F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (37 page)

Something rattling around in the
back of his head, something bad… talk of the tape had shaken it loose.

A tape… his missing
jacket…

And then it hit him. Hit him hard,
making him a little sick. He’d thought things were bad before.
They’d suddenly got worse.

“The girl has one of the
tapes,” he said.

Salinas was silent. “I do not
think I believe you, Miguel.”

“I swear it’s true. She
got the drop on me. She took my jacket while I was out. I had a copy of the
tape in one of the pockets. She’s got it.”

“Then we will have to find
her.”

“I’ll find her.
I’ve known her for years. I know her better than anyone you’ve got.
If anyone can find her, I can.”

Only marginally true. Everything he
knew about Poppy-the-bitch-Mulliner was what he’d heard from Paulie, and
that hadn’t been a hell of a lot. Next to nothing, in fact. But Salinas
didn’t know that.

“No me jodas! Llosa will
bring you in… where you will be safe. It is for your own protection.”

“Look, man,” Snake
said, desperate now. He had to convince this greaseball. “I’ve got
as big a stake as you in finding her. That tape was only supposed to be
listened to if I was dead. I’m on it too! If that gets around, my ass is
on the line with yours!”

Salinas let out a long stream of
profanity in Spanish. Snake could catch only snippets, but he got the idea.

Finally Salinas ran out of steam
and agreed to let Snake stay on the streets and search for Poppy. But he wanted
Llosa to go with him. More arguing before Snake convinced him that not only
would Llosa slow him down, but Salinas would be better served by having Llosa
search separately.

“Very well. Search on your
own. But no games when you find her. Finish it and let me know immediately.”

“I’ll send you her
head.”

“You will find her in
Atlantic City. She will be contacting the doctor about returning the package
today. He is staying at Bally’s Park Place.” How does he know all
this? Snake wondered, amazed as ever by Salinas’s connections.

“I’m on my way.”
He eyed Llosa and his buddy, waiting expectantly. “But you’d better
talk to your amigo here, so he knows his assignment’s been
changed.”

Salinas sighed. “Put him
on.”

Snake held up the phone and called
to Llosa. “Yo! The boss wants to talk to you.” And while Llosa got
new orders. Snake reviewed what he knew about A.C., which was damn near
nothing. He’d never been there. Gambling was for jerks. Didn’t
matter. He’d haul ass up there this morning and learn about it.

One way or another he’d find
the bitch and the kid, grab the tape, and tie up the last loose ends. Then
he’d disappear. Forget the final payment. He wanted to get as far away as
possible from Carlos Salinas.

Singapore sounded pretty good right
now. After Atlantic City.

Mamie watched the elevators over
the top edge of her complimentary copy of USA Today. She’d followed John
here in a different rental car—a red one this time. She’d even
parked near him in the Rally’s garage and followed him inside, watched
him register.

She was tired, but she wasn’t
giving up. She’d positioned herself in the Daily’s lobby first
thing this morning and had been on sentry duty ever since.

Sooner or later, John would have to
show. And then she’d follow him to Katie.

What are you up to, John?

Mamie was sure that Katie
wasn’t at John’s house. She’d peeked in the windows a couple
of times during the dinner hour and had only seen John and his battleax mother
at the table. He must have hidden Katie away in another of his cruel attempts
to keep them apart.

But if you’re not here to see
Katie, what are you doing? Gambling?

What kind of father hides his
daughter from her natural mother—God knows where he’s stuck
her—and goes traipsing off to a casino?

And he calls me a bad parent…
and dangerous.

Probably here to see one of his
whores. Mamie had never been able to catch John at it, but she’d been
sure he was sleeping around before the divorce. Katie knew all about it, but
she’d kept John’s secrets… no matter what.

Always hiding things from me, those
two.

You’ve corrupted her, John, I
know it. But she’s still young. None of the damage is permanent.
I’ll get her back. I’ll save her. I’ll straighten her out.

The phone rang at 11:02. John knew
because he’d been sitting on the bed since 7:13 a.m., watching the red
LED-numerals climb toward noon.

