“Yeah. She’s still got all ten. How’d you figure out the one you got wasn’t hers?”
“A laboratory. Were you the one responsible for—I mean, for not…”
“Not allowing her to get hurt? Yeah. Me and Paulie. And it got Paulie killed.”
“The dead man in the house?”
Now it was Poppy’s turn to get tight in the throat. She swallowed. “Yeah. He was a good guy. He died protecting her.”
“I… I don’t know how to thank you… I’ll never be able to thank you enough… but I don’t understand…”
“It’s like a long story and I don’t have time to tell it. But what you gotta know is that the guy who killed Paulie is still alive. That’s why I didn’t bring Katie last night. I thought he was totally dead. I mean, like I put a bullet in his head. I—”
“You?”
“Well, yeah. He was trying to hurt Katie. She knows what he looks like, so he’ll still be after her. If I give her back, you gotta get her protection.”
“Oh, trust me, she’ll have the best protection in the world. I guarantee as soon as she’s back the FBI, the Secret Service, and DEA, even the CIA will be guarding her.”
Poppy’s stomach did a flip-flop. All those federal initials. What if they were looking for Katie now? That meant they were looking for her too. Suddenly she wanted this all over with.
“They’ll protect you as well,” Katie’s father was saying.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. My hands ain’t so clean in this.”
“Believe me, you bring Katie back and help them, all sorts of deals can be made.”
“I think I’d just like to fade into the scenery, if you don’t mind.” She kept thinking: FBI, Secret Service, DEA, CIA. She glanced at her watch.
She’d been on the line for too long.
Her mind raced. How could she get Katie safe back home? Couldn’t do it back in the D.C. area, and she couldn’t stay around here any longer.
Where?
And then she knew.
“All right, look. Here’s how it’ll go down: I’ll meet you in A.C. tomorrow and give Katie back.”
“Aycee?”
“Atlantic City.” Paulie liked blackjack; they used to hit the casinos regularly. “Register tonight in Bally’s Park Place under your own name and I’ll get in touch. You’ll have Katie back like tomorrow for sure.”
“Can’t we do something today?”
“Sorry. Gotta be tomorrow. Bally’s. Don’t forget.” She hung up.
“You didn’t let me say bye,” Katie said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey bunch. But guess what? You’re going back to him tomorrow for sure.”
Katie’s big smile and the light in her eyes were daggers through Poppy’s heart. Aren’t you going to miss me? Just a little?
6
Every time he thought things couldn’t get worse, they did.
Dan Keane sat in on the task force update and tried to appear calm as Decker summarized the latest information. But it wasn’t easy. Murphy’s Law had taken over.
“… and so it appears that the actual kidnap operation is a bust. If we can trust this unidentified woman who’s been calling Vanduyne, the kidnappers had a falling out over cutting off the child’s toe. The disagreement left Paul Dicastro dead and someone named ‘Mac’ wounded. ‘Mac’ may or may not be ‘Snake.’ According to the woman, he’s got a head wound. Consequently, we’ve got an APB out for a man with a gunshot head wound— officially listed as a suspect in the Falls Church killing. We’re combing emergency rooms in a fifty-mile radius.”
I’ve got to call Salinas, Keane thought. He’s got to start his own ER sweep.
“We want this guy. We’ve got to get to him before he gets to Katie Vanduyne. Once we have him, we can tie him to the kidnapping and to the murder. With those counts against him, I know we can make him roll over and give up whoever put him up to this.”
Canney spoke up. “But first we need Katie Vanduyne alive and well. We traced the last call to a pay phone in Edgewood, Maryland, but they could be anywhere between Maryland and Atlantic City now. We could clamp down on the A.C. Expressway and check every car, but that might frighten her off. We want this exchange to happen. We want Katie back. We’d also like the woman who has her, of course, but we’ll settle for Katie. She can identify ‘Mac.’ She’s the key right now.”
“Right,” Decker said. “That’s why this will be our last face-to-face meeting for a while. Gerry and I are heading to Atlantic City tonight. That’s where Vanduyne’s supposed to get Katie back. We’ll bug his phone and be in the wings making sure nothing goes wrong.”
Why risk another call? Keane thought. I’m clean. No links. Let’s keep it that way.
Right. Everything has already gone to hell. Let Salinas worry about it.
Time for Dan Keane to wash his hands of the whole affair. Let the little girl get home to her father, let Decker and Canney catch this wounded kidnapper. It won’t matter. He was certain Salinas had insulated himself from the plot. And if this missing guy does pose a threat, Salinas will see to it that he never gets a chance to talk.
What mattered was that the plan had worked. That fool Winston was in Bethesda Naval rather than on his way to The Hague. His decriminalization debacle was heading for derailment. Without him, it would never get back ontrack.
And I did it.
Dan headed straight home to Georgetown after the meeting. Still early on this Sunday afternoon, but he needed a drink. A stiff one. He wished Carmella and the kids hadn’t gone to Florida. He didn’t feel like being alone today.
The phone was ringing as he entered his townhouse. He hurried down the narrow front hall and snatched it up.
“Hello, Mr. Keane.”
