The Big Bad Wolf (Alex Cross 9)

Wolf: All right then, maybe we’ll get you the boy. Be careful! There might not be another!

I typed: Then there won’t be another hundred twenty-five thousand!!!

Wolf: I’m not worried. There are lots of freaks like you. You’d be amazed.

Mr. Potter: So. How is your hostage?

Wolf: I have to go back to work. . . . One more question, Potter. Just to be safe. Where did you get your name?

I looked around the room. Oh, Christ. It was something I hadn’t thought to ask Taylor.

A voice whispered close to my ear. Monnie’s. “The kids’ books? They call Harry Mr. Potter at the Hogwarts school. Maybe? I don’t know.”

Was that it? I needed to type something; it had to be the right answer. Was the name from the Harry Potter books? Because he liked boys? Then something from Taylor’s office in the farmhouse flashed in my brain.

My fingers went to the keys. Paused for a second. Then I typed my answer: This is absurd. The name is from the Jamaica Kincaid novel—Mr. Potter. Fuck U!

I waited for a response. So did everyone else in the room. Finally it came.

Wolf: I’ll get you the boy, Mr. Potter.

Chapter 85

WE WERE IN BUSINESS again, and I was back working the streets, the way I liked it, the way it used to be.

I had been in Boston several times before, loved the city enough to consider moving there, and was comfortable. For the next two days we shadowed a student named Paul Xavier, from his apartment on Beacon Hill, to his classes at Harvard, to the Ritz-Carlton, where he was a waiter, to popular clubs like No Borders and Rebuke.

Xavier was the “bait” we had set out for the Wolf and his kidnapping crew.

Actually, Xavier was being impersonated by a thirty-year-old agent from our field office in Springfield, Massachusetts. The agent’s name was Paul Gautier. Boyishly handsome, tall and slender, with fluffy light brown hair, he looked like someone in his early twenties. He was armed, but also being closely watched by a minimum of six agents at all times of the day and night. We had no idea how or when the Wolf’s team might try to grab him, only that they would.

For twelve hours each day, I was one of the agents watching and protecting Gautier. I had spoken about the dangers of using “bait” to try and catch the kidnappers, but nobody had paid attention.

On the second night of surveillance, and according to plan, Paul Gautier went to “the Fens,” along the Muddy River near Park Drive and Boylston Street. Actually called the Back Bay Fens, it had been imagined by Frederick Law Olmsted, who’d also designed the Boston Common and Central Park in New York. In the evening hours after the clubs closed, the real Paul Xavier often cruised the Fens looking for sexual encounters, which was why we had sent our agent there.

It was dangerous work for all of us, but especially for Agent Gautier. The area was dark, and there were no streetlights. The tall reeds along the river were thick and provided cover for pickups and liaisons

—and kidnappings.

Agent Peggy Katz and I were on the edge of the reeds, which resembled elephant grass. During the past half hour, she had admitted that she wasn’t really interested in sports but had learned about basketball and football because she wanted to be able to talk with her male counterparts about something.

“Men talk about other things,” I said as I scouted the Fens through night glasses.

“I know that. I can talk about money and cars too. But I refuse to talk to you horny bastards about sex.”

I coughed out a laugh. Katz could deliver her lines. She was often wry, with a twinkle, and she seemed to be laughing with you, even if you happened to be the butt of her jokes. But I also knew that she was very tough, a real hard-liner.

“Why did you join the Bureau?” she asked as we continued to wait for Agent Gautier to appear. “You were doing well with the Washington PD, right?”

“I was doing just fine.”

I lowered my voice and pointed toward a clearing up ahead. “Here comes Gautier now.”

Agent Gautier had just left Boylston Street. He was walking slowly across the Fens toward the Muddy River. I knew the area pretty well from an earlier scouting trip. During the day this same section of the park was called the victory gardens. Area residents raised flowers and vegetables, and there were signs pleading with night visitors not to trample them.

The team leader, Roger Nielsen, spoke in a whisper that seeped into my earphones. “Male in the watch cap, Alex. Stout guy. You see him?”

“I’ve got him.” Watch cap was talking into a microphone on the collar of his sport shirt. He wasn’t one of ours, so he must have been one of theirs—the Wolf’s.