Suspicion

59

He waited until Abby had gone to bed that night.

In the old days, not so long ago, that meant tucking her in and reading to her and talking and eventually turning out the light. Often he’d fall asleep before she did and later stumble out of her bedroom in a stupor. Now it meant she closed the bedroom door and put on her headphones and listened to music and “chatted” with friends on Facebook.

Danny kept his voice low, just in case Abby wasn’t wearing her headphones and had her ear against the wall.

“Baby, something happened this afternoon,” he began. “But it began a while ago.”

He started with Galvin’s loan and the meeting with the DEA. He told her how he’d planted a bug in the Boston College medal and how it was somehow discovered. He told her about Esteban’s mutilated body. About how he furtively downloaded Galvin’s BlackBerry at the Plympton Club. And finally about the nightmarish event earlier in the day. Had it been only a matter of hours since they’d discovered the mutilated body of the bodyguard? It felt like days.

Mostly, she listened. After the first few minutes, she stopped interrupting him with questions. Her mouth came open a few times, an understandable response to the shock. She gasped at his descriptions of what had happened to the two driver/bodyguards.

When he finished, she was silent for a long time.

Her eyes were filled with tears, her jaw tight.

“So basically you decided to secretly cooperate with the DEA against a Mexican drug cartel,” she said. “And put your life in harm’s way. And your daughter’s. And mine, too.” He was surprised by her tone, flat and cold and bitter.

“That’s not how it happened, Lucy. I told you.”

His cell phone made the plinking sound of a secure text message. He ignored it. He knew what it was: They wanted his photos of whoever Galvin had met on the Aspen mountainside. Well, they could wait.

She sat up in bed very straight. “No, that’s exactly how it happened. You didn’t tell me in the beginning because you knew what I’d say. You knew how I’d react.”

He shook his head. “Come on.” But he knew she was probably right.

“Because keeping me in the dark would keep the bad guys away. Like that? Is that what you thought? You know, we shrinks call that magical thinking.”

“Lucy.”

“Because you didn’t want to have this very argument?”

“I wanted to keep you safe. You and Abby both.”

She shook her head slowly.

She was wearing an extra-extra-large T-shirt that said KEEP CALM AND CARY GRANT on the front. A spoof of an old British wartime poster you now saw parodied everywhere: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. A silhouette of Cary Grant in North by Northwest, running from a crop duster. Danny had forgotten whether he’d given it to her. She loved old Hitchcock movies. She insisted they didn’t make movie stars like Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy or Gregory Peck anymore.

“I figured, the less you or Abby was involved, the better. Safer to keep you out of the loop.”

“So one day Tom Galvin would get arrested and-what, the Mexicans would leave us all alone and say, ‘Rats, I guess we’re just going to have to file an appeal’? And ‘Oh, that guy who’s responsible for us losing billions of dollars, that guy who funneled the information to the DEA, we’ll just leave him alone, because them’s the breaks of the justice system’? Like that?”

“There’s no need to raise your voice.”

She swung her feet out from under the covers and onto the floor. “What the hell were you thinking? That they’d go away quietly? Because they always do that, right? Just walk away and throw up their hands. These people who behead their enemies and butcher them, and… and you just thought you were going to work against these cold-blooded killers and they’d leave you and your daughter alone?”

He made a palms-down gesture, patting the air, trying to calm her, get her to keep her voice down. “You don’t really think I’d deliberately do anything that might cause harm to you or Abby, do you?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “So when you told her she couldn’t go over to the Galvins, and I asked you if there was something about them you didn’t like, and you said no…?”

“Yes. That was a lie.”

“And the reason you didn’t want her being driven around by Galvin’s chauffeur-when you said you were just uncomfortable-”

“That was also a lie.”

“The old friend who wanted publishing advice, the Jay Gould letters at Wellesley-”

“I lied to you over and over again. I did. I’m deeply, deeply ashamed of it. But everything I did was about protecting you and Abby. Lucy, come on, keep it down, Abby can hear.”

“And all because you can’t deal with confrontation.” Her cheeks burned deep red. “Well, that’s something I really can’t fix. This is such a disappointment, really.”

He no longer recognized her. The mask of anger had lifted away, and what remained was terrifyingly unfamiliar. A woman who looked at him like he was a stranger. Her eyes stared, her expression oddly neutral, impassive.

“You didn’t want to have this fight, so you decided you knew best.”

“I didn’t-” He faltered. He didn’t know what to say, because he knew she was right.

She fell silent, and so did he. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say.

He got up from the bed. He saw tears in her eyes. She spoke so softly he could barely hear. “You take care of that girl, and tell her I love her so much and I’ll say good-bye to her another time. Right now I can’t.”

“Lucy,” he said.

But she’d closed the bedroom door behind her.

He lay awake for what seemed like hours.

He wept.

At four in the morning, when the sky was dead black, and daybreak seemed impossibly far off, he had an idea.

He selected ChatSecure on his iPhone and texted the DEA agents: Need to meet ASAP.

“It really sucks that I have to go to school today,” Abby said the next morning. “Instead of being in Aspen.”

“I know. Life’s tough.”

She seemed to relent a bit. “I know. Jenna calls it a first-world problem. Lucy left already?”

“She had to leave early.”

A beat. “You guys were fighting last night.”

“We were talking. Did we wake you up?”

She shook her head, then shrugged.

His iPhone, in his pants pocket, vibrated and bleated the distinctive tritone of a secure text message.

“Is that yours?”

He nodded, slipped it out of his pocket. Entered his passcode. The message read: Busy on another case. Can’t meet until tonight or tomorrow.

“That from Lucy?”

“It’s business. Boring.”

“You changed the text alert sound? It sounds different.”

“I don’t know. You want some coffee?”

She gave him a quick look of surprise. “Yes, please.” She looked at him and smiled.

“Just this once,” Danny added. He rose and got down a Winnie-the-Pooh mug from the cabinet and filled it three-quarters of the way with coffee. “You can add your own milk and sugar.”

“Okay.” She poured some Lactaid milk until it was as light as coffee ice cream. She stirred in three teaspoons of sugar. “You sure you guys weren’t fighting?”

“We’re fine,” Danny said. He’d tell her when it felt less raw. “Get a move on. You don’t want to be late.”

“Let’s go,” Danny called out fifteen minutes later.

He jangled his car keys. Abby was still in the bathroom, doing whatever teenage girls do in the morning that takes them so long.

“Boogie, move your butt.”

The bathroom door opened. Abby’s face was different. It was twisted in what at first looked like intense curiosity, but something about her expression made Danny look twice. Anger?

“Where’s her toothbrush?” she said.

“What are you talking-?”

“Lucy. Lucy’s toothbrush. Her makeup. It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

Danny couldn’t think of what to say beyond, “It is?”

“You broke up.” An accusation.

Danny sighed. “Can we not get into this right now? You’re going to be late for school.”

“You lied to me!”

“It’s not your business.”

“Not my business? All the times you’ve told me to treat her like a member of the family? ‘She loves you, Abby. She’s part of our family, you should treat her like that.’ And now you’re freaking lying to me?”

“Abby. Boogie. We’ll talk later. Not now.”

“No!” Abby threw something at him, something small and hard. A hairbrush. It missed him by a couple of feet.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Abby, what the hell are you doing?”

“Sure, why not lie to me the same way you lied about Mom.”

“Huh?”

“You said she had an infection. An infection.” She was crying now, her face red and distorted.

“Abby-”

“You made me go to camp!”

“You wanted to go to camp. Mommy wanted you to go to camp.”

“I was kayaking and swimming when Mommy was dying. Oh my God.” Her voice had gotten high and tiny and constricted.

“Baby,” he said. He went to hug her and she pushed him away. He went numb.

Tears dripped from Abby’s cheeks. Her nose was running. It tore Danny apart to see her like this. “Like it wasn’t my business Mom had breast cancer. Like I couldn’t hear the truth.”

Crying now, too, Danny said, “Abby, sweetie, no. That wasn’t it at all. Mommy wanted you to be happy for as long as possible.”

She said something, but Danny couldn’t make out the words. All he heard was “happy?”

“Honey,” he said. “I lied to you because Mommy asked me to.”

And then it was out.

Pass the buck right back to your dead wife, he thought. Blame her. She’s not around to defend herself.

Did it make any difference that it was true?

This time when Danny tried to hug her, Abby didn’t fight him. She didn’t hug back, not really, but she allowed herself to be hugged for a long time. His shirt was hot and damp from his daughter’s tears.

Ten minutes later he called Jay Poskanzer, the criminal defense attorney.

“Jay,” he said, “I need a little help.”

“On what?”

“It’s about the DEA guys I’ve been dealing with.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah. I want out.”

60

The terror Danny had felt in Aspen at the side of the mountain had scarcely lessened its grip on him.

Whatever the reason behind that nightmarish mutilation, it might as well have been done for his sake alone. It was a warning, that’s what it was. A glimpse of his future.

But it was Abby’s tears that had finally decided it for him: He had to get out. The DEA agents would not let up until he met an equally grisly end. To them it made no difference; he’d be a casualty of a long and brutal war.

He could predict what they’d say. No turning back now. Toothpaste’s out of the tube. Hang in there; keep the faith. We’ll take care of you.

They’d say whatever it took, make whatever threats they could, to keep him reporting on Tom Galvin, trying to incriminate him. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it anymore. He couldn’t be responsible for putting the guy in prison. Or getting him murdered, more likely.

A loving father of three kids who’d never done him any harm, who’d tried to bail him out, who was himself trapped like Danny was trapped. Lucy was right. He’d made a terrible mistake.

And now he had to undo it.

Force the DEA to back off. However he had to do it.

So he sat in front of Jay Poskanzer’s desk and tested out the solution he’d finally come up with.

Poskanzer toyed with a miniature baseball bat, a Red Sox souvenir. He leaned back in his expensive-looking office chair. “What do you mean, you want out?”

“I want to stop cooperating with them.”

Poskanzer’s eyes narrowed. His wire-framed glasses were clouded, as if begrimed by fingerprints. His frizzy reddish-gray curls came to a point on either temple like ram’s horns. “You signed an agreement. It’s a binding legal document.”

“Yeah, well, I want to get out of it. I want it nullified. I want to stop cooperating with the DEA. Simple as that.”

The sun shone through one of the plate-glass walls of his office, flooding the place with light, glinting off the glass-topped desk. “Dude. Not so simple.”

“If it were simple, I wouldn’t need to hire you.”

“Are we on the clock?”

“I’ll let you know in a couple of minutes.”

Poskanzer shrugged. “On what grounds do you want to get out of the agreement?”

“Professional misconduct.”

He chuckled nervously. “What does that mean?”

“Threatening to leak to the Sinaloa cartel that I’m cooperating with them.”

“They wouldn’t-You don’t actually believe they’d do that, do you?”

He nodded. “Sure. It wouldn’t surprise me. I take them at their word.”

Of course, all they had to do was take a deposition and put him on the witness stand and the cartel would put out a hit on him. It was a wholly unnecessary threat. But they’d made it.

“You got proof? An e-mail, maybe?”

He shook his head.

“Voice mail? A note? Anything?”

He shook his head some more.

“What are their names, again?”

Danny told him. Poskanzer wrote them down. “So it’s your word against two federal agents’.”

“Not if we get them on tape.”

“Wait a second.” Poskanzer held up his hand like a traffic cop. “You’re not talking about recording it yourself, I hope.”

“Why not?”

“It’s illegal, for one thing? In Massachusetts, both parties have to consent.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think they’re going to consent.”

“Right. And I can’t counsel you to break the law. That’s against the Massachusetts lawyers’ code.”

“Well, I didn’t ask your counsel on that, did I?” he said with a smile. “We’re talking about a massive, multibillion-dollar investigation into the Sinaloa cartel. So I broke the law by making an illegal recording. That’ll be a slap on the hand. A goddamned speeding ticket.”

Poskanzer shrugged. “I… I didn’t agree to this.”

“Got it. So noted. Now, let’s say I get proof. Then where do I go with it?”

“You take it to the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Hold on.” He swiveled his chair and batted out something on his keyboard. “Okay, here’s their website, okay… it says… here we go: Jurisdiction… yada yada ya… investigate allegations of misconduct by law enforcement personnel. Yep, these are the folks you want.”

“And they’d really go after a couple of DEA agents? Not just cover it up?”

Poskanzer exhaled a long sigh of what sounded like frustration. “Here’s the deal. This is what they do, investigating official misconduct. But they won’t open an investigation unless they think they can win it. Which brings us back to proof. You don’t have any.”

“Not yet,” Danny said, and he stood up. “But I will.”

He’d gotten three secure texts from the DEA agents demanding to meet. They wanted the photos, the ones he’d failed to get in Aspen. He’d avoided their texts.

But he was ready to see them now.

61

In front of the Hancock Tower, Danny grabbed a cab to Government Center.

He still hadn’t answered the DEA agents’ text messages. He wanted to surprise them. Catch them off guard. Provoke them into making threats again, if need be. Anything.

The afternoon sun was melting the snowdrifts. Water seemed to be dripping everywhere. A truck plowed through an immense gray puddle on Cambridge Street in front of One Center Plaza, splashing everything within ten feet, including Danny’s shoes and socks. He cursed aloud.

Standing outside the ugly façade, he took out his iPhone and selected one of the recording apps. He recorded a sample and played it back. It seemed to work fine.

Then he started it again and began the recording: “My name is Daniel Goodman,” he said. “I live at 305 Marlborough Street in Boston, Massachusetts.” He gave the date and the time. Keeping the recorder on, he slipped the phone into a front pocket. For evidentiary purposes, Poskanzer had told him, he had to make one continuous uninterrupted recording.

He took the elevator to the second floor. His cell phone rang. He saw BATTEN SCHECHTER on the caller ID. Jay Poskanzer.

He debated taking the call. Then decided against it. He’d already begun the recording by stating his name and the date and time. The iPhone was recording. He could talk to Poskanzer when he was finished with the DEA.

He found room 322 and recognized the stain on the carpet. This was definitely the place.

He turned the knob and pulled the door open and looked to the left. The receptionist, strangely, wasn’t at her desk. The L-shaped mahogany-laminate desk was still there, but that was the only piece of furniture in the reception area. The row of chairs was gone. There was an empty cardboard box on the floor. The DEA seal, which had occupied a place of prominence on the wall, was gone. So were all the Most Wanted posters.

No.

“Hello?” he called.

He advanced farther into the room, pulled open the door to the inner corridor where he’d met with the DEA men.

It was empty, too.

A snowdrift of Styrofoam peanuts across the hallway. Another empty cardboard box. The wrapper from a ream of Staples copy paper.

Nothing here. No one.

The quietly bustling office was no more. It had been disbanded, broken down like a stage set at the end of a run.

He stood there, dazed, looking around. His cell phone rang. Batten Schechter again. He picked it up.

He knew what Jay Poskanzer was going to say before he said it.

“Hey, what’s the deal?” he said. He sounded angry. “I talked to my pal at the US Attorney’s office. There’s no special agents named Slocum or Yeager on the DEA payroll. They used to work for DEA, couple of years ago. But no longer.”

62

Danny felt a coldness settle over him, icy tendrils reaching inside, freezing and palpating his guts.

If they weren’t DEA, then who were they?

Maybe they were real DEA agents using cover names. That was certainly a possibility. He’d covertly taken a picture of one of them, Slocum, and he mailed it to Jay Poskanzer and asked him to forward it to the DEA. The real DEA.

Poskanzer called back twenty minutes later. “It gets better,” he said. “These guys used to work for the DEA in Mexico, in Nuevo Laredo, and got caught up in a corruption sting. They each got fired seventeen months ago. They’re bad apples.”

“Well, they made pretty convincing DEA agents.”

“Probably because they’ve had practice. Question is, what’s their game? What are they up to? What are they doing it for?”

Danny didn’t reply. He didn’t know.

But he would find out.

His cell phone chimed: a secure text message. “Hold on,” he said. He held it away from his ear, read the message.

From AnonText007@gmail.com: 6 p.m. Home Depot parking lot, South Bay.

South Bay was a shopping center between the South End of Boston and Dorchester, just off the Southeast Expressway.

“Slocum” and “Yeager” were ready to meet.

63

Wallace Touhy’s knees hurt like hell.