Dan nearly fell into a chair as he recognized the voice.
He could not speak.
“Hello?” said Carlos Salinas. “Are you still there?”
His panicked mind whirled. How? How did he trace me? What do I do?
Play dumb.
“Who… who is this?”
A laugh. “You know very well who this is. And I know who you are.”
Dan said nothing. His body had turned to stone… cold stone.
“I haven’t heard from you since yesterday so I am calling to see if you are all right.”
“I’m fine,” Dan managed. This couldn’t be happening. Salinas couldn’t have traced him. It was impossible. He’d covered himself completely. “What do you want?”
“I would like some news. Our lost amigo is still missing. Has anyone found him?” Play dumb!
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? Tell me then, do you recognize this voice?” Dan heard a click, then a recorded voice coming through the receiver: “What kind of half-assed operation are you running there, Salinas? I just learned that a bottle of pills belonging to the little girl was found in a house in Falls Church where someone was murdered. What the hell is going on?” Dan felt his stomach heave. My voice!
Had the distorter failed?
“How?”
“A miraculous world we live in, no? What is hidden can be found. What is distorted can be made clear.” Salinas’s voice lost all its lightness.
“Now tell me, señor, what are the latest developments?”
Dan raged—at himself, at this slimeball drug pusher— and thrashed about for a way out of this. He could speak—the chances of his home phone being monitored were near zero—but he loathed the idea of becoming a pawn to this creature.
“Hurry, señor. We do not have much time. This should be of equal concern to you because if I am taken into custody, my collection of tapes comes with me. Where is our friend?”
Dan sagged. He was trapped.
“No one knows. Supposedly he had a head wound. They’re searching high and low for him. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll find him first.”
“And the child?”
“Apparently she saw ‘our friend’ and
can identify him. A woman is going to return her to her father in Atlantic City tomorrow.”
“A woman… that is very interesting. I will look into this. And I hope to hear from you frequently. Remember, your freedom is tied to mine.” The line went dead.
Dan sat with the silent handset dangling from his fingers. He felt dead inside. The only thing stirring was fear. No longer fear for his country and his career. Now he feared for his freedom, for his life.
What had he done?
Monday
1
“You’re a mess,” Snake muttered as he stood before the motel bathroom mirror and redressed his wounds. “But you’re alive.” That alone was a miracle.
Most of Saturday was still a blur. He vaguely remembered coming to in that empty house—Paulie had been there, lying next to him, but he no longer counted—and climbing to his feet, unable to see out of his right eye.
What he remembered best was the pain, the excruciating pain in his eye and the right side of his head. And the blood. Running down the side of his head, down his neck, under his shirt. He’d finally found a towel and tied it around his head.
Somehow he’d found his keys. He grabbed them and his revolver and staggered out to the Jeep. Somehow, he’d managed to drive away before the cops arrived.
And all the time his beeper going, each beep a spear of pain through his head.
He hadn’t wanted to go home, but that bitch had stolen his wallet and his jacket and he needed cash. Lots of it. He knew a guy in Northeast D.C., an M.D. whose license had been yanked because of his fondness for Class II controlled substances, and his habit of selling prescriptions for the same. But that hadn’t stopped him from practicing. His name was out: “You got a reportable wound you don’t want recorded, see Doc Moeller.”
But he only took cash.
The doc stitched up the ragged furrow the bullet had torn from the corner of Snake’s right eye, across his temple, to somewhere above his right ear, saying how lucky he was that the temporal artery had only been nicked. Straightened out his broken nose. That was the good news.
Nothing he could do about that right eye, though. It was shot—literally and figuratively. The bullet had nicked it, causing intraocular hemorrhage, the muzzle flash had seared it, and it was completely out of order.
Maybe an opthamologist could salvage it, but the doc doubted it.
At the very least the eye work would take days, and most likely a stay in a hospital, and Doc Moeller didn’t know of an opthamologist who wouldn’t report the bullet wound.
So that was out.
Call me Deadeye.
The bleeding had stopped, but the pain went on and on. A symphony of agony—deep throbbing basso aches inside his skull accompanied by tight steady whining jabs from his scalp and nose, highlighted by staccato bursts of glass-shard stabs in his eye socket. The Percodans he was popping like M&M’s did next to nothing to mute the pain.
He squeezed a glob of antibiotic ointment onto a gauze eye pad and pressed it over the red horror that had once been his eye. Then he began winding a roll of two-inch gauze around his head.
But then he dropped the roll and grabbed the sink, hanging on as the bathroom suddenly spun around him.
His head had been playing that trick for two days now. Doc Moeller had told him to expect it—post-concussion syndrome, or some such. Whatever it was called, it was scary. Didn’t want something like that to happen when he was driving.
But he was going to have to drive today. Get out of this neighborhood and find a phone. He’d stopped at the first motel he’d seen after leaving Doc Moeller’s—somewhere on Rhode Island Avenue. He had to be the only white man in a couple of miles. He sure as hell wasn’t going to call from this room. Probably have to go into the Federal area to find a phone that worked or didn’t have a pusher hogging it.
