F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (35 page)

“Where is he?” Carlos
pounded the desk with both fists.

“He could be anywhere,”
Gold said. “We have his house staked out, so we know he’s not
there. We just have to wait until he calls in.” The MBA looked fidgety,
and Carlos was glad of it. Let him be frightened of me. Let him fear not only
for his future income, but for his physical well being. His life.

Because Carlos was afraid for all
those things himself.

MacLaglen might be alive, but he
might be hurt and hiding somewhere, or even dying. Carlos was not concerned
about the cabron’s health so much as the fact that his very disappearance
might trigger the release of that damned tape.

“I want him found!” He
turned to Llosa. “Get some men together. We have a picture of MacLaglen;
have copies made. We know he likes to call from hotels. Make the rounds. Go
from hotel to hotel and look for him.” It was a long shot, but he
couldn’t simply sit here and wait for something to happen.

Llosa nodded and pulled out a
pistol. “And when I find him, should I… ”

“Madre, no!” He
didn’t want Gold or Llosa or anyone to know about the tape. “Bring
him here, to me. He has much explaining to do, and a dead man cannot
explain.”

Poppy checked out her hair in the
bathroom mirror.

“It’ll grow
back,” she told herself for the hundredth time since she’d started
hacking it off.

Her China doll bob was gone. So was
the Deadly Nightshade rinse. Instead she now sported jet-black hair, close on
the sides, spiked on top. Kind of retro and like eighties-ish, and normally she
wouldn’t be caught dead looking like this, but the whole idea of the
makeover was staying alive.

She checked out the rest of her
get-up: baggy jeans, oversized denim shirt, sneakers. She’d removed her
ear rings, eyebrow ring, and nostril stud. No makeup, no nail polish, and still
no way she’d pass for a guy.

But Mac would have to be looking
pretty damn close to recognize the Poppy Mulliner he’d known.

Katie, however, was like a totally
different story. Poppy stepped back into the sleeping area and admired her
handiwork.

Katie sat on the bed, remote in
hand, channel surfing. She’d been a little difficult during her makeover,
but seemed to have forgotten it now. But it had been worth all the trouble.
Katie really looked like a little boy.

A red-haired little boy. Poppy had
tried to make her a blonde, but the bleaching solution had turned her dark hair
red instead. Which was okay, she guessed. Blond would have been cooler, but
with the short bowl cut Poppy had given her, her Jets T-shirt, and jeans and
sneakers to match Poppy’s, she looked ready for peewee football practice.

I hope this works, she thought.
Just long enough for you to get to safety and me to disappear.

She put on a smile and clapped her
hands. “Hey, bro. Let’s go. How’s a call to your daddy
sound?” Katie dropped the remote and ran to the phone.

“Can I dial?”

“You sure can. But
let’s find another phone, okay?”

Before leaving, Poppy scoured the
room of every trace that they’d been here. Even if someone tracked them
to this room, they’d have no notion that hair had been cut or dyed.

She stopped their newly red truck
at a gas station, got a fistful of change ready, let Katie punch in her
dad’s cell phone number, then held the handset between them as her father
answered.

“Hi, Daddy. It’s
me.”

“Katie!” said a
masculine voice. “Oh, Katie, thank God it’s you! What happened? I
thought I was going to see you last night. I waited and waited.”

Poppy heard the voice crack and
almost break with emotion. Damn me, she thought. I should’ve let him know
I wasn’t coming.

“I fell asleep,” Katie
said.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure. We’re playing
let’s pretend and you know what we did?” Poppy pulled the handset
away. “Let me talk now, okay?”

No telling who might be listening.
Maybe even Mac. Paulie said he was a genius. He might have tapped Katie’s
home line, but how could you tap a cellular phone? No wires.

“Sorry about last
night,” she said. “I had to like change plans.”

“As long as Katie’s all
right. But she needs her medicine. She—”

“All taken care of,”
Poppy said.

A pause on the other end, then,
“But the pills were left—”

“Don’t worry about it.
I’m taking good care of her. I ain’t about to let her start having
fits.”

“Can I ask how you got them?
I mean, is it the right dose?”

“Exactly the same as the ones
in the bottle. I had to like knock over a drugstore to get them.”

After another pause, longer this
time. “You did that for Katie? You…you really do care about her,
don’t you.”

“Sure. You got a great kid
here.” A totally great kid. “But how come she’s got like this
dent in her head?”

“An… accident. A
fractured skull. It left her with the seizure disorder.” He cleared his
throat. “Listen… can I ask you… is she all there? I mean, her
toes… ?”

“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?

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?

“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.