"You have an address on Liptak?"

Bob shook his head. "No. Never did. He shouldn't be hard to find, though. I think he's pretty rich. He called me," he added almost as an afterthought. "Just recently."

Sammie and Joe glanced at one another. "What about?" Gunther asked nonchalantly.

"He wanted to know how she was doing. Said he was married now and just got to thinking one day, sort of reliving old times."

"You tell him about her?"

"What little I knew, sure. He was happy she was bouncing back."

"Did he ask where she was living?" Sammie asked.

Bob thought back. "I don't think so. I couldn't have told him anyway."

"How 'bout w.i.l.l.y, Bob?" Gunther asked after a pause. "If you don't know where he is, can you think where he might be? Friends he had when he lived here, old haunts?"

Totally recovered now from his emotional breakdown, Bob gave them a chastened, war-weary look. "I don't know how long you've known my brother, but I wouldn't go looking for any old friends. He didn't make friends, and if for some reason someone tried it with him instead, he made sure it wouldn't last."

Gunther glanced at Sammie at that, but she was staring at the carpeted floor.

He rose to his feet. "Thanks, Bob. You've been a big help. And for what it's worth, I think having you in his life has helped w.i.l.l.y a lot, even if he'd never admit it."

Bob smiled weakly. "I guess that's good to hear."

Chapter 15.

It was so dark in the alley that w.i.l.l.y Kunkle couldn't even see Riley c.o.x, although they were standing just four feet apart.

"That Marcus?" asked Riley in a disembodied whisper.

"According to my source, it is," said w.i.l.l.y. "From spiky hair to silver necklace-too far off to see the scar on his face. And I guess we're at the right address."

w.i.l.l.y watched Marcus cross the street, carefully check up and down the block, and then vanish into the entryway of a beaten-up building with the first two floors of windows covered in metal and a row of dented trash cans out front. w.i.l.l.y quickly trained his small telescope on the site, as he'd been doing throughout, steadying it against a drainpipe running down the wall beside him. They'd been standing here for several hours, waiting for some indication that their information was accurate. Not finding any clues at Nate Lee's apartment to Nate's whereabouts, Riley had taken them on a round of personal contacts to make inquiries. It hadn't taken long to find someone who claimed to know where Diablo was reportedly packaged for distribution. They'd also been told that there was good reason this brand had been around for a long time. The man in charge-nicknamed La Culebra, or the Snake-was known for his ruthlessness and a penchant for security. Riley's informant had described the address they were now looking at as a fortress. If it was, however, it didn't include the entire building. The traffic in and out up to now had been strictly mundane: moms with kids, old people, a few couples. And the windows of the upper floors had revealed the kind of normal activity one might expect in a regular apartment house. La Culebra might have been a tough nut, but he apparently wasn't well heeled or paranoid enough to claim the whole place as his own.

w.i.l.l.y lowered the telescope. "He hit the second-floor buzzer."

There was a small moment of silence before Riley murmured, "Okay, we seen day-to-day stuff on the third and fourth floors, and who knows about the first and second."

"First's probably the factory," w.i.l.l.y ventured, "with several exits besides the front door. And the second's where he lives. At least that's the way I'd lay it out."

Riley didn't disagree, but his focus was on something more pragmatic. "So, what now? We don't even know what La Culebra looks like, much less how to get at him."

w.i.l.l.y looked thoughtfully across the street. "The trick," he said, "is to come at them some way they don't expect."

"And they expect cops and the compet.i.tion," Riley added, "meaning a big show of force."

w.i.l.l.y admitted with grudging admiration, "I bet that's why half this place looks normal. Fill a potential combat zone with civilians and you screw up the other guy's attack plan. No free-fire zones, no Philadelphia-style bombings from helicopters. We can't even burn them out with a Molotov c.o.c.ktail."

"Too bad we don't have more time to recon this," Riley mused.

"Well," w.i.l.l.y answered, "we don't, so we'll just have to improvise. Maybe we can underwhelm them, instead." He reached into his pocket, extracted his gun, and held it out to where Riley was standing in the inky darkness, nudging him in the shoulder. "Here."

"What're you doin'?" Riley asked in surprise.

"Going in there," w.i.l.l.y said simply, and stepped out into the open.

"Wait," Riley whispered from his hiding place. "You'll get your a.s.s shot off."

"Whatever," w.i.l.l.y said without looking back. "Stay put and keep an ear out."

He crossed the street, climbed the front steps, and rang the same bell he'd seen Marcus. .h.i.t earlier.

"What?" came the reply through the small loudspeaker above the door.

"Police. Open up."

The speaker went dead. w.i.l.l.y waited for several minutes, aware of the conversation that must be taking place overhead.

Finally, the disembodied voice came back with the most standard of inquiries. "You got a warrant?"

"Not necessary. La Culebra needs what I have."

"What d'you mean?"

"I'll tell that to him."

"The f.u.c.k you will."

"You'll be f.u.c.ked if I don't."

There was another prolonged silence. w.i.l.l.y let out a small puff of air. Despite the stakes, there was an element of formal, almost boring protocol to this, as if all of them were locked into a pattern of behavior none could escape.

Without further comment from the loudspeaker, the door lock buzzed noisily and w.i.l.l.y turned the k.n.o.b. He stepped into an empty, dimly lit lobby with a staircase and an elevator door against the far wall.

"Step into the middle of the room and put your hands up," said a voice.

w.i.l.l.y looked around. There were several doors to each side, one of which was barely open. He moved forward. "My left arm is paralyzed. I can't lift it."

