Man of Wax (26 page)

In the past three years they’d never had any vital information about a player until they’d already exited the game. At that time the entire operation shut down. As far as Carver could tell, those players had been random selections from the pool of American society—at least from the selections they’d come in contact with; there was no doubt in his mind the same operations happened in other countries around the world.
 

The first was Ronny Kersic, forty-three years old, who’d driven tractor-trailers for a living. His wife and two children lived in Maryland. He’d woken up in a shed just outside of Zapata, Texas, a few miles from the Mexican border. A small black cell phone just like the one that had been shipped to me was waiting beside him when he opened his eyes.
 

The second was David Resh, thirty-nine, who had worked as a bartender at a place in Georgia. He’d woken up near the train tracks in Sarles, North Dakota. Unlike Ronny, whose wife and two daughters had been held captive to ensure he did everything Simon said, it was David’s wife and girlfriend both who’d been taken. His wife was thirty-seven. His girlfriend, a server at the bar, was twenty-three. In his game he’d been listed as the Man of Unfaithfulness.
 

The third was Bronson Lam, twenty-three, a high school dropout who’d been supporting himself and his family by selling drugs in the city of Canton, Ohio. He’d found himself one morning in Porthill, Idaho, near the Canadian border. When Simon contacted him, Bronson learned his parents had been taken.
 

Drew Price had just turned forty, worked as a plumber in Queens, and had woken up in Kenton, Oklahoma. His girlfriend and four-year-old son had been taken.
 

Larry Vaughn was thirty-two, a farmer in Missouri who had lost his wife and three kids to Simon’s game. On the weekends he liked to go to the racetrack and would watch the stock cars speed around and had, at one time, even envisioned himself becoming a professional driver.
 

Carver had intervened in all their lives. Had learned everything he could about them and helped them understand there was no outlet to the game. As far as he and the Kid could determine, nobody had ever pulled the strings for them to be chosen. They’d simply been Americans doing the American thing, which was trying to live day by day, and then all at once that was gone. Everything was gone.
 

“But even though you wanted to go on,” Ronny said, “Carver had the Kid check you out.”
 

The Kid brought up a lot of information—where I’d gone to school, where I worked, where my wife worked, where she’d gone to school. The Kid crosschecked that information. He crosschecked again. And again. For the longest time nothing came. But Carver told him to keep at it, that someone was definitely pulling strings. And so the Kid continued, his computers working furiously to find a connection. One finally came.
 

Howard Abele’s name appeared more than once during the search. The Kid learned that for the past couple years my family was being watched. Howard Abele had hired a company that in most major sectors did not even exist to break in and install visual and audio recording devices around the house. In the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. The bedrooms and even the bathrooms.
 

Once the Kid was able to establish the connection, he started looking into Howard Abele. Ran everything he could. Learned about all the properties he’d bought and sold in the past forty years. Learned about all the companies he had stock in. The man was worth close to one hundred million dollars and had been doing well for most of his life. Until just recently. In the past three months the Kid found that a sizable amount had been depleted from his accounts. What was close to ninety-five million dollars. That money had seemingly disappeared, supposedly transferred to an account that the Kid quickly found did not exist ... anymore.
 

“So you’re not one hundred percent sure he’s really involved,” I said. The initial shock of hearing we’d been watched for the past few years had already begun to wear off—especially after what I’d been living through the past week.
 

Ronny shook his head. “Not one hundred percent. But come on, Ben, use your head here.”
 

“But ... why?”
 

Except I knew why, or at least I could suspect—and for some reason the fact that I hadn’t seen this coming was the ultimate blow, the thing that kept digging its nails into my heart and soul.
 

I said, “Do you know anything about a person named Caesar?”
 

Ronny frowned at me, shook his head.
 

“Do you think Carver would know?”
 

“I doubt it. Everything he knows he tells us. None of us keep secrets from each other.”
 

“Fifteen more minutes,” Larry said, merging now onto 41.
 

Beside me, Ronny began checking his weapons. So did Drew up front. Ronny reached back and grabbed a rifle and then glanced at me, asked if I had a preference in firearms.
 

The question was ridiculous—I had never fired a gun once in my life—but the world Ronny and the rest of these men lived in was a different world from my own. In their world, they probably carried weapons with them everywhere they went.
 

It hit me a second later that their world was now my own.
 

I shook my head and pulled the small revolver from the glove compartment out of my pocket and held it up.
 

“I have this.”
 

I didn’t want to tell him I intended to use it to kill Howard Abele.
 

Ronny took the gun, opened the cylinder. Pulled out the bullets, slid them back in.
 

“Huh,” he said.
 

“Huh?” I took back the gun. “What does that mean?”
 

We arrived to Howard Abele’s mansion ten minutes later.

48

Howard Abele’s mansion—the place Jen had once lived as a girl, what seemed a thousand years ago—was located on the western side of Highland Park. It was clustered around a number of other houses that strived to be mansions themselves but came up short. The reason for this, Jen had told me the first time I visited the mansion, was because her father owned nearly three hundred acres of the land which the houses rested upon, and he wanted to make sure his home was the biggest. Jen had claimed it made her popular in elementary and middle school, since the kids would want to visit the mansion, but come high school the kids grew up and understood just what kind of man Howard Abele truly was and took their irritation out on her.
 

There was a black wrought iron fence, about seven feet high, which ran the entire perimeter of the property. Along the side of the street near the edge of the property was where Carver and Bronson and David were waiting in a sedan.
 

