[2017] It Happened at Two in the Morning Read online

  “Where are we?”

  “I think it’s a potting shed,” she says.

  He struggles to an upright sitting position to feel for the wall. It’s two feet away, and it’s stone. He reaches overhead. His sensation of inadequate headspace is confirmed. Then he feels beneath him. “This is a hose.”

  “Brilliant,” she says.

  “But this shed’s not a potting shed,” he points out politely. “A potting shed would be made out of wood.”

  “You really give a shit? It’s a cage. For us, it’s a tiny stone cage.”

  “There’s a door behind you; you’ve tried it?”

  “No,” she says. “I’ve just been sitting here stupidly for an hour waiting for you to wake up.”

  “Would you mind if I try?” He’s still trying to be as gracious as possible in the circumstances.

  “Be my guest,” she says, edging out of the way.

  Steel construction, no give whatever. He sinks back into his coiled nest.

  “They stole my wallet and cards,” she says. “Even took my BlackBerry.”

  “Mine too,” he says, trying to sound caring.

  “I had a lot of private stuff on that.”

  “Hmm,” he says, mind now fully on an appraisal of their prison. Obviously too low to stand up in. If it were empty, enough room to lie down in and spread his arms and legs—but it’s not empty. Besides the girl, there’s that hose and a rake. No immediate use for either presents itself.

  He twists around. A narrow slot near the top of the wall behind him appears to be their one source of light and air.

  The girl has become strangely quiet.

  While struggling to take off his jacket, he says, “I saw you waving to Robbie Riles.”

  “And?”

  “So you know him?”

  “He’s my father.”

  “Ah,” he says.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, of course, that might explain what we’re doing in here.”

  “You’re thinking kidnapping,” she says.

  “I’m thinking that’s the most likely explanation, yes.”

  “And you’re just what?” she says. “The innocent bystander? Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

  “Tom Weldon.”

  “Doesn’t really tell me that much.”

  “There are other clues,” he says. “Like I’m wearing a suit, having worked until two o’clock in the morning.”

  “So you’re a lawyer.”

  “Got it in one.”

  “Coming from Eleventh Avenue?”

  “We just moved there,” he says, then reflects on the irony of his still using the first-person plural pronoun with regard to that firm. “The far west of Manhattan is the new frontier.”

  “Bad place to be at two in the morning.”

  “As it happens, I’d say, yeah.”

  She says, “Did you see what happened?”

  “To your dad? Sorry. Didn’t.”

  Silence.

  He says, “You have any idea who they are?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Well, whoever,” he says. “They’ll just want the money.”

  “No doubt.”

  “They obviously don’t want to kill us,” he says. “They could have done it by now. Curious, though. Why they just left us here.”

  He looks around again. “Don’t you think it’s odd?” he says. “Two men go to all this trouble, grabbing us, commandeering a taxi, taking us all the way out here, wherever this is, sticking us in this shed, and then not bothering to tie us up? Indeed, why the hell did they leave us with anything else in here—even a garden rake?”

  “‘Indeed?’ You talk like that all the time?”

  “Yeah. I’m a lawyer. Let’s try the rake.”

  “Where? In that slot behind you?”

  “Where else?” he says, wedging it in there.

  He struggles with it for a few seconds.

  “What’s happening?” she asks.

  “Not very much.”

  “Try slamming it, then.”

  “Okay,” he says skeptically.

  “Try it!”

  Pushing back against the coiled hose to get the maximum leverage, he thrusts the rake like a spear, bashing the steel end against the top of the wall.

  “And?” she says.

  “I think something—a stone—came loose.”

  “No fucking way!” she says excitedly.

  “Way, indeed,” he says, prying it looser with his hand.

  “Hit it again!”

  He does. Two stones fall outward and let in a flash of sun.

  They stare at the light. Then Tom starts frantically smashing the rake head to the wall until more stones come loose.

  “Let me have your jacket,” she commands.

  He shuffles it to her, and she drapes it over the opening. Pushing her head through, she thrusts her shoulders at the wall, and the whole thing gives way. Hastily they clear the stones and scramble over them.

  “Fucking out of there!” she exclaims, bounding to her feet.

  Achingly, he rises next to her.

  It’s the middle of the day, sun high in the heavens. They find themselves in a dirt yard of what was once a large farmhouse. All that’s left now of house, barn, and outer buildings are charred ends of timber and ashes. Barren fields stretch seemingly for miles. A well, fifty feet off, is enclosed by a stand of birches.

  “Insurance fire,” Tom says.

  “How do you know?”

  “Just has that look. This place was once prosperous.”

  “I gotta pee,” she says. “There’s no privacy.”

  “Behind the trees,” he suggests.

  “Not much privacy there!”

  “I won’t look.”

  “I can trust you?”

  “You have a choice?”

  “No, you bastard,” and she storms off.

  He laughs and turns his back on her.

  THREE

  The Acting District Attorney, Mike Skillan, has the perpetual scowl of someone expecting the worst. He’s a large, square man in his early fifties, with good bones in a fleshy face. His cheap haircut, close on the sides, leaves a clump of black hair on the top flopping over a wide forehead. He wears a white shirt, rep tie, cordovan shoes, over-the-calf socks, and the pants to a very good suit, bought during his life in private practice. The suit jacket is draped over the back of his desk chair.

