CHAPTER SEVEN - Talk and Action
October 19, 2005. The street before Giorgia Carentini's penthouse. NYC. 05:00 pm.
32 hours missing.
Aiden longed for a coffee. All that joking about Sam Spade eating her hat suddenly did not seem funny anymore to her. Twenty minutes had passed, and Morris Greek had not left the penthouse. At least not through the front door. She was already racking her brains, wondering whether they had made a mistake somewhere.
"Our theory is flawless, Aiden," Sam said.
Aiden winced. "Am I that transparent?" she asked.
"It wasn't hard to guess what's on your mind," Sam replied. "I've been thinking the same thing: What the heck is keeping him upstairs!"
Aiden laughed. "That's pretty much what I thought," she admitted.
"He'll appear," Sam assured her. Then she grimaced. "For the sake of my stomach, he should," she added.
Aiden's reply got stuck in her throat. She had just spotted Morris Greek leaving the house.
"There he is!"
Morris did not look left or right. He looked quite in a hurry. He was carrying a bag that seemed stuffed full with something and headed for a row of parked cars on the opposite side of the street.
"Suspect leaves the house," Aiden radioed to HQ. She craned her neck to get a glimpse at the car Morris was just unlocking. "He gets into a light blue Chevy Malibu. License plate reads... uhm..."
Sam helped her out, and Aiden nodded thank you.
"Agent Spade and Detective Burn take up pursuit," she finished and put the radio back into its cradle. Then she started the engine and followed Morris's Chevrolet.
It seemed an endless odyssey through a maze of small streets, and Aiden had to admit a few times that they passed through areas where she'd never been before. But Sam assured her that she felt the same.
When Morris turned another corner and pulled over in the parking lot of a cheap motel somewhere in Queens, Aiden heaved a sigh of relief. "Are you sure we haven't been going round in circles for the last thirty minutes?" she remarked, expecting no answer from Sam.
"Gates Motel," Sam read aloud. "What do you think, why did they choose that name? Because it sounds modern, as in Bill Gates?"
"I suppose it was rather 'cause it rhymes with Bates Motel," Aiden said wryly. "But I can tell you one thing, Sam - the owner's name certainly isn't Gates."
"I agree."
They watched Morris get out of the car, get his bag and fumble in his pocket for something, probably the key. Then he turned around a corner and was out of sight.
"Oh, cripes," Aiden cursed. "Now we can't see which room he enters."
"Well, then we'll have to settle for the good old method." Sam opened the car door, her gun ready. "Let's canvass the motel."
Aiden joined her, her own gun drawn, although she did not really think they would need them. Morris Greek had not seemed especially violent to her.
Nor very intelligent, for that matter. It was almost an insult that he really seemed to think he'd fooled herself and Sam. But it was also somewhat amusing.
It turned out that they did not have to knock on every single motel room door. Voices of a man and a woman arguing drifted out of the slightly opened window of room # 54. Aiden had to suppress a giggle. Morris Greek was about as talented a kidnapper as Mac would be as a cabaret singer.
She and Sam snuck closer to the window, both with their guns ready despite Aiden's assumption as to their being actually used. But for the time being, they settled for a little eavesdropping. It was their only chance, since they had no conclusive evidence against Morris. Only what they overheard now and Tricia Quinlan's statement would maybe lead to a conviction, so they both were very careful not to make any mistakes.
"We'll listen for a while, then I'll call for backup and we'll storm the room together," she whispered to Sam. "That'll probably scare him out of his pants."
Sam gave her the thumbs-up, and they concentrated on what was spoken inside.
"But it was really an accident!" Morris was saying.
The woman - Tricia - sighed. "We've had this a thousand times before," she answered, sounding exhausted rather than really irritated. "If it was an accident, you won't have to fear anything. You were a minor back then, don't forget that. But it's really stupid of you to keep me captive like that, Morris. That's a real crime. You can still release me, and we'll both go to the police and I won't mention to anyone that this ever happened. But if someone finds me here, there'll be no way of concealing what really happened any longer."
