But there weren’t any walls.
CHAPTER 2
HOOTER’S MOTEL PUMIS CITY, MARYLANDEARLY SATURDAY MORNING
WHO WERE THESE people? Moses Grace and Claudia—those were the exact names signed on Pinky
’s kidnap note, the same as on the motel registry. Why would kidnappers advertise? They must have made up the names, Savich thought. Moses Grace and Claudia, whoever they were, didn’t know the cops were there, waiting for them to come out.
Savich was so tired he could feel his thoughts falling out of his brain before he could quite finish with them. Only the bone-freezing bite of the swirling wind straight from the Arctic kept him from falling asleep. His feet were getting numb, and he stamped them hard. They’d been there since eleven o’clock. It was now nearly three on Saturday morning, and they were unable to hunker over their portable stove because Moses Grace and Claudia might see the light. They were hidden in the trees across from Hooter
’s Motel, out in the boonies of western Maryland.
Why this Moses Grace character had picked Pinky Womack to take was another puzzle. Pinky was a middle-aged part-time comedian at the Bonhomie Club who could spout thirty lame jokes in ten minutes if you let him. He didn’t have much money of his own, and his only family was a single brother who had less than he did. He was unusual at the Bonhomie Club because he was one of Ms. Lilly’s token whites. He’d been gone a day before his brother, Cluny Womack, found the note duct-taped to Pinky’s kitchen counter. Hey, Savich, we got Pinky. We’ll be seeing you. And it was signed Moses Grace and Claudia. The handwriting was a young girl’s, all loopy, the i’s dotted with little hearts. It was written specifically to him. Moses Grace and Claudia knew not only who he was but also that he performed at the Bonhomie Club, and they knew Pinky. What did they want?
They were stymied until one of Agent Ruth Warnecki’s informants, who called himself Rolly, had called on Ruth’s cell phone that evening. Since Ruth was out of town, he was forwarded to Agent Connie Ashley. Rolly was a street person, really quite insane, but he’d given her the real juice more than once. Ruth called him her psycho snitch because his information always came for the price of a pint of warm blood, O negative. Ruth had a deal with a buddy at the local blood bank to give her expired pints of O
negative when she needed them.
Rolly told Connie how he’d been testing this new dark brew from Slovenia, or some such weird-ass place, rumored to have a nip of blood mixed in it, but he couldn’t taste it, and, he’d added as an afterthought, he was standing on the east side of a 24/7 on Webster Street, N.E., when he overheard this old man and a girl shootin’ the breeze not six feet away from him about how they’d scuttled old Pinky right out of his apartment as he was watching reruns of Miami Vice on cable. Rolly said the guy sounded like an ancient old buzzard—Rolly had been too afraid to try to get a look at him—but he sounded like he was on the brink of death, coughing like he was going to puke out his lungs. The old guy called the girl Claudia and cutie and sweetheart. She spoke all jivey, sounded Lolita-young, jailbait, like ripe fruit hanging off a low branch.
Rolly knew to his pointed canines that both of them were worse than badass bad, and they’d talked about hauling Pinky to Hooter’s Motel in Maryland, and they’d laughed about Agent Dillon Savich and his Keystone Kops braying around like three-legged jackasses. Rolly didn’t know why they’d picked a boob motel in the sticks of western Maryland. Claudia had laughed and said, “Well, Moses Grace, I’m goin’ to butter Pinky up and stick him in a big toaster if the cops show their face.” Why did she call him by his full name?
When Connie offered him another pint of blood, Rolly remembered they had talked briefly about taking Pinky out of the motel before dawn on Saturday, but they didn’t say where to. Mostly they laughed a lot, weird crazy-like laughter. Even Rolly had shuddered as he said that to Connie. It could be a setup. Maybe. Probably. But the FBI and the local cops were there because they had no other leads. They only knew Savich was at the center of it. On short notice they’d set up this elaborate operation—too elaborate, too complicated, Savich thought. And so they waited on a brutally cold winter night for Moses Grace and Claudia to leave their room dragging poor Pinky with them, FBI sharpshooters at the ready.
Savich rubbed his hands over his arms, then raised his night-vision scope toward room 212, the last room on the second level of Hooter’s Motel. Moses Grace’s old Chevy van hunkered in the parking lot, so filthy they couldn’t make out the license plate.
Raymond Dykes, the owner of the motel, had told Savich the girl signed both their names, with the same loopy handwriting. He couldn’t describe her well since she never took off the oversized dark glasses that covered half her face, but she was white, real pale white, and he knew she was pretty, with all that blond hair, wild and blowy, and a blue fake fur over jeans and a top.
They’d come strutting into his lobby during the evening, he didn’t remember the exact time. Maybe eight or nine, even ten o’clock, who knew? They were carrying bags of McDonald’s takeout under their arms, and they told him they had a sick brother moaning in the back of the van. Mr. Dykes gave them aspirin for the brother. Moses Grace called him Pinky, a funny name, which was why he remembered it. He watched them haul Pinky and the McDonald’s bags up the stairs between them to their room. He thought about the french fries and Big Mac and hoped Pinky wouldn’t puke in the room. When Savich, along with Sherlock and agents Dane Carver and Connie Ashley, had met up with Chief Tumi and half a dozen of his deputies, and given them instructions, Moses Grace and Claudia were already ensconced in their room with Pinky. By 12:15 a.m., agents had evacuated the motel’s other three occupants.
At one a.m. Savich’s directional receiver crackled, and he heard Moses Grace say in an old scratchy voice, “We ain’t heard a single lame joke from the little loser, just look at him, sleeping like a baby.”
Claudia, sounding like a teenager, added casually, “I could wake him up with a little kiss of my knife in his ear, you know, dig it in a little bit, rouse him real fast.” The old man laughed, and then he wheezed and coughed, phlegm rumbling low in his chest, and then there was nothing more. Savich looked down at his receiver, as if willing the unit to come to life, but there was only silence again. He heard a couple of yawns, a snort or two in the minutes that followed. There were the sounds of sleep, but could he trust them? A lone light still shone at the window, but he saw no movement of any kind. At three o’clock, Savich heard Moses Grace say clearly in his aged, juicy voice, “You know, Pinky, I’m thinking I’m gonna stick my fingernail through your left cheek, poke it in deep, twirl it around in your sinuses.” Nothing from Pinky, which meant, Savich hoped, that he was gagged. Claudia giggled. “I wish we took your brother, too, Pinky. He’s like a cute fat little pig. I could stuff him in the ground and roast him, pretend we’re in Hawaii at a luau.” She giggled again. They wouldn’t rush the motel room, not with just verbal threats. They had to wait, and Savich knew it was driving everyone nuts.
Agent Dane Carver whispered, “The old man sounds tired and sick. Claudia sounds hyper, talked so fast I could practically see spit flying out of her mouth. She’s young, Savich, real young. What’s she doing with that old man? What is she to him? They’re mad, no doubt in my mind, like Rolly told Connie.”