“I guess you’re real proud of yourself,” Poppy said.

She was asking for it… really asking for it…

“C’mon, Poppy,” Paulie said, giving her a hard look.

“Yeah,” Snake continued, ignoring her. “No more arguments from Daddy. He’s ready to do anything we want.”

“And just what is it we want Daddy to do?” Paulie said.

“That’s between me and the other people involved. Better you don’t know.” No way in hell was he telling these two.

“So, where’s the little package?” he said to Paulie.

He jerked his head toward one of the doors leading off the living room.

“In there.”

“Well, I’ll just take a look, and that will complete my inspection tour.”

“She’s sleeping,” Poppy said.

Didn’t this bitch know when to shut up?

“Blindfolded?” he said to Paulie.

“Sure. That’s SOP.”

“Good.” He started toward the door. “Then I’ll just take a peek.” Poppy was up and standing by the door, her worried eyes nicking from Paulie, to the door, to Snake, and around again.

“Don’t. You’ll wake her up. You don’t know what a time we had getting her to sleep.”

“That’s what baby-sitters get paid for.” He breezed past her and opened the door. The light was out so he found the switch and flicked it.

Poppy slipped past him and stood by the foot of the bed—no, hovered was more like it. She looked nervous as a cat, biting her lip, rubbing her hands together. Looking at her you’d have bet half your net worth the package was her own kid.

But Snake had to admit that everything looked okay: The package was blindfolded and tied to the bed frame, just as she should be. She wore a plaid shirt and overalls of some sort, a sneaker on her left foot, and a big gauze bandage on her right.

He nodded and walked out, leaving Poppy behind. Out in the front room, Paulie still didn’t look right. And that worried Snake. He didn’t want these two to get cold feet on him. The game still had a way to go before it was finished.

“Hey,” he said with a smile, “she looks pretty damn good. No worse for wear, as far as I can see. And she’ll never miss that toe.”

“I’m real glad it worked,” Paulie said.“ ‘Cause I don’t know if I could go through that again.”

“What’s the matter with you, Paulie? You going soft?”

“No. I just—”

Snake felt his rage flare. Time to lay down the law to these assholes.

“You just nothing! You’re working for me. I tell you to cut off her fucking hand, you say, ‘Which one?’ Or you’re out of this!” But Paulie was shaking his head. He was looking at the floor, but he was hanging tough.

“All right,” he said. “Then we’re out of it. Find someone else to do your dirty work. But we ain’t cutting up a kid. It ain’t right.”

The words shook Snake. Find someone else? Where the hell would he find another baby-sitter at this stage of the game? This whole gig was going to hell. First he had to take out an insurance policy with Salinas, and then he had to deal with that unpredictable Vanduyne, and now the peasants were threatening revolt. What next?

“You threatening me?”

Paulie shook his head. “No threat. Just telling you the way it is. We’ll play this thing through just like you want it, but no more persuaders.” Snake couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make him look bad. And since he couldn’t do what he really felt like doing—put a .38-caliber hole in Paulie’s face—he decided to make his exit.

Yeah. Leave them wondering what his next move would be.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said, and headed out the front door.

He fumed on the way across the yard. And to think he’d been feeling guilty about throwing Paulie and Poppy to Salinas’s wolves when this was over. Just went to show how useless an emotion guilt was. Getting rid of these two was a great idea. He’d had it up to here with Paulie and his bitch.

3

As soon as the door closed behind Mac, Poppy threw her arms around Paulie.

“Paulie! You were awesome! The way you stood up to him… totally awesome!” She could feel him shaking but wouldn’t mention it— not for a million dollars.

“Yeah, well, I just didn’t like him talking to you like that. Know what I mean? I mean, enough is enough.” She looked up at his face and realized something was different about him.

He’d started getting quiet last night after taking the blood from Katie.

Poppy had held her while Paulie jabbed the corner of a razor blade into the pad of her little toe. They figured they were going to have to bandage her foot anyway to make it look like she’d had her toe cut off, so why not like get the blood from that spot.

And Katie had been so good about it, a real champ. She’d winced and whimpered, but that was about it. She said she was used to getting stuck because of the regular blood tests she had to get as long as she was taking her medicine.

And after Paulie came back from delivering the persuader, he’d been quieter still, and had continued that way this morning. She’d thought he was still ticked at her for making him go out to that funeral home last night, but now she realized it was something else. Something deeper.

“What’s up, Paulie? What’s bothering you?”

He pulled away and went to the window. He stood there with his hands jammed into his pockets and stared out at the front yard “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t sleep much last night. I got to thinking—I don’t do much of that, but last night I couldn’t turn it off. I kept thinking about how you stood up to me yesterday. I mean, Mac says, ‘Cut off her finger,’ I haggle him down to a toe, and I’m ready to do it. But you say no—this was something you weren’t going to do, weren’t going to allow to happen. You were ready to put everything on the line to stop it. I was pissed, as you know, but later on it hit me like a ton of fucking bricks: You drew a line and said, ‘That’s it. That’s where I stop. I don’t cross that line and neither does anybody else when I’m around.’ And so I laid there last night thinking, Where’s my line? I mean, do I even have a line? Or do I just wait for someone like Mac to tell me what to do, then go ahead like some fucking robot and do it? What kind of man is that? I couldn’t turn it off.”

Poppy stepped over to the window and slipped her arms around him, pressing her face against his upper back. She felt as if she were about to totally burst. She didn’t dare speak because she knew she’d start bawling.

So amazing… the feelings Paulie was talking about, they were the same ones that had been growing in her since the last baby-sitting job. But hers had been creeping up on her—at least until she’d seen Katie having a fit; then it all like came together. Paulie had got hit all at once.

“I’m gonna be thirty in November,” he said. “And man, I laid there and looked back over my life and you know what I saw? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. I mean, if I died now, is there any trace of me anywhere? Is there anything to say Paulie Dicastro was even here? No. There ain’t. So last night I decided I was gonna start drawing lines. Gonna learn to say ‘Stop, I don’t go past this point.’ I mean, you gotta stand for something in your life, and I never really stood up for anything, but that’s gonna change. I’m not saying this good. Am I making any sense at all?”

Poppy hugged him tighter. “Truckloads. Maybe this is a turning point for us, Paulie. Maybe we can make something good out of his whole ugly scene. We take the money we get and like go off somewhere and use it to build something.”

“Yeah, but what? I don’t know anything legal. What am I good for except taking orders?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find something. We’re not total jerks. But the important thing is we’ll draw another kind of line—between the old life and the new life. And we’ll like never look back, Paulie.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning around and looking at her. His eyes searched her face. “You and me. We can do that.”