“She faked it.”
“It didn’t sound fake to me.”
“Give me a break. No woman sounds like that unless she’s faking it.”
“That’s a disturbing piece of information.”
Hooker was feeling better in the morning. He had dark circles under his eyes, and he had a lump on his head, but his headache was gone, and he wasn’t seeing double.
We ordered room service breakfast, and halfway through breakfast my phone rang.
“He’s gone!” Judey wailed.
“Who?”
“Bill! Wild Bill is gone. I took a shower and when I came out he was gone. I don’t understand it. We were having such a good time. He was feeling so much better this morning. He came out and sat at the table for breakfast. I made him pancakes. How could he leave after I made him pancakes?”
“Did he say anything about leaving? Did you hear anything? Did it look like someone broke in and took him?”
“No, no, and no. The little shit just left. He got dressed in my clothes. And he left.”
“Did he leave a note?”
“A note,” Judey said. “I was so upset, I didn’t look for a note.”
I sat with my lips pressed tight together, listening while Judey searched.
“I found it!” Judey said. “It was on the kitchen counter. It says he went to get Maria back. That’s all. I’m so sorry. This is terrible. I was supposed to be watching him.”
“It’s not your fault. This is why we call him Wild Bill. Call me if you hear from him.”
Hooker pushed back from his breakfast. “That didn’t sound good.”
“Bill went to get Maria.”
“Unless he knows something we don’t know, he’ll be sniffing around Salzar. How do you think he’ll do that? From what I’ve seen, Salzar’s never alone. He’s always got a couple big guys with him.”
“Bill’s not known for his cunning. Bill just goes after whatever it is he wants. I wouldn’t be surprised if he walked up to Salzar and put a gun to his head.”
TWELVE
It was a little after ten when I drove past Salzar’s office building on Calle Ocho. It was a perfectly nice-looking building, in a nice neighborhood. And this would have been a perfectly nice day, if only things were different. I must have been doing a lot of unconscious sighing because Hooker reached over and put his hand at the nape of my neck.
It seemed to me we were always taking one step forward and two steps backward. And with each step, no matter that it was forward or backward, Hooker and I got dragged deeper into the mess, Bill’s future got increasingly precarious, and I didn’t know what to think about Maria. I hoped she still had a future.
Until a week ago, my life had been so easy. No major illnesses, no big disasters. Nothing to make me uncomfortable. Okay, I had a couple aborted romances that caused me some pain. And sometimes I felt like I was aimlessly drifting, marking time. But I’d never had to fear for my life or for the premature death of someone I loved. Until a week ago, I’d never looked down the barrel of a gun.
Now I know what it’s like to live with real fear…and I’m not crazy about it. I’d get on a plane and go home, but that wouldn’t make it all go away. I suspect the bad guys would track me down, no matter where I ran. And I couldn’t live with myself if I bailed on Bill. Sometimes his brain isn’t fully engaged, but his heart’s always in the right spot.
And then there’s this other thing that I’m struggling over. The canister. The truth is, I’m a person who pretty much lives day to day. I haven’t got a lot of large heroic ambitions. I’d like a better job, but up to this point I was always working too hard to pay the rent to take a chance on a move. And even with a better job, I guess my aspirations are small. It’s not like I want to be a movie star or an astronaut or the queen of England. I’d just like to find something that’s a little more fun. Not that it has to be fun all the time…but some of the time would be a good thing. And God knows, I never wanted to save the world. So I’m a little unprepared for the current responsibility of knowing where a canister (that could possibly be a warhead) is hidden. And I’m a lot unprepared for the almost violent resolve I have that it won’t fall into the wrong hands.
“We need help,” I said to Hooker. “This isn’t like the time Bill stole the keg. This is serious, and it’s not going away. We need to get some sort of law enforcement involved here.”
“I agree,” Hooker said. “What kind of help should we get?”
“I don’t know. Who would be in charge of possible bomb disposal?”
“I’m a little stumped on that one. I can drive, and I can dance, and I can even scramble an egg, but I don’t know a whole lot about possible bombs. I guess we could start with the FBI.”