When the doorbell rang, he got up from the couch and lumbered to the front door. It took him a good minute or so. He groaned. He’d planned to hold off on the knee replacement until he retired, but now he wasn’t so sure he could make it another four months. The soft knee brace didn’t do a damned thing, and the steroid injections were worthless. He gobbled Motrins like popcorn. His doc told him if he lost thirty or forty pounds, it wouldn’t hurt so bad, but he knew better. It was those four years of serious wear and tear, playing football for the Billerica Memorial High School Indians half a century ago. That was what did it. Everything else was just the cherry on the cake.

“Agent Touhy?”

The man at the door was tall and lanky and appeared to be Hispanic.

Touhy elbowed the storm door open. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Come on in. Hernandez, right?”

“Thanks for seeing me.”

“I don’t know if it’s gonna be worth your while, but okay.” He flapped a hand toward the living room. “I’d make coffee, but believe me, I’m doing you a favor not making it. Your stomach will thank me later.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly fine,” the man said. “I suspect you’ll enjoy this more than coffee anyway.”

He handed Touhy an elegant box containing a fine bottle of whiskey.

“Pappy Van Winkle, huh?” Touhy’s mouth came open.

“I hope my intel was accurate. I’m told you love bourbon.”

“I do.”

“That’s a small-batch bourbon that’s-”

“I sure as hell know Pappy Van Winkle. Just never had it before. Can’t find it around here. Awful generous of you. This is a first for me.”

“They were out of the twenty-year, but the fifteen’s supposed to be quite smooth.”

“Much obliged, Agent Hernandez.”

“David. Please.”

“All right, David. Have a seat over there. I’ll get us a couple of glasses.”

Touhy broke the seal on the bourbon bottle and glugged a couple of fingers into two highball glasses. He hobbled over to the visitor and handed him a glass. “Neat okay?”

“The only way.”

Agent Touhy looked easily a decade older than his fifty-seven years. His white hair had a yellowish tinge to it. He had a large, jowly face. His cheeks were taut and shiny and scarlet, evidence of a bad case of rosacea, though years of heavy drinking might have broken a bunch of capillaries, too.

A large flat-screen TV was on, some sort of reality show about two men fighting to survive in the Amazonian jungle.

“So,” Touhy said, sinking with a deep sigh into his favorite chair. He reached for the cable remote and hit the MUTE button. “Any reason this couldn’t wait till tomorrow?”

“I apologize for the inconvenience, Agent Touhy. I have to fly back to San Francisco tomorrow morning.”

“Right, right, you said that.” Touhy took a sip of the bourbon. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

“So glad you like it. I’m sorry I didn’t give you any advance notice.”

“Yeah, well, you really cut into my social life.” Touhy laughed rumblingly and coughed. “Smoke?” He held out a pack of Camel Lights.

“Not for me, thank you.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to go back to Wild Turkey after this.” Touhy tapped out a cigarette and put it in the corner of his mouth and picked up a red Zippo lighter from the end table. He thumbed the Zippo, lit the cigarette, took a deep crackling lungful of smoke. “Trudy never let me smoke inside the house. Now I grab my little pleasures where I can.”

“I’m sorry about your wife.”

“It was a blessing, believe me. The last couple of years were no fun. I wouldn’t wish ALS on my worst enemy.” He blew out a white plume. “So you work out of S.F.”

His visitor nodded.

“How’d you like Mexico City?”

His visitor smiled. “You’ve done your homework. Mexico City was no walk in the park.”

“It’s where the action is. At least you speak the language. My Spanish is crap.”

His visitor shrugged, took a tiny sip from the highball glass.

“I don’t know how much I can tell you,” Touhy said. “I just keep the source files in my office.”

“You’re too modest. You’re the division security officer. You keep the files on the confidential sources updated.”

“There’s barely any updating to do. Which CS are you interested in?”

The visitor pulled a little spiral-bound notebook from his jacket pocket and consulted it as if he couldn’t remember. “SCC-13-0011.”

“That’s one of ours, all right. Number eleven, did you say?”

“That’s right.”

“What kind of background are you looking for?”

“Any criminal background, for example. Anything that might disqualify him. We want to send a team out here to do a joint debriefing of the CS, but I’ll be honest, my ASAC thinks it’s a waste of resources.”

Touhy took a large swallow of bourbon. “I don’t know what I can tell you that might make a difference.”

“Well, I’m not going to ask his name, of course, but maybe you could give me a rough sort of sketch of the man. Some details. What kind of job he has, where he lives, his standing in the community, all that.”

Touhy filled his lungs again with smoke and narrowed his eyes. Then he exhaled slowly, a narrow stalactite of smoke escaping through his pursed lips. “How’s Renny Haberman doing these days? Still a practical joker?”

“He’s great. Yes, still the office cutup.”

“Will you give him my best? We did basic agent training together.”

“I most certainly will.”

“Huh. Renny Haberman is my orthopedic surgeon. He’s not in the DEA.”

A long, long silence.

“Agent Touhy,” Dr. Mendoza said sadly. “I really wish you hadn’t tried to be clever.”

64

The old man had put up quite a fight, lunging toward the console by the front door, where he kept his DEA-issued.40-caliber Glock 23.

But age hadn’t been kind to him. His knees were fragile as glass, and the bourbon had slowed his reflexes.

Dr. Mendoza subdued him well before he got anywhere near the Glock.

Now the man struggled on the wall-to-wall carpeting near the TV. Flex-cuffs bound his wrists and ankles, duct tape over his mouth. A nasty purplish welt appeared on the supraorbital ridge where Dr. Mendoza had struck him with the leather Denver sap.

In the struggle, Dr. Mendoza’s hairpiece had come loose, but he no longer needed to look like a DEA agent named Hernandez in the San Francisco field division.

It was always preferable to extract information by means of social engineering. He never enjoyed the rougher methods and considered having to resort to them an admission of failure.

But when it was necessary, he was good at it.

He’d dragged the DEA agent’s body, with great difficulty, into the nearest bedroom. It was a guest room that appeared to get little or no use. The only furniture in the small room was a queen-size bed covered in a dark blue polyester-blend spread, two small unmatched end tables, and a bureau. The floor was covered in turquoise wall-to-wall carpeting. A fine layer of dust coated the furniture. Agent Touhy was a widower and lived alone, probably had no housekeeper. Maybe he did a quick run-through with a vacuum cleaner every couple of weeks.

Agent Touhy bucked and struggled, which only made it harder to get him onto the bed. Not impossible, though: Dr. Mendoza was strong. By struggling, Agent Touhy made it necessary for Dr. Mendoza to handle him roughly. He had to pull at the DEA man’s arms, wrench him this way and that. This caused pain.

The pain was nothing compared to what he was about to experience, though, if he did not cooperate.

Once he got Touhy onto the bed, he flipped him over with one hard tug. Facedown, Touhy bucked some more and then gave up. He tried to shout through the duct-tape gag, but the noise was nothing more than stifled, strangled nonsense. He was not going to be cooperative, which was too bad.

Touhy fought some more and tried to turn over, but Mendoza held him in place with one knee. Hog-tied with flex-cuffs on his ankles and wrists, the agent was not difficult to maneuver.

“Agent Touhy, you can make this all go very easily for yourself, simply by telling me the real name of confidential source number SCC-13-0011. That’s all I require. Once you give me the name, there’s no point in causing you any harm. I will leave you here, unhurt, until I’ve finished my work. I think you’ll agree this is the preferred resolution. Just a name. That’s all I ask.”

Dr. Mendoza waited for some signal of agreement. A nodding of the head, something. But Touhy simply breathed heavily through his nostrils, his face down on the coverlet. Dr. Mendoza decided to give the man a chance to agree and make things easier. He braced the back of the man’s neck with one hand and carefully pulled off one end of the duct tape.

Agent Touhy blurted out an obscenity.

Dr. Mendoza smiled. This was nothing more than the powerless tantrum of an infant. “You know the identity of all active confidential sources in the Boston division. Number eleven was just queried yesterday by the San Francisco office. The name is quite fresh in your mind.”

“You’re not Hernandez, you slimy little mother-”

Dr. Mendoza, latex gloves on each hand, replaced the flap of duct tape over Agent Touhy’s mouth. He disliked obscenity and had no use for personal slurs in any case.

From his coat pocket he withdrew a small rectangular nylon case. He unzipped it and opened it flat on the side table. He opened a sterile cotton gauze pad and squeezed a few drops of Betadine onto it. Force of habit: Even when he did his work for the cartel, he always maintained a sterile surgical field. He painted an orange oval on the back of Touhy’s neck.

The DEA agent struggled even harder, torquing his body from side to side. He knew something bad was coming; he knew many of the techniques employed by the sicarios for the Sinaloa cartel. Dismemberment, say, or decapitation.

But Dr. Mendoza didn’t use chain saws. His methods were more sophisticated and far more effective. And far less bloody.

Agent Touhy continued to struggle violently. He was not going to make this easy. Unfortunate for him, Mendoza thought. But so be it. Mendoza was prepared for all eventualities. He selected a single-dose vial of Amidate, twenty milligrams of etomidate. He carefully pointed the hypodermic needle at the carotid artery on the left side of Touhy’s neck. Behind his duct-tape gag, Touhy roared, but the etomidate worked rapidly. In less than a minute, Touhy lay flat on the bed, calm and compliant.

Now Dr. Mendoza was able to do his work with his accustomed fastidiousness. He untied the agent and then removed his blue button-down shirt, unbuttoning the placket carefully. Now the man’s torso was exposed.

Two more injections, the first a delicate job. He used a Whitacre needle, three and a half inches long, and injected it at the C4 level of Touhy’s cervical spine, about three centimeters deep at the back of his neck. There was a small yet distinct pop as the needle point penetrated the dura.

Then he injected the fluid, a local nerve block called ropivacaine.

He stood up, returned the syringes to his zippered travel case, and selected a conventional hypodermic. This one could be injected nearly anywhere. He chose the same carotid artery where he’d injected the etomidate. The damage had already been done. This hypodermic contained naloxone, an opioid inverse agonist. Naloxone was sometimes used to counteract heroin or morphine overdose. Inject it in the bloodstream of someone floating on a heroin high and it would bring him crashing down, make him scream in pain. In a normal person it heightens the sensation of pain.

It would put Agent Touhy into a nightmare from which he could not awaken.

Dr. Mendoza rolled the agent over onto his back. His chest was pale and doughy. Wispy gray hairs garlanded his nipples. His eyes fluttered and then opened as the drug began to take effect. Dr. Mendoza peeled the duct tape back so the man could talk.

“What the hell are you-I can’t-I can’t-”

“You can’t move,” Dr. Mendoza said gently. “You are paralyzed.”

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”

“The pain you are about to experience will be unlike anything you’ve ever felt before. Normally, if you were to drop a brick on your foot, say, or accidentally hit your thumb with a hammer, you’d feel intense pain, but then the pain would subside. Your body secretes endorphins that dull the pain and make it bearable. But the drug that is now in your system blocks those endorphins. You will feel pain with an intensity that human beings are simply not meant to experience.”

He took a number 11 disposable scalpel from the nylon travel case, pushed its blade through the sealed foil pouch, and without hesitation flicked it precisely down the DEA man’s areola and nipple, splitting the nipple cleanly in half. Bright red blood wept from the wound.

Agent Touhy bellowed, his eyes wide, his mouth contorted.

Dr. Mendoza replaced the tape over his mouth. It flapped open, allowing Touhy to emit a full, ear-rending scream of pain. The adhesive had disintegrated, so Dr. Mendoza ripped off another length of the silvery tape and placed it over the agent’s mouth.

The screaming did not stop, but now at least it was muted.

Dr. Mendoza put his index finger to his mouth and made a shushing sound. “You see, the pain does not subside, does it? Sadly, it will continue as long as the naloxone courses through your blood vessels.”

The duct tape wrinkled and belled but stayed affixed.

“If I do nothing, the pain will begin to diminish within five minutes. It will be a very long five minutes, but it will come to an end. If, however, I inject another bolus of naloxone, you will experience excruciating pain. Before long, either your heart will give out or you will simply lose your mind.”

Agent Touhy’s face was purplish red and his eyes bulged. He snorted in a lungful of air.

“Agent Touhy, you have the ability to make the pain go away. All I want is one name. Right now it doesn’t seem a frightfully high price to pay, does it?”

Agent Touhy held out less than one minute more.

65

Danny had no choice. He had to meet them.

If he didn’t show up, they’d become suspicious. He had to keep things as normal-seeming as he could.

But what if this were a setup?

And if they knew he’d learned the truth?

If they’d cloned his iPhone and could monitor every call he made or received, they’d have listened to his conversations with his lawyer.

If they had, then this meet was going to be an execution.

Or maybe he was just being paranoid. They had to take physical possession of the iPhone in order to clone it, right? Then maybe they thought nothing had changed. That Danny still believed they worked for the DEA.

But how was this different from playing Russian roulette, spinning a revolver’s chamber and pulling the trigger?

Was there a round in the chamber, or not?

He looked at his watch. In about half an hour he was supposed to pick Abby up from school and take her home. But if “Slocum” and “Yeager” knew he knew, then Abby wasn’t safe. Anywhere, really, but especially not at his apartment.

He needed to talk to Tom Galvin on a phone he could trust.

He bought a ten-dollar Samsung TracFone and spent another twenty bucks on a card offering sixty minutes of call time.

It was a truly craptastic phone. You had to put in a battery and slide in the metallic-look plastic back panel, then hook up the power cord to charge it. The instructions were half in English, half in Spanish. On his laptop he went to the TracFone website and activated the phone. He put in a fake name-Jay Gould, because why not? And a fake e-mail address, and the serial number of the phone from the brochure in the phone’s box. He scratched the silvery stuff off the back of the phone card to reveal the airtime PIN, and he entered that, too. Eventually, he got the phone to work, even though the website kept chiding him in red type that the phone number wasn’t verified. That didn’t seem to make any difference; the phone worked anyway. He wondered how a strung-out meth head or cokehead was able to set up burner phones and make it through the complicated registration process. Maybe they didn’t bother, either. Maybe you didn’t have to.

But whatever: He now had a disposable cell phone that wasn’t cloned or traceable.

He couldn’t call Galvin’s BlackBerry-that was out-and he wasn’t sure about Galvin’s office line. Maybe that was safe, maybe not. He had Celina’s cell phone number. The DEA guys probably did not.

When she first answered, she sounded guarded, not recognizing the incoming number. Then, when she recognized Danny’s voice, her voice warmed a bit.

“I was wondering whether Abby could go home with Jenna today. I’m going to be out for the afternoon.”

“I’m sure that would be fine with Jenna.”

“Is your driver picking Jenna up?”

She was silent for several seconds. Then: “Tom changed drivers.”

“Okay.” Meaning what, exactly? Another dead chauffeur/bodyguard? The only job with less security was managing the Red Sox.

“He replaced Diego with someone he hired himself.”

Good. He’d followed Danny’s suggestion.

“One more thing. Did my number come up on your caller ID, the number of the phone I’m calling from?”

“I-let me-yes, but I don’t recognize-this isn’t your normal number.”

“Is Tom there?”

“He’s gone into his office.”

“Okay. Do me a favor. Call Tom and give him this number. But don’t call him on his BlackBerry or his office phone. Give this number to someone else to give to him.”

“What-?” she began, but then, understanding that everything had changed and that bad things were happening, she said, “All right.”

On his iPhone he texted Abby and told her that the Galvins would pick her up and that she should go to their house after school. He didn’t offer an explanation. Abby’s text came back quickly: OK!

No argument there.

A few minutes later, the disposable Samsung trilled.

“Danny?” It was Galvin. A number Danny didn’t recognize. “Everything okay?”

“Use this number from now on.”

“Understood. Same with this one.”

“I asked Abby to go home with Jenna today.”

“Right, Lina told me. Did something happen?”

“Let’s talk later. Is your house safe?”

Galvin sighed loudly. “As we agreed. I’ve hired private security.”

“Just outside the house?”

“The perimeter as well. The entire property. What happened?”

“Later,” Danny said, and he disconnected the call.

66

He got to the South Bay Center twenty minutes early. The giant parking lot swarmed with cars pulling in and out and circling and jousting for spaces. It was rush hour, and this was a shopping center of big, busy chain stores: Bed Bath & Beyond, T.J.Maxx, OfficeMax, Old Navy, Marshalls, Target, Best Buy, Stop & Shop. Home Depot. The good old Home Despot. An Applebee’s and an Olive Garden. Pretty much Danny’s idea of hell. That and shopping at Whole Foods late on Sunday afternoon.

