Choice of Evil

I gave him a blank look back. Nothing changes with me, either.

“The way I figure it, somebody’s glommed his action,” Morales said. Not sure of himself, just throwing it out.

“Wesley’s?”

“Sure. He was the best, right? Money in the fucking bank. You paid—you got a body. Never a problem. Fucking Torenelli had to go off, start that war. That was bad enough. Then Julio double-crosses Wesley. Stupid motherfucker had to know what that was gonna cost.”

“You think Wesley did Julio before he—?”

“No way. I think the Family took him out. They knew whose fault that whole thing was. You don’t pay Wesley, you open the gates of hell. If they hadn’t offed Julio, fuck, Wesley, he would’ve wasted every mob guy in the city, the way he was going. They just cut their losses, that’s all. Not the first time.”

He didn’t sound like he was fishing. Good. The truth was buried with the body. I was innocent of a lot of things I was suspected of, but Julio was mine all right. I had met him at the spot where we were going to make a trade: a letter he wrote a long time ago—a letter about a little girl—for a bundle of cash. As we made the exchange, I vise-gripped his hand. He struggled to get free, his eyes insane with what he knew was coming. Max took him out. While Strega witch-watched from the shadows, a little girl no more.

That killing had been part of a trade. And Wesley kept up his end, like he always did. I hadn’t lied to that crazy Nadine. Wesley was a pure sociopath; that’s what all the psychs said. But they didn’t know. There was a piece of him that still connected. Not enough to keep him here, but enough to give me that one last gift.

At least this Homo Erectus loon had his own motives. All Wesley ever had was a list. And all it took to get put on it was money.

Money. Maybe Morales was right after all.

“You think someone’s stepping in? Taking over?”

“They’d have to blood-in, right?” he growled back at me. “No way anyone’s gonna fork over the kind of bucks Wesley got without knowing they was getting the real thing. This guy, whoever the fuck he is, he knows how to make bodies.”

“So what? They’re just random hits,” I said, fishing now myself. “It’s not like anyone ordered them done. Not like these guys had bodyguards or anything. Any freak can do a lot of kills if there’s no motive, you know that.”

“Yeah,” Morales agreed. If he knew anything about some mobster hiring a hit man he thought was Wesley, it didn’t show on his face. And I bought it too—Morales isn’t that good at keeping his face from talking even with his mouth shut, and he wasn’t the kind of cop they’d let in on an organized-crime thing anyway. Maybe the brass had called him a hero in their press conference when he got the credit for killing that psycho Belinda, but he was marked forever as a dinosaur street-roller. They couldn’t let him work narcotics, because they knew him for a flake-and-bake guy from way back. Put him in the gang unit and you’d have corpses by the end of the week. Vice was out of the question—he was too full of puritanical rage to work anything that took delicacy. Undercover was impossible—he reeked of cop. So he worked job-to-job, always roving, never partnered up. Which was okay with him. He wasn’t going anywhere. No promotions in his future. And they couldn’t fire him. So he was just doing time.

I knew all about that.

I also knew one place I could get what I wanted. . . if Nadine’s friend was really all she said she was.

“He was a man,” Morales said, surprising me out of my thoughts.

“Who?” I asked him.

“Wesley,” Morales said, touching the brim of his hat as a goodbye. Or maybe a salute.

Driving away, I shoved in a cassette and let the blues flow over my thoughts. What’s a “man” to Morales, anyway? Someone who walked his own way, I guessed, same way Morales himself did. What was he saying, then? That this Homo Erectus guy. . . wasn’t?

It was like trying to knit a sweater from cigarette smoke. I gave it up.

The whisper-stream isn’t all lies. I’d never heard of this “Gatekeeper” the Prof had talked about, but I knew who might. Queen Thana, the voodoo priestess who had told me the truth about myself. My destiny. And, maybe because I understood she already knew—I guess I never really will know why—I told her the truth about myself, too. What happened to me when I was a little kid. First time I ever said it out loud. She told me I was a hunter. That was true—I’d been looking for a missing baby when I’d come to her, following a twisty-scary trail. She told me two more things: I had to be what I am—I could change my ways, but I couldn’t change myself. And not to come back.

After that, it all happened. I went into a house of beasts looking for a captured kid. At least, that’s what I told myself. But I went in shooting. Killing, really. The only gunfight was at the end. And if they hadn’t had guns down in that basement—where a kid was trussed up for the sacrifice, the videocams ready to turn blood into money—it would have been just killing then, too. In the exchange, they all died. Even the kid.

I’d gone into that house hunting my childhood. Not the ones who did those things to me. They were gone. I couldn’t dig them up and kill them again. But their descendants. Their heirs. Their. . . tribe. When it was done, it almost did me too. No rationalization worked. I know who killed that kid. I know it was me. I know I didn’t mean to. I know they were going to kill him anyway.

None of it helped.

For a long time, I wouldn’t touch a gun. I prayed for Wesley’s ice to come into my soul. He was my brother. We had suckled at the same poisonous breast. Only he could save me from going down into the Zero, it was pulling at me so hard.

Things happened since then. A lot of years. And the last time I held a gun in my hand, it was to protect my family. I never got to pull the trigger. Michelle was closer, and she got off first. And roared away on the back of Crystal Beth’s motorcycle as a team of feds drove a convoy of explosives toward the Hudson River.

That was 26 Federal Plaza, the giant downtown government building that houses IRS, FBI, INS—everything the New Nazis hated. That’s what Morales had been talking about. But it was just talk. Nobody really cared, not with hundreds of Hitler-worshippers in prison. . . and the plot to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe bomb defused.

I was rambling. Not out loud—that would have scared me. But in my head, still. And I didn’t like the sound.

Queen Thana wasn’t the only witch I knew. And now I had to see if Nadine’s friend was going to bring me the offering I’d need for the other one.

“Can you stop by sometime?” Lorraine’s voice, on the phone at Mama’s, as casual as if she wanted me to pick up a bunch of forwarded mail that had piled up for me at her house.

“Sure,” is all I told her.

I hung up. Walked through the back of Mama’s kitchen into the alley, climbed in the Plymouth, and headed over to the place I still thought of as Crystal Beth’s safehouse.

I didn’t recognize the woman who answered the door downstairs, but she must have been expecting me because she forked over a folded piece of paper and slammed the door in my face.

Under a streetlight, I opened the paper. Just an address. I got back in the Plymouth.

I guess I was expecting a dyke bar, but it turned out to be a little diner—one of those aluminum-sided things—standing right off the Red Hook waterfront like a leftover from the Fifties. Inside, I could see they’d ripped out all the old fixtures and set up a bunch of wooden tables so it looked like a regular restaurant.

The crowd was dressed too good for the neighborhood, but I knew it was only a short drive from Brooklyn Heights and other trendy sections, so I wasn’t that surprised—New Yorkers are real adventurous when it comes to eating.

A woman behind the counter saw I was alone and waved her hand in the direction of some empty tables. I took the smallest one I could find—round, with a butcher-block top. I opened the menu and looked around.

I couldn’t tell what the game was. The diner was in a borderland, but the clientele was all from one side of the line. Yuppies are major consumers, but most places won’t let narcotics in the door. Mama has the same rule, and I never asked why. Could be morals, could be the untrustworthy nature of the traffickers. Or how easily homicide comes into play when you fuck with poppies or powder. It doesn’t matter. Truth is, every thief knows, it’s not for nothing they call it “dope.”

Maybe it was a restaurant for real. A waitress came over, asked if I wanted anything to drink. I asked her for some lemonade by touching it on the menu with my finger. She nodded and moved off.

Then I spotted the big guy in a corner, drawing something. I’d seen him before, in another joint. The one where I’d first met Crystal Beth. He looked over at me, like he was bored from working, giving his eyes a rest. His head moved about a quarter of an inch. I sensed someone just behind my left shoulder, but I didn’t look up.

“In the back,” a voice said.

I got up, saw the voice belonged to a stocky woman with an expressionless face.

“I’ll follow you,” I told her.

She shook her head. No.

I walked down a narrow corridor, past the restrooms, to a door marked STORAGE.

“That one,” the woman said.

It opened when I turned the knob. I stepped into an empty room. It was absolutely bare, except for a pocket door. I stood there, knowing there was a lens watching from somewhere, my hands open at my sides.

The flat door slid into the wall. I stepped through.

Lorraine was standing there. “Thanks, Trixie,” she said to the stocky woman. “You got here quick,” she said to me.

“Quick as I could,” I answered her.

Then I saw why she had called. Xyla. Sitting by herself in a corner of the room in one of those orthopedic computer chairs they have for people who spend hours in front of the screen. And the screen was huge—looked like a TV instead of a monitor. The entire wall was nothing but cyber-machinery: lights blinking, hard drives whirring, modem connections buzzing and howling. . . searching for openings.

I walked over behind Xyla’s chair. The screen in front of her was filled with numbers and letters and symbols, all strung together, like they’d turned an autistic kid loose at the keyboard.

“I got him,” Xyla said, not turning around.

“You sure?” I asked her.

“Pretty sure. I got. . . let me check. . .” She hit the keys so fast her fingers were a blur. “. . . four hundred and eighty-eight responses. But most of them were just to the addy—they couldn’t even open the message I sent, just wanted to talk, you know. He’s got his own home page now, so I figure maybe one of his fans—”

“What’s a home page?”

“A website. Like some companies have. You know: www, whatever, dot com? It’s a domain. A webmaster runs it, and it’s only devoted to one topic. We have. . .” She glanced over her shoulder at Lorraine.

“He knows,” Lorraine said. “Crystal Beth told me she told him about ours.”

Xyla nodded. “Okay. Anyway, this one isn’t actually his, okay? I mean, he didn’t set it up or anything. And it’s not a true domain, just a personal home page. Like a fan page, I guess you’d call it. They’re all over the Net. Some cyber-guy thinks a horror writer is hot stuff, so he starts a fan page for him. They usually post a few pictures, maybe some news about upcoming books or appearances. Like that. But the big feature is the message board.”

I gave her a puzzled look, but quickly figured out she was just drawing a breath before she went on: “You can leave messages, okay? Sometimes the star. . . or the writer, or the singer, or whoever the cyber-guy set the home page up for. . . actually answers, but that’s like a big thing. . . real rare. Usually it’s just fans of whoever the home page is for—talking to themselves, you know? Like who should play what character in the movie, like that.”

“And this guy has one of these home pages?” I asked her.

“Yeah. In fact, there’s about a half-dozen of them. One’s even in Japanese.”

“And people write to these message boards with stuff for him?”

“Sure. Mostly it’s like ‘Right on!,’ you know? I mean, they’re fans, right?”

“Of a serial killer?”

“Oh, please,” Xyla said. “First of all, that’s nothing new. Charles Manson has a website. Plenty of people get turned on by serial killers. Go to the movies, read a book—serial killers are hot stuff. But this one, it’s. . . different. I figured, at first, it was mostly gay guys writing, just being. . . encouraging, you know? But once he started blasting those child molesters, it’s like everyone’s on his side. You can see it everywhere. They call him HE. For his initials, I guess it meant, once. But now it’s like ‘he,’ understand? Like ‘He said so,’ see?”

I did see. I’d sure seen

graffiti’ed all over town. Thought it was another of those religious-nut organizations pasting their crap up the way they always do.

“Anyway, so, I got a bunch of hit-backs, like I said,” Xyla went on. “But only three even opened up the encryption, and two of those were obviously from geeks.”

“How’d you know that?”

“ ‘Cause it worked just like you said,” she replied. “That velociraptor bit. The other two, they started in with Jurassic Park. The movie, right? And they wanted me to send them a gif, and—”

“A what?”

“A picture. Digitized photograph. Just wanted to see if I was a boy or a girl, my best guess. So lame. . . like anyone couldn’t send someone else’s picture. Anyway, I knew it couldn’t be them. But this one. . . it’s him, I bet. Take a look for yourself.”

She hit some keys again. The screen blinked, went all blue, then flicked back into white. Xyla pointed at the lettering:

>>Send proof. One (1) word. No more.<<

“Jesus Christ!” I said. “That has to be him. You’re right. Can you get an address from what he sent?”

“Not a chance.” Xyla laughed. “The guy’s way ahead of me. It’s not just his addy that got nuked, it’s the whole ISP.”

“Huh?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, an undercurrent of impatience in her voice at having to explain such simple stuff to the older generation. “Look. No, I can’t trace it. Nobody could. He built it himself, from scratch. And he’s probably got more. . . that he’s only going to use one time and do the same thing. It probably only existed for a few seconds. It’s gone forever. Very, very slick,” she said, admiringly.

“But if you can’t find him. . . if his address is gone. . .?”

“I can’t find him,” she said. “That’s true. And I could never find him if I couldn’t at least get into the server. I can’t believe he actually built one just to send one lousy message. He’s not just smart, I’ll tell you something else about him—he’s rich. Whatever he’s got, it cost more than all this,” she said, sweeping her arm to indicate the bank of machinery in the room, “times a hundred.”

“So what do we—?”

