Part 87 (1/2)
He reached across Susan a final time, turned off the radio, put the microphone in the glove compartment, and slammed the door.
”Satisfied?” Susan asked.
”Now I know I can call the cops-or at least the sheriff-if I need to.”
”What's the administrative channel?”
”Beats the h.e.l.l out of me,” Matt confessed. ”But whatever it is, that operator can talk to other people.”
Two or three minutes later, he saw what he thought must be the Crossroads Diner up ahead on the left.
”That it?”
”That's it.”
”I've been in there,” he said. ”I once took Penny to a gambling h.e.l.l in the Poconos and we stopped in there on the way back.”
”A gambling h.e.l.l?”
”A mob-run joint outside Stroudsburg.”
”What for?”
He didn't reply as he turned into the parking lot of the Crossroads Diner. He drove slowly through the complex. Susan showed him where the telephones were. He stopped the car, told Susan to wait, and went inside the restaurant. He took a good look around, found three places from which he could see the bank of telephones, and then left. He got back in the car and started up.
”Okay, show me the house,” he said.
She gave him directions.
Twenty minutes later, they were almost there. ”About a hundred yards ahead is the driveway,” she said. ”The house is a couple of hundred yards down the drive. If you go in, they're liable to see you.”
He drove past the driveway, around the next curve in the road, and then stopped.
”What I want you to do,” he said, ”is slide over and drive. When we're fifty yards from that driveway, stop. I'll get out. Then you drive down the road, turn around again, go back where I turned around, wait until”-he stopped and looked at his watch-”quarter after five, and then come back to where you dropped me off. I'll get in the back, and you head down the road.”
”What are you going to do?”
”I'm going to walk through the woods and take a look at the house.”
”If Bryan sees you sneaking through the woods, he'll shoot you.”
”I don't intend to let him see me,” Matt said, and got from behind the wheel and walked around the front of the car.
Susan had not moved.
”Slide over,” he said. ”I have to do this.”
”Oh, G.o.d!” she said, but she moved.
”Not to worry, fair maiden, I am a graduate-summa c.u.m laude-of the U.S. Marine Corps how-to-sneak-through-the-woods course offered by the Camp LeJeune School for Boys.”
”I don't want you to get hurt,” she said.
”Neither do I,” Matt said. ”And I don't intend to. Drive, please, Susan.”
She started up.
He opened the glove compartment again and turned on the radio.
”However,” he said as they neared the drop-off point, ”to cover every possible eventuality, if you hear gunshots, or I do not come out of the woods by twenty after five, you pick up the microphone and push the thing on the side, and say-pay attention: 'Officer needs a.s.sistance. 4.4 miles East on Bucks County 19 from intersection of Bucks County 24.' If you hear shots, say: 'Shots fired.' If they come on and ask you who you are, say you are a civilian in Philadelphia Special Operations, car William Eleven.”
”Matt, I can't remember all that,” Susan wailed. ”Please don't do this!”
”Do your best,” he said. ”If you have to. I don't think you will.”
”Don't do this!”
”Stop the G.o.dd.a.m.ned car!” he said.
She looked at him, then slammed on the brakes. ”Start back down the road to pick me up at quarter after five,” Matt said, and got out of the car.
He ran across the street into the woods.
Susan didn't move the car for a long time. He was on the verge of running back toward it when she finally started off. He could see that there were tears on her cheeks.
What's going to happen now is that this a.s.shole Chenowith is going to spot me out here, fill me full of holes, then take off for parts unknown. And I will have seen the love of my life for the last time, without even thinking to kiss her good-bye!
It didn't happen that way.
Aside from tearing the pocket of his suit jacket on a protruding limb, he made it through the woods to the house, got a good look at it-it was an ancient, run-down, fieldstone farmhouse with diapers and underwear drying on a line on the narrow front porch; and an old Ford station wagon and a battered Volkswagen parked next to it-saw that it would not only be fairly easy to surround without being detected but that the woods would offer all the cover the FBI would need, and made it back to the road with plenty of time to spare before Susan, on schedule, came down the road.
He jumped in the car and she drove off.
”I think I hate you,” Susan said. ”G.o.d, that was stupid!”
”Nothing happened. I saw what I had to see, and everything's all right.”
”You're as bad as Bryan,” she said, on the edge of hysterics. ”He's playing revolutionary, and you're playing heroic policeman.”
”There's a difference, Susan,” he said, and he fought back the wave of anger he felt growing inside him. ”I am a policeman, not a heroic one, but a policeman. I don't know if your f.u.c.king friend is a revolutionary or not, but he kills people, and my job is to put the son of a b.i.t.c.h away.”
”I don't want you to die!” she said.
”Look for a telephone,” he said. ”It's time to call Jack Matthews.”