Most Wanted

47

MELANIE WAS IN TERRIBLE SHAPE. THOSE TEN extra pounds-she felt every one of them. Rushing toward the model-boat pond in her high-heeled shoes, gasping for breath, she had an agonizing stitch in her side. The paved pathway was nearly deserted in the stifling heat, the air wet and pungent, smelling like rain. Her body ached to stop, but she had to keep going, had to find Sophie Cho before the skies opened.

Slice didn’t fuck around. He would murder Sophie with less thought than he’d give to crushing a cockroach under his shoe. Melanie refused to let that happen. Whatever Sophie’s entanglement with Jed Benson, she was fundamentally a good person, whereas Slice was an animal. Thinking about Slice hurting her friend, pure rage shot through her. She felt capable of terrible violence, imagined hurting Slice, clawing him with her fingernails, ripping into him with her teeth. She felt the animal within herself.

She got to the open plaza housing the model-boat pond and slowed to a walk. The sweat dripping down her back made her dress stick to her skin. Black thunderclouds loomed overhead. In the gathering gloom, she focused her mind, scanning the shiny green benches around the pond’s perimeter. They were largely deserted because of the heat and the threatening rain. A few people sat fanning themselves, waiting hopelessly for a cool breeze, but Sophie wasn’t among them. Had Slice overtaken her on the empty pathway? Was she lying dead or injured in the bushes Melanie had just passed? Central Park was a big place. She could use some help, but there was no one to call, no one to trust.

Not seeing Sophie, she picked up her pace again. The sky darkened to a lurid gray-green. The first fat drops of rain hit her arm and forehead. Within seconds it became a downpour. Everybody scattered. Melanie flew up shallow bluestone steps to a small brick building housing a concession stand, huddling along with several others under its green copper awning. Rain beat down on the metal like sticks on a tin can. Drops fell sideways in sheets, pricking her skin and stinging her eyes.

If Sophie wasn’t at the model-boat pond, where was she? Hands racing, Melanie dialed Sophie’s cell phone. It picked up on the first ring.

“Yo, Big, what up?” a man’s voice answered, low and dangerous. She recognized it instantly, from the tape.

“Slice,” she said.

“Who this?” Slice asked.

“Where’s Sophie? What have you done with her?”

The phone went dead in her hand.

If she hadn’t been certain before, she was now. Slice had Sophie’s cell phone; ipso facto Slice had Sophie. Melanie trained every neuron on figuring out where he would take her. She felt the answer beckoning just at the edge of her grasp. What was the connection between Sophie, an architect, and Jed Benson’s murder? It had something to do with the town house, with the blueprints Sophie had filed with the Buildings Department. They were fakes, she’d told Melanie over the phone. Fakes? Fakes! Duh! Melanie didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until the woman standing next to her looked at her with a start. No, she wanted to say, I’m not mentally ill, but I am a complete moron.

Melanie reached for the red cardboard tube she’d been carrying, protruding from her handbag, since this morning. Why would Jed Benson bother hiding blueprints of his town house in his trapped-out car? Why would Dan’s snitch travel all the way to Millbrook to find them? Because the blueprints were valuable, that was why. She’d been carrying around the originals, the real ones, the whole time. They revealed something, hid something, contained some secret, that the phonies on file with the Buildings Department didn’t. Based on what she knew, the secret must be about one of two things: either the Securilex deal or drugs. The evidence pointed to one of those two motives being behind Jed Benson’s murder. Melanie was betting on the latter. Something that had to do with drugs. Drugs, drugs, drugs. Yes! She thought about the Road Runner sticker on Benson’s Hummer, about the secret trap in his car. It all made sense. She held the real blueprints in her hand, and with them the key to the whole case.

SHE SPRINTED TO JED BENSON’S TOWN HOUSE in the pouring rain, skidding and slipping, wrenching her ankle, swearing. People on the street got out of her way as if she were a crazy woman. Her dress was soaked, her hair plastered to the side of her face, but she wouldn’t stop. Slice was taking Sophie there to find what was hidden in the blueprints. Once he got what he wanted, he would surely kill her. Every second that passed brought Sophie’s murder one second closer.

