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CHAPTER 087

The Kendall were screaming as the Hummer raced forward, but Vasco Borden, snarling through his aching teeth, one hand holding the bandage against his bleeding ear, knew what he was doing. He drove the car up onto the lawn and pulled to a stop, blocking the front door. Then he and Dolly jumped out, grabbed Alex’s Jamie off the lawn, pushed the kid’s stunned mother to the ground, leapt back into the Hummer, and roared off. While the others just stood there and stared.

“Just like that, baby,” Vasco said, shouting. “If you’re not inside the house, you’re mine.”

He roared off down the street.

“We lost our ambulance, so we go to plan B.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Dolly, honey, get the next operating room going. Tell ’em we’ll be there in twenty minutes. One hour from now, this is all a done deal. ”

Henry Kendall was in shock. There had been a kidnapping right on his front lawn; he hadn’t rushed forward to stop it; his own son was sobbing and clutching his mother; and Dave had dropped some guy’s ear on the lawn; the other kid’s mother was getting to her feet, screaming for the cops, but the Hummer was gone, down the street and around the corner, and gone.

He felt weak and emasculated, as if he’d somehow done something wrong, and he was embarrassed to be around Lynn’s friend, so he went inside and sat down again at the computer. It was just where he had been sitting five minutes before, when Dave screamed and all this started.

He still had the TrackTech web site up, where he’d entered the names and the serial numbers. He had done it for Dave, and for Jamie, but he hadn’t done it for the other Jamie. Feeling bad, he did it now.

The web site switched to a blank, featureless map, with an entry spot where you typed in the unit you were looking for. The first unit he entered was Jamie Burnet’s. If the sensor was operating, he would have seen it moving down the street. But the blue spot wasn’t moving, it was static. The address showed 348 Marbury Madison Drive, which was his own house.

He looked around the living room and saw Jamie’s white sneakers over in the corner, with his little travel bag. He’d never even put the sneakers back on.

Next, he typed in the sensor for his own son. Same result. The blue spot was fixed at his own home address. Then it moved a little. And his son Jamie walked through the door. “Dad. What are you doing? The police are outside. They want to talk to everybody.”

“Okay, in a minute.”

“His mom is really upset, Dad.”

“In a minute.”

“She’s crying. Mom said to get a tissue.”

“I’ll be right with you.”

Quickly, Henry typed in the third serial number-Dave’s number. The screen went blank. He waited a moment. He saw the map as it was redrawn. It now showed roads leading north of town, in the area of Torrey Pines.

The blue dot was moving.

North, Torrey Pines Road, ENE, 57 mph.

As he watched, the dot turned off onto Gaylord Road, heading inland.

Somehow, Dave’s sensor was in the Hummer. It either came out of his shoe, or they had taken his shoe. But the sensor was there, and working.

He said, “Jamie, go get Alex. Tell her I need to see her for a minute.”

“But Dad-”

“Do it. And don’t say anything to the police.”

Alex stared at the screen. “I’m going to get that son of a bitch and I’m going to blow his head off. You touch my kid, you’re dead.” Her voice was flat, cold. Henry felt a chill. She meant it.

“Where’s he going?” she said.

“He’s left the coast and heading inland, but he may just be avoiding the Del Mar traffic. He may go back to the coast again. We’ll know in a few minutes.”

“How far away is he?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Let’s go. You bring that,” she said, nodding to the laptop. “I’ll get my gun.”

Henry looked out the front window. There were three cop cars flashing their lights at the curb, and six cops on the front lawn. “Not that easy.”

“Yes, it is. I’m parked around the corner.”

“They said they want to see me.”

“Make an excuse. I’ll be in my car.”

He told them Dave needed medical attention, and he had to take him to the hospital. He said that his wife, Lynn, had witnessed everything and could tell them what had taken place. He said he would give a full statement when he returned, but he needed to take Dave to the hospital.

Since Dave’s hands were bloody, they accepted it. Lynn gave Henry a funny look. He said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He walked around the back of the house and cut through the property behind. Dave followed him.

