F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (15 page)

“Not a bit. Doc,” said
Snake.

The utter flatness of the voice
sent a blast of cold despair through John. The emotions he’d expressed
were incomprehensible to this man. He might as well have been speaking Swahili.

“And you know what else
doesn’t make sense to me?” Snake said. “You disobeying and
spying on my man. You know what that means, don’t you?”

Panic surged through John. He
didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

“I haven’t called
anyone or told anyone!” He began babbling. “Not a soul! Just as you
said! But I have to know, don’t you understand? Coming down here was a
crazy thing to do, but that’s what not knowing if Katie’s alive or
dead is doing to me! It’s making me crazy! You’ve got to believe
that!” A long pause followed. John held his breath, waiting.

Finally Snake spoke.

“Well, we don’t want
you going crazy, now, do we. We wouldn’t want that.” The hand
released John’s neck. “You freeze there, Doc. You stay facing that
wall and the only thing you look at is your watch. You wait here ten minutes
before you so much as turn your head.”

“But Katie—” A
sharp jab in his back cut him off.

“Not another fucking word,
you hear?”

Miserable, John nodded. He felt so
helpless. Christ, if only he had the guts to turn around and grab this guy and
throttle Katie’s whereabouts out of him. But that might spell the end of
Katie… if she wasn’t already— He heard footsteps moving away
from him, heading back toward the escalator. He pushed back his jacket sleeve
and looked at his watch:
4:11
.
He’d have to stand here until
4:21
while Snake and his accomplice got away.

And then he heard a voice shout two
words from over by the escalator: “Maggie Simpson!” At first they
didn’t register. Was that Snake or someone else looking for— Maggie
Simpson! The little pacifier-sucking girl from Katie’s favorite TV show.
Katie loved her! That could only mean… the only way they could have found
out…

She’s alive! Katie’s
alive! John clamped his hands over his eyes and wept with relief.

Snake listened to Vanduyne’s
sobs, watched his shoulders quake as he leaned against the wall and bawled,
then he stepped onto the escalator and rode it to street level.

Snake hadn’t wanted to tell
him, had wanted to let him suffer for being such a jerk, but then he’d
reconsidered. If not knowing about his kid was really making Vanduyne nuts,
then it was good business to tell him. Otherwise, the guy was a loose cannon.
Who knew what crazy thing he’d try next?

And this guy had a crazy streak a
mile wide. Sure, he was back there crying like a baby now, but Snake had an
uneasy feeling he’d be making a big mistake if he wrote off that guy as a
wimp. He’d sensed something dangerous at the bus stop as Vanduyne had
passed by on Paulie’s tail. Something in his eyes. Feral. Like some sort
of predator. Hard to match that up with the sob sister downstairs, but the
guy’s eyes hadn’t been lying.

Snake slammed his fist against the
escalator’s rubber hand rail. That’s why you never snatch a kid.
Adult to adult, it’s one thing… a snatch is the cost of doing a
certain kind of business, a price they pay for not being careful. The packages
lick their wounds and slink away, poorer but wiser.

But involve a kid and you’re
on a whole other level. You tap into something primal. You wind up dealing from
a different deck. Suddenly everybody’s taking it personally. And
that’s when people became unpredictable… dangerous. Snake
didn’t understand it but recognized it when he saw it. And he sure as
hell had seen it in Vanduyne’s eyes.

So he’d told him about Maggie
Simpson. To calm him down. Make him more predictable. He starts thinking his
kid is dead, pretty soon he decides he’s got nothing to lose—a very
bad situation all the way around.

Up on the sidewalk he checked his
watch. He’d wasted too much time jerking around with Vanduyne. He’d
left his car at the Mayflower, so he started jogging up
Connecticut
Avenue
. He’d have to hustle if he was going
to make the meeting with
Salinas
.

He thought about Vanduyne again.
Before this was over, he was going to need a persuader.

As planned, Paulie stepped onto the
Metro train and waited until the platform emptied; then he stepped off again.
And watched. No one else got off. He watched the doors close and the train
slide away into the dark gullet of the tunnel.

