The Big Bad Wolf (Alex Cross 9)

I typed: Milton. Of course.

Sterling 66: He was attending?

I typed: No—I literally bumped into him. In the men’s room. I watched him for the rest of the day. Found out where he lived. Been studying him for three months.

Sterling 66: So why did U purchase Worcester?

I knew the question was coming. Impulse, I typed. Then, But this boy in Cambridge, that’s true love. Not a casual thing.

Sterling 66: So U have a name? An address?

I typed: I do. And I have my checkbook.

Sterling 66: Worcester won’t be found? UR certain?

I could hear Potter’s voice in my head as I typed. Good Lord, no. Not unless someone goes swimming in my septic tank.

Sphinx 3000: Gross, Potter. I love it.

Sterling 66: Well, if U have checkbook in hand.

Wolf: No. We’ll wait on this. It’s too soon, Potter. We’ll get back to you. As always, I’ve enjoyed our talk, but I have other matters to attend to.

Wolf signed off. He was gone. Shit. He’d come and gone just like that. The mystery man, as always. Who was this bastard?

I stayed on-line, chatting with the others for a few minutes—expressing my disappointment at the decision, my eagerness to make a purchase. Then I left the site too.

I looked around the operation room at my colleagues. A few began to clap, partly mocking me, but mostly it was genuinely congratulatory. Cop-to-cop stuff. Almost like old times. I felt marginally accepted by the others in the room. For the first time, actually.

Chapter 82

WE WAITED TO HEAR from the Wolf’s Den. Everyone in the overcrowded room wanted to take the Wolf down in the worst way. He was a complicated and twisted criminal, but besides that, the FBI needed a win; a lot of people working their asses off needed it. Snaring the Wolf would be a tremendous victory. If we could just find him. And what if we could get all of the other sick bastards too? Sphinx. ToscaBella. Louis XV. Sterling.

Still, something was bothering me a lot. If the Wolf was as powerful and successful as he seemed to be, why was he involved in this at all? Because he’d always been into lots of kinds of crimes? Or because he was a sex freak himself? Was that it, the Wolf was a freak? Where could I go with that line of thinking?

He’s a freak, and therefore . . . ?

Except for a couple of hours when I went home to see the kids, I remained inside the Hoover Building for the next day and a half. So did a lot of other agents on the case, even Monnie Donnelley, who was as emotionally invested in this as anybody. We continued to collect information, especially about Russian mobsters in the States, but mostly we waited for a message from the Wolf’s Den to Mr. Potter. A yes or a no, a go or a no go. What was the bastard waiting for?

I talked to Jamilla several times—good talks—also to Sampson, the kids, Nana Mama. I even talked to Christine. I had to find out where her head was at about Little Alex. After our talk, I wasn’t sure if she knew, which was the most disturbing thing of all. I began to detect an ambivalent tone in her voice when she spoke about raising Alex, even though she said she was prepared to sue for custody. Considering all she’d been through, it was hard for me to stay angry at her.

I would rather have given up my right arm than my little boy, though. Just thinking about it gave me a headache that throbbed continuously and made the long wait for a resolution even worse.

The phone on my desk rang around ten on the second evening, and I picked up right away. “Waiting for my call? How’s it going?” It was Jamilla, and though she sounded close, she was all the way across the country in California.

“Sucks,” I said. “I’m stuck in a small windowless room with eight smelly FBI hackers.”

“That good, huh? So I take it the Wolfman hasn’t gotten back with an answer.”

“No. And it’s not just that.” I told Jamilla about my phone call with Christine.

She wasn’t nearly as sympathetic to Christine as I was. “Who the hell does she think she is? She walked out on her little boy.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” I said.

“No, it isn’t, Alex. You always like to give people the benefit of the doubt. You think people are basically good.”

“I guess I do. That’s the reason I can do my job. Because most people are basically good and they don’t deserve the shit that gets heaped on them.”