Adrenaline pumping, Melanie didn’t spare a thought for her own safety, until suddenly she pictured Maya’s precious, funny face. Maya made her want to take care of herself, to take precautions. If ever there was a moment to call in reinforcements, this was it, but who to call? Damn that Dan O’Reilly, making her feel she couldn’t trust him. Because there was simply nobody else. Randall, Bernadette, Rommie Ramirez. All of them would hurt her before they would help her. Wouldn’t they?

Before she knew it, Melanie stood panting, gazing up at the Bensons’ town house. Boarded-up windows lent its facade an eerie, derelict appearance. The rain was letting up, but the sky overhead was still black with storm clouds. Once she caught her breath, she crept around to the basement entrance. It was hidden from the street, tucked behind the grand, curving limestone steps to the main floor. Tattered remnants of yellow crime-scene tape fluttered from its carved wooden door. She rattled the heavy brass doorknob. It wouldn’t budge. Just as well. She needed time. Time to gather her nerve. Time to formulate an escape plan.

She did the only thing she could think of to alert anyone to her whereabouts-dialed Steve at work. No matter how things stood between them, he cared about her safety. The thought gave her a sharp pang of nostalgia for him. But his secretary came on the line and said he was out of the office at a meeting. Melanie left a quick voice mail saying where she was and hung up wondering if she’d achieved anything beyond telling him where to find her dead body.

She stashed the blueprints in a nearby planter and knelt down to examine the lock. Maybe she could jimmy it with a credit card like she’d seen in the movies. She’d give it a try, maybe do a little reconnaissance, but not go inside just yet. She was digging in her handbag for her wallet when she heard a noise behind the door.

It swung open, and before Melanie could get to her feet, two men sprang out, one lean and slight, the other huge and hulking, both wearing black ski masks over their faces. The big one tackled her. She went over backward, slamming her head against the rough sidewalk, letting out a startled grunt.

“Yo, what you up to, bitch?” the small one asked in a low, intimate tone, leaning down so she felt his fetid breath, warm on her face. He thrust a large silver semiautomatic against her cheek. She felt it there, enormous and cold, blocking her view of the sky.

“Well, lookit this, Bigga. It the prosecutor. Melanie Vargas. She come for a visit. Ain’t that nice? You got something you wanna tell me, Melanie?”

It frightened her that he knew her name. Obviously she recognized him, even through the ski mask. Not just from his old mug shot either, but from everything she’d heard. The height and build, the attitude. Killer’s freaky energy radiating through the ski mask, body twitching with adrenaline. This guy had to be Slice. But the fact that he recognized her-what could that mean, other than that he’d followed her?

“I know you come for a reason, bitch, so don’t play cute,” Slice repeated softly, prodding her cheek even harder with the gun. The answer he was looking for was in the blueprints sitting a foot away in the planter, obscured by dark leaves, but she wasn’t about to give it up so easily. The information was too valuable. She would use it to trade-for Sophie’s life, for her own.

Slice nodded at Bigga, who yanked her up and twisted her arms roughly behind her back. Dragged to her feet so suddenly she saw stars.

“Where’s my friend?” she demanded when her vision cleared.

“You hear that, Big? This bitch think she in charge. She gonna learn her lesson when she dead ’fore the night’s through.” Slice’s tone was casual. Killing was just what he did.

“If you let my friend go, I have some information for you.”

Melanie heard the deadly calm in her own voice. She wasn’t afraid. This felt like a dream. Or a nightmare, really. A nightmare she’d lived through before. The man behind the door, the blast, her father lying in a pool of blood, eyes staring, breathing ragged.

“What information?” Slice asked.

“No. First you show me she’s okay,” Melanie insisted.

“Who you talking about? That Chinese bitch? The architect?”

“Yes.”

“She your friend? Small world, ain’t it? She inside, resting. Come on in, we’ll have a nice talk.” He laughed deep in his throat, like a growl.

Slice went inside, and Bigga shoved her through the door after him. The lights were on, the foyer looking just as it had when she’d been there the night of the murder. It smelled different, though-the burned-flesh odor replaced by a powerful, acrid combination of basement damp, water damage, and the smoky aftermath of the fire. Thick enough to taste, but better than a charred corpse. Slice headed down the hallway toward Jed Benson’s office, and Bigga pushed her from behind, making her follow.

