No Second Chance

“What is it?” I asked.

“They’ve stopped,” Rachel said. “We’ll be on them in two miles.”

Chapter 32

Steven Bacard replacedthe phone’s receiver.

You slip-slide into evil, he thought. You cross the line for just one moment. You cross back. You feel safe. You change things, you believe, for the better. The line is still there. It’s still intact. Okay, maybe there’s a smudge there now, but you can still see it clearly. And next time you cross, maybe that line smudges a little more. But you have your bearings. No matter what happens to that line, you remember where it is.

Don’t you?

There was a mirror above the fully stocked bar in Steven Bacard’s office. His interior decorator had insisted that all people of prestige had to have a place to toast their successes. So he had one. He didn’t even drink. Steven Bacard stared at his reflection and thought, not for the first time in his life: Average. He had always been average. His grades in school, his SAT and LSAT scores, his law-school ranking, his bar score (he passed it on the third attempt). If life were a game where children choose sides for kickball, he’d be picked in the middle of the pack, after the good athletes and before the really bad ones—in that cusp for those who leave no mark.

Bacard became a lawyer because he believed that being a JD would give him a level of prestige. It didn’t. No one hired him. He opened up his own pitiful office near the Paterson courthouse, sharing space with a bail bondsman. He ambulance-chased, but even as a member of this small-time pack, he couldn’t distinguish himself. He managed to marry a woman slightly above his station, though she reminded him of that as often as she could.

Where Bacard had indeed been below average—waybelow average—was in sperm count. Try as he might—and Dawn, his wife, didn’t really like him to try—he could not impregnate his wife. After four years, they tried to adopt. Again, Steven Bacard fit into the abyss of the great unspectacular, which made finding a white baby—something Dawn truly craved—nearly impossible. He and Dawn traveled to Romania, but the only children available were too old or born drug addled.

But it was there, overseas in that god-deserted place, that Steven Bacard finally came up with an idea that, after thirty-eight years, made him rise above the crowd.

“Problem, Steven?”

The voice startled him. He turned away from his reflection. Lydia stood in the shadows.

“Staring in the mirror like that,” Lydia said, adding a tsk-tsk at the end. “Wasn’t that Narcissus’s downfall?”

Bacard could not help it. He began to tremble. It wasn’t just Lydia, though, in truth, she often had that effect on him. The phone call had set him on edge. Lydia popping up like that—that was the clincher. He had no idea how she’d gotten in or how long she’d been standing there. He wanted to ask what had happened tonight. He wanted details. But there was no time.

“We do indeed have a problem,” Bacard said.

“Tell me.”

Her eyes chilled him. They were big and luminous and beautiful and yet you sensed nothing behind them, only a cold chasm, windows to a house long abandoned.

What Bacard had discovered while in Romania—what had finally helped him rise above the pack—was a way to beat the system. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, Bacard was on a roll. He stopped chasing ambulances. People started looking up to him. He was invited to fund-raisers. He became a sought-after speaker. His wife, Dawn, started to smile at him again and ask him about his day. He even appeared on News 12 New Jersey when the cable station needed a certain kind of legal expert. He stopped, however, when a colleague overseas reminded him of the danger of too much publicity. Besides, he no longer needed to attract clients. They found him, these parents searching for a miracle. The desperate have always done that, like plants stretching through the dark for any sliver of sunlight. And he, Steven Bacard, was that sunlight.

He pointed to the phone. “I just got a call.”

“And?”

“The ransom money is bugged,” he said.

“We switched bags.”

“Not just the bags. There’s some kind of device in the money. Between the bills or something.”

Lydia’s face clouded over. “Your source didn’t know about this before?”

“My source didn’t know about any of it until just now.”

“So what you’re telling me,” she said slowly, “is that while we stand here the police know exactly where we are?”

“Not the police,” he said. “The bug wasn’t planted by the cops or the feds.”

That seemed to surprise her. Then Lydia nodded. “Dr. Seidman.”

“Not exactly. He has a woman named Rachel Mills helping him. She used to be a fed.”

Lydia smiled as if this explained something. “And this Rachel Mills—this ex-fed—she’s the one who bugged the money?”

“Yes.”

“Is she following us right now?”

“No one knows where she is,” Bacard said. “No one knows where Seidman is either.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“The police think this Rachel woman is involved.”

Lydia lifted her chin. “Involved in the original kidnapping?”

“And the murder of Monica Seidman.”

Lydia liked that. She smiled and Bacard felt a fresh shiver slink down his back. “Was she, Steven?”

He teetered. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Ignorance is bliss, that it?”

Bacard chose to say nothing.

Lydia said, “Do you have the gun?”

He stiffened. “What?”

“Seidman’s gun. Do you have it?”

Bacard did not like this. He felt as if he were sinking. He considered lying, but then he saw those eyes. “Yes.”

“Get it,” she said. “How about Pavel? Have you heard from him?”

“He’s not happy with any of this. He wants to know what’s going on.”

“We’ll call him in the car.”

“We?”

“Yes. Now let’s hurry, Steven.”

“I’m coming with you?”

“Indeed.”

“What are you going to do?”

Lydia put her fingers to her lips. “Shh,” she said. “I have a plan.”

Rachel said, “They’re on the move again.”

“How long did they stop?” I asked

“Maybe five minutes. They could have met up with someone and transferred the money. Or maybe they were just getting gas. Turn right here.”