Choice of Evil (27 page)

“All right. Fine. You don’t have AIDS. Whatever you say. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“You wouldn’t care if I—”

“I don’t care if you live or die,” I told her. “I work real hard at that—not caring about people who don’t care about me. You say you don’t have AIDS, I believe you. But you
are
crazy. And you
are
dangerous. And there’s nothing you could do, no outfit you could put on, no girlfriend you could invite over. . . nothing that could make me take a chance against that.”

“Is that what
she
told you?”

“Who?

“Strega? Strega the witch. Is that what she said? That I was crazy?”

“She didn’t say anything about you,” I lied. “Believe me, jealousy isn’t her game.”

“Then why would you—?”

“I don’t have time to spell it out for you. Only reason you want to know is so you can camouflage it better, right?”

“Of
course
not! Camouflage what? That I’m ‘crazy’? Don’t be an idiot. I just want to know why
you
think so.”

“Not today. Just get me the—”

“But you
will
tell me, right?”

“If you—”

“Not today. I don’t care. But you’ll tell me. Someday.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have any paper,” she said.

“What? So this was all a—”

“I don’t have any paper because there isn’t any. Just listen to me for a minute, please? My. . . friend looked. Just like you asked. There is
nothing
in there.”

“Not a single—”

“Not one single organized-crime figure whose child was kidnapped and not returned. Not one, period. But my. . . friend says maybe there’s a reason for that.”

“And that would be. . .?”

“NYPD only has local records. Kidnapping, it’s a federal offense. And there’s Mafia in other cities. She said what you need is an FBI contact. They’d have a record of
every
kidnapping and—”

“And you just happen to have a friend who works there?”

“No,” she said, almost sadly. “I don’t. But I thought the information would be. . . helpful. I mean, at least it’s something. A new place to look. . .”

I left her sitting there. She looked like a sad little girl. In a translucent mushroom cloud of menace.

“
W
hy would you want this information?” Wolfe asked, not playing the game the way she always did. Away from me now. Maybe forever.

“What difference does that make?” I asked her. “You’re in the business. You sell stuff. I want to buy some of it.”

“You sell stuff too. And now you’re
in
stuff, aren’t you?” she asked, her gray eyes empty of even a hint of warmth.

“Not what you think,” I told her. “On the square.”

“What you’re into? Or what you’re telling me?”

“What I’m telling you.”

“Is Wesley gone?” she asked me bluntly, cobra-killer eyes unblinking.

“He’s dead,” I said. Wondering if she’d take that for an answer.

“Kidnappings. Ransom paid. Child never returned. No arrests, no clearances, no nothing. And the targets are all Family members?”

“Yes.”

“Going back. . . how far?”

Damn. Wolfe was the first one to think that way. Like a hunter. “Uh, twenty years,” I said, pulling it at random.

“That’s a big search.”

“A big price, you mean. It’s computers, right? How long could it take?”

“Everything wasn’t databased back then,” she said. “They only started keeping certain records recently.”

“But kidnappings. . . that’s been
federale
territory since Hoover was wearing a dress.”

“Sure. But, still. . . they have to code it in by hand from those days. It may not be all done yet. And if you want—”

“I don’t care what it costs,” I told her.

She stood there facing me, hands at her sides, clenched, not giving ground. “If I find out you’re in business with Wesley, I’ll take you down myself,” she said. Then she walked away.

“
T
his one’ll take a while to come up,” Xyla told me, her eyes deliberately averted from the screen. “I can tell by the pre-coding when the message came in.”

“How’d you learn all this stuff?” I asked her, more to kill time than anything else.

“I had to pretty much teach myself,” she said. “It’s mostly men—boys, really—who understand it. And you can’t get them to teach you much.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I don’t mean to be offensive, but you’re a pretty girl. I’d think those kids would be falling all over themselves to—”

“The opposite.” Xyla laughed. “Cyber-boys are always flexing their little muscles, you understand? Like, if I go to the beach. . . I walk by, guys show off, understand?”

“Sure.”

“Well, it’s the same thing in Cyberville. Only the muscles they have, they’re not real. I mean, I can’t bench-press four hundred pounds. But I
can
do anything on a computer they can do—it doesn’t take strength, just knowledge. If they give me theirs, they can’t. . . pose, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And you figured that out yourself?”

