F Wilson - Deep as the Marrow

But if you’re not here to see Katie, what are you doing? Gambling?

What kind of father hides his daughter from her natural mother—God knows where he’s stuck her—and goes traipsing off to a casino?

And he calls me a bad parent… and dangerous.

Probably here to see one of his whores. Mamie had never been able to catch John at it, but she’d been sure he was sleeping around before the divorce. Katie knew all about it, but she’d kept John’s secrets… no matter what.

Always hiding things from me, those two.

You’ve corrupted her, John, I know it. But she’s still young. None of the damage is permanent. I’ll get her back. I’ll save her. I’ll straighten her out.

5

The phone rang at 11:02. John knew because he’d been sitting on the bed since 7:13 a.m., watching the red LED-numerals climb toward noon.

“Hi, Daddy.” Katie! John’s heart soared. She sounded so close. And suddenly he was sure that this time it would work. Today he’d get her back.

“Hi, honey. Where are you?”

“With Poppy.”

Poppy… was that—?

Suddenly the woman was on the line. “Uh, you should like forget you heard that, okay?”

“Heard what?” John said.

“That’s the spirit.”

He hoped they understood each other. If this woman truly had saved Katie’s toe and Katie’s life and was truly returning her to him unharmed—she’d said she robbed a drugstore for the Tegretol—he would forget anything he knew about her. No court in the world could get him to remember her name or the sound of her voice.

“Are we set for today?”

“We are. Go down to the boardwalk at three and stand by the phones between Boardwalk Rogers and Planet Hollywood.”

“Where’s that?”

“Just a little ways down from where you are. You can’t miss Boardwalk Rogers—looks like a little ceramic church or something. I’ll call the first phone on the left and let you know where to pick up Katie.”

Three o’clock… seemed like years away.

“Can’t we make it earlier?”

“Three. I got some things to work out first. We don’t want no screw-ups.”

“No. We don’t. Okay. First phone on the left. At three. Got it. But I’ll be there well before that. Call me earlier if you want.” John planned to be at that phone around two. He didn’t want a scene like the one in Lafayette Square last week. No arguments this time over whose phone it was.

He’d claim it and hold on to it.

6

Bob Decker took Canney’s call on the car phone on his way in from the A.C. heliport. He glanced at his watch.

“Three o’clock? Can you get someone over to that phone to hook up—?”

“Already on his way. But we need more manpower. We need people stretched all along the boardwalk, because sure as hell she’s going to do the Hollywood thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You know. In the movies. You’ve seen it—where the kidnapper keeps someone running from phone to phone. It’s been shown so many times, real kidnappers have come to assume that’s the way it’s done.”

“This is my first kidnapping,” Decker said. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“It’s actually pretty effective, especially if the caller keeps switching phones as well.”

“So I take it the last place we should concentrate our troops is around the phones.”

“You got it. You can bet Vanduyne’s going to be sent somewhere else. Oh, and we got a bonus out of the call: The woman’s name is Poppy.”

“Poppy… could be her real name, could just mean she’s a junkie.”

“I know. But we’re running it through New York. That’s where Dicastro lived. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Okay. As for manpower, see how many people you can grab from the Bureau, and I’ll call Keane to see what DEA can supply. I figure they should have a fair number of agents around fun city here.” Decker hung up and leaned back. Things looked good.

This whole thing might be wrapped by four p.m.

7

“What a dump,” Snake thought as he stood by a pay phone at New York and Atlantic Avenues and waited for Salinas to return his call.

This wasn’t anything like the Atlantic City he’d seen on TV. Looked more like the Bronx. He didn’t like even being out of his Jeep, but using his car phone was verboten.

He felt like crap. This headache wouldn’t quit. He was ready to bang his head against the sidewalk—that might feel better than this deep relentless ache. And the drive up here had been pure hell. With only one eye, his depth perception was off and he’d damn near cracked up half a dozen times. And now the sun was so damn hot he was sweating and itching under the bandages, and so bright it hurt his bad eye even through the shades and the gauze eye pad, Dizzy… sick… in pain… and suffocating inside this hooded sweatshirt. He wanted to kill somebody.

An emaciated-looking black guy shuffled toward Snake through the nearby vacant lot and offered him a flyer. Snake’s first instinct was to wave him off—the last thing he was interested in now was an ad for some local grind house or escort service—but better to take the sheet than have some crackhead hanging around while he was trying to talk to Salinas.

But even after Snake took the flyer, the guy stood there staring at his face, at the bandages.

“What’re you looking at?” Snake snapped.

“Nothin‘.” The burnout moved off. “Nothin’ ay-tall.” Snake crumbled the flyer and was about to toss it into the gutter when he spotted the word reward. He flattened it out again and read about the thousand bucks being offered for information as to the whereabouts of two runaways—an eighteen-year-old and her little sister.

The descriptions perfectly matched the ones Snake had supplied Salinas with before leaving D.C. this morning. Poppy was no eighteen-year-old, but the rest of the description fit.

Anybody who spotted her with that little girl wouldn’t be put off by the fact that she didn’t look quite like a teenager. They’d drop a dime to the local number listed at the bottom of the sheet.

A thousand bucks. That’s all? Salinas should be willing to pay a million to get his hands on Poppy and the kid.

Then Snake realized the fat man couldn’t let on how important they were. A grand sounded about right for a couple of runaways—and it would buy somebody a lot of crack.

He wondered how many of these flyers were floating around. Probably every junkie and pusher in A.C. had one. Had to be thousands of junkies in town. Each one turning a daily profit for the traffickers. All that money, millions and billions flowing from cities and towns all over the map. No wonder Salinas and his bosses wanted to off a guy looking to legalize their trade.

The phone rang. Salinas was on, sounding like he was riding the edge as he launched into a rapid-fire spiel.

“The doctor will be waiting for a call in front of Boardwalk Rogers. You can be sure the delivery won’t be there. His phone is not secure. You will be called shortly after he is contacted, so keep your cell phone at hand. Be careful. Very many feds around.”

And that was it. The line went dead. Salinas had to be feeling pretty desperate if he was talking about contacting him on his cell phone. But Snake could think of ways to endrun the cellular’s vulnerability to eavesdropping. The most obvious was to relay the message to someone at a pay phone, and have him make a short, cryptic call to the cell phone.

Whatever. Snake wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it. Salinas would be cool. He was pretty canny when it came to phone security.

What Snake wanted to know was what the hell he was going to do with the info Salinas relayed to him, especially with the city crawling with feds? Obviously he had a man inside, and that was fine for raw data. But what if Snake needed a little assistance? What was he going to do—recruit a bunch of crack heads?