Paolo didn’t trust hospitals. Like the Bates Motel, people checked in but not out. Nor did he like going after a kid. But both directives had come from Philippe, and if there was one thing a soldier learned to do early it was to follow orders.
Fortunately, looking Latino remained an advantage. No one would take any notice of him. He intended to exploit this invisibility.
Paolo knew that no day care worker in her right mind was going to turn over information about a child under her care. Not to a Hispanic man. Not to a civilian. For this reason, as he had before, Paolo donned his police uniform. It was black, not blue or khaki, the word SWAT written over the pocket, and a SWAT insignia sewn onto the left sleeve. The trained eye might immediately note the lack of a city or jurisdiction within the badge or insignia, might identify this costume as a costume, might question the forged ID badge that hung open from the left breast pocket, slightly smeared-pink, as if blood had been cleaned from it, his own personal touch for which he felt especially proud-making it difficult to read. But who knew what a SWAT uniform was supposed to look like? Civilians encountered cops often enough to develop expected patterns of dress-but special forces units? Also working in his favor was that SWAT held a certain respect, panache even, that impressed people. It made up for any questions-voiced or otherwise-about his ethnicity.
He entered Baines Jewish Hospital from the delivery side and asked directions only once, then of a young woman who appeared to be in a hurry. After ten minutes of wandering corridors and moving between connecting structures-this place was more complicated than the pyramids-he finally reached a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Administrators had elected not to advertise the whereabouts of their employees’ children.
He found the door locked-an unexpected nuisance-and knocked twice with authority. There would be cameras here. There might be an armed response if his uniform were spotted by some alert security guard.
“Officer Rodriguez,” he announced himself in a hush to the anorexic who opened the door and received him. She could have been thirty, might have been fifty. Her teeth pushed apart thin lips.
“I need to speak to Penny…” he said, while digging into his left pants pocket.
“… Stevenson,” the woman supplied. Teachers were always so eager to know everything, so eager to please. “Regarding?”
“Police business,” he replied. “We have a… a tricky situation. In progress. I’m going to need to contact the mother… April, no. Alice ,” he corrected himself. “I’ll leave Penny in your care, but ask you to keep a close eye on her once I’ve spoken to her.”
“Penny’s not with us today.”
Paolo craned to get a better look past her. He hadn’t been asked in. A group of fifteen kids sat cross-legged on the floor, facing an adult woman who held a book in her lap.
“Where is she?”
“I wouldn’t know. Absent today. Her mother’s scheduled, so we called, but there was no answer.”
“I’ll need her address and home phone number.”
“The police don’t have a home phone number and address?” Lines of incredulity damaged an already difficult face. Her eyes fell to his uniform, and he knew he’d lost her.
He jammed a straight arm, the flat of his palm against the flatness of her chest, and drove her backward and off her feet. She fell onto her coccyx and cried out sharply.
He was inside. With his foot, he drove the door shut behind him.
“Cell phones on the floor,” he announced, carefully brandishing a plastic weapon in order to disguise its lack of authenticity. To his satisfaction the other two caregivers, the one reading and another neatening up a play area behind her, went slack-jawed. The one neatening up was of a sturdy, breeder build, a dark-haired wonder, well endowed in both hips and chest. He took a special interest in her immediately.
With the instruction repeated, the reader tried to speak as the breeder rose and crossed silently to her purse. The breeder set her phone down onto the carpet.
Not taking chances, Paolo holstered the fake pistol. He backed up, seized the thin one off the floor, and held her in a choke hold. She was frail enough that he could kill her by merely tightening his grip.
“Anyone moves,” he warned, now flashing his razor blade in the grip of index finger and thumb, “including any of the little ones, and there’s trouble for all of us.” He made eye contact with each of the two caregivers now on their feet. “Are we clear?”
The women nodded. They eyed their captive colleague, and instinctively moved to corral the children.