“Well, I don’t have his address, but he has mine. At least, he did. I nuked it myself, soon as I heard from him, like I told you I would. I figure, we keep playing, right? Send out another message, just like I did before. He must have known what was going to happen. That’s why he said ‘one word only,’ see? I’ll put it out there again. He does lurk. He’ll see it. And, if it works, he’ll reply to whatever new addy I send it from, then nuke himself off again, see?”

“Yeah,” I told her.

“So,” Xyla asked, her fingers poised, “what’s the word?”

I told her, playing the only card in my deck, watching the name of the ice-man pop up on the giant screen:

wesley

I tried the radio on the drive over to my place. No music that didn’t belong in elevators. No surprise. The all-news station was all-crime. No surprise there either. I tried talk radio. Mistake. Some “expert” was saying depression is America’s number-one mental illness. Chump. You want to know about America’s number-one mental illness, consult a proctologist.

Pansy was glad to see me anyway.

The next morning was so bright and crisp it made the badlands look pretty through my window. Until you looked close. Like those magazine photos of Tibet. The ones that don’t show the Chinese troops.

I thought maybe I’d start looking for the witch I needed, playing it that Nadine’s friend would come through. Then I realized. . . I didn’t know anything about the witch but her name. The name they gave her, and the name she took for herself. I knew her daughter’s name. . . but that kid would be a teenager by now. She could have moved. Disappeared, even. The only one I could have asked was the guy who got me involved with her in the first place. Julio. The one she watched die, gleeful witchfire crackling in her eyes. I still had her phone number, but it had been so long. . . .

I thought it through. Nothing. Then I worked with the singing bowl Max had given me. I never wondered why he had such a thing himself. Max can’t hear, but I know he can feel vibrations—better than anyone else I know. So, when he held it in his hands, maybe. . .

Pansy liked the sound too. I was getting pretty good at it. When I came back around, I made the decision. If she was still there, okay. If not, I’d try and trace her through her daughter. But I wasn’t going to open that coffin unless I had something to ask for.

So I went back to waiting.

Part of the waiting was sex I had with a girl named Lois. I wasn’t looking for her—she just turned up in a place I was and we went back to her apartment. If the action had been in a movie, the critics would have called the whole scene gratuitous.

“Just like old times,” she said, when we were finished.

That was the truth. She’d greeted me with “Hello, stranger,” and that’s the way I left.

I stayed down in the whisper-stream, sifting and sorting, looking for anything that could get me what I needed. That “message-board” thing Xyla told me about was nothing new. It works that way down here too. At the intersection of a few wires, I picked a rumble from a finger—someone who sets up jobs but never does them himself. Some fingers are amateurs—cable-repair guys, utility company workers, deliverymen—anyone who gets access to a house and has a chance to look around, check the security, see if there’s a dog, anything worth stealing, like that. But this particular guy was a pro, and he only fingered big jobs. An armored car, this one was supposed to be. And the finger didn’t just have the route, he had an inside man. A driver who wanted a piece of whatever haul he got “robbed” of—willing to take a few good knocks to make it look real too, and guaranteed to hold his end of the take for no less than five years before spending a penny. Sounded like gold. Unless you listened close. The way I saw it, the finger had finally gotten popped himself. And instead of diming out people who’d worked opportunities he’d pointed out in the past, the cops were using him to catch the crew who’d been doing cowboy jobs on armored cars all over the East Coast the past year or so. The cowboys didn’t seem all that organized—they’d just cut off the armored car with their own jalopy, jump out wearing ski masks and body armor, rake a full-auto burst across the windshield to get the driver’s attention, then hold up a grenade. . . high, so the driver could see what would happen if he didn’t open up. Sometimes they scored—one take was near a million—sometimes they struck out. In fact, the one driver they killed was piloting an empty truck, on his way back from a dropoff. So the FBI probably figured the hijackers for some of the White Night crowd, refinancing their coffers after so many of them had been captured last year.

I thought the feds were wasting their time. The guys they were looking for weren’t even pros themselves, so they wouldn’t be tuned in. No working pro would care if a pack of Nazi asshole amateurs went down, but the finger was marked lousy now. No matter how it played out, he was done.

I didn’t know if Lincoln was bugging Davidson for “progress-report” crap, but it wouldn’t matter. We already had his money, and Davidson wouldn’t even bother telling me about things like that.

The more I thought about it, the more I figured this Homo Erectus guy was already well away. It had only been a couple of weeks—not enough to make the fag-bashers brave again, sure—but he hadn’t done his bit for a while, so he could be anywhere.

Maybe I was right about that. Maybe it was the other stuff that brought him back. Maybe he never left.

The other stuff was copycat. It started small: A child molester just released from prison had his address published in the paper—seems he decided the only suitable housing he could find was about a hundred yards from a kids’ school. Some people paid him a visit one night. And lit a fire. It was an amateur arson, but good enough to total the house. And if the freak hadn’t moved fast, he’d have been barbecued.

I knew it wasn’t the killer’s work. So did the cops, I was sure. But the papers didn’t. And they started playing it up again.

Smart fucking move. A while back, the papers decided to do a series on the Bloods. Not the real-thing, L.A. gangsta Bloods, this was about the East Coast version—a few guys who got together in the joint, awarded themselves OG status and started talking the talk. Probably began in response to the Latin Kings and the Netas—two Hispanic gangs who formed themselves Inside for protection, the same way it always starts. But the balance had shifted. Rikers Island was more Hispanic than black now. If the Latino gangs had joined forces, they could have ruled. Naturally, that didn’t happen. When I was Upstate, it was usually black against white, with the Latins trying to stay out of the crossfire. Now it was the whites’ turn to play that role. The papers did what they usually do: interview some “spokesman” and print it all like it was gospel.

Next thing was a wave of random slashings all over the city. Usually box-cutter jobs, usually to the face. Word was that you had to cut someone to be a Blood, and all these dumb-fuck kids wanted to be in. . . so they went out slicing. And when the cops responded to the media with their usual sweep-arrest thing, they scooped a lot of nasty little weasels, but no real Bloods.

The Bloods found out the wannabes were even imitating the triangular cigarette burns that proved you were in. And so they started issuing more press releases, working the pay phones in the jailhouses to call the newspapers collect, disclaiming any responsibility for the slashings, warning the wannabes they’d be “dealt with” as soon as they came Inside. And as long as they were on the line with the press, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to dump on their Hispanic counterparts.

So the Latin Kings demanded equal time. And the newspapers were eager to comply. Each reporter dutifully printed the usual rant about how the gangs were community-improvement and racial-pride organizations. Sure, they could be violent, if they were forced to, but their purpose wasn’t crime, it was. . . uh, you know, political.

Sure. The papers, especially the columnists, provided a perfect forum for the Bloods and the Kings to death-diss each other publicly. All the leaders ended up in total lockdown, but the slashing continued Inside. And the publicity only got more kids wanna-being.

The Mayor pledged to wipe out the new scourge, convinced that winning the last election against the lamest candidate the Democrats had come up with in half a century made him a national model for city management. Yeah. Like the ATMs in New York City strip bars are proof of our “economic revival.”

Sure enough, the cops started finding Crips too. No, not the Compton Crips. This crew was mostly crack dealers flying colors.

Perfect. Now you had Hispanic kids approaching black kids, asking, “You a Blood?” and slashing away no matter what the answer. You had some kids afraid to wear red or blue, while others proudly flew the colors without the credentials, risking attack from both sides.

So, when the freak’s house got burned down, it wasn’t a big surprise that whoever wrote to the papers bragging about doing it signed off with “HE Rules!” Not pretending to be him, just with him.

Then the gates opened again.

The first four seemed unrelated at first. A stockbroker in his twenties, a middle-aged manager of the service desk at a car dealership, an unemployed guy who lived alone but wasn’t on welfare, and a woman who had once run a day-care center on the West Coast.

They all had two things in common. Each had been shot in the head at close range, in their own home. The papers weren’t saying, but the implication was that it was the same weapon too.

The other common denominator was computers—they’d all been involved in freakish cyber-stuff.

The stockbroker and the unemployed guy were after boys, haunting the chat rooms. The manager liked little girls. They didn’t find any evidence that he did any more than collect pictures of them. He was trading the pictures too. But if the cops learned the identity of any of the kids in the photos, they weren’t saying.

The woman was looking for “models.” Said she ran an agency, and promised girls big bucks for a few hours’ work. All she wanted was teens or younger. “Hairless” was her favorite description for the merchandise. One exchange the cops pulled off her computer’s hard drive was between her and a twelve-year-old who’d already been “posing” for a year. The girl had a little sister, and was negotiating a price for her, seeing her own market value dropping with age, moving up to agent status.

This time, as soon as he spoke up, the papers didn’t wait to print what he had to say.

Impostors beware! I do not seek converts. I am a hunter, not an evangelist. Those last four were all targeted for their crimes against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. A warning here: I am well aware that two of the targets met their victims through so-called “homosexual” chat rooms. This perversion will not be tolerated. Anyone who links homosexuality to pedophilia will be dealt with. Anyone. The other two were dispatched because their conduct fuels the fires of discrimination and violence against us. Finally, no crimes are to be committed in my name. None. Should my name be linked, in any way, to an incident of violence, the perpetrators will be viewed as antithetical to my mission. For all I know, the pedophile whose house was burned was targeted because of a misperception that he was “homosexual.” I have gone to great lengths to disabuse the world of the notion that molestation of children is “homosexual” even if committed by perpetrators of the same gender as the victim. That myth is homophobic. Homophobia breeds gay-bashing. And gay-bashing now brings death. The equation is simple. The rules have been explained. Unless a public disavowal of self-identification as “homosexual” by major pedophile organizations is forthcoming within the next two weeks, escalation will occur.

So he was here. In the city. Had to be. No way to do all those close-up hits without having someplace local to disappear into.

I spent a lot of time thinking. Almost like being back Inside. Only I wasn’t thinking about getting out, I was focused on getting in. Into him.

He wasn’t a chess player, not that kind of killer. No, he played outside the lines. Made the rules. So I went outside the lines myself. Off the chessboard. Considered what nobody seemed to be thinking about: All we had was the letters. And the murders. Did it have to be a man? Or even one man? There was nothing to show one man couldn’t have done everything he’d pulled off. . . no simultaneous murders in different parts of town, nothing like that. The letters were all in the same voice. No question about that. As distinctive as a fingerprint—egotistically individualized beyond the ability of any group-composition effort, no matter how shared their rhetoric. And too concise to be group work anyway. But if he did have partners, he’d know how to keep that off the screen.

And why respond to that “velociraptor” bait at all if he didn’t want to. . . what? He already had the biggest forum anyone could hope for. All the newspapers published his letters the minute they came in, usually on the front page. I knew they were translated into other languages too. Fan pages on the Internet. He wasn’t threatening anyone if they didn’t publish, like that Unabomber maniac. He didn’t have a fucking “manifesto” he wanted in print. And he sure as hell wasn’t looking for a book-and-movie deal.

I couldn’t make it work. But I had to work from someplace, so I settled on three assumptions: he was working solo; he was based here; he was willing to talk to me if I was the real thing—not a cop, from the other side of the line.

And if Wesley’s name didn’t prove that to him, I was out of luck.

A few days passed. And when the pedophile organizations didn’t produce the public statements he wanted, didn’t admit they were not “gay,” but just child molesters, he went even farther off the board.

“KIDDIE SEX TOUR” PLANE

EXPLODES OVER PACIFIC!

Some version of that headline blazed across the front page of every paper in the world. For once, the TV networks were ahead in the race—this time they had footage, and video beats print every time. But the footage wasn’t much. . . mostly of the futile rescue efforts.

There had been no irregular communication from the plane just before it vanished from the radar screens. No warning, no hint. No nothing.

But though nobody expected a bombing, the anchorman made it clear that his network had known about the flights for a while. I tuned in somewhere in the middle of his somber-voiced speech:

At the time of the crash, our In-Depth Investigative Team had already been working on the shocking story of “kiddie-sex tourism” in Southeast Asia. The changing economic climate in that region has paralleled a change in child prostitution practices. Thailand was originally considered the worst offender, but Thai brothels are now largely staffed with women and children brought across the border from Myanmar, while Goa, Sri Lanka, and especially the Philippines are all significant purveyors. The ID Team has learned that the charter service, which had advertised under the name “Budding Blossoms,” has been in operation for several years. We now go to Mary Jo Sanstrom, on board a SEATO vessel which is part of the search-and-rescue operation. Mary Jo. . .

A woman wearing a khaki jumpsuit and a camouflage cap standing against a backdrop of endless sea. . .

John, there are no apparent survivors of the devastating explosion. The activity you see behind me has been under way for several hours, but we are told the search is now concentrated on recovering the black box, although helicopters are continuing to work close to the ocean surface, hoping against hope. The passengers had all apparently purchased “package deals,” the specifics of which are not known at this time. However, UN-agency sources state bluntly that the tours were exclusively for pedophiles who wanted sexual access to child prostitutes in an environment free of danger from prosecution.

They cut away to a tall, lanky man with a beard and glasses, standing in the middle of a small office with haphazard piles of books everywhere. He looked like a professor. Talked like one too:

Sure, the government says that child prostitution is illegal, and claims that offenders are always prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But virtually every international agency concerned with the protection of children from sexual exploitation has debunked those claims. Indeed, there is plenty of printed material explicitly advertising “safe” sex with children in. . .