“Hi, Daddy.” Katie!
John’s heart soared. She sounded so close. And suddenly he was sure that
this time it would work. Today he’d get her back.

“Hi, honey. Where are
you?”

“With Poppy.”

Poppy… was that—?

Suddenly the woman was on the line.
“Uh, you should like forget you heard that, okay?”

“Heard what?” John
said.

“That’s the
spirit.”

He hoped they understood each
other. If this woman truly had saved Katie’s toe and Katie’s life
and was truly returning her to him unharmed—she’d said she robbed a
drugstore for the Tegretol—he would forget anything he knew about her. No
court in the world could get him to remember her name or the sound of her voice.

“Are we set for today?”

“We are. Go down to the
boardwalk at three and stand by the phones between Boardwalk Rogers and Planet
Hollywood.”

“Where’s that?”

“Just a little ways down from
where you are. You can’t miss Boardwalk Rogers—looks like a little
ceramic church or something. I’ll call the first phone on the left and
let you know where to pick up Katie.”

Three o’clock… seemed
like years away.

“Can’t we make it
earlier?”

“Three. I got some things to
work out first. We don’t want no screw-ups.”

“No. We don’t. Okay.
First phone on the left. At three. Got it. But I’ll be there well before
that. Call me earlier if you want.” John planned to be at that phone
around two. He didn’t want a scene like the one in Lafayette Square last
week. No arguments this time over whose phone it was.

He’d claim it and hold on to
it.

Bob Decker took Canney’s call
on the car phone on his way in from the A.C. heliport. He glanced at his watch.

“Three o’clock? Can you
get someone over to that phone to hook up—?”

“Already on his way. But we
need more manpower. We need people stretched all along the boardwalk, because
sure as hell she’s going to do the Hollywood thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You know. In the movies.
You’ve seen it—where the kidnapper keeps someone running from phone
to phone. It’s been shown so many times, real kidnappers have come to
assume that’s the way it’s done.”

“This is my first
kidnapping,” Decker said. “I’ll have to take your word for
it.”

“It’s actually pretty
effective, especially if the caller keeps switching phones as well.”

“So I take it the last place
we should concentrate our troops is around the phones.”

“You got it. You can bet
Vanduyne’s going to be sent somewhere else. Oh, and we got a bonus out of
the call: The woman’s name is Poppy.”

“Poppy… could be her
real name, could just mean she’s a junkie.”

“I know. But we’re
running it through New York. That’s where Dicastro lived. Maybe
we’ll get lucky.”

“Okay. As for manpower, see
how many people you can grab from the Bureau, and I’ll call Keane to see
what DEA can supply. I figure they should have a fair number of agents around
fun city here.” Decker hung up and leaned back. Things looked good.

This whole thing might be wrapped
by four p.m.

“What a dump,” Snake
thought as he stood by a pay phone at New York and Atlantic Avenues and waited
for Salinas to return his call.

This wasn’t anything like the
Atlantic City he’d seen on TV. Looked more like the Bronx. He
didn’t like even being out of his Jeep, but using his car phone was
verboten.

He felt like crap. This headache
wouldn’t quit. He was ready to bang his head against the
sidewalk—that might feel better than this deep relentless ache. And the
drive up here had been pure hell. With only one eye, his depth perception was
off and he’d damn near cracked up half a dozen times. And now the sun was
so damn hot he was sweating and itching under the bandages, and so bright it
hurt his bad eye even through the shades and the gauze eye pad, Dizzy…
sick… in pain… and suffocating inside this hooded sweatshirt. He
wanted to kill somebody.

An emaciated-looking black guy
shuffled toward Snake through the nearby vacant lot and offered him a flyer.
Snake’s first instinct was to wave him off—the last thing he was
interested in now was an ad for some local grind house or escort
service—but better to take the sheet than have some crackhead hanging
around while he was trying to talk to Salinas.

But even after Snake took the
flyer, the guy stood there staring at his face, at the bandages.

“What’re you looking at?”
Snake snapped.