“You want to know the truth?” she asked. “A man taught me. Not computers—what I just told you. And as soon as I snapped to it, I realized I’d have to learn the cyber-stuff myself. So I did.”

I saw the screen change. “That’s—”

“It’s coming up?” she interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“See you later,” she said, walking out of the room.

T
he killer continued his serial. The same way. I watched it come up, then started to scroll. . . .

    I had been careful to act on a Monday. Not only are reaction times typically slower on Monday mornings, it is a major “sick day” for civil servants, and late starts are also common. In addition, USA Today does not have a weekend edition, and I wanted to give the targets maximum opportunity to post their answer as directed without having to wait. A Tuesday response was impossible, and even Wednesday was unlikely. A drive to the airport would be necessary. Anyone buying USA Today from a regular newsstand might attract attention in a small town, and anyone buying on two consecutive days certainly would. Such risks must be minimized.
     Obviously, this is a part of the operation where a confederate would be invaluable. But even had I not ruled this out on practical grounds, I confess that my artistic sensibilities would be offended by the appearance of collaboration with others. I refer, of course, to *internal* appearance—externally, the appearance of having confederates involved in kidnappings is, indeed, one of the critical elements of success.
     The nearest airport was approximately 77 minutes, depending on road conditions. [I was not willing to make the trip during the early-morning hours, at least not until there was considerable commuter traffic. The additional investment of time was worth the cover traffic would provide.] A minimum of three hours’ absence was thus required, so Wednesday was out of the question.
     Fortunately, the child was quite capable of self-entertainment. The two-day wait passed uneventfully, and I did not have to resort to the tranquilizers some of the other children had required. At the age of ten—and a highly precocious ten she was, although her school records had not so indicated—boredom plays a significant role in counter-tranquillity. I asked the child if she wanted to play with any of the dolls I had purchased, realizing, from experience, that some children would eagerly accept a new doll while others only wanted their own—something I could not assure, depending on the circumstances of the original capture. The child refused, but made no reference to any doll of her own. Perhaps she was already outgrowing such things. . . .
     Common thugs have “equipment” for their crimes. I have a repertoire. This includes a working knowledge of the developmental milestones in children and their unique linguistic capacities. One must be careful, for example, never to use “tag” questions when conducting interviews. One does *not* ask a child: “It’s really nice that it has stopped raining, isn’t it?” This common lawyer’s trick requires that the responder confirm the proposition in order to answer the question: i.e., to agree that it *had*, in fact, been raining, even if the child was not aware that it had been and could observe only the fact that it is *now* not doing so. I have also learned that an engaged child is a less anxious child, and so I delicately questioned my captive to ascertain her tolerance for engagement. As it developed, she was profoundly uninterested in what I had been assured were “age-appropriate” games.
     However, I did have a variety of higher-level board games on hand, ranging in difficulty. Her favorite proved to be something called Risk, a strategy-based game not intended for children her age. . . . I had added it almost as an afterthought. I explained that Risk was not really designed for only two players, and she quickly grasped the concept of playing two roles simultaneously. I was prepared to let her win a moderate number of games, balancing a child’s natural competitiveness against the need to maintain intellectual challenge for her, but it proved unnecessary: There is sufficient luck in any game which involves rolling dice so that she managed to win legitimately a number of times. I noted with interest that she did not insist on keeping score, nor did she “celebrate” her victories.
     “What’s a game that has the right design?” she asked suddenly.
     “I don’t understand.”
     “Well, you said Risk isn’t really for two players. There must be games that *are*, right?”
     “Certainly. There are card games—casino, gin rummy, and others of that sort.”
     “Do you have cards?”
     “Uh, no, I don’t.”
     “Can you get some? When you go out?”
     “I can,” I told her, remembering that every airport in the world sells such items.
     “What else?”
     “What else?”
     “I mean, besides cards. What other games?”
     “Oh. Well, there’s checkers. And chess.”
     “Do you have them?”