The camera quickly played over the glossy covers of some brochures. Just glimpses—a little girl licking a lollypop; a little boy running on the beach, naked, his back to the camera—the lens furtive and guilty, knowing it was lingering too long as the professor kept right on talking:

. . . those countries. Some of these so-called “tour” companies offer “guidebooks,” while others offer “on-site services” which means. . .

The camera snuck another look at images on a computer monitor, this time blurring out the details.

Then back to the anchor:

But not everyone is convinced that operations such as “Budding Blossoms” actually deliver what they promise. . . .

As his words trailed off, they segued to an outdoor taped interview, with some disheveled-looking little guy who claimed to be the “coordinator” for various groups “exposing” the kiddie-sex tours as a scam. He babbled about how anyone going to the Philippines looking for sex with a child was going to end up in jail. Claimed all the “exposés” about kiddie-sex tourism were actually encouraging freaks to go there. Whoever was editing the tape cut him off in the middle of a stumbling rant about his “authenticated” website and replaced him with a young Asian woman with harsh eyes who called him a fraud:

If it’s such a scam, how come that charter service has been running so long and so successfully? The reason that flight was full was because so many previous flights had gone so “well” for those degenerates. They live by word-of-mouth. Why don’t you pull the passenger manifest? I’ll bet you find it shows the name of plenty of repeat customers.

Then back to the anchorman, live:

Although law-enforcement sources have not released the manifest to which Ms. Hong referred, the ID Team has obtained a copy, and airline sources confirm that many of the passengers on Flight 0677 were, indeed, repeat customers. And we have learned that a number of those on board had criminal records involving sexual abuse of children. However, the essential mystery now is what caused the plane to spontaneously explode. Stay tuned to this station for updates as they occur. . . .

Turned out they didn’t need the black box. Or even an investigation. He did all that for them. His message was front-page everywhere.

Warnings were issued. And duly ignored. Consequences were promised. And duly delivered. I now utilize this forum for three distinct reasons, each of potential value to apparently disparate but occasionally interlocking constituencies of interest.

(1) Flight 0677 was deliberately destroyed. It was neither accident nor negligence. I most sincerely recommend neither conspiracy theorists nor lawyer feeding-frenzies be tolerated by the media or the public.

(2) There were no “innocents” killed. Collaborators are subject to the same punishment as principal actors. You are now on notice as to the rules of engagement. For those of you who fail to comprehend such argot, I will simplify: If you aid, abet, facilitate, or even transport others to the scene where children are sexually exploited, you are a target. The same rules, including the collaborative crime of harboring the enemy, apply, of course, to gay-bashing.

(3) The mass execution was made possible only by the volitional act of a thief. One on board Flight 0677. The methodology was as follows: An obviously expensive, alligator-bound world atlas measuring approximately 5 × 9 × 3” and containing elaborate, full-color maps on silk-shot paper with numerous pull-outs, a compartment for holding personal papers, and other indicia of extreme cost (including, but not limited to, 18-karat gold corner clips and ribbon markers) was “left” in the Men’s Room at LAX. The specific Men’s Room was located just outside the gate area to Flight 0677. The person who stole the book was specifically and actually monitored. Had a passenger not booked on that flight taken the book, he would have been intercepted. Needless to say, the person who did take the book did not turn it in to the authorities, but simply pocketed his prize. That prize contained, in addition to the above-described contents, a sufficient amount of plastic explosive to blow out a considerable portion of the airplane, guaranteeing its inability to remain aloft. The timing mechanism was set so that, even allowing for deviation caused by weather or intruding flight patterns from other aircraft, the explosion would occur over water, limiting the damage to those on board. I commend to your attention this simple method of destroying aircraft. Any half-baked terrorist could have duplicated my feat, not targeting any particular flight but claiming responsibility as soon as the explosion occurred. As such “packages” will pass through existing scanners without incident, any dedicated, competent individual willing to play the odds with the requisite patience will succeed. The only method of defense against such eventualities is for those who “find” property to turn it over to the proper authorities. I believe it is safe to state that such activity is highly likely to increase in the immediate future. Consider this (still another) public service.

This time, he only signed his initials.

But that still didn’t mean he had a partner. There had been more than enough space between the last murders here and the flight out of L.A. for him to have made the trip with ease.

It did tell me one thing. Whatever he looked like, it wouldn’t be remarkable. He was a blender, a natural camouflage man. He wasn’t obese, he wasn’t flashy, he wasn’t. . . Sure, he wasn’t anything but white either.

Yeah, that narrowed it down. The guy I just described, he could be me.

I was at Mama’s when she called.

“I have it,” she said. And hung up.

It was almost three in the morning when she’d called, so I was outside her apartment house in fifteen minutes. I didn’t like the doorman eyeballing me more than once, but I didn’t see a way around it either. If he thought it was unusual for someone to be calling at that hour, he didn’t show it. . . just rang up and got the okay for me to enter the elevator.

She must have been right at the peephole—the door opened even as I raised my knuckles to rap. The rose lighting was back on. Otherwise, the place was shrouded. “Go sit down,” she told me, standing aside.

I gave up trying to solve the mystery of her three chairs and just took the middle one, letting her play any way she wanted.

She looked ghostly, floating across the room toward me. Barefoot, in a gauzy white robe that wrapped her body—a frame, not a cover. She took the nearest open chair, reached over, and pulled mine around so we were facing each other.

“I believe you,” she said.

“Which means. . .?”

“I believe you wouldn’t. . . do what you said. I believe you. . . Oh, never mind. Look, here it is, okay? She. . . asked around. Like you said. I don’t know about this ‘theory’ of yours, but you’re right about one thing—they have the men who did that drive-by.”

“Have them?”

“Found them, I should have said. They’re dead. And one of the people killed in the crowd—you were right about that too. The police think it was murder. I mean, deliberate murder. The rest was only for. . . what do you call it? Camouflage? I don’t know. But the cops say it was business. Professional business. They think they know who gave the order. That’s what you want, right?”

“That’s what I want.”

“Well, I have it,” she said.

“But you want to play with it first? Or you want me to place a fucking bid? What?”

“Why are you so. . . hostile?” she asked softly. “I’ve been nice to you. It was fun. . . flirting, right? I know you liked it.”

“We’ve already been there,” I told her.

“You really hate them, don’t you?” she said, leaning so close I could feel her breath.

“Who?”

“Child molesters.”

“Who doesn’t?” I said, sloughing it off, staying clear of whatever was lightning-bolting around the rose-lit room.

“You should spend more time where I do,” she said, an ugly undertone to her soft voice. “And you said to ask. You said it was okay. You told me to do it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My. . . friend. The cops. All that. It was easy, she said. They all. . . a lot of them anyway. . . they know you. Or about you, at least. I even know about those murders—the ones in the South Bronx.”

“Jesus Christ, that’s the kind of sorry two-bit rumor your pal came up with? That story’s a fucking fossil.”

“I know what you think,” she said, sliding the gauzy robe off her shoulders. “You think I’m trying to get you to. . . admit something, right?”

“That’s why you keep taking your clothes off? So I’ll see you’re not wearing a wire?” I laughed at her.

I could see her face flush. Or maybe it was just the reflected light.

“I’m just more. . . comfortable this way,” she told me. “I don’t like clothes. I don’t like people to wear clothes. It’s another thing to hide behind.”

“Yeah, sure. You spend half your life in a gym, you’ve got a beef with clothes? You’re more confident without your clothes, that’s all. Because you’re an overmatch against most everyone else that way.”

“I’ll bet I’d be with you.”

“No contest,” I acknowledged.

“You don’t want to play at all, do you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not a player.”

“What does that mean? You don’t have sex unless you’re in love?”

“No. It means I smoke cigarettes but I don’t light them with sticks of dynamite.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I’d have to upgrade a cubic ton to distrust you,” I told her, keeping my voice level. “You got me over here because you said you had what I wanted. Instead of giving it to me, you start asking me about some murders I’m supposed to have committed. I tell you I don’t want to fuck you,” I said, dropping my voice, letting a harder tone bleed through, “you tell me I’m a liar. I told you before: Behavior is the truth. What’s the game? I say: ‘Sure, you’ve got a body that would get a rise in a morgue,’ and you say, ‘Well, you’re not getting any of it’? Would that make you happy? Is that your game? Okay, I’ll pay that much, if that’s what it takes. You’re a gorgeous woman.”

“But. . .?”

“But you can’t get juice from marble,” I told her.

“What does that mean?”

“How many different ways you want me to say it? You’ve got a stake in this. Not the same one Lincoln and those other guys have. Yeah, I know, you told me: You ‘love’ this guy. And you just want to protect him, right? Sure, fine. I’ll buy it, that’s what you want. And I played right along, didn’t I? You think I’d turn him over to the cops for a pass on one of my own cases, then don’t help. But you already did that, right? Checked me out. Found out some stuff. Enough to convince you that, whatever else I am, I’m not a rat. So here I am. And what do I get? Another strip show. More of your stupid teasing. And some questions about. . . bullshit crap that couldn’t be your business.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know it isn’t my business? All right, I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was stupid. I’ll tell you what she. . . my friend. . . told me. She said there was a. . . cult or something. Or maybe just a ring of perverts. They were making torture films. Of little kids getting raped. The cops were looking for them, all over. There’d been a murder. . . a baby’s murder. It all got confused. But this is what they know for sure: They were all in a house. In the South Bronx, like I said. Some people went into that house and killed them. Every one of them. And they, the cops, they all say it was you. Your work. My friend asked, if they thought you did all that, how come you’d never even been arrested for it? You know what they said? They said they didn’t have any proof but it was the kind of thing Burke would do. They said you’re a homicidal maniac when it comes to. . . them.”

I heard Wesley’s machine voice in my head. “Every time one of those diddlers gets done, your name comes up on the radar screen. Killing people, it’s a business. You start making it personal, you’re dead meat yourself.”

I went with it and used it. Like I always do when Wesley talks to me. “Look, it’s no secret that I hate those freaks,” I told her. “But the rest of it, that’s just lazy-ass cop-speak for ‘We can’t find who really did it, so we’ll just chalk it up to Burke.’ How many people was I supposed to have killed, anyway? Couple a hundred?”

“No,” she said, her voice soft and serious. “But a lot. A lot more than were in that house, too.”

“And you believe that?”

She reached over and put her hand on the inside of my thigh. It didn’t feel sexual. . . more like she was checking for a pulse. “Yes,” she said. “I believe it. And this Wesley. . . he helped you, too.”

“Wesley’s dead,” I told her. Seemed like that’s all I’d been telling people for a while. “Didn’t your cop pal tell you that?”

“Yes. She told me about it.”

“All about it?”

“I. . . think so. Why?”

“You’re ready to do something for me, to trust me, because you believe I killed a bunch of baby-rapers, right? That’s your story. Today’s story, anyway. If you know how Wesley died, you know he didn’t go out alone.”

“I know what he did. That. . . explosion. At the school.”

“And who died in that?” I put it to her. “Kids, right? Lots and lots and lots of kids. You hate baby-rapers, you want to help me because I do too. You think I did a bunch of killings. You think Wesley was my partner. If that was true, then my ‘partner’ killed more kids in a few minutes than any of those freaks could do in ten lifetimes.”

Her eyes did that flicker-thing again. Not blinking—a light going on and off. It was over in a second. She took a deep breath. Not showing off this time—like she needed strength.

“Maybe he had his reasons,” she said.

“To kill kids?”

“Yes.”

“You pay your shrink by the hour or do you get a volume discount?”

“I don’t have a shrink,” Nadine said. “I don’t need one. I know what I need. And you have it.”

“I already said—”

“Stop! I’m not playing either. Just listen. The man the cops think ordered that murder—of the gay guy in the park—is someone named Gutterball Felestrone. And the name of the man who was killed is Lonnie Cork. ‘Corky’ is what they called him.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. Let it out. Looked directly into my eyes. “And the man Felestrone hired was your friend. Wesley.”

I waited, not wanting to cut her off if she had anything more. But she was done. She looked exhausted, as if saying those few words had wasted her.

“Okay,” I told her, starting to stand up.

She jumped to her feet and shoved me with both hands against my chest. I fell backward into the middle chair, Nadine on top of me. “Don’t even think about it,” she said into my ear. “You promised! You said if I got that information for you I could be in on it.”

My hand went to her back, fingers searching for the spot on her spine that would stop her cold if she ended up acting as crazy as she was talking.

“You will be in on it,” I said calmly. “What you just got was a piece of the puzzle. Maybe, I can’t even be sure about that. And it’s a big puzzle, girl. You think you were gonna just throw some clothes on and come with me? Right now?”

She grabbed the sides of the chair with both hands and pulled, hard, jamming her body into mine so deep I had to turn my head to breathe. “You think what you want,” she said into my ear. “You do what you want, too. But when you meet him, I have to be there. That’s our deal. Nothing else. Nothing less. Understand?”

“How could I guarantee—?”

“He is going to meet you,” she hissed at me. “I know it. I’m trusting you. What I told you. . . it might make it happen. And I’m going to be there. So that nothing happens to him, understand?”

