Dawn had broken gray and cloudy, but they’d both perked up after a stack of waffles at the Denny’s across the highway. And now, back in the room, she wished she could find some cartoons to distract Katie, but the tube was like totally filled with talking heads, and if they weren’t blabbing about legalized drugs they were speculating about like why the President was in the hospital.
As if anybody cared.
“How come your hands are all red?” Katie said.
Poppy looked down at her hands. Black fingernails and blood-red fingers.
Very weird.
She stood and stepped toward the window. “C’mere and I’ll show you.” She pulled back the curtain. “Check out the truck.”
Katie pressed her face against the window. “It’s red!”
“Sure is. Did it myself last night.”
She’d pulled the truck around the back of the motel and parked near a storage shed. There, out of sight of pretty much the whole parking lot, she’d emptied like can after can of spray paint. Her fingers still ached from pressing those nozzles. Sure as hell wasn’t pretty, but anyone scanning the freeways for a white panel truck would probably skip right over this one. She hoped.
Poppy dropped the curtain and turned back to the motel room. They couldn’t stay here. She’d charged it on Mac’s bogus plastic, thinking he was dead. But Mac wasn’t dead. And what if he had a way to trace her through the card?
They had to get out of here.
But first they had to make some changes.
“Good,” Poppy said. “Let’s play a game, then. How about”—she made a show of trying to decide—“oh, I don’t know… how about a game of let’s pretend?” Katie’s pout of a moment ago seemed to be history.
“What are we going to pretend?”
“Let’s see… why don’t we pretend we’re boys? Won’t that be fun?”
“Boys?” Katie didn’t seem to be too sure about how much fun that would be. “How do we do that?”
“It’s easy. We change our hair and change our clothes and we act dumb. You know…” Poppy made a face. “Duh.”
Katie laughed. “Duh! That’s easy.”
“But we gotta look like boys.”
A wider grin. “You mean dress in boy clothes?”
“Right! And cutting our hair.”
The smile vanished as Katie’s hands darted to her hair. “Cut my hair? Oh, I don’t—”
“Yeah, we’ll cut it, color it, comb it different. This’ll be the most fun we’ve ever had!”
But Katie still wasn’t buying.
She has to buy it. Poppy thought. I’ve changed the color of the truck, and I’m going to change license plates and change motels, but if we’re both going to get through this in one piece, I’ve got to change us.
She’d stopped at a Giant Foods on the way back from Denny’s and picked up all the necessary materials. Now she had to sell Katie.
“Look,” she said, grabbing a pair of scissors. “I’ll go first.” She grabbed a fistful of her own hair and began cutting.
3
Dan Keane sat stiffly in his chair in the cramped back office of W-16 and listened with growing horror as Gerry Canney updated the task force on the latest developments from the FBI Crime Lab.
“And here’s the latest finding: two different types of blood on the carpet in the Falls Church house. Both fresh. One belongs to the dead man, Dicastro. The other is unidentified, but it is definitely not Katie Vanduyne’s.”
Everything’s unraveling, he thought. He wanted to flee the room.
Decker took over. “Okay. Now, in the U.K. Jim says he’s found the guy who runs the anonymous remailer Snake’s been using.” Jim Lewis cleared his throat. “His name’s Steve Fletcher but he refuses to tell us where he hides his computer. The easiest solution would be to follow him to it and steal it. Then we run through his hard drive to find Snake’s e-mail address. Snake’s got to have an account with an online service or a private server to get on the Internet, and we track him through that. But stealing the CPU would shut down the remailer service and cut off communication from Snake. So we’re working with British Intelligence to pressure Fletcher into giving up the information. If it looks like there’s going to be too much red tape, we have other options.”
“Like what?” Decker said.
“I’ll get into that when and if.”
Dan steadied himself. If they can trace this Snake to Salinas, we’re screwed.
Decker nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned to Dan. “And finally, what’s DEA got?” Dan licked his dry lips. Truth was, he’d gone through some motions but hadn’t done much of anything. But he couldn’t tell Decker that.
“We’ve got all our ears open. I wasn’t specific about kidnapping or assassination plots, but I put the word through to check all our informants and inside people about any rumors as to how the traffickers and the cartel are reacting to the threat of decriminalization.”
“And?”
“And nothing yet.” Which was true. It was too early to hear much of substance, but the little that was filtering back was negative.
Salinas had done a good job of keeping his operation under wraps, but it looked as if he’d hired a bunch of rank amateurs to pull it off.
“All right,” Decker said. “That’s where we stand. We’ve got lots of leads, lots of new information, but also the damnedest set of new questions. If the toe Vanduyne received isn’t his daughter’s, then whose is it? Or rather, whose was it? Why send someone else’s toe?
We know Katie was in the Falls Church house at one time, but where is she now? And why was she moved? Why was a small-time thug named Paul Dicastro murdered in that house? Was he part of the action from the outset or someone trying to horn in? Who does the other bloodstain on the carpet belong to? Another of the kidnappers or an outsider? And where is this wounded person? Is this a small-time or big-time operation? Did the kidnappers have a falling out? Is the conspiracy busted? Who was the woman that called Vanduyne and offered to return his daughter—for no ransom—and then never showed. What the hell is going on?“
“Damn straight,” Canney said. “This one’s got to be the most bizarre goddamn kidnapping I’ve ever seen or heard of. One moment it appears to be a highly sophisticated operation; the next—strictly amateur hour.”
You’ve got that right, Dan thought. But Carlos Salinas is a pro. Some of the people he hired may have fucked up, but even as we sit here, he’s tying up all those loose ends.
Dan forced himself to relax.
Everything will be all right. Salinas will have everything under control soon, if not already. He won’t leave a trace.
4
“Where is he?” Carlos pounded the desk with both fists.
“He could be anywhere,” Gold said. “We have his house staked out, so we know he’s not there. We just have to wait until he calls in.” The MBA looked fidgety, and Carlos was glad of it. Let him be frightened of me. Let him fear not only for his future income, but for his physical well being. His life.
Because Carlos was afraid for all those things himself.
MacLaglen might be alive, but he might be hurt and hiding somewhere, or even dying. Carlos was not concerned about the cabron’s health so much as the fact that his very disappearance might trigger the release of that damned tape.
“I want him found!” He turned to Llosa. “Get some men together. We have a picture of MacLaglen; have copies made. We know he likes to call from hotels. Make the rounds. Go from hotel to hotel and look for him.” It was a long shot, but he couldn’t simply sit here and wait for something to happen.
Llosa nodded and pulled out a pistol. “And when I find him, should I… ”
“Madre, no!” He didn’t want Gold or Llosa or anyone to know about the tape. “Bring him here, to me. He has much explaining to do, and a dead man cannot explain.”