He found a spot a few traffic aisles away from Home Depot, closer to Old Navy, fifteen rows back. He sat in his car and awaited further instructions: a call or a text. They’d said only the Home Depot parking lot. But it was a big parking lot and he had no idea whether they’d be on foot or in some vehicle.

Under the front seat he’d stashed the Beretta Galvin had given him.

In his pocket, his iPhone.

He took a few deep breaths. Tried to steady his nerves. He’d asked for this meeting before he’d discovered the truth about them. Or if not the truth, at least he’d discovered the lie about them: that they weren’t working for the DEA.

But who were they, and what were they after?

The best theory was that they were ex-DEA agents running some sort of long con. They’d been fired in Mexico on grounds of corruption. Then maybe they’d tried to cash in. They’d run across the name of a cartel money man while working for the DEA, but instead of reeling Tom Galvin in, maybe they’d decided to scam him.

Or maybe they were working for another cartel.

Whatever they might be up to, there was only one way to shut them down: Bring the FBI down on them.

Jay Poskanzer knew people at a high enough level to make this happen. But he needed something tangible, he’d said. “Get me something on them we can give the FBI,” Poskanzer said. “A place. A location where these two grifters can be confronted and questioned and apprehended by FBI. Once we’ve got something, we hand it over to the FBI and let them go to work.”

He knew what he was about to do was risky. Maybe extremely so. He tried to relax, calm himself.

What he was about to do required thinking and acting on a whole new level.

He checked his phone for text messages, just in case he hadn’t heard the secure-text alert. Nothing. He switched off the ringer and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

He waited.

Then it came, that unusual, electronic plinking sound of ChatSecure. Rear lot, row 5 white van, the message read.

At the back of the parking lot, at the end of an aisle that ran perpendicular to Home Depot, he spotted a white van labeled INTERSTATE FOOD & BEVERAGE. Sitting behind the wheel was Slocum, the wiry rat-faced one with the shoe-polish-black hair. He glanced at Danny briefly, scowled, and glanced away. Danny heard a door open, and Yeager, the bald squat one, came around the hood of the van.

He beckoned Danny to follow him, then went to the rear and opened the swing-out doors. Danny hopped up inside. Cargo racks lined the walls of the interior. Gray powder-coated steel modular shelves. Apart from a few toolboxes and an extension cord, most of the shelves were empty. It smelled of machine oil and old cigarettes.

“All right,” Yeager said, “just stand still a moment.”

He took some oblong black object from a shelf, the size of an old-model cell phone, switched it on, pulled out a telescoping antenna, and began waving the thing up and down against Danny’s sides. It emitted a tinny squeal like a metal detector, its high-pitched tone swooping low to high, soft to loud.

This he hadn’t expected. Something had made them suspicious of him. Almost as if they knew, somehow, what he was up to. But that wasn’t possible, was it?

“What’s this about?” Danny said.

Yeager ignored the question, tapped the outside of Danny’s left front pants pocket.

“That a cell phone?”

Danny felt his insides seize. He shrugged with feigned casualness. “Good guess.”

Yeager lay his hand out flat. As in: Hand it over.

But the iPhone had been set to record, a big fat red RECORD button on the home screen. As soon as Yeager saw it, Danny would be busted.

There was nothing to do but give it to Yeager. Danny pulled the phone out and placed it, with an impatient sigh, facedown on Yeager’s beefy palm. When Yeager flipped it over, Danny’s heart clanged.

The screen had gone dark.

Without another thought, Yeager set it on a shelf next to a black plastic DeWalt drill case and resumed running the bug detector along Danny’s lower back, over the seat of his pants, down to his shoes, back up to his wristwatch. He nodded. There was nothing else.

“You forget something?” he said.

Danny just blinked.

“The pictures from Aspen. Where the hell are they?”

Danny shook his head. “I got nothing for you.”

Yeager looked momentarily surprised, but his expression quickly turned into grim amusement. “That’s a real shame,” he said, beginning to massage the fist of his right hand.

“That’s why I wanted to talk. They grabbed the camera.”

“They? Who?”

“How do I know? Whoever Galvin’s working with. His security guy.”

“You didn’t make a backup?”

“Did you not hear me? They took my camera. There wasn’t anything to back up. I didn’t have a chance. They caught me trying to take pictures on the mountain at Aspen.”

“What do you mean, ‘caught’ you?”

“Someone knocked me out. Literally, like”-Danny pantomimed a sap clocking his own head-“bam.”

“And you couldn’t tell us this via e-mail?”

“I got caught, you get it? That means Galvin’s onto me. They’re onto me.”

Yeager stopped rubbing his knuckles. “How’d you play it?”

“When I came to? Like I was just skiing.”

“And the camera?”

“No one said anything one way or another. It was just gone. I assume they took it.”

Yeager shook his head. “With no questions, like why did you have a camera with you when you were skiing?”

Danny shook his head. “Right. No questions, nothing.”

“And you’re sure there weren’t any pictures on the camera?”

“Like I told you.”

“Then maybe you were just Wildlife Cameraman, taking artsy pictures of the snow and the trees. Well, we’re just going to have to figure out another way for you to get what we need-”

“Actually,” Danny said, cutting him off, “no.”

Yeager laughed. “No?” He cast a glance at Slocum, in the driver’s seat way up front. “You believe this guy? ‘No’?”

“This turns out to be a dangerous job, and the rules are changing. Now I’m going to require hazard pay.”

Yeager had opened his mouth to speak, maybe to scoff, but he stopped midsyllable. “You’re a funny guy.”

Danny leaned back against the wall of the van. “No joke. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do, and the smart thing for me to do is to walk away. But I’m willing to try again. If I get compensated for my efforts.”

“The DEA doesn’t pay informants.”

Danny smiled. “Come on, Glenn, you think I don’t do research? You underestimate me. DEA pays, and sometimes you pay really well. I read about a Guatemalan drug dealer the US government paid nine million bucks as a source. But you’re in luck this morning. I’m willing to offer you a deal. A special low low price.”

“In your dreams.”

“Thing is, I have something you want pretty desperately. And I’m willing to get it for you. On my terms.”

“Your… terms?” Yeager was looking at him differently. Was it a newfound respect?

“An authorized payment. In writing. A million dollars in cash.”

Yeager burst out laughing, a strange, hollow sound that rumbled from deep in his chest.

“I’m willing to accept payment in four installments,” Danny said. “The first two hundred fifty thousand dollars is due no later than ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” He paused to let it sink in. Yeager didn’t reply. Stunned silence, perhaps. “Now, why don’t we discuss what you want from me.”

Yeager shook his head slowly. He gave a thin smile. “I don’t think you understand,” he said. “You’re not in a position to negotiate. You’re out there all by yourself at the end of a limb, and you’re sawing away at it. Not smart, Danny. Not smart at all.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

“Well,” Danny said, “you and your partner have a decision to make. You know how to reach me.” He turned around and yanked open the van’s rear doors and hopped out.

Leaving his iPhone behind.

Not by accident.

67

Danny sat in a groovy café on Newbury Street called Graffiti. The walls were lined with paintings for sale, done by students at the Museum of Fine Arts school. The ceiling was pressed tin, the floor was tiny white hex tiles, and the coffee was “single-source.” And expensive. A cappuccino cost six bucks. The baristas were clean-cut, with neatly trimmed beards, wearing white button-down shirts.

No one at a table seemed dislodgeable, so Danny ordered a six-dollar cappuccino and sat at a banquette, placing his laptop on one of the shellacked tree stumps they provided for the tableless to set down their cups and plates.

He signed into their Wi-Fi. No password required. He had to assume the phony DEA agents had found a way to tap into his Internet at home.

He went to iCloud.com, Apple’s cloud storage and computing service, and entered his Apple ID. There he found a green radar-screen-looking icon for an application called Find My iPhone. It showed his iPhone. Up came a big Google map of Boston, centered on the Back Bay, where he was. Then the map swooped toward the western suburbs, and a tiny green pinhead appeared on an orange road marked I-90, the Massachusetts Turnpike.

The green pinhead was slowly moving westward along the turnpike.

He was tracking his own iPhone, and with it, the bogus DEA guys, Yeager and Slocum. The idea had come to him while he was standing inside the van. His iPhone was more useful to him as a tracking device than a tape recorder.

Maybe Yeager would realize Danny had left his iPhone behind. In fact, he probably would. But he’d assume Danny had forgotten it in the heat of the moment.

Would he and Slocum toss it? Not likely. They’d want to mine whatever intelligence from it they could-call logs, text messages, phone numbers. Not that they’d find much of use; Danny had deleted quite a bit.

Or maybe they wouldn’t even notice he’d left it. He’d turned off the ringer and the vibrate mode.

Now the green glowing pinhead had turned off 90 and was headed north on Route 128.

A couple of sips of bitter cappuccino later, the pinhead had turned off onto Third Avenue in the town of Waltham, heading south.

Where they were going, and why, he hadn’t a clue.

A few minutes later, the green glowing pinhead had stopped moving.

He clicked the + button on the map to move in closer. Now he was in Google’s Street View. The green dot was in a parking lot behind a building that was marked AMBASSADOR SUITES.

He Googled “Ambassador Suites” and “Waltham” and found a website for an extended-stay hotel for businessmen.

Residentially inspired suites. One-week minimum occupancy. Fully furnished mini-kitchen, light housekeeping.

The temporary home for two ex-DEA agents.

Time to pay them an unannounced visit.

68

Half an hour later, Danny pulled into the parking lot of a generic-looking redbrick three-story motel-like structure.

The Ambassador Suites Extended Stay Hotel of Waltham.

No white van in sight.

He parked and switched off the engine. In front of the hotel was a portcullis over a concrete T that led to the main entrance. The grand entrance. It was a dismal, antiseptic-looking place. It pulsed with loneliness and desperation and transience. Most of the guests here, he figured, were midlevel business executives from places like Oracle or Raytheon or Biogen Idec who’d just “relocated” to the Boston area and were searching for housing. Or maybe visiting “teams” from Google or Microsoft or Genzyme here on some short-term project for a couple of lonely weeks. Skilled construction engineers working on a job, here for a month or two, away from home.

But what about a couple of ex-DEA agents running some sort of scam? Were they here?

A gray Mini Cooper came around the side of the hotel and pulled out into the street. And he realized there was more parking behind the hotel. He started up the car again and moved around to the back. Two rows of parked cars, broken in the middle by the rear entrance to the hotel and a lane perpendicular to the cars that led to a street. Directly across the street from the hotel was a big concrete and steel parking garage, almost a block long.

In the back row of cars on the left, nestled among the rented-looking economy sedans, was a white panel van with INTERSTATE FOOD & BEVERAGE on the side.

They were staying here, at this hotel, and they were probably in their room. This wasn’t an area where anyone walked anywhere. There were no sidewalks, and the distances were too great. If they’d gone out, they’d have taken the car.

They were here.

He parked, slung his laptop bag over one shoulder, and walked under the portico into the main entrance. The lobby was small and dimly lit and smelled of burnt coffee and fast food. The reception desk was small, with a marble-topped counter. Fluorescent light flickered. No one seemed to be behind the counter.

There was a bell, the kind you hit to make it go ding. No one, not even Pavlov’s dogs, likes being summoned by a bell. He called out, “Hello?”

A bulky young man, midtwenties, trundled out. His name badge said MATT.

“Can I get a room just for the night, Matt?” Danny asked. Maybe the one-week-minimum policy was flexible. He shifted the bag on his shoulder. It bulged on one side with the mass of Galvin’s pistol, but the shape wasn’t obvious. Still, he couldn’t help feeling self-conscious.

“Sure,” the clerk said. Simple as that. Plenty of vacancies and the policy goes out the window.

“Got anything at the back of the hotel?” Where the white van was parked, he thought.

The clerk hunched over a keyboard that was a little too low for comfort. Tappa tappa tap tap tappa.

Danny’s chest felt tight. He was on the verge of doing something pretty damned dangerous. But it was better not to dwell on the odds.

It was like a Wile E. Coyote moment where you fall if you look down: the cartoon laws of physics.

So don’t look down.

“That’ll be one hundred four ninety-nine.”

Danny handed him a credit card, held his breath. After a moment, he saw the charge had gone through okay. This one he’d paid down. There was room on the credit line. He exhaled.

The clerk took a sheet of paper from the printer and slid it across the counter. Danny signed it.

“Help you with your bags, sir?”

“I’ll bring them up later.”

His room was on the second floor. It was entirely possible that he’d bump into Slocum or Yeager or both, and he had no explanation prepared.

If they saw him, he was pretty well screwed.

The room was small and efficient. A queen-size bed, a desk, and a chair. A kitchen area with a dishwasher, refrigerator, coffeemaker, two electric burners. Everything a relocating executive could need to make his lonely little home for a few weeks.

The window looked out over the back of the hotel and the double rows of cars.

The white van was still there.

Slocum and Yeager were in the hotel. But where? In which room? There were ways to find out. Pretexting, it was called. Pretending to be someone you’re not, or pretending that something had happened.

But maybe he didn’t need to go that far.

He unzipped his laptop bag and took out his PowerBook, and plugged it in, and he signed on to the free Wi-Fi service.

He took out the prepaid Samsung TracFone. Then he took out Galvin’s Beretta and a box of ammo and set it on the desk next to the laptop.

The Beretta smelled of gun oil. It didn’t smell like it had ever been fired, or at least not recently. It was new-looking and unscratched. He popped the magazine release and pulled out the magazine. It was still loaded with fifteen rounds. He picked it up and held it in a two-hand grip the way his father had taught him and sighted on the right bedside sconce. Then he turned and aimed it out the window at a blue Prius. A traditional dot-and-post system, a half-moon rear sight with a red dot, and a front post with a red dot.

The pistol felt substantial in his hands, heavy yet balanced. It was a serious gun-was there such a thing as an unserious gun?-and his aim had always been decent. Nothing great-he was no sniper-but not bad for a guy who fired a gun no more often than every couple of years. At most. And that was standing in the range at the Nauset gun club with his dad. In controlled, artificial, ideal circumstances.

In the real world, he was a rank amateur.

Facing off against someone who used weapons on a regular basis? Forget it. Danny would be dead. Facing off against a semiautomatic assault rifle? Don’t even think about it.

So what did he need the Beretta for? Could he in fact use it, under duress?

He put the thought out of his mind. It was simply better to have the thing than not.

He could call Jay Poskanzer now and have him give the FBI this address. The exact location of two former DEA employees who were pretending to still be on the payroll, impersonating law enforcement officers.

But as long as he was here, he could get a lot more.

Beginning, he realized, with the license plate number of the white van. He looked out the window.

Just in time to see Slocum and Yeager getting into it.

69

The elevator was too slow in coming, so he raced down the stairwell to the lobby. His footsteps clattered and echoed. He slowed to an unhurried pace as he entered the lobby.

He caught a glimpse of Matt, the rotund desk clerk, behind the counter. Danny went to the glass door at the rear of the building and, standing to the side, looked out.

The white van was gone.

He circled back to the front desk. He smelled French fries. “Those guys who just left in that van?”

“Excuse me?” Matt was still chewing. He tilted his head politely.

“Man, did I screw up,” Danny said. “I hit their van when I was parking earlier, and I wanted to leave them a note. You know who I’m talking about? The white van?”

Matt swallowed. “Um, I don’t know anything about a white van, sir. I don’t really notice what kind of cars guests drive.” A shred of lettuce nested among the hairs of his goatee.

“The two guys who just left-the skinny one with the black hair and the squat bald guy? Just walked out?”

He nodded. He knew who Danny was talking about. “Would you like me to leave a note for them?”

Danny shook his head, looking horrified by the idea. “I can’t take that chance. I mean, if they see the damage and file a claim against-well, I’m just screwed, because I’m driving this company car without going through all the paperwork, and I could lose my job. Will you be around later tonight?”

“Tonight? No, my shift is over at five, but Leslie will be here.”

He probably worked an eight-hour shift, nine to five. Of course he wouldn’t still be here at night. Danny was counting on that. “All right, let me write down their room number.” Not What room are they in? “I’m going to have to get an insurance form and a personal check, and-I’ll just slide it under their door when I get back here tonight.”

Matt hesitated. He inhaled. His expression looked like he was about to apologize. To say something officious and bureaucratic. I’m sorry, sir, we’re not allowed to give out room numbers of hotel guests. It’s hotel policy.

