The Time to Kill

by Mason Cross

  We’d talked on the way about where to eat, then decided it would be fun to stay in and cook. Carol wasn’t much of a homebody. This was her first day off in three weeks, and she apologized that she wouldn’t have much in the cupboard. We picked up some supplies at the Italian grocery store on the corner and took everything up to her place.

  Her apartment was small but neat. You could tell a lot about the occupant with a cursory glance: It was a place to sleep and occasionally relax, but it didn’t feel quite lived in. The only real personal effects were a large bookcase taking up one wall of the living room and a television in the bedroom. I recognized the spare, utilitarian ethic from my own place and wondered for a second if this was another reason we were unconsciously drawn to each other. As though to prove the point, she picked up a remote control from the coffee table, pressed a couple of buttons, and a Sam Cooke song started up from hidden speakers somewhere. “Wonderful World.” My favorite soul singer, and something else we had in common without knowing. Chemistry is a funny thing, just like Drakakis had said.

  “I like to put on music when I come in. More relaxing than just turning on the news, you know what I mean?”

  I nodded at the other door leading off the living room.

  “Kitchen in there?”

  She nodded and then looked at the bag of groceries. “Yeah, but just put them down here.”

  I did as she asked, and all of a sudden she was in my arms, her right hand on my cheek, pulling me in for a kiss. When we broke for air a minute later, I smiled.

  “I thought you were hungry.”

  “There’s more than one way to be hungry,” she said playfully.

  We kissed again, breaking earlier this time as she grabbed my hands in hers and tugged me back toward the hallway, quickening her steps as we fell into the bedroom. We tumbled onto the bed, her pulling my shirt out from my belt and fumbling with the buttons as we kissed some more. She pulled her T-shirt over her head before putting her arms around me again.

  A patter on the window distracted us for a second as the rain started up out of nowhere. I looked back at her, wondering if this was a good idea when so much was still in question. She seemed to sense my hesitation and nodded.

  We kissed again.

  19

  SEATTLE

  I had been alert for the possibility of Bryant making a run for it when we got outside the diner, but he played along, resigned to the new itinerary. There was nowhere to run, not really. He knew it as well as I did. He had already proved he wasn’t the type of person who could disappear without a trace. Now he was without resources, friends, or even the chance of a payoff. He would last a week on the run, tops. All he could do was delay his arrest, and sacrifice the chance to cut a deal with Stafford that might keep him out of jail.

  “So do you have the plane tickets already?” he asked as we got into a cab headed for Sea-Tac.

  I shook my head. “I always buy them at the airport.”

  “More expensive that way.”

  “In some ways.”

  The journey passed in silence for a couple of minutes as the cabbie negotiated the surface streets and turned onto the on-ramp for the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

  “Should be a smooth trip this time of day, fellas,” he called back as we merged into southbound traffic. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

  The mention of time reminded me that I had really expected to hear from Coop by now. I made up my mind to call him right after we bought the tickets.

  “So I guess we’re gonna be traveling companions for the next few hours,” Bryant said after a minute, settling into the seat and seeming to relax for the first time since I’d seen him.

  “Looks that way.”

  “It doesn’t have to be awkward, does it?”

  I looked over at Bryant. His demeanor surprised me. He seemed to have accepted the reversal of his fortunes with good grace and was content to sit back and enjoy the ride. I didn’t know if he was putting up a front, either for my or for his own benefit, but I had to admit I kind of admired his attitude. It made me think I’d made the right choice offering a deal to Jasmine Bryant, and to him.

  “Not on my account.”

  “I guess you do this a lot, huh?”

  I thought about it. “‘This,’ tends to be different on every job. But yeah, I find people. It’s what I do for a living.”

  “You’re an expert, then. So how’d I do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How close did I get to getting away clean?”

  “From me?” I asked. “No offense, but not very. As soon as I knew where you were headed and that you hadn’t made the sale yet, I knew I could get you.”

  “And how did you find that out?”

  “Trade secret. Let’s just say everybody makes mistakes.”

  He shrugged and looked out at the cars coming the other way on the other side of the barrier.

  “Great. I wanted to make the sale last night. Kelner put me off. Said it would be better to let things cool down a little.”

  I didn’t say what I was thinking: that Kelner had been playing it safe; waiting to see if Bryant was going to get caught. And he had been right to do so.

  He shook his head at his bad luck. “I could have been long gone.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. I knew better than most that it’s more difficult to truly disappear than people realize. If the sale had gone through before I had tracked Bryant to Seattle, it would have made things a little more difficult to me—not to mention a lot more difficult for Kelner—but I would have found him sooner or later. And besides, he had already left enough of a trail to lead me to his prospective buyer. In that sense, Bryant’s loss was Kelner’s gain. Since the deal hadn’t gone through, there was nothing concrete to tie him to any of this.

  I was grateful to be thinking about the work, about something that was largely under my control. The traffic on the highway started to bunch up a little at the exit for Sea-Tac. Bryant was still staring out of the window, watching a 737 take off, headed out over Puget Sound. I knew he was wishing he were on that plane, and not the one we were about to catch.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked quietly, so as to be sure the driver would not overhear.