All right! Nobody following him.

He headed back up to street level.
He’d been twitchy as a strung-out crackhead since he’d walked into
that drugstore, half-expecting a gang of feds to jump him as soon as he asked
for those pills.

He checked his pocket to make sure
he had the drugstore bag. A lot of risk to get that little vial. But things had
worked out okay. Better than okay. He’d hit Snake up for some cash to
cover the jogging suit and the prescription, and a little extra to keep the
home fires burning.

He checked his beeper in the other
pocket. The readout said no calls. Which reconfirmed that he hadn’t been
followed—Snake was to have beeped him if he’d spotted anyone on his
tail. So everything was cool. He felt the tension ooze out of him.

He passed a guy leaning against a wall,
looking for all the world like he was crying. Maybe he was sick. Or drunk.

Which gave Paulie an idea. Why not
pick up a little bubbly as a gift for Poppy? She was all strung out babysitting
the kid. She liked champagne and a bottle might get her to lighten up a little.

Yeah. Great idea. Buy her a goddamn
magnum. Buy her two.

It took Snake a while, but he
finally found a parking spot off M Street within half a block of Il
Giardinello—he needed his car close by. He opened the glove compartment and
started the tape recorder, then snapped his fingers in front of his chest. The
mike in his shirt button picked up the sound and the needle on the receiver
jumped. All right. All systems go—as long as he didn’t get too far away.

Snake walked around
Georgetown
a little before approaching the restaurant—just to be sure no one was
tailing him. What’s the big attraction in owning a restaurant? he
wondered as he approached the kitchen door. Actors, comedians, jocks, TV
geeks—they all seemed to want one. Why? Looked like a royal pain in the
ass. He checked his jacket buttons and his lapel pin, then knocked.

One of
Salinas
’s
guards, a beefy guy named Llosa with dark skin and thick, Indian features, let
him in. Snake handed him his .45 but the guy patted him down anyway. Satisfied
that Snake wasn’t going to murder his boss, he led him to the back office.

“Miguel!”
Salinas
said, from his recliner. His beige silk suit was wrinkled where it bunched
around his rolls of fat, and his gold-toothed smile was humorless. “You’re
late!” Mr. Fatso Drug Lord didn’t like to be kept waiting?

Tough. Snake wasn’t about to
incite
Salinas
, but he wasn’t
going to kiss his ass either.

“Had to arrange to get some
medicine for the kid,” Snake said pointedly. “You know, the kid no
one knew was sick? Took me longer than I’d anticipated.”

“But it is all taken care of,
no?”

“Yeah. All taken care
of.”

“Excellent!” Now his
smile was genuine. “Alien, pour our friend a drink.

Scotch, right?“

“Right. A little soda.”

“Give him the good
stuff.”
Salinas
’s
financial butt boy hopped to the task.

“We’ve got some
beautiful sixty-year-old MacCallan single malt here,” Alien Gold said.
“Cost Carlos thirteen big ones at auction.”

Thirteen grand for a bottle of
Scotch? Now that was conspicuous consumption. Snake glanced around. Just like
the rest of this dive. Look at the furniture, all dark and heavy and
intricately carved, with real Tiffany lamps and Persian rugs; the walls were
worse, hung with heavy burgundy drapes and all shades of garish Colombian art.

And in among the paintings, a
signed photo of Tricky Dick. Very weird.

Gold handed Snake his Scotch, neat.
“I held off on the club soda,” he said. “You don’t want
bubbles getting in the way of the taste of this stuff.” Snake bit back a
sharp retort. No profit in being ungracious, but he wondered about a guy with
an MBA acting as gofer.

“To the success of the
project,”
Salinas
said,
raising a glass of red wine.

They all drank. Snake smacked his
lips around the sixty-year-old Scotch. Pretty good, but not worth five hundred
bucks a pop.

“Alien,”
Salinas
said, wiping off his mustache, “give Miguel his next installment.”
Gold bent and lifted a leather attachê case. He handed it to Snake.

