>>Queensboro Bridge: (1) You present? (2) Caliber?<<
I said some words to Xyla and she made them appear on the screen:
(1) yes (2).223 Remington
She hit the keys, and my message disappeared. Somewhere in cyber-space, I had just told a killer I was with Wesley when he’d done one of his hits. And proved it.
You know how it is—you talk different things over with different people. I had no one to talk this over with. No point guessing what the next installment would be, or how it would end. I couldn’t make a move until he was finished with his story. If it was a story.
Nadine called me at Mama’s. Asked: “Do you have anything yet?”
“No,” I told her, and hung up, not even sure if I was lying.
When I called Strega to ask her the same question, she just hissed at me, asked what I
I know a brilliant guy when it comes to unhinged minds. Doc runs a little private clinic now, but I’d met him in the joint—he’d interned as a prison shrink. I could have asked him, I guess. But there just didn’t seem any point. He always said I knew more about freaks than he did.
You could only ask the Mole techno-questions. And Michelle only emotional ones.
Mama knew money. Max knew combat.
The Prof knew it all. But he didn’t know this.
I had the lines out. But I couldn’t do anything until I got a bite.
I spent a lot of time with Pansy. Wondering how much time she had left. They say Neos are a long-lived breed. But Pansy had already gone past where they said. She looked okay—fatter, slower, maybe, but okay. I took her to a vet I know in Brooklyn. He’s not a guy I like—he works pit-bull fights for cash—but when it comes to medical stuff for someone you love, you look the other way. He said she was in good shape: heart, lungs, all that. Nothing wrong with her. “She’s just old,” the vet said.
“Me fucking too,” I told him as I forked over the money.
I was in the Plymouth, on my way back from wasting a couple of hours with a punk who said he wanted to buy three crates of guns. But he didn’t show me the cash and I sure wasn’t showing him any guns first. Reason the conversation took so long, neither of us knew if the other was ATF. He didn’t feel that way to me. Just some disturbo who wanted to talk politics and had been thrown out of too many bars, so he set himself up as a buyer and got an audience that way. Pitiful stupid loser. When the ATF
The cell phone throbbed next to my heart. I unholstered it, said: “What?”
“Incoming.” Xyla’s voice.
I punched the throttle.
* There was no expectation of immediate response on my part. Indeed, the voice message transmitted had provided different directions entirely:
We have your daughter. She has not been harmed in any way. This is not personal. We are professionals. Do not notify the authorities. This can be resolved very easily if you cooperate. Place an ad in the Personals column of USA Today which states: “Lost at O’Hare Airport: Saudi Arabian passport number 125689774. Repeat: 125689774. Reward for return. No questions asked.” When we see the ad, we will contact you by this same method. Any attempt to trace calls will be detected by our equipment and the subject will be terminated without further contact. You may, however, record any incoming calls so that you need not rely on your note-taking ability.
I have found that allowing the target to tape calls provides them with a measure of reassurance. Even the most cooperative of victims can be subject to attacks of nervousness, and I would not want such a mental state in those whose *precise* cooperation would be required throughout the process.
USA Today was selected because of its status as a “national” newspaper, available from a wide variety of totally anonymous outlets. The ad itself has the ring of authenticity: While I cannot be certain without hacking into the passenger manifests of various airlines—something of which I am certainly capable—logic compels the conclusion that some Saudi nationals have passed through America’s busiest airport within the two weeks or so preceding the placement of the ad. Further, because it is a common practice of contraband-traffickers to place apparently innocent ads which contain a series of numbers, those in law enforcement who scrutinize such placements on a regular basis would assume the ad I requested to be in that category, never connecting it to my actual intent.
Finally, of course, no physical contact is required for me to read the ad. . . or to read subsequent entries in that same forum.
My next task was to monitor local radio, alert to any news of the kidnapping. There was no such reference. Although I had little fear of being discovered accidentally, the thought of roaming search parties of self- righteous locals, any of whom would trade their paltry futures for a few minutes’ exposure on television, was not comforting to me. By then, the bus would have been discovered. But even had I been careless enough—and I assure you, I was not—to leave some indication of my brief presence, any bus occupied on a daily basis by a dozen or so schoolchildren would prove beyond the forensic capabilities of any local operation. In my work, I rely to some extent upon the jealousy and territoriality of local jurisdictions, and do not expect FBI involvement for a minimum of seventy-two hours. And the FBI, following its own procedures for excluding known prints, would be required to take exemplars from all of the children who habitually ride that bus. Amazing though it will sound to the uninitiated, my experience indicates that at least one of the families of the children who were not kidnapped will balk at this intrusion into their “civil rights,” thus delaying the process even further.
None of that is of any consequence.
Then he was done.
I had my mouth open to call Xyla when she walked in. Almost like she knew how long it was going to take me.
“Question coming?” she asked.
“Always has, so far,” I replied.
It took less than a minute.
>>Last address?<<
Whose address did this maniac want? Mine? Wesley’s? Wesley never had an address. The last time I’d seen him face to face, it was in an abandoned building he was using as a staging area. . . before his last strike. Was he trying to tie me to. . . No, what was the point? All this. . . information. Fuck it. I spoke to Xyla and she made it appear on the screen.
Meserole Street
My answer to his last question had been a pair of guesses. Even if I was right and he was asking about Wesley, the ice-man’s last hideout wasn’t actually on Meserole Street, it was just off the corner. But I couldn’t give you the number of the building if my life depended on it. That neighborhood probably didn’t even have a goddamned zip code.
He was getting cute now. No reason for it.
None I understood, anyway.
“Not a single one,” Wolfe said.
That was all she said. I felt. . . surrounded. We were in the no-man’s-land under the Williamsburg Bridge. Someone I didn’t recognize was standing off to one side, holding a revolver. It was pointed at the ground, but I was close enough to see his left hand on his right wrist. And that the piece was cocked. Mick was somewhere behind me. Max had always figured him for a karateka of some kind, but we’d never known for sure. Pepper was in the front seat of her car, watching, the motor running.
Me, I was alone.
Wolfe was looking at me, a glowing red neon
