Safe House

“I wasn’t hired,” I told him. “She’s in it, I’m in it.”

“If you say so,” he said indifferently. “But the problem could still get solved the same way.”

“Which is?”

He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. I noticed the fingers were all flesh-webbed—deep, right up to the first set of knuckles. A muscle twitched under his right eye. “Do you want me to talk in front of her?” he asked.

I could feel the heat from Crystal Beth next to me, but she didn’t move. “Sure,” I said, noncommittal.

He mimed opening a notebook, read from its imaginary pages. “Baby Boy Burke,” he said softly. “That’s what the birth certificate reads. Father unknown. Mother was sixteen at the time of your birth. Or so she told the hospital. A working prostitute . . .” He paused, but I didn’t react. Calling my mother a whore was nothing to me. I’d never met her.

“Baby Boy Burke was left in the hospital. Mother walked out. Presumed missing . . .

“Child was institutionally raised. Four foster homes. Removed from the third one following an investigation into . . . does it matter?”

“Not to me,” I said. Meaning: not anymore.

“Chronic runaway. Three placements. Same pattern. Returned to foster care. The last foster home was closed when it burned to the ground. Arson. Perpetrator never apprehended.”

Again he looked up. Again he saw me looking back.

“First conviction for gang-fighting,” he continued. “Age thirteen. Last placement as a youthful offender was for attempted murder with a handgun. Subsequent adult prison sentences for armed robbery, hijacking, and assault with intent. No current parole holds.”

I made the face of a man desperately trying to look mildly interested. Anyone with access to the computers could get everything he’d spit out so far.

“Employed as a mercenary by a rebel faction inside the Federal Republic of Nigeria between 1968 and 1969,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“It wasn’t a rebel faction,” I told him. “It was a country. Its name was Biafra. And I was a relief worker, not a mercenary.”

“Yes. With the Red Cross, no doubt,” he said, lifting an eyebrow just a fraction.

I didn’t say anything. The man knew his business. That tribalistic insanity in Africa was the first time in history a Red Cross plane had ever been shot right out of the skies. Up to then, the Red Cross symbol had been a guarantee of safe passage, universally respected. That’s all changed now. . . . Ask anyone in Bosnia.

“Evacuated right near the end,” Pryce continued, “whereabouts unknown for several months. Since then, worked variously as a salesman of various products. No known affiliation with organized crime.”

He was wandering off the track now, mixing rumors with truth. Big deal.

“Listed as suspect in several apparently unrelated homicides over a period of a dozen years. Seven arrests, on a variety of charges, during that period. No convictions.”

I watched him roam through his invisible notebook, reading yesterday’s headlines. He wasn’t close.

“Also known as Arnold Haines. And Juan Rodriguez.”

Ah, that was bad. The Arnold Haines ID was a throwaway, good enough for renting cars and buying airline tickets. It was the name I used on the visiting lists at prisons where I still had contacts too. But Juan Rodriguez was me. My driver’s license, Social Security, everything. Juan was an employee of a junkyard in the South Bronx. Only I really owned the place. The manager wrote me a regular paycheck, did all the withholding and everything. I cashed it and kicked back a piece, but it squared me with IRS. It’s not illegal to use another identity, so long as there’s no intent to defraud.

My whole life was an intent to defraud. And now a carefully constructed piece of it was shot to hell. I kept my face bland, waiting for the rest.

“Known associates include . . .” He looked up at me, held my eyes. And said Wesley’s name out loud.

“Go fix your makeup,” I told Crystal Beth out of the side of my mouth.

As she started to stand up, Pryce made a “sit-down” gesture with his hand. She ignored him.

He pushed his chair back a few inches, looked around the restaurant. “I don’t like that,” he said. The muscle under his right eye jumped again, harder than before. When he interlocked his fingers, the webbing closed, forming a solid mass of pale flesh.

“You think Wesley’s dead?” I asked him, a threat so subtle only a guy who really knew the score would get it.

“Accounts vary,” he said evenly, not telling me if he’d missed it or if it didn’t faze him.

“She’s not your problem,” I told him, moving my head in Crystal Beth’s direction. “Me neither. I got no little notebook on you. When she comes back, we walk out of here. Out of your life, okay? Find another way.”

“There is no other way,” he said, putting his elbows on the table.

But not his cards.

“This guy, Lothar. The one you don’t want busted. He’s not yours, right?”

“That’s right.”

“And the people he’s with, you’re not with them?”

“No, Mr. Burke. I want them.”

“But when you get them, old Lothar walks away, right?” I said, getting it. Finally.

“That’s the deal,” he said. Flat-out, no more playing.

“He get the kid too?”

Pryce shrugged. He was a player all right. And the rest of us were nothing but chips.

“You’re by yourself,” I said. Not a question.

He didn’t react. Even the muscle under his eye was quiet.

“I’m not,” I told him. “Look in that notebook of yours—see what it says about who’s with me. All you can do is protect your boy Lothar from the law. Not from me. You’re worried about what I’m going to do? Think about it— why would I do it to you?”

“What are you saying?”

“Me? I’m not saying anything for your little tape recorder. All you got is this tired old ‘rogue-agent’ routine. And a bunch of halfass ‘info’ any cybergeek could vacuum. The only one committing crimes here is you, threatening a helpless woman to drop charges so some fucking Nazi can keep doing what he does. Promising him a baby as a booby prize. But if something happens to old Lothar, the game’s over, right?”

“Nothing is going to happen to Lothar.”

“I didn’t say it was. I’m just . . . theorizing, okay? What you’re doing, it’s a game. You say ‘Or else.’ Now I get to say ‘Or else, what?’ ”

“It’s not you that gets to say that, Mr. Burke.”

“The bitch will do what I tell her,” I promised him.

“She might,” he agreed, lipless mouth reluctantly releasing the words. “But she’s not the only one who gets a vote.”

“Intelligence,” I told him. “It’s a commodity. Like dope or diamonds. A thing people buy and sell, right?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes they trade things too.”

“And you have something to trade?”

“You got to bring some to get some,” I said. “What you brought, it’s nothing. And you know it. Just showmanship. Flash and splash. If you’re telling the truth, there’s only one reason why you’re covering Lothar’s play. Maybe I could do something, get you what you want some other way.”

“Provided . . . ?”

“Provided you leave the baby. With the woman. The baby’s out.”

“He won’t—”

“And provided I get paid.”

“What possible guarantees could you—?”

“None right now. I have to see about some things first. Then we meet. You and me. Alone. Anywhere you