by Paul Moomaw
They like to put first class passengers on before anyone else. This is supposed to be a privilege, the chance to sit and breathe the stale air of the airplane cabin for an extra half an hour. I choose to wait while American Airlines boards all the other passengers. This lets me watch people passing through the concourse. I do that as a hobby. I find a place to sit where people congregate, in malls, and parks, and coffee houses. Pike Place Market is one of my favorites. I watch people pass by. Then I make up stories about them. As idle entertainment it is harmless and not fattening. And I tell myself that it is actually useful, because it hones my skills at picking up vibes and reading nonverbal cues—posture, gait, facial expressions. Right now I see two people, a man and a woman, approaching on one of those electrical carts that roam all airport concourses, beeping little horns and playing slalom with the passengers who are on foot. The driver looks grumpy, but they usually do. The couple sit turned as much away from each other as possible, which is not much given the amount of space they take up. The woman is enormously fat. I put her at something like three hundred pounds. She appears to be crying. She wears heavy makeup, and the tears have created little black tracks down her cheeks. The man is not fat. In fact he is heavily muscled and wears a t-shirt that shows off his pectoral muscles. They pass me in silence. The cart is headed in the general direction of the international gates. I decide that his name is Fred and hers is Harriet, and they met on the internet. She is rich and lonely, and he has married her for her money. They are starting their honeymoon, heading for Latin America, and the strain is already showing. Before the trip is over he will realize that he is not man enough after all to live with his decision, and he will take her out in a little boat and try to drown her; but she will fight back, and sit on him until he is unconscious, and then throw him in the water. When she returns, she will tell the authorities that she tried to convince him not to swim because there were sharks, but he insisted, and now he is gone, and she is bereft.
The gate attendant interrupts my fantasy with the announcement that Flight 1483 is ready to leave, and if anyone has not boarded, it is now or never. I sigh, pick up my overnight bag, and walk to the gate. The bag is my only luggage. Anything that will not fit into a carry-on stays at home when I travel.
The plane is full. Even in first class my seat is the only one still unoccupied. It is on the aisle, and I wonder if that is only chance, or if my employers are somehow aware of my habits. I always take an aisle seat. I have canceled tickets and rescheduled trips when my original flight did not have an aisle seat open. I think it is only sensible. It is easier to get up to go to the bathroom, or to reach an emergency exit if something happens. There is nothing to see through the windows of a modern jet; and usually they want the blinds drawn anyway so people can watch whatever idiotic movie they are featuring. I shove my bag into the overhead compartment and settle into my seat. Close to half the passengers have taken advantage of the pre-flight offer of a drink. I suppose that is why some of them board early, to get a head start on the alcohol. The flight attendant comes by and offers me a drink as well. I turn him down. I have purchased a Seattle Times at the airport. I rummage through it until I find the crossword section. Then I pull out a ball point and go to work. It is another one of those innocent, half mindless activities that still offer some challenge to the brain cells.
The puzzle is a disappointment. I finish it before we are more than twenty minutes out of Sea-Tac. I glance at the headlines, but there is nothing new. Same grim stories from Iraq and Afghanistan. Someone has walked into one of those parties they call raves and killed half a dozen people in the Capitol Hill district of Seattle. He is from Montana, which catches my interest momentarily; but he comes from Whitefish, which is mostly filled these days with nuts from California, so he is not really a Montana boy. I fold the paper and tuck it into the seat pocket in front of me, and let my mind wander toward the coming job. If feels different, and I attribute that to the time pressure. I am not used to deadlines. I like having ample time to think, and plan, and pick just the right moment and location. That also gives me the opportunity to get to know my target and find out what makes him tick. For me, that is half the reward. This time there will be none of that. I will be lucky to hear Trego say three words. I assume that Gordini will pick Trego up, then go to wherever I am waiting, let me into the car, drive somewhere private while I do the job, then drop me off again. Then I will go home. Gordini will be in charge. I will just be a cog in the machine. In a way, given the little time available, that is good; but it also makes me uncomfortable. I do not like not having control of a job. Gordini may be efficient, or he may be an idiot. All plans can go wrong. When they are my own, I am already half way to correcting them. I always have a contingency plan. And I always have two or three ways out, just in case. This time I have no control over any of that. The plan will be whatever Gordini, or his manager, says it is. What if somebody fucks up? God knows, the Mob fucks up.
