would assume that he was completely round the bend, like a rabid animal. If this happened, he was dead, because you couldn’t see something like that and figure you would just wait until it wandered away. You wanted to know exactly where it was during every second until you killed it. If the report said he was popping unknowns who hadn’t done anything to him, then something was missing.
Elizabeth could probably help him out on this one. As he thought about her he felt a shudder of regret and embarrassment. He never should have made that joke about her being ugly; what if she really
Hamp could feel his scalp begin to tighten, as though his hair were actually going to stand up. Martillo and Bartolomeo were such little fish that only a criminal would recognize them, and one had. The Butcher’s Boy had seen those guys in Washington and they had seen him, so he had shut them up. It all made perfect sense, but only afterward. Hamp unbuckled his seat belt, stood up and started to sidestep his way into the aisle. The stewardess saw him and hurried up the aisle toward him to let him know he was busted. “Sir—”
But he took out his identification wallet and held it up in front of her face. “My name is Jack Hamp, and I’m a special investigator for the Justice Department. I have a car waiting in that airport, and I need to get to it now.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but it will be a few more minutes before we can deplane. It isn’t something we can do anything about. It’s an FAA regulation.”
Hamp took a step forward and she sensed that she had to move with him or step aside, so she came with him. “The wheels are hot,” he said. “If they were going to blow, they’d have done it by now, but we’ll sit here an hour or more just to be safe. Explain to the pilot that I’ve got an emergency.”
“But, sir. Mr.—”
“Hamp. Do it. Because if you don’t I’m going to crank that hatch open myself.”
* * *
Hamp couldn’t believe it. Elizabeth had actually told him about it the minute she had gotten the damned present, and he hadn’t figured it out. He drove fast along Jefferson, changing lanes and keeping the pedal down as far as he dared. He was what might have been called a professional speeder, since that was what cops in L.A. had to be to get anywhere while the bodies were still warm. He instantly wished he hadn’t thought it in those words. Because now it all made sense, and he hoped this didn’t mean that it was already over.
The mistake was in thinking that the Butcher’s Boy was just wandering around slaughtering the big bosses because they were big. He wasn’t in any position to take on something like that. All he was doing was what Jack Hamp would have done in his place: trying to stay alive. Though to a man like the Butcher’s Boy it meant that you figured out who was giving you the most trouble, and then you killed him. So now he was in Washington, but he hadn’t come here to find a pair of nonentities like Martillo and Bartolomeo. That had just been an accident. Somehow he had figured out who was giving him the worst trouble, the one who had kept him from leaving the country in the first place and would keep closing in on him until he couldn’t move at all—Elizabeth Waring.
Wolf had the cab driver go all the way up the block past his house before he told him to stop at the end of the street and got out. He waited for the driver to disappear before walking back down the block. He was still watching for the fourth man. Somebody had brought those three to his house this evening, and he still hadn’t spotted the man or his car in the neighborhood. But he wasn’t in a position to spend any time looking for him. He had started the sequence, and now he had to finish it and get out.
As he went to E. V. Waring’s kitchen door, he tried to remember the exact layout of the house. There were no alarms or even serious locks to stop him, and she had cleaned the place before he had come to dinner, so there wouldn’t be eight hundred toys on the floor to trip over in the dark.
He reached into his pocket, found a credit card from one of the men he had left in Vico’s yard, slipped it between the door and the jamb and moved it up and down until he found the plunger. He depressed the plunger, but the door wouldn’t move. He could feel that another bolt somewhere near the knob was engaged. He got down on his knees on the concrete steps and pushed on the rubber flap of the cat door that was cut into the lower panel. He measured the length of his arm from the cat door to the doorknob, and judged that it was long enough. Lying on his back on the steps, he stuck his arm inside all the way to the shoulder and felt for the bolt. The tips of his fingers barely touched it, but he managed to turn it and pull it out. Opening the door, he crawled inside, then closed it carefully.
Wolf stood up and made his way slowly into the dining room, where they had eaten, then glided silently across the living room where the thick carpet muffled his steps. He could feel his left knee brush against the couch where they had sat, and this helped him orient himself. He stood absolutely still so that he could let his mind work without distraction. He was inside, but he still wasn’t sure what he was going to do. At any other time of his life he would have gone down the hallway to her bedroom and put a hole in her temple before even attempting to do anything else. He might make a noise in the next few minutes, and she would wake up. Or there might be some blood at his house that he had missed, and then she would be alive to give the FBI an accurate description of him. But while he constructed the argument for it, he already knew that he wasn’t going to do it. He was not here to kill this woman. He might have to do it to survive, but he was determined to at least try it the other way first. If he could just get into the room, take what he wanted and get out, there would never be any reason for her to tell anyone what he looked like. He began to move again, but at the entrance to the hallway he stopped. When she had walked onto this floor, she had taken off her shoes, so he did the same.
Inside the door he could hear the sound of a child breathing slowly and deeply. He stepped to the side and felt his way along the wall until he identified the woodwork that framed the closet door. He groped for the knob and squeezed it tightly in his fist to swing it open without making any noise. He reached up to the top shelf and felt something made of leather. A baseball glove. Then there was the soft texture of cloth. Sure, a baseball cap. Now the smooth, sharp corner of the box. He reached both hands up to the shelf to be sure he could lift it without sliding it across the wood.
“Who are you?” came a little voice.
It was high and piping, and there was something shaky about it, like a bird. Oh, God, he thought. I don’t want to kill this kid. “Mr. Richardson,” Wolf said softly.
“Oh,” said the boy. He waited for the kid to say something else, but there was no sound. He lifted the box and turned. “What are you doing here? I was asleep.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to come. I’ll be gone in a minute.”
“Where’s my mother?”
“She’s asleep. If we’re quiet, she won’t wake up. She needs her rest.”
The light came on and the click sounded like a hammer hitting a piece of metal. He was a tiny little boy, skinny, with his hair standing up on his head. He still had his hand on the lamp beside his bed, and he was squinting. “What are you doing with that?”
“It’s for work. We need one of these pictures of your trip to England at the office right away.”
“Which one?”
Wolf opened the lid. “London. The Parliament building. We’re going to enlarge it so we can see what’s going on inside.”
“How can you do that?”
Wolf regretted having said it. How old was this kid—four? “We blow up the part we want so we can see in the window, and we transfer it to a computer. Then we can make a three-dimensional image and turn it around every which way.” He made a slow rotating motion with both hands.
“What for?”
“I shouldn’t tell you,” Wolf said. Jimmy looked at him skeptically. “Well, we think somebody in Parliament isn’t who he says he is.”
“Who is he?”
“We don’t know yet. That’s why we need the picture.”