“Yeah, sure. I got it. He’s the one man in the world you want to fuck, so—”

She punched me in the face so fast and hard that I didn’t have a chance to get my hand up. But I stabbed a two-finger kite deep into her heavily muscled rib cage before she could do it again. She gasped and slid off me.

“You dirty fucking pig!” she snarled at me from the floor. “I would never. . .”

My mouth tasted bloody. Some of it probably sprayed on her when I bent down to tell her: “Don’t ever do that again. What did you think, you insane bitch? We were gonna handcuff ourselves together until this is over?”

“You better not—”

“Don’t threaten me,” I said. “Far as I’m concerned, you’re with them. You were there when the deal was made. If I do get this guy to meet me, you can be there. And then I’m gone. Whatever you do after that, it’s on you. I’ll be all square then. Earned the money, right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Right?” I asked her again, shoving my face within inches of hers.

She didn’t flinch. Locked eyes with me for a long few seconds. “All right,” she finally said.

The whole crazy scene hadn’t taken long. There was enough of the night left for me to reach out for a woman who loved the dark.

It had been, what? Six, seven years. But this was her time. If the number was still good. . .

I found a pay phone and pushed the buttons, remembering you needed an area code to reach Queens from Manhattan now. It rang only twice before it was picked up.

“Hhhmmm?” is what it sounded like. It was enough.

“It’s me,” I said.

“I knew you would come.”

“I—”

“I know,” she said in her witchy voice. “Now, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Come,” she whispered.

I was driving through a time warp. Nothing had changed. The same car, the same streets. And, when the Plymouth’s headlights picked it out, the same house. I drove around to the back, the way I always had. The garage door was closed. The house was dark. I got out, walked to the back door.

It opened while I was still on my way. She was wearing a red slip dress the exact same shade as her flaming hair. Even the spike heels and the lipstick matched. As if she’d had years to shop for this minute.

“Hello, Jina,” I said.

She stepped in to me, her face in my neck, hands locked around me. “Say my name,” she whispered. “My real name. You didn’t come for Jina. She’s not for you.”

“Strega,” I said.

She cooed, licked the side of my face like a cat. A silk-tongued cat, but one with fangs and claws. Then she turned and grabbed my hand, leading me through the house to that ice sculpture of a living room I’d spent so much time in. Terror time. The chair was still there, too. She pulled my jacket off my shoulders. I sat down. She went off somewhere. I closed my eyes.

“Here,” she said. On her knees next to the chair, holding my cigarettes and matches.

I lit the smoke, blew a jet out my nose.

“You look the same,” I told her.

“I will always look the same to you,” she said. “You know that. But that’s not what you came for. I know you. Tell me what you want.”

“It’s a long story. How much of it do you—?”

She climbed into my lap, snuggled against me. “Remember what we did, right in this chair?” she asked softly.

“Yes. How could I—?”

“Forget? I don’t know. You’re a man. I don’t know what men forget. I know what I don’t forget. You saved my Mia. You found Scotty’s picture. And you made that. . . filth dead. While I watched. I sleep with you inside me. Not inside my heart. You don’t want my heart. Not the part of it that’s left. That’s only for Mia.”

Mia was her daughter. That’s how I’d met Strega. She was being threatened. By some freak who’d been watching her jog in the nearby park, saying he was going to do something to her child if she didn’t. . . do what he wanted. Julio remembered me from the joint, and he called, gave me the job. He didn’t want it done by the Family, so he needed a mercenary. One he could trust, is what he said. Made sense.

There wasn’t much to the job. Max and I found the freak. We hurt him. He didn’t like pain. We promised him much more if he ever came near the woman again. He never did.

But then it whirlpooled. Her daughter had a pal, a little kid named Scotty. And somebody in a clown suit had taken a Polaroid of Scotty being raped. Scotty thought they had captured his soul, and his therapist couldn’t convince him otherwise. Strega hired me to get that picture back. And she helped too. Witch’s help. We had sex in this chair. She didn’t want to use anything but her mouth. And I had to tell her she was a good girl every time she was done. I should have known then, but I was too focused on staying alive. The maggot who had taken Scotty’s picture was half of a husband-and-wife team. And they’d hired muscle—a White Night gang I knew from Inside. I had to walk that tightrope. Then I had to sit in a room with a human so foul that killing him would have given me an orgasm. And listen while he spooled out evil, showing me how pedophiles computer-networked their traffic in trophies. . . pictures of raped babies. It ended in murder and arson. Later, two more fires: one in Strega’s hands as she burned the Polaroid I’d found in front of Scotty; one in her eyes as she told me the truth about her Uncle Julio.

It was years later when that score got squared. The vicious old gangster had used me once and gotten away with it, but he went to the well once too often. He started it with Wesley, then he couldn’t make it stop. So he tried to middle me, figuring the ice-man would kill the messenger and forget the message. But it was Julio who went down—his neck broken on a bench near La Guardia, Strega watching from the car as it happened.

I don’t know how she did some of the things she did. But I knew her word was platinum, her heart was steel, and her touch terrifying.

So I told her the truth.

“I still don’t understand,” she said when I was finished. “You already have the money, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So. . . Ah, it’s the woman. This woman. Your woman. The one who got killed?”

“I. . . think so.”

“You’re a very religious man, aren’t you, Burke? It’s always in you. This isn’t for love. Did you love her?”

“I. . . guess I did.”

“But you can’t bring her back, no matter what you—”

“Did you ever hear anything about. . . a Gatekeeper?”

“Oh God, not that thing. Yes, you crazy, dangerous man, I’ve ‘heard.’ Do you believe it?”

“No. I just—”

“It’s only for the evil,” she said softly. “Or those who did evil. It’s from the same root. The revenge root. Are you saying you loved an evil woman? Is that why you came to me?”

“No. She wasn’t evil. The opposite.”

“So even if there is a Gatekeeper, what good would it do you?”

“None, I guess. I just. . . heard about it. And I thought I’d ask you.”

“Want me to kiss you?” she asked, hand drifting into my lap.

“No.”

“I know you don’t. But someone made that mistake, didn’t they? With a lot less evidence than this, huh?” she whispered, flicking her long thumbnail just under the head of my cock. The response was a match in gasoline, but she just kept holding me, gently, waiting for an answer.

“Yes. That happened.”

“Some woman thought you wanted her, but you didn’t?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s involved too?”

“I. . . think so.”

“But she doesn’t know you?”

“No.”

“Know how I know? That she doesn’t know you?”

“No.”

She grabbed my cock around the shaft, squeezed hard, made one of her little sounds deep in her throat. “I asked you what you wanted. That never works on you. It hurts you to say you want something. Anything. So you never say. But if I asked you. . . if I said, ‘Could I?’ you would have said something different, huh?”

I didn’t answer. It was like it always was with her. She frightened me past fear.

“Some men like to be asked. Begged, even. If I got down on my knees and begged, would you like that?”

“No.”

“Why wouldn’t you? It would be a very pretty sight, wouldn’t it?”

“Sarcasm isn’t pretty,” I told her.

“Ummmm,” she moaned. “I don’t beg, and you don’t take orders. It’s so hard, huh?” She squeezed my cock again, chuckling, enjoying her magic tricks. Like always.

“You want to know why I came?” I asked her.

“You want me to stop playing with you?”

“No. It feels. . . nice. I just want. . . something else. Like I said.”

“You can have it,” she promised, breath soft against my face. “Whatever it is. You know that.”

“The way this started—the drive-by—I learned some things about that. It was a hit. Somebody was deliberately taken out, the rest of it was just cover. The guy who ordered the hit was Gutterball Felestrone. The dead man was Lonnie Cork. . . ‘Corky,’ they called him.”

“So? Gutterball’s with the Donatelli crew. And they’re part of the—”

“Yeah, I know all that. Listen for a minute, okay? The way I heard it, when Gutterball made the. . . arrangements, it was on the phone. And the guy he thought he was talking to—the hit man—it was Wesley.”

“Wesley’s—”

“Right. But he’s the key to all this.”

“How could he be, my poor baby? All Wesley is, is a ghost. A rumor. People talk about him in the street like he was a god, but he was a killer, that’s all.”

“That’s not all he was,” I told her. “I know. I know. . . him. We came up together.”

She nibbled at the carotid artery in my neck, waiting.

“Look,” I said, “here’s what I need to know: Is it true? All I got is a handful of rumor. I don’t even know if the stuff about Gutterball is the real thing. Maybe it’s just cop-talk bullshit.”

“Ah. That’s what you came for, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But you could find out some other—”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Or I would have.”

“Are you afraid?” she asked me.

“I’m always afraid,” I told her.

“I know. I didn’t mean. . . that. I mean. . . this. Of this. You don’t think Wesley’s alive, right?”

“Right.”

“Because, you know, it’s true, some say he’s not gone. That he never died. That he’s still. . . working. Some even think he’s the one doing all this. . . killing now.”

“But not you.”

“No. If Wesley was still here, I’d know it.”

“Will you do it?”

“I already said I would. But you have to trade.”

“Trade what? First you say you’ll—”

“I swore I would always protect you,” she hissed, “and I will. But you have to let me do it my way. My way, the way I know. I’ll get what you want—it won’t be hard. I have all the wires. But I need something. . . need you to do something.”

“What?”

“I need you in me. I need to taste you. So sweet. It banishes the. . . I’m not going to tell you. I want to taste you again.”

“All right.”

“Yes. And I want her too. I want to see her.”

“Who?”

“This woman who doesn’t know you.”

“Why would you—”

“Ssshhh,” she said, holding her fingers against my lips. “You don’t ask now. Two things. For what you want. Will you do them? Do them both?”

“Yes,” I told her.

“Do one now,” she said, her mouth dropping onto me.

Pansy and I watched first light come, sitting together. I wondered if I’d ever watch it come with a woman next to me. I knew Strega would do whatever she promised. She was a woman without boundaries, but she hated liars. In her mind, “they” were all liars. I knew who “they” were. . . . It was a secret she’d shared with me, and I never with her, but we were the same. She knew I lied. Knew it was part of what I did. But I didn’t lie to her, and I guess that kept the wolfpack of her witchery at bay.

I remembered one of the first things the Prof taught me Inside. “Nothing be strong if it don’t play long, Schoolboy. Insistent, persistent, and consistent, that’s the train you got to ride.”

I didn’t know why I was doing this anymore.

“You go there, now, okay?”

“Where, Mama?”

“Girl who eat here call. Her place. Now, okay?”

“I’m rolling,” I told her.

Broad daylight, but I moved the Plymouth through the badlands without attracting even a glance. Just another rustbucket on its way to one of the dozens of bootleg, no-license repair joints in that part of Bordertown—no big thing.

Mama had to mean the same place I’d found Xyla the last time. But I thought they wouldn’t open until it was time for the supper crowd.

Sure enough, when I pulled into the parking lot, it was deserted.

I got out, unsure of myself. But before I could make a move, Trixie came out a side door I didn’t know was there, and made a waving motion at me. I walked over to where she was standing, as evenly balanced as if she was tuned to the earth’s rotation. The way Max stood.

Xyla was at her computer chair, but the screen was blank in front of her.

“It’s the screen-saver,” she said over her shoulder by way of explanation. “He came back. There’s a file. But I haven’t opened it. Wait a minute, and you’ll see what I mean.”

She tapped some keys. The screen came to life. “It was all encrypted, but this is as far as I went,” she said. On the screen, I saw:

Your ID accepted. Dialogue will now commence. A file is attached. *Warning!* If any attempt is made to copy this file, to print it, or to enter it in any way, it will vanish. Further, be advised that it will appear in chroma-blue, rendering it impossible to photograph. Further, understand that, once opened, it will remain on screen only long enough to be read at an appropriate speed. It will then vanish. When it disappears, you will be required to furnish certain information in order to see the next transmission. I estimate approximately twelve (12) transmissions before you have viewed the total. The transmissions were originally not intended for publication until my death. However, I am now prepared for that death, metaphorically speaking. And I expect you to aid therein. All will become clear as you read. I am certain whoever sent the original contact messages on your behalf will tell you that there is no technological means to determine if other individuals view the screen along with you. This same individual will tell you that my own expertise in this area far exceeds their own. View the following *alone*. It is for your eyes only. When the screen clears, you may summon your confederate(s), as some cyber-communication will be required. When ready, open the attached file.

“You want me to open it?” Xyla asked.

“If I understand him right, something’s going to show up then? Something I can read?”

“Yeah. But not copy. Or even take a picture of. You have to scroll down, like this,” she showed me, tapping an arrow key, “to read it. Better do it pretty quick—I don’t know what ‘appropriate’ reading speed means to someone like him, but I can guarantee, if you try and scroll backward, you’re gonna lose it all, understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. When you’re ready, just hit this key,” she said, pointing. Then she got up and left the room, leaving me alone.

I took a deep breath. Lit a cigarette, grateful for the empty ashtray someone had placed right next to Xyla’s machine table. Then I hit the key. The screen danced for a good long minute, then it turned white. Words popped up—in some shade of blue I’d never seen before.