The room steadied and he straightened up from his death lock on the sink. He finished winding the fresh gauze around his head and stared at his handiwork.
Gauze encircled his forehead, running down over his right eye and covering the whole right side of his head, including the ear. Not as neat as the doc’s had been, but it would do.
He thought of Poppy and the hot surge of hate and rage made his pain recede a little. This was all her doing. What’d she think she was up to? Shooting him and running off with the kid. What was going on in her crazy head? When he got hold of her…
He could still see the look in her eyes as she’d pulled the trigger. She was crazy, that bitch. And she’d damn near killed him. A fucking broad had got the best of him. How the hell had he let that happen? Sure, he’d been groggy from that conk on the head, but still it wasn’t something he’d ever talk about. He could barely face himself.
And Paulie. For the life of him, Snake couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong with Paulie. Such a simple thing to chop off the package’s toe and send it to the father. What was the big fucking deal? Why couldn’t he have just done as he was told?
And why had he got in Snake’s way when he went after the package? Didn’t make any sense. Not at all like Paulie.
Only one explanation: Poppy. She’d done Something to Paulie’s head.
Probably got into some mother thing with the package. Snake remembered the way she’d been cradling the kid when he’d come after her. Yeah. Had to be it. And she’d infected Paulie.
So stupid!
Poppy’s fault. All of this.
His beeper went off again in the next room. Shit, didn’t Salinas ever give up? All right. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He was going to have to call in.
Luckily, things didn’t look near as bad as they really were. Unlikely that Salinas knew anything about the trouble at the Falls Church house. The story of the killing had been on the news, but nothing to connect it to a kidnapping. And no one had mentioned Paulie’s name.
And the Pres was still in Bethesda. Salinas should be happy about that. Sure. He could convince Salinas that he still had the kid and that everything was under control. They could go on stringing Vanduyne along while they waited for Winston to die.
And meanwhile Snake would be scouring the whole goddamn countryside for Poppy and that brat. And when he found her… ohhhh, yes, when he found her…
He’d fantasize later. Right now he had to get to a phone.
2
Decker had been on his way out of W-16 when Razor called. He updated him on the latest developments.
“So John’s in Atlantic City now?”
“Yes, sir. He checked into Bally’s last night. We bugged his room while he was out to dinner. I’m on my way there now myself.”
“Does he really think he can handle this better on his own?”
“Apparently. He hasn’t told us about the phone calls.”
“Well, keep an eye on him. I want you to make sure he gets Katie back unharmed. And I want you to make that happen today. Let me know the instant she’s in safe hands. As soon as you call, I’m out of here. I’m going buggy in this hospital.”
“Yes, sir,” Decker said, trying to sound neutral. He was remembering Vanduyne’s crushed, haunted look as he’d left the Maryland House Friday night. Something must have come through.
“Don’t think I don’t appreciate what John’s going through. Nor that I’m not concerned about Katie. I am. But larger matters are involved here. As soon as I know she’s safe, I can get out in public again and let whoever’s behind this know that they’ve failed.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll do everything we can.”
“And tell John to give me a call at the White House as soon as he gets home with Katie.”
“Will do, sir.” Decker hung up and called Gerry Canney, who was with the surveillance team in A.C.
“Any contact from the woman yet?”
“Nothing. He called his mother and that was it. But we do have a problem.”
“What?”
“His wife. She followed him here.”
“I thought your man was going to box her
out like last time.”
“That was the plan. And he was following her when he got jammed behind a truck-bus accident on the turnpike. She slipped past and he was never able to catch up.”
“Do we know where she is?”
“Not exactly, but she’s got to be somewhere in the vicinity of Bally’s. We’re keeping an eye out. If she shows up and looks like she’s going to be trouble, we’ll isolate her.”
“Do that. I don’t want anything to queer the transfer this time. And neither does Razor.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Just got off the phone. He wants this settled today.”
“I hear you.” Decker hung up and headed for Andrews Air Force Base to hop a copter. He’d be in A.C. in a couple of hours. The thought of Vanduyne’s ex wandering around without a tail bothered him. Here it wasn’t even nine a.m. and already something had gone wrong.
What next?
3
“Let me speak to the man.”
“What?” A pause. “Is this… ?”
Snake recognized Gold’s voice, but it sounded strange. Strained.
“Yeah. This is me. Here’s where I am.” Snake began to read off the hotel phone when Gold interrupted him.
“Wait, wait. Let me get a pen.”
What was this? Gold always had a gold Mont Blanc stuck in his shirt pocket. While Snake waited, he took a quick look around the hotel lobby.
The sudden movement brought on another spasm of vertigo. He clung to the phone to keep from rocking. Didn’t want anyone to think he was drunk. They’d boot him out.
The lobby steadied and he saw that no one was paying any attention to him. The combination of a bulky sweatshirt with the hood up, and the largest pair of sunglasses he could find, hid ninety percent of his bandages. Still he felt as if he were carrying a blinking neon sign: Look at me… Look at me…
“Okay,” Gold said. “Got it. Give it to me.” Snake read it off and was about to hang up when Gold spoke again.
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