F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (36 page)

Most of Saturday was still a blur.
He vaguely remembered coming to in that empty house—Paulie had been
there, lying next to him, but he no longer counted—and climbing to his
feet, unable to see out of his right eye.

What he remembered best was the
pain, the excruciating pain in his eye and the right side of his head. And the
blood. Running down the side of his head, down his neck, under his shirt.
He’d finally found a towel and tied it around his head.

Somehow he’d found his keys.
He grabbed them and his revolver and staggered out to the Jeep. Somehow,
he’d managed to drive away before the cops arrived.

And all the time his beeper going,
each beep a spear of pain through his head.

He hadn’t wanted to go home,
but that bitch had stolen his wallet and his jacket and he needed cash. Lots of
it. He knew a guy in Northeast D.C., an M.D. whose license had been yanked
because of his fondness for Class II controlled substances, and his habit of
selling prescriptions for the same. But that hadn’t stopped him from practicing.
His name was out: “You got a reportable wound you don’t want
recorded, see Doc Moeller.”

But he only took cash.

The doc stitched up the ragged
furrow the bullet had torn from the corner of Snake’s right eye, across
his temple, to somewhere above his right ear, saying how lucky he was that the
temporal artery had only been nicked. Straightened out his broken nose. That
was the good news.

Nothing he could do about that
right eye, though. It was shot—literally and figuratively. The bullet had
nicked it, causing intraocular hemorrhage, the muzzle flash had seared it, and
it was completely out of order.

Maybe an opthamologist could
salvage it, but the doc doubted it.

At the very least the eye work
would take days, and most likely a stay in a hospital, and Doc Moeller
didn’t know of an opthamologist who wouldn’t report the bullet
wound.

So that was out.

Call me Deadeye.

The bleeding had stopped, but the
pain went on and on. A symphony of agony—deep throbbing basso aches
inside his skull accompanied by tight steady whining jabs from his scalp and
nose, highlighted by staccato bursts of glass-shard stabs in his eye socket.
The Percodans he was popping like M&M’s did next to nothing to mute
the pain.

He squeezed a glob of antibiotic
ointment onto a gauze eye pad and pressed it over the red horror that had once
been his eye. Then he began winding a roll of two-inch gauze around his head.

But then he dropped the roll and
grabbed the sink, hanging on as the bathroom suddenly spun around him.

His head had been playing that
trick for two days now. Doc Moeller had told him to expect
it—post-concussion syndrome, or some such. Whatever it was called, it was
scary. Didn’t want something like that to happen when he was driving.

But he was going to have to drive
today. Get out of this neighborhood and find a phone. He’d stopped at the
first motel he’d seen after leaving Doc Moeller’s—somewhere
on Rhode Island Avenue. He had to be the only white man in a couple of miles.
He sure as hell wasn’t going to call from this room. Probably have to go
into the Federal area to find a phone that worked or didn’t have a pusher
hogging it.

The room steadied and he
straightened up from his death lock on the sink. He finished winding the fresh
gauze around his head and stared at his handiwork.

Gauze encircled his forehead,
running down over his right eye and covering the whole right side of his head,
including the ear. Not as neat as the doc’s had been, but it would do.

He thought of Poppy and the hot surge
of hate and rage made his pain recede a little. This was all her doing.
What’d she think she was up to? Shooting him and running off with the
kid. What was going on in her crazy head? When he got hold of her…

He could still see the look in her
eyes as she’d pulled the trigger. She was crazy, that bitch. And
she’d damn near killed him. A fucking broad had got the best of him. How
the hell had he let that happen? Sure, he’d been groggy from that conk on
the head, but still it wasn’t something he’d ever talk about. He
could barely face himself.

And Paulie. For the life of him,
Snake couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong with Paulie. Such a simple
thing to chop off the package’s toe and send it to the father. What was
the big fucking deal? Why couldn’t he have just done as he was told?

And why had he got in Snake’s
way when he went after the package? Didn’t make any sense. Not at all
like Paulie.

Only one explanation: Poppy.
She’d done Something to Paulie’s head.

