Safe House

counts.”

“Wherever she is, she’s dependent,” I said. “She’s not going to be able to do this by herself. She needs the others. That’s the way it works. There’s a whole support system. Not just money—she needs emotional support too. She’s safe where she is. Her baby too. It may be a little tense, but it’s not dangerous. She can wait. When this started, you wanted the whole thing called off. Well, we don’t have to call it off, right? All we have to do is delay it. For as long as you want.”

“It’s not that simple,” Pryce said. “Too much time has gone by. He—Lothar—is getting nervous. Not about the others—he’s very confident there. About me. He wants something from me. A show of strength.”

“What’s that got to do with—?”

“He wants to see his son.”

The weather changed in the room. The baby. I felt little dots of orange behind my eyes. My hands wanted to clench into fists. I pictured my center. Saw it start to fracture. Pulled it into a latticework, holding it with my will. I turned the blossoming rage into ugly green smoke, let it pass through the lattice. To somewhere else. Tested my voice in my head until it sounded calm, all the jagged edges rounded into smoothness. Then I let it out.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said, checking the audio on my voice to be sure it was calm and peaceful. “He can’t take the kid into the cell. Even if he has someone who’d take care of the baby, he’d never get him back once the wheels come off.”

“He doesn’t want to take him,” Pryce replied. “Not now. He just wants to see him.”

“To be sure you can deliver?”

“Yes. He knows I can handle the . . . other part. After all, we need his cooperation, so he can expect to be treated very well. But the . . . government doesn’t know where his wife and baby are.”

“And neither do you,” I said, getting it for the first time.

He shrugged, as if it were a minor problem. One he could expect to have solved sooner or later.

“And that’s what the threats were all about, huh? It was never about delaying some scam divorce. That was the deal you made with him—that you’d find his kid. And maybe—yeah!—and deliver the kid when he goes away. Hand him right over.”

He shrugged again.

“But if he brings Herk in, he’s skewered. You’d have your own source. If he rats Herk out, he goes down too.”

Another shrug.

“Very nice,” I told him, meaning it. “But I can get what I want without doing anything now. You might have threatened Crystal Beth into getting the woman to drop the divorce thing, but you know you don’t have enough horsepower to make them give up the baby. Let’s go back to where we started. Forget the divorce. It’s not gonna happen, okay? Lothar won’t come in. He won’t get busted. You play out your own string.”

“It’s too late for that,” Pryce said. “I have to have that baby. For an hour. Two hours, tops.”

“Can’t do it,” I told him.

“You said you had total control of—”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. Everyone has limits. That would be hers.”

“I don’t care about hers,” he said quietly. “Only about yours. We have a deal. What you get is your friend Hercules. Vanished. With full immunity.”

“That’d be good. But we can live without it.”

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“What murder?”

He idly fingered the photo of the dead man, not saying a word.

“That’s a guess,” I told him. “Not an indictment.”

He looked up at the ceiling, like he was seeking divine guidance. “Everybody’s been lying to you, Burke,” he said. “When you see your girlfriend, ask her about Rollo’s.”

“What about Rollo’s?”

“You think she was a stranger there? They’re all part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“Her network. This Mimi, the one who runs the place. Her. The bouncer, T.B. Rusty, the big guy who sits in a corner and draws pictures. Even her husband.”

“Crystal Beth has a—”

“Not her, Mimi. Her husband is the owner of the place. He never goes there, but he owns it. And half a dozen others like it, all around the country.”

“So he owns a few bars, what—?”

“Not bars. Nerve centers. He’s one of the bankrollers, like this Vyra person. But it’s Crystal Beth who’s in charge. This stalking thing, it’s out of control. So many people just living in terror. It was only a matter of time before they banded together. Your friend Crystal Beth, she’s running a lot more than you think.”

“So she’s a liar,” I said. “So they’re all liars. It doesn’t matter. I’m out of this now. Why should I help you get your hands on that baby?”

“This immunity thing, it’s really quite wonderful,” Pryce said smoothly. “You can always trade up. Give prosecutors a homicide, they’ll give you a pass on a whole bunch of other stuff.”

“So?”

He picked up the photo of the dead man again, held it like it was a delicate shard of spun glass. “So it’s all a chain. But I hold the link that can snap it. If you don’t believe me, maybe you should ask Anthony LoPacio.”

“Who the hell is Anthony LoPacio?”

“Ah, that’s right. You probably know him by some other name. Try ‘Porkpie.’ ”

I lit a cigarette to buy time, not surprised that my hands didn’t tremble—I was dead inside. My brainstem felt clogged with all the messages. Only one came through clearly, acid-burning all the others out of the way.

Murder would fix this.

A pair of murders. Right here. Right now.

I looked up at Pryce, feeling my eyes go soft and wet. My eyes were Wesley’s now, watching prey. I was born a motherless gutter rat. And when I’m cornered . . .

He saw where he was walking. His Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times. The muscle jumped under his eye. “There’s another way,” he said softly, playing for his life, putting his hands flat on the table, palms down. “We can be partners.”

I listened to every word he said, pushing killing him and his boy Lothar behind a door in my mind. But I left the door ajar. Then I went over the deal. Again and again.

Summed up:

Even if he was telling the truth, even if he was the only one who was, he’d walk away with all the cards.

And he could always come back and play them again.

“Why should I trust you?” I asked him.

“Because you know what I want . . . and because I’m the only one in this whole thing you can say that about,” he told me. “The rest of them all have their games. Whether they want to save the world or destroy it, what difference? You and I, we’re professionals. I can’t do this without you, okay? And you can’t get what you need done without me either.”

I kept his eyes, but my mind went walking. Years ago, I did time with an Indian. He had some tribal name, but he never used it Inside. We called him Hiram. He told me a lot of stuff, and I always listened. Hiram told me