I shake the thought away and let my mind drift. Before long it is hovering around Katherine and her niece, and Edward Angwin. This is another situation where I may not have control. There, too, I may just be a cog in a machine, some weird construction, and I do not even know what all the parts are. It is too fuzzy. I do not like fuzzy when I think. I like clarity and certainty, or at least a good sense of the odds. Better not to think at all, especially when my watch tells me that we are barely two hours into the flight. I call the flight attendant over and order a Scotch with water. He brings me a tiny bottle of Justerini and Brooks, a glass of water and another empty glass. I pour the Scotch, add a tablespoon or so of water, and take a sip. I pull out the newspaper and glance over the comic section while I finish my drink. Then I push my seat back, close my eyes, and hope to sleep.
I do drift off, and then wake up with a start to an odd flashing of red. At first I think something is happening to the aircraft, but no one else notices the flash, and finally as I become more alert, I realize that it is deep inside my own head. It is a dark red, a dim light, somewhere far behind my eyes, and it does not illuminate anything. I blink several times and it goes away just as a subtle change in the jet’s attitude and sound tells me that it has begun its initial descent into St. Louis.
The airport, which used to be Lambert Field but has now added International to its name, is about eleven miles west of downtown St. Louis. The parking lot where I am to find my car is on the south edge of the airport, within easy walking distance. I take my time leaving the terminal, letting my body adjust to fresh air and a new time zone. The car is where it is supposed to be, and the key fits. It is a Toyota Camry, nice enough to park under a good hotel, and common enough not to attract attention. I open the glove compartment. It contains a cellular telephone and a black vinyl case. I open the case and find a Beretta pistol. It is a single-action semi-auto job in .25 caliber. The case also contains a silencer tube that is almost bigger than the gun. I do not care for silencers, but in this case I assume it may be desirable. I zip the case closed without touching the gun. If the time comes to use it, I will have gloves on. A card is taped to the back of the telephone. It tells me that the phone is loaded with thirty pre-paid minutes. Tucked away in the rear of the glove compartment is another kind of gun—a pick gun. It looks to be new and of good quality. I do not own one. They make picking a lock too easy, and when you use them, you lose whatever skills you had at the job. Then, when they do not work, and that happens fairly often, you are lost. I am generally a minimalist anyway. When I hunted with a bow, I never owned a compound. I had a Bear Kodiak recurve with a sixty-pound pull. My favorite deer rifle was a fifty-caliber Hawken muzzle loader. I molded my own bullets for that. I think of this as a virtue, although I suppose that it came from necessity. My father preached frequent sermons about making do with what you had, and he saw to it that what I had was damn little.
I leave the terminal lot and pay my way out of the toll gate. The charge is eleven dollars, which tells me the car has only been in the
lot since that morning. Then I am on the freeway, which takes me to downtown St. Louis and my hotel.
I am hungry, and I discover that I am within walking distance of the Ice House, which Trego owns. Out of curiosity, I go there as soon as I am unpacked. There is another restaurant across the street, with sidewalk tables. I cannot resist settling there for a while. I do not really expect to see Trego, but who knows? If he owns the place he probably likes to spend some time there, show off to his friends, play the lord of the manor. I take a table and a waiter appears almost immediately with a menu. I order a glass of red wine to start with, and tell the waiter I may want to eat in a while. I see a Post Dispatch on an empty table near me and pick it up. I have to smile as I realize that I must look like a scene from a bad spy movie, sitting at a table at an outdoor cafe, pretending to read a newspaper while I watch to see if my target shows up.
