I found one, dropped the quarters into the slot, dialed Kelly’s number, and held the sticky receiver an inch from my ear. My eyes remained fixed on the station house down the street. It was probably because I was still rattled, but I felt certain this wasn’t over. I had to find her and get out of town, fast.
Chapter 9
SUNLIGHT AND SUNBURNED tourists filled the airport. Kelly had picked me up and we checked out of our hotel. We returned our rental car and made it to our terminal with fifteen minutes to spare. We were on the same flight out of town.
“Boarding group two,” the gate agent announced.
We merged into the crush of travelers. I looked down the Jetway, glad to put some distance between us and whatever those cops were up to, though it had cost us the last day we had together on this trip.
I relaxed some as I handed our boarding passes to the gate agent. The machine returned a red light. He examined the screen.
“We’re good with an exit row,” I said.
“That’s not it. Could I see your IDs?”
“Sorry?”
“Your IDs. I have to double-check your date of birth. Sometimes we get false positives.”
“We showed it at Security.”
“Please, sir. We don’t want a scene.”
“It’s all right, Tom,” Kelly said, trying to calm me down. I swallowed, then leaned over and pulled my wallet from my bag.
She handed her license over first. The agent held it, then took mine. He checked the computer and conferred with the other person working at the gate. Her eyes went wide. A few travelers behind us grumbled about the holdup.
The gate agent fidgeted with his tie. “Could you step to the side for a moment,” he asked.
“What’s wrong?”
“Please move to the side.”
We stepped out of line.
“Away from the gate, sir,” the man said. He held his arms tight against his body, his hands balled into fists.
A manager walked over and picked up the phone. She saw me looking, and she covered her mouth and whispered into the handset. I watched the boarding groups disappear, one by one, down the Jetway. A few stragglers jogged toward us.
“We can’t miss this flight,” I said. When I turned, I saw a police officer doing his best to keep up with a young TSA agent heading toward us.
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to fly today,” the woman said. She had waited until she had backup.
“What’s the problem?”
“Perhaps you should talk to these men.”
“What’s going on?”
The TSA agent held her palms up toward me. “It’s a security precaution, sir. We’re going to have to ask you to leave the sterile area.”
“You’re kidding,” Kelly said.
They moved closer, flanking us. “We would be happy to explain the procedures, but I’m afraid we need to relocate you outside security.”
Maybe I wouldn’t make it through today without snapping after all. “We paid for our tickets. We’re boarding that plane,” I said, and I picked up my bag.
The cop’s mouth tightened to an asterisk. His nostrils flared. Then his hand went for the Taser hanging off his belt.
Kelly put her hand on my chest. I laughed wearily, and we started walking back to the security checkpoint.
I spent the next two hours in a cubicle in a hot back office filled with the sound of jet engines, talking in circles with the TSA agent. There is no such thing as a no-fly list, I was told. Dozens of different agency and law-enforcement watch lists get dumped together by the Terrorist Screening Center. The DHS enforces it, but they say they have nothing to do with it. No, you can’t know if you’re actually on it. That’s classified. And no, you can’t find out which agency has blackballed you.
The woman gave me half a dozen forms and said something about the interagency compliance-redress memorandum of understanding. She told me my name probably just matched that of someone on the list, in which case there was no point in appealing the decision, since I wasn’t on the list at all.
“So I can fly?”
The agent looked at me like I was thick. “Of course not.”
Kelly had been sitting quietly, but I could see her shoulders tense up. She stood and approached the woman. She was about to tear into her. I laid my hand on her arm. “Our problem isn’t with the TSA,” I said. She looked from me to the agent and then back to me, and relented.
We brought our luggage to the taxi line.
“It’s the police from before, isn’t it?” Kelly asked.
I had told her about the questioning and how they had let me go once they verified where I’d been last night. And we looked up the news about the armored-truck robbery. No wonder they had been so on edge.
“They must have flagged my name. The stuff Cruz rattled off at me—terrorism—it was crazy. I’ll get it sorted out.”
She looked at me for a moment. She had every right to bolt. She probably should have. I could see the suspicion in her eyes, that evaluating gaze.
She leaned over and kissed my forehead, then took a close look at the bandage they’d placed over the cut there. She shook her head and bit her lower lip lightly, looking ready to kick someone’s ass. There was something deeply attractive about that.