Any moderately discerning individual could deconstruct the failures of Leopold and Loeb simply through perusal of the tabloids of that era. Yellow journalism notwithstanding, there *was* no “Leopold and Loeb.” There was a “Leopold,” and there was a “Loeb.” The media created the illusion of “oneness.” Ironically, that illusion originated in a delusion of the participants. A shared delusion. Folie à deux, the psychiatrists call it.

[Of course, these are the self-same psychiatrists who call child molestation “pedophilia.” That same flock of politically driven sheep who change their own bible—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. . . or, as they term it so worshipfully, the “DSM”—as the dictates of grantsmanship command. At one time, they characterized homosexuality as a “mental disorder,” subject to the profession’s varied and sundry “treatments,” all of which were doomed to fail. Today, homosexuality is viewed as a “life-style,” an equally stupid misunderstanding of reality. In truth, homosexuality is genetic. Its manifestations may be more or less syntonic with the individual so marked, but that is internal. Only the behavior is external.]

Christ, I thought to myself. That’s what it’s been about all along, huh? But I kept scrolling, reading fast, knowing I’d have to remember it later.

Forgive the digression. A mind such as mine multi-tasks constantly—insights simply fly off the diamond-faceted surface of my intellect. And because insights have value only in proportion to their dissemination. . . this journal.

A brief word about the journal itself. My art demands egolessness. Hubris has ruined many aspirants to greatness. And as I aspire even higher—to nothing less than uniqueness—egotism is not permitted to intrude upon my work. No “Please catch me before I kill again!” notes to the police; no bombastic letters to newspapers; no “unconscious” clues left at the scene of my crimes.

What was this lunatic talking about? He’s a goddamned specialist at writing letters to the newspapers. . . . I hit the scroll key before I got lost in that thought.

To the world, I am a criminal. A professional. And in my specialty, anonymity and success are inextricably intertwined.

But I am, above all else, an artist. Where is the ego in art? That has long concerned me. Should the true artist be satisfied with his art? Or must he share it with others, subject it to their critical appraisal, and await trepidatiously their biased and agenda’ed response?

The answer continues to elude me. So I compromise. This journal is a meticulous record of my art. As matters now stand, it will be released, automatically, upon my death. Should I change my thinking on the subject, it could be released sooner. For now, it shall remain covert.

Am I replicating the mistake of so many others who have walked this road before me unsuccessfully? Am I creating evidence to be used against me in some future trial, as though I were a demented mail-bomber or religious fanatic? No. Rest assured, access to this journal will occur only upon my express consent. The encryption codes are known only to me, locked in my perfect memory, never put to paper. Any attempt to access this computer will crash the hard drive. Any “recovery” software will yield only gibberish. And a random program designed to reveal the password would require a mainframe running at capacity for approximately 7.44 years to locate its target.

Of course, all of that is secondary to the vial of sulfuric acid inside this very computer, its trigger set to discharge the contents should any unauthorized intrusion be attempted.

Further, I vary from the garden-variety psychopath in one fundamental way. No matter how insane the act, no matter how horrific the consequences, the actor will always find those who approve—even worship—his conduct. Incarcerated serial killers receive fan mail and marriage proposals. Murderers of those who work in abortion clinics are admired by those who claim to be “pro-life” (ignoring, of course, the unintended irony which so often accompanies the activities of the terminally stupid: i.e., some of the victims are *pregnant* women who would have given birth until “aborted” by the heroic killers). The homicidal arsonist of black churches is a “freedom fighter” to his fellow race-haters. The list is endless.

But I am not of that undistinguished (and indistinguishable) ilk. I am no herd animal—I stand alone. Should I be captured, I would be alone as well. What I do is done by no other. And I do not cloak my art in the pretensions of politicians or the alibi of insanity.

I have no politics. And I am the sanest, most rational person any of you will ever encounter.

But to return to my theme: Leopold and Loeb were not “one.” Therefore, each divisible half could betray the other. And so they did.

Although they thought of (and referred to) themselves as Nietzschean “supermen,” they were, in fact, a pair of pathetic little sociopaths, cringing together in the wet darkness of their fears. The kidnapping they engineered was beyond incompetence: Their cover story was tissue paper; they actually *rented* the vehicle in which the victim was transported; the ransom note was typed on a machine stolen from their fraternity house. . . . The list is endless. One of the blunderers even left his eyeglasses at the scene of the disposal.

And once apprehended, they tripped over each other in their eagerness to shift the blame.

Money, and perhaps Darrow’s brilliant dispositional arguments, saved them from the rope. But it was their sexuality that caused their eventual doom. Although it quickly became known that their relationship was homosexual—indeed, rather pedestrian master-slave homosexual—what was ignored was the fact that the kidnapping itself was a sex crime. No, I do not refer to the mutilation of the little boy’s genitals (although that might have alerted even the most incompetent forensic psychologist), but to the fact that the very mutuality of the act was sexual in and of itself. . . much as many gang rapes of females are, in reality, homosexual orgies engaged in by those in deep denial. For additional criminological reference, see the literature regarding so-called “fag-bashing.” Some are content to be in denial, others attempt to destroy that which they are unable to successfully deny.

One of the secrets of my continuing success is my refusal to deny anything.

What the fuck? was all my mind could react with. He says he never denies anything, but he’s some supercreature way above sex? How could this be the same guy blowing up half the damn city in a war against fag-bashers? Or would the rest of this lunatic’s little journal take me to that answer. . .?

Denied their grotesque mutuality, Leopold and Loeb were physically separated in prison. Loeb the “master” quickly learned that he had no such power over anyone but Leopold. His lesson was a fatal one—he was stabbed to death in the prison shower room. Leopold reconfigured his sexuality into suppression, and lived to be paroled some three decades later.

But while failure to properly execute a kidnapping is near-universal, the reasons for failure run across a lengthy continuum. Hickman failed because he was an incompetent, a defective of low intellect and excessive self-esteem. Krist failed despite his intelligence because his plans were insufficiently flexible. And he did not work alone. Speaking of which: Hauptmann, of course, was a pawn.

Although most failures occur at the point where the kidnapper must recover the ransom money, a listing of every failure would exhaust human language. A successful kidnapping is high art.

I have made that art my own. Redefined it. I am a perfectionist. Alone and unfailing.

I was still trying to connect what he was saying with what was happening now when the screen went blank. Then it bloomed in bright red, with black lettering clear against it.

>>Summon your operator now. A question will follow. It must be answered in order to see my next journal entry.<<

“Xyla!” I called out.

She bounced into the room, shooed me out of the chair, and took over. “Ready?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I told her truthfully.

We both watched the screen. In another few seconds, his message came, this time in a regular font, black letters on a white screen:

>>Prove link, you <–> Wesley. Three (3) names. No more. Send immediately.<<

“What words?” Xyla asked me urgently, her fingers poised.

I told her. Watched the screen carry the message.

Candy. Train. Julio.

Driving back, I wanted the safety of my cave. My head hurt from it all. It started reasonably. . . for a lunatic. That whole gay thing. But he was saying he was a kidnapper. The best in the business. What business? There hadn’t been a successful kidnapping in years. Nothing remotely resembling the perfection he was bragging about. When had he first written this? Why was he sending it to me? And what did Wesley have to do with a. . . “metaphorical” death?

Was he saying all those homicides meant something other than what they were? Was any of his journal true? I. . . couldn’t get it. So I stuffed as much as I could deep into my memory, packing a suitcase for a long journey.

I was in Mama’s that night. The Prof had left word he’d roll by, and I waited to. . . I don’t know what I wanted. Maybe just to be with the only father I’d ever had, just for a little while. Before I did something I knew was going to end ugly.

My father came in with his son. They sat down. The old man looked at me. . . and, for the first time, I realized he was an old man. I mean, he had to be, right? But it never came to me so hard as right that moment.

He didn’t ask me anything, just had his soup and waited. When he was done, I told him.

“Okay, let me get this straight. Motherfucker sends you his ‘journal’? A diary, like those teenage girls keep? Only this one, it’s about him being the all-time ace of snatch artists?”

“Not the whole thing, Prof. It was. . . a piece, like.”

“There’s more, then? He gets his pleasing from teasing?”

“I don’t think so. It could be techno—maybe he could only maintain security with so much data at a time. But it feels like. . . You remember those serials you told me about, the ones they had at the movies when you were a kid?”

“Oh yeah. Those were some boss cliffhangers, son. Kept you coming back for more, that’s the way they scored.”

“Right. That’s what this feels like.”

“He gets you hooked, so you don’t book?”

“Sure. But why would he care? The only thing he wants from me has something to do with Wesley—that name really opened his door. And, remember what I told you, he said he was ready to die. And I was going to help him.”

“But not die-die, right? Meta-something die. That don’t mean the real deal.”

“No. I don’t know what. . . The way it started, I thought he was going to go into a rant about being gay, you know? But he dropped that in a flash, switched to the kidnapping thing.”

“Then here’s what’s true, that ain’t new.”

“Because. . .?”

“Because the motherfucker may be crazy—hell, he sure is crazy—but no way he’s stupid, right? If he’s king of the kidnappers, you won’t know it from the papers. Like I said, that ain’t the play, no way, not today. The drug boys do snatches, but it’s to get back their powder or make somebody go along with the program, not a ransom deal.”

“So you think this is an old journal?”

“What the man said, right? Got it stashed in some computer in case he’s caught or something. . . .”

“No. In fact, he said, if anyone tried to get at it, the whole thing would get nuked.”

“But it was getting him off,” the Prof said, flatly. “Had to be. Keep fucking records of your own heists—what kind of righteous thief does that?”

“You got me. He says he’s a pro. He came across like there’s no way he’s got partners.”

“He figured out a way to do snatches without partners, man’s good,” the Prof conceded. “But he still sounds like the kind of fool I came up with. . . you know, a motherfucker so dumb, you tell him somebody with a gun’s coming for him, he runs around looking for a knife.”

“Those they still have,” Clarence said gravely.

“Always gonna have,” the Prof assured him. “Like they wasn’t born stupid enough, they got to practice.”

“Prof,” I asked him quietly, the same volume we used to speak on the yard, so many years ago. But straight ahead, not out of the side of my mouth. “Can you tell me anything?”

“Got two things to tell you, Schoolboy. Only one you gonna listen to.”

“You sure?”

“Here’s the first one: Walk away. Fast.”

The little man looked at me until my eyes dropped. “Thought so,” he said. “Here’s the other. Motherfucker’s tied to Wesley some way. And the way I see, only one way that could be.”

“Which is?”

“He’s afraid of him,” the Prof said.

“Wesley’s dead,” I said. My theme song now, I guessed it was.

“And people still not afraid of him?” the Prof challenged. “You know what they say. You know where they say it. Wesley may be dead, but he ain’t in the ground. Some be saying Wesley went down to the Crossroads, see if he could meet the Devil. Not like Robert Johnson did. Not to make no trade. To meet the man, to get it on. And the way it’s told, the Devil, he never showed. Remember, nobody did no autopsy. Every once in a while, the wire starts humming: Wesley’s coming. You hear it too, what do you do?”

“Get out of the way,” I told him, all truth.

“I don’t think this crazy motherfucker’s got even that much sense,” the Prof said solemnly.

We were still sitting there when Mama told me I had a phone call. It was just after midnight.

“What?” I said into the receiver.

“I have what you want.” Strega’s voice. “You bring me what I want now.”

“I don’t know if she’s—”

But the witch-woman was gone.

“Where are we going?”

“Never mind. You said you wanted in. This is how it has to go.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll meet you—”

“No. Stay there. I have to make sure you’re. . . okay before we go.”

“What does that—?”

I hung up on her.

She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, a thin red leather jacket held over one shoulder.

“Hold it,” I told her. “I want you to bring something with you.”

“What?”

“You know that mask you told me about?”

“Yes. . .”

“That.”

“Why?”

“Go get it,” I told her.

She stared at me for a long second, then went somewhere into the darkness. When she came back, she had it in her hand. Black leather, just like she described, right down to the zipper for the mouth.

“How do you get this over a full head of hair?” I asked her.

“She doesn’t. . . Oh: it laces up the back, see?”

I turned it over, saw what she meant. “Okay,” I said, “let’s go.”

There’s lots of ways to cross the river into Queens, but I had to make my move before I took any of them. I pulled under the FDR underpass, turned off the ignition. Handed her the mask.

“Put it on,” I told her.

“Me?”

“You. Where I’m taking you, I don’t want you to remember the route.”

“You could use a—”

“I don’t trust blindfolds. And I’m not gonna tranq you; it would take too long to bring you around.”

“Isn’t there any other way?”

“Sure,” I told her. “Get out.”

I walked her around to the back of the Plymouth, opened the trunk, showed her how much room there was back there, even with the padded fuel cell cutting into the space. Showed her the blankets I had for Pansy, the air holes for breathing.

“No,” is all she said.

“Then we’re down to two choices,” I bluffed, knowing I had to have her with me. Knowing Strega. “You can wear the mask, or I can take you back to where I got you.”

“I never had it on,” she said. “I always wondered what it felt like. Some doms I know, they try their gear on themselves. Like a paddle, you know? See how hard it’s really going to sting? But I never. . .”

“Yes or no?”

“All right,” she said, walking away from me.

