Assumed Identity

by David R. Morrell

  13

  It was dark outside. Buchanan kept the guest room’s light off as he packed, relying on the slight illumination from the hallway. After he finished and made sure that he hadn’t left anything behind, he considered taking the 9-mm pistol from the holster attached to the side of the bed but decided against it. If there was trouble, the police might trace the gun to Doyle, and Buchanan didn’t want to involve him any more than Doyle already was.

  Leaving the guest room, Buchanan almost turned left toward the lights in the kitchen but changed his mind and instead turned right toward a door farther along the dimly lit hallway. He knocked, received no answer, noticed that the door was slightly ajar, and decided to take a chance. Pushing the door farther open, he knocked again. “Cindy?”

  “. . . What is it?” her weary voice asked from the darkness.

  Buchanan entered, crossed the murky room, and knelt beside the bed, able to see her shadowy contour under the sheets but not her face. “I missed you at supper.”

  “Tired,” she whispered. “The casserole . . .?”

  “Was excellent. You didn’t need to use up your energy making it. Jack and I could have eaten takeout.”

  “Not in my home.” Cindy managed to emphasize the word despite her fatigue.

  “Well,” Buchanan said, “I just wanted to let you know I appreciate it and to thank you for everything.”

  She moved slowly, evidently turning toward him. “You sound as if . . . Are you leaving?”

  “I have to.”

  She tried to sit up but couldn’t. “I hope not because of me.”

  “What would make you think that?”

  “Because people feel self-conscious about me being sick. It’s hard to be around . . .”

  “I don’t feel that way,” Buchanan said. “It’s just that I have things to do. It’s time for me to move on and do them.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Cindy?”

  “I sort of hoped you’d stay so you could be company for Jack.” She inhaled in a way that made Buchanan suspect she was crying. “Seems like most of the time I’m either in the hospital or here in bed. I’m not afraid for me, but I feel so sorry for Jack.”

  “He loves you very much.”

  “Sure.”

  “He told me that several times. He told me how proud he was of you, the way you put up with being married to him when he was in the service and how you stonewalled those reporters.”

  She chuckled slightly, then sniffled. “Yeah, I was tough. The good times. Except Jack was gone so much then, and now that we’re together . . .”

  “Right. You just said it. You’re together. And you don’t need me around to make a crowd. In a few minutes, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Take my car.”

  Buchanan cocked his head in surprise.

  “I get the feeling you’ll be needing it.” She touched his hand. “I sure won’t. I haven’t driven it since before I was in the hospital this last time. Take it. Please.”

  “I’ll get it back to you when I’m settled.”

  “There isn’t any rush, believe me.”

  “Cindy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  Buchanan leaned down and kissed her gently on the cheek, his lips salty from her tears. “Take care.”

  “I always tried to. Didn’t do me any good, though. You take care.”

  “I’ll have to.” He stood from beside the bed. “Maybe sometime I’ll be back this way.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I’d better let you get some sleep.” Buchanan touched her cheek, then backed from the room and closed the door.

  14

  Doyle sat, playing solitaire at the kitchen table. He didn’t look up when Buchanan entered the room. “I overheard.”

  “And?”

  “Thanks. Friends mean a lot. These days, she doesn’t have too many. Most of them ran when they found out how sick she was. They didn’t know enough to say what you just did to Cindy.”

  “What was that?”

  “‘I’m sorry.’” Doyle looked up from the cards. “Cindy’s right. I think it’s a good idea to take her car instead of my van. Less conspicuous. When you’re done with it, just let me know where to pick it up. And this is another good idea.” Doyle reached under the table, where there must have been a bracket—because when his hand reappeared, it held a Beretta 9-mm pistol.

  Buchanan glanced toward the windows. The blinds were pulled, so no one outside could see the weapon. But he was still wary of possible hidden microphones. Instead of talking, he shook his head in refusal.

  Doyle mouthed, WHY NOT?

  Buchanan picked up a notepad on the counter and wrote: WHAT IF I HAD TO DUMP IT?