  Bryant turned, and I saw a flash of embarrassment in his eyes that I had caught him gazing at the plane and guessed what he was thinking about.

  “Did Stafford pay you extra to provide counseling? Why do you think I did it? For the money. Same reason you took this job. What’s the difference?”

  Money isn’t the whole story for me, and I doubted it was for him, either. I shrugged. “I guess one difference is, I knew what I was getting into.”

  He stared back at me for a moment and then turned back to watch the airport buildings as they passed. “You know what, I’ve changed my mind. Let’s skip the small talk.”

  20

  The driver let us out at the drop-off lane in front of departures. I paid him and grabbed Bryant’s laptop case from the seat between us. He didn’t object. As we passed through the doors into the terminal, he looked at the case and realized it was the only item of baggage I was carrying. He spoke to me for the first time since the cab.

  “You travel light, huh?”

  I had left my stuff at the hotel. Retrieving it before we flew back to California would have meant a delay I didn’t feel I could afford. With a bird in the hand, I decided I could afford to replace the clothes and the travel toiletries, and the laptop was clean. I wasn’t just thinking about not giving Bryant more time to change his mind about cooperating. I was starting to get more than a little concerned that I hadn’t had an e-mail from Coop yet. I knew he would be busy, but I had expected to have heard something from him by now, even if it was just to tell me he hadn’t received any more e-mails with photographs of unidentified dead bodies. That made me think of something I had forgotten to ask Bryant.

  “I take it you have ID?” I asked.

  He patted his coat pocket. “Driver�
��s license and passport, right here. Be prepared, huh?”

  He looked so rueful that I almost wanted to apologize for catching him. I reminded myself that he had brought this misfortune entirely on himself, not caring about the fact he might bankrupt his boss and put his coworkers out of a job.

  He shook his head. “I thought I was being so smart driving up here. Staying off the grid. Flying is too traceable these days, you know? Not that it matters now, I guess.”

  Bryant couldn’t know that he was starting to make me nervous. He was right. Flying was too damn traceable. Right now my priority was to get Bryant back to Stafford, get paid, and get clear. I had been reasonably relaxed about how much time I had the night before. Now I wasn’t so sure. A two-hour flight to California would probably be okay. After that, I would heed Bryant’s advice and get the hell off the grid. I knew where I had to go, and I realized now I would have to do it the long way.

  I told Bryant I had to make a call and we found a solitary phone booth, tucked away in a corner beside the restrooms like a forgotten heirloom. He raised an eyebrow, obviously surprised I wasn’t using a cell phone, but said nothing. He stood a couple of feet away from the booth as I picked the handset up. I hadn’t used a pay phone in a while, but probably not as long as most people. Pay phones still have their uses. One of these days they’ll rip out the last one and put it in a museum, and there will no longer be any such thing as a truly anonymous call.

  Given that my phone was at the bottom of Lake Washington, it was helpful that I have a good memory for numbers. My first call was to Coop’s cell. It went directly to voice mail. No personalized message, just the operator’s default request to leave a message or call back later. I hung up before the message ended. The low-level anxiety I had been feeling had increased. The next call was to a number I hadn’t memorized, but hadn’t had to: It was the direct dial on the business card Stafford had given me the day before.

  “Why the hell is your phone switched off?” was the first thing he said.

  “It’s been giving me problems,” I said, before cutting to the chase. I told him I had made some progress and that there was a very good chance I could get the MeTime software back to him, its secrets intact. The hook baited, I laid out my suggestion. Bryant and I would return to Moonola with the software. Stafford could confirm no more copies were in existence, and in return for a detailed and signed statement from Bryant, Stafford would agree not to press charges. His response was immediate.

  “Not a chance. He’s going to jail; that was the deal.”

  “The deal was I do whatever I need to do to find your guy,” I reminded him. “I couldn’t have gotten this far without making certain assurances to certain people, and I can’t go back on that now. If you’re willing to compromise a little on this, you get everything you want. No harm, no foul.”

  Stafford was quiet, thinking it over.

  “The other option is easy. I return the fee and maybe Bryant sends you the software back by mail. Or maybe he doesn’t. This is a good deal, Stafford.”

  His reply sounded like it came from between gritted teeth. “How soon can you be here?”

  “This evening. Say, five o’clock at your office?”

  “All right, Blake,” he said. “I guess it’ll have to do.”

  I hung up and looked at Bryant, who had caught enough of my end of the conversation to know whom I’d been speaking to.

  “He went for it?”

  “Another satisfied customer,” I said. “Just about.”

  There was a nearby ATM, and I withdrew another five hundred dollars for the tickets. The blond attendant on the United tickets desk gave us a glassy smile as we approached and asked us how she could help us. I asked for two tickets on flight 468—the next plane to San Francisco International. She looked down and tapped rapidly on the keyboard in front of her. She checked the screen, and her fixed smile took on a sympathetic cast. She inclined her head sadly.

