F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (18 page)

“So? You cut off mine.
Fair’s fair. Now here’s five bucks back. I figure I should keep
half the money because I let you use the phone but—”

John felt his lips pulling back
from his clenched teeth. If half of him wasn’t praying for Snake to call
back, he’d be grabbing the handset and shoving it down her throat.

“Get out of here,” he
said in a low voice.

Her chatter cut off. She took a
faltering step back.

“Hey. What’s eating
you?”

He leaned toward her, still
speaking through his teeth, enunciating with slow precision. “Get away
from me or I will kill you.” He’d never threatened anyone with harm
before, let alone death. But right now he meant it.

She must have sensed that. She
backed up another step, then hurried away. “I’m calling a
cop!”

John turned back to the phone.
“Please ring,” he whispered. “Please call back.” He
slammed his fist against the side of the booth. “Please!” But the
phone remained silent. John waited in the morning sun, amid the milling people,
clinging to the booth, a hand on each side, guarding it as if it were his
personal property.

After five minutes he began losing
hope. When fifteen minutes had passed, he knew Snake wasn’t going to call
back, but still he hung on, waiting. He couldn’t leave.

He looked up and saw the polyester
lady walking his way with a cop in tow. He couldn’t get involved with the
police right now. What if Snake had someone watching him? If Snake got a report
that he was seen talking to a cop, no telling what he might do. John released
his grip on the booth, turned, and forced himself to walk away, to get lost in
the crowd.

He told himself it was useless to
stay by the phone. Snake wasn’t calling back. John’s best bet was
to get to his computer and send Snake an e-mail explaining what had happened.
The sooner, the better.

Still, in his soul, he felt as if
he’d just abandoned his daughter in Lafayette Square.

He hung up!

Snake, sitting in traffic on
Pennsylvania Avenue, still couldn’t believe it. John Vanduyne, M.D.,
supposedly this loving, devoted father, and he hangs up on the guy who’s
holding his daughter. What the hell was he up to?

Snake had to admit he’d been
rattled for a moment after the line went dead. He’d told him. Either you
dose your pal or you don’t. What’s it going to be? And Vanduyne
went and hung up on him.

After being so high last night,
barely able to sleep, that had brought him down. He’d known this guy was
going to be a problem.

Maybe it had been some sort of a
reflex. After all, he’d verbally pole-axed Vanduyne with what he had to
do to get his kid back. He had to smile. Hell of a choice, wasn’t it.
Here was the stuff myths were made of: Choose between your old buddy, the
leader of the free world, and your kid. Something almost cosmic about that. And
Snake was calling the cosmic tune.

Except Vanduyne wasn’t
dancing the right steps. Another example of the guy’s instability. He was
a wild card.

But Snake knew just the thing to
get him in line. He’d have Paulie take care of that…

Right after he met with Salinas.

Snake patted the audio cassette in
his jacket pocket and swallowed. He’d be walking a very thin line in the
next hour or so. This meeting had to be handled just right.

“And so, Miguel, how did the
good doctor take the news?” Carlos Salinas sat behind his desk, leaning
back in his enormous leather chair.

His suit was charcoal gray this
morning. A small, amused smile curved under his mustache.

“Not well,” Snake said.
He felt like pacing but forced himself to remain seated. He and Salinas had the
office to themselves. No sign of Gold this trip. “We shook him up pretty
good.”

“And you did not have to
explain to him about his friend’s previous reaction?”

“Nope. He seemed to know all
about it.”

“Bueno. So, how do things
stand at this moment? He has agreed to our ultimatum?”

Snake debated telling Salinas the
whole truth—about Vanduyne hanging up on him—but held back. He
didn’t want Salinas to have the slightest doubt that he was in complete
control.

“He’ll do it, but
he’s a bit shell-shocked right now. I’ve decided to send him a
little persuader to get him focused. By tomorrow morning he’ll be falling
all over himself to get some of that chloramphenicol into Winston.”

“Excellent!” Salinas
slapped his weighty thighs. He was grinning now. “Miguel, I am so very
glad I put you in charge of this matter.”

You may not be so very glad in a minute.
Snake thought. He cleared his throat.

