Once A Spy Part 10

He considered, though, that while he had been sitting in his office pricing widescreen TVs online, the fugitives might have sneaked around the back of the building to his own car. He felt the blood drain from his face.

'Are you okay?' Mortimer asked.

'I don't know,' Brody said, bolting for the other side of the building.

Rounding the corner, he could see that the Reserved: Management spot was empty. He stopped and placed his hands on his knees to prevent himself from collapsing under the weight of his own stupidity. How had he gotten it into his head that shaking down fugitives would provide them with a sense of security?

Mortimer and Cadaret rounded the corner behind him. 'Mr. Brody, can you give me the make, model, color, and tag number?' Mortimer asked.

Brody sighed, thinking not of the car, which was late in life, but the value of its occupants. 'It's a red, ninety-three Toyota Cressida, Jersey plate T-E-N dash P-I-N.'

'We ought to be able to get a statewide be-on-the-lookout alert on the system in a matter of minutes,' Mortimer said, hurrying to his car, presumably to effect the BOLO from a computer. 'We'll get it back for you.' His cool failed to buoy Brody. The fugitives would have to be idiots to keep the car long.

Brody returned to the office with Cadaret. 'You may have information, whether you realize it or not, that can help us,' Cadaret said as they sat down.

Brody couldn't think of a thing that would be of use to them. Desperate to increase his reward prospects, however, he added insights and innuendo as he recounted his chat with Charlie, including Charlie's admission that he was on the lam and thinking of going by bus to South Dakota. Wherever possible, Brody sprinkled in what little else he knew, like that the old man was wearing pajamas.

Cadaret asked, 'Have you told any of this to anyone else?'

'No, of course not.'

'Good,' Cadaret said. His words were punctuated by a m.u.f.fled blast.

Brody's eyes fell on the gun Cadaret was aiming at him.

Then came a searing pain unlike anything Brody ever had felt, and all at once the world was cold and black and*

Cadaret posted a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES sign in the office window. Watching from the driver's seat of the Caprice, Mortimer dialed a local number. One ring and a man answered, 'Road service and towing.'

'Hi, I've got a dead battery,' Mortimer said.

'No problem, man. Where are you at?'

'Montclair, at the library.'

'I got a guy I can get there in fifteen, twenty minutes.'

'Great, thank you.' Mortimer hung up and opened the door, admitting Cadaret.

They drove onto the New Jersey Turnpike as soon as the paramedic van pulled up at the motel office. Three men, clad head to toe in white medical garb, exited the van. While the first tidied the office, the second and third removed the corpse. They got a chuckle out of the A. BRODY placard beside it*Cadaret had removed the letter R.

9.

No sign welcomed Charlie and Drummond to Monroeville. The northwestern Virginia town appeared to have no signs at all. Or buildings, houses, or power lines. The Toyota Cressida's replacement, the burgundy Ford Taurus Charlie drove, was alone on what, according to the map, was Monroeville's only road, a crudely paved, single-lane straightaway through an eternity of dense, towering pine trees. Monroeville had no streetlamps either. And because of the shadows cast by all the pine trees, the town could have used some, even at ten on a cloudless morning such as this. welcomed Charlie and Drummond to Monroeville. The northwestern Virginia town appeared to have no signs at all. Or buildings, houses, or power lines. The Toyota Cressida's replacement, the burgundy Ford Taurus Charlie drove, was alone on what, according to the map, was Monroeville's only road, a crudely paved, single-lane straightaway through an eternity of dense, towering pine trees. Monroeville had no streetlamps either. And because of the shadows cast by all the pine trees, the town could have used some, even at ten on a cloudless morning such as this.

'I remember Mom liked the outdoors a lot,' Charlie said, 'but enough that she could have become a forest hermit?'

'I don't know,' said Drummond, taking the question at face value. 'Now that I think of it, there is one thing I do remember about her: She was a smoker.' He said smoker smoker with disdain. with disdain.

Charlie had lost count of how many times this morning Drummond had recalled that she was a smoker and gone on to condemn the habit. All Charlie had learned otherwise was that the three of them used to take wonderful outings to the Prospect Park Zoo when he was in his pram. Which smacked of cover story. He gave up on questions while still in New Jersey.