"There's always a way, Tricia, if you only keep quiet," Morris retorted. "Come on, you covered for me once, you can't go back on your promise now."
"You said it yourself, back then: this promise does not extend beyond high school. I should have told them years ago, but I had no idea that we were talking about homicide!"
"We weren't, Trish!" Aiden heard Morris's footsteps; he was probably pacing up and down.
"We are now." Her voice suddenly dropped down and assumed a warm, pleasant tone that exuded calm and confidence. This must be what she talked like when she was interpreting, Aiden thought. A voice anyone in the audience would love to have in their ear. "Look, Morris, what do you think you could gain by holding me captive here? I'm not gonna give in to your pleas, and what then? You can't keep me locked up here forever, and besides, I suppose that the police are already looking for me."
"The police were at my place this afternoon," Morris answered. "Seems like your neighbor saw me entering your apartment the other day, but they believed me when I said I hadn't seen you since the fifteenth."
"So maybe they believed you, but, Morris, don't you see you're not gonna get anywhere with this? Look, I'm trying to help you. If you don't give yourself over to the police, then it will haunt you for the rest of your life. And if you don't release me, what are you gonna do instead? You're already into it up to your ears. I can still help you!"
"Yeah, sure, that's what you said on the phone. And your generous help consists of what, getting me jailed!"
"No, Morris! It consists of keeping you out out jail - by not telling them that you kidnapped me!"
"Why should I believe you? You covered for me once and now you're about to tell on me. Why shouldn't you do it again?"
"Because this time, no one got hurt. Not even I. For a kidnapper, you've been pretty generous."
"I don't want to hurt you, Trish. Really. I never wanted to hurt anyone. But this guy just walked in front of my car, and there was no way I could get around him, or else we would both have kicked the bucket."
"Then you should tell that..."
"But, Trish, when I said I don't want to hurt you, I didn't necessarily mean that I would not hurt you." Morris's voice had assumed a threatening tone, and Sam and Aiden exchanged a glance.
"I'm calling for backup," Aiden whispered, and when Sam nodded, she turned on her heel and hurried back to the car.
xxx
05:59 pm. 32 hours 59 minutes missing.
Sam's hands were slippery, and she fastened her grip on her gun. She was still hoping she wouldn't have to use it, but she was ready to intervene as soon as anything implied that Morris Greek was getting violent.
To her surprise, Tricia laughed silently.
"Morris Greek," she said, and there was something in her voice that Sam could not quite place. It almost sounded like a sort of affectionate mockery. "I know you too well. You won't hurt me. You're self-centered and arrogant, and you can be quite ruthless - I guess that as a journalist you have to - but you're not cruel; you're not even particularly aggressive. You're all talk and no action, and I'm not saying this to provoke you. You know it's true."
There was no answer for quite some time, and then something shattered in the room, and Sam winced. But Tricia resumed talking, unperturbed.
"There you go, Morris. You've always been like that. You'd've loved to slap my face just now, but you shattered that plate instead. Why? Because you don't have it in you."
"Are you telling me I'm a coward?"
"I never said that."
"Tricia, for the sake of the old times..."
"What old times, Morris?" Her voice suddenly sounded sharp. "There were no old times for us, Morris. Only a strange agreement between two very different teenagers."
"For the sake of what you once felt for me..."
"You said it, Morris. What I once felt for you. I don't have any feelings for you now. What little remnants were still there, they vanished a few days ago."
"You were in love with me back then."
"I was." It was a simple statement of fact. "That's partly why I agreed to keep your secret. And that's why I really was content with your way of saying thank you. But now I don't really know how I could be. All you did was grant me little insights of how it might have been. It was no big deal for you, but I suppose you really felt as if you were doing something completely unselfish. My benefactor! I don't deny that you really helped me over the past few months, but you had ulterior motives."
"We had an agreement."
"And I didn't break my promise."
Sam's thoughts began to drift. Invariably, she ended up thinking of Martin. She hated herself for it, knowing that she was to blame for the end of the relationship, but the sharp pang of pain that went through her insides told her all too clearly that she was far from over him. For the umpteenth time, she wondered what might have been...