Here goes.

“Speaking of’this
matter,” he said, “it’s much bigger than I’d ever
imagined.”

Salinas’s eyes narrowed.
“I hope you are not going to ask for more money. We have a
deal—”

Snake raised his hands, palms out.

“Absolutely not. A deal is a
deal. No. What I’m saying is, this matter is so big that you might not
want me around after it’s over and done with.”

“Yes,” Salinas said
slowly, nodding and smoothing his mustache. “I can see how you might fear
such a thing. But it is not my way.”

“Trouble is, I don’t
know your ways. We haven’t known each other that long.”

“Miguel, if I killed everyone
who did a job for me, I would have been out of business a long time ago.”

“Right, but this isn’t
some routine pick-up-and-deliver gig. This is major league. This is the biggest
thing you’ll ever do in your life, or I’ll ever do in mine. I just
don’t want it to be the last thing I do in mine.”

“It is not you I am concerned
about. Paul Dicastro and Poppy Mulliner, however…” It didn’t
surprise him that Salinas knew their names— he seemed to know
everything—but it bothered him.

“I can see how they’d
be considered a liability. I just don’t want to be lumped in with
them.” Salinas was staring at him—like a cobra eyeing a mongoose.

“I have a feeling that all
this is leading somewhere.”

Snake reached into his pocket and
pulled out the cassette. He leaned forward and placed it on Salinas’s
desk.

“What is this?”

“Recordings of some of our
conversations.”

Salinas’s smile was tight and
grim. “That is impossible.”

“Because you have a bug
jammer?” Snake said. “It worked on the tape I made of our first
meeting—I got nothing but hiss. So I went out and found a filter that
eliminated the interference.” He pointed to the tape. “I believe
you’ll find your voice quite recognizable. Especially during last
night’s conversation, when you explained the ultimate purpose of this
endeavor.”

“Mierda!” Salinas
turned a deep red as he slammed his fist on the desk and let loose with a
string of curses in Spanish.

He won’t kill me, Snake told
himself. I’ve got the kid, I’m hooked into Vanduyne. He needs me.
He won’t kill me.

Across the desk, Salinas closed his
eyes and calmed himself. Then he opened them and glared at Snake.

“I am insulted. We made a
deal.”

“And I made a deal with my
people that I’m probably not going to be able to hold to. Things change,
right?”

“And you intend to blackmail
me?”

“Absolutely not. I’m on
that tape too, you know. I’m the guy who did the snatch and told Vanduyne
what the ransom was going to be. The last thing in the world I want is for
anyone to hear that tape. What I do want is to make sure that you have an
ongoing interest in my good health. I’ve got a dozen copies and I’ve—”

“Twelve tapes!
Chingate!” Actually only four more: another in his jacket, one hidden in
his house, one in his safe-deposit box, and one with a lawyer. If Salinas found
those, Snake wanted him to go crazy looking for the rest.

“They’re all safe. But
if something happens to me, they go to the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service,
and so on. I know you folks own a lot of people, but when this shit hits the
fan, nobody’s going to want to be downwind.”

Salinas continued to glare, saying
nothing. Snake was sure he knew how difficult it would be for the feds to get a
conviction on the basis of an audio tape, but at the very least they’d
shut down his money-laundering business and make his life a nightmare. So Snake
tried to mollify him. Even though he was protected now, this was not a man he
wanted pissed at him.

“Hey, look. I can understand
how you feel. You took all these elaborate, state-of-the-art precautions
against anyone eavesdropping or bugging you, and you wind up on tape anyway.
But this could save you in the future. Technology’s always changing.
You’ve got to stay on the cutting edge if you don’t want someone to
get the drop on you.”

Salinas said nothing, but he seemed
to be cooling.

“And look at it this way:
Knowing I’ve got this kind of life insurance will let me do a better job.
I mean, I’m already juggling the kid and Vanduyne, and soon I’ll be
dodging the entire federal government. I don’t want to have to keep
looking over my shoulder wondering what you’re planning for me too. That
could be very distracting.”

Salinas continued to stare. But no
question, the rage was fading from his eyes.

