Part 10 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+ngles 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.'