     “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
     “Can you—?”
     “Yes, Angelique,” I said. “I can try to find a set while I’m out.”
     “No, I didn’t mean that. Couldn’t you. . . make one?”
     “Make a. . . oh yes, I see. Actually, I have no such skills. But *you* do. So if I provided the schematic—”
     “What’s a schematic?”
     “It’s like a plan. A picture of how something works.”
     “You draw pictures?” she asked, an unreadable look on her face.
     “No, child. Not pictures, plans. There’s a great difference.”
     “What’s the difference?”
     Realizing I should have anticipated just such a question and incorporated the answer in my prior explanation, I mentally resolved to concentrate with greater task-oriented precision. “A plan is something that can be drawn with instruments, say a ruler, or a protractor, or a T-square. A diagram. Art is freehand. Very individual. No two pieces of art are ever exactly the same.”
     “Can’t people copy art?”
     “Certainly they can try. But a true connoisseur could always distinguish between an imitation and the genuine article.”
     “What’s a connoisseur?”
     “A person who is especially knowledgeable about a certain subject. It could be food, or antiques, or even wild animals, for that matter.”
     “But it has to be a thing?” the child asked.
     “A. . . thing?”
     “Yes. Those are all things, right? Not something you do.”
     “Well, certainly, one could be a connoisseur of. . . oh, I don’t know. . . say, ballet. Or football. Those are not objects, they are performances. Do you understand?”
     “But could you do them yourself and still be one?”
     “I am not certain I—”
     “Could you, like, be an artist and still be a. . . connoisseur of art?”
     “Ah. Yes, to be sure. In fact, there are those who say one cannot be a great writer unless one is also a connoisseur of writing. . . as an art form, do you see?”
     “Sure! That’s me. I love to draw, and I love to look at. . . paintings and stuff. So I guess I’m a connoisseur, aren’t I?”
     “Well, that would depend on the criteria you employ.”
     “I don’t—”
     “I mean,” I corrected myself, “whether you had good taste. In other words, if you liked only very fine art, you could be a connoisseur.”
     “I like everything.”
     “Well, then, you—”
     “But I don’t like everything the same. I mean, I like some stuff a lot better. So could I be a—?”
     “Yes, child. That’s correct. You certainly could be. Shall I show you the. . . drawing of the game?”
     “Yes, please.”
     Using the edge of a hardcover book, I quickly roughed in a diagram of a checkerboard—sixty-four identical squares. Then I used a half-dollar to make a pair of circles. “See, Angelique? There will be thirty-two pieces, half of them one color and half of them another. And we put them on a board that will look like this. Do you think you could make one?”
     “Sure I could. But I’d need some construction paper. Do you know what that is?”
     “Not only do I know,” I told her, a trace of pride perhaps in my voice, “I have some right here.” [In fact, I always keep a plentiful supply for my captives, having found that making the sort of mess children create with brightly colored paper occupies some of them for long periods of time.]
     When I gave her the paper and a pair of scissors (with rounded tips) she set to work. When we took a break for the midday meal, she was so absorbed I had to summon her twice.
     The checkerboard was finished by mid-afternoon. I pretended not to notice the child’s progress, concentrating on the portable computer’s screen. [Yes, obviously, the computer will contain incriminating evidence. But should I be apprehended in the company of a captive, it would be coals to Newcastle.]
     “It’s ready!” she called out, and I got up to see her project.
     My astonishment was impossible to conceal. . . which was fortuitous, as it seemed to delight the child. The board was composed of what appeared to be several dozen layers, a multi-colored laminate (the top of which was a dazzling white) on which she had drawn the squares to perfection. My amazement, however, was reserved for the pieces themselves. Although each was a disk of the same size, and although the thirty-two of them were equally divided between a sort of Day-Glo orange and a misty blue (I had not disclosed to the child that the traditional colors are red and black), each piece was individually decorated with a tiny drawing. . . everything from butterflies to bears to houses and cars. The work was as complex and delicate as scrimshaw and, to my not-untrained eye, displayed no less skill.
     “This is absolutely remarkable,” I told the child.
     “Do you like it?”
     “Very much. It’s. . . magnificent.”
     “It’s for you, all right? To keep. Like a present?”
     “I will treasure it,” I told her solemnly, realizing even as I spoke that it too would be evidence and I could not keep it, but. . .
     “Can we play now?” she asked.
     “After dinner,” I promised.