by Dean Koontz
“Damn!”
“Better back out,” she said.
“And run right into them.”
“You’ve got the gun.”
“There’s probably more than one of them, and they’ll be armed.”
At the fifth house on the left, the garage door was open, and there wasn’t a car inside.
“We’ve got to get off the street and out of sight,” Elliot said.
He drove into the open garage as boldly as if it were his own. He switched off the engine, scrambled out of the car, and ran to the big door. It wouldn’t come down. He struggled with it for a moment, and then he realized that it was equipped with an automatic system.
Behind him, Tina said, “Stand back.”
She had gotten out of the car and had located the control button on the garage wall.
He glanced outside, up the street. He couldn’t see the van.
The door rumbled down, concealing them from anyone who might drive past.
Elliot went to her. “That was close.”
She took his hand in hers, squeezed it. Her hand was cold, but her grip was firm.
“So who the hell are they?” she asked,
“I saw Harold Kennebeck, the judge I mentioned. He—”
The door that connected the garage to the house opened without warning, but with a sharp, dry squeak of unoiled hinges.
An imposing, barrel-chested man in rumpled chinos and a white T-shirt snapped on the garage light and peered curiously at them. He had meaty arms; the circumference of one of them almost equaled the circumference of Elliot’s thigh. And there wasn’t a shirt made that could be buttoned easily around his thick, muscular neck. He appeared formidable, even with his beer belly, which bulged over the waistband of his trousers.
First Vince and now this specimen. It was the Day of the Giants.
“Who’re you?” the pituitary-challenged behemoth asked in a soft, gentle voice that didn’t equate with his appearance.
Elliot had the awful feeling that this guy would reach for the button Tina had pushed less than a minute ago, and that the garage door would lift just as the black van was rolling slowly by in the street.
Stalling for time, he said, “Oh, hi. My name’s Elliot, and this is Tina.”
“Tom,” the big man said. “Tom Polumby.”
Tom Polumby didn’t appear to be worried by their presence in his garage; he seemed merely perplexed. A man of his size probably wasn’t frightened any more easily than Godzilla confronted by the pathetic bazooka-wielding soldiers surrounding doomed Tokyo.
“Nice car,” Tom said with an unmistakable trace of reverence in his voice. He gazed covetously at the S600.
Elliot almost laughed. Nice car! They pulled into this guy’s garage, parked, closed the door bold as you please, and all he had to say was Nice car!
“Very nice little number,” Tom said, nodding, licking his lips as he studied the Mercedes.
Apparently Tom couldn’t conceive that burglars, psychopathic killers, and other lowlifes were permitted to purchase a Mercedes-Benz if they had the money for it. To him, evidently, anyone who drove a Mercedes had to be the right kind of people.
Elliot wondered how Tom would have reacted if they had shrieked into his garage in an old battered Chevy.
Pulling his covetous gaze from the car, Tom said, “What’re you doing here?” There was still neither suspicion nor belligerence in his voice.
“We’re expected,” Elliot said.
“Huh? I wasn’t expecting nobody.”
“We’re here . . . about the boat,” Elliot said, not even knowing where he was going to go with that line, ready to say anything to keep Tom from putting up the garage door and throwing them out.
Tom blinked. “What boat?”
“The twenty-footer.”
“I don’t own a twenty-footer.”
“The one with the Evinrude motor.”
“Nothing like that here.”
“You must be mistaken,” Elliot said.
“I figure you’ve got the wrong place,” Tom said, stepping out of the doorway, into the garage, reaching for the button that would raise the big door.
Tina said, “Mr. Polumby, wait. There must be some mistake, really. This is definitely the right place.”
Tom’s hand stopped short of the button.
Tina continued: “You’re just not the man we were supposed to see, that’s all. He probably forgot to tell you about the boat.”
Elliot blinked at her, amazed by her natural facility for deception.
“Who’s this guy you’re supposed to see?” Tom asked, frowning.
Appearing to be somewhat amazed herself, Tina hesitated not at all before she said, “Sol Fitzpatrick.”
“Nobody here by that name.”
“But this is the address he gave us. He said the garage door would be open and that we were to pull right inside.”
Elliot wanted to hug her. “Yeah. Sol said we were to pull in, out of the driveway, so that he’d have a place to put the boat when he got here with it.”
Tom scratched his head, then pulled on one ear. “Fitzpatrick?”
“Yeah.”
“Never heard of him,” Tom said. “What’s he bringing a boat here for, anyway?”
“We’re buying it from him,” Tina said.
Tom shook his head. “No. I mean, why here?”
“Well,” Elliot said, “the way we understood it, this was where he lived.”
“But he doesn’t,” Tom said. “I live here. Me and my wife and our little girl. They’re out right now, and there’s nobody ever been here named Fitzpatrick.”
“Well, why would he tell us this was his address?” Tina asked, scowling.
“Lady,” Tom said, “I don’t have the foggiest. Unless maybe . . . Did you already pay him for the boat?”
“Well. . . ”
“Maybe just a down payment?” Tom asked.
“We did give him two thousand on deposit,” Elliot said.