  “I’m afraid we only have seats in business left on that—”

  “Business is fine,” I said.

  “Might as well go out in style,” Bryant said.

  All of a sudden, I was on edge. I don’t like flying at the best of times. It’s the only type of travel where you have no option but to go on record: You have to provide your name and use photographic ID. Like Bryant had just said—too damn traceable. But I needed to get him back to California and get moving. It would take only a couple of hours by air; and by the time anyone wanted to check up on it, all they would have would be San Fran as a starting point of where to look. The alternative was to drive, which would take most of a day.

  The attendant hit some more keys and turned to face us again, the smile dialed back up to full wattage. “That’ll be six hundred and seventy-two eighteen including tax. May I take your credit card please, sir?”

  “Can I pay cash?”

  Back to sympathetic. “We no longer accept cash, I’m afraid.”

  I sighed. This was a recent innovation at the larger airports, designed to create a faster and more efficient airport experience for customers, or something like that. But I knew I was leaving a trail anyway, so one more bread crumb wouldn’t make it any worse. I handed over the Amex card I keep in my wallet as a last resort.

  “Thank you, Mr. …” She paused as she read the name on the card. “Blake. And I’ll need photographic identification for you and your traveling companion, too.”

  We handed over our driver’s licenses, and she deftly arranged the credit card and the DLs on the desk in front of the keyboard like a croupier dealing a hand. Two hours, I reminded myself as she started to tap our details into the system. Just two hours.

  And then the attendant’s demeanor changed absolutely. In the course of our conversation she had modified her smile as appropriate to the information she was giving us, but suddenly the bulletproof customer-service facade had vanished like fine mist on a summer’s morning. She was reading something on the screen she was not used to seeing, and she was frowning. I felt a thousand needlepoints dance up and down the length of my spine as her eyes moved away from the screen and back to us. She remembered to smile only at the last moment, but her attempt was brittle, fake in a very different way from before.

  “I apologize. We’re having some problems with the system. Do you mind waiting here while I contact my manager?”

  You idiot, I cursed myself. So much for two hours.

  “Actually, I’ll come back. We’ll go get a coffee.” I held out my hand for the cards. The attendant didn’t move. Bryant was looking at me, a bemused expression on his face—so there was a technical glitch, so what?

  “I need to keep your identification until … until the technical issue can be resolved. If you could please just wait here a moment, I’m sure it won’t take long.”

  There was no point wasting any more time. I grabbed Bryant’s arm and started walking away.

  “What’s wrong? She said it would only take a minute.”

  I could hear the attendant calling after us, her Excuse me’s gaining in volume and urgency. People standing in line at the other ticket desks were starting to turn and stare at us.

  “We’re getting out of here,” I said. “Now.”

  “But you said … What do you mean we’re getting out of here? Why?”

  “Because I’m on the No Fly list, and that’s very bad news.”

  21

  It was bad news for more than just the obvious reason.

  Appearing on the No Fly list doesn’t exactly make you a VIP in and of itself—there were about six thousand names on the list last I heard, and it was growing every year. So in terms of notoriety, it’s not quite the same as hitting the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted. But it’s not a good sign. You don’t get on the list by jumping bail, or committing a run-of-the-mill crime, which was how I knew it was my name and not Bryant’s that had set off the alarm bells.

  It means that you’ve made it through a number of filters of persons of interest and have been desi
gnated as a live risk: someone who should not be allowed to board an aircraft. That my name was on the list meant that they were more serious about getting me than I’d appreciated. It meant somebody had pulled strings with the FBI. If I know anything about the feds, it’s that they’re not exactly ultra-compliant, no-questions-asked types. So not only was Winterlong on my trail, but they wanted me bad: bad enough to create some ripples. Right about now, someone was receiving a phone call to let them know that someone by the name of Carter Blake, answering my description, had just tried to buy a plane ticket at Sea-Tac. The only question now was, how close were they? Did I have time to get Bryant back to San Francisco by alternative means, or should I just cut my losses and go?

  I glanced around as we walked. The terminal was a high space bounded by sixty-foot-high windows. There was a raised mezzanine level accessed by stairs and escalators and a food court and stores beneath. There were lots of people crowded around, waiting for their gates to be announced, saying their goodbyes to friends and relations. I decided that heading immediately for the front entrance would just make us stand out more. Instead, I made for the busier area around the stores at a quick walk. Bryant was keeping pace with me. That made me realize that he really did understand his best chance was to stick with me. If he had decided to stay at the ticket desk, there would have been nothing I could have done about it.

  “Blake, what’s going on? I thought I was the master criminal here.”

  I ignored him. I glanced behind me and saw two burly security guys in white shirts and navy chinos approaching the United desk. The woman was pointing in our direction. Fortunately, we were already obscured by the crowd. I hoped there was another way out through the food court.

  “Seriously, tell me what’s going on, or you can forget me going any further. I’m not getting mixed up in some terrorist thing.”

  A lady with white hair and pink-tinted glasses gave a sharp intake of breath at the mention of the T-word as we passed.