The front door of the Ice House opens and Trego appears. He stands, hands on hips, and surveys the street with an air of ownership. On the curb a kid in a green monkey suit throws him a salute and sprints to a parking lot next to the restaurant. A few moments later he returns with a large, midnight blue BMW sedan, and pulls up in front of Trego. He jumps out, goes to the other side, and opens a rear passenger door. Trego turns back toward the restaurant and says something over his shoulder as the door opens again and another man steps out. Everything about the second man says he is either a cop or a bodyguard. He stops and scans the street as Trego did, but with an air of vigilance, not ownership. Trego slides into the car, and the man steps to the curb and closes the passenger door. He looks around once more, then walks to the driver’s side of the car and gets in.
I watch as they drive away, and I can believe my luck after all, because it is bad. Bad luck is no stranger to me. That is why I try as hard as I can to avoid situations where I have to depend on luck instead of skill. If I were a poker player, I am sure I would mark the cards.
I have an impulse to walk back to my hotel, but I am still hungry, and doing without a meal will not solve anything. I order a dish of linguine and clam sauce. It is surprisingly good, and I eat it slowly, savoring the flavor. It helps me keep my mind off the two new things I have just learned.
The man who drove Trego away in his BMW is clearly his bodyguard. And that bodyguard is not Gordini.
Chapter 33
Back at the hotel I dig out the cell phone and call the number I have for Gordini. He answers on the first ring.
“You know who this is?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“I saw our friend. You weren’t with him.”
“Tell me. Day before yesterday I get a call from the security agency. They say I’m off the job. Just like that.”
“Did they say why?”
“No. Just don’t come in today and we’ll call you when we got another assignment.”
“Do you know anything about the new man?”
“Not a fucking thing.”
“This complicates my job.”
“No shit.” A pause, then, “You only got three days, too. They moved the thing up.”
“The thing?”
“You know. That business.”
It takes me a moment to realize that he means the grand jury, which tells me that this little surprise has jarred me harder than I realized.
“There’s going to be a delivery for you this evening,” Gordini says. “Check with the front desk after ten. It’ll be there by then.”
“What am I expecting?”
“Your friend lives in one of those neighborhoods with a fence around it. This will get you through the gate.”
“I don’t like conducting business at home.”
“Hey, you can do your business in church for all I care. Except he don’t go to church.” Gordini laughs at his own joke. “Anyway, headquarters says they need a completed contract in three days. How you do it is your problem. Don’t forget to check the front desk after ten.”
Gordini hangs up. I turn off the cell phone and throw it on a chair. The hotel has provided me with a small suite that includes a bar. I open the cabinet door in the bar and find an array of mixers and mini-bottles of liquor. I grab a bottle of Scotch, open it and pour it into a glass, then add a touch of water. I go back to the chair and pick up the cell phone. I have to fight an impulse to throw the damn thing into the television screen. I bite my lip and place the phone onto the small coffee table, then take a healthy swallow of the Scotch.
At ten o’clock I go downstairs to the front desk, where they give me a manila envelope with “SMITH, SUITE 402” printed on it in purple ink. I take it upstairs and tear it open. Inside is a magnetic key card, the kind you wave past a reader. A firing range I spend time at has a similar arrangement. You drive up to the large steel gate that guards the entrance to the range, wave the card within a couple of inches of a scanner, and the gate hauls itself up. Half a minute or so after you pass through, the gate closes again. There is also a note in the envelope. It tells me that the gate house at Trego’s community, which is called The Orchard, is manned from seven in the morning until ten at night. After that, the residents let themselves in with their key cards. The note adds that Trego, who apparently is a creature of habit, is always home by nine, and always gone by half past seven in the morning, when he drives his children to their school bus stop a quarter mile down the road from the gate.
I toss the note and key card onto the table, sit down, and finish my drink. A big part of me wants to say to hell with it and go back to Seattle. The Mob set this up and fucked it up, and now I am faced with what may be an unacceptable risk; and the risk is there no matter what I do. If I take on this mission impossible it could be a disaster. If I abort, the people who hired me will not be happy. I have never made them unhappy before, and I do not want to find out what they might do if I ever did. I feel a brief flush of anger and push it away. Anger is a distraction. This situation requires detachment and thought.