“Where are we going?” Dave said.

“To find that guy. The guy with the black beard.”

“He hurted Jamie.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I hurted him, too.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“His ears came off.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Next time his nose.”

“Dave,” he said. “We need to show restraint.”

“What’s re-straint?” Dave said.

It was too complicated to explain. Alex’s white Toyota was up ahead. They got in the car. He got in front, Dave got in back.

“What is this?” Dave said, pointing to the seat beside him.

“Don’t touch it, Dave,” Alex said. “That’s a gun.”

She put the car in gear and drove off.

She called Bob Koch, on the off chance that he had news.

“I do,” he said. “But I wish it were better.”

“He let it go?”

“He held over until tomorrow.”

“Did you try-”

“Yeah, I tried. He’s confused. It’s not the usual legal area for Oxnard judges. That’s probably why they filed there.”

“So, tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks,” she said, and hung up. There was no point in telling him what she was about to do. She wasn’t even sure she would do it. But she thought that she probably would.

Henry was riding shotgun, looking at the computer. Now that he was out here, in a car, the connection sometimes dropped out for a minute or two. He began to worry about losing it altogether. He glanced back at Dave, who was shoeless. “Where are your shoes?”

“They camed off.”

“Where?”

“In the white car.” He meant the ambulance.

“How?”

“One was in his mouth. The man. Then the car falled.”

“And your shoes came off?”

“Yes, they camed off.”

Apparently Alex was thinking the same thing, because she said, “Then his shoes are still in the ambulance. Not the Hummer. We’re following the wrong car.”

“No, the ambulance crashed. It can’t be the ambulance.”

“Then the signal…”

“It must have fallen out of his shoe, and slipped into the guy’s clothes. Somehow.”

“Then it could slip out again.”

“Yeah. It could.”

“Or they could find it.”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t say anything after that.

He continued watching the screen. The blue dot went north, then east. Then north. And finally east again, passing Rancho Santa Fe, going back to the desert. Then it curved onto Highland Drive. “Okay,” he said. “I know where they’re going. Solana Canyon.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a spa. Very big. Very high-end.”

“With doctors?”

“I’m sure. They may even do surgery. Maybe face-lifts, liposuction, something like that.”

“Then they have surgical facilities,” she said grimly. She stepped on the accelerator.

The one hundred acres known as Solana Canyon represented a triumph of marketing. Only a few decades earlier the region was known by its original name, Hellhole Palms. It was a flat, boulder-strewn region, without a canyon in sight. Thus Solana Canyon had no canyon, and precious little to do with the coastal town of Solana Beach. The name simply tracked better than the other choices, which had been Angel Springs, Zen Mountain View, Cedar Springs, and Silver Hill Ashram. Compared to the other choices, the name Solana Canyon conveyed a muted, understated quality in keeping with a resort that charged thousands of dollars a day to rejuvenate the bodies, minds, and spirits of its clients. This was accomplished through a combination of yoga, massage, meditation, spiritual counseling, and diet help, all delivered by staff who greeted guests with prayerful hands and a heartfelt “Namaste.”

Solana Canyon was also a favorite spot for celebrities to dry out.

Alex drove right past the adobe-style main gate, artfully concealed behind giant palms. They were following the tracking signal, which was going around the back of the resort.

“He’s taking the service entrance,” Henry said.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Once. A lecture on genetics.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t invited back. They didn’t like the message. You know the old saying. Professors attribute the intelligence of their students to environment and the intelligence of their children to genes. Same with rich people. If you’re rich or good-looking, you want to hear that your genes make you that way. That enables you to feel inherently superior to other people-that you deserve your success. And then you can give other people as much crap as you-hold on, they’re stopping. Slow down.”

“What now?” she said. They were on a side road, and there was a service entrance up ahead.

“I think they’re in the parking lot.”

“So? Let’s get them right there.”

“No.” He shook his head. “There’s always a couple of security guys at the parking lot. You show a gun, and there’ll be trouble.” He watched the screen. “Stationary…now moving again. Now stationary.” He frowned.

