Читать книгу They Disappeared - Rick Mofina, Rick Mofina - Страница 9

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New York City

Hans Beck gripped his backpack and pinballed through Penn Station.

For a fleeting moment he considered boarding a train, any train, and getting away.

No use. They’re watching, waiting. And I need the money.

Beck had lied to Jeff Griffin about having to catch a train. Instead, he had to meet his contact and complete this delivery.

He’d nearly blown this job.

How could he have been so stupid to have picked up the wrong bag? In his time as a courier he’d never screwed up like this. His customers were enraged. He’d never had contacts so intense. He didn’t know who they were, or what they were involved in.

He didn’t want to know.

When he’d given them the Griffin backpack in error, they took no comfort in his assurance he would retrieve the misplaced bag.

Well, he did it, just as he said he would.

So everyone should relax, he told himself. We’ve got the right bag now. Soon this would be over and he’d be on a plane to Aruba awaiting a large deposit in a numbered account.

Beck left Penn Station and hurried by the post office and deep into the heart of the Hudson Yards. He moved quickly beyond the Long Island Rail Road maintenance tracks, where Thirty-third Street dipped into a wasteland near the Hudson River.

He was nearly jogging now as he hurried along a chain-link fence that surrounded a site where a massive foundation, reaching down several stories, was under construction. The sun had set, the entire area was deserted. He heard the hum of a motor, then brakes, and a panel van stopped suddenly beside him.

A side door slid open and he got in. It was crowded inside because several men were in the back working. A couple of them were talking on cell phones. Two others were working quickly on laptops.

The men had already acted on the information sheet they’d found in Cole Griffin’s bag and had quickly searched the family. They’d also taken pictures of Jeff and Cole on the street, making the exchange with Beck.

Everything had unfolded with urgency.

The men seized his backpack, dumped its contents, probed them, then tore through the empty backpack.

Whatever they needed was still missing.

For the first and last time in his life, Beck had failed to make a delivery.

His final thought was that a plastic bag had swallowed his head and his struggle against the forces holding him was in vain.

Everything went black.

His corpse was wrapped in a plastic sheet and hefted into the construction site. It was concealed under a layer of gravel at the base of a footing that would be filled with fifty cubic yards of concrete the next day.