The Wrong Hostage Read Free Page A

is. I just hoped that…” Ted would step up and be the father Lane needs. That Ted would at least call Lane once a week or even every two weeks .
    Another truck roared by, belching diesel into the unusually sultry air.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Grace said. “But if you hear from Ted, please ask him to contact me. I’m tired of being his answering service. A lot of people get angry at me because they can’t get through to him.”
    The senator coughed. “I hear you. Take care, Grace. We need women like you on the appeals court.”
    “Men, too,” she retorted, but she laughed. “Good-bye, Chad. And thanks.”
    She rushed back onto the toll road, leaving a rooster tail of dirt in her wake and wondering if drugs were what Calderón had on his mind.

T IJUANA, M EXICO
A UGUST
S ATURDAY, 12:12 P.M.
3
    J OE F AROE CAME OUT the front door of Tijuana Tuck & Roll carrying what looked like a two-foot-long section of vaguely curved abstract art carved from oak. The shop that had made the oak piece had been in the same location for more than forty years. It was a hangover from the days of gringo surfers and hot-rodders crossing the border for cheap custom car work. When angora dice and hand-stitched leather seats stopped being cool, the shop had chosen a different business model.
    It made the best smuggler’s traps to be had in a city whose economy was based on smuggling.
    The output of Tijuana Tuck & Roll was the kind of open secret Mexico thrived on. The shop was surrounded by a stout chain-link fence topped with lazy, deadly loops of razor wire, the kind that would cut a man to rags.
    Joe Faroe knew about wire like that, just like he knew about the auto upholstery shop’s real business.
    Been there.
    Done that.
    Burned the T-shirt.
    Faroe glanced across the street. The man was still there, still leaning in the shadow of a doorway. The watcher looked away when Faroe stared at him, but he didn’t move from his post.
    A cop, Faroe decided.
    The dude’s leather jacket and comfortable belly gave him away. For some cops, life was good.
    Okay, is he a Mexican cop or an American working south of the line, trying to figure out the latest smuggling wrinkle?
    Is he looking for an arrest or a shakedown?
    Faroe closed the chain-link gate behind him and stared at the cop whose leather jacket was almost as expensive as Faroe’s.
    The dude pretended he didn’t exist.
    Faroe kept staring.
    Finally the cop looked over casually and nodded. He was an old hand. He knew he’d been burned.
    “Have a nice day,” Faroe called across the street.
    The cop shrugged and turned away to light a cigarette.
    Faroe strolled along the buckled, treacherous sidewalk toward La Revo. He’d parked in Chula Vista and walked across La Línea—the border. Now he needed a cab back to the U.S. port of entry. There were always cabs next to the zebra-striped burro on the corner of La Revo and Calle Cinco.
    The cop stopped smoking long enough to talk into a cell phone or a radio. Faroe couldn’t tell which and didn’t care. For the first time in decades he had a squeaky-clean conscience.
    Around him the air smelled of broken septic lines and tacos with claws in them. The sidewalks were dirty and cracked, cluttered with hunched indio beggars, sidewalk souvenir sellers, and a timeless collection of hustlers, thieves, and ordinary people just trying to get by. They peddled leather boxes, brightly painted wooden toys, and T-shirts celebrating the joys of everything from drugs to anal sex. The shops were ramshackle and poorly stocked. The bars advertised lap dancers. Next door, phony pharmacists in white coats peddled cut-rate Viagra and knockoff cancer drugs.
    The tourist district of Avenida Constitución tried to be respectable, but it reeked of shadowy bargains, furtive pleasures, and easy vice. Cheap smokes, cheap liquor, cheap sex; everything the bluenoses had squeezed out of San Diego had migrated a few miles south to Tijuana.
    Faroe walked the block that