“You want to go back to the Coronado?” I asked.
“It was a little Mayberry. Maybe someplace new.”
“La Jolla?”
“What’s that place near the cove? La Valencia?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Let’s give that a shot. Tom? Does that sound good?”
My attention was fixed on the short-term parking lot. “Do you recognize that car?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“I think he was ahead of us the whole way to the airport.”
“He was following us from ahead?” She put her hand on my arm. “Babe, I think this is getting to you.”
Our cab rolled up. “Maybe,” I said, and gave the driver the address.
I called on the way, using Kelly’s phone, and made a reservation. When we got there, I was still so out of it I nearly crashed into a man at the main entrance. The hotel was a 1920s throwback set on Prospect Street, painted pink. The dining room was framed in palms with French doors opening onto a terrace and panoramic views of the ocean.
I took my wallet out and was about to get in line for the front desk when I saw a waiter thread through the tables carrying a loaded tray. The ache in my stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten anything all day. “You want to grab some food first?” I asked Kelly.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m starving. Then we can figure out the flights.”
We parked our bags at the side of the room. The tables were all full, so the hostess seated us at the bar. I handed Kelly the wine list. “Go nuts,” I said. We might as well enjoy ourselves.
She picked out a bottle and we ordered appetizers.
“You are staying at the hotel?” the bartender asked. I told him we were as he opened the bottle and poured us two glasses. I raised one to Kelly. “There’s no one I’d rather be stuck with.”
She clinked mine and smiled. “So you’re stuck with me, hmm?”
I laughed and we drank. Kelly put her hand over mine.
“What was the room number?” the bartender asked.
“We haven’t checked in yet,” I said.
“Okay. Can I have a card for the tab, then?”
I lifted my wallet. The bartender swiped it at his terminal, then pressed his lips together. “Hmm…didn’t go through,” he said. I took out my bank card. No luck.
Kelly took her wallet out of her purse. “Try this one.” I protested, but she handed the card over.
The bartender swiped again.
“No. I’m afraid not.”
We went around and around, four or five cards between us. Nothing worked.
“Do you have any cash?” Kelly asked. I opened my wallet. As we’d left the last place, the Hotel
del Coronado, half a dozen captains, bellhops, and stewards materialized. “No. I tipped it all out.”
“I spent my last forty on the cab.”
“There must be some kind of travel freeze on our cards.”
“Let me check with the manager,” the bartender said.
A man with dark hair slicked back came over and listened as we explained the situation. He eyed us up for a moment. I wondered if I looked like a guy who had been in jail half the day.
“Do you have some ID?” the manager asked. The politeness was still there, but behind it was a new wariness. “We can send you a bill,” he said.
My license was loose in my pocket. As I fished it out, the pink slip from the police station fell to the floor. The manager picked it up and glanced at it as he handed it to me.
The goodwill disappeared. He eyed our open bottle of wine, our glasses three-quarters full. Then he looked up, shook his head, and mouthed No. I turned to see a confused waiter standing ten feet behind us holding our food. Kelly watched the appetizers with longing as the waiter turned around and headed back to the kitchen. The bartender took the bottle of wine off the bar.
“I can send a bill for the bottle of wine to your home address.”
“And we have a reservation for tonight,” I said.
“How many nights were you hoping to stay?”
“It depends.”
“I am sorry, sir, but without a valid form of payment, that won’t be possible.”
I looked around the room, an odd mix of bridge ladies and Arab and Mexican moneymen. My issue wasn’t with this guy. I was looking for a fight only because I was hungry and pissed off. It was Cruz I wanted to throttle.
I signed a bill he printed up. We picked up our bags and started walking. I heard the bartender say something about us not looking the type.
Prospect Street was lousy with tourists. We turned downhill, toward the water and the setting sun and, I realized a few minutes later, the smell of grilled onions coming from a food truck. There was a music event in the park overlooking the cliffs and the cove. We were starving, broke, and stuck without a place to stay. This was a great opportunity for a blowup, but Kelly just rolled with it. We watched the sun go down, which lifted the mood for a moment.
“Should we call that agent? Cruz?” she asked. “This is obviously a mistake.”
I scanned the street for someone following us but saw nothing strange among the palms and luxury cars.
“No. It’s not.”
“Then what the hell’s going on?”
“They put a scare into us, set us loose, cut us off from all support, and trapped us here to see what we would do, who we would contact, where we would go.”