Pine trees flew by for several more miles, and he was beginning to wonder if they'd left Monroeville, or Virginia for that matter, when he saw that the road terminated ahead at a pair of tall, rusty doors in a high stone wall.

He stopped the car at the doors. He couldn't see over them or over the wall, just through the gaps between the hinges. All he saw was more forest.

To the left sat, at a slant, a small gatehouse. Many of its wooden roof and wall shingles were missing and the remainder were beset by rot. The lone window was cracked and caked with muck. Above the door, hardened pine sap formed outlines of letters that had since fallen off; Charlie was able to make out 1 Loblolly Blvd.

'That's the address I have,' he said, 'but she can't live here.'

'Why not?' Drummond asked.

'For one thing, no one's been here for a hundred years.'

The gatehouse door creaked open, giving them both a start. A string bean of a man unfolded himself through the tiny aperture. Although the pine boughs overhead diffused the sunlight, he squinted, transforming his pale and craggy middle-aged face into a roadmap of wrinkles. He hadn't shaved in a few days and his graying black hair, while not long, was chaotic. A disproportionate belly swelled his soiled khaki windbreaker imprinted with MHFC SECURITY.

Charlie rolled down his window. Air blew in that was cold and redolent of pine. The guard's approach brought the smell of liquor.

'Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Monroeville Hunt and Fish Club,' he said as if he'd learned it by rote. 'How may I be of a.s.sistance?'

'We're looking for Isadora Clark,' Charlie said. Off the guard's blank look, he added, 'Supposedly she lives here.'

'n.o.body lives here, sir. No humans, that is.'

'Maybe she's a member of the club or something like that?'

'She married to a member of the Plumbers and Pipe Fitters?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, that's who belongs here. Any case, the rule on club grounds is no ladies.'

Pine trees flew the other way on Loblolly Boulevard until, finally, Charlie spotted a filling station. The pumps still said ESSO. The faded yellow-clapboard general store at the back of the property predated horseless carriages. There was just one vehicle in the dirt lot that had tires, a rusty pickup. What mattered was the place was still in business and it had a pay phone. Better, the pay phone was outside the store on the rear wall; Charlie was keen on being seen by as few human beings as possible.

While Drummond waited in the car, Charlie fed a handful of change into the pay phone's coin slot, then spun the rotary dial. By the second long ring, a sticky foreboding crawled over him. In the hours before the betting windows opened, when the tip trade was at its peak, Mickey was something of a legend for answering his cell phone before the end of the first ring. Even though it added fifteen minutes to his commute, he rode the bus instead of the subway because some of the subway tunnels blocked his cell reception.

By the fifth ring, Charlie suspected Mickey would never answer a telephone again. Hoping he was wrong*as well as praying to that anonymous ent.i.ty he called upon when one of his picks was neck and neck with another horse*he dialed Mickey's office line.

The phone was picked up in the middle of the first ring.

Along with profound relief, Charlie exhaled, 'That address can't be right.'

'This isn't Mickey.' The voice was deeper than Mickey's and solemn enough that guilt kicked Charlie in the stomach; if not for the phone cord to cling to, he might have fallen.

Boiling over with rage, Charlie sat at the wheel of the Taurus, gas pedal even with the floor, the filling station rapidly becoming a faded yellow speck in the rearview.

Drummond looked over as if Charlie were the one with lucidity issues. 'Did you get the proper address?' Drummond asked.

'Do you know what they mean at the track by a stooper?'

'It rings a bell. I think. Maybe not.'

'Stoopers comb the floors and the corridors, picking up tickets in hope of turning up a winner that was mistakenly crumpled or tossed before the race officials took an infraction into account and revised the order of finish. A little while ago, while stooping in the Big A parking lot, my friend Mickey found a ticket from yesterday's eighth race for a hundred bucks on a filly named Tigertown. Tigertown won, paying nine to one. The paramedic's opinion was that, in his excitement, Mickey died of a heart attack on the spot.'

'I'm sorry, Charles.'

'Same,' Charlie said. For now his remorse took a backseat to retribution. 'And we're not the only ones who are gonna be.'

