Stealing Time

CHAPTER 12

A

nton Popescu's office was in an architecturally uninteresting glass and steel tower on Fifty-sixth Street and Broadway, within easy walking distance of his apartment. The law offices of Pfumf, Anderson and Schmidt were on the tenth floor, around the corner from the elevator bank. Imposing eight-foot mahogany doors separated it from a nondescript hall with gray stone floors and white walls. Anton's office had an Oriental rug in bright reds and blues and an expansive view of the building across Broadway.

On Wednesday morning he was a desperate and brooding man. His baby was missing and his wife was still unconscious in the hospital, where he could not bear to look at her through the window in her door, battered and out of it. After trying to get in to visit with her in the early morning with no success, he went to work as usual.

There, no one could take pictures of him. No reporter's voice could get through to him. He hid in his window office with the door closed and orders to the staff not to disturb him. But quiet was not to be his. Almost immediately his secretary Angela's Brooklyn voice came up on the phone. "Anton, you have some visitas."

He punched the speaker phone to reprimand her. "I told you no calls, no visitors!"

"They're from the police. What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't care where they're from."

"They say they won't take much of your time."

Anton made an impatient noise. "For Christ's sake, Angela. I've spent all night talking to the police. What more do they want?"

"The woman told me if you don't want to talk here, you can go to the station with them." Angela sounded as if she'd like to see that.

"Jesus Christ!" Anton's heart pounded. He let injustice envelop him with all its familiar incitements: fury's roaring heart, rockets of fire. Yesterday his whole life had fallen apart. The shock of betrayal was profound. The air around him seemed to stink of his vulnerability. He could feel the profound treachery reach deep into the core of his being to destroy his dignity, his love, everything that he'd held sacred. He could not look in the mirror without seeing the open wounds of his hurt and humiliation bleeding out of his eyes, drooling from the corners of his mouth. He could feel his ruin coming.

Anton was at his worst. He had not slept at all. Strangers were camping in his living room, waiting for a call that would never come. Now he was supposed to be preparing to take depositions in a very important case. He had people to talk to, the research of associates to supervise. He had a firm luncheon and meetings to run. He was a prominent lawyer. Look at the settlements and judgments he got in his cases, the hours he billed, the kind of money he pulled down. His hand curled into a fist around his fat Montblanc pen, one of the many indicators of his importance. The police had to go away. He could not bear the questions. Angela interrupted his thoughts.

"What do you want me to tell them?" she asked.

"Okay, bring them in here." He smacked the desk, a wide expanse of fine burled wood. The pen jumped out of his hand. He picked it up and stabbed the blotter. The point of the pen skidded, making a jagged line. Shit. Now he needed a new blotter. To hell with the blotter. It was not good to get excited like this. He blinked a few times to calm down.

The Chinese woman came in first. Anton could see by her walk she had the rank. He had trouble understanding how that could be. Her empty expression immediately gave him the feeling she was out to get him. The male, who seemed to be her lackey, followed her into the room and carefully closed the door. Popescu gave his attention to the lackey, with his conservative haircut and well-cut blue blazer. It was clear to him the buttons were real brass, so he knew the guy was no street cop. Maybe Baum was really the ranking guy, and they were trying to confuse him. That felt more correct to him. He scowled at the possibility of more treachery.

"Good morning, Mr. Popescu; you remember Detective Baum," the Chinese said, then closed her mouth.

"Yeah, what do you want?"

"We're real sorry to bother you."

"Well, you should be, coming here to my office and humiliating me like this." He stared at them belligerently, sure of his position.

"Excuse me, sir, humiliating you?" The cop swerved off the road, onto a tangent.

Anton eagerly followed him there. "You heard me, humiliating. Intimidating. Call it what you want."

"I apologize if you've gotten that impression." The young man gave him a chastened nod, which gratified Anton. He glanced at the woman. Her blank Chinese face stared back, cold as stone.

Baum nodded again and continued. "It was not at all our intention to give that impression, sir. Your wife and baby are our highest priority. The mayor is on it. The commissioner is on it. The whole city wants him found as much as you do." The detective spread his hands out, palms up.

Anton stabbed the air with his pen. "Okay, I accept your apology. But I told you everything I know last night. I have nothing more to say to you."

Detective Baum scratched his ear. "That's not how it works."

"Okay, I'll tell you how it works. You assholes had the chance, but you didn't get the job done. You didn't find my baby and you don't know who hurt my wife," Anton raged.

"Excuse me, sir." Baum cocked his head in the direction of the woman. "Are you calling the sergeant here an asshole again?"

Another curve ball. Anton made a disgusted noise. "Don't give me this shit. If you don't have something positive to report, I have work to do."

"Well, there's no need to be rude and insulting to the lady."

