F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (23 page)

His heart began to pound… the
bag trembled in his fingers as he leaned closer for a better look. And when he
realized what it was his legs seemed to dissolve and he dropped to his knees
and let out an agonized howl of grief and despair so long and loud that it set
the neighborhood dogs to barking.

Snake hurried up the front walk to
the house.

He would have preferred to limit
all his contact with Paulie to phones and hotel bars, but he always made a
point of visiting at least once to inspect the arrangements.

What he didn’t like was
someone remembering him or his car here in the unlikely event the place was
ever connected to the snatch. Which was why he was wearing an Orioles cap and
had his collar pulled up. The Virginia plates on the Jeep were borrowed and
would be tossed in the Potomac as soon as this was over.

All those precautions, and still he
felt buck naked out here. But that didn’t blunt his good mood. He’d
heard from Vanduyne this morning and everything was under control.

As he approached the front door he
made a quick check of the yard. The butter-colored blossoms on the scraggly
forsythia along the foundation did little to offset the house’s generally
disheveled appearance. Not much of a lawn, but it looked like it was waking up
from winter. Yard maintenance had been part of the one-year lease, but
they’d all be long gone before it needed its first mowing.

He knocked on the door.
“It’s me. Everybody where they should be?” He’d phoned
earlier to let them know he was coming. He wanted the package safely tucked out
of sight when he arrived.

Paulie opened the door.
“Yeah. Everything’s fine. C’mon in.” As the door closed
behind him. Snake reached out and grabbed Paulie’s hand. “Good job
with the persuader, my man. Worked like a charm.” Always a good policy to
lavish a little praise on the peons when it was well deserved. A few strokes
cost nothing and sometimes were better than money. Sometimes.

He spotted Poppy on the couch,
reading a magazine. She didn’t look up and he didn’t bother
acknowledging her. The bitch was one major pain in the ass.

“Yeah?” Paulie said,
smiling through his beard. “How do you know?”

“Got a message from him this
morning. Guy’s practically falling all over himself to cooperate.”

“So he bought it, huh?”

Snake spotted a quick look pass
between him and Poppy. What was going on here?

“Bought it?” Snake
said. “What’s to buy? It’s his kid’s toe.”

“Yeah, I know. But he
could’ve thought she was already dead and we just cut her toe off, or
something like that. But then, with fresh blood on the toe, I guess he’d
have to believe she was still alive.” Snake had never heard Paulie babble
like this… and he didn’t like it.

“Something wrong,
Paulie?”

“Wrong?” His eyes got a
funny, guarded look. “No. Why should anything be wrong.”

“Because you’re not
acting like yourself.”

“Maybe because he never had
to molest a child before,” Poppy said.

Snake didn’t bother looking
at her. “Nobody molested anyone. And who asked you anyway?”

“What do you call chopping
off a six-year-old’s toe?” she said. “Not exactly a walk in
the park. And we’re damn lucky she didn’t take one of her
fits.”

Now he had no choice but to face
Poppy, and he was shocked by the naked anger and revulsion in her
expression—as if she were looking at something that had just crawled out
from under a rock. He fought an urge to step over there and wipe that look off
her face.

“Fits?”

“Yeah. The fits she takes
those pills for.” Now he got it. “Oh. You mean convulsions.”
He let the words drip acid. “You need to work on your vocabulary,
honey.”

“And you need to work on your
research. How come you didn’t know she took fits?”

Snake had had just about enough of
this bitch. He turned to Paulie.

“Tell your girlfriend not to
speak unless spoken to.”

“She’s got a right to
her opinion.”

“When I want the opinion of
someone with purple hair, I’ll ask for it.”

Paulie held up his hands.
“All right, all right. The point she’s trying to make is it was
pretty goddamn dicey getting that toe. I hope to hell it was worth it.”
Snake gave himself a few seconds to cool.

“Yeah. It was worth it. You
should have seen her father’s message. Frantic as hell. If it had been on
paper it would have been covered with tear stains.” Snake smiled. As
he’d read those pleading words he could almost hear Vanduyne’s
sobs.
Please oh please
oh please oh PLEASE don’t hurt her again!