  Doyle took the pen and wrote on the notepad: I TOOK IT FROM A DEAD SOLDIER IN PANAMA. IT CAN’T BE LINKED TO ME.

  Buchanan studied Doyle, then nodded. He removed the magazine to make sure it was loaded, reinserted the magazine, worked the slide back and forth to chamber a round, lowered the hammer, then stuck the weapon beneath his belt, at his spine, and covered it by putting on a dark brown nylon windbreaker that he’d borrowed from Doyle.

  Doyle assessed the effect. “Fits you perfect.”

  Buchanan glanced toward the clock on the stove: 8:25. Bailey was due to call in five minutes. Doyle shrugged as if to say, Be patient. Self-conscious because the kitchen might be bugged, neither man spoke. Doyle ripped up the sheet of paper, burned the pieces in a saucer, and washed the ashes down the sink, more for something to do, it seemed, than for the sake of destroying an incriminating object. Then he returned to his game of solitaire, appearing to understand that Buchanan needed to focus his mind and not clutter it with small talk.

  Eight-thirty. Buchanan kept staring toward the phone. Five minutes passed. Then ten. His head began to throb. At last, at quarter to nine, the phone rang.

  Buchanan grabbed it before the noise could wake Cindy.

  “There’s a minimall near you on Pine Island Road. A couple of blocks from Sunrise Boulevard,” Bailey’s crusty voice said.

  “I know the place. I’ve driven past it.”

  “Go over to the pizza joint. Stand to the right of the entrance. Be there at nine. Come alone.”

  Before Buchanan could acknowledge the message, Bailey hung up.

  Buchanan frowned and turned to Doyle. “Got to run an errand.”

  “The keys to the car are in that drawer.”

  “Thanks.” Buchanan shook his hand.

  That was all the sentiment Buchanan could allow. He took the keys, lifted his suitcase, grabbed a small red picnic cooler off the counter, and nodded as Doyle opened the door for him.

  Ninety seconds later, he was driving away.

  15

  The small red picnic cooler contained an apple and two bologna sandwiches on a white plastic tray. A lower tray contained ice cubes. Beneath that tray was a hundred thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. In the dark, driving, Buchanan glanced toward the cooler on the seat beside him. Then he checked for headlights in his rearview mirror to see if he was being followed.

  He’d received the cooler and the money in it that afternoon while he was parked at a stoplight on his way back to Doyle’s. The money was in response to a call that he’d made from a pay phone immediately after returning from his conversation with Bailey. The colonel had told Buchanan to wait at the Bon Voyage office until three o’clock and, when he drove away, to leave his passenger window open. At the stoplight, a motorcyclist had paused, pushed the cooler through the open window, and driven on.

  Now, his pulse quickening, Buchanan parked at the crowded minimall on Pine Island Road. Beneath hissing sodium lights, he carried the picnic cooler to the pizza shop and stood to the right of the entrance. Customers went in and out. A delivery boy drove hurriedly away. Scanning the night, Buchanan waited. This time, Bailey made contact exactly when he’d said he would.

  “Is you
r name Grant?” a voice asked.

  Buchanan turned toward the open door to the pizza shop, seeing a gangly, pimply-faced young man wearing a white apron streaked with sauce.

  “That’s right.”

  “A guy just called inside. Said he was a friend of yours. Said you’d give me five bucks if I relayed a message.”

  “My friend was right.” Buchanan gave the kid the five dollars. “What’s the message?”

  “He said you’re supposed to meet him in twenty minutes in the lobby of the Tower Hotel.”

  Buchanan squinted. “The Tower Hotel? Where’s that?”

  “The east end of Broward Boulevard. Near Victoria Park Road.”

  Buchanan nodded and walked quickly toward his car, realizing what was ahead of him. Bailey—afraid that he’d be in danger when he showed himself to get the money—intended to shunt Buchanan to various places throughout the city, carefully watching each potential meeting site for any indication that Buchanan had not come alone.