Inside the car, she pulled the mask over her head. I laced it up, not tight. She found the zipper herself, pulled it across. “It’s hard to breathe like this,” is all she said.

“I won’t smoke,” I promised her.

I wasn’t worried about some cop spotting the mask. All the glass in the Plymouth is tinted, and I could just tell Nadine to yank it off if I spotted any company. She didn’t say another word for a while. I was just turning off the BQE when she spoke again.

“You like this?”

“Like what?” I asked her.

“Me. Keeping me. . . restrained.”

“You’re not restrained,” I told her. “This isn’t some bondage trip. I don’t want you to see where you’re going. Big deal.”

“You said you don’t trust blindfolds. Why?”

“Because they don’t always work.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve had them on me, bitch. All right?”

“Playing a—?”

“You’re not going to make me lose my temper,” I promised her. “Playing? No, not playing. I was a child. And people were. . . It doesn’t matter. You’re not with me. There’s nothing you need to know about me. We made a deal. I’m keeping my end. But the person I’m taking you to, maybe they don’t want you to be able to find them on your own. Is that so fucking shocking to you?”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You don’t have a truly sorry bone in that body you’re so proud of. But it doesn’t matter. You being sorry wouldn’t help me, even if it was true. You don’t even know what you’d be being sorry for. You’re just making it up. Filling in the blanks. Look, you don’t want to do this, just tell me. I’ll turn around, you can take the mask off. Then I’ll drive you back to your place.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Oh. Yeah, I get it now. You’re sorry that you might have been a little too cute, even for you. There’s something you want. It’s marked all over you. I don’t know what it is, and—”

“I told you I—”

“Yeah, I forgot. You love this guy. And you want to help him. And you don’t trust Lincoln and his crew and you sure as hell don’t trust me. Got it. It’s all playing with you, huh? All games? No matter what happens, you go back to your leashes and your collars and your chains and your other toys. Me, I’m in it, understand? So how about you just shut up, okay?”

I could feel her vibrate next to me, but she didn’t say another word for the rest of the trip.

I wasn’t surprised to see the garage door open. Two far-apart cars inside the murky space. I backed the Plymouth in carefully, but there was no risk—plenty of room on both sides. I got out and hit the switch—the door came down. The place went pitch-black then, but I’d been ready for it. I opened the passenger door and helped Nadine get out. Then the door opened, the one that leads right into the first floor of the house.

Strega was standing there, waiting. She was wearing a long-sleeved white silk something that was cut off around her diaphragm and a tiny black spandex skirt. Her fiery hair was lustrous and loose. Her stockings had some kind of sparkle-dust woven into them, picking up glints of light over her ankle-strapped black spikes.

“Bring her over here,” she said, her voice witchy and low.

I did that. Strega turned and walked. I followed her until we got into the living room. A couple of the baby spots were on, but it was shadowy elsewhere. If the spots had been rose-colored, it would have looked a lot like Nadine’s joint.

At a nod from Strega, I unlaced the mask. Nadine yanked it off before I was finished, the heavy muscles standing out on her bare arms. She shook her head hard, resettling her hair without touching it. I stepped to the side as she and Strega faced each other.

“So this is the girl who’s helping you, huh?” Strega said to me.

“This is the girl I told you about,” I said, not asking for her judgment, just telling her I’d delivered the goods, kept my promises.

“What’s your name?” Strega asked her.

“Nadine.”

“I’m Jina. And he’s mine,” she said, pointing at me like I was an unlicensed dog she was claiming from the pound.

“You’re welcome to him,” Nadine said. “I’m only here because—”

“Oh!” Strega said suddenly. “I see. You’re not into men at all, huh?”

“I’m a lesbian,” Nadine said proudly, folding her arms under her breasts.

Strega walked around Nadine like the bigger woman was a statue, not saying anything for a long minute. “Sit down,” she finally said, pointing at a chair.

Nadine sat back, crossed her legs, waiting. Strega perched herself on the ottoman that matched the chair, imitated the other woman’s gesture.

“Yours?” Strega asked her, holding the leather mask.

“Yes,” Nadine replied, eyes and voice steady.

“Oh, you like to spank, huh? What do you think?” she said, getting up. “You like to spank me?”

“I don’t know you,” Nadine said, like she was answering questions at a job interview.

“Ahhh. . . and I thought I had such a tempting ass too,” Strega said, bending forward and making a kissing sound at Nadine. “Get up,” she said suddenly.

Nadine did it, standing still and calm, taller than Strega.

“Take a better look, maybe you’ll change your mind,” Strega told her, turning her back on Nadine and walking away. Nadine followed her into the darkness.

They were gone long enough for me to smoke through a pair of cigarettes. Not chain-smoke either—plenty of time in between. I went somewhere else then, closing my eyes.

“You asleep, baby?”

Strega’s voice. I opened my eyes. She was alone.

“No,” I told her. “Where’s—?”

“Oh, she’s nice and safe. But she has to stay there. It’s not her business what you want to know, right?”

“Right.”

“I have to whisper,” she said, turning her back and dropping into my lap.

I didn’t say anything, waiting. When she finally settled herself, her voice was calm, like she was giving me the recipe for something.

“Gutterball ordered it, all right. You know how he got his name? He was a bowler, a pro bowler, when he was younger. Like calling some fat guy Tiny, I guess. Anyway, Corky was angling, and Gutterball wanted him off the count. Corky wasn’t made, so Gutterball didn’t need the okay, but he—Corky, I mean—he was with some Irish guys. Some bad Irish guys, you understand what I’m saying? So it had to look good.”

She slipped her hand inside my pants. Said, “Oh, not interested, huh?” then chuckled at her own pun before she went on: “You know what was the real slick part? Corky, he thought he was gonna do someone. I mean, that’s why he was there. At that gay rally. What they told him was, the mark’s gonna come strolling by. Behind him, like, understand? So Corky, he knows there’s gonna be a car there. The way I got it, they made a few passes, let Corky see them and everything. How it was supposed to go, Corky stands at the very back of the crowd, close to the sidewalk, get it? Then, when the mark comes down the sidewalk, the guys in the car, they tap the horn three times, real quick. Corky turns around, blasts him, and just keeps running into the car and off they go. The cover fire was supposed to protect Corky. A real slick plan.”

“You saying Gutterball wanted them all gone?”

“I don’t know. They weren’t his honchos or anything, but they were in his crew. The way I heard it, Wesley told him he was gonna get Corky, but. . .”

“Wesley?”

“Wesley,” she said softly. “Gutterball talked to him himself. Made the whole deal on the phone. You know how Wesley works.”

“Yeah. But how could Gutterball be sure it was—?”

“That’s what he said himself. You know what Wesley told him? New deal. Nothing up front. COD. How could Gutterball lose behind that?”

“But how would Wesley know Gutterball wanted—?”

“I don’t know. Gutterball didn’t know. He thought he was being set up. So he met with him and—”

“He met with Wesley?”

“That’s what he said. Oh, he didn’t see him—just a man, in the shadows. But whoever it was, he knew Gutterball’s business, knew what Corky was up to. . . everything.”

“Jesus.”

“Wesley—”

“It wasn’t Wesley.”

“Okay, baby. Sssshh. Whoever it was, all right? He said he was back in town, and he knew some people wouldn’t believe him. That’s why he was changing the deal. He didn’t ask for it all up front, like you’d expect. . . especially since that whole war started back then, when they wouldn’t pay him, remember? He said he’d prove who he was.”

“It stinks,” I said. “How’d Gutterball know he wasn’t talking to the law, for chrissakes?”

“He said he could tell. I don’t know what else to say. You’ve been around Wesley. No cop could ever. . . Wesley has his own. . . I don’t know what you’d call it. But it wasn’t a cop. And there damn sure was a killing.”

“More than one.”

“I know. Gutterball, he paid fast, I promise you. It’s Wesley’s style, right down to the end. No witnesses, right?”

“Yeah. But anyone could’ve—”

“Sure, honey. Whatever you say.”

“The other ones who died. . . the ones in the crowd. It was all for. . . nothing.”

“That’s Wesley too, baby boy.”

“He’d—”

“—do it just like that, and you know it. Wesley’d burn a building down to get one of the tenants. He did it before. And he couldn’t have known your girlfriend would be. . .”

“Gutterball, you think he’d talk to me?”

“Not in life. He’s not gonna talk, period. Even if they drop him for this, he’s never saying a word. You can always juice a jury or scam the parole board. But Wesley. . . Gutterball wouldn’t be safe, no matter where they put him. Anyway, it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen. Gutterball, he’s golden now. Word is, Wesley’s working for him. You know what that means.”

“Sure. It means they’re a pack of retards.”

“Whatever you say. But they’re a scared pack of retards, that’s the truth.”

“It wasn’t Wesley,” I told her.

“Burke, I wasn’t there, okay?”

“I know. Thank you.”

“You know how to thank me.”

“Strega, not now. I. . .”

“Sssshhh,” she hissed.

“Where is she?” I asked her later.

“You ready to go? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, you don’t. But I’ll know. And I’ll be here. I never forget. Give me something.”

“What?”

“Something of yours. That,” she said, pointing to my wristwatch, “I’ll take that.”

I didn’t say anything as she unsnapped the bracelet and pulled it off my wrist.

“Hmmm,” she said, rubbing her thumb over the crystal. “Come on, I’ll give her back to you. And you don’t need the mask. I don’t care if she knows where I live. She’ll never come back. Unless I tell her to.”

Strega led me to a back bedroom. It was dark. I saw Nadine, sitting on a straight chair in a corner, facing out. Her legs were pressed primly together, hands in her lap.

“Come on,” I told her. “We’re going.”

She got up and came with me.

“I want to talk to you,” she said as I turned onto Metropolitan Avenue, heading straight down to the Williamsburg Bridge, no traffic at that hour, a clean run.

“Talk,” I told her.

“You know what she did?”

“Who?”

“Strega. She told me her real name. With me. Back in that room.”

“I don’t have a clue. Nothing she did would surprise me.”

“She told me to sit down. In that chair. I did it. Then she slapped my face. Not. . . playing, like we do. But to. . . get my attention. So I’d listen. I could tell. She has a voice like a snake. It scared me. But only a little. She said if I did anything to hurt you she’d make me dead. Slow dead. Rotting from the inside. She said she was a witch. And she told me something about myself to prove it.”

“Which was. . .?”

“I don’t have to tell you,” she said, in a little girl’s adamant voice. “She said I didn’t have to tell you. But she knew. Nobody knows, but she knew. She said I could have my secret. Everybody has secrets. But not from her. She said you were in her. Inside her. Not like sex. . . I don’t know what she meant, but I know she meant it.”

“So she guessed something about your past and you—”

“She wasn’t guessing. And it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t going to hurt you anyway. But I have to see him. Even if it. . . Whatever happens, I have to see him. You promised. You said if I—”

“I’m keeping my promises,” I told her. “To everyone. But I can’t make things happen. All I can do is try to make them happen, understand?”

“Yes. I know. I’m sorry if I—”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I told her.

I pulled up outside her apartment building. “Where’s your mask?” I asked her, looking in the back seat.

“It’s hers now,” Nadine said. “She told me to give it to her. Are you going to call me when—”

“Yes,” I lied.

I had the Plymouth in motion the second she slammed the door.

I thumbed the cellular into life, tapped out Mama’s number. I don’t use speed-dial—cloning cell-phone numbers is a big-time felony, and if this one fell into the wrong hands, I wouldn’t want anything that could connect back to me. I never even touch the damn thing without gloves on.

“Gardens,” Mama answered.

“Anything?”

“Yes. Girl call. Say, more come in, okay?”

“Got it,” I told her, and aimed the Plymouth in the right direction.

“He sent another,” Xyla said, excitement clear in her voice. “Same as last time. You want to look at it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. You remember how to do it?” she asked, getting up from her chair.

“I do. Thanks.”

I lit a cigarette and pulled the curtains aside. There he was:

This is my ninth experience. Of the prior eight, I collected the ransom in five. I consider this to be a laudatory record of success. Perhaps I could have increased the collection percentage, but at the cost of increasing risk. My way is unalterable, however—unless and until each and every step is flawlessly executed, in sequence, with the proper response from the target, I simply retire from the field.

The first step, obviously, is research. How many kidnappings have failed when it develops that the parents simply lack the appropriate resources? To demand a half-million-dollar ransom from a man whose net worth is in five figures is the act of a fool. A doomed fool.

As I write this, I realize the value of the writing. It clarifies my own thoughts. And helps me to express them to you. . . the eventual reader. Thus, in reviewing the last paragraph, I came to realize that I have omitted a vital step. One that comes before research. Indeed, before anything. It is, doubtless, one of the many aspects of my modus operandi that distinguishes me from other operators. What is this critical distinction, you might ask? The answer is: A trial run. Not with the intended victim, but with the entire process.

Thus I began my kidnapping career by deconstructing the totality into segments, then practicing the various aspects independently so as to avoid even the possibility of detection. So, for example, I might research Family “A” as to finances, but conduct surveillance of Family “B” as to terrain and so on. In point of fact—verified by the records, which are appended hereto—I captured four separate children successfully before I ever sought ransom of any kind. Each technique was perfected before moving on to the next.