  In an arc of chairs confronting his desk sit several high-ranking members of his office, including the redheaded, squirrel-nosed chief deputy, Joe Cunningham, who is invited to start things off. “Has all the markings of a slam dunk,” Joe says.

  “Or a frame,” notes Mike.

  “Her gun,” Joe points out.

  “In her apartment. Left there. Conveniently.”

  “In the bottom of a garbage bag,” Joe says. “She ran. Something spooked her. Before she could throw it out. But there’s more here, Mike.”

  “Bet there is.”

  “First, the relationship, father, daughter? Stormy,” says Joe. “Page Six. Yet she’s still the heir, heiress. Which is pretty good motivation. And the second thing … I’ll let Foster do this.”

  Eyes on Foster Donachetti, head of the trial division, narrow face, hooked nose, saturnine and svelte. A former partner of Mike’s, he’s a man of many suits, made in London, with a perfect gray, double-breasted pinstripe chosen for the day. He says, “The gun wasn’t registered, wasn’t legal.”

  “Even less reason, then, to believe it was hers,” Mike says.

  “Except,” Foster says, in an argument-ending tone, “we have the guy who sold it to her. Victor Contrares, gun merchant to the stars.”

  “Really?” Mike says, still thinking something’s amiss.

  “Singing very prettily is our Victor.”

  “How’d we find him, connect him?”

  “He found us,” Foster says. “Walked right in. This morning.”

  “Said he supplied?
”

  “That was the proffer,” Foster says. “Of course, he’s lawyered up.”

  “Why’d he come in at all?”

  “We would have had him, he says. He could hear footsteps.”

  “I don’t know,” says Mike, not persuaded. “Whatta they want?”

  “Immunity. Transactional only. Fair deal. Which we gave him.”

  Mike frowns but nods. “Corroboration?”

  “Phone records. Three calls, her to him.”

  Mike sits back. “Okay, book her,” he says.

  “She’s gone,” says Joe. “Of course she’s in flight. More confirmation.”

  “So find her.”

  “Obviously, the cops are looking, tristate, PA, elsewhere. Big alert.”

  The door swings open. Sammy Riegert, works for Donachetti. “You should hear this. Cops got a call. Young woman, her boyfriend’s missing. Guy named Thomas Weldon. Called her from work at two in the morning, said he’d be right home. Never showed. Work for him was Forty-Ninth and Eleventh. We’re guessing he walked right into the shooting.”

  “You don’t guess, Sammy. Whatta you got?”

  “Phone records. Fourteen calls between Weldon and Elena Riles last two months.”

  Chorus of whistles.

  “Okay,” Mike says. “We want both of them. Him as a material. Anything else?”

  FOUR

  Julian Althus stands uncomfortably behind the desk in Robbie Riles’s old office. Seated before him is the Riles Whitney outside counsel, Harrison Stith.

  “I realize, Harry, it’s the corporation you represent, not me personally.”

  “That’s true,” Stith says. “But until a conflict arises….”

  “And it might never, you’re saying.”

  “Quite probably never.”

  “Given a confluence of interests,” says Julian. “The company’s, mine.”

  “Such a … confluence,” says Harry, “is more likely than not, I think.”

  Julian laughs. “Always liked you, Harry.”

  “Thank you, Julian. Fully reciprocated, I’m sure.”

  “Shall we go for a walk?”

  Without further invitation, Julian makes for the door. Harry, much like a loyal dachshund, jumps up and follows.

  In Central Park, Julian strolls briskly toward the underpass to the Sixty-Fifth Street transverse. Harry keeps pace, which isn’t easy for him. Though both men are of an age, Harry’s pre-dinner routine features martinis, whereas Julian frequents a gym. He’s a tall man with an athletic step, a high smooth brow, and light straight hair blown every which way in the wind.

  “You don’t mind this, do you, Harry? Getting out in the air? Little exercise?”

  “Delightful,” says Harry.

  “At a thousand an hour, or whatever it is you fellows now bill?”

  “Worth every penny.”

  “So what are the steps?” Julian asks.

  “To the accession?” Harry says, already huffing and puffing. “Well, of course, it’s not automatic. Requires board action. Appointment of a nominating committee. Then their nominations for the post. Not necessarily for a full slate, just CEO. But one would expect others now to tender their resignations to give the new CEO—you, if that’s the result—flexibility. So, as a practical matter, it will be a new slate.”

  “And the election of the nominating committee?”

  “Usual way. Wouldn’t be inappropriate for you to put forth some names.”

  “Safe names.”

  “Naturally,” Harry says.

  “No one would be surprised by this?”

  “Only by the opposite.”

  “And Elena?” Julian asks. “The sole heir to his controlling interest?”

  “The cops think she did it.”

  “Yes, that’s already leaked, hasn’t it? Somehow I find that inconceivable.”