  Bailey’s instincts were good, Buchanan thought as he checked a map in his car and steered from the minimall, heading toward his next destination. The truth was, Buchanan did have a team keeping track of him. Their mission was to follow Bailey after the money was handed over and to try to find where he was keeping the videotape, the photographs, and the negatives, especially the ones depicting Buchanan on the yacht with the colonel, the major, and the captain. The colonel had been very emphatic about that point when he’d hastily returned Buchanan’s phone call. The images of Buchanan with the colonel had to be destroyed.

  As Buchanan headed east on Broward Boulevard, he again glanced in his rearview mirror to see if he was being followed. He looked for Bailey, not the team that was keeping track of him, for there was no way he could spot the team, he knew. They had a way to follow him and later Bailey that permitted them to stay far back, out of visual contact, and that method was the reason Bailey’s protective tactic, no matter how shrewd, wouldn’t work. Bailey would never see the team at any of the potential rendezvous sites. He could never possibly detect the team as they followed him after he received the money. No matter what evasion procedures he attempted, he would not be able to elude them.

  Because they didn’t need to keep him in sight. All they had to do was study an audiovisual monitor and follow the homing signals they received from a battery-powered location transmitter concealed within the plastic bottom of the small picnic cooler that contained the money.

  Friday-night traffic was dense. Amid gleaming headlights, Buchanan reached the glass-and-steel Tower Hotel two minutes ahead of schedule. Telling the parking attendant that he would probably need the car right away, he darted inside the plush lobby and found his jeans, nylon jacket, and picnic cooler being sternly assessed by a group of men and women wearing tuxedos and glittering evening gowns. Sure, Buchanan thought. There’s a reception going on. Bailey found out and took advantage of it. He wants me and especially anyone following me to be conspicuous.

  Used to being inconspicuous, Buchanan felt self-conscious as he waited in the lobby. He looked for Bailey among the guests, not expecting to find him, wondering how Bailey would contact him this time. The clock behind the check-in counter showed twenty after nine, exactly when Buchanan was supposed to . . .

  “Mr. Grant?” a uniformed bellhop asked.

  Buchanan had noticed the short middle-aged man moving from guest to guest in the lobby, speaking softly to each. “That’s right.”

  “A friend of yours left this envelope for you.”

  Finding a deserted corner, Buchanan ripped it open.

  At quarter to ten, be at the entrance to Shirttail Charlie’s restaurant on . . .

  16

  Three stops later, at eleven o’clock, Buchanan arrived at the Riverside Hotel on Las Olas, a street that seemed the local equivalent of Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive. From information in the terra-cotta-floored lobby, he learned that the hotel had been built in 1936, a date that was very old by Fort Lauderdale standards. A few decades before, this area had been wilderness. The wicker furniture and coral fireplaces exuded a sense of history, no matter how recent.

  Buchanan had a chance to learn these facts and notice these details because Bailey didn’t contact him on schedule. By twenty after eleven, Bailey still hadn’t been in touch. The lobby was deserted.

  “Mr. Grant?”

  Buchanan looked up from where he sat on a rattan chair near glass patio doors, a location he’d chosen because it allowed him to be observed from outside. A woman behind the small reception counter was speaking to him, her eyebrows raised.

  “Yes.”

  “I have a phone call for you.”

  Buchanan carried the picnic cooler to the counter and took the phone from the receptionist.

  “Go out the rear door, cross the street, and walk through the gate, then past the swimming pool.” Bailey’s curt instructions were followed by the sudden hum of the dial tone.

  Buchanan handed the telephone back to the receptionist, thanked her, and used the rear exit. Outside, he saw the gate across the street and a walkway through a small murky park beside the swimming pool, although the swimming pool itself was deserted, its lights off.

  Moving closer, enveloped by the shadows of palm trees, he expected Bailey’s voice to drift from the darkness, to give him instructions to leave the money on a barely visible poolside table and continue to stroll as if he hadn’t been contacted.

  The only lights were ahead, from occasional arc lamps along the canal, as well as from a cabin cruiser and a houseboat moored there. He heard an engine rumbling. Then he heard a man call, “Mr. Grant? Is that you over there, Mr. Grant?”