We parked behind them and got out and I realized that everyone was wearing black except me. Carver shook my hand and thanked me for coming back.
 

“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” I said.
 

“But you did have a choice, and I think you made the right one. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it.”
 

He reached into his pocket and withdrew Jen’s wedding ring. I’d asked him to keep it safe when Simon told me to bring only the cell phone and nothing else to Navy Pier. I took the ring from him and squeezed it in my hand and closed my eyes and did everything I could at that moment not to cry.
 

“Thank you,” I whispered.
 

He nodded. “Do you remember the mansion’s layout?”
 

From what I remembered, the stone-sided mansion was only three stories, but had close to forty rooms. The ceilings on the first floor were almost twelve feet high. Priceless paintings and black and white photographs had marked the flawless walls, just as antique vases and crystals adorned the occasional table in hallways and rooms. It had appeared as if Howard Abele had spared no expense to ensure that everyone who stepped foot inside the front door—and everyone who drove past—knew that he was a very wealthy and powerful man.
 

I told this all to Carver and his men, and they listened carefully and then nodded when I was done. It was close to three-thirty in the morning and besides the lights along the drive and the porch, which probably always stayed on, only a few other lights were on inside the first and second floors of the mansion. Somehow it contrasted greatly with the rest of the houses in the area, which were all dark and quiet with sleep.
 

“Also,” I said, “do you know anything about Caesar?”
 

“Who?”
 

I explained what my one-eyed escort had said, his little slip up.
 

Carver said, “Interesting.”
 

Ronny retrieved the bundled T-shirt from its place on the SUV’s roof. I took it from him and opened it up and placed the glasses on my face. They were freezing but at least I could see again.
 

Which meant the rest of the viewers could see again too.
 

At this thought I purposely tilted my head down to the ground.
 

Carver stepped close to me and whispered in my ear, “You sure you want to do it this way?”
 

I thought about all the years we’d been in our house on Cherry Oak Lane, the times Jen and I had made love in our bed, the times Casey had fallen asleep on my chest while I watched TV. The times I’d snuck away to the den and shut the door, certain that it was me and only me.
 

I nodded. “There is no other way.”
 

“Then let’s do it.”
 

Carver and I started walking toward the entrance gate, leaving the others behind to take up their positions around the property. We still weren’t one hundred percent certain Howard was in the house. We still weren’t even certain if there was anybody else in there either.
 

The gate was standing open. Normally to open it you needed to punch in a combination on a keypad. I thought about the first and only time I’d come here with Jen, how she’d punched those numbers in without even looking. She’d been talking to me as she did it, telling me not to be nervous, that her parents were going to love me.
 

I kept my focus on the house as we walked down the drive. The mansion was becoming larger with each step. Carver kept pace beside me. He was carrying two guns, I was carrying one, but for some reason I still didn’t feel safe.
 

The front door opened before we even stepped up onto the marble porch. It was tall and massive and made of oak and it swung inward. Both Carver and I stopped at once. Carver already had one of his guns out before I even considered reaching for mine.
 

A woman stood in the doorway. She was small and she was thin and she smiled a smile that was not at all pleasant.
 

“Please,” she said, “put away the guns. You don’t need them.”
 

Neither of us moved. Neither of us said a word.
 

“It’s cold,” the woman said. “Please, come inside. Mr. Abele’s been expecting you.”

49

The woman introduced herself as Olivia Kemp. She said she was Mr. Abele’s nurse. She looked to be about fifty. Her dark hair was turning gray and she had it pulled up in a bun. It made me think of the woman from Hickory View, only I didn’t consider this woman here now an innocent.
 

She shut the heavy door behind us. The rush of the wind outside stopped immediately, only continued to bat invisible fists against the windows.
 

Olivia Kemp asked, “Would you like some coffee or something else to drink?”
 

I said, “Just tell us where he is.”
 

She led us down a hallway toward the back of the mansion. There was no carpet, only wooden floors, and her heels clicked and echoed. Carver took up the end and I kept glancing back at him. He hadn’t put his gun away. For some reason, this didn’t seem to surprise or worry Howard Abele’s nurse.
 

Thinking of this, I asked, “You said you’re his nurse, right?”
 

Without turning back, without even shifting her head, she said she was.
 

“Why does he need a nurse?”
 

She didn’t answer.
 

We continued walking, turning one corner, turning another. I was trying to remember the rooms I’d seen before, the leather chair I’d sat in while waiting for Howard Abele the first time I met him. I’d never seen Jen’s bedroom upstairs, had no idea what had become of it.
 

“What happened to this place?” I asked, because something had dawned on me. The paintings and photographs on the walls, the vases and crystals on the tables, they were all gone. Nothing marked the walls now, nothing filled up the empty corners of the hallways.
 

Either Olivia Kemp didn’t hear me this time or she chose to ignore the question. She just continued walking, her back to us.
 

I glanced back at Carver. He still had his gun out, looking everywhere around him as he walked.
 

Finally the woman stopped in front of a door. She opened it. Stepped back and motioned us to enter.
 

“No,” Carver said. “You first.”
 

There was mostly darkness beyond the door. I say mostly darkness because there was some light in there too, very faint. Also there was noise, what sounded like low and monotonic beeping.
 

And, though I couldn’t be certain, what sounded like a faint echo of Carver’s voice.