“Don't do that, Howard,” he said more quietly. “Don't buy me no drinks and tell me to walk.”
Harrigan nudged his playing partner. ”I think Albert has found his tuneup.”
“No.” Eddie Kuntz shook his head. “He won't fight Twilley. Twilley's got his number. You know how some guys have another guy's number no matter who's the meanest? Doviak tried his shit the first night after Twilley bought this place, and Twilley made him back down just by lookin' at him and talkin’. I seen Twilley do it other times too. To Doviak and to some of the other boomers that come in here. Twilley has their number.”
Harrigan nodded, believing for the first time the story Duncan Peck had told him. He heard Twilley's voice again.
“It's for your own good, Albert,” he was saying. “If you came in looking for a workout, you're going to find more than you can handle.” Twilley's thumb waved over his shoulder. “My man, Jimmy Flood. He's going to go the distance this year.”
Startled, Harrigan's eyes lashed back toward Jared Baker. Baker trembled. Harrigan saw it. Baker knew what was coming and he was afraid.
“Who the hell is Jimmy Flood?” Doviak peered past the barkeeper.
“My new relief man,” Twilley answered nonchalantly.
The big man's scowl softened into a grin as he appraised Jared Baker. At an inch over six feet and a hundred eighty-five pounds, Baker was still a full three inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter than Albert Doviak. Smaller and softer. And Albert too could see he was nervous.
“You're shitting me, aren't you?” Doviak asked.
“Fifty dollars.”
“Fifty on what?”
“Fifty says he can take you tonight, next week, or next month, and he can put you down in sixty seconds.”
The bigger man hesitated. “This is fist-fightin', Twilley. None of that karate crap.”
“Flood wouldn't know karate if it fell on him. He's just cat quick and he's strong.”
Doviak craned his head for another look at the relief bartender. He could see nothing that concerned him. Still, he was uncertain. “You're saying he can put me down inside a minute. Does that mean rasslin' and rollin' or does that mean I stay down and he don't?”
“It means you don't get up until he's back in here tending bar.”
The room was quiet but for a throaty Tanya Tucker number.
“Got his number,” Eddie Kuntz whispered. “Maybe Twilley's man got Doviak's number too.” He raised his head. “I'll take some of that,” he called. “I'm holdin' thirty dollars I'll put on the new guy.”
Another man, older, leaped at it. “I'll cover Eddie's dough and I got another twenty on Al.” The bar erupted into an auction.
“You said fifty bucks?” Doviak asked.
“More if you like.”
“What's in it for him?”
“He needs a tuneup too.”
One more time, Doviak studied the man called Jimmy Flood. Baker felt the stare but would not meet Doviak's eyes. Instead, he drifted closer toward the kitchen door and turned his back on Doviak.
“Make it a hundred,” Albert said, rising. “I'll be in the parking lot.”
The others, except Harrigan, watched him go. Harrigan's attention was locked on Jared Baker and on a shudder that moved in ripples across his back. And then Harrigan realized that what he saw was more than trembling. He did not know what it was. Only that it was more.
At last Baker reached behind him and pulled at the strings of his white apron. Lifting it above his head, he turned, first facing the door and the dwindling crowd of men now jamming through it, then looking squarely into the eyes of Connor Harrigan.
Harrigan's last breath jammed in his chest as he saw Baker's face. Then Baker turned away, easily lifting the heavy, hinged gate of the bar and flowing, it seemed, toward the door of the Riverview Grill.
Harrigan was thunderstruck. Transfixed, he sat in the almost abandoned bar waiting for the strength that had drained from his legs. The man who'd looked at him, the man now gone outside, the explosive and violent man who'd been so visibly frightened only moments before was, by God and to hell with everybody else, no longer Jared Baker. And the man he became knew Connor Harrigan. He knew him!
