“Let’s check the other one,” he said.
When it came up, Payne said, “Jesus Christ! That one says he’s in the Florida Keys.”
Andy Radcliffe looked in deep thought. He clicked around and double-checked a couple links.
“That’s just not possible,” he then said. “Both of those comments were typed in the same day-yesterday. No way someone could’ve traveled from Alaska to Florida. And there’s no way for two people to have the same screen name; the software that sets up the screen names only allows for unique ones. For obvious reasons.”
Radcliffe thought a bit. “There is one possible explanation. If this guy had some way to mirror another computer, he could create confusing IP addresses. And mirroring computers is easy. It’s just that generating an artificial IP address, in essence an alias, can cause havoc. But it is the electronic equivalent of a shell game. And that’d work.”
Payne sighed.
“Looks like we’re at what’s known as a dead fucking end,” Payne said.
Then he saw Radcliffe staring at him with a look of dejection.
Andy looks like he’s truly sorry this went nowhere.
Like it’s his fault.
“Hey, it happens, Andy,” he said.
Harris offered, “Maybe he will write again, and we can draw him out.”
Payne turned to Byrth. He saw that the Texas lawman not only appeared to be in deep thought but that he had that dry white bean tumbling again across his left fingers.
“What’re you thinking?” Payne said seriously. “You look damned introspective.”
“Thinking about Plan B,” Byrth said. “We let your cat out of the bag.”
Payne nodded.
Harris said, “I can call Lee Bryan at the paper and give him the story he can write and post.”
Payne felt his phone vibrate, and he found himself in what he realized was a Pavlovian moment. He was grinning, and it was because he’d already conditioned himself to associate the phone vibration with a text message from Amanda Law.
But then it vibrated again. And when he picked up the phone, the smile quickly went away.
The cellular telephone instead had been ringing. The color LCD screen flashed: SOUP KING-1 CALL TODAY @ 0902.
Well, I’ve put him off long enough.
Now certainly qualifies as “later.”
“Hey, Chad,” Payne said into the phone after hitting the keypad. “What’s new?”
XI
[ONE] Philadelphia International Airport Thursday, September 10, 9:01 A.M. Eastern Standard Time Juan Paulo Delgado pulled out of the parking lot at the Avis Rent A Car facility, the tires of his Chevy Tahoe squealing, speeding off so fast that he almost snapped off the white barrier arm at the security booth.
Delgado was pissed off. The causes were many, and growing, the most recent being the attitude of the Avis assistant night manager. They had had a long-running arrangement in which Delgado could park in the employee parking lot for as long as he wanted, in exchange for which Delgado saw that the guy got an occasional FedEx envelope of heroin, sometimes cut and mixed and packaged as Queso Azul, sometimes pure, uncut smack. The guy sold it to supplement-very damn nicely-the income he got from the Avis gig, which he said he kept only because he needed the health benefits for his daughter’s sickle-cell anemia.
But now, like the others, that’s not good enough anymore.
No. The bastard wants more.
Just like that fucking Skipper Olde was always squeezing me.
And that pendejo who worked with him and cooked Skipper’s meth.
They both got their payback…
Delgado was also still pissed, of course, at Ramos Manuel Chac?n and his incredibly stupid mistake.
Make that mistakes.
First, not paying the bill.
Then sending that text from jail.
Who knows what he had to promise the other inmate so he could use that phone?
Delgado knew that all kinds of contraband existed in Texas jails. Almost anything could be had for a price paid to the right guard. And that included cell phones.
It was well known that in the state slam in Huntsville, Texas, the Mexican Mafia handled their outside business dealings using cell phones. The gangbangers called in hits on rival gang members, for example. Once, they’d even phoned a judge at his home, threatened him, then named his daughter and said they knew where she went to high school.
That, of course, had triggered a clean sweep of the cells. Contraband was always confiscated at these things, but then the bribes to the guards would begin again. And then there’d come another sweep. And on and on.
It’s only a matter of time before that phone he used gets picked up.
And then who knows how long till they track down the phones that were called from it.
If Miguel and Jorge are smart, they’ll get new phones.
Me, too. I’ve had this one a week now.
And Ramos can rot in jail.
I’d be careful not to drop the soap, if I were you, mi amigo. And keep your back to the wall…
Then there’d been that newspaper photograph and story this morning.
That one really pissed him off.
Stupid doctor bitch.
After they had fled the Dallas house, Delgado got the hell out of Dodge as fast as he could. He’d had Miguel Guilar and Jorge Ernesto Aguilar drive him the twenty-five miles out to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport so that he could catch the first direct flight to Philadelphia. Dallas Love Field didn’t have anything departing for Philly till hours later, and those flights made stops en route. His American Airlines Boeing 727 had left DFW at four thirty Texas Standard Time.
When the American Airlines plane had landed in Philly at eight thirty Eastern Standard Time, he’d turned on his phone.
The phone had pinged three times, announcing three new text messages. One was from Guilar. He’d written that he and Jorge Ernesto Aguilar had driven the Suburban back past the stash house-and reported that the place was crawling with cops. And ambulances.
Delgado had replied that the sooner he and El Cheque got on the road headed for Philly with the guns and money and drugs, the better. Especially if they were going to finish with the ransom calls; that window of financial opportunity was quickly closing now that the people had been found in the house. It would slam shut very soon.
They could establish another stash house in Dallas, or maybe even Fort Worth, or both, sometime soon.
Delgado, still on the plane, had next sent a text message to Omar Quintanilla: meet me @ mall de mejico in 30 mins it?s payday Then, as he was walking from the concourse to get his bag, he passed a newsstand with three neat tall stacks of the Thursday edition of The Philadelphia Bulletin.
Actual paper newspapers, he thought.
No computer required.
As best as he could recall, Juan Paulo Delgado had never bought an actual newspaper. And he’d had no intention of doing so.
But then he noticed the big color photograph, on the newspaper’s front page, of an attractive blond woman in a white medical lab coat. She stood behind a bank of microphones at what looked like a hospital.
The headline above the photograph read: DOCTOR CONFIRMS BURN VICTIM SHOT TO DEATH IN ICU BED.
