by Dean Ing
“But I am. Is this your way of telling me to look out for running waiters without, ah, bending a guideline?”
“Very perceptive,” the T-man said with a solemn wink. “Waiters, or little old ladies hitching a ride up this hill, or anybody else you can’t vouch for. If you always play cards on Tuesday, or buy booze at the same place, break up those patterns for a while. I don’t suppose you practice with a sidearm?”
Wes shook his head and showed the man open palms. “Never thought it might be important.”
“I invite you to suspect it is. The Sheriff of Alameda County, I can tell you with fair assurance, will not look askance if you ask for a permit. But if you do, join a shooting club and take advantage of it. We’ll get back to you. Okay?”
Wes nodded absently, and shook the proffered hand. “You’re taking off now?”
“Right. The county stationed a man outside your gate. Our guy may be harder to spot, but if you see or hear anything you don’t like, sing out. You might be surprised.” The T-man’s smile was more confident now.
As the three men turned away, Wes could not resist it. “You forgot to tell me not to leave town,” he called.
“We know who you are, Mr. Peel. You have more ways of leaving town than an AIDS virus, no slur intended.” One of the other men laughed briefly, with attendant echoes that fragmented into the night from the almost-empty pool. Suddenly Wes felt the need of friends, and wheeled toward the house. The digital thermometer on his patio read 72 degrees. His skin said it was twenty degrees colder than that.
* * * *
Waiting for coffee to perk, Wes glanced at his-two confidantes who slumped on stools at his kitchen pass-through. “Vangie, you need sleep, not caffeine,” he urged.
“Can’t sleep. I have to talk to you,” she said. Her tone unnerved Wes a little. Her sidelong glance plainly said she did not want to talk in front of Masefield.
But if Wes could not trust the reporter, he could trust no one - Vangie herself excepted, he thought. “Okay. It won’t be long,” he promised, which was hint enough to Masefield. “Reese, this is all deep background. Okay?”
“Shit, excuse me, shitshitshit. ” This drew something that might almost have been a smile from Vangie. “Cut my heart out while you’re at it. But okay,” he added.
Abandoning his search for clean cups, Wes began to wash three of the dirty ones. “You tried to tie this to the senator and the director? Well, when you’re right, I tell you; and maybe you’re right this time. The waiter wasn’t a waiter, he was a foreign student named Ra . . . no, Majid. Majid Hashemi.” Masefield sat up straighter, the crinkles around his eyes suggesting that his formidable synapses were firing at doublespeed. “Even I can draw an inference from that,” Wes added. “Not proven, but a solid maybe.”
“Hashemi? Syrian, Iranian, Jordanian - too damned cosmopolitan to pinpoint, but it’s all crazy land. By God, there is a pattern,” Masefield said, looking at the wall. “You’re getting too bloody important. Patriots with a small p and a big effect, who aren’t in anybody’s pocket. Forty years ago, Bill Hewlett would’ve been on the same list.”
“Still is, for my money,” said Wes, drying a cup.
“Oh, my God,” Vangie breathed, and lowered her head on crossed arms. Her next words were muffled, her voice almost unrecognizable; but the words were clear enough. “Reese, please go home. ’ ’ As the two men frowned their mutual amazement above her dark hair, now in pathetic disaiTay, she raised her head. Her eyes were red, her breasts rising as she tried to keep from bursting into tears. “I can’t say it with you here, and if I don’t say it now, I will never have the courage again.”
Masefield made the kind of face a man makes when he is told by a gorgeous woman to go home. “Why do I get this nagging suspicion that three is a crowd?” he said, and stood up.
Vangie, her tears now beginning to flow, stood too, and wheeled toward Masefield. “I. . . one more thing,” she stammered. “I saw you throw that chair, Reese.” And with that, she stepped up to him, both hands cupping the back of his head, in an openmouthed kiss that would, under any other circumstances, have brought Wes to a towering fury. Masefield just stood there and enjoyed it. And, understanding her motive, so did Wes Peel. After a moment, Vangie moved back. “That, suh, is the sincerest way I know to thank you for siaving my boss’s life.” The tone was full of banter now, and she attempted a smile despite the tears. “I owe you. That’s all I’m going to pay you; but I owe you. Clear?”
