F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (7 page)

Also had to respect how smoothly
Mac’s gigs ran. Like well-oiled machines. Everything went down by the
numbers…

Except the last one.

And if Poppy was calling the shots
now, that would have been Paulie’s last one too. They’d had a fight
about doing this gig, with Poppy shouting and throwing things, and almost
walking out. That was when Paulie realized how important she was to his life.

So they cut a deal: One last gig
and then they were out of it. They’d take the money and run, find an
island somewhere, and just sleep, sunbathe, eat, drink, and screw. Yes.

He cruised the truck over to where
Mac was backing a shiny new Lincoln Town Car out of a slot. He motioned Paulie
to pull into the space. Paulie parked the truck, then got out and ran a gloved
hand over the
Lincoln
’s
gleaming black finish.

“Flash ride. Where’d
you get it?”

“Get in. We’ll talk
inside.” The windows slid up as Paulie slipped into the passenger seat.
All sound from the outside world faded to zero when he closed the door. Like
being sealed in a coffin.

“It’s rented,”
Mac said in a low voice, looking straight ahead through the windshield as he
pulled an envelope from the inside pocket of his brown herringbone jacket.

Paulie checked him out: No patches
on the elbow this time. “The
Maryland
omnibus plates are borrowed.” Paulie tried not to look too interested in
the envelope, but he was hoping he’d find some dead presidents inside. He
was just about tapped out. He had to hold himself back from snatching it when
Mac handed it over.

“Here are some papers
you’ll need,” Mac said. “Just in case.” Paulie lifted
the flap, looking for green paper. The first thing he found was a supply of
business cards. He held one up.

“ ‘Reliance Limousine
Service.’ Is that who I am?”

“For the next hour or so,
yes. You’ll find a Reliance Limo ID and
Maryland
driver’s license with matching names. Plus directions to your pickup
neatly typed on Reliance Limo stationery.” Paulie emptied the envelope.
No green, but boy, Mac was thorough. The bogus license and ID were beauties.

“Where’d you get
these?”

“I made them.”

“No kidding?”

“All it takes is a color
scanner, some DTP software, and a little time.”

“Amazing. I—” And
then a couple of words on the itinerary caught his eye and he straightened in
the seat.

“Hey, Mac. Does this say
Holy
Family
Elementary School
?
Elementary School?”

Mac was still looking straight
ahead. “You got it.”

“You mean I’m snatching
a kid?”

“You are.”

“Oh, shit! Oh, fuck! Not a
kid!” And now Mac turned to him, letting those stone-flat dirt-brown eyes
bore into him.

“You got something against
kids, Paulie?” he said in a voice smooth as satin… and just as
cold.

“No. I got nothing against
kids. That’s why I don’t want to snatch one.”

“You don’t look at it
as a kid. You look at it as a package. Just another package.”

“Yeah, but a young package.
People get upset about an old geezer getting snatched, but, man, they go off
the fucking wall about a kid.”

“It’s not like
we’re going to molest her or anything.”

“Her? Oh, shit! A little
girl? Just great. Poppy don’t like kids.”

“She’d better like this
one.”

“She’s gonna go
ballistic.”

“Poppy will do what
she’s told.” Paulie wished there’d been more heat behind
those words. But Mac said them with the same soft flat tones he’d use
ordering a cup of coffee… black, two lumps.

Truth was. Poppy would do what she
was told… up to a point…

“You’re the one who
brought her in,” Mac said. “I went along. Poppy’s had a free ride
so far. Now it’s time for her to earn her keep. She can be a nanny for a
week or so.” He smiled… a cold flash of teeth. “We’ve
called it baby-sitting all along. Now it really is.”

“Yeah,” Paulie said,
slumping back in the seat. He didn’t like this… didn’t like
it at all. “How old is this baby?”

“Six. Don’t let her age
spook you. This is going to be a walk. I’ve called the school.
They’re expecting you. You drive up, belt her into the back seat like a
good, safety-conscious driver, then you cruise away and bring her back here.
What could be simpler?”

“How about you doing it? That
would be a whole lot simpler.”