“I guess you’re real
proud of yourself,” Poppy said.

She was asking for it… really
asking for it…

“C’mon, Poppy,”
Paulie said, giving her a hard look.

“Yeah,” Snake
continued, ignoring her. “No more arguments from Daddy. He’s ready
to do anything we want.”

“And just what is it we want
Daddy to do?” Paulie said.

“That’s between me and
the other people involved. Better you don’t know.” No way in hell
was he telling these two.

“So, where’s the little
package?” he said to Paulie.

He jerked his head toward one of
the doors leading off the living room.

“In there.”

“Well, I’ll just take a
look, and that will complete my inspection tour.”

“She’s sleeping,”
Poppy said.

Didn’t this bitch know when
to shut up?

“Blindfolded?” he said
to Paulie.

“Sure. That’s
SOP.”

“Good.” He started
toward the door. “Then I’ll just take a peek.” Poppy was up
and standing by the door, her worried eyes nicking from Paulie, to the door, to
Snake, and around again.

“Don’t. You’ll
wake her up. You don’t know what a time we had getting her to
sleep.”

“That’s what
baby-sitters get paid for.” He breezed past her and opened the door. The
light was out so he found the switch and flicked it.

Poppy slipped past him and stood by
the foot of the bed—no, hovered was more like it. She looked nervous as a
cat, biting her lip, rubbing her hands together. Looking at her you’d
have bet half your net worth the package was her own kid.

But Snake had to admit that
everything looked okay: The package was blindfolded and tied to the bed frame,
just as she should be. She wore a plaid shirt and overalls of some sort, a
sneaker on her left foot, and a big gauze bandage on her right.

He nodded and walked out, leaving
Poppy behind. Out in the front room, Paulie still didn’t look right. And
that worried Snake. He didn’t want these two to get cold feet on him. The
game still had a way to go before it was finished.

“Hey,” he said with a
smile, “she looks pretty damn good. No worse for wear, as far as I can
see. And she’ll never miss that toe.”

“I’m real glad it
worked,” Paulie said.“ ‘Cause I don’t know if I could
go through that again.”

“What’s the matter with
you, Paulie? You going soft?”

“No. I just—”

Snake felt his rage flare. Time to
lay down the law to these assholes.

“You just nothing!
You’re working for me. I tell you to cut off her fucking hand, you say,
‘Which one?’ Or you’re out of this!” But Paulie was
shaking his head. He was looking at the floor, but he was hanging tough.

“All right,” he said.
“Then we’re out of it. Find someone else to do your dirty work. But
we ain’t cutting up a kid. It ain’t right.”

The words shook Snake. Find someone
else? Where the hell would he find another baby-sitter at this stage of the
game? This whole gig was going to hell. First he had to take out an insurance
policy with Salinas, and then he had to deal with that unpredictable Vanduyne,
and now the peasants were threatening revolt. What next?

“You threatening me?”

Paulie shook his head. “No
threat. Just telling you the way it is. We’ll play this thing through
just like you want it, but no more persuaders.” Snake couldn’t
think of anything to say that wouldn’t make him look bad. And since he
couldn’t do what he really felt like doing—put a .38-caliber hole
in Paulie’s face—he decided to make his exit.

Yeah. Leave them wondering what his
next move would be.

“I’ll be in touch,”
he said, and headed out the front door.

He fumed on the way across the
yard. And to think he’d been feeling guilty about throwing Paulie and
Poppy to Salinas’s wolves when this was over. Just went to show how
useless an emotion guilt was. Getting rid of these two was a great idea.
He’d had it up to here with Paulie and his bitch.

As soon as the door closed behind
Mac, Poppy threw her arms around Paulie.

“Paulie! You were awesome!
The way you stood up to him… totally awesome!” She could feel him
shaking but wouldn’t mention it— not for a million dollars.

“Yeah, well, I just
didn’t like him talking to you like that. Know what I mean? I mean,
enough is enough.” She looked up at his face and realized something was
different about him.