Masefield had to cough twice before he could say, “Clear. ” Heading toward the front door, he went on, “The Treasury man was right, Wes. It’s hard to get help like that.” Then he closed the door softly behind him.
Vangie turned, half-smiling, toward Wes, and then her face shattered again. “Oh, my God,” she said, and covered her face with her hands.
He carried her to the master bedroom, ignoring her objection that she wanted to be sitting across the room from him. “Now,” he said, when he had eased her onto the bed and waved the lights off, sitting beside her. “You can tell me - whatever.”
She sat up; kicked her sandals off; hugged her knees, turning to look at him in faint moonlight. With her hair falling past her legs almost to the bedding, he thought she had never looked lovelier, nor half so vulnerable. “I brought that man here,” she said.
She waited until he had stopped laughing. “I would rather you slapped me than laugh at me, because then I’d know you were taking me seriously,” she said, fighting to control her breathing. And then he fell silent, and then she told him.
Her brother, Thibodeaux, driving a Calcasieu rig years before, had opted for long hours; the kind of hours that urge a man to take little pills to stay awake. He’d had an accident in Mississippi which could be traced to those pills. Tib might have been unemployable after that, if not for Joseph Alton Weatherby. Joey Weatherby had smoothed it out, caused the blood test to vanish. After that, the surest way to pick a fight with Tib Broussard was to bad-mouth Joey Weatherby.
Tib honorably went to Weatherby and bent his knee. And in time, performed certain little favors for Weatherby and the NTC. Vangie did not know what those favors were, but had little doubt they were shady. In time, Weatherby developed a sort of fatherly interest in Tib Broussard. “And that’s how
Weatherby learned about my tawdry litde dreams,” she said, now reciting it in a deadly monotone. “He had someone spiff up my resume. I think he knew I’d set my cap for Peel Transit. You were already one of those firms university profs like to puzzle over.”
For the first time in many minutes, Wes spoke: “You weren’t summa cum at LSU? No master’s at Loyola? No thesis on technology and transport in Acadia?”
“Oh, that was all true. I didn’t even understand what Weatherby had done, Wes! But I began to get the picture three months after I signed up with you. He waited ’til I’d gushed to Tib about how happy I was here, and then he called me one night.” “He’d probably seen pictures of you.”
“Will you just - just let me tell it? Please?” A pause with labored breathing. Then: “Joey Weatherby did not care if I looked like Mother Theresa. He cared very much that your short-haul rigs were, as he put it, ‘creating a lot of interest’ at the NTC. I guess he didn’t realize I knew what kind of interest that was. Hostile interest. Well, in short, he wanted me to spy.”
“I see.”
“Not yet, you don’t; I was furious with him, even more furious because of what he said he’d done to get me this job, when I thought it was my sterling character. I hung up on the man. Believe that, or don’t. I hung up on him, no matter what I might have to say to Tib later. But Tib called me the next evening, Wes. He was worried. Not scared for his life: scared for his career. Tib has a wife and four kids. He reminded me of that. Told me that if I cared about the food in their mouths, I’d call Weatherby back. Collect, of course.”
“So you did.”
“Of course I did, Wes.” In a very small voice, “I have spied on you from t
hat day until . . . very recently.”
Wes: “How recently?”
Vangie, staring into the darkness, shrugged as she thought
about it. “Until I began to worry about the way you drank, and realized I was probably in love with you. Weatherby has known about your vendetta for a long time. I quit feeding him tidbits a few months ago; claimed you were watching me.” “That was no lie.” He reached out to stroke her hair. “Don’t - please, I don’t want to be touched right now. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be on an NTC death list.” Wes stood up; began to pace the carpet soundlessly. Presently he paused before the room’s moonlit window, wondering what the shadowed acreage hid, juggling scenarios. “So you don’t think this Hashemi guy was a terrorist.”
“You bet I do, but not from the Land of Oz. I think Joey Weatherby realizes that if you’re not stopped soon, Peel Transit’s big lifters will bankrupt the NTC.”