Probably got into some mother thing
with the package. Snake remembered the way she’d been cradling the kid
when he’d come after her. Yeah. Had to be it. And she’d infected
Paulie.

So stupid!

Poppy’s fault. All of this.

His beeper went off again in the
next room. Shit, didn’t Salinas ever give up? All right. He
couldn’t put it off any longer. He was going to have to call in.

Luckily, things didn’t look
near as bad as they really were. Unlikely that Salinas knew anything about the
trouble at the Falls Church house. The story of the killing had been on the
news, but nothing to connect it to a kidnapping. And no one had mentioned
Paulie’s name.

And the Pres was still in Bethesda.
Salinas should be happy about that. Sure. He could convince Salinas that he
still had the kid and that everything was under control. They could go on
stringing Vanduyne along while they waited for Winston to die.

And meanwhile Snake would be
scouring the whole goddamn countryside for Poppy and that brat. And when he
found her… ohhhh, yes, when he found her…

He’d fantasize later. Right
now he had to get to a phone.

Decker had been on his way out of
W-16 when Razor called. He updated him on the latest developments.

“So John’s in Atlantic
City now?”

“Yes, sir. He checked into
Bally’s last night. We bugged his room while he was out to dinner.
I’m on my way there now myself.”

“Does he really think he can
handle this better on his own?”

“Apparently. He hasn’t
told us about the phone calls.”

“Well, keep an eye on him. I
want you to make sure he gets Katie back unharmed. And I want you to make that
happen today. Let me know the instant she’s in safe hands. As soon as you
call, I’m out of here. I’m going buggy in this hospital.”

“Yes, sir,” Decker
said, trying to sound neutral. He was remembering Vanduyne’s crushed,
haunted look as he’d left the Maryland House Friday night. Something must
have come through.

“Don’t think I
don’t appreciate what John’s going through. Nor that I’m not
concerned about Katie. I am. But larger matters are involved here. As soon as I
know she’s safe, I can get out in public again and let whoever’s
behind this know that they’ve failed.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll do
everything we can.”

“And tell John to give me a
call at the White House as soon as he gets home with Katie.”

“Will do, sir.” Decker
hung up and called Gerry Canney, who was with the surveillance team in A.C.

“Any contact from the woman
yet?”

“Nothing. He called his
mother and that was it. But we do have a problem.”

“What?”

“His wife. She followed him
here.”

“I thought your man was going
to box her out like last time.”

“That was the plan. And he
was following her when he got jammed behind a truck-bus accident on the
turnpike. She slipped past and he was never able to catch up.”

“Do we know where she
is?”

“Not exactly, but she’s
got to be somewhere in the vicinity of Bally’s. We’re keeping an
eye out. If she shows up and looks like she’s going to be trouble,
we’ll isolate her.”

“Do that. I don’t want
anything to queer the transfer this time. And neither does Razor.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Just got off the phone. He
wants this settled today.”

“I hear you.” Decker
hung up and headed for Andrews Air Force Base to hop a copter. He’d be in
A.C. in a couple of hours. The thought of Vanduyne’s ex wandering around
without a tail bothered him. Here it wasn’t even nine a.m. and already
something had gone wrong.

What next?

“Let me speak to the
man.”

“What?” A pause.
“Is this… ?”

Snake recognized Gold’s
voice, but it sounded strange. Strained.

“Yeah. This is me.
Here’s where I am.” Snake began to read off the hotel phone when
Gold interrupted him.

“Wait, wait. Let me get a
pen.”

What was this? Gold always had a
gold Mont Blanc stuck in his shirt pocket. While Snake waited, he took a quick
look around the hotel lobby.

The sudden movement brought on
another spasm of vertigo. He clung to the phone to keep from rocking.
Didn’t want anyone to think he was drunk. They’d boot him out.

The lobby steadied and he saw that
no one was paying any attention to him. The combination of a bulky sweatshirt
with the hood up, and the largest pair of sunglasses he could find, hid ninety
percent of his bandages. Still he felt as if he were carrying a blinking neon
sign: Look at me… Look at me…

“Okay,” Gold said.
“Got it. Give it to me.” Snake read it off and was about to hang up
when Gold spoke again.

