Part 8 (1/2)

It was a few minutes to one. Lenore, who tended bar at the Four Leaf Clover, a horseplayer watering hole in h.e.l.l's Kitchen, ought to be home now, hopefully alone. He'd been to her apartment three nights ago. The visit lasted only as long as the nightcap that occasioned it. He left without much sense of whether he wanted to call her or whether she had any interest in hearing from him. They hadn't spoken since. So his showing up now and asking to stay the night would strike her as peculiar, to say the least. That he'd brought along his father would be off the charts. On the flip side, who would think to look for him there?

There was little activity on her block. The bodega on the near corner had no business. A middle-aged Asian man sat outside in the tent that protected the fruit and cut flowers from the elements. The portrait of boredom, he dipped a soup spoon into a small bowl. There was some movement on the other side of the blinds of the chess club on the second story. Farther down the sidewalk, a shopping cart lady had parked her cart and slept on a stoop by a heating grate. Otherwise the residential block was dormant.

Still, as Charlie drove onto it, his pulse doubled. Probably due to exhaustion, he thought. Also his blood sugar was on Empty.

No, it was the soup.

Like they say at the track, believe nothing that you hear and half of what you see. He shouldn't have been able to see the boredom on the man's face at all. There ought to have been vapor in the way, rising from the bowl. h.e.l.l, a night this cold, there ought to be a shaft of steam. Maybe Smith or MacKenzie or whoever learned about Lenore from one of the horseplayers at the Four Leaf Clover: Most of them would sell their mothers for the price of a two-buck ticket.

Or maybe the poor bodega guy's soup simply had gotten cold.

Drummond slept in the footwell. He might have a sense of whether the bodega man was something other than he appeared. But rousing Drummond risked drawing the man's attention, and more than likely Drummond would not have a sense. So Charlie simply drove past, watching the bodega in the rearview mirror.

The man s.h.i.+fted his position. He was was watching the Buick. watching the Buick.

But did that necessarily mean he was up to no good? What else did he have to do? He was bored*so bored, he probably had nodded off, allowing his soup to cool.

There was an empty parking s.p.a.ce by Lenore's building. Charlie tapped the brake pedal.

The red taillights set aglow a circle, the size of a quarter, at the end of something the bodega man held to his right eye.

He was watching through some sort of night scope!

Shock nearly turned Charlie to stone. He fought an impulse to heave his foot at the gas pedal; he maintained the car's moderate pace. As he drove the remainder of the block, to his surprise, no bullets smashed into the Buick.

At the end of the block, he turned onto Delancey. The bodega man s.h.i.+fted his scope to the shopping cart lady.

While driving west on Delancey, Charlie felt regular sensation return to his body, but any sense of relief was negated by fear of what lay ahead, as well as uncertainty over which way 'ahead' was. The fact that Smith, MacKenzie & Whoever knew about Lenore's apartment turned Manhattan into an awfully tiny island.

And they were everywhere Charlie looked. Like the squeegee man on the corner. Didn't the city get rid of squeegee men last century? Or the electric company repair crew on the other side of Delancey, a common enough sight anytime. But how about the broad-shouldered guy sitting idly by the pneumatic drill while his coworkers were neck-deep in the manhole? Wouldn't he catch h.e.l.l for gunning that monster in the middle of the night? Was it one disguise element too many?

Charlie turned uptown at the Bowery, only because he had no reason to, so theoretically there was no reason for anyone to suspect he would.

Hoping the ten minutes of rest made a difference, he roused Drummond. 'Dad, I need some help,' he said.

'My pleasure,' Drummond said. In no way on the ball.

'Have you remembered, by any chance, who you work for?'

'Perriman Appliances*you know that.'

Perriman was a perpetually debt-ridden Argentine manufacturer of third-rate was.h.i.+ng machines, dryers, and refrigerators. Its early-'70s venture into automotives, a sedan named the Chubut Chubut for the southern Argentine province that was home to the factory, was greeted with wild enthusiasm and national pride. But reports of poor quality control*some Chubuts left the line missing parts*resulted in the nickname for the southern Argentine province that was home to the factory, was greeted with wild enthusiasm and national pride. But reports of poor quality control*some Chubuts left the line missing parts*resulted in the nickname Chupar Chupar (Spanish for 'to suck'), total sales of just 366 cars, and debt that nearly suffocated the company. (Spanish for 'to suck'), total sales of just 366 cars, and debt that nearly suffocated the company.