Tina said, “It was a refundable deposit.”
“Yeah. Just to hold the boat until we could see it and make up our minds.”
Smiling, Tom said, “I think the deposit might not turn out to be as refundable as you thought.”
Pretending surprise, Tina said, “You don’t mean Mr. Fitzpatrick would cheat us?”
Obviously it pleased Tom to think that people who could afford a Mercedes were not so smart after all. “If you gave him a deposit, and if he gave you this address and claimed he lived here, then it’s not very likely this Sol Fitzpatrick even owns any boat in the first place.”
“Damn,” Elliot said.
“We were swindled?” Tina asked, feigning shock, buying time.
Grinning broadly now, Tom said, “Well, you can look at it that way if you want. Or you can think of it as an important lesson this here Fitzpatrick fella taught you.”
“Swindled,” Tina said, shaking her head.
“Sure as the sun will come up tomorrow,” Tom said.
Tina turned to Elliot. “What do you think?”
Elliot glanced at the garage door, then at his watch. He said, “I think it’s safe to leave.”
“Safe?” Tom asked.
Tina stepped lightly past Tom Polumby and pressed the button that raised the garage door. She smiled at her bewildered host and went to the passenger side of the car while Elliot opened the driver’s door.
Polumby looked from Elliot to Tina to Elliot, puzzled. “Safe?”
Elliot said, “I sure hope it is, Tom. Thanks for your help.” He got in the car and backed it out of the garage.
Any amusement he felt at the way they had handled Polumby evaporated instantly as he reversed warily out of sanctuary, down the driveway, and into the street. He sat stiffly behind the wheel, clenching his teeth, wondering if a bullet would crack through the windshield and shatter his face.
He wasn’t accustomed to this tension. Physically, he was still hard, tough; but mentally and emotionally,
he was softer than he had been in his prime. A long time had passed since his years in military intelligence, since the nights of fear in the Persian Gulf and in countless cities scattered around the Mideast and Asia. Then, he’d had the resiliency of youth and had been less burdened with respect for death than he was now. In those days it had been easy to play the hunter. He had taken pleasure in stalking human prey; hell, there had even been a measure of joy in being stalked, for it gave him the opportunity to prove himself by outwitting the hunter on his trail. Much had changed. He was soft. A successful, civilized attorney. Living the good life. He had never expected to play that game again. But once more, incredibly, he was being hunted, and he wondered how long he could survive.
Tina glanced both ways along the street as Elliot swung the car out of the driveway. “No black van,” she said.
“So far.”
Several blocks to the north, an ugly column of smoke rose into the twilight sky from what was left of Tina’s house, roiling, night-black, the upper reaches tinted around the edges by the last pinkish rays of the setting sun.
As he drove from one residential street to another, steadily heading away from the smoke, working toward a major thoroughfare, Elliot expected to encounter the black van at every intersection.
Tina appeared to be no less pessimistic about their hope of escape than he was. Each time he glanced at her, she was either crouched forward, squinting at every new street they entered, or twisted halfway around in her seat, looking out the rear window. Her face was drawn, and she was biting her lower lip.
However, by the time they reached Charleston Boulevard—via Maryland Parkway, Sahara Avenue, and Las Vegas Boulevard—they began to relax. They were far from Tina’s neighborhood now. No matter who was searching for them, no matter how large the organization pitted against them, this city was too big to harbor danger for them in every nook and crevice. With more than a million full-time residents, with more than twenty million tourists a year, and with a vast desert on which to sprawl, Vegas offered thousands of dark, quiet corners where two people on the run could safely stop to catch their breath and settle upon a course of action.
At least that was what Elliot wanted to believe.
“Where to?” Tina asked as Elliot turned west on Charleston Boulevard.
“Let’s ride out this way for a few miles and talk. We’ve got a lot to discuss. Plans to make.”
“What plans?”
“How to stay alive.”
chapter twenty
While Elliot drove, he told Tina what had happened at his house: the two thugs, their interest in the possibility of Danny’s grave being reopened, their admission that they worked for some government agency, the hypodermic syringes. . . .
She said, “Maybe we should go back to your place. If this Vince is still there, we should use those drugs on him. Even if he really doesn’t know why his organization is interested in the exhumation, he’ll at least know who his bosses are. We’ll get names. There’s bound to be a lot we can learn from him.”
They stopped at a red traffic light. Elliot took her hand. The contact gave him strength. “I’d sure like to interrogate Vince, but we can’t. He probably isn’t at my place anymore. He’ll have come to his senses and scrammed by now. And even if he was deeper under than I thought, some of his people probably went in there and pulled him out while I was rushing off to you. Besides, if we go back to my house, we’ll just be walking into the dragon’s jaws. They’ll be watching the place.”
The traffic light changed to green, and Elliot reluctantly let go of her hand.
“The only way these people are going to get us,” he said, “is if we just give ourselves over to them. No matter who they are, they’re not omniscient. We can hide from them for a long time if we have to. If they can’t find us, they can’t kill us.”
As they continued west on Charleston Boulevard, Tina said, “Earlier you told me we couldn’t go to the police with this.”
