kite string in his teeth and flicked open a pocket knife . . .

Ten minutes later, Serge folded the ladder against a wall. He placed the broom on a workbench, sawed off the business end and carved a lengthwise groove down the shaft.

“Coleman, kill that light.”

In darkness, Serge raised the door again. He walked to the garage’s threshold, reached up and tore weather stripping off the bottom edge, then generously applied a ribbon of superglue. The truncated broom went in place, reinforced with duct tape. He knelt on the ground, unscrewing the back of his custom transmitter.

Coleman felt inside his other pocket and pulled out something round and tan. He tasted it. “What are you doing now?”

“Removing the nine-volt battery so I can wire my alternate power source.” He stood with the resulting configuration, left the garage and placed the automatic opener in the driveway. “I need your help. Grab that rope.”

Coleman threw a pebble over his shoulder. “What do you want me to do?”

“After I finish these knots, pull as hard as you can . . .”