The Big Bad Wolf

this is fucking
funny?
” Farley rasped from the edge of the bed, where he was lodged like a beached whale. We’d made him put on clothes, blue jeans and a work shirt, mostly because we couldn’t stand the sight of his flaccid rolls of fat and his tattoos of naked women and a purple dragon eating a child.
    “You’re going down on kidnap and murder charges,” Mahoney snarled at him. “You injured two of my men. One might lose an eye.”
    “You had no right comin’ in my house while I’m sleeping! I have
enemies!
” Farley yelled, and spit at Mahoney again. “You barge in here ’cause I sell some weed? Or I screw a married broad who likes me more than she likes her old man?”
    “Are you talking about Audrey Meek?” I asked.
    All of a sudden he went quiet. He stared at me, and his face and neck turned bright red. What was this? He wasn’t a good actor and he wasn’t real smart either.
    “What the hell’re you talking about? You been smoking my shit?” Farley said finally. “Audrey Meek? That chick they kidnapped?”
    Mahoney leaned forward. “Audrey Meek. We know you know all about her, Farley. Where is she?”
    Farley’s piggy eyes seemed to be getting smaller. “How the hell would I know where she is?”
    Mahoney kept at him. “You ever been in a chat room called Favorite Things Four?”
    Farley shook his head. “Never heard of it.”
    “We have a record of your conversation, asshole,” Ned said. “You got a lot of ’splaining to do, Lucy.”
    Farley looked confused. “Who the hell is Lucy? What are you
talking
about, man? You mean, like,
I Love Lucy
?”
    Mahoney was good at keeping Farley off guard. I thought we were working okay together.
    “You’ve got her in the woods somewhere in Jersey,” Mahoney yelled, then stamped his foot hard.
    “Did you hurt her? Is she all right? Where is Audrey Meek?” I picked up.
    “Take us to her, Farley!”
    “You’re going back to prison. This time, you don’t get out again,” I shouted in his face.
    It was as if Farley were finally waking up. He squinted his eyes and stared hard at us. Lord, he smelled, especially now that he was scared.
    “Wait a fucking minute. Now I get it. That Internet place? I was just showin’ off.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Farley slumped down into himself as if we’d been beating him. “Favorite Four is for freaks to talk. Everybody makes shit up, man.”
    “But you
didn’t
make up the stuff about Audrey Meek. You
know
things about her. You got it all right,” I said.
    “The bitch turns me on. She’s a fox. Hell, I collect catalogues from Meek, always have. All those skinny-ass models look like they need a good
unh, unh, uh!
”
    “You knew things about the abduction, Farley,” I said.
    “I read the newspapers, watch CNN. Who doesn’t? I told you, Audrey Meek turns me on. I
wish
I abducted her. You think I’d be sleeping with Cini if Audrey Meek was around here?”
    I jabbed an index finger at Farley. “You knew things that
weren’t
in the newspapers.”
    He shook his huge head from side to side. Then he said, “Got a scanner. Listen in on police radios and such. Shit, I didn’t kidnap Audrey Meek. I wouldn’t have the balls. I wouldn’t. I’m all talk, man.”
    Mahoney cut in. “You had the balls to rape Carly Hope,” he said.
    Farley seemed to be shrinking inside himself again. “Nah, nah. It’s like I said in court. Carly was a girlfriend. I didn’t rape her none. I don’t have the balls. I didn’t do nothing to Audrey Meek. I’m nobody.
I’m nothing.
”
    Rafe Farley stared at us for a long moment. His eyes were bloodshot; everything about him was pathetic. I didn’t want to, but I was starting to believe him.
I’m nobody. I’m nothing.
That was Rafe Farley, all right.

Chapter 40
    Sterling
    Mr. Potter
    The Art Director
    Sphinx
    Marvel
    The Wolf

    The cover names sounded harmless, but the men behind them weren’t. During one session, Potter had nicknamed the group Monsters Inc. as a joke, and that was an accurate description. They were monsters, all of them. They were freaks; they were deviates and worse.
    And then there was the Wolf, who was in a whole other class.
    They met on a secure Web site that was inaccessible to outsiders. All messages were encrypted and required a pair of keys: One key garbled the information; the second key was needed to recover it. More important, a hand scan was necessary to get onto the site. They were considering using a retinal