As she walked through the office door, she saw two feet sticking out from behind the blackened remains of Jed Benson’s desk, and she gasped. The feet were clad in Sophie Cho’s favorite black Nikes. Melanie lurched forward, trying to reach her friend, but Bigga grabbed her arm savagely and stopped her.

“Where the fuck you think you going?” Bigga yelled.

“That’s Sophie! What did you do to her?” Melanie exclaimed, craning her neck but unable to see any more of Sophie than her feet.

“She fine. We just give her a little taste of something, keep her quiet on the way here,” Slice replied, a sadistic glint in his tiny eyes.

If Sophie had been unconscious since they brought her here, Melanie realized, they couldn’t have gotten any information from her yet. That was a positive sign. Because the second they had what they wanted, Melanie knew, they would have no reason for keeping Sophie alive. Or Melanie either.

Slice shoved Melanie down into a damaged leather swivel chair. Popped springs from the scorched seat poked into her back and thighs. She wondered if it was the same chair Jed Benson had been tortured and died in. The thought made her angry rather than afraid. Slice leaned close, his sweaty ski mask emitting a sour wool smell.

“Listen up, Melanie,” he said, “we can do this real easy or we can do it the hard way. The easy way, you tell me what I want to know. The hard way, you end up dead like Jed.”

“Dead like Jed,” Bigga said. “My man shootin’ the rhymes.”

“You a pretty girl. Be a shame if you got cut so you wasn’t pretty no more,” Slice said, rubbing his gun along her cheek, pushing back her hair with the barrel. The sexual menace in the gesture enraged and nauseated her. She honed the anger, realizing that it was helping her stay in control.

“If you want to talk to me, Slice, back the fuck off,” she commanded icily, as if she were in her office. She’d talked to scumbag criminals like him a hundred times before. Pretend this is no different, she told herself. She was the boss. She wasn’t surprised when it worked. Confidence was everything in life. Slice laughed and took several steps backward, dropping the gun down to his side.

“The bitch got cojones, I say that much,” he said to Bigga. “And she know our names. No point in being uncomfortable, then. We can go plain-face.”

Slice stripped off his ski mask. Bigga did the same. Melanie was overwhelmed with rage, this time at herself. By using his name, showing him she knew who he was, she’d signed her own death warrant for sure. No way he would ever let her live, now that he knew she could identify him. Her only remaining chance was to drag out giving him the information he wanted as long as possible, and try to figure a way to escape. She had no hope that anybody would come save her. She’d have to rely on her wits.

“What is it exactly that you want to know?” she asked, making an effort to keep her voice steady.

“Don’t play games, bitch. Where the product?” Slice demanded. “We know it’s here. You show us where.”

“We know it’s here, you show us where,” Bigga chanted, laughing. Slice shot him a look, and he fell silent.

So her theory was right. There was an elaborate trap built into the walls of Jed Benson’s town house, concealing a king’s ransom of drugs, revealed in the blueprints she’d left outside. Sophie, Sophie, what did you do? But Sophie, lying on the floor in deep sleep, couldn’t answer her silent question. It had been a classic home invasion from the start. The bad guys were looking for drugs, like they always were. When Jed Benson wouldn’t give up the goods, Slice killed him, as often happened. The same brutal story had played out a thousand times before on the streets of Bushwick. She just hadn’t recognized it in this fancy neighborhood.

Just then the cell phone in her pocket began to howl. Somehow she knew it was Steve; she could feel his worry in each piercing shriek. Slice leaned over and dug his hand into her pocket, his fingers creeping grotesquely against her thigh. He withdrew the phone, turned it off, and threw it to the floor. It skidded to rest against the desk. Melanie looked at it longingly, saying a silent prayer that he would call the police.

“Guess they’ll have to leave you a voice mail,” Slice said, smiling sarcastically. “Now, about the merchandise…”

Drag it out longer. Maybe somebody will come, she told herself. “What merchandise?”

“Don’t be acting like you don’t know. That would upset me. You don’t wanna see some shit I do when I’m upset, you feel me?” he said in a low, intense tone. He had the eyes of some night creature-tiny, gleaming, dead eyes much too small even for his narrow face.

“I’m gonna tell you everything, okay? I don’t want to get hurt. I need to make sure we understand each other, that’s all.”

“What the fuck merchandise you think I’m talking about? Ladies’ underwear?” Slice yelled. Bigga laughed uproariously.

