do—and re-emerges locally, so whatever rudimentary device of her father’s the child was referring to would only recognize the 800 number (which is based in a faraway state) if it recognized anything at all.

     “Are you going to call from here, then?” the child asked.

     I patiently explained that, while I could, indeed, call from the location in perfect safety, there was no phone installed. Sophisticated technology is a two-edged sword, and taking chances is for amateurs.

     “So you have to go out?” she asked.

     “Yes.”

     “Shouldn’t you take me with you?”

     “Why would I do that?”

     “So I couldn’t. . . escape.”

     I assured the child I was more than satisfied with the restraint system I had established, speaking to her as if she was a colleague in the enterprise rather than its victim. . . which seemed to best match her own affect. Obviously, I realized that she was attempting to beguile me into giving her an opportunity to attract attention once we were outside, but I was not angered. In fact, I had a sincere respect for her wit. And for her will to survive.

     Yet I did not tell her the entire truth. Once I have successfully completed the capture phase of my operation, it is vital to remain in the hideout until target-contact is established. The message had long since been recorded, and the central computer in my residence. . . [I must digress here: I work from home, in my perfectly legitimate occupation of independent computer consultant. My small, modest house is rather isolated from the neighbors by the landscaping and they all know my habit is to remain inside for literally weeks at a time, working on some complex computer problem. I earn a moderately respectable income yearly, and dutifully report it all. None of my neighbors have ever been inside my house, nor I in theirs. But even were they to inspect the premises, they would find nothing untoward. That is, unless they discovered the opening to the tunnel, which leads from my basement all the way through to a heavy stand of trees on a three-acre plot which all the neighbors fear will someday be sold to a developer. After all, it is owned by a corporation with precisely that stated purpose. Their petty suburbanite fears are groundless. I, in fact, own the land. Inside the house is my principal computer.]

     Let me resume: The principal computer is never disengaged. I can access it via telephone from anywhere in the world. A certain code will trigger its auto-dial feature and, after the appropriate loops, it will reach the target. As soon as the phone is picked up and voice recognition—any human voice—occurs, the previously recorded message will be played.

     So I will not actually leave the premises, just the basement. I use a portable phone to reach the computer. Even should the call be inadvertently intercepted—it is, after all, a radio transmission—it would not reveal anything but a series of connection-beeps. I make only one call per phone, and then discard it. After I reduce it to untraceable rubble, of course.

     There was no need to tell the child this. I have learned that children are especially sensitive to commitments. . . even those made by their captors. The promise to return, for example. One might imagine the children would be happy if I never returned. After all, they are incapable of seeing deeply into the future—very much instant-gratification creatures, indeed. So with a plentiful supply of food—including, of course, the sort of so-called “junk food” many children are not allowed by their parents—and toys and games, they would not worry about being rescued. Yes, they might easily become bored—that is always a concern. But you would surmise that the return of their captor would hardly be greeted with pleasure. Yet, surprisingly, that has not been my experience. Without exception, each child was absolutely overjoyed when I returned. It took me considerable time to synthesize this data. My conclusion was as stated: The keeping of promises is critically important to children.

     Therefore, I told the child I was going out to make the first call, but would return within two hours. I then simply went upstairs, dialed up my home-base computer, and waited patiently for the time to pass.

He finished the way I’d gotten used to by then—if I wanted to see the next installment, I had to pay up front. His question was a simple one this time:

>>Marco Interdonato. Wesley?<<

Marco Interdonato. Sure, I remembered that one. A spring-bomb in a public storage locker at La Guardia. Another of the killer’s tests? Trickier than before, maybe? That one was Wesley’s work. It was in the goodbye letter he’d left with me, the one where he took the weight for killing Mortay. And Train. And some other things I’d done. Maybe it convinced the cops. Maybe it didn’t. But it wasn’t something they ever leaked to the papers, so. . . It was like the blowgun-dart thing again. How the fuck could he know such things?

If I said Wesley’s name now, would I be ratting him out. . . or confirming he was dead? I figured the killer could have put it all together without any inside knowledge. Morales always said Wesley left his fingerprints all over every job, and he wasn’t talking forensics. That left only one way to play it:

yes

Xyla typed it in.

“Is there anything I could do to make you hot?” Nadine asked me. Her outfit didn’t go with the question—she was wearing a gray jersey workout suit, and her hair was dank with sweat, like she’d been pushing herself hard just before I’d come to her place.

“You mean you you?”

“That’s right. Me me.”

“And by ‘hot,’ you mean aroused?”

“Yes!” she snapped, impatient now.

“What difference would it make?” I asked her.

“I want to have sex with you.”

“Huh? From the minute I met you, all you’ve been telling me is how bad I want you, right? What a liar I am when I say I don’t. So. . . what is this, another stupid game? I fuck you, that proves I’m a liar? Look, all men are liars. I’m no exception. You already have all the answers, why don’t you just write ‘Burke’ on a vibrator and be done with it?”

“Why are you like this?” she demanded, stepping close to me. She smelled like a sweaty-sweet girl. No estrogen pheromones, just. . . girl-smell.

“Me? I’m not ‘like’ anything. I’m me.”

“And you. . . you don’t want to fuck me?”

“You know what? Sure. Who wouldn’t? You got all the stuff. But you don’t smell like pussy to me,” I said, hoping that going crude would end this game. . . whatever it was.

“Oh yes?” she asked, standing right against me. “What do I smell like?”

“Like a trap,” I told her.

She turned her back on me and walked a few feet away. Then she whirled around and stood looking at me for a few long seconds. And disappeared.

When she came back, she was wearing a pair of loose wide-leg white cotton shorts and a pink T-shirt, barefoot, smelling of soap. She took the chair next to mine. Asked: “What did you mean?”

“About. . .?”

“Me smelling like a trap. What does that mean?”

“You got the information I wanted? The stuff you said you had to get me over here.”

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