The one Paolo held went limp, having passed out from fright-or perhaps he’d choked her too tightly. He allowed her to slump to the floor and released her. He stepped over her, approaching the two others. Both recoiled.
“Penny’s mother’s address. Now.”
The kids stared at him, wide-eyed.
The breeder glanced toward the computer terminal on the gunmetal gray desk.
Paolo grabbed the phone off the desk and tore it from the wall, in case that had been her intention. He signaled her over, and she responded by standing and brushing herself off. Her colleague, the reader, reached out to stop her, but the gesture went unfelt. The sturdy woman walked calmly toward the computer terminal and sat down. Paolo moved around to view the screen from directly behind her. He stood close enough that had he wanted, he could have cut her open ear to ear.
“You do anything to-”
“I won’t.”
He watched as she called up various employee records.
He kept watch between keystrokes, first to the wall clock, then to the woman seated with the kids, then to the one still unconscious on the floor. He hoped he hadn’t killed the skinny one.
She toggled through several records, a digital photo embedded in each. A minute or two had passed. Murphy’s Law told him everything about this would quickly fuck up, and he’d be caught if he didn’t hurry.
By purposely identifying Penny and her mother he’d shown his cards, revealed his target. In the time it now took him to reach Hope Stevens, a.k.a. Alice Stevenson, she’d be warned off, and he’d miss her again.
That was unthinkable. Not an option. He had to think of a way around that.
Then he spotted the breeder’s handbag sitting atop the desk where she’d searched it for the phone, and he had his solution.
“Quickly!”
Terrified, she typed faster.
When he heard her fingers pause, Paolo viewed the record on the screen: “Penny Stevenson. PARENT/GUARDIAN: Alice Stevenson. ADDRESS:” a PO box!
“Her street address,” Paolo said.
“See for yourself,” the woman answered. “There isn’t one listed.” With a trembling finger, she pointed out the appropriate line on the screen.
“I need the street address…” he repeated. “Now!” He reached out, snatched up her purse, and then turning, the two other purses, both from cubbyholes.
The tall, skinny woman came alive, sitting up from where she lay on the floor. She tugged at the hem of her dress self-consciously. It had ridden up her pale thighs, revealing a pair of white stretch stockings that stopped at her knees. As if a part of this conversation, she told him, “I drove them home once.” To her colleague at the computer she said, “That blizzard last year. The buses…” She caught herself. “It’s a loft in Jefferson Square.”
“You’ll come with me,” he said.
“Oh, God, no…”
He removed the billfolds from all three purses. The thin woman looked dazed. He’d have preferred the breeder, for entertainment value, but he’d take the one he was given.
“I now have all your home addresses,” he explained, displaying their billfolds. “I have your driver’s licenses, pictures of your children, no doubt. I’m an elephant.”
All three women reacted with puzzled expressions.
“Children,” Paolo called out to the kids on the floor, “what do we know about an elephant?”
A boy raised his hand energetically and called out, “He packs his own trunk?”
Some of the other kids laughed.
Paolo cued the kids, “Do elephants forget?”
“No!” a handful of kids erupted.
Addressing the women, he said, “And neither will I, if anyone tries to interfere.” He tossed a box of tissues across to the thin woman, now kneeling. It landed at her feet. He asked which purse was hers and retrieved a set of car keys.
“You’re driving.” Moving toward the door now. “No one comes in or out. You don’t make or take calls. If it comes up, your friend went home early. One of the kids pulled the telephone off the wall.” He held up the two billfolds. “You continue on and finish the day as planned. You go home. For all you know, I’ll be watching you. Do not call each other, do not tell anyone anything: husbands, family, no one! If the kids talk, you handle it. Tomorrow morning you can do as you please.”
He glanced back at the breeder one last time, knowing the pleasure she represented.
He called out to the room: “Start singing!”
As he headed down the hall, the skinny one at his side, he heard their small voices like toy bells, off-key but lovely in their clarity.