Hepfinger backhanded him again.
Marco’s knees buckled and he collapsed like a cast-off rag doll into his own blood. His eyes were still open and his mouth worked, but the only sound he made was unintelligible to Hepfinger.
Santander came through the kitchen door and stopped dead. “What happened?”
“He’s bleeding to death,” Hepfinger snarled. “Let him. Break a glass and push a piece through his hand. Make it look like an accident.”
“But—” Santander said.
“An accident,” stormed Hepfinger, nearly crying with anger. “And wipe my shoes. Clean them.”
Hepfinger stepped out of his shoes and padded daintily around Marco’s twitching body. The old man’s lips still worked spasmodically, his eyelids fluttered.
Hepfinger made his way angrily into the living room. He began going furiously through Marco’s checkbook, the clutter of papers on his desk, the scribbled notes by the phone.
By the time Santander came from the kitchen carrying the cleaned shoes, Hepfinger was almost himself again. The old man hadn’t thwarted him after all. He held a piece of paper that told him what he wanted to know.
“Is he dead?” Hepfinger demanded.
“Almost, the shaky old fuck,” Santander said. “How’d he make you so mad? Didn’t you want him to die?”
“Of course I did,” Hepfinger said in disdain. “It’s Just he was so full of lies. He thought his secrets would die with him. He was wrong.”
Santander blinked and set Hepfinger’s shoes on the table. He gave him a look of sulky curiosity.
Hepfinger tapped his fingertips against the wrinkled paper. “He was careless. He had this in his coat pocket. Along with the change he had left for the phone. Old men are forgetful.”
“Left what?”
Hepfinger managed to smile one of his little smiles. “It’s yesterday’s calendar page. There’s the name and number of a drugstore here. A note that says, ‘M. Boy and Jefferson flu, Goffstown, NH.’ And more. About prescriptions.”
“What’s it mean?” Santander asked, scowling harder.
“That he phoned a prescription in yesterday. Last night, no doubt. Montana’s in New Hampshire. He’s got the boys. And the black man. But they’re slowed down. It’s sickness. Or they wouldn’t need prescriptions. We’ve got them.”
“New Hampshire’s a big place,” Santander muttered. “How can you find them, just from that?”
“Child’s play,” Hepfinger said. He sat down and slipped on his shoes. “What was he saying at the end, the old ass? Could you tell?”
The corners of Santander’s mouth curved down. “It was nonsense. Something about ‘We won.’ ”
Hepfinger shook his head at the folly. Lovingly he tied his shoelaces into perfect bow knots. He smiled to himself. “He was a stupid old man,” he said. “He won nothing. Nothing at all.”
FIFTEEN
Evening was starting to fall. Laura stood by the kitchen counter, her arms folded nervously, her lips pressed together. She watched as Montana knelt before Rickie, trying to unjam the zipper on the child’s jacket.
She’d worked hard to teach the boys to dress themselves for outside, but Rickie’s red jacket had a stubborn zipper that often baffled him.
She was familiar with the zipper; she could have worked it with her eyes closed, but Montana had waved her away.
“Let me do it,” he’d said quietly. He intended to take Rickie for the day’s last outing by himself, without Laura or his brother. He wanted to get the boy used to going alone with him.
But Montana’s bad hand slowed his progress with the zipper, and Rickie fidgeted, confused and impatient. He stared at Laura so accusingly that her resolve weakened.
“Let me help,” she told Montana, “there’s a trick to it.”
Montana shook his head. “No. He’s got to learn to depend on somebody besides you.”
She leaned back against the counter again, hugging herself more tensely. It was odd, disquieting, seeing her place usurped.
Montana continued his struggle with the zipper. “Laur-a!” Rickie wheedled, pointing at his half-open jacket. “Laur-a—fix zipper!”
“Sorry, kid,” Montana muttered. “Montana’s gotta fix it this time.”
He waggled the zipper’s tag, and this time it traveled up the track, closing the jacket snugly up to Rickie’s chin.
“Now where are your gloves, chum?” Montana asked. “Should I help you with them?”
