Blood Runs Cold

‘I just don’t believe Billy Waites is involved, I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said Monahan. ‘Billy Waites could be one charming motherfucking pig.’

‘Yeah, well, charm doesn’t cut it with me,’ said Ren.

‘I’m not talking about a guy chatting you up in a bar,’ said Monahan. ‘I’m talking about work.’

‘So am I,’ said Ren, her eyes boring into him.

‘I’m talking about the charm of a man who has lied for years, gotten what he wanted for years, evaded law enforcement …’ said Monahan.

‘I would be surprised if he had anything to do with this,’ said Ren.

‘I bet you would,’ said Gary.

Everyone looked at him. Monahan frowned.

‘Well, she knows Billy Waites better than any of us,’ said Gary, shrugging. ‘And if she says he’s reliable, that’s good enough for me.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ren.

‘OK,’ said Monahan. ‘OK. We’ll see what comes up. But for now, Mr Waites has the benefit of the doubt. Or at least the benefit of an association with Special Agent Ren Bryce.’

‘Now,’ said Warwick, ‘Agent Bryce. Are you ready to go in and talk to our little friend?

The boy sat in the interview room with his elbows on the table, his hands in fists against his forehead. Ren watched through the small, glass window. Reinforced. Unlike me. She breathed in and out, afraid to close her eyes in case she’d see something she didn’t want to see. But what she was looking at was hitting her just as hard. Shut down and you can do this. It was a physical sensation in her chest, like the sliding shut of prison bars. Her heart was all locked up by the time she was at the other side of the door and it was closed behind her.

The boy looked up. He watched her walk all the way across the room with those lost eyes that had almost broken her before. Ren could see the fight inside him. She sat opposite him. They hung there in silence. Eventually, he looked up at her. Before she had a chance to speak, he did.

‘It wasn’t always like this,’ he said, looking down at himself as if the clothes he wore were telling her something. ‘I used to have someone who looked after me. I was six years old when we met her – in the playground, me and Mama. She was sitting on a bench, crying. She was a pretty lady with a sad story. She told Mama she’d lost a baby and that she liked to come to the playground to be around kids because it made her feel sad and she was hoping that one day it would make her feel happy. It was the only time I saw my mama cry. The only time. Ever. The next week she brought this lady home. She ate with my family, drank with my family and one day? She moved in.

‘I was six years old and … this lady was, like, magical. She made everything all right for her bambino. We lived in this beautiful home, in a secure compound with guards and guns. But hidden in the building at the far corner, there were other things going on that I didn’t know about. The men who worked for Mama – her servants, her goons, her guinea pigs? This lady would explain away these creeps. The guy with the twisted spine would walk around with his head tilted sideways, raising his eyes up to you to talk. He scared the shit out of me. Mama would get crazy if she heard me cry out. So this lady – Remy was her name – my Remy would hold me in her arms and rock me and she would say:

There was a crooked man

And he walked a crooked mile …

‘And it just made it OK for me. It was like a game. Her little rhymes made everything seem like a fairy tale, made these men seem just like characters who had something in them that was good, something we could smile at.

‘My father was a monster. He would provoke me like I was an animal. And then he would disappear. For weeks on end. One day Remy was there with me when I had to watch him leave. She said to me:

As I was walking up the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there

‘And a few days later, I was able to finish it:

He wasn’t there again today

I wish, I wish he’d stay away.

‘I’ll never forget it. And I’ll never forget my Remy. You guys don’t change your names too much, right? You need to be able to turn your head and respond at the right time, right? Ren. Remy. Ren. Remy.

‘So, how are we all doing? You and your fake dead baby. Me and my real gone father. You and your fake name, your fake job, your fake sad, tragic fucking life …’ He shrugged. ‘No wonder the stories you told me were so … imaginative.’

Ren got up and left the room. My little Gavino Bambino Val Pando.

65

Ren made it down the dark hallway of the prison, then started to run. And run. By the time she got to the Sheriff’s Office, her breath was heaving. She made it into the bathroom, locked the door and collapsed on to the floor. Tears streamed down her face, soaking her shirt, wetting the tiles beneath her cheek. She lost control of the terrible, wrenching sobs. She paused to draw breath and could hear someone pounding on the door.

‘Ren, open up. Ren, please. You need to open up. Let me in.’ It was Gary.

Group One undercover employees are cut off completely from their regular life for as long as it takes them to safely do their job. Each UCE has a contact agent; ten years ago, Gary Dettling was Ren’s. Her colleagues then – and now – never knew. Paul Louderback never knew. Only a panel of senior FBI agents in Headquarters knew. Including Jeff Warwick and Tim Monahan.

‘Ren, come on,’ said Gary. ‘Please. This is not good. Please let me in.’

Ren waited, but he didn’t go away. She dragged herself to her knees and half crawled to the door. She managed to open it. Gary pushed in and locked it behind him. He knelt down beside her and took her in his arms. She let him.

When she calmed down, he finally spoke.

‘Your call, Ren. Can you do this?’

She looked up at him. ‘Yes.’

Ren sat again in front of Monahan and Warwick. She was wearing a fresh shirt that Gary had brought for her from the trunk of her Jeep.

‘I want to know,’ she said, ‘how Gavino Val Pando found me. Because I know Billy Waites had nothing to do with it.’

‘It was Domenica Val Pando’s minions that tracked you down,’ said Warwick.

Ren stood up and slammed her fists on the desk and shouted louder than even she expected.

‘I brought you Domenica Val Pando,’ she said. ‘You know the history. And in twenty-four hours, you blew it. And now that bitch … Jesus.’

No one spoke.

Ren held Tim Monahan’s stare. ‘I knew Domenica Val Pando like no other agent could have ever gotten to know her. I know the brand of strip wax her facialist uses on her. I know that, in spite of her cellulite, she wears only g-strings. Her plastic surgeon is French. I know who the real father of her son is. And after one memorable evening, I know what the inside of her fucking mouth tastes like and what her left hand feels like on my right breast – two details that may not have made it into my reports, but by your faces, are clearly working now to illustrate my point.’ She flung her arms in the air. ‘But what the fuck do I know?’

Monahan glanced down at his notes. ‘I will remind you why you needed to be removed for your own safety. Two boys, Enrique Caltano, Paulo Salinas –’

The images returned, the faces swelled by humidity, the ugly, haunting looks. ‘Boys?’ said Ren. ‘Boys? Those boys were old enough to rape Domenica Val Pando, to hold me down and make me