But then he noticed the twenty-dollar bill that Danny was sliding across the counter.

“That’s-that’s not necessary, sir,” he said with an embarrassed smile.

“I know it’s not much. My job’s worth a lot more than that. But…”

Once Matt snapped up the bill, the deal was sealed. It wasn’t the twenty bucks that did it, of course. It was Danny’s desperation. It would have been churlish to refuse to help.

Matt tap-tap-tapped away and said quickly, quietly, “They’re in rooms 303 and 304. I really can’t give you their names, though.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. All I need is the room number. Thank you so much. You have no idea what a huge help this is.”

70

Danny wandered the third-floor hallway in search of a housekeeper. He finally found one in room 307, where the door was propped open with a cart.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Like an idiot I locked myself out of my room. Three oh three-could you let me in, please?”

The housekeeper whirled around, eyes widening. “Oh! Sir? What happen?”

He held up a Lucite bucket. “I stepped out to get some ice.” He shook his head, scowled. But not apologetically, not really. More annoyed at the hotel. At the unexpected speed with which his room door had slammed shut. The hotel’s fault. Not his.

“What room you say?”

“Three oh three.” He shook his head, the disgruntled hotel guest.

She approached, pulled a clipboard on a string from a well in her cart. “Eh, what is name?”

“Yeager.”

She looked down the list of hotel guests. Shook her head. “I’m sorry?”

They’d probably checked in under different phony names. “I’m in three oh three. Could you hurry? I’ve got an important conference call in a couple of minutes.”

“Yes,” she said with a brisk nod. “Room 303.” She said it as if confirming it to herself.

He followed the woman out into the hallway. She smelled like a fabric softener sheet you’d toss into a load of laundry in the dryer. Or like a room deodorizer spray. It was mixed with the odor of her perspiration, the sweat of a hardworking woman. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, but it was the miasma in which she spent her workday.

She led him briskly down the hall. She had a slight limp.

When she got to room 303, she pulled out a master key card and inserted it into the electronic card reader in the lock set unit. It probably opened all the rooms on her floor.

“Thank you so much,” Danny said as she pushed open the door. He handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

“Oh, gracias, gracias, señor. Eh-you want I get you ice?”

The room was a near-exact replica of Danny’s and looked like it had just been cleaned.

A metal Rimowa suitcase rested on a luggage stand, closed. He tried to open it, but it was locked. A suit and a blazer hung in the ample closet next to the bathroom. Nothing in the kitchenette had been left out. Just about the only indication that someone lived here, apart from the locked suitcase, was the desk.

A black Toshiba laptop was open on the desk, next to a neat sheaf of papers. He pulled Galvin’s gun from the small of his back and set it down next to the computer.

A psychedelic screen saver swirled and undulated, a rainbow of streamers in a starry night sky.

He tapped the keyboard, and the screen saver vanished and a password prompt came up. He stared at it for a few seconds. Hit RETURN, just in case it didn’t really require a password.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

He typed the word password and hit ENTER.

PASSWORD INCORRECT. Well, it was worth a try. He typed 12345678 and hit RETURN.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

He typed abc123.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

He hesitated. Maybe the machine would lock up after a certain number of wrong tries. He typed 999999, then paused, then added two more 9s, for a total of eight.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

Hold on, he told himself. You don’t need to access their laptop. Leave that to the computer experts at the FBI. The laptop would have all sorts of compromising information on these phony DEA agents. It would be serious leverage. It would enable him to make an excellent deal with the Department of Justice.

Just take the damned thing.

He closed the laptop. Picked up the neatly stacked sheaf of papers. On top was a printout of an e-ticket. A boarding pass, actually:

Flights 401/2470 Flight 2470

operated by AEROLITORAL DBA AEROMEXICO CONNECT

Depart:

12:45 AM

New York, NY (JFK)

Arrive:

8:20 AM

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico (NLD)

Connect in: Mexico City

The ticket was in the name of Arthur Duncan, and the flight departed in three days. Maybe Arthur Duncan was the real name of one of them, or maybe it was an alias. The destination was a place in Mexico called Nuevo Laredo. Jay Poskanzer had said that Slocum and Yeager had been working there for the DEA when they were fired. But why Arthur Duncan was going there now was a mystery.

He folded the paper in quarters and slipped it into a pocket.

The door to the room came open.

Danny picked up the gun and spun toward the door.

It was Philip Slocum.

71

Slocum pushed slowly into the room. His eyes widened as he took everything in. Then he smiled. The door slammed shut behind him.

“That’s it,” Danny said. “No farther.”

With his right hand he aimed the Beretta at Slocum’s chest. At center mass. He’d read somewhere that aiming for center mass increased the odds of hitting your attacker, especially if you weren’t confident in your aim. He thumbed the manual safety off. The gun was solid and fairly heavy, maybe a pound or two.

Slocum stood no more than fifteen feet away. It would be hard to miss.

If he could bring himself to pull the trigger.

He brought his left hand up to steady his grip. “Hands up.”

Slocum seemed to be calculating something. He hesitated, looked twitchy. He seemed to be contemplating making a run at Danny.

But he shrugged and lifted his hands as high as his chest, grudgingly, palms out, a tolerant grin on his face. As if Danny were an annoying child who insisted on playing patty-cake. As if the whole thing amused him and he was putting up with it just to be a good guy.

“All the way.”

Slocum exhaled. Lifted his hands up. His smile had morphed into something closer to a sneer. He didn’t look as nervous as a guy who had a gun pointing at him should.

“Step around to the side. That way.” Danny indicated, with a wag of the pistol, the armchair by the window. The reading chair. Next to it was a standing lamp with a big white cylindrical shade. “Sit over there.”

The TV in the adjoining room came on, muffled but audible through the thin walls. The other impostor, Yeager, was home now, too.

“Maybe you’re not aware that killing a federal law enforcement agent is a capital offense,” Slocum said, standing defiantly.

“Yeah? What’s the penalty for killing a former law enforcement agent who’s gone bad? Sit down.”

Slocum nodded and grinned and remained standing. Their secret was out, and he knew it.

“Twelve feet away and you probably think your chances of hitting me are pretty good,” he said. “Well, guess what. You’re more likely to drill a forty-caliber round through the drywall and kill or maim an innocent civilian. A hotel guest you can’t even see. An employee, maybe. That’s why police are instructed never to fire a gun in circumstances like this unless they’re absolutely certain of the stopping range. Are you, Danny?” He shook his head. “You haven’t really thought this through, have you?”

The surge of adrenaline was making it hard to collect his thoughts. What should he do now? He wasn’t going to shoot the guy, and he had no name or phone number of anyone at the FBI. Call the police? By the time the police got here, Danny would be long dead.

Suddenly, Slocum lunged at him, hands outstretched like claws. Danny sidestepped, then swung the Beretta hard. Gripping it tightly, he slammed it into the side of Slocum’s head. Slocum grunted and yowled in pain and then sprawled backward to the floor. Blood seeped from his eye. “You just screwed up big-time, you pathetic bastard,” he snarled.

Behind him Danny could hear the faint metallic clunk of the door to the adjoining room coming open.

Danny turned and saw Yeager coming through the doorway. “Oh, Daniel, this is not good,” he said as he trundled in. A gun drawn.

On Danny’s left, Slocum was scrambling to his feet. Rivulets of blood streamed down one side of his face. The gun had apparently gashed the skin just below Slocum’s eye. Danny turned and pointed the weapon at Slocum, then moved it around to the right, aiming at Yeager.

“Put the gun down, Daniel,” Yeager said patiently. “Don’t be foolish.”

“Back off,” Danny warned Slocum, jerking the gun at him.

“Daniel, I see you hurt Phil,” Yeager said. “Looks like you kicked ass beyond your wildest dreams. I salute you for that.” He tipped a hand to his brow, making a salute. “Sure, you could try to shoot my friend here, which would be ill-advised. You’d be shocked at how quickly I can put you down. Which I really don’t want to do, because frankly you’re far more useful to me alive than dead. So please, let’s both lower our weapons so we can have a civil conversation. We have some things to discuss.”

Slocum swiped a hand over his bloodied face. He gave Danny a poisonous glare. As if he’d go after Danny if Yeager weren’t there.

Yeager was utterly calm. He could have been discussing football scores.

“Daniel, if we wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead, I promise you.”

He was right: They still needed him. It wasn’t in their interest to kill him. This was pointless.

He lowered the gun.

“Thank you,” said Yeager. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“I’m onto you guys,” Danny said. “You’re frauds. You don’t work for the DEA anymore.”

“Busted,” Yeager said. “You’re right. We’re not with the DEA. You should be so lucky.”

“All your threats about sending me to prison-they were all lies.”

“Also true. We’re not going to send you to prison. No, Daniel, if you don’t cooperate, you’ll wish you were going to jail. It will be far, far worse. Am I making myself clear?”

Danny stared. He’d begun to feel cold.

“You mean to tell me you still haven’t figured out who we work for? I’m disappointed in you. Here, here’s a hint.” He pulled something from his jacket pocket and tossed it at Danny. He grabbed it with his free hand: a necklace of green and black beads with a pendant of a robed woman holding a scythe. “Look at all familiar?” Yeager said.

“That-that-” Danny had last seen that necklace around the neck of Galvin’s driver in Aspen. He’d thought it was the Virgin Mary. But it wasn’t. With that scythe it looked more like the Grim Reaper.

A few of the beads were crusted with something dark that was probably blood. Danny dropped it in revulsion.

“That’s right. Consider it a gift from us. You don’t mind if it’s pre-owned, do you? That’s Santa Muerte. Saint Death. A noncanonized saint. South of the border, some people wear it for protection. It’s supposed to bring you luck.”

“I’d say this one’s had sort of a mixed record,” Slocum said.

Yeager chuckled. “It didn’t turn out so well for Alejandro, that’s true,” said Yeager. “But hey-you never know. Maybe Daniel could get lucky.”

And Danny knew then that either they’d been the ones who’d murdered Galvin’s driver in Aspen or they worked with the people who did. The room seemed to tilt.

So who did they work for? A cartel, was it possible?

That e-ticket he’d found: One of them was flying to Mexico, back to the city of Nuevo Laredo, where they’d been fired by the DEA. Was a cartel based there?

“Phil,” Yeager said, “could you cue up the home movies?”

Slocum moved to the desk and tapped away at the laptop. Then he turned it so that it was facing Danny. He hit a couple more keys on the laptop, and a window on the screen opened. It took him a minute to recognize the image.

The blood drained from his face. He felt dizzy.

Lucy wore a pastel blue T-shirt and navy gym shorts, doing something in a room that looked like her own kitchen.

Making coffee. The image was grainy. It looked like surveillance video.

“Want to know why she always smells like smoke?” Yeager said. “Not because of the bums she hangs around, I’m sorry to say. I know, she told you she quit smoking. But I’m afraid your ex-girlfriend is what you call a chipper-she borrows cigarettes from friends, never buys her own. Phil, pull up the next channel, could you?”

Another video window came open on the screen. With terror, Danny recognized the family room of his childhood home. His father was leaning back in his favorite chair, the Barcalounger. His mother sat in her customary place on the plaid couch. Both watching TV.

“It’s cute,” Yeager said. “Mom and Dad go together to Stop & Shop in Orleans twice a week. Your dad insists on buying the day-old bread, and your mom hates it, but she puts up with it. In a long marriage, I guess you gotta make all sorts of compromises, you know?” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, there’s your teenage daughter, too, but we don’t do kids unless we really have to. Which I hope doesn’t come to pass. I have a daughter myself.”

“You son of a bitch,” Danny said, crackling with anger. “You goddamned son of a bitch.”

“So here’s the thing, Daniel. You asked for two hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash by tomorrow morning at ten, and that’s not going to happen. But I appreciate your directness, and I’m going to be just as direct with you. Thomas Galvin keeps all of his account numbers and passwords in one cloud-based encrypted site. Which is locked by means of a single password. That password generates a random key and a random vector initialization and blah blah blah. So you, my friend, are going to get us that password by ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Your own deadline. If you fail to give us that password, you’re going to become an orphan. And that will be just the beginning of your troubles.” He brightened. “On the other hand, give us that password, and all of these problems go away. Life becomes good again.”

Danny stared.

“Are we clear?” Yeager said.

Danny nodded. His pulse raced and the room had gone bright. “Yes,” he said. “We’re clear.”

“Good. One more thing?” Yeager said.

Danny turned.

“Please be careful with that gun. You might hurt someone.”

72

His tires squealed as he swung through the Lyman Academy’s wrought-iron gates, barreling past the teacher’s parking lot-Hyundais and Nissans and Ford Fiestas-and careening around the semicircular pickup lane. Two hours before school got out, and his was the only car parked in front of the main entrance. He hummed with anxiety. Everything was too bright and seemed to move like a jagged stop-motion video. Adrenaline pulsed through his bloodstream.

Their assurance that children were off-limits-that was meaningless. What they, or their colleagues, had done to Galvin’s driver in Aspen bespoke a limitless violence. If abducting his only child was the way to force his obedience, they wouldn’t hesitate.

He had to get her out of here, keep her away from all known locations, which included Lyman and his apartment. Wellfleet, staying with his parents-that was out of the question now, since the cartel had them under surveillance.

There was only one safe place right now, and that was the Galvins’ house in Weston. It was a target, yes, but a hardened one. The property was fenced in, and Galvin had assured him he’d brought in private security. Not manpower provided by the Sinaloa cartel, but real security guards. If she’d be safe anywhere, she’d be safe there.

He sprang out of the Honda and raced through the school’s front doors.

Leon Chisholm, the school security guard, looked up from the chair where he was reading the Globe, and said “Hey, Dan-” but Danny kept running through the hall and up the stairs, no time to talk. Mrs. Gifford, the school secretary-receptionist, gave him a perplexed smile that quickly turned into alarm. “Mr. Goodman, is everything all right?”

“Where’s Abby?”

“She didn’t sign out-”

“What class is she in?”

She lifted her reading glasses from their chain around her neck and peered at the computer monitor. “She’s in Mr. Klootjes’s precalculus class. Do you need me to get a note to her? Is there something wrong?”

“Where’s the class?”

“Mather 29, but-”

“Which way?”

“I can send a message, but parents can’t-”

“Thanks,” he said, and he vaulted into the corridor in search of Mather Hall.

In his peripheral vision he saw Mrs. Gifford get up from her desk chair and heard her call after him, “Mr. Goodman?”

His shoes slapped against the terrazzo floor and rang in the hallway. The damned school was a maze of halls and cubbyholes and lockers and short flights of stairs and blind turns.

It took him a good five minutes to locate Mather. Room 29 was a modern-looking classroom, at least by Lyman standards: whiteboard walls instead of blackboards or greenboards, M. C. Escher posters, inscrutable diagrams. Danny stared into the classroom through the window in the door. Fifteen bored-looking students sat in burgundy tablet-arm desks staring dazedly at Mr. Klootjes, an obese bearded redhead with grimy wire-rimmed glasses and a soporific teaching style, scrawling a tangle of digits with green marker on a whiteboard. Danny had met him once, at a routine parent-teacher conference, and understood at once why Abby detested the man.

Abby was in the back row apparently struggling to stay awake. He didn’t see Jenna; maybe she wasn’t in the same math class.

Danny yanked open the classroom door. Mr. Klootjes turned around slowly, squinting. “Um, hi…?”

“Abby, come on,” Danny said, beckoning with an urgent wave.

Abby looked up at the door, alarmed. “Daddy?”

“Let’s go, come on, now!” Fifteen girls were staring at him, a few tittering. He heard one of them say, “Abby’s dad.”

“Excuse me, sir,” said Mr. Klootjes.

“Abby, let’s go, this is important,” Danny said.

Mortified, she slunk out into the hallway. “What’s going on?” she said.

“Let’s go, we’ll talk in a minute.”

“I need to get my stuff from my locker.”

“No time for that.”

“It’s close, it’s just in Burke-”

“We can get stuff from your locker another time.”

“What? What’s going on? What happened?”

“We’ll talk in the car.

“Wh-why are you doing this? Did something bad happen?”

“We’ll talk in the car,” he said again.

Abby slammed her car door. “Oh my God, this is so embarrassing! What the hell is so important that you have to pick me up now? What’d I do?”

“You didn’t do anything.” He couldn’t tell her the truth, couldn’t tell her what was going on, what exactly the threat was. “I’m taking you over to Jenna’s house now.”

