“Johnny…” Her voice cracked and fell away. “Johnny, tell me this is a cruel joke!”

His first impulse was to lie, but what good was that? When Katie didn’t come home from school later… He stepped to her side and put an arm around her, gently guiding her toward the couch.

“Here… sit down.”

“Oh, dear Lord, it’s true, then! Someone’s kidnapped Katie! Why? Oh, Lord, why?”

“I don’t know, Ma.” John explained all that had happened, and why he was afraid to call in the FBI.

His mother seemed to get a grip on herself as the story unfolded. She’d never been one for hysterics. She asked all the questions he’d been asking himself over and over: Why Katie? And what “service” did they want from him?

“But they are arranging to get Katie her medicine,” she said. “I am thinking this is a good sign, yes? It means she’s alive and they want to keep her so.”

Or they just want me to think she’s alive, John thought, but he didn’t say it. They could pick up the pills and simply dump them in the garbage.

“I want—I need—more than a sign,” he said. “I’ve got to know, Ma.”

She clutched his arm. “Don’t make them angry, John. They may take it out on Katie.”

Yeah, they might—if she’s still alive. He nodded. “I’ll be careful. I’ll be polite. I’ll kiss their butts, but I’ve got to know.”

“John…” his mother said slowly. “You don’t think this could be… Mamie’s doing?”

He stared at her. “Mamie?”

“Well, she is crazy, you know.”

“She’s very crazy.” John was intimately familiar with his ex-wife’s history of bizarre behavior, but this was too wild even for her, and far beyond her scope. And besides, Mamie was confined to Georgia, in deep therapy. “But I guarantee you Mamie’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“First, call in that prescription.” He called information, got the number of the CVS at K and 17th, and told them to have fifty Tegretol 1oo mg. chewables ready for Katie Vanduyne ASAP. Since they’d never heard of him, he had to supply his office address and phone number, plus his DEA number.

“Now I’m going to get back to Snake.”

“Please be careful.”

“I’m just going to tell him that the prescription is ready and waiting. But I’m also going to ask for the answer to a question only Katie can give. And I’ll tell them that as long as I know Katie’s alive, I’ll do anything to keep her that way. I’ll perform any ‘service’ they want.”

“I am hoping you can do this.”

“I’m hoping, too, Ma.” But then what do I do? Sit around and wait? Call the pharmacy every five minutes to see if the prescription’s been picked up? He realized he was starting to fall apart. He’d be a gibbering basket case soon if he didn’t do something.

27

Paulie parked the panel truck in a lot on Desales Street and walked over to the Mayflower Hotel. He stood in the entrance to the bar and searched the late-afternoon crowd for Mac. Some crowd—only half full and mostly suits. They called this a bar? Cushioned seats and a polished floor and hardly anybody smoking. This wasn’t a bar—it was a goddamn cocktail party.

Mac had called saying he had an errand for Paulie. That got Paulie nervous. Usually they never left the package once they started babysitting. Maybe Mac was making an exception because it was a kid. Still, Mac had sounded a little weird. He’d wanted Paulie to ask the kid if she knew how to swallow pills, and who was her favorite character on TV. Poppy had got the answers out of her, no problem. But what was going on?

Paulie saw someone waving from a corner and went over. He noticed the suits gawking his leathers. He stuck out here. Usually he didn’t mind that, but considering the circumstances, he’d have preferred to be somewhere else.

Mac sat with his back to the room. He was wearing a white shirt and a blue blazer with a Spiderman pin in the left lapel. He was drinking something clear on the rocks.

“How come we always meet in hotels?” Paulie whispered as he took a seat opposite him. “There’s gotta be less public places.”

“Where would you prefer?” Mac said, a sneer playing about his thin lips. “Some low-life dive that’s being watched by the fuzz twenty-four hours a day, where we’d stick out among the regulars?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Look, Paulie. I meet you in places where an unfamiliar face is the rule rather than the exception. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then you’ve got a real big problem.”

“All right,” Paulie said grudgingly. Mac was right as usual. He ordered a Heineken when the waiter came by.

Mac said, “You get the answers I wanted?” Paulie nodded. “Yeah. She says she swallows pills real good. Does it all the time. And she likes Maggie Simpson the best of all. So what’s this errand you need?”

“The package needs medicine.”

“Oh, fuck!” Bad enough a kid. Now a sick kid. That explained about swallowing pills.

“Relax. Just a pill she’s got to take twice a day. No biggee.”

“Easy for you to say. Where’s this medicine?”

“In a drugstore a few blocks from here.”

“And you want me to pick it up.”

“You got it.”

Paulie said nothing as the waiter delivered his beer. He was pissed—and worried—but tried to show just the pissed part.

“What do I get for sticking my ass out like this?”

“Nothing,” Mac said. “It’s part of the job.”

“No it ain’t.”

“Look, Paulie,” Mac said, eyes blazing as he leaned forward and lowered his voice even further, “I don’t like this anymore than you do. I learned about this after the pickup, so it’s news to me too. I’m not getting extra because the package is sick, and so neither are you.”

Paulie didn’t feel like backing down this time.

“And what if I don’t pick up the pills?”

“Then she starts flopping around on the floor like a break dancer OD’d on ice, and pretty soon she dies, and you and Poppy’ll have to find a way to dump the body. Plus you’ll have a murder rap hanging over you. But not for long.”

“Why not?” The look in Mac’s stone eyes told him the answer.

Paulie drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t like this, man.”

“Just do it and get it over with. You’ve still got your beard. You put on those shades, dump the leather, get yourself a hooded sweatshirt—bam—you’re in and out and it’s a done deal. I’ll have you covered.”

“Oh, well, then,” Paulie said, letting the acid flow, “I don’t have a goddamn thing to worry about, do I?”

28

Seemed like an eon since John had slipped into the CVS.

He’d examined every Easter card at least twice, checked out all the chocolate eggs and baskets, and read the ingredients on all the over-the-counter medications.

He could have hung out at the magazine rack but that was too far toward the front. He needed to stay within earshot of the pharmacy counter.

All the reading was eye exercise and nothing more. None of the information penetrated. And if it had, he wouldn’t have been able to make sense of it. He was too keyed up to concentrate on anything except the names people gave at the prescription counter.

This is insane, he kept telling himself. Why am I doing this? I’m endangering Katie’s life just by being here.

Why was he here? He was never impulsive. His style was to take the long view. Get the facts, act if necessary, but otherwise stand ready and see how things played out—traits that made for a lousy surgeon but an excellent internist.

But what kind of father had that made him? Katie would have been spared so much if he’d acted sooner as he saw Mamie decompensating. But he’d loved Mamie. And he’d thought he could keep an eye on her. Wrong. He’d never dreamed she’d do what she did.

Maybe that was why he was lurking about this pharmacy. Maybe he’d learned that watchful waiting didn’t always cut it. Especially where Katie was involved.