Recovering, Harrigan braced to rise from his chair and follow the excited sounds outside. A clink of glass told him he was not alone. Twilley stood half-hidden behind the cash register, calmly wiping the varnished surface of the bar. Harrigan sat back, studying this man who had once been Ben Coffey. The man who had Doviak's number and who turned guns into rats. He watched as Twilley worked his way toward Harrigan's end of the bar. There was more than calm in his expression, Harrigan thought. There was satisfaction. Howard Twilley had just accomplished something. Something had been set up and made to happen. Harrigan remembered the comforting hand on the shoulder of a lost and worried Jared Baker. And Harrigan knew. He knew in a flash of intuition what was happening here tonight. It was a testing ground. A training arena. A match with a ranking contender. And here was his promoter, his corner man, wiping a bar with no shadow of concern about the outcome of a blood brawl fifty feet away.
He saw something else as well. Just a flicker, really, when the satisfaction on Twilley's face faded for a moment. It was so out of place and out of context that he would have missed it had it not been for his memory of the call to Sonnenberg that Peck had intercepted: “I've had it, Doc. I want to use it. Soon, Doc. I mean it.”
What Harrigan saw, he was convinced, was a profound and crushing loneliness in the soul of Howard Twilley.
Outside, a sudden silence fell, and the shadow passed from Twilley's face. He turned in Harrigan's direction to watch the second hand of a Coors Beer clock that hung on the wall behind the game table. Twilley nodded to himself and snapped his fingers. He looked like a horse trainer clocking a furlong sprint. That was it, Harrigan realized. Jared Baker wasn't here to hide any more than he'd been hiding in the Sonnenberg compound these past four months. Nor had he been schooled there just to beat up bullies in midwestern shot-and-a-beer joints. By whatever means and for whatever reason, this new Jared Baker had been created by Marcus Sonnenberg. Jared Baker now and Benjamin Coffey before him. And the good Lord knows how many others.
Harrigan felt a draft and turned toward the opening door. It was Baker. The real Baker. Alone, he stepped inside, shutting the door against the murmur of stunned and shaken voices behind him.
“How did you do?” Twilley asked, his voice more caring than curious.
Baker hesitated. “Someone said twenty-eight seconds.”
“How bad?”
”I. .. was able to hold him back ” Baker answered. “If I hadn't, Doviak might have been .. ”
Twilley raised a hand to silence him, gesturing toward Connor Harrigan with his head. Who the hell is “him”? Harrigan wondered.
“Congratulations, champ.” Harrigan waved and forced a smile. He stepped fully into the light toward Baker, wondering as he did so what Albert must be looking like.
“Thank you . . ” Baker faltered.
'Td like to shake your hand,” Harrigan said, the tension he felt beginning to drain. “Also, good luck in the tournament.”
Baker took the extended hand and gripped it weakly. There was a shyness, an embarrassment, on Baker's face. But there was no recognition. This Jared Baker did not know Connor Harrigan. This Jared Baker didn't know him from Adam.
Harrigan stayed for the first three elimination rounds of the Tough Man Tournament. Baker won his first fight with just three quick blows of his left hand. Some insisted it was a single punch. Without a replay, it was hard to tell. When his opponent, a red-haired trucker named Doyle, collapsed against the lower rope, the opening bell was still echoing in Harrigan's ears.
In Baker's second and third fights he went the full three rounds. He seemed to be holding back, taking some punches, slipping others, but never reacting to the other man's blows or to the crowd or the referee. He seemed to see nothing, feel nothing, except the presence
of the other fighter. At the sound of the bell, he would lock his eyes upon those of his opponent. Seconds later, Harrigan saw, the other man would seem terrified. But Baker would bide his time. Near the end of each third and final round, Twilley would call Baker's name and Baker would strike. His blows, which avoided the face and head, were astonishingly precise and quick. Almost surgical in their artistry. A jab would be answered with a blur of an uppercut against the muscle on the underside of the jabbing arm. The truncheoned arm would collapse, useless. The opponent's right arm would rise in defense, and again its soft tissue would be crushed. A third blow at the base of the ribcage would leave the man gasping and helpless as the bell sounded. Baker, it was clear, could destroy any of these hardhats at will. It was terrible to watch. By the second fight, the crowd did not cheer Baker. A few booed nervously.