“You want to count it?”

“Not now,” Snake said.
“I’ll count it later.” He smiled to make it clear he was
joking.

Salinas
chuckled and his gut shook like the proverbial bowl full of jelly. A round man,
Salinas—a round face with a round mouth on a round body. His smile was
all white and gold except for the space between his upper front teeth—a
gap big enough to shoot watermelon pits through.

Always polite, soft-spoken, almost
formal. Yet Snake knew that behind that jolly exterior hid a diamond-hard,
laser-sharp mind. An obsessively security-conscious mind. He’d realized
that the first time they’d met here.

Snake had recorded the
conversation—he admitted to his own security hang-up—with a
standard transmitter mike, but when he’d checked the tape, all he heard
was thirty minutes of hiss. Which meant
Salinas
had a bug jammer in his office. A good one—randomly varying frequency and
amplitude. But there were ways around that…

Snake took another sip of Scotch
and dropped into a chair. “All right. I’ve got the kid. I’ve
got her daddy dangling on a string. What’s this service he’s
supposed to do?”
Salinas
looked at Gold.

“Alien, will you please
excuse us?”

Gold looked hurt. “You
don’t think you can trust me with this?”

“I think you can be trusted
with anything. Alien. But I do not think you want to be trusted with this.
Comprende?”

Gold stared at him a moment,
glanced at Snake, then shrugged. “Okay. If that’s the way you want
it.” He started for the door.

“It is not a burden you wish.
Alien,”
Salinas
said, smiling
solicitously.

“Fine. I’ll be at the
bar.”

As the door closed,
Salinas
said, “He is upset. He thinks he should know everything about my
business. And perhaps he is right. But in this matter, I am not so sure.”
Snake was beginning to get an uneasy feeling about “this matter.”

“I believe your
question,”
Salinas
said,
“was what service do I expect Dr. John Vanduyne to perform?” He
took another sip of his wine. After he swallowed, his smile was gone. His voice
was coldly matter of fact. “I expect Dr. John Vanduyne to remove his old
friend Thomas Winston from the White House.” Snake felt the Scotch glass
begin to slip from his fingers.

“The P-President?”
He’d never stuttered before in his life. “The President of the
United
States
?”

Salinas
nodded.

Snake had a strange, floating
sensation. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. All along he’d
known that the stakes in this job would be high—nobody offered you that
kind of money just to put the screws to a doctor bureaucrat in HHS. He’d
tried to figure the angle but couldn’t come up with any reason why
Vanduyne would be so valuable.

The stakes were high, all right.
Too high.

He opened his eyes.
“Winston’s legalization thing… that’s what this is all
about, right?”

Salinas
nodded again. “This coward wants to ruin our business. Fifty billion
dollars a year—gone.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like
that! You can understand why we cannot allow such a thing.”

“Yeah, sure,” Snake
said. Fifty billion a year justified just about anything. What had he got
himself into? “But how’s this Vanduyne going to solve your problem?”

Salinas
smiled. “Vanduyne is President Winston’s personal physician. We
will instruct him to administer a dose of chloramphenicol to his old
friend.”

“Chloram—what?‘’

Salinas
gestured to the pad on the table to Snake’s right. “Write it
down.”

Snake spelled it out phonetically
as
Salinas
repeated it. Klor…
aw… PHEN… uh… call, then got the proper spelling from
Salinas
.

“What’s that? A
poison?”

“No. That is the beauty of
it. Chloramphenicol is an antibiotic. An old one that is rarely used
anymore.”

Snake stared at the word on the
sheet of paper in his hand. “I don’t get it.”

“One of the reasons
chloramphenicol is rarely used is its effect on the bone marrow of a small
percentage of patients.”

“What’s that?”
Snake said.

“Like the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima
:
The bone marrow stops producing blood cells. The condition is called aplastic
anemia. I have never heard of it, but then, what do I know about medicine?
However, I have educated myself over the past few months… ever since a
certain source informed me that Thomas Winston almost died from aplastic anemia
at age three. The cause was chloramphenicol.”