The answer was not to call the police. The answer was to call a single policeman. A police detective. One who might feel he still owed Lawrence something, who might want to make up for a mistake he’d made in the past.

As I sped toward Lawrence’s apartment, I dug into my back pocket and struggled once again to get out my wallet. In there, I found Steve Trimble’s official business card. I let the wallet drop onto the passenger seat, glanced at the home number on the card, memorized it, and dropped the card next to my wallet. Now I dug out my phone and punched in the number with my thumb, keeping my other hand on the wheel.

“Hello?” A woman.

“Is Steve there?”

“May I tell him who’s calling?”

I told her.

“Just a minute.”

I waited a good half minute. Finally, “Walker, what do you want?”

“I haven’t got a lot of time to explain this, Trimble, so listen carefully. Some people from Lenny Indigo’s gang, one of them Barbie Bullock I think, have kidnapped my daughter. They’ve told me that if I call the police, they’ll know and they’ll kill her. They say they’re willing to trade her for my car, which I bought yesterday at a police auction with Lawrence, and which I’m guessing has drugs hidden in it someplace. Am I going too fast?”

“I’m listening,” Trimble said.

I could see Lawrence Jones’s building up ahead. I hung a right before I reached it, drove into the parking lot out back.

“They’re calling me back in about half an hour, to tell me where I’m supposed to meet them. I don’t think I can make this exchange alone. I need someone watching my back, and since I’m too scared to call 911 and tip these guys off, I’m calling you. And there’s something else you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“I think these are the people who tried to kill Lawrence.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Where will we meet?”

My mind raced. “How fast can you get to Lawrence Jones’s apartment?”

“Fast.”

“I’m in that part of town. I could meet you out front. I’ll be in one of those Virtue hybrid cars. It’s silver.”

“Ten minutes.”

“Okay.” I paused to catch my breath. “I appreciate this.”

“Ten minutes,” he said again, and hung up.

I pulled up behind Lawrence’s old Buick. I was hoping the cops, during their investigation of the attack on Lawrence, wouldn’t have bothered to search this car. After all, it had bogus plates on it. There was a chance that if they’d rooted through any car, it would have been Lawrence’s Jag, whose plates were legit.

I popped the Virtue trunk, left the engine running, walked around back and lifted up the cover I’d looked under only a few minutes earlier. I grasped the tire iron, walked over to the passenger side of the Buick, and smashed in the window.

I pulled up the lock button, opened the door, and reached for the handle to the glove box. It was locked. Using the thin end of the tire iron, I wedged open the glove box door.

I reached into the back, past the ownership manuals and tattered maps, and found the gun Lawrence had used to fire at the Annihilator two nights earlier. I took it out, and a roll of masking tape that was tucked in there. I knelt down next to the car and rolled up my right pant leg as far as my knee and taped the gun around my leg. I didn’t much care what Bertrand Magnuson might think of this.

And if it hadn’t been for Angie’s suggestion that I go for ample-fit khakis, I wouldn’t have been able to roll the pant leg back down over the gun so easily.

29

I WAITED AROUND FRONT, on the sidewalk, by the door to Lawrence Jones’s apartment. I’d driven the Virtue around, left it running. Its excellent fuel economy was a major blessing now that I was afraid to turn the damn thing off.

Five minutes later, Trimble arrived in the same unmarked four-door Ford he’d shown up in the night before at this same location.

He put down his window, motioned me over. “Have they called yet?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Any moment now, I’m guessing.”

“You said these people are the same ones who tried to kill Lawrence,” Trimble said, his eyes narrowing.

“Yeah. I think that’s how they got to me, they found my address on a check in Lawrence’s apartment, maybe in his office or his wallet, I don’t know. All this time, I’ve been worried about some kid following my daughter around, not knowing there was someone else out there a whole lot more dangerous.”

Trimble got out of the car. “Are you going to be okay?”

I looked into his face. “I’m not okay now, I can tell you that much. These people, what they did to Lawrence, you really think they’re going to let me walk out of wherever they are, with Angie, alive?”

Trimble’s face didn’t move. He chose not to answer.

“Do you really think they’ve got cops on the inside?” I asked. “Because maybe, if there are some you trust, we should get more help?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Trimble said. “There’ve been rumors for a while that Lenny Indigo had people on his pad, in the force. But there’s never been anything hard, nothing concrete. But more than once, we get ready to make a move on him, and he knows before we get there. We’re lucky we finally nailed him a few months back, but his organization is still alive and kicking.”

“That’s Bullock? This Barbie Bullock guy?”

“Yeah. His real name’s Willy, or William. You’d think a nickname like Barbie would be hard to take, but if people are going to be calling you Willy, maybe it’s not that much worse. He’s dangerous, but not always a hundred percent competent. He’s been struggling lately to prove to Indigo that he’s got what it takes to run the organization. And there’s talk that he does have informants on the force. And I don’t think right now would be the best time to test that theory, not if you want to get your daughter back in one piece.”

I didn’t like his choice of words. They conjured up an image I had to push out of my mind.

“This Bullock, is he the kind of guy who’d kill Angie, even after I give him the car?”

“Look, let’s just take this a step at a time. You got a paper, pen, ready for when they call? Because they’re probably going to give you an address, where to make the trade.”

I patted my jacket, where I had my pen and the reporter’s notebook. Almost as if my tapping had activated it, my cell phone rang inside my coat. I grabbed for it nervously, nearly dropping it as I pulled it from my pocket. I was sweating, and a drop had rolled down into my right eye, stinging and causing me to blink.

“Okay,” said Trimble. I had my thumb poised over the button, ready to take the call. It had now rung twice. “Just take it easy. Listen carefully to what they have to say.” He eased his head up close to mine. “I’m gonna listen in. Okay, go.”

I pressed the button and put the phone to my ear, tilting it out a bit so Trimble could hear the person on the other end.

“Hello,” I said, breathlessly and a little too fast.

“Hey,” said Sarah. “Where the hell is everybody?”

I let out a breath. Trimble cocked his head to one side, looked at me, asking the question. I mouthed, “My wife.”

“What?” I said. “Are you home?”

Trimble had moved his head away. This was a call he didn’t need to hear in detail, but he had some input just the same. He was shaking his head, indicating that he didn’t want me to tell Sarah anything about what was going on.

The fact was, I didn’t want to tell her anything. First of all, the longer we spoke, the greater chance there was I’d miss the call from Bullock. And second, I might not be able to persuade Sarah not to call the police. She had every right to know what was going on, but right now, I felt the fewer people who knew what was happening, the better the odds we’d get Angie back alive.

“I just got home. The drive coming back didn’t seem all that long. Both the cars are gone, the only one here is Paul, and he says he doesn’t know where anyone is.”