Chapter Twenty

WE WERE STANDING next to the car, triple-checking the map we’d been given by Carp with our own maps, when John’s cell phone rang. He listened for a minute, then said, “Twenty minutes,” and hung up.

To Marvel, he said, “I’m going with Kidd. You go on back to the house in case somebody calls about Rachel.”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing, yet. But it looks like this tailing job might take some help. He’s gonna spot our people if they can’t switch out more often. You go on.”

Something was up, and Marvel knew it. She squinted at him, and seemed about to say something, but he shook his head and she said, “All right.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, like try to follow us,” he said. “We need you back at the house.”

TWO minutes later, she’d gone one way and we another, at right angles to each other, and even from a mile away, we could see the plume of gravel dust she left behind her as she headed back into Longstreet.

“He’s at the RayMar Motel in Bradentown,” John told me. “He’s in his room, so he’s gonna be cracking the laptop pretty soon. We’ve got two cars on him now and another two coming in.”

“How far?”

He looked at his watch. “If we’re not lazy about it, we can be there in half an hour.”

“What’s the layout like?”

“One-level mom-and-pop, an office at one end and then a long string of rooms in a straight line. Not busy. I don’t know the people that run it, but black folks stay there-no color line, so we won’t be too noticeable.”

A HALF-HOUR later, we were still not there and my phone rang. I dreaded picking it up, but had no choice.

“You motherfucker,” Carp shouted. “You cheated me.” You could hear the spit flying.

“We’ve just been at the crossroads, James, so don’t tell me about cheating. I can tell you where to get a set of keys-and I would have done it if we’d found Rachel-but now… I’d say your head’s in trouble. You remember what I told you.”

“I want the fuckin’ keys,” he shouted. “You want the girl back, you better cough ’em up.”

“Are you still close to Universal?” I asked.

“Never mind where I am,” he said. He was slowing down now. “How are we gonna do this? I don’t want the kid to die, I got nothing against her, but I’ll leave her out there if I don’t get the keys.”

“Can’t figure out a way to trust you, James.”

“I’ll tell you-”

“I’ll tell you, James,” I said. “I’m still out here in the woods. I’ve been driving around, hoping I was at the wrong place, hoping I’d find that abandoned schoolhouse. I’m gonna hang up now and see if I can think of something. It’s gonna have to be something weird.”

“She’s out in the woods, on a chain,” he said.

“Call me back in half an hour,” I said.

FIVE minutes later, we were parked down the block from the RayMar, in front of the Bradentown Bakery. Bradentown was just as hot as Longstreet, and smaller. Nothing stirred under the midday sun. I got out, went inside the bakery, and bought two Diet Cokes and two apple strudels, mostly to keep the cashier behind her counter. Back outside, I found two of John’s friends in the backseat of the car.

“We got it figured out,” Henry said to John. “If you want to go in, we can get him.”

“He has a gun,” I said.

“We can be on top of him in three seconds,” Henry said. “We need somebody to go into the office and talk to the clerk while we go in.”

They all looked at me, and I shook my head. “I need to talk to Carp. I need to hear what he says. One of the other guys’ll have to talk with the clerk.”

They did a quick eyeball vote and John finally said, “Kidd’s okay. Let’s get Terry to talk to the clerk. He’s a bullshit artist.” The other two glanced at each other and Henry nodded and took a cell phone out of his pocket. “Terry, you’re going in to talk to the clerk. Park right in front where he can see your car, and don’t touch anything when you get inside. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Whatever, you make it up.”

He hung up and nodded to John. “We’re good.”

I said, “His room doesn’t connect to another one, does it?”

Henry said, “Nope. None of them connect.”

TERRY took a few minutes to get organized, and then we saw his car pull in to the RayMar. We backed out of our parking space, and as soon as Terry went through the motel’s office door, we started down the block. Another car, an old Chevy, pulled into the parking lot a few doors from the end of the line of motel rooms.

“He’s in the second room from the end,” Henry said. “Pull in right next to Bob’s car, the Chevy, and wait.”

Henry and the other guy-I never knew his name-got out and walked over to Bob’s Chevy, and Bob got out one side, and a guy named Rote on the other. Bob was holding a heavy sledge-hammer at his side. I wanted to say something about a safety chain on the door, but before I could, John muttered, “Rote’s got the bolt cutters.”

The four guys knew what they were doing. In fact, they looked a lot like cops; the night before, they’d even talked like cops. Bob got lined up on the door, taking his time, being quiet, while Henry and the others blocked the view from the street and the office. When Bob was ready, he nodded, and Rote showed a big pair of bolt cutters. The bolt cutters turned out to be unnecessary, because when Bob hit the door, there was a single loud whack like a car accident, the door flew open-no chain, or at least, no chain that held-and the four men went straight into the room.

I was a step behind them. Carp had been sitting on his bed, typing on a laptop, and when we came through he hurled himself at a nightstand on the opposite side of the bed, where a big military-style Beretta sat under the lamp. He almost made it; his hand was six inches from the gun when Bob landed on him, then Rote, and they had him by the neck, dragging him across the bed, and he screamed once and Rote hit him in the nose with a closed fist and his nose broke and he stopped screaming and started to gag; then the door was shut and he was on the floor, three guys on him.

“Roll him over,” John said.

They controlled him-I thought cops again-and rolled him, and Rote sat on his chest while John knelt next to his head. “Where is she?” he asked.

Carp’s eyes were wild, and his torso was shaking under Rote’s weight, from adrenaline. But he choked out, “Fuck you. Go ahead and kill me, motherfucker. You’ll be killing the kid, too.”

Rote stuck the heel of his hand on Carp’s lips, and pressed his jaw open; he pressed down harder until his fist filled Carp’s mouth. John looked at Carp for five seconds, then dug in his pocket and took a red Swiss Army knife out. He chose one of the blades, looked down at Carp, and said, “I’m gonna ask you one question. If you don’t answer it, I’m gonna cut your nose off. Then I’m gonna cut your eyes out. Here’s the question. What town is Rachel closest to? Universal? Longstreet? That crossroads? Here in Bradentown? Which town? Don’t have to tell us where, just which town she’s closest to.”

Rote pulled his hand out of Carp’s mouth. Carp gasped for air, groaned, and then said, “I don’t care if you kill me, I’m not gonna tell you where she is. You cocksuckers, you cocksuckers.”

John leaned forward with the knife. “I’m gonna cut your nose off,” he said. “In ten seconds, your nose gonna be gone. Nobody’s gonna put that nose back on.” He was talking quietly, but his face was a stone; he was scaring the shit out of me. “So answer my question. Not where she is, just what town she’s closest to.”

Carp stared at him for six of those seconds, then finally spat out, “Universal. If you’d really given me the keys, I would have told you.”

John turned to me and said, “Get back up there.”