Sacrifice

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The entrance to the Bureau is blocked by a steel gate, guard's desk to one side, two-passenger elevator to the left of a narrow corridor. An Oriental woman was at the desk. Pretty face, calmly suspicious eyes.

'Can I help you?'

'I'm here to see Ms. Wolfe.'

She handed me a sign-in sheet on a clipboard with a cheap ballpoint pen attached by a string, but her eyes never left my face. 'Your name?' she asked. The way cops ask.

Sheba jumped up so her front paws were resting on the desk, her ears up and alert.

'Hi, Sheba!' the Oriental woman said. 'I know I've got a treat for you around here someplace. Let me see…' She rummaged in her desk drawer, came out with a dog biscuit in her left hand. Tossed it at Sheba while she showed me the pistol in her right.

'Where did you get our dog?' she asked, still calm, much colder.

I moved my hands away from my body. 'Ask Wolfe,' I told her.

She must have kicked some button under the desk. Wolfe came around the corner, a cigarette in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other.

'What is it, Fan?' She spotted me. 'Oh, here you are. Right on time.'

Sheba bounded over to her. Wolfe reached down, scratched behind the dog's ears. 'Sheba, playroom! Go to the playroom.' The dog trotted off.

'He's okay, Fan.' Wolfe smiled. The Oriental woman inclined her head about an inch, put the gun away.

I followed Wolfe back into her office. It looked like it always does: paper all over the place, walls covered with charts and graphs, a computer terminal blinking in one corner. And a white orchid floating in a brandy snifter.

'Where's the beast?' I asked, looking into the corners.

'Bruiser? He's somewhere with Bruno. Everything work out?'

I sat down across from her, lit a smoke of my own. 'He brought a kid with him this time. Left him there. When I took off, McGowan's boys were hitting the back door.'

She nodded, picked up a phone, pushed a button. A doll-faced young redhead with a pugnacious jaw walked in fast, her spike heels tapping on the hard floor.

'The Kent case, you got the warrants ready?' Wolfe asked her.

'All set,' the redhead replied, confident.

'He delivered a kid this afternoon.'

'We'll pull him in tonight.'

I shook my head slightly. Wolfe caught it, looked up at the redhead. 'The warrants…you have tap and search?'

'Mail cover too,' the redhead said. 'The Task Force is on it.'

She meant the FBI Pedophile Task Force. They're right down the road from City-Wide. Must be the freak was networked way past the storefront in Times Square— the one thing baby-rapers have in common is enough to link them all over the damn earth.

'Take him tomorrow,' Wolfe said, watching my face. I nodded agreement. 'At work,' she continued. 'But start the tap tonight. If he gets a call from the Times Square people, we'll have them hooked in. Execute the search tomorrow night.'

'What if he runs tonight?'

'Then grab him. But don't do it unless there's hard evidence that he's fleeing the jurisdiction, you understand?'

'Sure.'

The redhead walked out fast, covering ground, her pleated skirt flying around her knees.

Wolfe dragged on her cigarette. 'That's the best I can do,' she said.

'It's okay. Good enough. I don't think they'll call him…degenerates don't work like that. No loyalty.'

'A lower class of criminal.' She smiled. A lovely, elegant face, framed by glossy dark hair shot through with two wings of white.

Wolfe knew what I was. What I did.

'Sheba was good?' she asked.

'Perfect.'

'She's perfect here too. Calms the kids down like no psychiatrist ever could.'

'Where'd you get her?'

'You know what happens to Seeing Eye dogs? After they work about ten years, they retire them.' A soft sneer in her voice. 'So their owner won't have to deal with an older dog. You know, they slow up, they get sick easily…like that.'

'Where do they go?'