Rickie shut one eye and stared at the ceiling. “Fruit flies are in bloom. I’ll twink your wink.”
Montana was saying things wrongly, unsettling Rickie, and Laura couldn’t resist coaching. “Don’t ask,” she said. “He knows perfectly well how to put on his gloves. Tell him to. And use his name.”
Montana gave a determined nod. “Okay. Rickie, put on your gloves.”
Rickie kept staring one-eyed at the ceiling and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’ll twink your wink. I’ll twink your wink.”
Montana shot Laura an exasperated glance. “Make him look at you,” she said. “Make him give you his attention. Then repeat it.”
Montana took the boy’s chin in his good hand, making Rickie lower his face so that his eyes were level with Montana’s. “Rickie,” Montana said, “put on your gloves. Put on your gloves now.”
Rickie gave an irritated sigh, but he dug into his pockets, fished out his woolly gloves, and drew them on.
“Good,” Montana said. “A big boy can put on his gloves. Rickie’s a big boy.”
That’s it. Praise him when he does something right, Laura thought. He’s like anybody else—he needs praise.
Montana rose, towering over the child. “All right,” he said, “Rickie and Montana’ll take a walk.”
Rickie looked dubious about such a proposition. He cast a measuring glance at the hallway, then at Laura. “Laura come,” he said. “Trace come. Laura and Trace come.”
“No,” she said stiffly. “Laura can’t. Trace can’t. Trace is sick. Rickie and Montana will go.”
Rickie stood, looking troubled and hesitant. A strange knot formed in Laura’s throat. “Go with Mr. Montana,” she told the boy.
Rickie frowned, his smooth brow wrinkling, but he stalked toward the door, his snow boots swishing. Montana followed and opened the door. “Come on, Rickie. Let’s go out. Should we make a snowman? Go to the barn? Or the pond?”
Rickie stopped on the threshold and his expression grew more bewildered than before. He looked back at Laura and held out his gloved hand to her, a gesture that showed he wanted help.
“Rickie, take Montana’s hand,” she said.
“Laur-a!” Rickie said, half pleading, half whining. He kept his hand stretched toward her, not Montana.
She tried to keep her voice even. “Rickie is the leader this time. Rickie decides where to play. Choose one place. The yard. The barn. The pond. The—”
“The barn,” he said without hesitation. “Laura get Trace. Rickie wants Trace—and Laura. At the barn.”
“No,” she told him. “Go play now.”
Rickie scowled, but he waddled out the door with the special gait of a child bundled in winter clothing. Montana followed, shutting the door behind them. She heard their footsteps crossing the porch.
A strange sense of emptiness seized her. She moved softly to the couch. Trace lay there, sleeping restlessly. All afternoon his fever had fluctuated, and he’d been miserable with a running nose and watery eyes.
All he’d wanted was for Jefferson to read to him from the stack of old tabloids. The papers littered the carpet around the couch in a garish spill.
She adjusted the afghan that covered Trace and felt his forehead, which was clammy. She gathered up the discarded tabloids and stacked them on the coffee table.
Jefferson, full of painkillers and cough suppressants, was taking another nap in the main bedroom. From time to time, in spite of the medicine, he had fits of coughing, harsh and wheezing
.
She heard him coughing now and tried not to flinch; the big man’s weakness frightened her because it seemed both unnatural and ominous.
She drifted to the kitchen window and stared out. Rickie and Montana had stopped halfway to the barn. Rickie’s snow boot must have come unbuckled, because Montana was on his knees, working at it. It seemed to take him a long time—he was not used to such tasks, and his bad hand must slow him.
But at last Montana rose and offered Rickie his good hand. Rickie threw a backward look toward the house, as if he hoped to see Laura emerging with his brother.
He gazed for a long moment, and even from this distance she could see that he looked puzzled. But Montana said something to him and again offered the boy his hand.
To Laura’s surprise Rickie reached out and took it. He seldom let anyone but Laura hold his hand. With that simple, single motion, he seemed to cross a bridge that led him away from her.
