“Bet that slut Shari would have Frenched him.”

“At least.”

Giggles.

Myron said, “You saw somebody?”

“Serious groatie.”

“Totally crusty.”

“He was, like, hello, ever wash your hair?”

“Like, hello, buy your cologne at the local Gas-N-Go?”

More giggles.

Myron said, “Can you describe him to me?”

“Blue jeans from, like, ‘Attention, Kmart shoppers.’ ”

“Work boots. Definitely not Timberland.”

“He was, like, so skinhead wanna-be, you know?”

Myron said, “Skinhead wanna-be?”

“Like, a shaved head. Skanky beard. Tattoo of that thing on his arm.”

“That thing?” Myron tried.

“You know, that tattoo.” She kind of drew something in the air with her finger. “It kinda looks like a funny cross from, like, the old days.”

Myron said, “You mean a swastika?”

“Like, whatever. Do I look like a history major?”

“Like, how old was he?” Like. He’d said like. If he stayed here much longer, he’d end up getting some part of him pierced. Way.

“Old.”

“Grampa-ville.”

“Like, at least twenty.”

“Height?” Myron asked. “Weight?”

“Six feet.”

“Yeah, like six feet.”

“Bony.”

“Very.”

“Like, no ass at all.”

“None.”

“Was anybody with him?” Myron asked.

“As if.”

“Him?”

“No way.”

“Who would be with a skank like that?”

“Just him by that phone for like half an hour.”

“He wanted Mindy.”

“Did not!”

“Wait a second,” Myron said. “He was there for half an hour?”

“Not that long.”

“Seemed a long time.”

“Maybe like fifteen minutes. Amber, like, always exaggerates.”

“Like, fuck you, Trish, all right? Just fuck you.”

“Anything else?” Myron asked.

“Beeper.”

“Right, beeper. Like anybody would ever call that skank.”

“Held it right up to the phone, too.”

Probably not a beeper. Probably a microcassette player. That would explain the scream. Or a voice changer. They also came in a small box.

He thanked the girls and handed out business cards that listed his cellular phone number. One of the girls actually read it. She made a face.

“Like, your name is really Myron?”

“Yes.”

They all just stopped and looked at him.

“I know,” Myron said. “Like, ultra lame-o.”

He was heading back to his car when a nagging thought suddenly resurfaced. The kidnapper on the phone had mentioned a “chink bitch.” Somehow he had known about Esme Fong arriving at the house. The question was, how?

There were two possibilities. One, they had a bug in the house.

Not likely. If the Coldren residence was bugged or under some kind of electronic surveillance, the kidnapper would also have known about Myron’s involvement.

Two, one of them was watching the house.

That seemed most logical. Myron thought a moment. If someone had been watching the house only an hour or so ago, it was fair to assume that they were still there, still hiding behind a bush or up a tree or something. If Myron could locate the person surreptitiously, he might be able to follow them back to Chad Coldren.

Was it worth the risk?

Like, totally.

9

Ten o’clock.

Myron used Win’s name again and parked in Merion’s lot. He checked for Win’s Jaguar, but it was nowhere to be seen. He parked and checked for guards. No one. They’d all been stationed at the front entrance. Made things easier.

He quickly stepped over the white rope used to hold back the galley and started crossing the golf course. It was dark now, but the lights from the houses across the way provided enough illumination to cross. For all its fame, Merion was a tiny course. From the parking lot to Golf House Road, across two fairways, was less than a hundred yards.

Myron trudged forward. Humidity hung in the air in a heavy blanket of beads. Myron’s shirt began to feel sticky. The crickets were incessant and plenteous, their swarming tune as monotonous as a Mariah Carey CD, though not quite as grating. The grass tickled Myron’s sockless ankles.

Despite his natural aversion to golf, Myron still felt the appropriate sense of awe, as if he were trespassing over sacred ground. Ghosts breathed in the night, the same way they breathed at any sight that had borne legends. Myron remembered once standing on the parquet floor at Boston Garden when no one else was there. It was a week after he had been picked by the Celtics in the first round of the NBA draft. Clip Arnstein, the Celtics’ fabled general manager, had introduced him to the press earlier that day. It had been enormous fun. Everybody had been laughing and smiling and calling Myron the next Larry Bird. That night, as he stood alone in the famed halls of the Garden, the championship flags hanging from the rafters actually seemed to sway in the still air, beckoning him forward and whispering tales of the past and promises of what was to come.

Myron never played a game on that parquet floor.

He slowed as he reached Golf House Road and stepped over the white rope. Then he ducked behind a tree. This would not be easy. Then again, it would not be easy for his quarry either. Neighborhoods like this noted anything suspicious. Like a parked car where it didn’t belong. That had been why Myron had parked in the Merion lot. Had the kidnapper done likewise? Or was his car out on the street? Or had someone dropped him off?

He kept low and darted to another tree. He looked, he assumed, rather doofy—a guy six feet four inches tall and comfortably over two hundred pounds darting between bushes like something left on the cutting room floor of The Dirty Dozen.

But what choice did he have?

He couldn’t just casually walk down the street. The kidnapper might spot him. His whole plan relied on the fact that he could spot the kidnapper before the kidnapper spotted him. How to do this? He really did not have a clue. The best he could come up with was to keep circling closer and closer to the Coldren house, looking out for, er, uh, something.

He scanned the surroundings—for what, he wasn’t sure. Someplace for a kidnapper to use as a lookout spot, he guessed. A safe place to hide, maybe, or a perch where a man with binoculars could survey the scene. Nothing. The night was absolutely windless and still.