  Buchanan continued forward, away from the swimming pool, toward the canal. He immediately realized that the rumbling engine belonged to a water taxi that was temporarily docked, bow-first, between the cabin cruiser and the houseboat. The water taxi was yellow, twenty feet long, with poles along the gunwales supporting a yellow-and-green-striped canvas roof. In daylight, the roof would shade passengers from the glare and heat of the sun. But at night, it shut out the little illumination that the arc lamps along the canal provided and prevented Buchanan from seeing who was in there.

  Certainly there were passengers. At least fifteen. Their shadowy outlines were evident. But Buchanan had no way to identify them. The canvas roof muffled what they said to one another, although their slurred rhythms made him suspect they were on a Friday-night round of parties and bars.

  “That’s right. My name is Grant,” Buchanan said to the driver, who sat at controls in front of the passengers.

  “Well, your friend’s already aboard. I wondered if you were going to show up. I was just about to leave.”

  Buchanan strained to see through the darkness beneath the water taxi’s roof, then stepped onto the gangplank that extended from the canal to the bow. With his right hand, he gripped a rope railing for balance while he held the picnic cooler in his left and climbed down a few steps into the taxi. Passengers in their early twenties, dressed casually but expensively for an evening out, sat on benches along each side.

  The stern remained shrouded by darkness.

  “How much do I owe you?” Buchanan asked the driver.

  “Your friend already paid for you.”

  “How generous.”

  “Back here, Vic,” a crusty voice called from the gloomy stern.

  As the driver retracted the gangplank, Buchanan made his way past a group of young men on his left and stopped at the stern, his eyes now sufficiently adjusted to the darkness to see Bailey slouched on a bench.

  Bailey waved a beefy hand. “How ya doin’, buddy?”

  Buchanan sat and placed the picnic cooler between them.

  “You didn’t need to bring your lunch,” Bailey said.

  Buchanan just stared at him as the driver backed the water taxi from between the cabin cruiser and the houseboat, then increased speed along the canal. Slick, Buchanan thought. I’m separated from my backup
team. They couldn’t have gotten to the water taxi in time, and certainly they couldn’t have hurried on board without making Bailey suspicious.

  Now that Buchanan’s eyes had become even more accustomed to the darkness, the glow from condominiums, restaurants, and boats along the canal seemed to increase in brightness. But Buchanan was interested in the spectacle only because the illumination allowed him to see the cellular telephone that Bailey folded and placed in a pouch attached to his belt.

  “Handy things,” Bailey said. “You can call anybody from anywhere.”

  “Like from a car to a pizza parlor. Or from a water taxi to a hotel lobby.”

  “You got it,” Bailey said. “Makes it easy to keep in touch while I’m on the go or hangin’ around to see if extra company’s comin’.” Bailey lowered his voice and gestured toward the cooler. “No joke. That better not be your lunch, and it better all be here.”

  The other passengers on the boat were talking loudly, obscuring what Bailey and Buchanan said.

  “There’s no more where that came from,” Buchanan murmured.

  Bailey raised his bulky shoulders. “Hey, I’m not greedy. All I need is a little help with my expenses, a little reward for my trouble.”

  “I went through a lot of effort to get what’s in this cooler,” Buchanan said. “I won’t go through it again.”

  “I don’t expect you to.”

  “That definitely eases my mind.”

  The water taxi arrived at a restaurant/tavern, where a sign on the dock read, PAUL’S-ON-THE-RIVER. The stylish building was long and low, its rear section almost completely glass, separated by segments of white stucco. Inside, a band played. Beyond the large windows, customers danced. Others strolled outside, carrying drinks, or sat at tables amid flowering bushes near palm trees.

  The taxi’s driver set down the gangplank. Four passengers got up unsteadily to go ashore.

  At once Bailey stood and clutched the picnic cooler. “This is where we part company, Crawford. Almost forgot, I mean, Grant. Why don’t you stay aboard, see the sights, enjoy the ride?”