Chapter 19: Pizza Ping
Roxanne, sitting in the back of a van that smelled like sweaty gym clothes, with her hands tied behind her back, she felt flustered. Unlike Tom, they hadn’t blindfolded her. She looked around for any details that might tell her who had taken her. Falling over a little to the left, Roxanne could tell the van was banking a turn.
“What do you want?” she asked. She craned her neck to see the two men who snatched her on the seat in front of her.
“Shut up,” one of the men said. She could only see the backs of their heads, yet she could tell they bore big muscles. Her purse, still draped across her chest, wasn’t much use. Roxanne realized she’d left her phone on the table at the coffee shop. Tom probably took it, she thought, but she probably wouldn’t get a chance to call it.
“You won’t get away with this, you know. If it’s money you want, I can help you.”
“Shut up,” one of the men said again.
As the van careened off another turn, Roxanne considered where they were taking her. Thanks to Tom’s blindfold, she hadn’t even been exactly sure where she’d been. Sitting on the floor of the van, she couldn’t even see much out the windows.
After another few minutes, the van stopped. Roxanne could make out the outline of tall buildings, but she didn’t recognize any of them. The two men hopped in the back, blindfolded and gagged Roxanne. Then they took off her shoes and tied her ankles together.
She started to fear they might throw her in the Mississippi River, bound and gagged, but based on what she saw out the window, she suspected she was closer to downtown. She pulled at the restraints on her wrists. They wouldn’t loosen.
She heard them wheeling something to the van, then, one of the men lifted her body under her armpits, while the other grabbed her legs. She tried to squirm; however, it didn’t do much good. They plopped her body on something soft and covered her with some other kind of fabric, towels she thought, because they smelled like bleach.
They wheeled her into a building, and she could hear the ding and characteristic rumbling of elevator doors open. An apartment or a hotel? She couldn’t be sure which. She lay still, listening to her surroundings rather than trying to fight. She knew she couldn’t do much blindfolded with her arms and legs tied.
When she heard the sound of a keycard slicing through the reader in the door, she knew it must be a hotel room. Despite her feelings of panic and utter uselessness, she forced herself to remain calm, gather all the information she could. They wheeled her inside, unburied her, placed her on the bed and removed the gag, the blindfold, and the ties on her ankles so only her hands remained tied together.
She recognized the two goons from Owen’s funeral, sitting in back of the church. They’d been following her, probably, tracking her movements. As she adjusted her focus, she could see another man, short and bald, sitting in an arm chair in the corner of the room.
The goons led her over to the corner, pulled out the desk chair, and plopped her on it in front of the bald man. She didn’t recognize him.
“What do you want?” she spat.
“Easy,” said the man. “It’s not so much what you have that I want. It’s what I can get for you.”
A little relieved that the men wanted to keep her alive, Roxanne pulled on her wrist ties, wriggling to free her hands.
“Behave, and I’ll untie you,” the man said.
“So you’ve been following me. I get it. But what’s the problem?”
“The way I see it,” the man continued, “you’ve been cozying up to someone with a lot of money.”
Tom, she thought. They were after Tom’s money.
“And with your substantial debt, what I can’t understand is why you don’t use some of your boy toy’s money to take care of that,” the bald man flashed a grin that made Roxanne’s arm hair stand on edge.
“It’s not like that. I can’t just take his money.”
“We’ll see about that,” the man said.
“We had an agreement. I’m paying back the money,” Roxanne said, assuming the goons and the bald man had been sent by her father’s loan shark.
The man clasped his hands and pulled them in front of him, stretching his shoulders, indicating his boredom with the situation.
“Yes, but not fast enough. When the boss sees another way, a faster way, he doesn’t hesitate to take the opportunity.”
“But we had a deal,” Roxanne protested, angered that they would suddenly involve Tom.
The bald man stood up from his chair and sauntered over to Roxanne. She followed his slow, deliberate movements with her eyes, not moving her head. He brought his hand to her face and stroked it. Roxanne snarled.
“Oh, honey. The moment you failed to secure the proper permit, the deal was off.”
She reeled from that information. How did they know? What was going on?
“Now we wait,” he said and hopped on the bed, outstretching his legs and laying back on the bulging white pillows with his hands clasped behind his head.
One of the other men picked up the remote and turned on the TV. He circled through the channels before landing on a superhero movie. The other man came over to Roxanne and turned her chair to face the TV. She grimaced.
“What do you want me to do? I don’t have my phone. Give me yours. I’ll call Tom. I’ll ask for the money.”
The man on the bed looked over at her. He smiled like an evil genius.
“We’re not that stupid,” he said. “The boss just said to wait. That’s what we do.”
Roxanne sat in the chair and seethed. She could try to run, but with three of them, they’d surely catch her. She eyed the phone on the bedside table. They’d unplugged it. She’d have to first plug it in and then make a call, which probably wasn’t going to be possible under their watchful eyes.
One of the goons stepped over to the mini-fridge, took out a beer can and opened it. When he padded back to the bed, Roxanne could see the logo against the shimmery silver of the can. A green shamrock. It was the same logo she found on the piece of aluminum at the burnt down building.
Why did they have a beer with that logo? They clearly brought it to the room. How did it all add up? She couldn’t figure out how they knew so much. Did this mean that construction was going to be delayed? Who else knew about the permit?
Her anxiety prevented her from thinking straight. She knew Tom would probably pay the money, but she wanted to stop that before it happened. She couldn’t let him get entangled in this mess. And who knew how much they’d demand from him.
If only she could get a message to Tom, she thought. Or maybe a hotel employee?
“I’m hungry,” she said, breaking the silence that hung thick in the room.
The man in charge looked at his thugs on the bed. One of them shrugged. “Room service?” he suggested.
“No, then they’d have to come in and it’d be on the charge. Too messy,” said the bald guy.
“And boss said not to drive the van anywhere,” one of the other men said.
The other thug added, “I could go for some pizza. I could meet the delivery guy outside.”
Both goons nodded to each other in agreement, then, they dug in their pockets.
“How much you got?” one goon asked the other.
“Five bucks?” said one.
“I only got two. Not enough.”
“You guys are idiots,” said the bald guy, as he turned back to the TV screen engrossed in the movie.
“But I’m hungry,” one goon whined. “We didn’t bring a wallet. No ID, like boss said.”
That gave Roxanne an idea.
“Pizza sounds good,” she said. “I’ll buy. My credit card’s in my wallet.” The two thugs glanced at each other and agreed it sounded like a good idea. The bald man on the other bed gave them the go-ahead with a wave of his arm as he continued to stare at the screen.
They took the card from her wallet and used one of their cell phones to place the order. Roxanne sat back, hoping her plan would work. In a minute or two, she hoped Tom would hear the ping.