XIII
One man apiece led them down a poorly lit flight of stairs. Emmett
whimpered with pain, but the giant gave him no mercy, yanking him along by
the forearm.
They entered a ground floor room with few furnishings. Rachel's
fear-clouded mind didn't register much about the room except for the five
men standing and one sitting in it. Their escorts jammed her and Emmett
into metal folding chairs and began wrapping ropes tightly around them.
They faced an old man, his face shrewd and wrinkled, who sat in an armchair
like it was a throne, two of the younger men flanking his chair like
attendants. Beside him stood a desk with a few papers and a phone.
"So," said the old man, in a voice wheezy with respiratory trouble, "Mr.
Nash. I give you time to reconsider. Now, you have something for me?"
Pale and miserable looking, Emmett shook his head. One of the standing men
strode to stand in front of Emmett, swung his arm back, and slapped him,
brutally. Rachel gasped and cried out.
All eyes turned to her. She bit her lip.
"Mary," wheezed the old man. "Is that your name?"
Rachel nodded. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she tried to take deep
breaths, but the malice in the gaze of the old man froze her breath from
her.
"Well, Mary, this whimpering lump of flesh took something from me.
Something which could hurt my business. You're in business, aren't you,
Mary. You know how hard you have to work to establish yourself . . ." He
broke off, coughing. Rachel stole a glance at the faces of the other men.
They did not react to the coughing fit. One of the attendants handed him a
handkerchief.
As Rachel looked around the room, she spotted familiar looking baggage on
the floor by a door. Her pounding heart seized in her chest. Her
suitcase!
As he recovered from the fit, the old man gestured at another of the men.
This other man stepped behind Rachel and yanked her head back by the hair.
Rachel's panic surged, and she struggled desperately against the ropes.
"We're not wasting any more time on this slug," announced the old man.
"Where do you want me to cut her first, Nash?" growled the voice behind her
head. "Ladies hate to have scars on their faces." The leash of her hair
tightened, and Rachel was forced to stop struggling. Out of the corner of
her eye, she saw a hand with a knife approach her cheek.
"I don't know, I don't know," cried Emmett. "I'm sorry!"
"Do it," the old man ordered, and the knife blade rested on her face.
"Wait!" Rachel cried. "I'll tell you where the ledger is!"
"That's more like it," said the man who had slapped Emmett. He stepped to
Rachel.
"Noo," moaned Emmett.
"Where is it?" Rachel's hair was released, and she returned her head to
its rightful place on her neck, and blinked through tears at the man before
her.
"It's in the store," she lied, praying with all her might. "I found it in
Emmett's things. National Linen Supply, right? 1947?"
"Where did you put it?"
"In a drawer," she gulped. "I don't know how to tell you where . . ."
"Rachel, don't!" Emmett sobbed.
"Rachel?" asked the man behind her chair. "I thought her name was Mary."
"Shut up, Joe," ordered the old man. "So, Rachel," he emphasized the name,
"your boss is dead. I have a whole graveyard for people who cross me. You
better be telling the truth, or you'll be feeding worms, too."
"Do you want me to take you there?" she asked in a small voice. "I have a
key."
"No way!" put in the slapping man. "Pop, after today the place will be
crawling with cops."
"I'm not senile yet!" the old man snapped, but his protest was weakened by
the coughing fit which followed. The younger men waited for it to pass.
Emmett cried.
"No, Rachel," the old man whispered, when he could. "You're gonna call
someone. Someone else who can get in the store. You tell somebody who
cares whether you live or die where the book is, and they better bring it
to the park bench by the Giuseppo Mazzini statue in an hour. No cops, or
you and Mr. Smart-ass are both dead. Got it?"
Rachel nodded and gulped. "I have to call the store."
"Not the store!" demanded the slapping man. "Cops'll have a phone tap."
"Think of someone else," ordered the old man.
"There's no one else. You killed my boss. Now there's only his cousin."
"It's true, Lucky," said another man. "We checked her out. No family."
"It's a sad thing to have no family, Rachel. No one who cares whether you
live or die. You should marry yourself a nice man."
Lucky thought for a moment. "We'll risk the tap. You keep the call short,
you understand? If we have to hang up on you . . . Tommy here doesn't
like hurting women, but Joe doesn't mind at all."
Rachel nodded. She thought furiously. What should she say?
Tommy, the man who had slapped Emmett, dialed the phone and held the
receiver to Rachel's ear. Joe held his knife to her throat. The weaselly
man lifted an extension which hung on the wall.
She listened to the phone ring. What if Connor answered?