She said, “If there’s security guards, they’ll see Jamie struggling when he gets out.”

“Maybe they’ve drugged him. Or…I don’t know,” he said quickly, seeing the pain on her face. “Wait, moving again. They’re going around the back road.”

She put the car in gear and drove to the service gate. The gate was open. Nobody was on duty. She drove through, into the parking lot. The back road was at the far corner of the lot.

“What do we do?” she said. “Follow them down the road?”

“I don’t think so. If we do, they’ll see us coming. Better park.” He opened the door. “Let’s take a walk through beautiful Solana Canyon resort.” He looked at her. “You going to leave that shotgun here?”

“No,” she said. She popped open the trunk, found a towel, wrapped the shotgun in it, and said, “I’m ready.”

“O-kay,” Henry said. “Here we go.”

“Goddamn it,”Vasco said, stepping on the brakes. He was driving around the back road to park behind the surgicenter. The plan was for Dr. Manuel Cajal to come out of the surgicenter, slip into the Hummer, do the biopsies, and go out again. Nobody sees it, nobody’s the wiser.

But now the back road was blocked. Two backhoes, digging some big trench. No way across, and no other road. A hundred yards from the surgicenter.

“Damn, damn, damn,” he said.

“Take it easy, Vasco,” Dolly said. “It’s no big deal. If the road is blocked, we just walk to the center, go in the rear door, and do it there.”

“Everyone will see us walking through the resort.”

“So what? We’re just visitors. Besides, everybody at this place is completely self-absorbed. They have no time to think about us. And if they did, and if they decided to call someone-which they never would-the procedure’d be finished before the call was finished. Manuel can do it faster in there than out here.”

“I don’t like it.” Vasco looked around, stared at the road, then at the spa grounds. But she was right. It was a quick walk through the garden. He turned to the kid. “Listen,” he said. “This is how it is. We’re going to take a walk. You just be quiet. And everything will be fine.”

“What’re you going to do?” he said. “To me.”

“Nothing. Just take a little blood.”

“Are there needles?”

“Just a little one, like at the doctor’s.”

He turned to Dolly. “Okay, call Manuel. Tell him we’re coming. And let’s get going.”

Jamie had been diligently taught to yell and scream and kick if anyone ever tried to kidnap him, and he had done those things when they first grabbed him, but now he was very frightened, and he was afraid they would hurt him if he made any trouble. So he walked quietly along the path of the garden, with the woman keeping her hand on his shoulder and the big mean guy walking on the other side, wearing a cowboy hat so his ear wouldn’t show.

They passed people in bathrobes, women mostly, chatting and laughing, but nobody really looked at them. They walked on through another garden area, and then he heard a voice say, “I say, do you need help with your homework?”

He was so startled he stopped. He looked up.

It was a bird. A sort of gray-colored bird.

“Are you a friend of Evan?” the bird said.

“No,” he said.

“You’re the same size as he is. What’s eleven take away nine?”

Jamie was so surprised, he just stared.

“Let’s go, dear,” Dolly said. “It’s just a bird.”

“Justa bird!” the bird said. “Who are you calling abird?”

“You really talk a lot,” Jamie said.

“And you don’t,” the bird said. “Who are these people? Why are they holding you?”

“We’re not holding him,” Dolly said.

“You gentlemen aren’t really trying to kill my son, are you?” the bird said.

“Ah Christ,” Vasco said.

“Ah Christ,” the bird said, exactly duplicating his voice. “What’s your name?”

“Let’s get going,” Vasco said.

“My name is Jamie,” Jamie said.

“Hello, Jamie. I’m Gerard,” the bird said.

“Hello, Gerard.”

“All right,” Vasco said. “Let’s get a move on here.”

“That depends on who’s in the saddle,” Gerard said.

“Dolly,” Vasco said, “we have to keep to our schedule.”

“Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother,” the bird said, in an odd voice.

“Do you know my mother?” Jamie said.

“No, son,” Dolly said. “He doesn’t. He’s just saying things he’s already heard before.”