“I would, but I’ve got
to cover this end.”

When Paulie said nothing, Mac
reached out and poked his upper arm with a finger. Paulie stiffened. He didn’t
feature being poked. But when he looked at Mac he saw what he hadn’t
thought possible: The guy’s eyes were even flatter and colder than before.

“You’re not backing out
on me, are you, Paulie?”

“Nah,” Paulie said
through a sigh. “I ain’t backing out.” He had to admit it: He
was afraid to back out now.

“Good. Because a deal is a
deal.”

“Yeah. A deal is a
deal.” But how the hell was he going to explain this to Poppy?

Snake strolled into the lobby of
the Marriott in
Bethesda
and went
straight to the bank of pay phones.

He’d already scouted most of
the larger hotels inside the Beltway—this Marriott was just inside the
Beltway—and knew which ones had the kind of phone he needed.

Of course he could have called from
his house or his car or a playground using the mobile PCMCIA modem card on his
laptop, but that would have involved a cellular call, and cell calls were about
as secure as a loudspeaker.

He found an AT&T Dataphone 2000
and slipped into the seat before it. Airports and hotel lobbies were the best
places to find these phones. They provided their own keyboards or a port for
jacking into laptops and notebooks.

Snake had brought his own. After
charging the call to Charles Porter, a credit account he’d set up just
for this gig, he jacked the phone clip on the wire running from the back of his
Thinkpad 701 C into the port, then popped open his computer and let the
butterfly keyboard expand.

As he waited for the rig to run
through its boot-up routine, he glanced around the lobby. Only a few people
about and none of them paying the least bit of attention.

He logged onto the IDT account
he’d recently set up for a nonexistent someone named Eric Garter,
accessed the e-mail service, and uploaded the text he’d written earlier
and stored in memory.

Thirty seconds later, with his
message zapping through the Internet, he logged off. He unplugged the Thinkpad
from the Dataphone, snapped the. top shut, and headed for the front doors and
the parking lot.

So easy, so anonymous, so
completely untraceable. So safe. Too safe, maybe. Too easy. Almost a letdown.

Paulie eased the
Lincoln
to a stop before the front entrance of the
Holy
Family
Elementary School
.

Didn’t look much like a school.
More like a big old house, two sprawling stories of dark stone and cement with
ivy crawling all over it.

He reached for the keys but
hesitated. He didn’t want to do this. It just wasn’t right.

Okay, it’s one thing to
snatch a guy. He’s an adult. Another man. He should be watching his ass
but he got careless, so now he’s snatched and somebody’s got to buy
him back. That’s life, dude: You pay for, your mistakes.

But a kid… shit. Kids
can’t protect themselves. They don’t know the rules. They’re
sitting ducks. And putting the screws to some guy through his kid… that
was low. Worse than low, it was unmanly.

Paulie slammed a gloved fist
against the steering wheel. Goddamn, Mac!

He was tempted to shift the car
back into drive and burn rubber out of here. Pick up Poppy from that rented
dump in
Falls Church
and roar off
to parts unknown.

But Mac would be pissed out of his
mind. He’d come looking, and sooner or later he’d catch up to them.
And that would be ugly. Only one of them would walk away from that scene, and
Paulie doubted it would be him.

And besides, he’d made a
deal. He hadn’t known a kid would be part of the deal, but a deal was a
deal. Is that how it really is? he wondered. Or am I just yellow? How low will
you go, Paulie? he asked himself. When do you say enough is enough? He
should’ve listened to Poppy and stayed clear of this one.

Growling with disgust, he grabbed
the keys and got out of the car. He adjusted his dumb chauffeur’s cap and
headed up the front steps.

A middle-aged woman at the desk inside
the door phoned, spoke a few words, then led him back to the principal’s
office.

The lighting wasn’t the
greatest but he kept his shades on. The less these people saw of his face, the
better.

The principal’s office…
jeez, did that bring back memories.