Duncan answered. "Hello?" He sounded tense.
A sudden wave of emotion washed over Rachel, part relief and part panic.
The situation had seemed so unreal to her, and hearing Duncan's familiar
voice made it somehow worse.
"Duncan!" she half sobbed.
"Rachel! Are you all right? Where are you?"
The cold point of the knife reminded her to watch her words. "Duncan. I'm
okay," she lied. "Emmett's here, too. These men want . . ." She needed to
remind him of the name of the company. "There's a ledger. It's for
National Linen Supply. I put it in the drawer in the desk. If you don't
bring it to the park bench by the Giuseppo Mazzini statue in an hour,
they'll kill us."
"No cops," hissed Joe.
"Can you find the ledger? It's for National Linen Supply, from 1947 to
1952."
There was silence while Duncan considered her words. Lucky pointed at his
watch, and made a "speed it up" motion.
"Rachel," Duncan answered, "they shot Russell, and they took his body with
them. Don't be afraid."
Tommy pulled the receiver from her ear and spoke into it. "No cops, buddy.
One hour." Then Lucky pressed the hook down, and Weasel hung up the
extension.
"Was it too long?" Tommy asked.
"We're okay," Lucky judged. "Frank and Jamie, get over to the park. And
get her keys outta her bag, just in case. Tommy, you take 'em back
upstairs. And Tony, get me something to drink. I'm dyin' here."
Tommy and Joe unwrapped the ropes binding her and Emmett to chairs. To
Rachel's horror, the giant, who must have been named either Frank or Jamie,
moved, not to her purse, but to her suitcase.
"Pop, let me lock 'em in the graveyard. I don't want to have to haul 'em
down later," complained Tommy.
The giant turned her suitcase over and reached for the latches.
"The keys are in my purse," she volunteered, a little too hastily.
The giant looked at her, as did everyone else, and then looked at Lucky.
"That's nice to know," Lucky mocked. "Something important in the suitcase,
Rachel?"
Her blood ran cold. Blood . . . "My Kotex are in there. Could I have
them? I'm on the rag."
A moment of silence gripped the room. Rachel held her breath and tried not
to look as scared as she was. A distant lady-like part of her winced at
the indelicate phrase, but she had needed to be as blunt as possible. It
had worked for another Rachel . . .
Lucky snorted and coughed. "Get 'em outta here," he wheezed. "Downstairs
is okay."
She and Emmett were hauled toward a different door. Rachel looked over her
shoulder as best she could, and saw the giant abandon the suitcase and
reach for her purse, just as she and Emmett were shoved through the door,
and crowded onto a cement stairway. The slamming door echoed hollowly.
*Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you. Please don't let them change
their minds.*
XIV
Emmett sank down by her feet, his breath rasping in the gloom. He said
nothing. Perhaps he was in too much pain to speak.
Rachel also remained silent, standing upright in the darkness, waiting for
her eyes to adjust. She had seen the descending stairs in the brief moment
of light as they entered, and now she slid her hand along the sides of the
door, searching for a light switch, but she found none. She moved one
bare foot forward, feeling for the edge. Leaving Emmett, she descended
into she knew not what.
After ten steps, her foot felt cold, packed earth, and her vision began to
make out a narrow basement with exposed pipes, ducts, and electrical
conduits suspended from the low ceiling. The place smelled damp and
close, with a faint odor of something unpleasant, but which she couldn't
quite identify. Something wisped against her cheek and she nearly jumped
out of her skin.
"Ah!" she gasped, as it tapped her again. Too firm for a spider's web, she
judged, breathing hard. She reached before her and found a hanging cord.
She pulled it, and a blessed dim light fell from a bare bulb above her.
Now she could see the basement. The brick walls, the narrow, ground level
windows just below ceiling height, the earth floor, and many shadows where
the single light source was blocked by ducting.
"There's no water, no sleeping bag," Emmett observed from the landing above
the stairs. "They expect to kill us soon."
"Or let us go," Rachel chided, though she didn't hold the hope she
defended. She felt thirsty, and guessed that Emmett, injured, must be even
worse off.
Emmett began a slow progress down the stairs.
Rachel continued to look around. Two large spades leaned against the wall
a few feet from her, with fresh dirt muddying their tips. She frowned and
looked at the earth floor. It was darker in large, rectangular patches,
where the dust and topsoil had been disturbed. As if something had been
buried . . .
"Emmett," her voice sounded strangled, even to herself. "Did they call
this the graveyard?"
The dark patch near the spades began to move.
