Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

He took hold of the passenger door handle and jerked upward to open it. At that very instant, a finger appeared and locked it as well. The tie didn't go to the runner: Boldt stumbled and fell. The van pulled away.

By the time he reached his car and was driving again, he couldn't see the van for the trucks, the Hondas for the hatchbacks. He stayed with it a while longer, but the van was nowhere to be seen. Without a radio and without backup, Boldt resigned himself to failure.

Depression overwhelmed him-not for what was coming from Shoswitz, he could handle Shoswitz but because a woman was missing, and Boldt was convinced the driver of this van was an accomplice in her abduction.

It was time to start all over, he decided. Time to do things right.

Time to have a little talk with Connie Chi.

Tegg had never seen Maybeck look this desperate, otherwise he might have objected to Maybeck's barging into his office unannounced. Maybeck was relegated to the back hallway, the walk-in, the disposal of waste; he was overstepping his bounds. "What is it?" Tegg complained. "The laptop's been stolen," Maybeck announced.

Tegg felt a sharp pain in the very top of his skull, and one of his tics hit him hard. He felt his shoulder lift and his head strain to meet it. He recovered and said, "Tell me about it, Donald."

"Don't call me that!"

"Start talking, Donald. This instant!"

Maybeck suffered through an explanation, trying to make himself into some kind of hero in the way he had avoided the police. Tegg was beginning to see him in terms of a corpse-just exactly how would he dispose of a person that size?

The laptop? He blamed himself for having ever entrusted such an important matter to Maybeck. It had all been by design: trying to distance himself from incriminating evidence wherever possible. But now? He had to assess his situation, to take control. The planned date of the heart harvest was inside that laptop-the entire history of their operation, if you knew what to look for. "First you handle Connie. She must be dealt with. Hmm? Nothing violent, I'm not suggesting that, just see that she's out of the way, out of town. Now! Then we get the computer back," he said. "One thing at a time. Hmm?" "Connie's first," Maybeck replied like a magpie echoing his master's voice. "Immediately."

"No problem. I know where to find her. I set that up like you told me to."

"You'll watch for cops."

"I know."

"This 'punk/ as you called him," Tegg said distastefully-he had no use for such slang-"is there some way to identify him?" Maybeck said brutishly, "I could always report it to the police."

Tegg waved a finger at him. "Don't challenge me, Donald.

Insolence will get you nowhere with me." A bonfire, Tegg was thinking. That size body was just made for a bonfire. one fire to burn the flesh, a second for the bones. Maybe even a third for those teeth. "This is your error we are attempting to correct here-let's pay particular attention to responsibility, shall we? We've discussed this all before. All before." How strangely seductive the lure of violence could be. He wanted to hurt this man. "I can handle it."

"Spare me such indulgence, would you? Dream on your own time." Tegg felt another tic coming. He squashed it with anger. Interesting how that worked, he thought-perhaps anger, always heralded as the enemy, was indeed a friend. "We will go to whatever means necessary to obtain that computer. A reward, a ransom, I don't care what you have to do."

"I can put the word out. We offer a reward, and we'll be onto this thing like flies on shit. It's password protected," Maybeck reminded. "That's one thing good about it." "There's nothing good about this!" Tegg announced He cleaned out his wallet-one hundred and fifty dollars-and practically threw it at Maybeck. "That kind of thinking is poison! Do you hear me? Poison! We need that computer back immediately. That computer is evidence, Donald! Get that into your head. That laptop is exactly what the police want. That's our battle, don't you see? And it's not one we want to fight, believe you me. No, sir. But we'll fight those we must. Hmm?

You bet we will."

"I can get it back." He waved the money at Tegg. "I have friends."

This seemed unlikely, if not impossible-especially the latter statement. "What an idiot you are!"

"Shut up!"

"An idiot, do you hear me?" He leaned toward Maybeck. "You get that laptop back, and you destroy that database before the police are any the wiser! Get rid of the van, too. If you fail in any of this, you will regret it!"

"Doctor?" His receptionist's voice.

"Is everything okay?"

He'd been shouting. "Out in a minute," Tegg replied in a friendly voice to the closed door. How much had his employee heard? How could everything come down around you so quickly?

Maybeck whispered, "I'say we zoom the girl we kidnapped and take our chances with Wong Kei."

"Is that what you say?" Tegg asked, standing and approaching him, daring to put his face up against Maybeck's. Breath like an open sewer. "I'm not terribly interested in what you have to say, Donald. But you had better be interested in what I have to say. Extremely interested." He whispered, "Connie, then the laptop, the van: That's your order of business, your priorities. If Connie won't play along … well … Use your imagination." "No problem," Donnie said.

Was he actually condoning such a thing? He felt a disturbing pressure in his head, like a tire taking too much air. He wondered why he couldn't just step away from it all? Let it go. How far would he go in order to make up for that mistake of his? He didn't like himself; he didn't even know himself. He had studied the psychology of cornered animals in college; only now that he was experiencing it did he begin to understand.

Only now did he see clearly what exactly was to become of the black man out in the kennel. He too was a liability, one that at this point they could certainly not afford.

But not for long.

LO With the surveillance a complete disaster, with no one to be mad at but himself, with no appetite, Boldt left work and headed directly to the back door of The Big joke. He didn't want Liz to see him like this-he wasn't sure what he wanted. Had he been a drinker, he would have gotten drunk, but booze only gave him a sour stomach and a bad case of the blues. The blues themselves seemed the best way out-eighty-_ eight keys of refuge, where voices sang in his head and drove out all thought. The club was closed to the public by order of the Treasury Department, but since Bear Berenson lived upstairs, access was still available through the back. The piano had never been confiscated-just the financial records-and only two of the six screws intended to lock it shut had violated it., Boldt let himself in, found the piano in the dark, and started playing. A while later Bear settled himself into a chair at the table farthest from the stage, because Boldt hated the cigarette smoke and because this table sat immediately under a light which Bear needed to read his trade paperback, How to Beat the IRS, a gift from Boldt. He studied it like a preacher with a Bible, his reading punctuated by grunts of disapproval and sighs of supplication. A captain going down with the ship, he paused and looked up only to relish a particular phrase from Boldt's piano or to roll himself another joint.

it had been several days since Boldt had played, and he took to it hungrily, tuning all else out. His pager-switched off-his holstered weapon, his shield and his wallet all occupied a leathery heap by the glass of milk that Bear occasionally refreshed on his way back from the bar.

The investigation would occasionally surface, like a prairie dog lifting its head from its lair, but Boldt would send it into retreat with the stomp of a foot or the stabbing of a dissonant note.