We pulled up on Centuro Road off Route 3. Giants Stadium loomed in the distance. About a mile up, Rachel pointed out the window. “They were somewhere over there.”
The sign readMETROVISTA and the parking lot appeared to be a never-ending expanse, disappearing in the distant marsh. MetroVista was a classic New Jersey office complex, built during the great expanse of the eighties. Hundreds of offices, all cold and impersonal, sleek and robotic, with too many tinted windows not letting in enough sunlight. The vapor lights buzzed and you could imagine, if not actually hear, the drone of worker bees.
“They weren’t stopping for gas,” Rachel muttered.
“So what do we do?”
“Only thing we can,” she said. “Let’s keep following the money.”
Heshy and Lydia headed west toward the Garden State Parkway. Steven Bacard followed in the car behind them. Lydia ripped open the wads of bills. It took her ten minutes to find the tracking device. She dug it out from the money crevice.
She held it up, so Heshy could see it. “Clever,” she said.
“Or we’re slipping.”
“We’ve never been perfect, Pooh Bear.”
Heshy did not reply. Lydia opened the car window. She stuck her hand out and signaled for Bacard to follow them. He waved back that he understood. When they slowed for the toll, Lydia quickly pecked Heshy’s cheek and got out of the car. She took the money with her. Heshy was now left alone with just the tracking device. If this Rachel woman still had any juice or if the police got wind of what was happening, they would pull Heshy over. He would toss the tracking device into the street. They would find the device, sure, but they wouldn’t be able to prove it had come from his car. And even if they could, so what? They would search Heshy and his car and find nothing. No kid, no ransom note, no ransom money. He was clean.
Lydia hurried over to Steven Bacard’s car and slipped into the passenger’s side. “You got Pavel on the line?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She took the phone. Pavel started screaming in whatever the hell language was native to him. She waited and then told him the meeting place. When Bacard heard the address, his head snapped toward her. She smiled. Pavel, of course, didn’t understand the significance of the location, but then again, why should he? He ranted a little more, but eventually Pavel calmed enough to say he’d be there. She hung up the phone.
“You can’t be serious,” Bacard said to her.
“Shh.”
Her plan was simple enough. Lydia and Bacard would race ahead to the meeting spot while Heshy, who had the tracker on him, would stall. When Lydia was set up and fully prepared, she would call Heshy on the cell phone. Then and only then would Heshy go to the meeting spot. He would have the tracking device with him. The woman, this Rachel Mills, would hopefully follow.
She and Bacard arrived in twenty minutes. Lydia spotted a car parked up the block. Pavel’s, she figured. A stolen Toyota Celica. Lydia didn’t like that. Strange cars parked on streets like these were noticed. She glanced over at Steven Bacard. His face was moon pale. It almost seemed detached, floating. The scent of fear came off him in waves. His fingers gripped the wheel, tense. Bacard didn’t have the stomach for this. That would be a liability.
“You can just drop me off,” she said.
“I want to know,” he began, “what you plan on doing here.”
She just looked at him.
“My God.”
“Spare me the indignant act.”
“No one was supposed to be hurt.”
“You mean like Monica Seidman?”
“We had nothing to do with that.”
Lydia shook her head. “And the sister, what was her name, Stacy Seidman?”
Bacard opened his mouth as though he might counter. Then he lowered his head. She knew what he had planned on saying. Stacy Seidman had been a drug addict. She was expendable, a waste, a danger, heading for death, whatever justification floated his boat. Men like Bacard needed justification. In his mind, he wasn’t selling babies. He really believed that he was helping. And if he made money—lots of money—from it and broke the law, well, he was taking tremendous risk to better lives. Shouldn’t he be well compensated?
But Lydia had no interest in digging into his psyche nor comforting it. She had counted the money in the car. He had hired her. Her take was a million dollars. Bacard got the other million. She shouldered the duffel bag with her—and Heshy’s—money. She stepped out of the car. Steven Bacard stared straight ahead. He did not refuse the money. He did not call her back and say that he wanted to wash his hands of this. There was a million dollars sitting in the seat next to him. Bacard wanted it. His family had a big house in Alpine now. His kids went to private school. So no, Bacard did not back off. He simply stared ahead and put the car in drive.
When he was gone, Lydia called Pavel with the two-way radio portion of the cell phone. Pavel was hiding behind some shrubs up the block. He still wore the flannel shirt. His walk was a labored lumber. His teeth had suffered under a lifetime of cigarettes and ill care. He had a squashed-from-too-many-fights nose. He was Balkan rough trade. He had seen a lot in his life. Didn’t matter, though. When you don’t know what’s happening, you are in over your head.
“You,” he said, spitting the word. “You no tell me.”
Pavel was right. She no tell him. In other words, he’d known nothing. His English was beyond broken, which was why he had been the perfect front man for this crime. He’d come over from Kosovo two years ago with a pregnant woman. During the first ransom drop, Pavel had been given specific instructions. He’d been told to wait for a certain car to pull into the lot, to approach the car without speaking to the man, to take a bag from him, to get into the van. Oh, and to confuse matters a little more, they told Pavel to keep a phone in front of his mouth and pretend to talk into it.
That was it.
Pavel had no idea who Marc Seidman was. He had no idea about what was in the bag, about a kidnapping, about a ransom, nothing. He didn’t wear his gloves—his fingerprints were not on file in the United States—and he didn’t carry ID.
They paid him two thousand dollars and sent him back to Kosovo. Based on Seidman’s rather specific description, the police circulated a sketch of a man who, for all practical purposes, was impossible to find. When they decided to rerun the ransom drop, Pavel was the natural go-to guy. He would dress the same, look the same, play with Seidman’s head in case he decided to fight back this time.