Anton recoiled in his chair as if he'd been smacked in the face. Rude and insulting! Weren't they the ones who'd barged in here, humiliating him in front of his whole office? His lip bunched. "I've never been rude to anyone in my entire life. Get out of here before I lose my temper."

"Is that a threat, sir?"

Anton half rose and smacked the desk again, stinging his hand with the impact. "Are you deaf? I told you if you don't have something to report, please exit this office."

"Well, the thing is, you came to a conclusion too soon about getting the job done. It's still early days, and we do have something to report."

Anton was interested. "Yeah, what's that?"

"Your fingerprints were on the weapon that battered your wife. If she dies of her injuries, you will certainly be indicted for murder. Maybe you'd like to save us all a lot of trouble and come down to the station and give us a statement now."

"What?" Anton's body clenched with terror. "No."

"No, what? No, your fingerprints aren't on the weapon, or no, you don't want to tell us where the baby is and what happened to your wife?" Baum stood in front of the desk. He looked to Popescu like some kind of storm trooper.

"No, everything. What are you trying to pull here? I had nothing to do with this." Now he was really scared. In a panic, Anton raked his memory for something that could be perceived by the police as a weapon. What was the cop referring to? There were no weapons on the scene. The man had to be out of his mind, had to be fishing.

"Just trying to establish what happened, sir." The detective looked apologetic again.

"I love my wife. I would never hurt her," Anton said slowly. "I told you that last night."

"You also told us about your relationship with the baby's biological mother. So, if there is such a person, she may have something to do with this. Any way you look at it, you're connected."

"Well, I had an affair, and I can explain that. It doesn't mean I don't love my wife." Anton clenched his jaw. "People have relationships. It happens all the time. One doesn't have anything to do with the other."

"Mr. Popescu, the FBI is very interested in this. Kidnapping is a federal offense. You don't want to play with those boys. They're a lot meaner than we are. And you mentioned the baby's mother lives across state lines. That also makes it federal. If you adopted the baby illegally, that raises other questions." Baum glanced quickly at the sergeant, who remained as silent and motionless as stone.

"Illegal adoption. The FBI!" Anton's eyes burned. His throat burned. His stomach burned.

"So, let's get to the point here. You say you had a baby with a married woman whose husband doesn't know and whose identity you don't want to reveal. And the baby is gone. We're not buying any of this unless you can prove it."

"Look, my wife doesn't know about it. I told you I don't want to hurt her." Anton bagged his rage, his fear. Suddenly the erupting volcano of his emotions was capped, cooled and stilled as if it had never gone off. He turned on a dime and smiled. He could never understand it when people told him or his partners he had a temper. He didn't have a temper. Baum was right; he didn't want to deal with the FBI.

"It's too late. She's already been hurt." The Chinese cop spoke up, almost kindly. "You can tell us the truth, she's beyond caring."

"What are you talking about, beyond caring? She's getting better. She'll be awake in a few hours. She'll tell you I had nothing to do with this."

"We need the baby's birth certificate," Baum said crisply.

Anton shook his head. "I don't have it."

"Last night you said it was in the office."

"I most certainly did not. I said I didn't have it at

home.

Don't start misrepresenting me or I'm going to have to get a lawyer."

"I suggest you do. The DA wants to talk to you."

"The DA! The FBI!" Anton let out a reflexive honking laugh, like the kind cops made at truly macabre crime scenes. "This is a joke."

"No, sir. We have to have the baby's birth certificate. And unless you know where he is and can verify his identity and his good health, we're going to pursue this case as attempted murder and kidnapping, which means local and federal agencies will be all over it."

"What about my wife?" Anton said softly.

"I don't know—with a good lawyer you may be able to get a separate deal on the prosecution of that. The DA's office is—"

"I didn't mean that," Anton said sharply. "I told you I had nothing to do with this. You're way off."

"Then cooperate."

"I can't," he said flatly. "I would if I could. But I can't. I don't know who has him, and that's the God's honest truth. Look, I appreciate the good work you're doing. I really do. If you refrain from torturing me in a cell, I'll commend you for your efforts." He glanced down and was suddenly pained by the sight of the jagged line on the blotter. "But you're going in the wrong direction. I want you to know this has been the worst night of my life. I've never suffered so much. I've been—hunted,

hounded

by media. My wife is in the hospital. I can't eat. The mess in the apartment— all the questions. It's been a nightmare." He paused for breath, then he smiled at them ingratiatingly. "I understand your problem here, but I'm as much in the dark as you are."

"Okay." Baum shrugged.

"By the way, what is that weapon I supposedly hit my wife with?"

"It was the broom, sir."

The blood drained from Anton's face. He closed his eyes to stop the pain. He didn't need this. He just didn't need it. Silently he cursed the woman he'd married with such hope and innocence. His own open wound bled out on the desk as he searched for an explanation for the broom.