“He’s, um, indisposed
at the moment, so it might take a little longer for him to get back to you. Be
patient.”

Snake had a sudden vision of
Salinas on the crapper, his rolls of fat bulging over— He banished the
thought. “Okay, fine. I’ll wait.”

“So, um, where’ve you
been?” Small talk from Gold—the last thing he needed.

“Busy. What’s it to
you?”

“Well, we’ve been
paging you for days.”

“You have? Hmmph. Maybe
I’d better get my beeper checked. Battery must be low. Haven’t
heard a thing.”

“Yeah, you damn well better
get it checked. The man has had some important things to discuss with
you.”

“Really? I can hardly
wait.” Snake depressed the plunger, but kept the phone to his unbandaged
ear while he waited for the call back.

The man has had some important
things to discuss with you. Snake didn’t like the sound of that. Could
Salinas know about the fuckup at the house?

He leaned against the edge of the
booth. He wished Salinas would hurry up and call back. And he wished they had seats
for these phones. He was feeling weak and shaky, and his head—his goddamn
head was killing him.

Come on, Fatso! Let’s get
this over with!

And then the phone rang. Snake
immediately released the plunger.

“Yeah.”

Salinas’s voice:
“Miguel. So good to speak to you. I was worried about you.”
Something in the tone sent a chill down Snake’s back. Too calm, too pleasant.

“Why would you be
worried?”

“I was not able to find you.
You were not answering your pages.”

“Like I told your butt boy,
I’ll have to replace the battery.”

“Please do. Now tell me, how
is the package faring?”

“The package is fine.”

“Everything is under
control?” He knows something, dammit!

“Why do you ask?”

“Because of stories I have
heard.” Uh-oh.

“Really?” Snake tried
to keep his voice light while his stomach was filling with lead. “Like what?”

“Oh, that the doctor has
spoken to the package on the phone and a woman has promised to return it to
him…”

No!

“… and that a
government laboratory discovered that a toe supposedly belonging to the package
actually came from a little boy—an embalmed little boy.

Shit!

“Let’s see… what
else? Oh, yes, that a dead man discovered in Falls Church is linked to the
package, and that a hunt is on for a man known as ‘Snake’ and a man
known as ‘Mac’—both possibly the same man—who was
seriously wounded in that same house.”

Now Snake really needed a seat.

He was sweating and
shaking—and not from fever. But even if he had one, he couldn’t
allow himself to sit. He had to get out of here.

“Do not hang up,
Miguel,” Salinas said, and now there was an edge to his voice. “We
are not finished speaking. And if you look around, I am sure you will see a
familiar face.” Snake turned—slowly this time—and stifled a
gasp as he spotted Llosa standing half a dozen feet away, a smile on his pitted
face, his right hand in his coat pocket.

Now he understood all the
delays—Gold looking for a pen, Salinas “indisposed” so he
couldn’t call back right away. Delaying tactics so they could trace the
call and give Llosa time to find him.

What a goddamn sucker!

Snake swallowed. “I see him.
What’s he doing here?”

“He was already out looking
for you. Now he is going to escort you to a warehouse I lease. I am going to
meet you there. And then we are going to have a very deep discussion, you and
I. Mano à mano. I will want some answers.”

Snake glanced at Llosa again and
saw that he wasn’t alone. Someone had joined him. Snake had never seen
the new man before, but had little doubt from his coloring and dress that he
was another Colombian.

“Don’t forget the
tapes,” he told Salinas. “Remember the tapes.”

“I remember them. They are
among the things we will discuss.” Snake knew what kind of discussions
Salinas had in mind—probably with meat hooks and cattle prods. Salinas
would want to know the locations of all the tapes, and Snake knew he’d
give them up—every one of them— before the first jab of pain. The
thought of adding torture to the pain he’d already endured for the past
two days made him feel even weaker than he already was.

He had to think fast. Do something,
anything, to keep from taking a ride with Llosa and his pal.