“Jenna’s-for what? How come we’re going there now?”

“Just… just listen to me, please,” he snapped as he maneuvered the car out of the main gates of the school and onto St. Agnes Road. “You’re going to be staying at the Galvins’ for a couple of days.”

“The Galvins-?”

“At their house. Just for a couple of days.”

“Why?”

“You’re not complaining, are you? I would have thought you’d be thrilled.”

“I can’t-I mean, all my stuff’s at home!”

“I’ll get it for you later on today.”

“You don’t know what to get! You don’t know where I keep all my stuff.”

“It’s not a big apartment. I’ll find whatever you need.”

It wasn’t as if Danny could give her an explanation that would make any sense to her. I’m afraid something might happen to you. I’m afraid someone might take you hostage. You’ll be safer, far less vulnerable, in a house in the suburbs surrounded by fenced-in acres and armed guards than in a second-floor apartment in the city with a couple of flimsy locks between you and them.

No reason to terrify her.

“What is the big rush, are you going to tell me?”

“No,” he said. “Not now. Later.”

73

The regular security at Galvin’s house had seemed elaborate enough, with the eight-foot-high wrought-iron fence and the electric swing gate that opened only once you identified yourself.

But Galvin, at Danny’s urging, had hired a private security company that provided trained ex-soldiers and ex-policemen to corporations and wealthy individuals. And now the property had the look of a military base. The two uniformed guards who stopped Danny at the gate didn’t look like the run-of-the-mill, rent-a-cop variety. They looked fit and professional and had walkie-talkies and were armed. A third appeared to be patrolling the perimeter on foot.

One of them came over to Danny’s car. Danny rolled down his window at the guard’s stern behest and handed over his driver’s license.

“I’m a friend. Daniel Goodman.”

“Yes, sir, we’re expecting you,” he said, consulting a clipboard. The guy stared at Danny’s license, handed it back, and nodded to his partner. The gate slowly came open.

“What is this?” Abby said. “What’s with those guys?”

Danny didn’t answer. He couldn’t tell her the truth, but he didn’t want to outright lie. He drove up the long tree-lined road that wound through the woods to the house.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

He pulled over and put the car in park, the engine running. “Boogie, listen. One of Mr. Galvin’s clients has been threatening him and his family.”

She squinted, frowned. “So… what does that have to do with me?”

“The thing is, they’re probably targeting close friends, too. Anyway, that’s what Tom’s security company tells him, and we don’t want to take any chances.”

Her mouth came open. “But what-what about Jenna?”

“She’s being picked up separately.”

“Holy crap!” she said. “I don’t believe this. You mean we can’t leave the house?”

“Just for a couple of days. Until this blows over.”

They pulled up to the house.

Celina answered the door, looking beautiful as ever, in jeans and a beige silk top, but her radiant smile was gone. She wore no makeup and looked a little haggard. She gave a perfunctory smile; she wasn’t hostile so much as remote, guarded. Her life had been rocked by the carnage at Aspen and its aftermath here at home. Everything had changed, and was about to change even more drastically, and she was frightened for her family.

“Abby, would you like to go to Jenna’s room? She’s on her way back right now.” The little rat dogs skittered around them, swarming them, wheezing and rasping, their nails clicking like tiny tap shoes.

“Torito! Loco! Enough!” she said.

She placed both hands on Abby’s shoulders. “Abby, querida, you and Jenna will have a nice time this weekend. Maybe you and Jenna can help make dinner tonight?”

Abby blinked and nodded. “Okay, sure,” she said, unenthusiastic, giving a quickly disappearing smile.

“There’s nothing to be scared about,” Celina said.

But Abby didn’t look convinced.

A few minutes later, Tom Galvin and Jenna came through the front door, followed by a stocky black man in a navy sweatshirt, his gun holstered on the left side of his belt. In his ear was the coiled wire of a security earpiece. He stood in the doorway.

Galvin looked ill. His shoulders seemed stooped. He was pale, with beads of sweat on his forehead. “We’re all set, Dennis,” Galvin told the guard, who nodded and left, pulling the door closed behind him.

“Mamá!” Jenna gasped, her eyes wide. “Will someone tell me what is going on here? Are we, like, prisoners here? Is anyone going to explain?”

“Celina,” Galvin said flatly. “Have a talk with the girls. Danny, you and I need to have our own talk.”

“What about College Night?” Jenna said.

“Huh?” her father said.

“Tonight at school,” Abby said. “College Night. Everyone has to be there.”

“Sorry,” said Galvin. “Change in plans. College Night’s been canceled. You girls can stay here and have a party.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Jenna told her father. “It’s not, like, optional. We have to go.”

Danny shook his head. Celina said, “It’s not good time.”

“Dad, every single girl in the class is going to be there,” Abby said. “There’s going to be admissions reps from Yale there, and Princeton and Brown, and the college counselors will be telling everyone what we have to do, and answering questions. It’s not a choice. I have to be there. We both do.”

“Not tonight,” Danny said. “Sorry.”

“You think I want to go to College Night?” Jenna said to her parents. “Abby really wants to go, okay? I mean, it’s not like I’m even going to get into college. Not unless you buy them a gym.”

Galvin looked stung. “Don’t say that, honey. The right college will be lucky to get you.”

“Lucky to get you, you mean. Anyway, you can’t force us to stay here. We’re not prisoners.”

“Actually, I have bad news for you. I can force you to stay here. Last I looked, I’m your father.”

“And I wish to hell you weren’t!” Jenna shouted. “You’re a goddamned Nazi, you know that?” The sharp edge of her banked fury was blunted only by her tears.

Galvin was quiet for several seconds. Then he shook his head, as if all the fight had gone out of him. “Don’t talk that way,” he said softly.

“I hate you!” Jenna said. “You’re ruining my life.”

“Your father loves you, chica!” Celina said. “Don’t say like this!”

“No!” Jenna shouted, and she stormed upstairs. A moment later, Abby followed Jenna.

Galvin muttered something to Celina in Spanish. Then he said, “Right now, Danny and I need to have a talk of our own.”

The two men headed toward Galvin’s office.

“I’ve got to show you something,” Galvin said.

“It’s gonna have to wait,” Danny said.

Galvin looked at him.

“I think you haven’t been honest with me,” Danny said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” At the door to Galvin’s study, he folded his arms.

Galvin looked at him sharply. “About… what?”

That was when Danny knew for certain he was right. “About how you’re working with the DEA.”

74

Until he learned the truth about Slocum and Yeager-that they were grifters-Danny had believed he was the leak, the confidential source of damaging information about Galvin that had so alarmed the Sinaloa cartel.

But he’d assumed wrong. Since they were frauds, someone else had to be the leak.

And that someone was Galvin himself.

It defied the odds that Galvin could have served as Sinaloa’s chief money man for so long without the DEA finding out and trapping him.

Galvin had as much as said so.

I’ve been at this a long time. Long enough for the DEA to dig down deep into what I’ve been doing. And trap me. Force me to flip. That doesn’t seem crazy, does it?

Now Galvin looked at Danny for a long time. He blinked a few minutes. “You’re a smart son of a bitch, you know that?” he said at last. “I’m going to put all my cards on the table. The simple, ugly truth is, the feds got onto me about a dozen years ago. I should have expected it-the whole arrangement was too good to last. An agent with the DEA showed up at my office and started asking me questions. I guess they had a team of accountants poring over Mexican cartel cash flow out of the HSBC bank. And he had a theory that pointed right to me.”

“Which you denied.”

“Of course I denied it,” he said with a shrug. “Until I figured out that someone high up the chain of command in the cartel must have turned. They had me. I had a choice of cooperating or fighting it. But this one DEA guy-name of Wallace Touhy-was too smart. Or his sources were too good. He had me.”

“You didn’t… try to fight it?”

Galvin shook his head. “What was the point? You can’t prove a negative. I couldn’t prove to them I wasn’t cooperating with the DEA-they’d assume I was cooperating. Or that eventually I’d break down and give them up. Then they’d have no choice but to kill me. They’d write me off as just another cowardly gringo who’d sell them out.”

“You became a confidential source for the DEA.”

“They gave me a choice. Twenty, thirty years behind bars-or help them out. Tip them off. Hand them the occasional Sinaloan, as long as I could do it without the cartel suspecting me. That was the trick-you never know who inside the DEA might be secretly working for the cartels. So Touhy agreed to run me off the books. A silo operation. The only way to make sure the cartel didn’t find out. He locked up my file in a cabinet somewhere-I mean, there’s always documentation. Has to be. He assigned me a number, and that was about it for paperwork. I must have given up five or six high-ranking Sinaloans over the years.”

“And how do you think the Sinaloans found out?”

He shrugged. “Ever seen that World War Two poster of a guy drowning, says, ‘Someone Talked’?”

Danny nodded.

“I guess I’m just lucky I got away with it as long as I did.”

“This DEA guy can’t help you now?”

Galvin scoffed. “The DEA? What are they going to do, put my whole family in witness protection? I mean, short of giving me plastic surgery and stashing me in North Dakota, there’s nothing the government can do, once the cartel has it in for you.

“For days now, I’ve been trying to reach out to Touhy. They gave me a number; I call it, he answers twenty-four/seven. Always. Except not this time. I’ve been calling him. No answer.”

Danny felt a fresh panic rising. “And?”

“And I just found out why. I got a source in the state police. Touhy’s dead. Murdered, brutal. Like, tortured to death. And if I don’t act now, I’m next.”

“You say this like you’re certain.”

“I am. And I know who they’re sending.”

75

“I need to show you a picture,” Galvin said, nodding toward his open laptop.

The image that filled the screen was of a man in a dark overcoat. Danny leaned in closer. The image was slightly blurred, like a still from a surveillance video. The man was entirely bald and had rimless glasses and appeared to be sitting in a vehicle, his head turned toward the camera. Looking directly at the camera, in fact.

“Who’s that?” Danny asked.

Galvin turned away from the screen, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. His face shone with sweat. It occurred to Danny that he looked as if he’d recently been sick to his stomach. He wiped a hand over his face.

“El ángel de la muerte. The angel of death, they call him. He’s the guy they send.”

“Who? Send to do what?”

“The cartel. Sinaloa. His name is Dr. Mendoza. That’s all I know-Dr. Mendoza, no first name.” He paused, took a deep breath. “He specializes in… coercive interrogation.”

“You mean like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’? Torture?”

Galvin shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it. I’m next on his list.”

“But how do you know he’s coming?”

“This picture was taken about an hour and a half ago, from a security camera on my fence. The guy was just sitting in a car across the road, watching and waiting. Like he was biding his time.”

“So you think your guy-Touhy?-was tortured and gave up your name, that it?”

Galvin nodded. “And maybe we’re safe as long as we stay on the property. But I can’t stay here indefinitely. I’ve got to vanish. At some point soon I need to leave.”

“And then what? He’s gonna…”

“You know the videos on the Internet of those guys with chain saws cutting off people’s heads and all that? The ones you see in your nightmares?”

Danny exhaled audibly, nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. “Oh, yeah.”

“Well, this is the guy who gives those guys nightmares.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Danny said, and for a long time he was silent. Then: “What does he want from you?”

“Account numbers, access codes, everything.”

“Was he behind what happened in Aspen?”

“No, I don’t think so. That was a Zeta signature. And that’s what I still can’t figure out.”

“What can’t you figure out?”

“Blood in the water brings out the sharks. I get that. My guys-Mendoza-they’re Sinaloa. But I don’t know how the Zetas got involved. Or why they’re coming after me.”

He turned and looked at Danny curiously. Something in his expression seemed almost accusatory. As if he knew Danny was holding something back.

And Danny could no longer keep Galvin in the dark about the ex-DEA agents. No more. Keeping that secret from Galvin had become unbearable.

“Now I need to tell you something,” Danny began.

76

The air in Galvin’s study was thick with cigar smoke. It hung in the air like clouds, like suspended jet contrails. A cigar smoldered in a big glass ashtray on the desk in front of him. The husk of another one sat blackened in the ash.

Galvin had listened to Danny’s story in silence, barely reacting.

“I knew you were ensnared in something,” he said when Danny had finished. “I’ve known it since that squash game.”

Danny winced. “I don’t even know what I can say to you. How I apologize.”

“You think I’m gonna judge you? After what I’ve done? Come on, man.”

Danny fell silent for a moment. “Do you… you think they’re working for Zeta?”

He shrugged. “Could be. I’d say it’s likely. They’re apparently ex-DEA contractors, and we know at least one of them was in Aspen. I told you, that obscenity in Aspen-that looked and smelled like the work of the Los Zetas cartel.”

“And that ticket to Nuevo Laredo-isn’t that where Los Zetas is based?”

“Right. Tell you something else. This is exactly how Zeta operates. They’re-like hermit crabs.”

“Meaning…?”

“Know how the Zetas got their start? They were all members of Mexico’s special forces, who were hired by the Gulf cartel to do security, enforcement. But after a while they decided, why be just the hired muscle-when they could make as much money as their bosses? So they broke off and started their own cartel. Kinda like the way hermit crabs find empty seashells and move in.”

“So in this case they’re trying to take over… what, the whole Sinaloa cartel?”

“They want what I built for the cartel. The entire financial structure. Account numbers and passwords and the keys to the kingdom. Cut to the head of the line. They colonize. They take over. Forget hermit crabs-they’re like cancer.”

“They want your master password by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, or…” He shook his head, didn’t want to let his mind even go there. “I mean, is there even such a thing? Do you have one master password?”

“How would they know that?” Galvin said with a curious half smile.

“Do you?”

He nodded. “Look, I’m no computer guy, but I’m smart enough to hire smart people, and they set me up with the most sophisticated password-management system you can get. All the most sensitive information-the entire list of account numbers and passwords and contact names and numbers-is encrypted and stored on a cloud-based service and blah blah blah. If you want to unlock that directory, you need to enter a passphrase, not a password. It’s actually a lyric from a Lynyrd Skynyrd song.”

“I’ll bet I know which one.” “Sweet Home Alabama” was a fairly safe guess.

“I’ll bet you do.”

“But it’s not going to do me any good. It’s not like I’m going to give them the passphrase and they’re going to say thanks and shake hands and leave me alone.”

Galvin grimaced. “I’m sorry you got into this.”

Danny looked at him for a long time. What did Galvin have to be sorry about? He didn’t get him into this. Danny did, himself. “There’s pretty much nothing I can give them that will guarantee my safety or the safety of my family,” he said softly. A gloomy desperation was settling in. “The best I can do is buy a little time.”

“I wish I had the answer,” Galvin said, “but I don’t.”

“And what about you? You disappear with however many billion dollars of their money, they’ll look for you forever.”

“Of course. Which is why I’m only taking the profit.”

“The profit?”

“The cartel owns real estate and shopping malls and fast-food franchises and a whole range of companies. All owned by a holding company. Plus a lot of cash.”

“You’re taking their cash?”

“Uh-uh. I always knew this arrangement had an expiration date. I knew the time would come when I’d have to disappear. I’ve been squirrelling away nuts for years now.”

“Meaning what? You’ve been ripping the cartel off?”

“Not at all. It’s money I’ve earned. A couple of hundred million dollars in an array of offshore accounts. Management fee.”

“So you’re going to sail to, what, the Caribbean and disappear under the name of that one hundred percent genuine US passport you bought?”

Galvin nodded once.

“And the couple of hundred million bucks-that’s in the same name?”

“No. All the offshore accounts are in a different name. You have to keep the passport name and the account name completely separate. I’ve done the research.”

“And what happens when US law enforcement starts pulling at the loose threads? They’re getting good at it, aren’t they? A lot of these Caribbean countries are starting to cooperate with the US.”

“Some are more than others, but that’s beside the point. My money’s in something the accountants call a walking trust. Meaning that the moment law enforcement opens an inquiry into one of my accounts, the trust is automatically dissolved. The funds are wired out immediately to another account in another country. Believe me, they’re not going to find me.”

“There’s no guarantees. Even if you do something elaborate like faking your death, they won’t be convinced. They won’t believe it.”

“You’re right. But there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Maybe not. Unless there is.”

“This is not for you to worry about. You just need to take care of your family.”

“Well, you’re protecting my daughter. That means a lot to me.”

Galvin bit his lower lip. “You and Lucy are-over, right?” It sounded like he’d been wanting to ask about her for a while.

Danny nodded.

“You did it to protect her.”

Danny just blinked a few times. His eyes were moist. “She walked out.”

“But you didn’t stop her.”