“Nothin‘.” The
burnout moved off. “Nothin’ ay-tall.” Snake crumbled the
flyer and was about to toss it into the gutter when he spotted the word reward.
He flattened it out again and read about the thousand bucks being offered for
information as to the whereabouts of two runaways—an eighteen-year-old
and her little sister.

The descriptions perfectly matched
the ones Snake had supplied Salinas with before leaving D.C. this morning.
Poppy was no eighteen-year-old, but the rest of the description fit.

Anybody who spotted her with that
little girl wouldn’t be put off by the fact that she didn’t look
quite like a teenager. They’d drop a dime to the local number listed at
the bottom of the sheet.

A thousand bucks. That’s all?
Salinas should be willing to pay a million to get his hands on Poppy and the
kid.

Then Snake realized the fat man
couldn’t let on how important they were. A grand sounded about right for
a couple of runaways—and it would buy somebody a lot of crack.

He wondered how many of these
flyers were floating around. Probably every junkie and pusher in A.C. had one.
Had to be thousands of junkies in town. Each one turning a daily profit for the
traffickers. All that money, millions and billions flowing from cities and
towns all over the map. No wonder Salinas and his bosses wanted to off a guy
looking to legalize their trade.

The phone rang. Salinas was on,
sounding like he was riding the edge as he launched into a rapid-fire spiel.

“The doctor will be waiting
for a call in front of Boardwalk Rogers. You can be sure the delivery
won’t be there. His phone is not secure. You will be called shortly after
he is contacted, so keep your cell phone at hand. Be careful. Very many feds
around.”

And that was it. The line went
dead. Salinas had to be feeling pretty desperate if he was talking about
contacting him on his cell phone. But Snake could think of ways to endrun the
cellular’s vulnerability to eavesdropping. The most obvious was to relay
the message to someone at a pay phone, and have him make a short, cryptic call
to the cell phone.

Whatever. Snake wasn’t going
to waste time worrying about it. Salinas would be cool. He was pretty canny
when it came to phone security.

What Snake wanted to know was what
the hell he was going to do with the info Salinas relayed to him, especially
with the city crawling with feds? Obviously he had a man inside, and that was
fine for raw data. But what if Snake needed a little assistance? What was he
going to do—recruit a bunch of crack heads?

Sure.

Right now the best thing be could
do was cruise the casino area and hope he got lucky.

Or hope Poppy got unlucky.

“Can I help you?” Poppy
nearly yelped in fright as she whirled to face the salesgirl.

“N-no. We’re just
looking. Th-thanks.” Jesus, she thought, shaking inside as the salesgirl
smiled down at Katie. I’m about ready to jump out of my skin.

Poppy and Katie had spent the last
ten minutes standing at the rear of Peanut World—“The
Boardwalk’s Largest Gift, Nut & Candy Shop!”—first
looking at the T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, ashtrays, thimbles, every
imaginable piece of junk, each imprinted with atlantic city; then they oohed
and ahhed at the elephants, alligators, cats, dogs, and other animals made of
sea shells; then they moved to the candy counter, checking out the fudge, the
jellies, and the salt-water taffy, pretending to be trying to decide which
flavor to buy. At least Poppy was pretending. But they weren’t here for
taffy. The real attraction was the view of the phones on the boardwalk about
fifty yards south of Peanut World’s door.

“Tough to decide, huh?”
the salesgirl told Katie, then glanced up at Poppy. “You think your
little boy would like to try a sample?” Poppy suppressed a
smile—Katie really did look like a strawberry-blond boy.

But Katie frowned and put her hands
on her hips. “I’m not—”

Poppy jumped in. “Yeah,
he’d love some.” As the salesgirl turned to pick from the bins,
Poppy nudged Katie and whispered, “Let’s
pretend—remember?”

The salesgirl picked out three
different flavors and handed them to Katie.

“Here y’go, guy.
Enjoy.” Then she moved off.

Poppy looked around the crowded
store. Thank God it was a warm, sunny day. The whole boardwalk area was like
mobbed with people getting out of their houses to take advantage of the
summerlike day—after all, it was almost spring and they’d been
cooped up all winter. The only bad thing was that they all seemed to be about a
hundred years old, which made Poppy and Katie stick out more than she liked.