He returned to sit beside her. “Only two problems with that, Vangie. One, it’s already too late. Freightliner, Mack, and Ford are already on the market with short-haulers and efficient freight-routing programs. Too got-damn’ good for comfort, and getting better. And Boeing knows we have Delta Two’s girders in place, and they’re not waiting any longer.
“Two, if the NTC goes under, it’ll be their lousy management. Short-haulers still need teamsters, and much as I hate to say it, there’ll always be a few special cases where a doubletandem will do the job better on a highway. The NTC will just have to fit itself into new kinds of transport. Even if that crazy little bastard had blown me to pieces, those two facts would still be the handwriting on Weatherby’s wall.” “Somebody should say that to him."
Wes gave a one-syllable chuckle. “Not a bad idea. Face-to-face, maybe. Why not?”
“You? Sit down with the NTC? After what they’ve tried to do?”
“We don’t know that. I’m inclined to doubt it, Vangie; but I’m not ruling the idea out.” A long silence before he added, “Would you call him, set up a meeting?”
Quick, frightened: “Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s been suggested. But I know a little about Weatherby, and I don’t think he’d try to whack me while I showed him around my own plant. Let him bring a friend if he wants to. It’ll be my turf, and he can publicize the visit beforehand. Bolster his image among his troops, and how will he know I don’t have a super-duper laser cannon trained on him?” “He’d never do it, if I’m right,” she warned.
“Which will give us a hint, won’t it? But we have a carrot as well as a stick, if you phrase it right. If Weatherby’s inclined to give us a ’bye, just hint to him that I’m ready to blow some evidence to the media. You don’t even have to know what kind of evidence, Vangie. Get it?”
“Poor Tib,” she said softly. “I’m not worried for myself - yes, I am, Wes.”
“Tell him you’ve left a confession in a safe-deposit box.” “That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m scared about us. You can’t possibly trust me after ... all this.”
Softly, tenderly, he leaned nearer. “Sure I can,” he said, in a near whisper. “I just can’t touch you.”
“That’s what I mean,” she said.
“ ’Cause you told me not to,” he reminded her.
“Oh, you mean . . . dirty . . . bastard,” she said. “Well, I think maybe I would like you to touch me now.”
As she lay back on the pillow, he moved so that he was poised above her, his arms flanking her, not quite touching.
“You’re absolutely sure about that,” he teased. “I want you to be sure - whooo,” he finished, startled, in response to her fingers at his groin.
“How sure is this?” she said.
“It’s what I’d call a sure thing.” Then, moving his mouth until it touched hers, no longer teasing, “I knew something was bothering you. Now I know what it was. It needn’t bother you again.”
“I love you, John Wesley Peel.”
“Even if I’m really sleepy?”
A giggle. “No, not if you’re sleepy. Anything but that.” He pursued the “anything” option.
NINETEEN
Network news provided its usual coverage with the apotheosis of Majid Hashemi. Without links to other known suspects, the event was merely a mystery which slid beneath the notice of broadcasters in three days. Newspapers, with more space to fill, carried follow-up stories for a week. Bruce Hassan Winthorp breathed more easily when, ten days after the blast near Crow Canyon Road, he finished scanning his day-old copy of the Oakland Tribune. Winthorp failed to find so much as a single column inch devoted to the Peel story.
Winthorp’s clippings carried Hashemi’s name, and varied guesses as to the assassin’s motive. Inevitably, the attempt on Wes Peel was linked to other, more successful, hits. But no reporter had yet mentioned Farda or Kosrow Nurbashi, and according to the mullah no one had questioned any Farda member. Nurbashi was perfectly capable of lying about that, even to Winthorp; but because Nurbashi did not get cuter with his communication links, Winthorp felt that they had all dodged this ricochet of mischance. He even offered a new name of “necessity,” a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist whose work might lead - within a year or so - to an oral AIDS vaccine.
It did not disturb Winthorp that such a vaccine could save lives in Iran as well as Omaha. The United States now admitted to half a million AIDS victims, and western youth seemed bent on screwing itself literally to death in anonymous couplings. Winthorp himself viewed sexual partners as messy, roundabout routes to self-gratification, but felt deeply reluctant to explain this part of his rationale to Nurbashi. The solution, when dealing with a man of such profoundly narrow interests as Nurbashi, was to claim the Johns Hopkins man was really working on biological weapons. In a way it was true, in the sense that a shield is a weapon.