'Who else?'

'There has to be some way to make it look like a person had a heart attack that'll be missed in a conventional autopsy, right?'

Drummond pondered it. 'Had someone given your friend chocolate?'

'Why?'

'I*I don't know.'

For Charlie's purposes, that was as good as a toxicologist's report. Getting a free Hershey bar would have made Mickey's day.

'I a.s.sumed someone did something something to him,' Charlie said. 'So I asked myself, What the h.e.l.l was I thinking about dragging Mickey into this?' to him,' Charlie said. 'So I asked myself, What the h.e.l.l was I thinking about dragging Mickey into this?'

'You needed the address.'

'I know that. I meant, why hadn't I taken into account what happened to the taxi driver, Ibrahim Wallid, who was an innocent bystander in comparison? One difference that occurred to me is Ibrahim Wallid posed a threat as a witness. But Mickey Ramirez? What did Mickey know? Just a wrong address for Mom*an address that's supposedly a decrepit hangout for chauvinistic plumbers and pipe fitters.'

10.

Charlie pulled off Loblolly Boulevard about a mile short of the club gate, then let the car roll into the woods. off Loblolly Boulevard about a mile short of the club gate, then let the car roll into the woods.

'We're not going to be able to go far with all these trees,' Drummond said.

'I was thinking we'd park here.'

'It would have been legal to park on the roadside.'

'I don't want anyone to be able to see the car from the road. We're trying to sneak sneak onto the club grounds.' onto the club grounds.'

'I see. Good thinking.'

They'd had the identical conversation a minute ago.

Having found a place to leave the car, they headed into the woods, batting aside boughs and crunching through mounds of crisp leaves and pine needles. A woodland novice, Charlie slipped and fell several times.

Drummond was as nimble as a stag, despite the comically oversized lime green down coat lent to him in Brooklyn. He also wore turquoise slacks and turquoise and glittery gold shoes, the outfit they'd found in the bowling bag in the backseat of Brody's Toyota. Charlie now considered that the pajamas Drummond changed out of might have been less conspicuous.

A quarter of a mile brought only more trees. Charlie had expected a No Trespa.s.sing sign at least. 'I don't suppose you have any idea where we are?' he asked Drummond.

'In the woods in Monroeville, Virginia,' Drummond said in earnest.

'I know that. I guess I was hoping you'd blurt out something like, the forest surrounding the Monroeville Secret Agent Encampment,' or uninteresting frontage to convince interlopers there's no point in continuing.' But I'm afraid you're right.'

The surroundings seemed to concur. There was the swish of trees in the light breeze and the trill of a few birds who'd either stayed here for winter or thought it far enough south. But there were no sounds of civilization, even at its most secretive.

Deciding to try a different approach to the club, maybe closer to the main gate, Charlie said, 'I hope we can find the way back to where we parked the*'

He caught sight of a stone, at eye level, glistening in one of the few bits of sunlight able to breach the ceiling of branches. He flew toward it, until, thinking better, he slowed and approached with caution.

The stone was one in a wall of unmortared fieldstones, the type of wall the colonists built and identical to the one at the club's main gate. Logistics suggested that the two were connected. This section extended through the woods for another half mile or so, then took a ninety-degree turn and went on at least that far.

'Building an enclosure this size in Colonial times would have required the partic.i.p.ation of everyone within a hundred miles for years,' he said, abuzz at having been right. 'But I'll bet this was put up much more recently, like when someone decided that an old-looking stone wall would draw less attention than electrified high-tensile wire.'

'Should we see what's on the other side?' Drummond asked.

'As long as we're here, why not?'

Charlie struggled to find handholds and footholds. Gasping, he reached the top of the wall. Drummond was already there, breathing no harder than usual.

'You're getting your money's worth out of your Y membership,' Charlie said.

Drummond stared past him and said nothing. His reserve was not due to his condition but, Charlie realized with a start, the huntsman standing on the other side of the wall. The man's camouflage field coat was cla.s.sic deer hunting attire, but he looked like he made a living blocking linebackers rather than fitting pipes. Also the shiny black semiautomatic rifle he pointed at Drummond would tear apart a deer. Or a rhinoceros.

