The Vanished Man

ground.
    Sachs, Bell and Kara jogged up and down the streets, looking through the crafts fair, the restaurants and the alleys. And every other place they could think to search.
    They found nothing.
    Until, desperate minutes later, a break.
    The two cops and Kara walked into Ely’s Coffee Shop near Riverside Drive and scanned the crowd. Sachs gripped Bell’s arm, nodding toward the cash register. Next to it were a black velvet riding hat and a stained leather crop.
    Sachs ran to the manager, a swarthy Middle Easterner. “Did a woman leave those here?”
    “Yeah, ten minutes ago. She—”
    “Was she with a man?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Beard and a running suit?”
    “That’s them. She forgot the hat and that whip thing on the floor under the table.”
    “Do you know where they went?” Bell asked.
    “What is happening? Is there—”
    “Where?” Sachs insisted.
    “Okay, I hear him say he going to show her his boat. But I hope he took her home.”
    “How do you mean?” Sachs asked.
    “The woman, she was sick. I figure that why she forgot her stuff.”
    “Sick?”
    “Couldn’t walk steady, you know what I’m saying? Seem drunk but all they drank was coffee. And she was fine when they got here.”
    “He drugged her,” Sachs muttered to Bell.
    “Drugged her?” the manager asked. “Hey, what is story?”
    She asked, “Which table were they at?”
    He pointed to one where four women sat, talking and eating, and doing both quite loudly. “ ’Scuse me,” Sachs said to them and gave the area a fast examination. She saw no obvious evidence on or beneath the table.
    “We’ve gotta look for her,” she said to Bell.
    “If he said boat, let’s go west. The Hudson.”
    Sachs nodded to where the Conjurer and Cheryl had sat. “That’s a crime scene—don’t wash it or sweep under it. And move them to a different table,” she shouted, pointing to the four wide-eyed and momentarily silent women, and ran outside into the dazzling sunlight.

Chapter Sixteen
    She saw her husband crying.
    Tears of regret that he had to “end the marriage.”
    End the marriage.
    Like taking out the trash.
    Walking the dog.
    It was our fucking marriage ! It wasn’t a thing.
    But Roy didn’t feel that way. Roy wanted a stubby assistant securities analyst instead of her and that was that.
    Another gagging flood of hot slimy water shot up her nose.
    Air, air, air. . . . Give me air!
    Now Cheryl Marston saw her father and mother at Christmas, decades ago, coyly wheeling out the bicycle Santa had brought her from the North Pole. Look, honey, Santa even has a pink helmet for you to protect your pretty little noggin. . . .
    “Ahhhhhh . . .”
    Coughing and choking, gripped by constricting chains, Cheryl was hauled out of the opaque water of the greasy pond, upside down, spinning lazily, held by a rope looped over a metal crane jutting over the water.
    Her skull throbbed as the blood settled in herhead. “Stop, stop, stop!” she screamed silently. What was going on? She remembered Donny Boy rearing, somebody calming him, a nice man, coffee in a Greek restaurant, conversation, something about boats, then the world uncoiling in dizziness, silly laughter.
    Then chains. The terrible water.
    And now this man studying her with pleasant curiosity on his face as she died.
    Who is he? Why is he doing this? Why?
    Inertia spun her slowly in a circle and he could no longer see her pleading eyes, as the inverted, hazy line of New Jersey miles away across the Hudson came into view.
    She revolved slowly back until she was looking at the brambles and lilacs. And him.
    He in turn looked down at her, nodded, then played out the rope, lowering her into the disgusting pond again.
    Cheryl bent hard at the waist, trying desperately to keep away from the surface of the water, as if it were scalding hot. But her own weight, the weight of the chains pulled her down below the surface. Holding her breath, she shivered fiercely and shook her head, struggling vainly to pull free from the unbreakable metal.
    Then Cheryl’s husband was here again, in front of her, explaining, explaining, explaining why the divorce was the best thing that could’ve happened to her. Roy looked up, wiped away crocodile tears and said it was for the best. She’d be happier this way. Look, here was something for her. Roy opened a door and there was a shiny new Schwinn bike. Streamerson the handle grips, training wheels in the back and a helmet—a pink one—to protect