Nurbashi did not seem particularly interested in the fresh name, and Winthorp guessed why: John Wesley Peel, alive, remained a deadly affront to Nurbashi and his two remaining berserkers. Winthorp needed several days to resolve the problem in his mind, and another week to choose his man. The National Transport Coalition had been mentioned in those newspaper clippings. A scholar with Winthorp’s reputation might, in the course of some innocent research, personally contact NTC leadership.
Studying his files, Winthorp zeroed in on a man who would understand the feather touch of delicate nuance but, according to published rumor, might not shrink from a bloody necessity once it was pointed out to him. It was entirely possible that Antony Ciano might perform the Peel necessity in enlightened self-interest without ever hearing the name of Farda.
* * * *
Wes Peel breezed into his office by the back way and perched his flight helmet on the plaster head of Thomas Jefferson, one of Vangie’s heroes. She turned from her terminal and smiled at the sacrilege. “How’d the training go?”
“By the time Delta Two is ready, the new crew will be,” he promised, leaning over his desk to query his own terminal for unfinished business.
“I meant your training,” she said. “Yesterday at lunch, Jim Christopher said you’re logging more time than the new guys.”
“Lunch with Chris, hm?” He studied his readout, then looked up. “He knows about you and me?”
“I suspect everyone does,” she admitted. “They just don’t talk to us about it. ” Leaning back, tapping a perfect fingernail as she considered an imperfect world, “In fact, nowadays they don’t talk to me much about anything important. Kaplan, Tom Schultheis, Boff - not like they used to, at the commissary. Lunch can be a sort of informal progress report, you know. Or maybe you don’t need those lunch soirees. But I get a,” - she stroked the air with her free hand - “a feel for the tempo of things; what’s going well, or what smells like a cost overrun before it shows on the bar charts. But I don’t get that anymore. I’m getting something else, and I don’t like it.”
He snapped off his terminal, stood erect, and stretched. “You have jazzercise or guitar lessons this evening?” At her n
egative headshake he nodded toward the digital clock. “It’s quitting time, ma’am, and I don’t have to practice with this fool pistol every day. If we’re going to talk business, let’s do it over a pizza.”
In nearly two weeks since the attempt on Wes’s life, he had obtained a permit and a deceptively small, nine-millimeter Walther automatic, the most potent weapon that would properly fit in an Alessi ankle holster. It chafed his leg, and was no quick-draw arrangement, but it freed Wes from wearing sport coats and no one seemed to notice his new penchant for flare-leg slacks. He practiced with it three afternoons a week, hating the necessity, learning to like the tiny Walther. It might be useless at fifty yards, but so was a jacket lined with French plastique.
Wes and Vangie had avoided her condo by unspoken agreement. This was the fifth time they had eaten out together since the party, never twice at the same restaurant. It was Vangie, on their third evening together, who had spotted the neatly suited young man watching from the bar as they dined. When Wes made the immediate call, he learned that the man was supposed to be there, not to worry, but for God’s sake not to engage the T-man in idle conversation. This concrete evidence of support buoyed Vangie’s spirits, so Wes did not admit that it made him uneasy. The truth was, a man hated to know that even the friendliest eyes were on him when he wanted to caress a knee behind a damask tablecloth.
On this evening they met in their respective cars at Vangie’s choice, a place in Hayward near Jackson and Hesperian. Vangie’s tastes did not run to pizza. After ordering wine, his scampi and her antipasto, Wes glanced around idly and then, with a villainous squint and side-of-his-mouth delivery, rasped, “You spot our tail, Chickie?”
“No, but it’s nice to know somebody’s on your side,” she replied, unwilling to play moll to his mobster. She waited until the wine was served, then toyed with her glass. At length she said, “Wes, what’s going on at Barstow that I shouldn’t know about?”
He flushed slightly, then hid his sheepish grin behind his glass. “What did Chris say?”