“You’re saying there are drugs hidden here? Why would there be drugs hidden in Jed Benson’s house?”

She didn’t even see it coming, he was that fast. In the blink of an eye, Slice smashed the butt of his gun against the side of her head. Pain exploded in her skull. She shot back in time. “Daddy! No! Noooo!” “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” A blinding blow to her head, then darkness. But a second later, she was back in Jed Benson’s office, conscious, hearing and seeing better than she wanted to. She raised her fingers to the spot the pain radiated from. They came away bloody.

The blow might have thrown somebody else into a panic. But for Melanie it served as a wake-up call. It reminded her. You had to fight back, or the animals would win. They’d won last time. Things had never been the same after the robbery. Her father had never spent another night under their roof. Years of rehab in San Juan, and then he ended up leaving them, marrying his nurse. She’d seen him twice in the last ten years. She wouldn’t let the animals win this time, goddamn it. She found her rage and, at the heart of it, her calm.

“You think I won’t hurt you? Next time it’s a bullet, bitch!”

“Okay,” she said, “I hear you. I’ll play ball.” Until I can figure out how to kill you, you scum.

“Where the fuck the drugs? And don’t you be acting like you don’t know, because I know that’s why you came here.”

“I’m getting to it. You know we were up at Benson’s place in Millbrook this morning, right?” She was breathing heavily, her ears still ringing, but she was more determined than ever before.

“That true, Bigga?” Slice asked.

“Toldja they’s somebody with that police who killed No Joke,” Bigga said.

“It was her? Why the fuck you didn’t body ’em when you had a clear shot, then? They killed my dog.” He grabbed Melanie by the throat. She struggled for air. “Fucking bitch, you killed my dog! That dog was a warrior. You know what his name was? No Joke, because he wasn’t no fucking joke. Me and him been through mad shit together. You gonna have to pay for that.”

He let go of her throat, took a step back, and raised his gun. She couldn’t let him shoot her, because then he would win. She didn’t care if she lived or died, but she cared if he did.

“Stop!” she yelled. “We found the trap. The trap in the car, okay? I have the blueprints to this house.”

“Yeah, Slice, get the product first, then body her,” Bigga said.

“Okay, right, Big.” Slice dropped his arm. Melanie breathed again. “I get carried away. Then I don’t get the information I need. I got to focus. One thing at a time. Yo, thank you, son.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Bigga said.

“So you found the blueprints. Where they at? ’Cause this bitch useless,” Slice said, pointing at Sophie, lying so still she might have been dead. “Think you mighta OD’d her on that shit, Big.”

Melanie’s brain felt intensely focused. She saw an opening.

“Dan O’Reilly, the FBI agent, he took them to my office and put them in the evidence vault,” she lied coolly. “We were planning to show them to a trap expert to help us figure it out.”

“If that’s true, why you here now?” Slice asked.

“I wanted to get a head start. You know, take credit for finding it first.”

Slice nodded. He believed her.

“So she got to call O’Reilly and tell him to bring the blueprints here, then,” Bigga interjected.

Yes! That was exactly the result she was aiming for. Better Dan than nobody. At least she thought he’d try to prevent her death. But Slice was too smart.

“What the fuck, Big? This why I tell you to keep your stupid-ass mouth shut. That would get us locked up. We use our own people. Here, take my heat and watch her while I make some calls.”

Slice handed Bigga the gun and retreated to the hallway, pulling his cell phone from his pocket as he went. She heard beeping as he hung up and dialed repeatedly. He was paging somebody. Melanie tried to focus, but she couldn’t help replaying what he’d said a moment earlier. Calling Dan would get them locked up. So Dan wasn’t on their payroll? He wasn’t working with them? God, she prayed that was what it meant!

Out in the hallway, Slice’s cell phone rang, and he answered. His voice filtered, low and intense but clearly audible, through the open doorway.

“Yo, son, you ain’t jumpin’ on my beeps like you should be,” Slice said. “Don’t gimme that shit. Now you gotta prove your loyalty. I need you to do something for me… Yes, now!…I don’t give a fuck if you busy. This more important… Don’t you be making me think nothing…I ain’t your bitch, so why you trying to fuck me?…You better be jumping on this, or you gonna wake up dead…Okay, that’s more like it… Good… This is what you do. The blueprints be in the vault in the prosecutor’s office. I need you to go in there and get ’em.”