“Right.”
“Why can’t we?”
“The cops might be a part of it, at least to the extent that Vince’s bosses can put pressure on them. Besides, we’re dealing with a government agency, and government agencies tend to cooperate with one another.”
“It’s all so paranoid.”
“Eyes everywhere. If they have a judge in their pocket, why not a few cops?”
“But you told me you respected Kennebeck. You said he was a good judge.”
“He is. He’s well versed in the law, and he’s fair.”
“Why would he cooperate with these killers? Why would he violate his oath of office?”
“Once an agent, always an agent,” Elliot said. “That’s the wisdom of the service, not mine, but in many cases it’s true. For some of them, it’s the only loyalty they’ll ever be capable of. Kennebeck held several jobs in different intelligence organizations. He was deeply involved in that world for thirty years. After he retired about ten years ago, he was still a young man, fifty-three, and he needed something else to occupy his time. He had his law degree, but he didn’t want the hassle of a day-to-day legal practice. So he ran for an elective position on the court, and he won. I think he takes his job seriously. Nevertheless, he was an intelligence agent a hell of a lot longer than he’s been a judge, and I guess breeding tells. Or maybe he never actually retired at all. Maybe he’s still on the payroll of some spook shop, and maybe the whole plan was for him to pretend to retire and then get elected as a judge here in Vegas, so his bosses would have a friendly courtroom in town.”
“Is that likely? I mean, how could they be sure he’d win the election?”
“Maybe they fixed it.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Remember maybe ten years ago when that Texas elections official revealed how Lyndon Johnson’s first local election was fixed? The guy said he was just trying to clear his conscience after all those years. He might as well have saved his breath. Hardly anyone raised an eyebrow. It happens now and then. And in a small local election like the one Kennebeck won, stacking the deck would be easy if you had enough money and government muscle behind you.”
“But why would they want Kennebeck on a Vegas court instead of in Washington or New York or someplace more important?”
“Oh, Vegas is a very important town,” Elliot said. “If you want to launder dirty money, this is by far the easiest place to do it. If you want to purchase a false passport, a counterfeit driver’s license, or anything of that nature, you can pick and choose from several of the best document-forgery artists in the world, because this is where a lot of them live. If you’re looking for a freelance hit man, someone who deals in carload lots of illegal weapons, maybe a mercenary who can put together a small expeditionary force for an overseas operation—you can find all of them here. Nevada has fewer state laws on the books than any state in the nation. Its tax rates are low. There’s no state income tax at all. Regulations on banks and real estate agents and on everyone else—except casino owners—are less troublesome here than in other states, which takes a burden off everybody, but which is especially attractive to people trying to spend and invest dirty cash. Nevada offers more personal freedom than anywhere in the country, and that’s good, by my way of thinking. But wherever there’s a great deal of personal freedom, there’s also an element that takes more than fair advantage of the liberal legal structure. Vegas is an important field office for any American spook shop.”
“So there really are eyes everywhere.”
“In a sense, yes.”
“But even if Kennebeck’s bosses have a lot of influence with the Vegas police, would the cops let us be killed? Would they really let it go that far?”
“They probably couldn’t provide enough protection to stop it.”
“What kind of government agency would have the authority to circumvent the law like this? What kind of agency would be empowered to kill innocent civilians who got in its way?”
“I’m still trying to
figure that one. It scares the hell out of me.”
They stopped at another red traffic light.
“So what are you saying?” Tina asked. “That we’ll have to handle this all by ourselves?”
“At least for the time being.”
“But that’s hopeless! How can we?”
“It isn’t hopeless.”
“Just two ordinary people against them?”
Elliot glanced in the rearview mirror, as he had been doing every minute or two since they’d turned onto Charleston Boulevard. No one was following them, but he kept checking.
“It isn’t hopeless,” he said again. “We just need time to think about it, time to work out a plan. Maybe we’ll come up with someone who can help us.”
“Like who?”
The traffic light turned green.
“Like the newspapers, for one,” Elliot said, accelerating across the intersection, glancing in the rearview mirror. “We’ve got proof that something unusual is happening: the silencer-equipped pistol I took off Vince, your house blowing up. . . . I’m pretty sure we can find a reporter who’ll go with that much and write a story about how a bunch of nameless, faceless people want to keep us from reopening Danny’s grave, how maybe something truly strange lies at the bottom of the Sierra tragedy. Then a lot of people are going to be pushing for an exhumation of all those boys. There’ll be a demand for new autopsies, investigations. Kennebeck’s bosses want to stop us before we sow any seeds of doubt about the official explanation. But once those seeds are sown, once the parents of the other scouts and the entire city are clamoring for an investigation, Kennebeck’s buddies won’t have anything to gain by eliminating us. It isn’t hopeless, Tina, and it’s not like you to give up so easily.”
She sighed. “I’m not giving up.”
“Good.”
“I won’t stop until I know what really happened to Danny.”
“That’s better. That sounds more like the Christina Evans I know.”
Dusk was sliding into night. Elliot turned on the headlights.