Really he was a guard, Charlie suspected. And hoped.

'Both of you, slide down real slow, then stand with your backs against the wall,' the man said.

11.

They rode in a six-wheel all-terrain vehicle, their captor at the controls in a motorcycle-style seat, Charlie and Drummond dead-bolted inside a cold, dark, and windowless trailer, hands pressed against the icy metal walls and floor to brace against the b.u.mps and jolts. Through a small ventilation grate, Charlie watched the browns and yellows of the woods give way to the uniform pale green of a golf course. in a six-wheel all-terrain vehicle, their captor at the controls in a motorcycle-style seat, Charlie and Drummond dead-bolted inside a cold, dark, and windowless trailer, hands pressed against the icy metal walls and floor to brace against the b.u.mps and jolts. Through a small ventilation grate, Charlie watched the browns and yellows of the woods give way to the uniform pale green of a golf course.

The three-minute ride ended with a skidding halt on damp gra.s.s. A rasp of the bolt and the guard opened the trailer, revealing a wall of red and brown bricks set in a herringbone pattern. With a flick of the rifle, he gestured for Charlie and Drummond to exit the trailer.

As Charlie slid out, and his eyes readjusted to daylight, he saw that the bricks comprised the first story of a three-story, oak-framed Tudor mansion nearly a city block long, topped with a steeply pitched red tile roof that was a mountainscape of gables and dormers and cut-stone chimneys. Charlie had antic.i.p.ated an impressive clubhouse but nothing of this scale or majesty.

'That way,' the guard ordered. It was as much as he'd said since ordering them against the wall to submit to a weapons search. He pointed his rifle at a stone staircase that wrapped around one side of clubhouse.

The stairs brought the three of them to a polished limestone portico that ran the length of the building, with tall, perfectly cylindrical columns every five or six feet. Inside it, their footfalls sounded like applause.

Halfway down, they crossed paths with two men in their late sixties, wearing expensive tennis shoes and the sort of warm-up suits in fashion at Wimbledon. Flushed from a match, they both smiled, one giving a crisp military salute and the other offering a bright 'Good morning.' In reply the guard uttered a deferential, 'Sirs.' With far too much cordiality, Drummond said, 'h.e.l.lo, how are you?' Charlie simply nodded, while studying the players' reactions to the a.s.sault rifle at his and Drummond's backs. They appeared to find Drummond's bowling pants and shoes of greater interest. As they pa.s.sed, they resumed a discussion of whether it was late enough in the day for c.o.c.ktails. Charlie wondered what would would have fazed them. have fazed them.

At the portico's end, the guard directed him and Drummond up a short brick pathway. It led to a flagstone terrace that had the dimensions of a Broadway stage and overlooked an expansive garden, beyond which were a trio of gra.s.s tennis courts and, after that, a good percentage of Virginia.

A silver-haired woman in a wheelchair rolled over to meet them.

12.

Charlie hadn't antic.i.p.ated that she would be paraplegic, but it rated as a background detail. That his mother was really alive was almost as great a shock as her 'death' had been. She looked to be in her early fifties, but unless Social Security were in on the deception, she was sixty-five. As ever, she was trim, her features were sharp, and her sea-gla.s.s-green eyes radiated intelligence. She wore a b.u.t.tery blouse, a cashmere cardigan, and tartan riding breeches. Even with the wheelchair and the woolen blanket atop her legs, she had such windblown vitality that he might have believed she'd just come from breaking a horse*which she used to do on the ranch in Montana, where she grew up. antic.i.p.ated that she would be paraplegic, but it rated as a background detail. That his mother was really alive was almost as great a shock as her 'death' had been. She looked to be in her early fifties, but unless Social Security were in on the deception, she was sixty-five. As ever, she was trim, her features were sharp, and her sea-gla.s.s-green eyes radiated intelligence. She wore a b.u.t.tery blouse, a cashmere cardigan, and tartan riding breeches. Even with the wheelchair and the woolen blanket atop her legs, she had such windblown vitality that he might have believed she'd just come from breaking a horse*which she used to do on the ranch in Montana, where she grew up.

Or so he'd been told.