The man in the ring was not Baker. Of that, Harrigan was certain. The man in the ring was the man who knew him in Twilley's bar a few days before. Yet Baker was there. It was Baker, or Jimmy Flood, who was introduced to the crowd, and Baker who received the referee's instructions. It was a tense and nervous Baker, a reluctant Baker, who dropped his eyes when his first opponent tried to glare him down with a Sonny Liston scowl. The second made no such attempt. The third dropped his own eyes. And it was Baker in the corner between rounds. It was, at least, until Twilley wiped his face at the start of a round and again at the conclusion. Harrigan knew, by that time, what must have been happening under the oversize yellow bath towel Twilley used. He'd almost seen it in the bar but for Baker's back being turned. Harrigan knew. But he could not yet bring himself to believe it.
On the night of the semifinal round, after cracking the ribs and collarbone of a sandlot football player at least twenty years younger, Baker took a long shower and waited for the crowd to leave the arena. A television crew had already begun laying cables for the taping of the final round. Harrigan waited in the shadows of the parking lot.
When Baker emerged, Twilley trailing well behind him, Harrigan thought he saw a curious lightness in his step. An air of relief, perhaps, although odd with the next night's final still to be faced. Harrigan began to hear the familiar buzz in his head. But before he could make sense of it, the sound of running feet swept the warning aside. Two men were running. They came from another set of shadows, and they ran not at Harrigan but at Baker, a length of heavy chain in each one's hands. Harrigan crouched and reached toward his pistol but froze in that position. For there was Twilley, hanging back, arms folded, as the two burly men advanced upon Baker. Harrigan tried to see what was happening, but his view was obscured by a scattering of cars. He could hear, however. He heard moans and grunts and the rake of steel chain against pavement, and by the time he found a better vantage, there was Baker walking quickly away. His tutor walked with him, smiling.
Harrigan could not know why the attack on Baker took place. Or who the men with chains might have been. He could only listen to his instincts. The two men, he supposed, might have been friends of Albert Doviak or of Baker's other three victims. But somehow he doubted it, given Howard Twilley's role as an amused spectator. Another test, perhaps? It seemed hardly needed. Perhaps to keep him on edge? Harrigan thought. To keep him what else? Vigilant? Moving? Moving is what his instincts answered. And then he remembered the television cables and was sure. Baker would never let himself be taped. He would have to disappear before the final round.
The disappearance was faster than even Harrigan expected. Twilley drove Baker directly from the parking lot to the Cincinnati airport. By the time Baker left Twilley's car, he was dressed once again as a traveling executive. Harrigan followed Baker onto a United L-1011 bound for Los Angeles, spending the entire four-hour flight in the first-class lounge, where he could stay out of Baker's sight.
Late the following morning, Harrigan followed Baker through three changes of cabs until he arrived at the rental office of Marina Del Rey. There he used a cashier's check to lease a houseboat, which he chose from among the six thousand tightly packed pleasure craft moored there. Interesting, Harrigan thought. A man pursued could leap endlessly from boat to boat as if they were tenement roofs. And access to Baker's section was restricted by an electric gate activated by a coded plastic card. Harrigan booked a room overlooking the marina and settled in.
Baker was Peter Binford there. A freelance film researcher, if anyone asked. The houseboat never left its slip, although Baker would occasionally rent a Soling or a Hobie for a singlehanded sail. On shore, much of his time was spent in libraries. Harrigan would watch from a distance as a curiously flaccid and torpid Baker would leaf through as many as forty volumes in a day or a year's worth of microfilmed files and newspaper pages.
Only Harrigan knew he was there. For several months on and off, ignoring increasingly anxious queries from Duncan Peck, who was ignorant of the whereabouts of either man, Harrigan watched. He watched until he began to notice subtle changes in Baker's behavior when he was near. He had the odd feeling that Baker seemed to know, sometimes quite abruptly, that Harrigan was close. Harrigan discovered one day, accidentally, that if he backed away to the proper distance, Baker would relax. It was his feeling, although he could not say why, that Baker's comfort had more to do with range than with distance. There was a point at which Baker could feel his presence, he thought, or someone's presence, and a point at which he could not. Harrigan learned to recognize that point through a curiously unmotivated anger he would feel when he crossed it. Harrigan understood that least of all.