I scrolled down fast, looking for the records he was talking about, but all I got was:

Forgive the rambling. I realize it is a conceit to assume that the (future) reader will be as fascinated with my thought processes as I myself am, but not all conceits are axiomatically invalid. Again, it is a matter of risk versus gain. If you are interested, then I must include everything or you will be cheated. If you are not, what has been lost?

Research is only a small portion of my success. Another operative factor is clinical purity. That is, no secondary motive. Too many kidnappers are, in fact, perverts or degenerates. Sadists, child molesters, rapists. . . those of that odious breed. The ransom demand is mere protective coloration over their actual intent—the true force which drives them.

I have no such demons within me. I take only children because: (a) they are more gullible; (b) they are less capable of physical resistance; (c) they are more likely to be ransomed, if only because the dictates of society so require.

The children are never returned. No matter how careful the kidnapper, some risk is always inherent in returning a victim. And while children are, in fact, weaker and easier to gull than adults, their powers of observation are extraordinary, their memories excellent, and their post-traumatic revelations have convicted more than one perpetrator.

I never kill with force. Not one child yet has refused the food I offered. Death follows, painlessly. The bodies are never found. No, not out of some sadistic desire to deny the parents the “closure” so beloved of the self-aggrandizing, but from the knowledge that forensics is a weapon I must deflect to the fullest extent possible.

Often, the children must be kept alive for some protracted period of negotiations, that complex dance in which the parents attempt to avoid the inevitable and the police interfere regardless of my instructions. In fact, at this point in my career, I *expect* police intervention. A routine, predictable annoyance.

Which is undoubtedly what led me to my most recent decision. . . to kidnap the child of an organized-crime kingpin. Viewed logically, it squares fully with my own precepts. The target: (a) has the necessary cash resources; (b) believes his child to be exempt from attack because of some archaic “code” allegedly governing conduct between gangsters; and (c) will not notify the authorities.

If this works as anticipated, I may sub-specialize in this area for the foreseeable future.

As soon as the screen started to change color, I knew what was coming. I hardly got her name out of my mouth before Xyla came bounding into the room, dropping into the chair I had just vacated with the springy grace of a gymnast. His message came in seconds:

>>Your prior proof acknowledged. Further transmissions from me on pure exchange basis. Next installment available only upon revelation of Wesley work not known to law enforcement. Maximum length = 5 words. Send *now*.<<

I stepped behind Xyla, put my hand on her shoulder. “Five words maximum? I’ll go the son of a bitch a couple better,” I told her. “Type this”:

blowgun dart

“Any idea why he only wants such short messages?” I asked as soon as her fingers left the keyboard.

“It could have something to do with his security software, but it’s too much for me to figure out,” she replied. “You’d think it would be the other way, right? I mean, he’d want to keep his transmissions as short as possible, limit his exposure. Are they longer?”

“Much longer,” I told her.

“It couldn’t be something as simple as an attached file,” she mused. “Maybe. . . I don’t know. You want me to poke around, see if I can—”

“No!” I interrupted her sharply. “Don’t look for him at all. Stay away. Just get word to me anytime he makes contact again, okay?”

“Okay. Sure, if that’s what you want. Lorraine said—”

“Sure. Thanks, Xyla. I really appreciate this.”

“You don’t look so good,” she said.

“Little girl, I never look good.”

“Stop that! I mean, you look. . . I dunno, drained or something. Was it his message?”

“Oh yeah,” I told her.

I thought I had it then. Organized crime—no, preying on organized crime—that was going to be his specialty. . . if whatever thing he was doing at the time he wrote his journal worked out. Which it obviously must have, if he was still out there somewhere.

I wondered if any of it was true. Any of anything.

“You heard me,” I told the voice on the phone. “Every kidnapping which resulted in the kid not being returned. Ransom kidnappings, money successfully changes hands, kid never found, nobody ever arrested. Got it?”

“Sure. But you’re probably asking the wrong man.”

“How so?”

“I can get all the reported cases that meet your search criteria.”

“Meaning?”

“Look, I’m a journalist,” Hauser’s gruff voice came back over the phone, “not a cop. I can work Nexis easy enough, but that’s a media database; it won’t get you anything that didn’t make the papers, see?”

“Sure. I got that other part covered.”

“And what’s in it for me?”

“I just told you,” I said, hanging up on him. Hauser was only going through his reporter’s dance. He’s an info-trader, so under any other circumstances, I’d have to promise him access to something—a story, an exclusive. . . whatever. But I’ve known Hauser for a long time. Being a father is the most sacred thing in his life. Telling him I was looking for a child-snatcher was enough, and we both knew it.

“Let me write this down,” Nadine said. She turned her back on me and left her living room, to return in a minute with a grid pad like architects use and one of those gel-handled pens that’re supposed to conform to your fingers as you hold then. She looked at me expectantly.

“Kidnappings,” I told her. “Successful kidnappings. From organized-crime bigshots. Not reported to the cops, but known to them anyway, okay? And the kid is never returned.”

“Murdered?”

“What word didn’t you understand?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, meekly.

“Look, this is no risk to your friend. Just computer access. She can always say she’s ambitious—looking to step up, work a cold-case file on her own time, score a promotion—if they ever tie anything to her.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’ll do—”

“Yeah, I heard that speech,” I told her. “Got it memorized.”

“Do you hate me?” she asked suddenly.

“Hate you? For being a pain in the ass? Don’t be stupid.”

“I wasn’t. I mean, I know I—”

“Hate. You got any idea what that word really means, you spoiled bitch? The way you people talk. . . Someone’s mad at you so you say, ‘Oh, he’s going to kill me,’ right? We don’t speak the same language.”

“ ‘You people.’ What does that mean?”

“It means, not my people,” I told her.

I was with my people when I told them the next piece the killer had sent me.

“He kills kids?” the Prof asked, jolted.

“Yeah. He says so, anyway. Not for fun. Like. . . cleaning up after himself. Or maybe just some techno-glitch, to a guy like him.”

“You know guys like him, mahn?” Clarence asked.

“Sure. So do you. People aren’t human to them. They’re just objects. Pieces on a chessboard. The only thing that holds guys like that in check is fear. They think they can get away with something—anything—they do it.”

“Sure, mahn. There are plenty like that. But this—”

“He’s just. . . better at it,” I said. “That’s all.”

“Nah, bro, there’s more we know,” the Prof said.

“What’s that?”

“He wouldn’t be so loud if he wasn’t so proud,” the little man said.

“I don’t know,” Strega whispered. She was in my arms, me carrying her. She wanted that, sometimes. I never knew why, but I always did it, walking her through that spooky house like she was a child I was trying to cuddle-coax back to sleep.

“But you could find out,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“I can find out anything from. . . them. They have no secrets from me.”

“Nadine said she had no secrets from you either.”

“Ah, that one. She lied to you, Burke.”

“About what?”

“She told you some fairy story, right? She didn’t start out gay. . . .”

“Yeah, she said something like that.”

“You know how guys—the ones who don’t get it—say lesbians hate men?”

“Sure.”

“She’s not lying about that,” Strega said against my neck. “She hates men.”

“That wouldn’t make her a—”

“I don’t know if she likes women either. She likes sex. And women are the only ones she’s going to have it with.”

“Yeah, I know. I heard all about—”

“She’s not a dom either,” Strega said softly. “Not in her heart. The role’s playing her, understand? She’s just building walls. Like the way she builds her body.”

“What?”

“It’s safer where she is. Like I’m safe now,” she whispered against me.

I rubbed my thumb in small circles at the base of the witch’s neck, quieting her while I thought about what she said. Walls. Prison. In there, everyone has to have a role. Predator or prey. No Switzerland option. You don’t have to fuck some kid to mark your territory, but some went that way. “Shit on my dick, or blood on my knife,” is what the wolves greet you with when you’re a young fish, a first-timer. That’s what drives so many of them into gangs Inside. That’s a role too. By the time I went in, I already knew the truth I later heard the Prof tell to so many new kids: “If they try, they got to die.” I had a shank in my waistband when I hit the yard for the first time. Being raised by the State in those prison-prep schools teaches you all that. But why would this woman need to. . .?

“I get it,” I lied to Strega. “It’s not men she hates, just sex with—”

“She’d have sex with you. She wants to, you know. Bad.”

“I don’t know. She’s a game-player. I don’t know her game. It doesn’t matter.”

“Because you don’t want her?”

“Because I’m not playing.”

“But you want to play with me, don’t you?” she asked, witchy.

I knew who it was even as the phone was ringing at Mama’s. And I was on my way in a couple of minutes more.

We had it down to a routine by now. I hardly had the match to my cigarette before he showed again:

I have the child now, here with me. Her name is Angelique, but her school records indicate she prefers “Angel.” She is 10+ years, in apparently excellent health.

The abduction was simplicity itself. The child is the first to be picked up each morning by the bus from the private school she attends. Her nanny accompanies her to the end of the drive, where the bus stops each morning, but my observations indicated that the nanny (a young woman who may have been selected for other than her child-care abilities, but I acknowledge that to be mere speculation on my part, albeit consistent with the pattern displayed by the girl’s father in other dealings) was always bored and inattentive, often to the point where she did not even respond when the child spoke to her.

The private school is quite discreet. Their bus is virtually unmarked—a smallish vehicle, dark green in color, with the school’s name gilded subtly in Olde English script across the door panel.

The regular driver had answered the knock at his door earlier that morning. He saw. . . well, me: Dressed in a standard-issue government suit, carrying a well-traveled briefcase. He let me in without complaint, albeit with an air of victimized resignation. Had the school thoroughly vetted its employees, they would have known their driver had a prior conviction for child molestation. Actually, he had been allowed to plead guilty to a lesser, statutorily euphemized offense, but the facts were there for anyone with the will to search them out. The driver had long since completed his parole (and it was in another state entirely), but he had grown acculturated to answering the questions of white males who had a certain look about them.

That look comes easily to me: My features are both unremarkable and mobile.

The driver lived alone, in a small cottage owned by the school. Occupancy of the cottage and personal off-duty use of the bus apparently were intended to compensate for the inadequacy of his salary. . . barely past minimum wage.

The driver’s death would be discovered rather quickly. It was not, as you might imagine, a gratuitous homicide on my part. Functionally, it accomplished two things: (a) immobilization, guaranteeing that he would not give the alarm before my work was completed, and (b) demonstrable evidence that the kidnapper would, in fact, kill. The latter tends to add emphasis to negotiations.

I was well prepared with a cover story had the nanny questioned me, but none was necessary. The child ran toward the bus even as I approached, and the nanny turned her back and started toward the house before I had even opened the doors.

The child said, “Where’s Harry?” and I told her Harry was sick—I was the relief driver. I knew from my research that such an emergency-substitution system was in place, but I could not know if it had ever been utilized during the period of time the child had been attending the school. Still, she made no protest, and took her seat calmly.

Less than a quarter-mile from her house, I pulled over to the side of the road into a spot shielded by overgrowth. Within ninety seconds, the child was rendered unconscious—chloroform on a sterile handkerchief—and carried from the bus into the car I had waiting.

There was some degree of exposure during the fifteen-minute drive to the house I had prepared, but it was minimal. The child was sleeping in the trunk, I could easily explain my presence should there be any inquiry, and I expected to be invisible, with my captive totally secured, before any of the other children’s parents called to complain about the bus being late.

When the child awoke, it was near noon. Many children are frightened when they find themselves captured, but this one was quite stoic. I showed her the basement where she would remain, including the TV set (complete with video-game connectors), the private bathroom, the small refrigerator, and the convertible sofa. She nodded gravely as I explained she had been kidnapped; that it was like a game adults play. . . a game for money.

She appeared to understand (and to readily accept) the concept of extortion.

I told her that she was free to move around or do anything that she wished while I was present, but that when I had to leave—occasionally in order to complete the financial arrangements—I would have to restrain her. I showed her how the restraints worked, how comfortable they actually were, and how she could use the remote to work the television, and that she could easily reach the bathroom and refrigerator should she require either—I never expected to be gone for more than a very short time anyway.

I asked her if there was anything I could get her to make her stay easier. She wanted books. I had anticipated this—her school records indicated she was a scholarly child. But, of course, any individual shopping for children’s books in the next few days would have aroused suspicion. Especially a stranger. I was prepared: With over one hundred separate titles, all age-appropriate and of great variety. The child seemed absolutely delighted with the selection. I told her she could take all the books with her when I released her, expecting even greater happiness. However, she said she would not be allowed to have so many books.

When I asked her why that should be—after all, her life seemed filled with various—and, frankly, conspicuous—possessions, she just replied, “That’s what they say.”

“Who is ‘they’?” I asked her.

“Them.”

I did not press the point, preferring to establish as harmonious a relationship as possible.

The screen flickered, indicating he was done. I called Xyla in, and waited for the rest. It didn’t take long.

>>Mortay? Wesley’s work? Yes or No?<<

Was this maniac into myth-busting now? Mortay had been the reigning champ of the anything-goes death matches some degenerates were holding in a giant basement, but he couldn’t handle the whisper-stream saying Max could beat him. He put it all on the line. Threatened to kill Max’s baby to force a match. Right after he said that to me, one of his men was shot from a nearby rooftop. The real target was Mortay, but he’d moved faster than any human I’d ever seen, and the sniper picked off what was left. The sniper wasn’t Wesley. . . but that’s what everyone thought.

