Riding the Rap

But if it’s a kidnapping, how do they score? Who pays? Harry doesn’t have a wife. All he has is money.

Raylan looked at it for a minute or so; it didn’t tell him anything.

The only thing he saw to do was go in the house and look around. Not with a consent to search, they’d never let him in. You could do it with Colombians because back home they couldn’t refuse a search and thought it worked the same way here.

He could call it exigent circumstances, the imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm and break the door down. And if Harry wasn’t there get sent to a new assignment like Minot, North Dakota.

The only other way, get a search warrant. Describe the premises in detail, what the house looked like, not just the address. Give the reason for requesting the warrant, also in detail, the probable cause why he wanted to gain entry, what he expected to find and why and show it to a U.S. attorney. Leave out the pruners and the Jell-O; no one would follow that kind of thinking, even though it was something he knew and could feel. If he was lucky and all the U.S. attorney did was put in a bunch of commas, he’d then take it to the U.S. magistrate and stand there while Her Honor read it, while she frowned and gave him a look, said something like, “Mr. Ganz owes Mr. Arno a sum of money, so you believe Mr. Arno is being held against his will in Mr. Ganz’s home?” Her Honor would tell him his probable cause sounded like wishful thinking. He wouldn’t in a million years get the magistrate’s signature.

In the funeral home parking lot he’d told Falco about Harry being missing, the reason he’d met Warren Ganz’s mother. Falco agreed with Torres: wait a few days and get Missing Persons on it.

“But what about Dawn?” Raylan said. “You think she really is psychic?”

“I think sometimes, anyway.”

“What if she can tell me where Harry is?”

“You mean using her clairvoyance?”

“It wouldn’t be enough to get a warrant and take a look, would it? The word of a psychic?”

“You’d still have to show probable cause, get into all that. I’d talk to her though, why not.”

“You think, if Harry was kidnapped, Dawn could be involved in some way?”

Falco had stared at him over the roof of the car before saying, “You think she’s stupid?”

Raylan wasn’t sure that was an answer but let it go. He said, “You mentioned you put a wire on her, for the meeting with Ganz? I’d like to hear it.”

“Anytime you want.”

Dawn wasn’t at the restaurant and the hostess hadn’t seen her all day. She was there yesterday, and the day before; Dawn hadn’t said anything about taking time off. Raylan picked up one of her Certified Medium & Spiritualist cards and rubbed it between his fingers walking back to his car. It didn’t tell him anything.

He did have a feeling she wasn’t going to be home, and when he reached the house on Ramona saw he was right. No red car in the drive. He went up to knock on the door and looked at the sign as he waited, at DREAM INTERPRETATIONS, PAST-LIFE REGRESSIONS. Pay to get regressed back to a coal mine and breathe that dust again. Raylan walked around the house looking in windows cloudy with salt mist, careful not to get stuck by palmettos. He looked into dim, dismal rooms, at the old worn-out furniture, the sofa he’d sat in and felt the springs, at watermarks staining the wall where the picture of Jesus and the children hung, and wondered if it depressed her to walk in the house. She could be helping Ganz as a way to get out of there.

Raylan didn’t feel like hanging around. He got in the Jaguar and drove up to Manalapan with the idea of staking out Ganz’s house for a while, see if anyone came or left…

And saw it happening before he even got there, as he came past groomed oleander toward the wall of trash vegetation marking Ganz’s property, saw Bobby Deo’s Cadillac pop out of the drive and turn north. Two guys in the car.

Now Raylan had to make a decision quick: follow or, with them gone, see about getting in the house.

nineteen

Chip watched Bobby’s Cadillac on the television screen until the car was through the shrubs along the drive and out of view. Finally. He’d been waiting all morning for them to leave so he could talk to Harry.

Trying to hurry them along didn’t work. “You want to get the show on the road-isn’t that what you told me?”

Louis said they’d leave when it was time to leave. Louis dragging his feet, Bobby taking half the morning to get dressed, Ganz smoking weed. This was before the guy in the hat showed up on the patio and spoke to Louis and Bobby. Ganz lit another joint, sucked it down listening to Louis say the man was a United States marshal, with the star, with the gun on his hip under his coat. Could see it when he took out his I.D. But mostly the man was a friend of Harry’s, the reason he came. Chip toking, Louis saying the man’s seen how it is now, who’s who, and won’t have a reason to come back. By the time Louis finished Chip was worry-free, zonked on the weed, able to ask deadpan, “A U.S. marshal? He ride in on a horse?” Louis gri

Wait some more, finally one o’clock before Louis said it was time and they left, the program now back on track in spite of interruptions, shit happening, revising the timetable, his two helpers thinking they knew more than he did. Why argue? If they wanted to speed up the program, get it done, fine. Chip thinking, telling himself, Go with the flow, man. Saying, You cool? Yeah, you’re cool. He felt it, full of his old confidence, in control…

Pushed a button on the remote, to switch the picture from the front drive to the hostage room upstairs, and stared at the picture for several moments-at the cots, the chains on the floor, trash, boxes of snacks-before he realized, Christ, Harry wasn’t there.

Ganz came up out of the sofa.

The black guy had stood behind him the whole time while he cut the blindfold off with scissors, so Harry didn’t get a look at him. All he knew for sure, it was the same guy who’d said the other night, “We do some business. Just me and you.” Harry had thought at the time the guy was putting on a Bahamian accent so his voice wouldn’t be recognized. This time the guy said, “Go on in the bathroom and clean yourself up. Man, you smell ripe.” And Harry realized what the guy had was the trace of a Bahamian accent, maybe left over from when he was a kid. The guy stood close breathing on him, Saying, “There’s a toothbrush in there, a razor, I believe anything you need.” The guy who wanted to do some business being nice to him. Making a play, it sounded like, to cut out the other guys-Harry pretty sure now there were three of them. He said, “I can’t take a shower with these chains on.”

“Do the best you can,” the black guy said. “Take a whore bath. You know what that is?”

“Before you ever heard of it,” Harry said.

The guy handed him a bathing cap to use as a blindfold, with instructions when to put it on, didn’t say anything about doing business, and left. Harry washed up and shaved; next thing would be to talk the guy into a shower and promote some clean clothes. He looked around his cell for the first time, the room bigger than he’d thought; looked at the windows covered with plywood and shuffled over to see if he could work the sheet free, but it was nailed onto the window frame.

Later on, Harry was coming out of the bathroom when he heard the key turn in the lock. The door swung open. Harry saw the look on the guy’s face, a different guy…

What Chip saw was the blindfold gone, something else covering his hair that Harry reached up and stretched down over his eyes: a rubber bathing cap, white with a yellow flower design that Chip’s mother used to put on when she swam in the ocean, years and years ago. He could see her wearing it.