Slice had spoken of using his own people, but he was obviously talking to an insider, to one of Melanie’s people, somebody who could get into the vault in her office. Rommie Ramirez. It had to be.

While Slice talked, Bigga stood leaning against the massive wooden desk. He had the sort of fat, doughy face that looked benevolent on some people. On him it was merely vacant and self-indulgent. His arms crossed, he held the gun casually against his chest, watching Melanie quietly.

“Who’s that on the phone with Slice, Rommie Ramirez?” she asked.

“Shut the fuck up. We ask the questions ’round here,” Bigga said.

“Whoever it is, maybe if I talked to them, I could give them a better sense of where to look for the blueprints.”

“Open your mouth again and I tape it shut.”

As she watched him warily, something clicked inside her throbbing head. She put two and two together. Bigga was the one who’d shot at her at the Benson estate this morning. Bigga was Dan’s snitch. But no sooner had she taken heart from that thought than warning bells went off. Which way did it shake out for her prospects of survival that Dan and Bigga were working together?

A FEW MINUTES LATER, SLICE WALKED BACK into the room. “Now we in play. If the blueprints be where she say, they’re on the way. If not, she don’t live another day.”

“Awright!” Bigga said admiringly. “Now what?”

“We wait. Keep the gun on her.”

Slice kicked aside debris to clear a space on the floor and, extracting a small GameBoy from the pocket of his baggy pants, slid down to a sitting position against the wall near the doorway. The beeps emitted by the video game lent an incongruously festive air to the dismal basement. Bigga stood watching Slice.

“I said watch her. What the fuck you watching me for?” Slice barked.

“Nuthin’. Whatever.”

“So don’t fucking look. You disturbing my concentration.”

“I’m hungry,” Bigga whined.

“You always hungry. That’s how come you so fat.”

“I’m starving, bro. I need me something delicious. Lemme go get some Chinese or something before the action start. I saw a place when we was driving.”

Slice looked up from his game, annoyed. “You remember that last job we pulled in Bushwick? You couldn’t climb in the window because you was so fucking fat, and that motherfucker Arturo broke out. We didn’t get nothing off’n him?”

“Yeah?”

“So I’m putting you on a diet. No food for you.”

Melanie had followed this conversation intently, flooded with relief that Slice wouldn’t let Bigga leave. She cherished the hope that Bigga was on Team America, working for Dan, and that when push came to shove, he would help her out. Despite her bravado, she had no interest in being left alone with Slice. She might be reckless, but she wasn’t stupid. Slice would kill her just for kicks, even if it made no sense for his game plan, so how could she predict his next move?

Bigga sighed and sat back down on the desk. Slice returned to his GameBoy. As they sat there, the silence broken only by beeps from the GameBoy and the noise of Bigga’s stomach growling, the air putrid with a wet, burned smell, Melanie’s confidence withered and disappeared. She realized she was right near her apartment, that her beautiful baby was mere blocks away. She thought about going out with the stroller on Monday night, smelling the smoke, following it here. Her foolish pride had made her run after the Benson case, and now it would cost her her life. And ruin Maya’s. Maya would be motherless, Steve left to raise her alone, and Melanie had only her own ego to blame. She knew what it was like, growing up with one parent, always feeling the absence of the other, and now she’d inflicted it on her daughter, something she’d vowed never to let happen. In spite of herself, Melanie started to heave and shake with suppressed sobs. Goddamn it, she was thinking, she wouldn’t give that bastard the satisfaction of seeing her cry! But thinking also about the gaping hole she’d be leaving in her daughter’s life, she couldn’t help it.

“Aw, fuck, shut the fuck up!” Slice yelled. Just then Bigga’s stomach let out a loud rumble. “You, too, shut up with that foul shit! Between her whining and your disgusting noises, you both making me sick.”

“I need something to eat,” Bigga said calmly.

“So go get it, then. I can’t fucking concentrate with shit like this going on.”

“You want me to bring you back Chinese?” Bigga asked.

“You crazy? I ain’t eating on no fucking job.”

Bigga shrugged. “Okay, I’ll be back real fast,” he said, handing Slice the gun.

A moment later the door to the street slammed behind him, leaving Melanie alone with Slice.