  “Hmm,” says Harry. His sources have told him something even more surprising, if that’s even possible, about his associate Tom Weldon. But there’s no point, he concludes, sharing that with Julian now.

  They stroll for a while in silence.

  Finally, Stith says, “Are we walking back as well?”

  “Why, Harry? You’ve reached the point of no return?”

  “We are getting rather far away.”

  “You’re hoping, maybe, for a limousine waiting on Seventy-Second Street?”

  “Is there?” Harry asks.

  “No limo,” Julian says, upping the pace considerably.

  Harry stops. Julian then does too and smiles sympathetically. “Not in shape?”

  Harry, breathing hard, says, “Why in the world did we have to come out here for this conversation anyway?”

  “Because, Harry, the air out here isn’t bugged.”

  FIVE

  At an abandoned farmhouse, Tom and Elena stop to look at the sign. It’s the third such farm they’ve come to, each with the same placard, placed by the same bank with the same message. In effect it says, Want this property? We’ve foreclosed on the mortgage. You can buy it at auction.

  “Colonial Bank,” Tom says. “That’s one of yours, right?”

  “Not mine,” Elena says indignantly.

  “Well, your dad’s.”

  “The firm he works for,” she says.

  “Rather the other way around, isn’t it?”

  “What’re you, giving me grief?” she says, staring up at him, her hair all frizzled and in disarray. “I’m starving, dying of thirst, drop-dead tired, and you’re picking a fight? I did not drive these people from their homes. And how do you know so much about it, anyway?”

  “The law firm I worked for? Represents Riles Whitney.”

  “So you’re the guys who foreclosed on all these farms we just passed.”

  “No,” he says. “That’s done locally. The original strategy—get these farmers in over their heads, then steal their land—that sort of thing’s hatched in New York.”

  “By my dad, you’re saying.”

  “Actually, I doubt it. CEO might have to approve such a plan, but it’s not likely he conceived it.”

  “You don’t really know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Probably right,” he says.

  She turns toward the house. “Let’s go in. Maybe there’s some food. At least water. And maybe the phone works.”

  But the doors, front and back, are locked.

  “So?” he says, not liking it. “Break a window?”

  “You’ve never done that?”

  Tom finds a rock in the weeds, walks back up to the front porch, smashes a window. They both pause to examine what he has wrought.

  “Yeah, okay,” she says, “if you clean it off, so we don’t slice ourselves up getting in.”

  He unlocks and raises the window, swipes his jacket at the windowsill, then they both climb inside. They’re in the dining room, still furnished, with a dusty old table, chairs, breakfront, all sitting in stale air. The living room is tiny, with ratty furniture, some stuffed, some spindly. They can smell a dog, though none is in evidence. The phone is dead, but there’s an old portable radio in the kitchen, which Tom turns on.

  “What?” she says.

  “News,” he says, finding a local station. He listens while she turns on the water tap, lets it run. Then she opens all the cabinets, the old refrigerator, goes into the pantry, comes back with a frown.

  “We’re in Pennsylvania,” he says. “This is coming from Allentown.”

  “And what? You think they’ll have a story about us?” She cups her hand under the faucet and drinks, then ducks to drink some more. Wiping her mouth, she says, “Try it. There’s nothing to eat.”

  He does, drinking lengthily.

  “So what do we do?” she says. “Just keep going?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can’t be every farm went belly-up.”

  “Of course not.”

  “We keep walking, bound to find one.”

  “Bound to.”

/>   “Except I’m pretty wiped,” she says.

  “So let’s grab some winks.”

  “Jesus.”

  “What?”

  “Winks? People still talk that way?”

  “Some people,” Tom says, laughing. “Come on. My guess is they left the beds.”

  “Beds. Plural. Got that right.”

  As they start upstairs, the news intervenes. Robbie Riles is dead. Shot dead in the street. Then: “The police in six states are searching for his daughter, Elena Riles, and her alleged accomplice, Thomas Weldon.”

  They look at each other. She screams, “What?”

  “Steady.”

  “Steady?”

  They listen for more details. “Miraculously, on a Manhattan street, there were no witnesses, at least none who has stepped forward. The murder weapon, however, was found in a routine search of the daughter’s apartment. Mr. Weldon’s girlfriend reported him missing, and a connection was discovered between him and Ms. Riles.”

  They look at each other stupefied. “What the fuck!” she says.

  “Easy.”

  “I don’t know what to feel.”

  “You’re in shock,” he says.

  “I didn’t even like him. I wished him dead. Probably thousands of times.”

  “You obviously don’t mean that.”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t,” he says. “I can tell.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “You’re in shock.”

  “I’m not in shock,” she insists.

  “You wouldn’t know.”

  “I know that. As to everything else, I’m confused. I shot my own father? And you’re an accomplice? I don’t even know you.”

  “True.”

  “What kind of connection?” she says. “Have you been stalking me or something?”

  “No offense, but until today I’d no idea of your existence.”

  “Something is really fucked up here.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” he says.

  “How would you put it?”

  “No, your way’s good.”

  “And you’ve got a girlfriend,” she snaps.

  “Had,” he says.

  “They said have.”

  “I was supposed to move out tonight.”