He’d started getting quiet
last night after taking the blood from Katie.

Poppy had held her while Paulie
jabbed the corner of a razor blade into the pad of her little toe. They figured
they were going to have to bandage her foot anyway to make it look like
she’d had her toe cut off, so why not like get the blood from that spot.

And Katie had been so good about
it, a real champ. She’d winced and whimpered, but that was about it. She
said she was used to getting stuck because of the regular blood tests she had
to get as long as she was taking her medicine.

And after Paulie came back from
delivering the persuader, he’d been quieter still, and had continued that
way this morning. She’d thought he was still ticked at her for making him
go out to that funeral home last night, but now she realized it was something
else. Something deeper.

“What’s up, Paulie?
What’s bothering you?”

He pulled away and went to the
window. He stood there with his hands jammed into his pockets and stared out at
the front yard “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t
sleep much last night. I got to thinking—I don’t do much of that,
but last night I couldn’t turn it off. I kept thinking about how you
stood up to me yesterday. I mean, Mac says, ‘Cut off her finger,’ I
haggle him down to a toe, and I’m ready to do it. But you say
no—this was something you weren’t going to do, weren’t going
to allow to happen. You were ready to put everything on the line to stop it. I
was pissed, as you know, but later on it hit me like a ton of fucking bricks:
You drew a line and said, ‘That’s it. That’s where I stop. I
don’t cross that line and neither does anybody else when I’m
around.’ And so I laid there last night thinking, Where’s my line?
I mean, do I even have a line? Or do I just wait for someone like Mac to tell
me what to do, then go ahead like some fucking robot and do it? What kind of
man is that? I couldn’t turn it off.”

Poppy stepped over to the window
and slipped her arms around him, pressing her face against his upper back. She
felt as if she were about to totally burst. She didn’t dare speak because
she knew she’d start bawling.

So amazing… the feelings
Paulie was talking about, they were the same ones that had been growing in her
since the last baby-sitting job. But hers had been creeping up on her—at
least until she’d seen Katie having a fit; then it all like came
together. Paulie had got hit all at once.

“I’m gonna be thirty in
November,” he said. “And man, I laid there and looked back over my
life and you know what I saw? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. I mean, if I died
now, is there any trace of me anywhere? Is there anything to say Paulie
Dicastro was even here? No. There ain’t. So last night I decided I was
gonna start drawing lines. Gonna learn to say ‘Stop, I don’t go
past this point.’ I mean, you gotta stand for something in your life, and
I never really stood up for anything, but that’s gonna change. I’m
not saying this good. Am I making any sense at all?”

Poppy hugged him tighter.
“Truckloads. Maybe this is a turning point for us, Paulie. Maybe we can
make something good out of his whole ugly scene. We take the money we get and
like go off somewhere and use it to build something.”

“Yeah, but what? I
don’t know anything legal. What am I good for except taking
orders?”

“Don’t worry.
We’ll find something. We’re not total jerks. But the important
thing is we’ll draw another kind of line—between the old life and
the new life. And we’ll like never look back, Paulie.”

“Yeah,” he said,
turning around and looking at her. His eyes searched her face. “You and
me. We can do that.”

Poppy pressed her face against
Paulie’s shoulder. She’d never felt this close to him.

“You will be able to come up
with so much money?” Nana said. John looked up at his mother from where
he sat before the computer and worried. She didn’t know the half of
it—a tenth of it—and already she looked like she was falling apart.
Her hair was carelessly combed, her clothes wrinkled, her once rosy cheeks now
pale and pinched. And she kept digging her fingertips into the sides of her
throat as if she were having trouble breathing.

No way he could tell her the
truth—about the “service” he was to perform, about…
Katie’s toe. So he’d lied to her. He’d told her the
kidnappers didn’t really want a service from him, they wanted money—a
million dollars.

“Yeah,” John said
softly. “It’s in the works. I have calls out to some people who owe
me favors, and a bunch of loan officers at the bank are working on it. I should
be able to get it all together in a couple of days.”