Perriman had had to move its midtown Manhattan office, where Drummond supposedly worked, to Morningside Heights, inconvenient to clients and prospective clients. But s.p.a.ce there was ten to fifteen dollars per square foot cheaper than midtown. Charlie had always thought that Drummond had the brains for better; his issue was people skills.

'Tell me again what it is you do there?' Charlie said.

'You know: I demonstrate the appliances in the showroom, then go on-site with building owners and property managers to ensure that their specifications and measurements are met.'

'Right, but that's just your cover, right?'

'Cover?'

Charlie exhaled in an effort to dispel his exasperation. It didn't work.

'How about this? When you're on all your sales trips, do you ever do any work on the side for, like, the CIA?'

'Not that I'm aware.'

Which didn't rule it out.

'The NSA?'

'Not that I'm aware.'

'I could get a list and call every place in Was.h.i.+ngton with a clandestine operations division, but if what we've seen so far is any indication about the resources of who or whatever's after us, odds are it'd probably be a case of the mouse calling the cat. So it would be really swell if you could remember anything.'

Drummond sat up. 'I think there is something about Was.h.i.+ngton.'

In his excitement Charlie found himself mirroring his father's posture. 'Yeah?'

Drummond ma.s.saged his temples, trying, it seemed, to stimulate the works within. 'Something.'

'You did go there on an awful lot of sales trips.'

'A good percentage of North Atlantic Division's building owners and property managers are there. I go on-site to ensure that their specifications and measurements*'

'Oh, right, of course,' Charlie said. But he was willing to bet that building owners and property managers had nothing to do with Drummond's trips.

'And nothing compares with the cherry blossoms.'

There would be no cherry blossoms for months. The four-hour drive was worth it anyway, Charlie thought. D.C. was to spy agencies what Milwaukee was to breweries. And, if nothing else, as each pair of approaching headlights seemed to be saying, it was a good idea to get away.

5.

The Fairview Inn was the type of motel once predominant on American roadsides, two stories of bricks, shaped like a brick itself, each upper-level room with an iron-railed balcony and each room on the ground floor opening onto a parking s.p.a.ce. There were only four cars in the parking lot now, including a beat-up Toyota Cressida in the Reserved: Management spot behind the office. The Motel 6 on the other side of the New Jersey Turnpike had just two cars. And the Best Western Charlie and Drummond pa.s.sed before that had had only a solitary RV. Evidently the holiday crowd had gone home, and business travel had yet to recommence. It was possibly the worst night of the year to be a fugitive, Charlie thought. Inn was the type of motel once predominant on American roadsides, two stories of bricks, shaped like a brick itself, each upper-level room with an iron-railed balcony and each room on the ground floor opening onto a parking s.p.a.ce. There were only four cars in the parking lot now, including a beat-up Toyota Cressida in the Reserved: Management spot behind the office. The Motel 6 on the other side of the New Jersey Turnpike had just two cars. And the Best Western Charlie and Drummond pa.s.sed before that had had only a solitary RV. Evidently the holiday crowd had gone home, and business travel had yet to recommence. It was possibly the worst night of the year to be a fugitive, Charlie thought.

He brought the Buick to a stop beside the beat-up Toyota, out of sight of the Fairview Inn office. Over the rumble of the highway, he begged a sleepy Drummond, 'Hang here for just a minute?'

Against his better judgment, he left the engine running so Drummond might stay warm, then he climbed into the stinging seventeen-degree night.

He rounded the corner to the side of the building that faced away from the highway. At the head of the row of ground floor rooms was a tiny office. The lights were on, but no one appeared to be inside.

Charlie rapped on the sliding window. Up popped a squat, middle-aged man, his doughy face flattened from sleeping against his desktop. His small eyes snapped to alertness, he smoothed the stripes of hair into place across his balding pate, straightened a clip-on tie bearing the Fairview's mountain peak logo, and slid the gla.s.s open an inch.

'Good evening, sir,' he said. With a glance at his antique pocket watch, he added, 'Technically, I should say, Good morning.''

According to the letters packed into the placard, this was NIGHT MANAGER A. BRODY. Although other managers shared this desk, Charlie had no doubt that the meticulously trimmed miniature Christmas tree on the sill was A. Brody's work. Charlie usually felt a kins.h.i.+p to the A. Brodys of the world, miles below the station in life befitting their intellect. Now Charlie was far more interested in getting out of the cold.

'Hi, I'd like a room, please,' he said. To diminish the chance of his being identified, he stayed at the outermost limits of the office's fluorescent haze.