Safe House

that there was no separate Chickasaw tribe—“Chickasaw” was just the Cherokee name for “once were here, now are gone”—those who chose war as a way of life. The last to fall to the white man’s guns—but the first to “adapt,” which was why the BIA began calling them one of the “Civilized Tribes” as they walked the Trail of Tears. But Hiram said they were just biding their time then, waiting.

And some of their children’s children still were.

Hiram told me there was no tribe called Seminoles either. That was just a name laid on them by Andrew Jackson . . . before he shipped them out to Oklahoma, where they could join the survivors from the Trail of Tears. What they really were was part of the Creek nation Jackson drove down into Florida from the Georgia border.

He said some of their children were still waiting too. Maybe, if the tribes hadn’t warred with each other, if they’d ever joined forces, the whole thing would have come out different.

Hiram told me something else too. He said the badger and the coyote sometimes hunt together. In the high Northwest, in winter, when game gets scarce. The coyote has the better eyes, but he can’t penetrate the rock-hard ground. And the badger can only see close-up. So the coyote would spot the prey, and alert the badger. Then the badger would dig it out, and they’d share the kill.

And go their separate ways, until the next time.

A temporary alliance of predators.

I had called Pryce a lone wolf, and he hadn’t argued. But professionals never correct mistakes you make about them. And what had Wolfe called him? A bounty spotter? Maybe . . .

I kept his hands pinned to the table with my eyes, waiting.

When he couldn’t wait any longer, he said: “And then there’s the money.”

“Which you can’t front,” I responded, back to where I was.

“How could I front it? I work on spec. All the risk is on my end. There’s no contract. Strictly COD. You know how that works. It’s all on the come, but I’ll go fifty-fifty when it shows. What could I do to convince you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Name it and it’s yours,” he said. “But I have to have that baby.”

“Any surprises?” I asked Herk. We hadn’t talked all the way down on the subway, but now we were in the Plymouth. Heading north.

“Nah. He’s a weak little punk, Burke. All that stuff about being a warrior and dying for the Race. His fucking ‘brothers.’ Like I don’t know he’s gonna give them all up, right?”

“Yeah.”

Silence after that as the Plymouth ate up the miles.

“You ever know any of them?” he asked suddenly.

“Nazis? Sure. When I was in—”

“Not them. Jews. You ever know any Jews?”

“Herk, for Chrissakes. Who do you think put that tattoo on your chest?”

“Oh. Yeah. I wasn’t—”

“Vyra’s Jewish,” I told him.

“Vyra?”

“Yeah, Vyra. The girl with the shoes.”

“She’s Jewish?”

“Sure. What’s so—?”

“I dunno. I never thought about . . . I mean, listening to that Lothar and all. Reading them books you got me. I never thought about girls being Jewish.”

What do you say to that?

“Can you do it?” I asked the Mole.

“It wouldn’t be precise,” he said calmly.

“But you could make it look like this?” I asked, pointing to a sheet of graph paper on which I’d roughed out a sketch. “And it would work?”

“Yes,” he said, giving me a look of mild surprise.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“It’s very . . . intelligent,” the Mole said.

“What’s this?” Pryce asked, taking the thin flesh-colored wrap from my hand. It was three days after I’d gone to see the Mole.

“It’s an ankle cuff,” I told him. “The latest thing. Weighs less than a quarter of what the old ones did. Space Age plastic with titanium wire. For monitoring pedophiles in those outpatient programs. You put it on, I seal it, it stays on until I take it off. If you have it cut off yourself, that’ll break the signal.”

“And you expect me to wear this?”

“That’s the deal,” I said. “You wear this, I know where you are. Not precisely, but close enough.” He couldn’t know how much of a lie that was. The major dope cartels use satellite tracking systems that can show the precise location of a tiny boat in hundreds of miles of empty sea. But they have the millions to hire Silicon Valley whiz kids to write the software, and billions’ worth of product to protect. Me, what did I have?

He thought it over for a minute. “And what good would that do you?” he finally asked.

“If you try and run with my money, I’ll know it. And I’ll find you easy enough.”

“How do I know you won’t just—?”

“Take you out when you deliver the cash? I don’t expect you to trust me either. You can mail it. I’ll give you an address. The cash shows up, you’re off the hook.”

“But you’ll still be able to track me.”

“Only for about thirty days—that’s all the battery’s good for. You can have it cut off as soon as you’ve sent the cash. The transmitter doesn’t have that much of a range. I’d know you ran, but I wouldn’t know where to.”

“But in the interim . . . ?”

“I already found you,” I reminded him. “I found you tonight. Every time we’ve been alone, it’s like I found you, right?”

“So I wear this bracelet and you give me the baby?”

“You wear this bracelet and I let Lothar see the baby.”

“Yes.”

“And one more thing.”

“Which is?”

“I need an address.”

“Yes?”

“Porkpie hasn’t been around lately,” I explained it to him.

“Once Hercules goes in,” he said quietly. “And Lothar sees the baby.”

“Deal.”

He took a breath. “You don’t expect me to put this on now?”

“Why not?”

“You’re not an engineer, are you?”

“No.”

“Well, neither am I. It isn’t that I don’t trust what you said, but I’d like to have this . . . device examined before I put it on.”

“Take it with you,” I told him.

“See the baby?” Crystal Beth said. “No way.”