“Your story didn’t sound quite right,” Gerard said. And in a different voice: “Oh, that’s too bad, you got a better one?”

But now the grown-ups were pushing Jamie forward. He didn’t think he could stay longer, and he didn’t want to make a scene. “Bye, Gerard,” he said.

“Bye, Jamie.”

They walked on for a while. Jamie said, “He was funny.”

“Yes he was, dear,” Dolly said, keeping her hand firmly on his shoulder.

Coming into the gardens, Alex first passed the swimming pool area. It was the quietest swimming pool she had ever seen-no splashing, no noise. People lay in the sun like corpses. There was a cabinet stacked with towels and bathrobes. Alex took a bathrobe and draped it over her shoulder, covering the towel-wrapped shotgun.

“How do you know these things?” Henry said, watching her. He was nervous. Walking with her while she carried that gun, and knowing she intended to use it. He didn’t know if the bearded guy was armed, but chances were that he was.

“Law school,” she said, laughing.

Dave walked a couple of steps behind them. Henry turned and said, “Keep up, Dave.”

“Okay…”

They rounded a corner, passed beneath an adobe archway, came into another secluded garden. The air here was cool, and the path shaded. A little brook ran alongside the path.

They heard a voice say, “Mellow greetings, ukie dukie.”

Henry looked up. “What was that?”

“Me.”

Henry said, “It’s a bird.”

“Excuse me,” the bird said, “my name is Gerard.”

Alex said, “Oh, a talking parrot.”

The parrot said, “My name is Jamie. Hello, Jamie, I’m Gerard. Hello, Gerard.”

Alex froze, stared. “That’s Jamie!”

“Do you know my mother?” the bird said, sounding exactly like Jamie’s voice.

“Jamie!” Alex started to shout in the garden. “Jamie!Jamie! ”

And in the distance, she heard, “Mom!”

Dave took off, running forward. Henry looked at Alex, who stood very still. She dropped the towel and the robe to the ground and methodically loaded the shotgun. She pulled the action bar back and forward, making achung chung! sound. Then she turned to Henry.

“Let’s go.” She was very cool. The gun was cradled in her arm. “You may want to walk behind me.”

“Uh, okay.”

She started walking. “Jamie!”

“Mom!”

She walked faster.

They couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the back door to the surgicenter-maybe three, four good paces, no more than that-when the whole thing started.

And Vasco Borden was pissed. His trusted assistant just melting right before his eyes. The kid cries “Mom!” and she lets go of him. She just stands there. Like she was stunned.

“Hold on to him, damn it,” he said. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer.

“Mom! Mom!”

Exactly what I was worried about, he thought. He had an eight-year-old kid screaming for his mother, and all these women in bathrobes walking around. If they weren’t looking at him and the kid before, they sure as hell were now-pointing and talking. Vasco appeared completely out of place, six-four and bearded, dressed entirely in black, with a black cowboy hat he had to pull down low because his damn ear had been bitten off. He knew he looked like a bad guy in a bad cowboy movie. His woman wasn’t helping; she wasn’t soothing the kid or leading him forward, and any minute he knew that kid would turn and bolt.

Vasco needed to get control here. He started to reach for his gun, but now more women were coming out of rooms on all sides-hell, a whole damn yoga class was emptying into the garden to look, to see why some kid was hollering for his mother.

And there he was, the man in black.

He was screwed.

“Dolly,” he snapped, “goddamn it, pull yourself together. We have to take this young man into the surgicenter here-”

Vasco never finished the sentence, because a dark shape came streaking toward him, leapt into the air, swung from a tree branch about eight feet high, and-right about the time he realized it was that black kid again, that hairy kid, the one that bit off his ear-the black kid slammed into him, hard as a big rock smashing him full on the chest, and Vasco stumbled backward over some rose bushes and went down on his ass, legs up in the air.

And that was it.

The kid bolted, shrieking for his mom. And Dolly suddenly starts acting like she doesn’t know him, and he’s cut and scratched, dragging himself out of the rose bushes with no help from her. Can’t work up any dignity getting up to your feet with your ass full of thorns. And there’s at least a hundred people watching him. And any minute, security guards.