Danny nodded again.

“You did the right thing.”

“It wasn’t up to me.”

“But you let her go. You’re letting her walk away because you love her. I get it.”

Danny winced, nodded. “What about you?”

“What?”

“Walking away. You’re just going to, what? Get on your boat and sail off the grid?”

“Pretty much.”

“What about your family?”

“My being gone is their best protection. You think it doesn’t rip my heart out?”

“Of course it does. But it’s not enough. It’s only half an exit strategy.”

“I’ve got my walking papers and my walking trust. What else is there?”

“I’m a biographer. Trust me on this. You need a narrative. A story.”

Galvin peered at him, shook his head, not comprehending.

“The answer’s been staring me in the face this whole time,” Danny said.

77

Galvin looked at Danny, shrugged. “What?”

“What would Jay Gould do?”

“Huh?”

“Jay Gould. The guy I’m writing a book about-industrialist, robber baron, whatever?”

“Right.”

“So we play one off against the other. That’s the only way we’re going to survive this.”

“How?”

“A double cross.”

“Explain.”

“I’m starting to have a real appreciation for Jay Gould. He was a shrimpy little guy. Frail, often in poor health. Had a lot of enemies-just about everyone on Wall Street. But he was just light-years ahead of anyone else. And the way he did it, the way he got so rich, was by playing a far deeper, far more sophisticated game than anyone else.”

“Okay…?”

“The way he went after Western Union. Back in his time, the telegraph was like our Internet. And the big gorilla in the telegraph business was Western Union. So naturally, Jay Gould wanted to own it. But their board of directors wouldn’t even let him in the door.”

“Okay.” Galvin was listening closely now.

“So he scammed them. Made them think he was going into business against them. Started buying up shares of the competition, the Atlantic and Pacific. And he knew that Western Union monitored the telegrams sent by their competitors. So he sent telegrams that made it look like he was planning to build a rival company. Sure enough, Western Union read those telegrams, and of course they didn’t want competition. So they bought his company. But the whole thing was just an elaborate scam, because he’d jacked the stock price way up. He made them pay ridiculously inflated prices for the stock. Like a poison pill. So Western Union stock tanked. And then Gould moved in, striking quick like a rattlesnake, and-presto-he owns Western Union.”

“What’s the connection?”

“It may be a bit complicated,” Danny began. “But I think it should work quite nicely. You have a bunch of companies in your portfolio-I mean, the cartel’s portfolio. Right?”

Galvin nodded.

“Are any of them, say, construction companies?”

“Sure.”

“Any of them around here?”

“We own Medford Regional Construction & Engineering. Nothing in the city.”

“That may do it.”

Galvin looked puzzled.

“Let me explain,” Danny said.

For the next thirty minutes, he laid out his idea. Galvin listened and made notes and occasionally argued. He made a few calls.

In time they had come up with something that seemed feasible.

Not a sure thing, and not easy.

But possible.

78

As Danny pulled out of Galvin’s estate, he gave a quick wave to the hired guards outside the gate. One of them waved back. The other stared at Danny’s car, as if inspecting the interior. Maybe looking to confirm there was no one else in the car besides the driver.

About half a mile down the road he noticed, in his peripheral vision, a large black vehicle pull out of a turnout just behind him. It was a black Suburban. The only other car on the road. He glanced into his rearview mirror. No one he recognized. Some musclehead behind the wheel and another one in the passenger’s seat.

When he entered the Mass Turnpike and the black Suburban was still behind him, he was fairly certain he was being followed. The Suburban stayed a car length or two behind, maintaining a consistent speed, never overtaking Danny’s car. When Danny exited at Copley Square, the Suburban did the same.

The men in the Suburban had that vacant-faced, stolid crew cut blandness that Danny had always associated with federal agents, Secret Service or FBI or whatever.

Then again, they could just as easily be private, though-working for, or with, Slocum and Yeager. If they were, it wasn’t clear what they were going to find out by tailing him. Galvin’s house and his Back Bay apartment were the two places he was sure to turn up. What was the point? Maybe nothing more than keeping the pressure on, letting him know that wherever he went, his movements were being observed.

So let them follow him. He was keeping up the appearance of a normal, predictable routine.

Because in less than an hour, he was going to depart from his routine. And make a trip someplace where it was vitally important he not be followed.

He found a parking space on Marlborough Street, across the street from his apartment. The black Suburban had followed him, not bothering with subtlety. It kept going past his parking spot, half a block away, then stopped and double-parked, putting on its flashers. They were going to wait for him.

Let them wait.

Once inside his apartment building, he pulled out his apartment keys. He could hear Rex whining softly, scratching at the door, desperate to go out. His tail thumped against the hardwood floor.

The bottom lock wasn’t locked.

He’d locked both locks when he was there last. He was absolutely certain of it.

Rex whimpered softly. “I’m taking you out now, boy,” he said.

The overhead light in the foyer had been left on, and he knew he’d turned it off.

They-probably Slocum and Yeager, the ex-DEA grifters, again-wanted him to know they were here.

Rex whimpered some more and struggled to get up. “You poor guy, you’ve been so patient.” Danny reached down and attached collar to leash-a red grosgrain Lyman Academy dog leash Abby had talked him into buying, at a fund-raiser for a school that didn’t need funds-while Rex licked his hand in gratitude.

As far as his observers could tell, Danny had driven in to the city to feed the dog.

Just part of his regular routine.

Rex hobbled the block or so to the Commonwealth Avenue Mall to relieve himself on the grass. While Rex circled to find a choice spot, Danny took out an index card on which he’d written down a few important numbers. He pulled out the disposable cell phone and punched out the phone number for Leon Chisholm, the Lyman Academy security guard.

Leon was expecting his call.

“You’re in luck,” Leon said in his low, smoky voice. “I still got friends on the job.”

“Excellent. Boston Police, or-?”

“Yep, BPD.”

“How much advance notice will you need?”

“The more, the better. But half an hour, forty-five minutes ought to do it.”

“I’ll call you soon. You’re the best.”

“And don’t forget it,” Leon said.

Five minutes later he got back into his Honda. The black Suburban was now double-parked even closer, about twenty feet away.

Waiting for him.

It pulled into the street right behind him, as if it were part of a convoy. Or an escort. They expected him to return to Galvin’s house, the way he always went, taking the turnpike to exit 15. So that was exactly what he’d do. At the end of Newbury Street, he crossed Mass Ave and entered the turnpike, the Suburban following close, and conspicuously, behind.

It was three thirty, half an hour before the start of rush hour, but the traffic was already heavy and grindingly slow. The old Accord had a fairly zippy pickup, so he was able to pass a few cars and leave the Suburban four cars back and one lane over. He wasn’t trying to lose his pursuers, not here. Just trying to show irritation. To let them believe he was annoyed, maybe a little spooked, which was the natural reaction.

It took almost forty minutes of driving through sluggish traffic to reach the Weston exit, sixteen miles away, a drive that normally took half that time. As he approached exit 15, he put on his right-turn signal and glanced in the rearview. The Suburban was still following him, maintaining a steady distance, always a few cars behind.

Instead of taking the exit for Weston and Galvin’s house, as he normally would, he pretzeled around onto Route 128 heading north.

He wasn’t going to Weston.

He had to get to Medford, a town not far from Boston. But without his followers knowing where he was going. That was critical. If they saw what he was doing, his entire plan would come crashing down.

Only by getting to Medford and making the transaction without being seen did Danny have any chance of staying alive.

As he sped north, he looked in the mirror again and saw the gold Chevrolet bow tie nameplate and its menacing front grille like the bared teeth of a wild animal. He caught a glimpse of the crew cut passenger.

They were still there.

He had to lose them or else scrap the meeting in Medford. Up ahead was the exit for Route 2. He signaled and took it, and the Suburban followed. Now he was heading east in the direction of Boston, and also Medford. The highway here was wide, four lanes each way divided by a steel guardrail. On one side was a sheer cliff face, the rock out of which the road had been blasted. On the other was a high concrete wall. Even though it was now rush hour, the traffic here was moving at a good clip, sixty to sixty-five miles per hour.

The Suburban was two cars behind. When he slowed down, it slowed. He pulled into the right lane, and it moved over to the middle lane, always staying back, but always in view.

There was nothing furtive about it: The guys in the Suburban wanted him to know he was being followed. They were doing the automotive equivalent of breathing down his neck. Anywhere Danny drove, he’d know they were on his tail.

Up ahead was a sign for exit 60. It said LAKE STREET, EAST ARLINGTON, BELMONT. He signaled right, and the Suburban did the same. He took the exit, and the Suburban followed. The road veered around hard, doing a complete one-eighty, past a chain-link fence and some trees and all the way around to a traffic light.

At the intersection, the road forked. On the right it took you back to Route 2. The lane on the left took you into a densely settled old residential neighborhood in Arlington. He’d driven around here before and knew it well enough. The traffic light showed a red left arrow. A couple of cars were waiting in the left-turn lane ahead of him, a U-Haul van and a VW bug. He slowed down to a crawl as he approached, the Suburban right behind him, clinging like a barnacle.

He had a choice to make: left or right.

He flicked on his right-turn signal, and the Suburban did the same. Suddenly, he jammed one foot down on the brakes while keeping the other foot on the gas pedal. His car rocked to a halt, its engine revving like crazy. As the Suburban slammed to a halt behind him, Danny cut the wheel hard left and floored the Honda’s accelerator, blasting through the intersection, through the red light, swerving around the U-Haul van, narrowly missing it.

The van honked and braked and skidded sideways. The VW bug, trailing too close behind it, clipped its rear bumper, sending both cars spinning into the center of the intersection. Danny saw this in his rearview mirror as he gunned it down the tree-lined road.

He took a quick right turn, so fast that he felt the tires on the left side nearly come off the road, narrowly averting a collision with a Subaru station wagon pulling out of a driveway. Two blocks more and he turned left, then another right.

Sirens were blaring, two police squad cars heading the other way-toward the accident, he assumed. The accident he’d caused. He glanced left, saw the pileup-and no Suburban. He’d left it behind. It was massive and ungainly and top-heavy, and a sharp turn might tip it over.

Meanwhile, Danny took advantage of the crucial few seconds of lead time to hang a left, once he was sure he was out of the Suburban’s sight. He’d entered a short road with two houses on either side that ended in a T. There he took a right. The houses here were small, pristine brick buildings, all the lawns neatly mowed. He went to the end of the next street and took the first left and immediately realized he’d entered a cul-de-sac. Not good. He didn’t want to get stuck. So he pulled into the first driveway he came to. A pink tricycle sat in the driveway, silver fringe hanging from its handlebars. A brightly colored play structure on a postage-stamp-size lawn. Someone pulled back the curtain in the front window.

He backed out down the street and went on to the next one.

He was on a main thoroughfare now, much more heavily trafficked. A jeweler, a travel agency, a RadioShack, a Chinese restaurant. Two more blocks and he’d hit Route 60, which would take him straight to Medford. He glanced at the rearview-

And his heart sank. There, turning onto the street, was a black Suburban. Gritting his teeth, Danny sped up and swung around into a narrow alley next to the Chinese restaurant. On the left side was a Dumpster, heaped with black trash bags. He cut the wheel and pulled up just past it, the Honda right up against the brick side wall.

Had they seen him make the turn? Would they be able to make out the car from the road? He’d pulled into a blind alley, a dead end. All he could do now was wait. Wait, and hope. He was fairly certain he couldn’t be seen from the street. He looked in the rearview mirror, watched and waited.

He was still holding his breath a minute later, when the Suburban came into view. It moved slowly, the sun glinting off its shiny black hood. Moving slowly enough that he could make out the crew cut driver, now wearing mirrored sunglasses.

No question about it. It was them.

He breathed out slowly. Took another breath. Waited.

The Suburban kept going. Drove right past.

He waited a few minutes longer, just to be sure. A scuffed steel door in the alley came open suddenly and a tired-looking middle-aged Chinese man emerged, jolting Danny. He spun, his fists up-and then he saw the man hurl a trash bag up into the Dumpster, and Danny started laughing, uncontrollably, with relief. The guy glanced in Danny’s direction, shook his head, and went back inside, slamming the door behind him.

Five minutes later, Danny pulled back onto the street.

Half an hour later, he arrived in Medford.

He pulled into a large dusty lot surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire. Signs on the fence said NO TRESPASSERS and KEEP OUT. A sign at the entrance gate said MEDFORD REGIONAL CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING/EMPLOYEES ONLY/TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

The gate was open.

79

Medford Regional was one of several Massachusetts companies owned by the Sinaloa cartel, with Tom Galvin the titular CEO. Danny wasn’t sure whether the cartel owned them for any reason other than that Galvin considered them a good investment. The company’s officials, according to Galvin, had no idea who their real owner was.

But they knew the name of their boss on paper and were happy to accommodate.

He drove through the gate and stopped at a construction trailer.

Danny got out and climbed up a few steps into the trailer. On the trailer’s front door were a US Marine decal and a Boston Strong ribbon sticker. He opened the door and said, “I’m looking for Paul.”

The guy at the desk stood up. He was a short, heavily muscled guy with full-sleeve tattoos and thick steel-framed glasses.

“I’m Paul,” the guy said, glowering.

“I’m Dan.”

The guy suddenly turned friendly. He stuck out his hand.

“The orders I got-this can’t be right.”

Danny had expected such a reaction. “It’s right,” he said.

“You got an end-user certificate?”

Danny pulled out the document that had been e-mailed to Galvin and handed it over. Paul looked at it briefly, then looked up. He shrugged. “Long as my ass is covered, I’m good. Where’s all this stuff going?”

Danny pointed to his Honda.

“You’re gonna want to pull up to the last trailer. But first, you got a bunch of forms to sign.”

80

Though it had been several hours since Dr. Mendoza had learned the identity of the DEA’s confidential source, he was still astonished by the revelation.

Thomas Galvin, one of the cartel’s American employees, had turned.

Dr. Mendoza would never have expected el dedo, the snitch, to be someone at that high a level. Galvin had become immensely rich through his dealings with Sinaloa. He wouldn’t have terminated the business relationship unless he’d somehow been compromised. The DEA must have obtained actionable intelligence on the man. There was no other plausible explanation.

But the explanation was far less important than the solution.

The cartel wanted him silenced. For that, of course, they didn’t need Dr. Mendoza. A simple hit team would do. The cartel could dispatch a unit comprising local talent, to take Galvin with brute force, neutralizing his minimal private security presence. There were, after all, only four security officers standing guard at Galvin’s estate: three patrolling on foot and a fourth in a vehicle circumnavigating the perimeter.

Easy.

But the cartel also needed Galvin’s full cooperation. They needed access to the accounts he ran for them. They needed a full transfer of owner documents. To kill the man would only create vast bureaucratic problems for the cartel. Galvin had to be questioned before he was killed.

Dr. Mendoza sat in his rented Nissan Maxima and watched the front gates of Galvin’s property and thought for a moment.

Galvin had barricaded himself and his family inside his estate. But that was merely a desperation move. Dr. Mendoza had compiled a hasty psychological profile of the family based on little more than credit reports, financial statements, and a few cartel files. Galvin’s wife was a regular shopper with a regular, if small, social life. She was likely to insist on leaving the property soon. But she was the child of one of the cartel’s founders, so she was off-limits. Galvin had a school-age daughter who didn’t have a driver’s license. She would not be leaving the premises on her own.

But he was confident that Galvin himself would be leaving, and soon.

And then he would set to work.

Galvin would crack, as absolutely everyone Dr. Mendoza worked with cracked, without exception. He would volunteer passwords and codes and so forth. No doubt about that.

What worried Dr. Mendoza was not Thomas Galvin. It was the others who were trying to get to him first.

The former DEA agents.

A few quick calls had established that they had been hired by the Zeta cartel. Los Zetas had been trying for quite some time now to penetrate Sinaloa’s security, and they had failed. Then they found a soft spot: Thomas Galvin.

If they captured Galvin, they would capture, in one swift move, the ownership of billions of dollars of invested capital. Seize it from Sinaloa. It would be a catastrophic loss, and it had to be stopped.

A black Chevrolet Suburban had been circling the perimeter of Galvin’s estate for the better part of an hour. They were hoping, as Dr. Mendoza was, to grab Thomas Galvin.

But they had to be stopped. Dr. Mendoza had to get to Galvin before they did. That was crucial.

Suddenly came the unmistakable sound of a police siren. A squad car roared up the road half a minute later, all of its lights flashing.