For the first time it hit her, very hard, that she and Rickie and Montana really would part. It had to happen; Montana was making ready for it.
The realization was acute and physical; it hurt, and she found it hard to draw her breath.
This is the start of good-bye, she thought. But she didn’t allow herself to cry. She watched them walk away from her, man and boy, hand in hand. Neither looked back in her direction.
In a motel room in Queens, Santander lounged on one of the beds, eating salted peanuts and reading another true crime magazine. He had found a tube of prescription skin cream at Marco’s and had applied it in liberal white patches to his face.
Hepfinger sat hunched over the desk, tapping at the keys of his computer. His cellular phone was at his right elbow, and a road map and his leather-bound notebook at his left.
Hepfinger pulled up an Internet menu on his computer screen. “We’re closing in on them,” he said with satisfaction.
Santander gave him an idle glance. “How?”
“By performing an act of what’s called ‘negative capability.’ I try to become one with my quarry. I try to sense what he fears, think as he thinks, plan as he plans.”
Santander turned back to the magazine. “Whatever.”
“He had prescriptions phoned to Goffstown,” Hepfinger went on, enjoying himself. “He wouldn’t ask for them unless he was desperate. That means somebody’s sick—seriously. Who’s most likely? The one who’s already hurt. The black man. DeMario wrote his name by the prescription note.”
Santander ate a handful of peanuts. “You always come back to the black man. La verdad es que siempre estas con la misma cantaleta. He’s the song you always sing.”
Hepfinger gave him a condescending smile. “Montana had no reason to drag him along. Unless he planned to use him some way. If Montana is clever—and he is—he will split up the twins. I think this is exactly what he plans.”
“That doesn’t help us find them.”
“Yes, it does. Montana can’t just go off with a kid like that. He’ll have to learn to handle him. And the boy has to learn to accept him. These children don’t like change. It interferes with the learning process. Ergo, for as long as possible, Montana will move them as little as possible. And to go underground successfully takes planning.”
“They don’t have time to plan.”
“They don’t have time not to. They can’t use their own identities. They need new ones. And that’s what they’re doing now. Establishing new ones.”
“So,” Santander said, crumpling up the peanut sack. “They’re somewhere near Goffstown. You don’t need a computer to figure that out.”
“But where near Goffstown?” said Hepfinger. “Use the process of elimination. The law’s looking for them. Can they go to a motel? No. A hotel? No. Friends? Possibly. But we have a pretty comprehensive idea of who their friends are, and they know that. They would not want to put friends at risk. And there are five of them, after all.”
Santander threw the crushed sack overhand into the waste container, like a basketball player shooting a basket.
“They could break into an empty house,” he said. “Or force someone to take them in.”
“Too chancy. Too messy. They’d be making themselves conspicuous.” Hepfinger gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Montana’s a professional. He knows the simplest, safest thing is to acquire a normal, everyday address. By normal, everyday means.”
“They’re fugitives,” Santander countered. “They have crazy twins and a shot black man and a white man with a crippled hand. Nothing about them is normal or everyday.”
“If I were he,” Hepfinger said, stroking his chins, “I’d rent a place, a house, out of the way. You can manage these things over the phone without ever coming face to face with a realtor.”
Santander smiled, a rare occurrence. “New Hampshire’s full of houses. What do we do? Knock on all the doors?”
Hepfinger nodded at his beautiful little computer. “In this country, they have a saying: ‘Let your fingers do the walking.’ I will. I hope they don’t have to walk far.”
He tapped on the computer’s keys and the screen changed. He began to make notes in his notebook.
“What are you doing?”
Hepfinger smiled. “We live in the computer age. You’ve heard of the information superhighway?”
Santander frowned and shook his head. He’d heard of no such road.
“Electrons reach everywhere,” Hepfinger said. “Most particularly into the marketplace. Including real estate. Even in places as godforsaken as New Hampshire. There’s a system called Nynex. It lists realtors by area. I check the Goffstown area.”