And the black monkey-looking kid is gone. Can’t see him anywhere.

Vasco realizes that he’s got to get out of there. It’s finished; it’s a fucking disaster. Dolly is still frozen like the fucking Statue of Liberty, so he starts pushing her, yelling at her to get moving, that they have to leave. All the other women in the garden start booing and hissing. Some old broad in a leotard screams, “Testosterone poisoning!” And the others are yelling, “Leave her alone!” “Creep!” “Abuser!” He wants to yell back, “She works for me!” but of course, she doesn’t anymore. She’s dazed and bewildered. And by now the leotard broads are screaming for the police.

So it’s only going to get worse.

Dolly is so slow; she might be sleepwalking. Vasco has to get out. He pushes past her, moving through the garden at a half-trot, his only thought now to get away, get out of this place. In the next garden he sees the kid standing with some guy, and in front of the two of them he sees the broad Alex, and she’s holding a fucking sawed-off twelve-gauge like she knows how to use it-hand on the stock, hand on the action-and she says, “If I ever see your face again, I’ll blow it off, asshole.”

Vasco doesn’t answer, just keeps moving past her, and the next thing he knows, there’s a fucking explosion, and ahead of him the bushes along the path just blast away in a green cloud of fluttering petals and leaves and dirt. So of course he stops. Right there. And he turns, slowly, keeping his hands away from his body.

She says, “Did you fucking hear what I said to you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. Always polite to a lady with a gun. Especially if she’s upset. Now the crowd is huge; they’re three or four deep, chattering like birds, craning to get a look at what is happening. But this broad’s not going to let it go.

She yells at him: “What’d I say to you?”

“You said if you saw me again, you’d kill me.”

“That’s right,” she says. “And I will. You touch me or my son again, and I will fucking kill you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. He feels the red rushing into his face. Anger, humiliation, rage.

“You can go now,” she says, moving the barrel ever so slightly. She knows what she is doing. A lawyer who goes to the shooting range. The worst kind.

Vasco nods and moves off, quickly as he can. He wants to get away from her, and out of sight of all those women. It’s like some nightmare, all these women in robes watching him eat shit. In a moment, he’s practically running. Back to the Hummer, away from this place.

That’s when he saw the black kid, the one who looked like an ape. In fact, he was an ape, Vasco was sure of it, watching the kid move. An ape dressed like a kid. But he was still an ape. The ape was circling around the garden. Just seeing that ape made Vasco’s head throb where his ear once was. Without a conscious thought, he pulled out his pistol and started firing. He didn’t expect to hit the little fucker at this distance, but he needed to do something. And sure enough, the ape ran, scrambled, went behind a wall, and disappeared.

Vasco followed him. It was the damn ladies’ room. But nobody was around. The lights in the bathroom were off. He could see the pool, off to his right, but nobody was there now. So nobody was in the bathroom, except for the ape. He held his gun and moved forward.

Chung chung!

He froze. He knew the sound of a double-action pump. You never went in a room after you heard that sound. He waited.

“Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you?” It was a raspy voice, sounded familiar.

He stood there in the doorway to the women’s bathroom, angry and afraid, until he began to feel very foolish and very exposed. “Ah, screw it,” he said, and he turned and went back to his car. He didn’t care about the fucking ape kid, anyway.

From behind him a voice said, “My, my. Such a lot of guns around town, and so few brains.”

He spun, looked back. But all he saw was that bird, flapping its wings as it stood on the door leading to the bathroom. He couldn’t tell where the voice had come from.

Vasco hurried to his Hummer. Already he was thinking what he would tell the law firm and the BioGen people. Fact was, it just didn’t work out. The woman was armed, she was tipped off, someone had told her in advance. Nothing Vasco could do about that. He was good at his job, but he couldn’t work miracles. The problem lay with whoever tipped her off. Before you blame me, take a look at yourself. They had a problem inside their organization.

Anyhow, something like that.