Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(92)
Lou had let paranoia beguile him. No one had been out there on Hope Street sitting in a black van with tinted windows. The Mafia was not watching the house. Surely they’d lost interest, the ringleaders having absconded, probably to Colombia. They’d obviously decided to cancel their ridiculous fatwa on an honest, objective journalist who’d reported the facts with no ill intent toward anyone.
He drove on slowly, in the throes of dilemma, worrying about the roads icing over if he didn’t get moving — the temperature had already dipped below freezing. He was tired, frazzled. What were the risks of staying in town? He was having trouble weighing them. Don’t do anything dumb, he told himself.
He slowed by a park on his right, an outdoor rink where preteen boys were playing hockey, their parents watching, chatting, laughing, drinking from Thermoses. Lou was transfixed by this heartwarming Canadian scene. He parked in a gap between the ubiquitous SUVs, and looked yearningly out the windshield, then turned the engine off and got out for a closer view.
A minor blot on this holiday tableau: a pissed-off eight-year-old girl demanding ice time. Clutching her skates, complaining to her mother, who was urging patience.
He caught her name, Betsy, spunky little Betsy, who showed a definite lack of patience when one of the boys, a smart alec, whizzed by with his stick raised and made a kissy face at her. “Sexist pig!” she shouted.
Lou had to laugh. DR. JOY’S TIPS ON LIVING STRESS-FREE. Add one more: Sit for an hour each day in front of a playground. He lingered for a while, watching the game, as the smart alec potted a couple, showing finesse, maybe a future all-star. Lou should be teaching little Logan how to skate. Which would be easier if he knew how.
Suddenly, with a rush of sadness, he realized that this idyll had to end, that he must jettison his daydream of returning to Celeste and family. It took all his resolve to break free, but he pulled out. He was going home. Robert O’Brien had a life there. A house on Main Street. Friends.
The playground gave way to empty parkland on his right. He had not advanced a block before he found himself overtaking the same little girl, Betsy, who was stomping down the roadway with her skates, obviously still in a temper. No sign of her mother, and no way he was going to offer her a lift — that threatened all sorts of awkward scenarios.
Suddenly he went tight. His heart was pounding. He was in cardiac arrest . . . no, something else, a doomy voice in his head, a powerful premonition. Something bad is about to happen.
What had probably triggered this (he realized much later) was a niggle of concern about the girl, a subliminal awareness she was in danger. A quick glance at the rear-view caused the niggle to explode into full-blown fright and horror: not a hundred metres behind him, a brown van had pulled up beside Betsy. A man with a Santa beard was leaning through the open passenger door, passing her a gift-wrapped box.
Lou slammed on the brakes, and his tires squealed and threw up ice and slush as his Chevy swerved sideways into a roadside snow pile. He tried to reverse, wheels spinning. Then came utter panic: the pervert had grasped Betsy’s arm and was tugging her in through the passenger door. She was screaming. A man and a woman came running from a house across from the park, too late, the passenger door had slammed shut, the van already accelerating up the street.
Lou’s car finally, sluggishly, freed itself as the van approached, and he did another wheelie, into its path, forcing it to veer, and Lou got a split-second look at the driver’s bug-eyed, gaping face as his van plowed nose first into a five-foot snowbank.
Lou was out of his car in a shot, but slipped and fell, while the pervert struggled to free himself from the airbag, his false beard askew. He was short, bald, and terrified.
Betsy threw the passenger door open, wriggled free of the airbag, and leaped into a snow pile. Neighbours across the street were piling from their homes. Her mom, sprinting from the rink, was screaming. “Betsy! My baby!”
The wannabe child-napper squeezed from the van and scrambled up the dam of snow into the park. Lou pursued him, fuelled by adrenaline: the Green Flash, flying over the snowy field as if with wings. He brought him down with a leap and a leg tackle.
There was exultant hollering behind him: “He’s got him! Keep him there, pal, we’re coming!”
The bug-eyed scuzzo was already pleading innocence, with hysterical lies: “No, I didn’t mean it! I didn’t do nothing! She asked for a ride!”
The rest was a haze, later reconstructed, only vaguely absorbed at the time: being lifted to his feet by two men, one in a housecoat, another in a Shaw Cable jacket; being hugged by one woman, then another, then Betsy’s mom, sobbing with gratitude. All the while, a cell phone on speaker, the voice of a 911 operator giving quick, firm instructions.
Lou slowly realized that he had either broken his left wrist or sprained it, maybe when he’d braced himself against the dashboard. But he kept repeating, “I’m fine, folks, I’m good. Perfectly fine. Just a little wet.”
Meanwhile, Bug Eyes was sitting in the snow feeling sorry for himself, sobbing and burbling. He’d lost his Santa beard and found his glasses, now askew on his nose. Late forties, short, pudgy, prematurely bald.
A wuss, a candy-ass. Lou had finally met someone he could best in combat, but he wasn’t going to let that erode his triumph. He was feeling not just perfectly fine but massively, immeasurably jubilant.
He could hear sirens in the distance as he was hustled into a grand, multi-gabled home across the street. “My husband’s a doctor, you’re in good hands.” The woman wrapped him in a towel, offered dry clothes and a shower, then deferred to her husband: “Leave him as is, darling, until the police come and take photos.”