"I suppose to believe that?"

"You don't have much choice."

The door swung wide, revealing a young man pointing a small machine gun at w.i.l.l.y's chest. He smiled as w.i.l.l.y watched him. "I got a choice, dummy, and this is it."

"What? You kill me and then La Culebra kills you because he learned what I got too late to save his b.u.t.t? Sharp thinking."

"f.u.c.k you."

w.i.l.l.y smiled. What would these guys do without that word?

The gunman hesitated, thrown by w.i.l.l.y's seeming lack of concern. "Open your coat, then," he finally ordered.

w.i.l.l.y did so slowly, revealing the badge he had clipped to his belt.

"Okay. Go over there and lean against the wall with your legs spread out."

Half amused at the irony of the request, w.i.l.l.y did as he'd ordered countless others to do in the past. The other man emerged from his refuge, crossed the lobby, and patted w.i.l.l.y down, looking for weapons or hidden wires.

Satisfied, he stepped back. "Okay. Go upstairs."

w.i.l.l.y took the steps slowly, his right hand held slightly away from his body so the gunman could see it at all times. One flight up was a landing with three doors, two of which had been welded shut with steel plates, and the third heavily beefed up against forced entry. A camera was perched over this last door, surveying the entire landing.

The gunman pounded on the door. "Rico. Open up."

A mechanical chorus of bolts and locks snapping to was followed by the door opening onto another man with a similar weapon.

"He clean?" this one asked the first.

"No, a.s.shole. I made sure he was carrying hand grenades."

"f.u.c.k you, Manny. Who made you the big man?"

w.i.l.l.y shook his head. "Boys, boys."

Manny poked him in the back with the barrel of his gun. "f.u.c.k you, cop. Maybe I don't care what you got and I kill you right here."

w.i.l.l.y looked at him. "Maybe you do. So what?"

Manny's eyes narrowed. "You f.u.c.kin' with me?"

w.i.l.l.y considered commenting on his limited vocabulary, but said instead, "Take me to La Culebra. Let him figure this out."

Manny pressed his lips together angrily before spitting out, "I don't like you, man."

w.i.l.l.y knew he should be a nervous wreck by now, bearding the lion in his den, bluffing all the way. But fear was an instinct he'd lost long ago. Once, during a similar confrontation when he'd been taken by surprise by a Viet Cong guerrilla, the man had threatened to shoot him on the spot. w.i.l.l.y had merely opened his shirt and exposed his bare chest in a moment of stark self-revelation, all concern for survival gone. During the stunned hesitation that had followed, one of w.i.l.l.y's companions had appeared from the foliage behind them and shot the young man dead. In that moment, w.i.l.l.y had both mourned his pa.s.sing and the service he'd been about to provide.

"Join the crowd," he told Manny.

They took him down a hallway, past rooms with other men loitering inside, some watching TV, others talking, a couple cleaning more guns. It reminded him of a base camp between operations. w.i.l.l.y noticed all the windows were equipped with closed steel shutters.

They reached what might have once been a dining room, now converted into a hodgepodge of den and office and general storage area. There, sitting at a badly abused metal desk covered with an a.s.sortment of weapons, paperwork, wads of money, and a couple of powder-filled baggies, was a man in his late thirties sporting a trim beard and mustache, his hair swept back and held in a ponytail, incongruously wearing a pair of half gla.s.ses on the end of his nose. He was reading something in a folder, much as any businessman might.

He looked up as w.i.l.l.y entered with his escort.

"He's clean," Manny announced unnecessarily. "He's got a crippled arm, too."

The man with the beard gave Manny a careful look, but didn't say anything to him. Instead, he motioned to an empty folding chair and told w.i.l.l.y, "Sit."

Manny and Rico fanned out to either side.

"You Culebra?" w.i.l.l.y asked.

"La Culebra, yes."

"What I got is for your ears only."

The Snake pushed out his lips thoughtfully, taking in the man opposite him. He then gave his two lieutenants a rapid order in Spanish and sent them off.

He waited until the door had closed behind them. "So," he asked, removing his gla.s.ses, "what do you want to tell me?"

"Nothing," w.i.l.l.y admitted. "I wanted to ask you a question."

La Culebra sat back in his chair, his face slightly flushed. He sensed he'd been taken advantage of, but knew the value of staying cool. "All this trouble just for that? You are a strange man. Are you really a policeman?"

w.i.l.l.y flipped open his jacket again, revealing the badge. "Vermont Bureau of Investigation."

La Culebra broke into a broad grin. "Vermont? What the h.e.l.l is that? You the ski police or something?"

w.i.l.l.y smiled back. "Close. I'm looking for a friend of mine-Nathan Lee."

The bearded man touched his forehead with his fingertips, as if trying to locate something he'd misplaced there. "A cop from Vermont lies his way in here to ask me about a man I never heard of. If I kill you right now, will anybody care?"

"n.o.body that matters to you."

"You're not going to tell me you have backup?"

"Nope."

"Why do you care about Nathan Lee?"

"He was doing me a favor. I think it got him in trouble."

"What favor?"

"I asked him to find out who was making Diablo. I wanted to ask that person a question."

Clearly fascinated, La Culebra now sat forward and rested his elbows on the desk. "Meaning the question is not where is Nathan Lee. Has anyone ever told you you're a very strange man?"

"All the time. And this is a different question."

He nodded. "Very good. What is it?"