Mortay finally got dead. Although the cops couldn’t be certain-sure about it, the whisper-stream knew. After I’d shot him a bunch of times in that deserted construction-site excavation, I’d kicked a grenade into his mouth, folded his hands over his face, and pulled the pin.

In a way, that’s what started all this. I didn’t know until much later that Mortay was already on Wesley’s list. The freak was too out of control for the mob guys who paid him to make snuff videos—taking hookers right off the street for actresses—so they gave the work to Wesley. But before the ice-man could get it done, our crew had handled it ourselves. It cost Belle her life, and me my love.

If I’d known the maggot was on Wesley’s list, I would have just stepped aside and waited for the inevitable. But after the way it went down, the whisper-stream gave me the hit-man tag. A street brand that I could never shed, not in some places.

And then the stupid cafones who’d contracted with Wesley said they wouldn’t pay off, because he hadn’t done the job; I had.

That’s when Wesley started killing them all.

Was this guy asking me who was on the roof that night Mortay almost got smoked? Or was he trying to find out what kind of a man I was? Didn’t matter. No way I was going to have Xyla type El Cañonero’s name into her machine. He had been the only other pro sniper working the city then, but he wasn’t with me. He was a soldier for some Puerto Rican Independentistas, doing a job for me that night in exchange for something I would do for them. And I wasn’t going to say I did Mortay myself, either. So I played his question straight.

no

is what Xyla sent him.

When you’re interrogating a suspect, you can sometimes get him to tell you the truth by letting him think you already know it. Did the killer really understand the “blowgun dart” message I’d sent him? Or was he playing me, waiting patiently?

And was he asking me about Mortay because he already knew the truth, testing to see how reliable my answer might be to something he didn’t know, down the line?

No way for me to even guess. But I knew this much: It was still Wesley, to him, all Wesley, somehow.

“Nothing,” Hauser told me two days later.

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“I mean nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not one case meets your search criteria. There were cases where a child disappeared. . . but no ransom demands. There were cases where there was ransom demanded and paid, and the child was later found. . . dead. But nothing along the lines you told me to look for.”

“Fuck!”

“You’re still on this, right?” Hauser asked.

“Yeah.”

“So I’m still in it if there’s something I can—”

“You have my word,” I told him, and hung up.

His next message just picked up from where the last one left off. I was as locked to it as if the previous one had still been on the screen, seamless.

Children vary as widely as adults. Perhaps more so, as they are still in the process of formation, and their possibilities and potential have not yet adapted to the dictates of socioeconomic survival. This child, however, was different in a way I had not observed previously. Some children go almost mute with the trauma of separation, some are garrulous. But, always, they are intensely self-absorbed—understandable, I acknowledge, in the circumstances under which I come into contact with them—wondering “What is going to happen to me?” to the exclusion of all else. This child, however, expressed such an apparently genuine interest in the mechanics of my art that I found myself in discussions which had an eerie “peer” quality about them.

[Of course, had she been older and more sophisticated, she would have concluded that discussing the specifics of my methodology with a person who could later describe same to the authorities would be counterindicated. Indeed, the fact that I remained unmasked throughout should have been sufficient to provide a clue as to each child’s fate. None seemed to notice. Or, perhaps, they were determined not to notice—I am not a psychologist.]

But this child seemed utterly fascinated with the mechanics of kidnapping. And hers was not the gory fascination of a child, but the mature fascination of an interested adult. This was no difficult deduction on my part. Indeed, her first question was:

“Aren’t you worried they could trace the ransom note?”

I was temporarily taken aback by her question, but, rather than ensuring my silence, it seemed to almost compel me to disclosure. An egotistical desire to share my art, perhaps? I do not believe so. After all, that is the purpose of this journal.

Still, I showed her how I used only electronic ransom notes. I tape complete television series—sit-coms are the best because they are more likely to possess the requisite longevity—in order to acquire a word bank. “All in the Family,” “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Brady Bunch” had sufficient running time to provide all I needed. Next, I use a digitizing apparatus to separate the individual words. The final edit assembles the note. The child had a little bit of difficulty following me—I realize that my vocabulary is occasionally excessive and that I tend toward the pedantic—but when I explained that my technique was the same as clipping words from newspapers and pasting them to paper, she grasped the principle perfectly. When I demonstrated—by forming the message “Angelique is a pretty girl” from “The Brady Bunch” (actually, the best source of girl’s names, for some reason unknown to me—I have never actually watched an episode) word bank—she clapped her hands.

After she had something to eat—I let her choose from a variety of foodstuffs I had assembled. . . it reduces the feeling of powerlessness in the captive—I showed her that the messages were on micro-cassettes. All I had to do was dial the target’s home number and, when the phone was answered, play the tape. Good luck to the FBI and its so-called “voiceprints.”

“My father has a. . . thing on his phone,” the child piped up. “They’ll know where you called from.”

Was she mocking me? It didn’t seem so—her little face was serious. Almost. . . concerned.

So I took out some more of my equipment and explained how a blue-box system worked. A telephone recognizes a hyper-specific series of electronic beeps. When I dial out using the box, it goes into an 800 loop—the best ones to use are those which have chronically heavy traffic. . . any of the conventional credit-card services will do—and re-emerges locally, so whatever rudimentary device of her father’s the child was referring to would only recognize the 800 number (which is based in a faraway state) if it recognized anything at all.

“Are you going to call from here, then?” the child asked.

I patiently explained that, while I could, indeed, call from the location in perfect safety, there was no phone installed. Sophisticated technology is a two-edged sword, and taking chances is for amateurs.

“So you have to go out?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t you take me with you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“So I couldn’t. . . escape.”

I assured the child I was more than satisfied with the restraint system I had established, speaking to her as if she was a colleague in the enterprise rather than its victim. . . which seemed to best match her own affect. Obviously, I realized that she was attempting to beguile me into giving her an opportunity to attract attention once we were outside, but I was not angered. In fact, I had a sincere respect for her wit. And for her will to survive.

Yet I did not tell her the entire truth. Once I have successfully completed the capture phase of my operation, it is vital to remain in the hideout until target-contact is established. The message had long since been recorded, and the central computer in my residence. . . [I must digress here: I work from home, in my perfectly legitimate occupation of independent computer consultant. My small, modest house is rather isolated from the neighbors by the landscaping and they all know my habit is to remain inside for literally weeks at a time, working on some complex computer problem. I earn a moderately respectable income yearly, and dutifully report it all. None of my neighbors have ever been inside my house, nor I in theirs. But even were they to inspect the premises, they would find nothing untoward. That is, unless they discovered the opening to the tunnel, which leads from my basement all the way through to a heavy stand of trees on a three-acre plot which all the neighbors fear will someday be sold to a developer. After all, it is owned by a corporation with precisely that stated purpose. Their petty suburbanite fears are groundless. I, in fact, own the land. Inside the house is my principal computer.]

Let me resume: The principal computer is never disengaged. I can access it via telephone from anywhere in the world. A certain code will trigger its auto-dial feature and, after the appropriate loops, it will reach the target. As soon as the phone is picked up and voice recognition—any human voice—occurs, the previously recorded message will be played.

So I will not actually leave the premises, just the basement. I use a portable phone to reach the computer. Even should the call be inadvertently intercepted—it is, after all, a radio transmission—it would not reveal anything but a series of connection-beeps. I make only one call per phone, and then discard it. After I reduce it to untraceable rubble, of course.

There was no need to tell the child this. I have learned that children are especially sensitive to commitments. . . even those made by their captors. The promise to return, for example. One might imagine the children would be happy if I never returned. After all, they are incapable of seeing deeply into the future—very much instant-gratification creatures, indeed. So with a plentiful supply of food—including, of course, the sort of so-called “junk food” many children are not allowed by their parents—and toys and games, they would not worry about being rescued. Yes, they might easily become bored—that is always a concern. But you would surmise that the return of their captor would hardly be greeted with pleasure. Yet, surprisingly, that has not been my experience. Without exception, each child was absolutely overjoyed when I returned. It took me considerable time to synthesize this data. My conclusion was as stated: The keeping of promises is critically important to children.

Therefore, I told the child I was going out to make the first call, but would return within two hours. I then simply went upstairs, dialed up my home-base computer, and waited patiently for the time to pass.

He finished the way I’d gotten used to by then—if I wanted to see the next installment, I had to pay up front. His question was a simple one this time:

>>Marco Interdonato. Wesley?<<

Marco Interdonato. Sure, I remembered that one. A spring-bomb in a public storage locker at La Guardia. Another of the killer’s tests? Trickier than before, maybe? That one was Wesley’s work. It was in the goodbye letter he’d left with me, the one where he took the weight for killing Mortay. And Train. And some other things I’d done. Maybe it convinced the cops. Maybe it didn’t. But it wasn’t something they ever leaked to the papers, so. . . It was like the blowgun-dart thing again. How the fuck could he know such things?

If I said Wesley’s name now, would I be ratting him out. . . or confirming he was dead? I figured the killer could have put it all together without any inside knowledge. Morales always said Wesley left his fingerprints all over every job, and he wasn’t talking forensics. That left only one way to play it:

yes

Xyla typed it in.

“Is there anything I could do to make you hot?” Nadine asked me. Her outfit didn’t go with the question—she was wearing a gray jersey workout suit, and her hair was dank with sweat, like she’d been pushing herself hard just before I’d come to her place.

“You mean you you?”

“That’s right. Me me.”

“And by ‘hot,’ you mean aroused?”

“Yes!” she snapped, impatient now.

“What difference would it make?” I asked her.

“I want to have sex with you.”

“Huh? From the minute I met you, all you’ve been telling me is how bad I want you, right? What a liar I am when I say I don’t. So. . . what is this, another stupid game? I fuck you, that proves I’m a liar? Look, all men are liars. I’m no exception. You already have all the answers, why don’t you just write ‘Burke’ on a vibrator and be done with it?”

“Why are you like this?” she demanded, stepping close to me. She smelled like a sweaty-sweet girl. No estrogen pheromones, just. . . girl-smell.

“Me? I’m not ‘like’ anything. I’m me.”

“And you. . . you don’t want to fuck me?”

“You know what? Sure. Who wouldn’t? You got all the stuff. But you don’t smell like pussy to me,” I said, hoping that going crude would end this game. . . whatever it was.

“Oh yes?” she asked, standing right against me. “What do I smell like?”

“Like a trap,” I told her.

She turned her back on me and walked a few feet away. Then she whirled around and stood looking at me for a few long seconds. And disappeared.

When she came back, she was wearing a pair of loose wide-leg white cotton shorts and a pink T-shirt, barefoot, smelling of soap. She took the chair next to mine. Asked: “What did you mean?”

“About. . .?”

“Me smelling like a trap. What does that mean?”

“You got the information I wanted? The stuff you said you had to get me over here.”

“I have it,” she promised. “And you can have it. If you’ll just answer my question. Honestly. One time. Will you do that?”

I looked at her cobalt eyes until I was sure she was connected, deciding what to tell her. . . deciding it would be the truth. I wasn’t sure I needed anything more from her anyway. But I also sensed that she’d smell a lie this time. And that if she did, and it turned out that I did need her again, there’d be nobody home when I rang the bell.

“I think you’re crazy,” I told her, my voice low and carefully controlled. “I mean. . . clinically insane. Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me what the diagnosis is. But you’re. . . nuts. There’s something about you so. . . off, I don’t know what else to call it.”

“You mean, like some Fatal Attraction thing?”

“No. I mean something like you having AIDS and wanting to spread it around before your time is up.”

“What?! You’re the one who’s crazy. I never even heard—”

“—of what? Spare me. There’s been dozens of guys charged with murder for doing exactly that, and you know it. Or you’re out of touch.”

“Yes,” she almost snarled, “dozens of men. But you can’t name one woman who—”

“Sure I can. You’re talking percentages, that’s all. Like saying most child molesters are men. Or that most serial killers are. But not all, right? It’s bound to happen. A woman with your body. . . you could probably kill a few hundred while you still looked good. And who knows how many they’d spread it to. If—”

“Stop! I do not have AIDS. Come on,” she said, standing up. “I know a clinic, a private one on East Eleventh. We’ll go together. You and me. Right now. Tell them we’re going to be married, and we want to exchange results, okay? You get mine, I get yours. You don’t have to give your name, just a code number. Fair enough?”

“Sit down,” I told her. “It was an example, that’s all. I didn’t say I smelled AIDS on you. I just said it was some kind of major-league craziness. . . and I gave you an example of that, okay?”

“I don’t have AIDS.”

“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.

“Why 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.

“This 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.

The 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.

The screen switched colors. I knew what was coming, so I called out Xyla’s name.

>>Queensboro Bridge: (1) You present? (2) Caliber?<<

I said some words to Xyla and she made them appear on the screen:

(1) yes (2).223 Remington

She hit the keys, and my message disappeared. Somewhere in cyber-space, I had just told a killer I was with Wesley when he’d done one of his hits. And proved it.