Was it possible…?

Yes. The police cruiser pulled right up to Galvin’s front gates. Dr. Mendoza could see through his binoculars one of the security guards checking the policemen’s badges and then waving it through.

The police car was entering Galvin’s property for some reason. Was Galvin about to be arrested by local law enforcement? The sirens wouldn’t have been activated for a routine visit.

Something very strange was going on.

After the police cruiser had been on Galvin’s property for almost five minutes, Dr. Mendoza heard the sirens again, and the squad car came rocketing back out through the gates.

In the backseat, a passenger was visibly handcuffed.

It was Thomas Galvin. He had just been arrested.

81

Sixty-five minutes later, the Honda was hurtling down Atlantic Avenue, past the North End, along the Boston waterfront.

Danny turned into a narrow lane posted with a NO VEHICLES ALLOWED sign, slowed to ease over the speed bumps, and pulled up to a gate labeled BOSTON YACHT HAVEN.

The gate was unlocked. The marina was open twenty-four hours, but it was slow this time of year. Most of the slips were unoccupied. There were a couple of cars in the front lot, probably belonging to marina staff. A guy in a short-sleeved blue polo shirt and holding a clipboard came out and circled around to the side of the clubhouse, looking preoccupied.

A few hundred feet away, Atlantic Avenue snarled and rumbled with rush-hour traffic, but here on the waterfront, it was oddly tranquil. A pair of seagulls soared and coasted on the breeze and then one of them dove suddenly to the surface of the water when it spied something.

Tom Galvin’s beloved boat, El Antojo, was moored on the right side of the clubhouse, where the water was deepest. It glinted in the late-afternoon sun. It was truly a beautiful ship. Danny could understand why Galvin loved it so. It was the biggest boat in the marina for now, but not for long. When the summer season began, there would be far bigger, more ostentatious boats.

Danny had downloaded the blueprints of the Ferretti Navetta 26 Crescendo, Galvin’s boat, and knew it was eighty-six feet long and almost twenty-three feet across. He knew it had twin MAN V8-900 engines and a fuel tank that held more than three thousand gallons.

He knew it could go as far as the Lesser Antilles without stopping to refuel.

Danny looked at his watch. He had very little time before Galvin arrived. Half an hour at most.

With Galvin’s key card, he unlocked the gate that led to the gangplank down to his boat.

Most of the wiring had been set up for him by Paul, the foreman at Medford Regional, back at the yard. Paul was a master electrician. It didn’t look particularly complicated. Now all Danny had to do, really, was put things in the right places.

Everything else was outside of their control. It would happen, or it wouldn’t.

It took him no more than twenty minutes. The sun was orange and plump on the horizon as it set. The sky was the purple of a bruise. The outside lights were coming on.

He heard the squall of a police siren approach, nearby. He cocked his head. The siren was getting louder and closer. He stepped off the boat and went up the gangway, through the locked gate, and around to the side of the yacht club.

The police car had pulled into the lot, its lights and siren now off. Leon Chisholm trundled out slowly, favoring one leg. He looked around at the clubhouse, at the water, and then he opened the back door.

Tom Galvin emerged in jeans and sneakers and a gray sweatshirt. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. He looked like he’d been crying.

82

“Yes, sergeant, that’s correct,” Dr. Mendoza said. “The name is Thomas Galvin. I’ll wait.”

He had taken note of the squad car number as it pulled away from Galvin’s house. Only later had it struck him that it was a Boston Police car, not a Weston one. On his laptop in the front seat of the rental with its wireless connection, he had Googled the district number from the car and was startled to learn that District C-11 was Dorchester, part of the city of Boston.

Why was a police car from Dorchester arresting someone who lived in the suburb of Weston, Massachusetts? It didn’t seem logical.

The desk sergeant from District C-11 came back on the line. “No paperwork here on a Thomas Galvin. What’s your name again?”

“John Ryan,” he said. “With Nutter McClennen.”

The sergeant probably didn’t even know that was the name of a real Boston law firm. He certainly didn’t ask Dr. Mendoza to prove he really was a defense attorney representing Thomas Galvin.

“Look, Mr., uh, Ryan, I got no Thomas Galvin brought in at all today at any time. Not for questioning, not booked for arrest, nothing.”

“Ah,” he said. “Very strange. My apologies.” If Galvin had been taken into custody, for some reason, by a police car from Dorchester, he’d have been booked at the Dorchester station house. How could they have no record of him?

Unless…

“Oh, one other thing, Sergeant. Mr. Galvin gave me the number of the squad car. It was number 536. That’s a District C-11 car, is it not?”

The desk sergeant sighed loudly. “Hold on.”

He came back on the line two minutes later. “You got that wrong, too. That car’s out for repair. Hasn’t been in service for almost a week.”

83

Tom Galvin set two duffle bags down on the pavement.

“Thank you, Leon,” Danny said.

“It was worth it just to find out my old uniform still fits,” Leon said. “Now, if you gentlemen are all set, I need to get this back to the garage before someone reports it missing. Then I got to head over to school. I’m working tonight-College Night, you know.”

“Sorry we’re not going to be there,” Galvin said.

Danny wondered whether Galvin had ever had occasion to speak to Leon before today. Maybe not. But not from snobbery, he knew. They were just two circles that never overlapped.

“Your family gonna be all right?” Leon asked Galvin. “Or are those Russians after just you?”

“Just me,” Galvin said. He took out his wallet.

Leon shook his head. “No need. Any friend of Danny’s is a friend of mine.”

Galvin pulled out a wad of bills and pressed them into Leon’s palm. Leon looked embarrassed, but he took the money. “You let me know if I can do anything else.” He shook Galvin’s hand, then Danny’s.

When Leon Chisholm had left, Galvin handed Danny one of the duffle bags. Danny zipped it open and quickly checked its contents. “Shoes?” he asked.

“Boat shoes. Sperry Top-Siders.”

“Sure, why not. Underwear?”

“Check.”

“I need a wristwatch, too,” Danny said.

“All I have is what I’m wearing. I left the other watches… behind. At home.”

“I’ll need it.”

“Christ,” Galvin said. He unbuckled the brown leather strap of his Patek Philippe and gave it to Danny. “This wasn’t cheap. How’m I supposed to check the time?” He seemed to be complaining almost by rote. His heart wasn’t in it. He looked distracted, tentative. As if he’d been hollowed out.

“Use your BlackBerry,” Danny said. “I’m sorry. Now we need to check cell phone reception.”

“I get a full five bars here.”

“Out on the water,” Danny said. “I need to know how far out you can go and still get at least two bars of signal. You need to be making and receiving calls on your BlackBerry when you’re offshore.”

Galvin nodded. “I’ll take her out into the harbor. I got nothing to do but wait.”

Danny looked at his own watch again. “Not much longer,” he said. “You need to get on the boat. You shouldn’t be standing around here. Where’s all your stuff?”

Galvin gestured with a toss of his head. Just the one remaining duffle bag.

“Is this it?” Danny said. “All your worldly possessions?”

“It’s an interesting exercise, packing for the rest of your life. How much do you really need? What do you absolutely have to have with you? And you realize pretty quickly that you can’t pack everything, so instead you pack almost nothing. You can’t pack for years, so you pack for a few days.”

“Probably better not to bring much of your old life with you. The fewer things to connect you to who you were, the better.”

“I never thought it was going to be easy to leave my family,” Galvin said slowly. “I just didn’t expect it to hit me so hard.”

“It’ll probably hit you even harder later on.”

Galvin nodded. His eyes were rimmed in red and glistened.

“Even harder because they don’t know,” Danny said.

“Just Celina. She knows. Jenna asked why I was making such a big deal out of a business trip.”

“Sweet Home Alabama” blared tinnily, and Galvin pulled out his BlackBerry.

“Lina, querida,” he said softly. Then, louder: “What?” His eyes widened. “You’re kidding me. Hold on.” To Danny, he said, “You have any idea where the girls have gone?”

“What?”

“Celina went upstairs to get them for dinner, and they’re gone. Both of them.”

“They-they must be somewhere in the house. It’s big enough to get lost in.”

Galvin shook his head. “No. Celina’s Range Rover is missing, too.”

“Christ. I assume Celina called Jenna’s cell phone.”

Galvin nodded brusquely. “No answer.”

“Try again. I’ll try Abby’s.”

They both punched speed-dial numbers on their mobile phones.

“I told her not to shut off her phone when she goes somewhere,” Danny said, more to himself than to Galvin.

“No answer,” Galvin said. “Until I know where they are, I’m not getting on my boat. Not until I know for sure my girl is okay.”

Abby’s voice mail came right on after a single ring. “Same here,” Danny said.

“Jenna, it’s Daddy,” Galvin said into his phone. “Your mother and I are worried about you. I told you, we all have to stay inside the house until this all… blows over. Now, you-call me as soon as you get this message. Please.”

Danny didn’t bother leaving a message. He disconnected the call. The last time Abby had disappeared and gone radio silent, she’d gotten her nose pierced. How utterly benign that now seemed.

“I’m going to find them,” he said.

84

Dr. Mendoza looked around the grand room, admiring its wainscoted walls of deep, rich oak. All around the room were hung large gilt-framed oil portraits of the school’s headmistresses, going back to the founder, Miss Alice Lyman, in the early nineteenth century.

In his well-cut serge suit and red tie, he knew he looked distinguished and prosperous. He looked like a Lyman Academy father. In fact, several parents and administrators had nodded and smiled at him, not sure who he was but never questioning that he belonged.

He peered pleasantly around as if looking for his wife or his daughter.

The problem was that he had no idea of his target’s appearance.

He knew, of course, what her father looked like. But the father wasn’t here.

It had been a stroke of luck that he’d seen the girls driving out of Galvin’s property. A gift, really. They were here somewhere; they had to be. But where?

The students and their parents, he noticed, were socializing separately, parents with parents and girls with girls. He sensed a great deal of nervous energy in the room. He could see it particularly in the overwrought expressions on the parents’ faces, their frantic good cheer.

He stopped one of the girls. In his most solicitous tone he said, “Where can I find Abby Goodman?”

The girl pointed toward a small cluster of students.

“Ah, yes, there she is!” Dr. Mendoza said. “Thank you so much.”

85

There was no direct route from the yacht club to the Lyman Academy, so Danny had to navigate the Honda through a maze of city streets, from Commercial Wharf to Tremont Street, poking along maddeningly, a sclerotic steel artery of rush-hour traffic.

He cursed aloud. “Move, goddammit!” Every few moments he alternated redialing Abby’s and Jenna’s phones. Each call went to voice mail. After the first few, he stopped leaving messages.

When he was still a few miles from school, Jenna picked up. Danny was so startled he almost sideswiped a cab.

“Um, hi, Mr. Goodman,” Jenna said tonelessly.

“Jenna! Is Abby with you?”

There was a long silence. Then: “I mean…” and another long pause.

“Look, your dad and I know you left the house. Where the hell are you? Are you at school?”

Jenna didn’t reply. He understood what had happened: Abby didn’t want to miss College Night, and Jenna wanted to take her there.

“Jenna, please put Abby on right now!”

Jenna sighed loudly. “I just dropped her off, like, ten minutes ago. I couldn’t find a place to park. I’m still, like, circling around.”

Lyman’s grounds were large, but for some reason it was always difficult to find parking on busy nights. Several small parking lots were nestled among the trees, attractively landscaped and unobtrusive. But never enough spaces.

“She went into the College Night assembly?”

Silence.

“Jenna, this is important. You guys have to get back home. It’s not safe. Now, tell Abby to call me immediately.”

“I mean, you tried her phone, probably, right?”

“I’m on my way into school. Where are you right now?”

“I’m just circling around, like-”

“Call Abby for me, can you do that? Please!”

Then Danny hung up.

86

“Excuse me-Abby?” Dr. Mendoza said. “Abby Goodman, yes?”

“Yes?” The girl looked at him warily.

“Oh, thank goodness. Your father needs you at once.”

“Um, w-wait, who are you?”

“He’s okay, but your father’s been in a terrible accident.” He took her by the elbow and gently escorted her toward the hall. “Come this way, please. Quickly.”

“What?” the girl cried. “Oh my God!”

“He’s at Mass General, and he’s been asking for you. My name is Dr. Mendoza. I’m a Lyman father, and I just got a text from a colleague of mine at the hospital.”

“Oh my God oh my God. What happened to him?”

“Please-quickly!” Dr. Mendoza said. He began striding rapidly toward the exit. Daniel Goodman’s daughter now hurried alongside. “There was a multiple-car collision on the pike not far from Weston.”

Dr. Mendoza was careful to use the right words, the right abbreviations. The pike, not the freeway. And Mass General, not Massachusetts General Hospital.

The girl cried: “But is he-oh my God, you said he’s okay-he’s okay, right? He’s not hurt? Or is he?”

The hall was deserted and dark. Once the door to Founders Hall had closed behind them, they were alone, with no one around to see. Their footsteps echoed.

“Is he hurt?” the girl asked again, louder. “Oh my God, please tell me!”

“Your father needs you,” Dr. Mendoza simply said.

87

Danny pulled his car up to the curb directly in front of the school, which was marked NO STOPPING/NO STANDING. Let ’em tow, he thought.

He slammed the door and jogged into the main entrance of the school.

Leon Chisholm was sitting on a chair inside the foyer. “Danny boy, I thought you weren’t coming-”

Danny shrugged. No time to explain. “You see my daughter, Leon?”

“No, ’fraid not, but all the girls and the parents are in Founders Hall. If she’s anywhere, she’s there.”

“Thanks,” Danny said, hurrying away.

“If I see her, I’ll tell her-” Leon called out.

But Danny was already out of earshot.

Founders Hall was the large, grandly appointed assembly room where the big school meetings took place. Back-to-School Night, when parents met with their daughters’ teachers, began with the parents assembled here. On College Night, juniors and their parents gathered as a group to listen to a few selected admissions officers, usually from one of the Ivy League schools or exclusive small colleges, tell them what colleges were looking for.

When he reached the set of doors that led to Founders Hall, he stopped. Through the round glass portal windows in the double doors, he could see that everyone was seated in chairs listening to a red-haired, freckle-faced young woman holding forth.

“… could fill the freshman class with students with 4.0 GPAs and 2400 SATs,” the woman was saying. “Several times over, in fact. But we’re looking for that certain special ‘plus,’ that something extra that makes the application pop.”

From this vantage point, he could see only the backs of people’s heads. He couldn’t make out Abby or Jenna. So he walked down the hallway to the next set of doors, and from there he could see faces. At this angle, he could see roughly half of the audience. He combed the crowd, row by row, looking for Abby or Jenna, not seeing either one.

Then, as he raced along the corridor to the other side of Founders Hall, where he’d be able to see the rest of the audience, his iPhone gave a text alert.

He stopped, glanced at the phone’s screen, and was surprised to see a text from Jenna.

Did u find her?

He texted back: No, is she w. u?

I’m here in Founders, don’t see her anywhere. Thought she was with you.

Please come out & talk w. me, he texted back.

A pause. Then her text came through: OK.

He resumed jogging down the corridor toward the far side of the room. He heard a thunder burst of applause and then a rising cacophony. The presentation was over. By the time he got to the entry doors, people were getting up from their seats, talking loudly to one another. The Yale admissions rep was standing at the front, engulfed by a huge jostling crowd, a honeybee queen surrounded by worker bees. A knot of parents stood near the door, obstructing Danny’s view.

He pushed the door open and entered, now searching only for Jenna. He had to push through a throng gathered around the tired, pillaged display of red grapes and Jarlsberg cheese cubes.

The chatter all around him seemed to break into unconnected fragments of speech like confetti scattered into the air. A woman was saying, “But if she gets in early decision, she has to go, and then what happens if she gets into Williams, regular decision? I mean, it’s a nightmare, right?”

A man was saying, “They don’t even do on-campus interviews anymore, just alumni interviews, and everyone knows those’re a joke.”

He saw a small, pudgy dark-haired girl who looked sort of like Jenna, wearing a Lyman Lacrosse sweatshirt. But it wasn’t Jenna. “Excuse me, have you seen Jenna Galvin?” Danny asked her.

The girl motioned with a jerk of her head. “I saw her back there.”

He was jostled by a woman who was saying, “Sure, but it’s not even in the top ten on the U.S. News ranking.”

A man was muttering to another one, “You do know that the school for war orphans their daughter allegedly founded in Rwanda was actually underwritten by her father, right?”