He still had feelings for her, of that she was pretty sure, and although she tried to deny it, her own feelings for him were also still pretty strong. It was solely due to her pride and stubbornness that things didn't work out between them.
Look what love can do, she thought sarcastically. It made a young girl help conceal a crime, and now it even got her kidnapped.
Unrequited love, another voice in her head corrected. What you had wasn't unrequited. Your feelings were reciprocated, and they still are.
She winced and could barely suppress a little shriek when Aiden suddenly turned up at her side again.
"Did I scare you?" she whispered?
Sam nodded.
"Anything happen?"
Sam shook her head, still too lost in her thoughts to speak. Aiden glanced curiously at her.
"Let's get back to the car and wait for backup," she suggested. "They'll be here any minute. That doesn't sound as if they'll soon stop talking," she added with a gesture at the door of # 54.
They retreated, and Aiden handed Sam a cup of lukewarm coffee from a warming bottle.
They were silent for almost a minute, then Aiden set down her own coffee and looked at Sam.
"What's going on between you and that Fitzgerald guy?" she asked bluntly.
Sam stared at her, speechless for a moment.
"I noticed the tension between you," Aiden continued, almost apologetically. "Look, I dunno what happened, but I can see that he loves you. And you don't seem to hate him, either, if I may say so."
"Of course I don't hate him," Sam said evasively. It gave her the creeps that Aiden Burn had noticed that something was going on. The dark-haired detective had seen them together, true, but only for a few minutes. Either she and Martin were the worst actors in the world, or Aiden was particularly quick-witted. She tended to assume the latter.
"It's none of my business, I know," Aiden went on, "and you don't have to do what I say, but if I may give you some advice - as a sort of neutral counselor - I'd suggest you two get together and talk it over. It's bound to affect your work - negatively, I should add - if you keep whatever it is unresolved between you."
"You're absolutely right, it is none of your business." Sam softened the sharpness of the remark with an apologetic smile. "Let's just say, things didn't work out very well."
"Try again," Aiden advised. "He seems worth it."
Sam did not reply. Aiden Burn had no right to interfere in her personal problem, but what she said was true. Completely, absolutely true.
"Maybe he is," she said after a pause. But maybe I am not.
Aiden rolled her eyes and glances at her watch. "Geez, those guys are never around when you need them," she remarked. "Where's the sense in calling backup if said backup doesn't show up?"
"They will," Sam said, glad that Aiden had changed the topic. But then something occurred to her and she added casually, "You and Danny Messer get along very well, don't you?"
Now it was Aiden's turn to stare at her. "He's my hero," she said cheerily, but Sam detected an undertone in her voice that suggested she was more serious than it sounded.
"Maybe he's also worth a try," Sam remarked.
Aiden Burn did not answer. But Sam knew that she would probably have done so if the backup had not chosen this moment to arrive.
The rest went very fast. They returned to the motel room (Morris and Patricia were still talking), two of the officers kicked the door open, and then they stormed the motel room. They were met by two equally stunned faces - Morris seemed horrified, Tricia relieved.
"Long time no see, Greek," Aiden commented as she snapped the handcuffs shut around his wrists. He was too surprised to put up any resistance.
Sam turned to Tricia Quinlan. She was cuffed to the bedpost with one hand, but a small table with several open bottles of water, a glass and a plate containing an assortment of small sandwiches stood within her reach. The remote control for the TV lay discarded between the sheets. At least Morris Greek had made sure she did not starve or dehydrate.
"Patricia Quinlan?" she asked formally.
The young woman nodded.
"I'm Samantha Spade, FBI. I'll get these cuffs off you; please hold still."
She unlocked the handcuffs and released the interpreter.
Tricia rubbed her wrist. "Thank you, Agent Spade," she said. Then she turned her head towards the bathroom and grimaced. "I'll be back in a minute, and then I'll happily answer all your questions," she said. "But first... I really have to go."