Maybeck, still watching the front door, said over his shoulder, "I'm hanging. just hurry it up.
Boldt could hear Daphne's coaching. Against his better judgment he said to the man, "You sure you're clean with the cops?"
"I'm clean, okay? You gonna do this or not?"
"Wait here."
As Boldt entered the back room for a second time all eyes were trained on him-terror in most of them. One of the techies snatched Maybeck's instructions from him and hurried to the computer. Boldt felt stunned. He was tugging at his ring when Daphne caught up to him. She looked a few years older than just a couple of minutes before. She stared at him. "You all right?" she asked. "I'm taking Grecian Formula into the shower with me tonight." "You did good," she said, intentional in her cop talk.
Boldt glanced over at the techies. "Any luck?" he asked.
One of them signaled a thumbs-up. "We're copying now," he said.
Adding, "Database software, a couple of big files, Sergeant.
That's good news I think.,, Boldt studied Maybeck on Watson's television screen. The entire ordeal had been captured on timecoded videotape. They would relive his every move, study every word for significance. The prosecuting attorney's office would examine the tape for signs of entrapment and rule as to its admissibility in court. A process would begin. Maybeck was in their file as of now. Boldt handed Watson the slip of paper that contained Maybeck's name, address, and credit card number. "Fax this back to the office and have them run him through the computer. Do the same with the Bureau. I want to know this guy's birthmarks, if he has any."
"I'd like a copy of that," Daphne said, explaining to Boldt, "for the handwriting sample.
The instructions as well."
Boldt looked at her skeptically. He didn't put much faith in handwriting analysis. She said defensively, "I'll make a believer out of you yet."
"Don't count on it."
"He's looking for you," Watson warned.
Boldt faced the television screen. Maybeck looked restless.
Boldt looked to Daphne for advice. "Make him wait," she said.
"We've got the password."
Watson added his two cents: "You're going to lose him. He knows it shouldn't have taken this long."
"We need him," Boldt reminded. To the techies manning the laptop he said, "How long?"
"There are a couple big files. We're doing everything we-"
"How long?" he reemphasized. "Not long."
"Stall him," Daphne said. She ran over to the computer table, snatched up the instructions. "Tell him to step you through it."
"He's leaving," Watson said to Boldt. To Daphne, he added, "I told you."
As Boldt reentered the pawn shop's show floor, Maybeck was on his way out the front door. "Hey, asshole! Mr. Toshiba' Where the hell are you going?" he asked. "Fuck you!"
Maybeck stopped. He didn't answer. He looked scared. Maybe he'd figured it for the setup it was.
Lamoia shouted to Maybeck, "Hey! What do you want a computer for anyway, Mr. Toshiba? I got a hell of a car stereo system over here." It broke the ice. Maybeck allowed the door to shut, remaining inside.
Boldt argued, "You crush my stones about how important this is, and now you're gonna blow on me? Get gone-and don't show your face in here again."
Another agonizing silence as everyone looked at Maybeck. The amplifier spit static. It was the only sound except for traffic noise. "Why so long?" Maybeck asked. "What? You think I'm Einstein?" Boldt asked, wondering how Miles was doing. "You got the handwriting of a moron, you know that?" He waved the sheet of instructions at him. "My first-grader's got better lettering than this! Get out of here. Get gone. But don't come back here. Not ever."
"What?'You can't read my handwriting?"
"What did I just tell you? You gonna leave? Go ahead, leave! You got a lotta nerve wasting my time. Yanking my chain." "What can't you read?" Maybeck asked, taking his first step back toward the counter.
Boldt felt a huge sigh of relief pass through him. "How about you explain it to me?" They worked it out between them. Maybeck talked Boldt through the whole thing. It took several minutes, Boldt watching the wall clock.
When he finally returned to the back room, the techies were standing there anxiously awaiting him. The laptop was all ready to go. "We got it!" one of them said excitedly. "We got every file in the thing." Boldt took the laptop. One of them said, "Better give it another minute." That minute stretched on indefinitely. "Okay," he finally said.
Boldt asked, "What the hell was the password, anyway. I forgot to even look." Donnie Maybeck stood less than fifteen feet away, on the other side of the closed door to this back room. "Zoom," the man answered. "Whatever the hell that means."
Off Inside the chilled, damp confines of Elden Tegg's wilderness kennel, Sharon Shaffer sat bare bottomed, her arms hugging her knees, her weak grip clutching the discarded needle she had recovered, her mind off in an imagined fantasyland where the cement she now sat on was a hot, fine, Mexican sand, and that god awful smell in the air was the sweet perfume of a trade wind. Each day she challenged herself to come up with another image, for without them her mind would decay into the depths of selfpity and her body surrender to disease. No one needed to tell her-she knew. She had seen it on the streets, usually at the receiving end of a bottle or a needle similar to the one she now cherished as if it were a key to the lock on the door that impounded her. She assumed from her diarrhea that he had her on a powerful course of antibiotics. Weakness was her biggest enemy. He was both feeding and drugging her through the I.V.
She didn't know how much longer she had in her.
Strength was everything. She knew that. Her will carried her hour to hour, but for how much longer? She continued to remind herself that as terrible as this was, she had seen worse, had lived worse, for she had lived without faith. Faith alone now carried her forward. Perhaps this suffering was her punishment for years of recklessness.
His words haunted her: "Practice makes perfect." This said while he held Michael's heart. Did that mean what she thought it meant? Was her heart next? Her life?
Her years on the street had taught her some things. She had learned how to fight, how to survive, how to lie, how to deceive. Cunning, she had found, could get you out of more problems than any amount of reason or talk.
The needle remained coiled in her fingers. An eye for an eye, she thought.
The obstacles she faced seemed overwhelming. The do c-tor, the vet-she still thought of him as The Keeper-was using Felix to patrol the building. The dog would tear apart any intruder or her, should she manage to escape. She needed more of a plan on how to deal with that. As part of an incentive program, The Keeper had also left the dog without food. Felix used the automatic waterer from the cage to her right, its door wired open for him, but as each day wore on into the afternoon, in anticipation of The Keeper's arrival, of food, the dog's restless pacing increased. He would enter the cage adjacent to her, sit there and drool while staring at her. it often went on for hours; it frightened her. She would motion at him, scold him through her gag, but the guard dog just sat there impassively, smelling her. Wanting her.
What worried her most about her planned escape was the way The Keeper used the shock collar to subdue her. The collar could be triggered either of two ways: if she touched the chain link or if The Keeper used the button on the remote "wand" that corresponded to her collar. His routine was to deliver a few devastating blasts to her collar, weakening her before his entry into the cage to change her dressings. By the end of those blasts, she was feeble and in immense pain-she was putty in his hands. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was taking no chances.
It would require all her strength if she were to use the needle on him. She had it all worked out: needle to the eye, out the cage, out the door, lock it, into the car, gone. But his liberal use of the shock collar warned her that she would not have all her strength when the moment arrived. , After hours days?-of contemplation, the only solution to this problem that she could arrive at was to condition herself against the effects of the collar. She had to beat him at his own game-to take more than he could deliver.