Sister Louise was an older nun, all
in black from head to toe. The only skin showing was on her hands and
face—and that was encased in something that looked like a cut-out Whitman
Sampler box. Looked about as comfortable as a vise. She stared out at him from
that box through thick rimless glasses that magnified her watery blue eyes. Her
jutting lower jaw made her mouth look weird when she smiled.

Which she did when she greeted him.

“Good day, Mr… ?”

“
Anderson
,”
he said, glad he remembered to look at the ID Mac had given him. “James
Anderson.”

“And you’re here to
pick up… ?” What is this? Twenty questions? She knows damn well who
I’m here for.

“The Vanduyne child. Katie
Vanduyne.”

“Oh, yes. Dr. Vanduyne called
and told me you’d be coming.” She stuck her head out the door.
“Camille, would you fetch Katie Vanduyne from K-3 and bring her
here?” Then she turned back to Paulie and held out her hand. “Your
identification, please, Mr. Anderson.” He fumbled in his pocket. Suspicious
old broad, wasn’t she. Mac might be a mean, sneaky, rat bastard, but
he’d covered all the bases. Paulie pulled out his Reliance Limo ID and
hoped she wouldn’t notice how his hand shook when he handed it over. But
he held back on the driver’s license. No need to appear too cooperative.

Sister Louise’s brow furrowed
as she studied the ID.

“This isn’t a photo
ID.”

“No,ma’am.” She
looked up and studied him just as closely with those old blue eyes. She was
still smiling but Paulie began getting a bad feeling about this nun. She had
this sweet little-old-lady air about her but she was a sharp old bat, and
suspicious as all hell.

“Do you have an
ophthalmologic condition?”

“Beg pardon?”

“An eye condition, Mr.
Anderson. Is there something wrong with your eyes?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why are you wearing
your sunglasses indoors?” Paulie felt himself begin to sweat. He
didn’t like the way this conversation was going, and he liked the way
Sister Louise was looking at him even less.

“Habit, I guess.”

“You may take them
off.”

Paulie struggled with the best way
to go. Refuse and push her from overly cautious to downright suspicious, or
cooperate and graduate.

He took off the glasses.

“There now,” said
Sister Louise as her searching eyes bored into his. “Isn’t it easier
to see?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he
said, trying not to look away.

“And please remove that hat.
We don’t wear hats indoors. It sets a bad example for the
children.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he
said, making sure he opened his jaw so he wouldn’t be speaking through
clenched teeth. He felt naked.

And then someone he assumed was
Camille delivered a dark-haired little girl in a plaid uniform to the office.

“Hello, Katie,” Sister
Louise said. “This is Mr. Anderson.

Remember how I told you earlier
that your father was taking you on a trip back to
Georgia
?
Mr. Anderson is going to take you home now.“

The kid looked up at him with her
baby blues and smiled. Jeez, she was little. And cute.

“You’re gonna take me
to my Daddy?”

“That’s right,
miss,” he said, turning on the charm— for Sister Louise’s
sake as well as the kid’s. “I’m taking you home, then taking
you and your dad to the airport. And then you’re off to
Georgia
for a vacation.”

She said, “Oh,” and
that was it. Didn’t seem too overjoyed.

He held out his hand. “Ready
to go?”

Pulling on a red beret, she said,
“Sure,” and turned to Sister Louise. “Bye, Sister.”

“Just one moment,” said
the nun, staring at him like she wished she had X-ray vision. “Tell me,
Katie. Have you ever seen Mr. Anderson before?”

The kid shook her head. “No.”

Sister Louise’s fingers
drummed the desk. “Before I let you go, I think I’d first like to
make one call.”

Oh, Christ! Who was she calling?
“We’re on a tight schedule, ma’am,” he said.

“This will only take a
second,” Sister Louise said, reading a number off her desk top as she
punched it into the phone.

Paulie’s heart kicked into
overdrive. His mouth, already dry from the cotton plugs, suddenly felt like a
stretch of desert highway. This was bad. Very bad. He widened his stance to
keep from wobbling as he began planning his getaway. Did he grab the kid and
take her with him? Or did he simply make a fifty-yard dash for the car and head
for the hills?

He took a slow, deep breath and
waited, hoping to hell Mac had this covered.