“Yes,” she almost snarled, “dozens of men. But you can’t name one woman who—”
“Sure I can. You’re talking percentages, that’s all. Like saying most child molesters are men. Or that most serial killers are. But not all, right? It’s bound to happen. A woman with your body. . . you could probably kill a few hundred while you still looked good. And who knows how many they’d spread it to. If—”
“Stop! I do not have AIDS. Come on,” she said, standing up. “I know a clinic, a private one on East Eleventh. We’ll go together. You and me. Right now. Tell them we’re going to be married, and we want to exchange results, okay? You get mine, I get yours. You don’t have to give your name, just a code number. Fair enough?”
“Sit down,” I told her. “It was an example, that’s all. I didn’t say I smelled AIDS on you. I just said it was some kind of major-league craziness. . . and I gave you an example of that, okay?”
“I don’t have AIDS.”
“All right. Fine. You don’t have AIDS. Whatever you say. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“You wouldn’t care if I—”
“I don’t care if you live or die,” I told her. “I work real hard at that—not caring about people who don’t care about me. You say you don’t have AIDS, I believe you. But you are crazy. And you are dangerous. And there’s nothing you could do, no outfit you could put on, no girlfriend you could invite over. . . nothing that could make me take a chance against that.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Who?
“Strega? Strega the witch. Is that what she said? That I was crazy?”
“She didn’t say anything about you,” I lied. “Believe me, jealousy isn’t her game.”
“Then why would you—?”
“I don’t have time to spell it out for you. Only reason you want to know is so you can camouflage it better, right?”
“Of course not! Camouflage what? That I’m ‘crazy’? Don’t be an idiot. I just want to know why you think so.”
“Not today. Just get me the—”
“But you will tell me, right?”
“If you—”
“Not today. I don’t care. But you’ll tell me. Someday.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t have any paper,” she said.
“What? So this was all a—”
“I don’t have any paper because there isn’t any. Just listen to me for a minute, please? My. . . friend looked. Just like you asked. There is nothing in there.”
“Not a single—”
“Not one single organized-crime figure whose child was kidnapped and not returned. Not one, period. But my. . . friend says maybe there’s a reason for that.”
“And that would be. . .?”
“NYPD only has local records. Kidnapping, it’s a federal offense. And there’s Mafia in other cities. She said what you need is an FBI contact. They’d have a record of every kidnapping and—”
“And you just happen to have a friend who works there?”
“No,” she said, almost sadly. “I don’t. But I thought the information would be. . . helpful. I mean, at least it’s something. A new place to look. . .”
I left her sitting there. She looked like a sad little girl. In a translucent mushroom cloud of menace.
“Why would you want this information?” Wolfe asked, not playing the game the way she always did. Away from me now. Maybe forever.
“What difference does that make?” I asked her. “You’re in the business. You sell stuff. I want to buy some of it.”
“You sell stuff too. And now you’re in stuff, aren’t you?” she asked, her gray eyes empty of even a hint of warmth.
“Not what you think,” I told her. “On the square.”
“What you’re into? Or what you’re telling me?”
“What I’m telling you.”
“Is Wesley gone?” she asked me bluntly, cobra-killer eyes unblinking.
“He’s dead,” I said. Wondering if she’d take that for an answer.
“Kidnappings. Ransom paid. Child never returned. No arrests, no clearances, no nothing. And the targets are all Family members?”
“Yes.”
“Going back. . . how far?”
Damn. Wolfe was the first one to think that way. Like a hunter. “Uh, twenty years,” I said, pulling it at random.
“That’s a big search.”
“A big price, you mean. It’s computers, right? How long could it take?”
“Everything wasn’t databased back then,” she said. “They only started keeping certain records recently.”
“But kidnappings. . . that’s been federale territory since Hoover was wearing a dress.”
“Sure. But, still. . . they have to code it in by hand from those days. It may not be all done yet. And if you want—”
“I don’t care what it costs,” I told her.
She stood there facing me, hands at her sides, clenched, not giving ground. “If I find out you’re in business with Wesley, I’ll take you down myself,” she said. Then she walked away.
“This one’ll take a while to come up,” Xyla told me, her eyes deliberately averted from the screen. “I can tell by the pre-coding when the message came in.”
“How’d you learn all this stuff?” I asked her, more to kill time than anything else.
“I had to pretty much teach myself,” she said. “It’s mostly men—boys, really—who understand it. And you can’t get them to teach you much.”
“Why not?” I asked. “I don’t mean to be offensive, but you’re a pretty girl. I’d think those kids would be falling all over themselves to—”
“The opposite.” Xyla laughed. “Cyber-boys are always flexing their little muscles, you understand? Like, if I go to the beach. . . I walk by, guys show off, understand?”
“Sure.”
“Well, it’s the same thing in Cyberville. Only the muscles they have, they’re not real. I mean, I can’t bench-press four hundred pounds. But I can do anything on a computer they can do—it doesn’t take strength, just knowledge. If they give me theirs, they can’t. . . pose, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And you figured that out yourself?”
“You want to know the truth?” she asked. “A man taught me. Not computers—what I just told you. And as soon as I snapped to it, I realized I’d have to learn the cyber-stuff myself. So I did.”
I saw the screen change. “That’s—”
“It’s coming up?” she interrupted.
“Yeah.”
“See you later,” she said, walking out of the room.
The killer continued his serial. The same way. I watched it come up, then started to scroll. . . .
I had been careful to act on a Monday. Not only are reaction times typically slower on Monday mornings, it is a major “sick day” for civil servants, and late starts are also common. In addition, USA Today does not have a weekend edition, and I wanted to give the targets maximum opportunity to post their answer as directed without having to wait. A Tuesday response was impossible, and even Wednesday was unlikely. A drive to the airport would be necessary. Anyone buying USA Today from a regular newsstand might attract attention in a small town, and anyone buying on two consecutive days certainly would. Such risks must be minimized.
Obviously, this is a part of the operation where a confederate would be invaluable. But even had I not ruled this out on practical grounds, I confess that my artistic sensibilities would be offended by the appearance of collaboration with others. I refer, of course, to *internal* appearance—externally, the appearance of having confederates involved in kidnappings is, indeed, one of the critical elements of success.