Suddenly, Danny glimpsed Jenna and exhaled with relief. He pushed his way toward her. When he got closer, she saw him and said, “I don’t know where she is. Is my dad here?”

“No. Did anyone see Abby at all tonight?”

“Well, yeah, a bunch of people saw her come in. Then Jordan and Emily saw her walking out with this guy.”

“What guy?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, like someone’s dad?”

“Walking out of the building?”

She shrugged. “I guess. I thought maybe she’d gotten in trouble or something.”

“You haven’t heard from her-message, call, nothing?”

“No-”

“She’s definitely not in here?”

“Definitely not. I texted her-”

“Well, you guys both need to get out of there. Get back home. And if you do hear from her-”

“I know, I’ll tell you.”

She’d walked out with a man who looked like someone’s dad.

He felt a rising panic. Abby had walked out of the building with someone, a man Jenna didn’t recognize.

But she wouldn’t go anywhere with someone she didn’t know. She wouldn’t do that. Even here, in the safe environs of the Lyman Academy, she knew not to trust strangers. That was drilled into kids these days.

He jostled a couple, trying to squeeze past.

“Well, her older sister got Z-listed at Harvard. They definitely played the Eliot card.”

“Aren’t they Eliots, like that Eliot? Like President Eliot of Harvard, those Eliots?”

“Hey, Danny,” he heard someone say. He felt a tap on his shoulder. A fellow Lyman dad he saw at school events and liked. “Man, you look as nervous as me! I mean, is this Tension City or what?”

Danny turned to look at him, a million miles away. “Yeah,” he said thickly. He gave an unconvincing smile. Sidling away, he took out his iPhone and hit speed dial for Abby once again.

It rang once, twice… and-that was different: It didn’t go directly to voice mail.

It rang a third time, and then someone said, “Hello, Daniel.”

A male voice.

“Who’s this?” he said, his heart suddenly racing.

“I’m sorry. Abby cannot come to the phone right now.”

“Who is this?”

“I am your life raft,” the voice said. “And you are a drowning man.”

88

“Who the hell is this?”

Danny became aware that the background noise on the other end of the line was identical to the background noise in the hall, and he felt a shudder.

The man on the phone was here, somewhere, in this room.

“You have something I want, and I have something you want,” the voice said.

“How the hell did you get my daughter’s phone, you bastard?” he burst out. It was all he could think to say.

His eyes desperately searched the room, scanning back and forth, looking for someone speaking on a phone. Someone who wasn’t a Lyman parent, someone who didn’t belong.

“Neither one of us has time to waste, Mr. Goodman. Your daughter is in the care of an associate of mine who has instructions to take good care of her.”

“An associate… Who is this?”

A knot of parents momentarily parted, and Danny saw a bald man with mocha skin and rimless glasses holding Abby’s red LG mobile phone against the side of his face.

Their eyes locked.

It was the man from the surveillance image Tom Galvin had shown him. The man sitting in a car outside Galvin’s house. The man sent by the cartel to…

“If you cooperate,” the man was saying, “nothing will happen to her. There’s no need to worry about that. It will be quick and painless. But if you refuse to cooperate, or you are slow about it, I need only call my friend. And then, what happens to your daughter… well, I’m afraid she will never be the same.”

Galvin’s words came rushing back to him.

You know the videos on the Internet of those guys with chain saws cutting off people’s heads and all that? The ones you see in your nightmares? Well, this is the guy who gives those guys nightmares.

And: His name is Dr. Mendoza. That’s all I know-Dr. Mendoza, no first name. He specializes in coercive interrogation.

“Let us step outside, Mr. Goodman,” the voice said.

89

Heart thudding, nearly dizzy with adrenaline, Danny stood at the rear of the school’s main building, off to the side.

Waiting for Dr. Mendoza.

His skin prickled. A parking light fixture buzzed loudly. In the distance a car started.

Everything had taken on an eerie clarity, a feeling of heightened reality.

Then he heard the scuff of a shoe on gravel and the man named Dr. Mendoza loomed into view.

“Well, then-” Dr. Mendoza began to say, but Danny lunged.

“You bastard!” he roared. “You goddamned bastard!”

He grabbed hold of Dr. Mendoza’s shirt collar, the knot of his necktie, and Dr. Mendoza made a tight strangled sound as Danny slammed his full weight against the man’s chest. But the man came back upright with surprising strength.

Dr. Mendoza’s rimless glasses were knocked askew.

He looked at Danny with an amused arrogance as he straightened them. “I am sorry you’ve done this,” he said, and he blinked several times. “You have just made a grievous mistake.”

“Where the hell is my daughter?”

“Please back away,” Dr. Mendoza said patiently. He pursed his lips.

Blood roaring in his ears, Danny unsteadily stepped back. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

“Mr. Goodman, you are overwrought. I will permit you this one outburst, because you are clearly unable to control your emotions. But let us be blunt. If you so much as lay a finger on me ever again, you will only harm your daughter. She will experience pain of a type and a magnitude that killing her will be a mercy, one she will beg for.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“I want to know where Thomas Galvin has gone.”

“And what makes you think I have the slightest idea-?”

“Oh, dear. This is a shame. You are risking your daughter’s life with your silly games. What I am proposing is a very simple trade. Your daughter for Thomas Galvin.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

Dr. Mendoza shrugged. “This game doesn’t benefit either one of us, and it doesn’t help your daughter. Abigail, is that right? Abby?”

It took all the restraint he could muster to keep from lunging at the man again. Danny clenched his fists and bit his lower lip. He actually trembled with anger.

“How do I know she’s okay?”

“You have my word.”

“Your-word?”

“I’m afraid that’s the best you can do. But you’ll see that I am a man of my word.”

Danny swallowed. He heard distant laughter, a girl’s squeal. “Okay, listen. If you let my daughter go-and if you absolutely guarantee my daughter’s safety-I’ll-I’ll try my best to find Galvin.”

Dr. Mendoza smiled. “You’ll try to find him? This is your notion of good faith? You disappoint me. Good night.” Straightening his tie, Dr. Mendoza began to walk away.

“Wait-”

Dr. Mendoza stopped, made a half turn.

“Hold on,” Danny said. He swallowed again. His face was taut, burning. Agonized, he said, “He’s on his boat.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Mendoza said. “And where is that boat?”

“Where’s Abby? Give me my daughter and I’ll tell you where his boat is.”

Dr. Mendoza sighed and shook his head.

“This is a game you really want to play? A game with your daughter’s life? No, this is how it will work: You will take me to Galvin. Then I’ll tell you where she can be found.”

Danny looked around wildly, trying to regain some semblance of control. He swallowed, closed his eyes.

“All right,” he said at last.

90

Danny sat behind the wheel of the Honda. In the passenger’s seat next to him sat the man in the suit, tall and lanky yet powerfully built.

“Place the call,” Dr. Mendoza said.

“He’s on his boat. I don’t even know if a call can get through.”

“For your sake, for your daughter’s sake, let us hope it does.”

Galvin was on his boat, waiting for Danny to give him the all-clear signal.

But this call would change everything.

Once again, Danny felt a terrible clarity. His daughter’s life depended on this. He remembered the morning when Sarah and he had strapped their tiny baby into a car seat and drove her home from the hospital. A howling snowstorm outside, and they’d covered her face with a pink-and-blue-striped baby blanket to protect her from the snow during the dash from the hospital to their car. He drove as if the baby was made of glass, as if the baby’s life was in his hands, and it was.

As it was now.

The most precious thing in the world to him.

His stomach was roiling. He was frightened and alone and his baby’s life depended on him. Abby or Tom Galvin-was that even a choice?

He punched the numbers for Galvin’s BlackBerry. It rang once, twice, three times, and he thought: What if he doesn’t answer? What will this monster in the seat next to me do?

On the third ring, Galvin answered. “Danny?”

“Tom-don’t leave yet. I have-something to give you.”

“Danny? What, did you say-give me-?”

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, and he ended the call.

“Where is Galvin?”

“Boston Harbor,” Danny said softly.

“The faster you take us there,” Dr. Mendoza said, “the faster our business will be concluded.”

“What are you going to do to him?”

A long silence. “That will be determined by his behavior.”

Danny drove like an automaton. Not another word was exchanged between the two men on the way over. His chest was tight. He found it hard to breathe. He was acutely aware of Dr. Mendoza’s presence next to him. It burned his cheeks and ears like he was standing next to a raging fire.

Traffic had gotten light, and they made it there in twelve minutes.

He pulled the Honda into the Boston Yacht Haven parking lot. He got out, his legs leaden, a prickle at the back of his neck.

As they came around the side of the clubhouse to the dock, Dr. Mendoza drew up close to him. “Do I need to tell you that if anything happens to me, if I do not place a call to my associate within an hour, harm will befall her?” He glanced at his wristwatch, a large white face with gold numbers and a brown leather strap. “You will see I am not in the business of making idle threats.”

Danny nodded. He felt light-headed, thick and slow. He moved as if through sludge.

“And where is his yacht?” Mendoza demanded.

El Antojo wasn’t tied up at the dock. Its berth was empty.

He pointed. Galvin’s yacht had left shore. It was a few hundred yards off, its running lights illuminating the ship with an orange glow as if lit from within.

“He’s left?” Mendoza said. “This is most unfortunate for you.”

“He’s out there. I told him not to go anywhere.”

Danny could taste the salt in the air. He heard the scuff of a shoe against pavement nearby, but when he turned he saw nothing.

“You had better persuade him to turn back now.”

Danny looked at Mendoza, then looked at the water. He said nothing.

“Let us be clear, you and I,” Mendoza said. “If he does not return to shore, your daughter is dead. It is as simple as that. If you cannot persuade him, your daughter is dead. It all rests on you.”

“Christ!” Danny said. His nerves felt stretched taut. He took out his cell phone and was about to hit REDIAL.

But then he stopped. Shook his head.

“Make the call,” Mendoza said.

“No.”

Mendoza’s eyes flashed. For the first time, Danny detected anger in the man’s face. Anger was good. Anger revealed vulnerability.

“You give the order to release Abby,” Danny said, “and I’ll get Galvin back here. But you’d better do it now, or you’ll lose Tom Galvin forever. Once Galvin’s out of cell range, it’s too late for you.”

“You do not make the rules of this game.”

“Let her go and I’ll make the call. You want a hostage, you have me. But let her go now. I want to hear her voice. Then I’ll give you whatever the hell you want.”

Mendoza gave Danny a basilisk stare. Taking a small mobile phone from his suit jacket, he spoke quickly in Spanish. Danny understood nothing of what he said.

Mendoza handed the phone to Danny.

“Daddy?” Abby croaked into the phone.

“Abby!” Danny said, tears in his eyes. “Baby. Where are you?”

“They tied me up! I think there’s a furnace? It’s like the boiler room-the basement of the school.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“He just left, Daddy, he’s gone. He cut off the things, the-those, like, plastic things for handcuffs?”

“You can move?”

“Yeah. I just want to get out of here. I-”

“Call Lucy. Right now. Ask her to pick you up at school. Can you do that?”

“Yeah. I-” She started crying. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry-”

“Boogie. Sweetie. Just call Lucy, would you do that for me?”

He hung up the phone.

Mendoza nodded, and Danny nodded back.

“As I have said, I am a man of my word,” Mendoza said. “And now it is your turn.”

Danny dialed the number for Galvin’s BlackBerry. It rang once, and then Galvin came on the line.

“Danny, what the hell is it?”

“Please, Tom, listen to me. You need to return to shore. Come back in. This is important.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just-it’s important. I’m here on shore. Come back.” He clicked off.

Mendoza, he noticed, had suddenly flinched. Danny turned to look and felt an iron grip on his left upper arm and something cold and hard pressing into the side of his head and he knew it was a gun. He froze.

He heard another scuffing sound and saw someone was holding a gun to Dr. Mendoza’s head as well. They were flanked by two men who smelled of cigarettes and body odor and whose bulging arms were tattooed down to their wrists.

In front of them stood Glenn Yeager. At his side he held a large stainless steel pistol. He wasn’t bothering to point it at Danny and Mendoza. He didn’t need to. His muscle was taking care of that for him.

“Well, Daniel,” Yeager said. “Looks like you’ve brought us a Sinaloa legend. Dr. Mendoza, it’s good to finally make your acquaintance.”

Mendoza stared straight ahead.

Danny looked back at Yeager, dazed.

“Oh, yeah,” Yeager said, smiling, “and thanks for the tip. As always, we’re three steps ahead of you. Forgot about Galvin’s BlackBerry, didn’t you? Forgot we were listening in to everything you and Galvin said. Well, you enjoy your new babysitters. Phil and I have some business to transact with your friend Tom Galvin. And, Daniel?”

Danny looked at Yeager. Yeager smiled. “I knew you’d do the right thing.”

Danny saw where Yeager was heading: down the ramp to the lower level of the pier where some of the smaller ships were tied up. Down there, Philip Slocum and several other guys with guns were boarding what looked like a large black inflatable raft with an outboard motor. Slocum had a large assault rifle slung around one shoulder.

Then the inflatable’s motor roared throatily to life. Danny turned instinctively to the loud noise, and he felt Mendoza’s left arm twitch.

Suddenly, Mendoza torqued his body to his right, whipping his free left hand around. Something caught the light, something glinting and lethal and slashing. In almost the same instant, the man on Mendoza’s right turned questioningly toward Mendoza. Around his throat was a thin red seam. As the man moved, the seam in his throat gaped open and a geyser of blood spewed forth, and the man’s knees buckled and he sank to the sidewalk.

Then Mendoza spun to his other side as Danny jumped out of the way. The man who a moment earlier had been holding a gun to Danny’s temple now lurched away from the blade concealed in Mendoza’s left sleeve.

The blade whooshed in the air, missing its target. Danny dove to the ground, taking cover behind a tall concrete planter.

What happened next took no more than ten seconds, but it seemed to take minutes, as if time had somehow slowed.

Dr. Mendoza juked behind a broad wooden column, a large gun in his hand. He moved with balletic grace. The other man fired, the muzzle flash a tongue of orange flame, and a shot splintered the wood a few inches from Mendoza’s head.

Another muzzle flash and a bullet zinged against the brick sidewalk near Danny. He could feel sharp fragments sting the side of his face. He crabbed on his knees toward where Mendoza was crouching behind the column, and with one forceful lunge, he shoved Mendoza, hard.

Mendoza lost his balance, sprawling out from behind the column, and a bullet exploded in his abdomen. Mendoza gasped. Then suddenly came another muzzle flash, and a bullet whizzed, striking him in the chest. Holding his gun level in a perfectly steady grip, he squeezed off one more shot. There was a scream, and the shooter’s weapon crashed to the ground.

For a moment, there was just the whine of the outboard motor.

Mendoza’s white dress shirt bloomed red. He’d been badly wounded. He reached down with one hand to feel his abdomen, and his pistol slipped from his hand and clattered to the sidewalk.

A moment later, he seemed to list to his left and then toppled slowly, tripping over the chain-link barrier, plummeting headlong with a great splash into the black water.

A frenzied splashing in the water as Mendoza struggled to stay afloat…

Then nothing. Just the growl of the motor.

A distant shout from the water.

Danny lay flat against the brick. He waited for another gunshot, but nothing more came. He waited some more. Then he turned toward the harbor and saw the inflatable racing toward the El Antojo.

Danny scrabbled to his knees, then onto his feet. His ears rang. Transfixed, he watched the speedboat pull up alongside Tom Galvin’s yacht. Its motor sputtered and died.

The former DEA agents and their cartel associates began boarding the yacht, intent on killing Tom Galvin.

Danny found himself praying. All was now beyond his control. He had done his best. He had done everything he could.

He took out his disposable cell phone and hit the only number he’d programmed into it. He listened to it ring precisely three times and then stop.

He waited. Three, four, six seconds…

And then the night lit up with an immense flash of fire, as if somehow the sun had suddenly climbed back up over the horizon, bleaching the sky, and a second or two later came the explosion, an enormous deafening boom, seemingly out of sync, like a badly dubbed movie, and the El Antojo had become a vast ball of fire. The sky was ablaze with orange and red and plumes of black smoke, a great roaring inferno.

And as he sank to the ground, he kept watching the burning yacht, and he felt an emotion he did not at first recognize because he hadn’t felt anything like it in such a long time.

It wasn’t despair and it wasn’t elation.

It was, quite simply, relief.