He began watching from greater distances. He watched and followed as Baker began to fly off every week or so to a different part of the country. Four times, Harrigan managed to follow him to a particular town before he lost him. During three of those visits, someone in that town disappeared. In the other, the office of a corrupt city commissioner was wrecked and two burly staff members critically injured by an unidentified berserk who walked in off the street. It might have been coincidence. Harrigan thought not.
Then there was Las Vegas. Harrigan tracked him there twice, although Baker might have stopped there as many as six other times en route back to Los Angeles. That many days were unaccounted for. There were at least two differences, Harrigan thought, about the Las Vegas visits. The first was that Harrigan detected a certain furtiveness about Baker in Las Vegas that was not present elsewhere. It was as if Baker was somewhere he was not supposed to be or doing something he was not sanctioned to do. The second was that Baker amused himself in Vegas. He gambled.
Perhaps amuse was not the right word, Harrigan reflected. There was a clear seriousness of purpose to the man. Nor, come to think of it, was gambling the right word. For Baker did not gamble. He simply won.
He won at twenty-one and he won at baccarat. He would play for an hour at most, until he won significantly or until a crowd began to gather, then he would move on to another casino. And it was the limp and distant Baker, the Baker of the library, who played these games, but the ordinary, average Baker who walked from resort to resort Average! More than once the word struck Harrigan as particularly apt, but the source of the impression remained just out of reach.
In any case, Baker won. He would play silently, communicating only with nods to the dealer, and just as silently pocket his winnings and move on. Then, during the second visit to Las Vegas that Harrigan observed and at Baker's sixth casino of the evening, two men approached him and steered him firmly toward an office marked Security. Harrigan knew at once what had happened. Baker had been spotted not as a fugitive but as a card counter, a professional player of any game in which cards already played could be memorized. Harrigan knew the procedure once a suspected counter was spotted. He would be photographed by the security staff of any casino, then banned, and his photograph would be distributed among all the major gaming houses. Won't this be interesting! thought Harrigan.
Halfway to the office, Baker the limp and silent gambler became the erect and speaking Baker whom Harrigan knew best. It was, in fact, a protesting
Baker. Twice he held back, shaking off the hands that guided him as he attempted to persuade the men that the floor manager had been wrong. They were not having it. One man advanced to open the door while the other pressed his palm against Baker's back and pushed. Harrigan saw Baker's body stiffen and coil as the door closed upon him. All that was missing was the large yellow towel and Howard Twilley.
Harrigan didn't bother to try listening at the door. He knew what was happening there. And he knew that there would be no photographing Jared Baker. Besides, he fully expected Baker to reappear in a matter of minutes, which he did, a look of weary resignation on his face. He left at once for the bus station.
From that day forward, Baker became something of a homebody. He settled in on his houseboat, and for almost two months more he barely budged except to walk to a pay phone every few days. All the calls were to his daughter. Harrigan had no means of tapping all the pay phones near the marina office, but the phone of the Carey house had been tapped for nearly a year. After each call, Harrigan would dial a number, and the conversation just recorded would be played back to him. They were harmless, caring calls that gave away nothing. But Harrigan began to notice a pattern of long interludes of silence on the tapes. Occasionally, Tina would respond to a silence as if words had just been spoken. Troubled, Harrigan began observing Baker's calls through a powerful telescope, fearful that Sonnenberg might have provided some exotic scrambler that deflected Baker's voice when he chose not to be heard. There was no such device. Baker's mouth did not move during the periods that matched the recorded silences. Nothing at all happened except that his body seemed to sag during those moments.
Then suddenly, soon after the longest of the silences was followed by a happy squeal on his daughter's end, Baker moved. He abandoned his houseboat and went to New York. He flew via four different connections and under four different names and then proceeded to two different hotels. The last, as Harold Mailander. A klutzy name, mused Harrigan, for such a slippery son of a bitch.
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