Santander saw a list in white and red and black and the name New Hampshire in large letters. He watched Hepfinger make notation after notation.
At last Hepfinger switched off the computer and took up the cellular phone. He dialed a number, casually, almost languidly, and began to talk.
Santander watched furtively, from the corner of his eye. Mother of God—was the fat man going to call every realtor listed on the stupid computer?
Santander thought that calling all those numbers would be not only impossible, but boring. And he would find it a strain to talk as perfectly as Hepfinger did. Estrada was lucky to have a man willing to do this drudgery. Santander wouldn’t have stooped to it.
Hepfinger was presenting himself as some high-ranking DEA agent, saying he was calling about a confidential matter. He asked if a man of Montana’s description had recently rented a place. He might have a wife and child or children. He would probably be driving a vehicle—a van perhaps—with out-of-state plates. Were there other realtors, other properties that might not have been listed on the Internet?
Santander finished his magazine, looked at the pictures two more times, then turned on the television to a soccer game, but it was boring, and he fell asleep. He was having a nightmare about the whores of Bogotá when Hepfinger woke him, a smile on his bland face.
“I’ve found them,” Hepfinger said. “Get ready. We’re getting reinforcements. Then we go after them.”
Santander stared at him for a moment, groggy and disbelieving.
“Two days ago a man arranged to pick up a key for a rental cottage from a realtor in Hooksett, New Hampshire. His description matches Montana’s. The renter mentioned a wife and child, but the realtor saw only him—he remembers because the man paid in cash.”
Santander just kept staring. Maybe it’s true, he thought. He has powers. He’s a brujo.
“They’re at a cottage two miles north of Hooksett. On Londonderry Turnpike. The second right after the Lucky Seven Motel is a dirt road. It leads straight to them.”
“What if it isn’t them?” Santander asked.
“It’s them,” Hepfinger said with perfect conviction. “He’s using the name Michael Kominski. Which just happens to be the name of DeMario’s dead grandson.”
• • •
Laura tried not think of the future, to stay centered, to live as much in the present as she c
ould. To keep busy, she’d volunteered to do the supper dishes alone. Even so simple an experience as sinking her hands into the soapsuds seemed sensuous and remarkable.
The men and the boys in the living room area were gilded by the glow of lamplight; it was getting close to the boys’ bedtime and the scene was homey, deceptively domestic.
Montana lazed on the rug beside Rickie, playing a complicated form of solitaire that they scored with pennies. He’s doing it, Laura thought. Hour by hour, he was winning Rickie’s trust and the closest thing to affection the boy could offer.
Jefferson, looking depressed, sat on the sofa, a box of Kleenex at his elbow. He was slowly making his way through the tabloids, reading them aloud to Trace.
Trace, slumped beside Jefferson, still wanted to do nothing except be read to; he frowned and whined whenever Jefferson tried to quit.
When Trace rose and stamped into the bathroom, Jefferson saw the opportunity to escape. “I gotta lay down,” he said. “I ain’t good for nothing.”
He dropped the newspaper to the rug and started to rise. He moved like an old man who ached in every joint.
Rickie raised his eyes from the solitaire game and glanced at the cast-off paper. It had fallen open to a double-paged spread of celebrity photos.
“That’s Moleman,” he said without emotion, then turned back to the cards.
Laura, wiping off the dining room table, went still. She looked up sharply and drew in her breath. “What did he say?”
She watched as Montana took Rickie’s chin in his hand and made the boy look at him. “Rickie,” he said, his voice tense and careful, “where’s Moleman? Show Moleman.”
Rickie glanced toward the paper. “Moleman,” he said, and impatiently stabbed his finger at the picture of a glamorous-looking young couple.
Then he turned over a red seven and put it neatly on a black eight. Montana picked up the tabloid. “Mother of God,” he said.
Laura forgot the table, the dishes, everything but what Rickie had said. Wiping her hands on her slacks, she hurried to Montana and knelt by his side.
Jefferson had sunk back into his seat and leaned over to peer at the paper.
See How They Run Page 24