Snake leaned forward and put on a
smile. “And tell me the truth: If positions were reversed, wouldn’t
you do the same thing?”

A little smile from Salinas now, and
then a nod. Snake felt his muscles relax. You silver-tongued devil, you.

“I suppose you are
right,” Salinas said with a sigh. “I cannot hold it against a man
that he protects himself. And you are right. I will learn from this.” And
then he frowned. “But I am hoping that you do not wish to extend the
coverage of life insurance to your two helpers.” Snake thought about
that. Here was a chance to save Paulie and Poppy. He’d be pushing it, but
he had Salinas over the proverbial barrel.

And then he thought about the
aftermath. Paulie and Poppy rich and getting stoked every day. One of them sees
the story about Vanduyne and his kid getting wasted, how he was our dead or
deathly ill President’s personal physician… wouldn’t take a
rocket scientist to put it all together.

Could you trust a couple of loadies
with something like that? Yeah, right. They’d be racing to see who could
babble about it first. No, Salinas’s approach made the most sense.

Snake held Salinas’s gaze and
shook his head. “No. This is just a personal policy. No group coverage.”

If Snake had felt high after
leaving Il Giardinello last night, he was stratospheric now. He’d done
it! He’d stared down the goddamn Colombian cartel. They blinked!

Or at least Salinas did. But that
was enough. He’d sent the message and it had been received loud and
clear: You don’t fuck with Snake.

He began punching the
air—left-right-left—as he made his way to his car. He was Ali, he
was Tyson. Float like a butterfly, sting like a cruise missile. When he reached
the car he knew he was too wired to sit behind the wheel.

A car? A car? Even a fucking
Concorde would be too slow right now!

He grabbed his laptop from the
trunk and set off walking through Georgetown like he owned it. Up Wisconsin,
then left toward G.U. along the cobblestone streets with their obsolete trolley
tracks, past the brick-fronted town houses, and up to the campus.

The walk burned off enough
adrenaline to allow him to seat himself in the library and plug into one of the
computer jacks. He logged onto his account and checked his e-mail.

He grinned when he saw the letter
from Vanduyne, a rush of pleading, whining, moaning how it was all a mistake
and how they got cut off by accident and to contact him again right away and
please-please-please don’t take it out on his dear little Katie.

Yeah, well, maybe it was an
accident and maybe not. Maybe this was a game Vanduyne was playing. But Snake
was boss. Even the Colombians knew that now. And Snake didn’t allow
games, or even accidents.

He began typing a reply that would
tell Vanduyne just that, then stopped. Nah. No reply. Let the pussy stew. Let
him go crazy waiting for a reply. He’d get his reply.

Tomorrow morning.

In his mailbox—his real
mailbox.

Poppy watched through the eyeholes
of her mask as Katie drained the glass of milk.

“Want some more?”

Katie shook her head.

Poppy glanced at her watch. Three
hours since the fit. The kid had woke up about an hour ago but still
didn’t seem to be all there. Her color was better but her fine dark hair
was all like tangled.

At least she hadn’t had
another fit, thank God. And she wouldn’t, either, as long as Poppy had
something to say about it.

“Aren’t you
hungry?” Another shake of the head, then a sob. “I just want to go
home.” Poppy slipped her arms around Katie and hugged her close.

“I know you do, honey bunch.
And you’ll be going home real soon, I promise you.”

“But when?”

“I don’t know exactly,
but it won’t be too long.”

“That’s what my Daddy
always says.”

“When’s that?”

“When we’re in the car
and I ask him how long till we get there, and he always says the same thing:
‘It won’t be too long now.’ Even if we just started out, he
says, ‘It won’t be too long now.”

Poppy laughed. “Yeah, my
Daddy used to say something like that, only he’d go, ‘Not much
further now.’ I guess all daddies are alike.” Except mine’s dead.

She thought about Dad, how
she’d heard about his heart attack six months after he was buried. And
she still remembered Uncle Luke’s voice on the phone: “That
wasn’t no heart attack. Your father died of a broken heart. And we both
know who broke it, don’t we.” Yeah, she knew. Totally.