I sigh and stretch back in the chair. I realize that my shoulders and neck are tight, and that tells me I am even more tense than I realize. I set the alarm on my wristwatch for fifteen minutes, then close my eyes and start to breathe. In to a count of four. Hold. Out to a count of four. Hold. Then repeat, over and over again, until the watch beeps. It is a trick I learned years ago when I was active in martial arts, and it still works. Within a couple of minutes I can feel my body begin to settle and float. I imagine, with each exhalation, a puff of mist blowing out of my nostrils. Gradually my mind begins to catch up with my body. By the time the alarm goes off I am in a different place altogether.
I open my eyes and begin to consider the situation. I cannot just walk up to Trego on the street and pop him, no matter what that police officer told me years ago. I do not know this city. I would be like a rat in a maze.
My suite offers a courtesy laptop and high speed internet access. I wake the computer up, go on line, and look for The Orchard. I find a realtor’s map that shows me the location, a small cluster of seven homes at the end of a short lane that runs from something called Spanish Pond Road to the development, which is on the edge of a body of water called Spanish Lake. It lies about fifteen miles north of downtown St. Louis, near where the Missouri River sweeps in a giant curve just before it empties into the Mississippi. The web site also lists the amenities and covenants. It calls the development ideal for families, then notes that one of the covenants forbids parking motor homes anywhere within the community, and another forbids pets of any kind. I wonder what kind of family would find that ideal. I go to Google Earth and find a good aerial view taken on a clear day so that the shadows are sharp. The development is completely fenced, even at the back, where the property abuts on the lake, although there is what appears to be another gate on that side that gives access to a small pier. There will be no easy approach to Trego’s house. Everything is exposed. Despite the community’s name, there look to be almost no trees except for occasional ornamentals in the yards. There does appear to be extensiv
e shrubbery along the fence, and the gate house is surrounded by what look like tall evergreens, maybe arbor vitaes. The places themselves are not secluded. All of the oversize houses appear to have been positioned for a “look at me” effect. There are seven of them. The drive from the gate house forms a large circle, with the houses arranged in an arc along it. Trego’s address is number four. I assume it lies at the center of the arc, directly facing the gate.
I shake my head and turn off the computer. I will have to drive to The Orchard tomorrow and take a closer look. I get up and grab another bottle of Scotch. I pour it into the glass and down it, not bothering with water this time. I undress and slide into the bed, then start on the breathing again and am quickly asleep.
Sometime in the night I awake with a start. I am breathing hard and have a vague memory of a dream, or a fragment of a dream. I am somewhere, I do not know where, and dark, red light is glowing on the other side of a door, except that the opening is too big to be a door, and towers over me. More like a gate, I think. Maybe a gate to Hell? I laugh at my morbid imagination. I decide this job is getting to me more than I want to admit. But as I drift back to sleep, I do not feel anxiety, but a vague sense of sadness.
Chapter 34
In the morning I drive north and find Spanish Pond Road. There are several turnoffs and I pass the access road to The Orchards without realizing it. There is no sign. On the second try I get it. At the intersection there is a small neighborhood park and picnic area. I make a note of it as a landmark to remember. After a couple of curves I see the gate house ahead. I was right about the landscaping. The fence on both sides of the gate is hedged for privacy, and the gate house is framed by tall arbor vitaes. The building has a flat roof with a wide extension on the gate side and a security camera perches at the edge. A window opens toward the driveway A guard sits inside the building, reading a magazine. At the edge of the pavement there is a small column with a rectangular box at the top. I assume that is the scanner for the key card I was given. As I pull up to the gate the guard puts his magazine down, but not before I have the chance to see that it is a copy of Penthouse. What a job, I think, sitting in a little room all day, waiting for visitors and passing the time with fantasies about big-breasted women.