“What are you looking for?”
“They’re probably watching us right now.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know. But they think we’re part of something. We’re bait.”
“Tom, what aren’t you telling me? I need to know—” Kelly put a hand to her stomach. “You know what? Save it,” she said. “I’m getting a little shaky. I’ve got to eat something and then we can talk.”
“We look decent,” I said, surveying the streets above us. “There are happy hours. Corporate events. We could crash.”
She appraised me for a moment. Kelly was big on eye contact, on fixing you with those beautiful greens while she thought about what you had said and prepared to speak her mind. I had done nothing wrong, but this was still somehow my fault. And everything she had seen suggested I was some kind of criminal suspect. I squirmed, felt like a bug pinned through the middle in a glass case. Maybe it was too much. We were both hungry. My stomach felt full of acid from sitting empty for so long. If she wanted to lose it on me, that was understandable.
“I saw a Samsung thing at the Grande Colonial. Just follow my lead.”
“Perfect.”
She followed my gaze to a takeout container perched on the edge of a trash can—the remains of a club sandwich.
“Don’t even.”
“I wasn’t.” Though the thought had crossed my mind. A seagull swooped down on the Styrofoam.
“You’re a good guy, Tom Byrne,” she said, and kissed me. “We’ll figure this out.”
We started walking up a steep hill toward Prospect Street. The path followed the bluffs. Below us, seals played in the caves, and pelicans flew by in a low chevron.
A car passed.
“Did you see that?”
“What?”
“That Taurus. It’s following us.”
I scanned the sidewalks behind us. The wind shifted. The reek of guano from the cliffs became overpowering. We continued up the hill. The smell only strengthened. It was like a cloud of chemicals.
“Tom. I’ve got to get out of here.”
We marched fifty feet toward Prospect, and I suddenly doubled back.
Kelly turned. “Where—” I pulled her into the stairwell of a parking garage.
“He’s coming,” I whispered.
“Who…” she started to say, then lowered her voice. “What are you going to do?”
I was going to grab whoever was after me and shake the living shit out of him. It probably wouldn’t help matters, but I didn’t care. I wanted answers.
A faint shadow stretched toward us, cast by a man standing in front of a yellow streetlight. Then I noticed ours; we were lit by a flood at the top of the stairwell. The man must have seen our shadow too. He turned around, fled back up the hill. I stepped out, sprinted after him, and saw him go down Prospect.
Kelly ran behind me. I pursued him as far as the Valencia, but he had disappeared. I scanned the streets—no sign of him—and then ducked back into the hotel’s lobby. I remembered the man who had bumped into me when I came through those doors the first time. He was all muscle; it had been like walking into a wall of granite. It was no accident.
I looked around the lobby: same bartender; same old ladies through the French doors, but I didn’t see my man. As Kelly entered behind me, the manager spotted us. He arranged his shirt cuffs with two sharp tugs and marched our way.
“Do you have Cruz’s business card?” I asked Kelly. “Enough is enough.”
I took her cell phone and called Cruz’s number. An operator answered.
“Tell him Thomas Byrne is calling. He’ll want to take it.”
He put me on hold. The manager approached Kelly. “Did your credit card start working?” he asked.
“No. We…we thought we left something behind.”
He looked me over nervously. I was breathing fast through my nose like a bull. I’m sure I looked like a maniac, but I’d had it. Anger overpowered me as soon as Cruz picked up the phone.
“Listen. Don’t think you can coerce me with this Gestapo bullshit. I told you everything I know. You flag me at the airports. You freeze my accounts. Enjoy it while you can. Because I’m going to destroy you. Wrongful arrest and imprisonment; I’m going to have your badge and make a belt buckle out of it. And tell these assholes following me that I don’t—”
“Who’s following you?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
There was some muffled cross talk as he checked with someone. “Give me the phone,” I heard a voice say.
“Thomas. My name is George Hall. I’m an army major and I have been helping with this investigation.”
“Gray suit?”
“What? Yes…that was me. You are in danger. Where are you? Can you see the men? Are they armed?”
“I chased one and he ran. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Get him as far away from innocent targets as possible,” said a voice behind Hall’s.
I could see the manager talking to Kelly, pointing to the door, telling her to get out.
“I’ll explain, Byrne,” Hall said. “But first, where are you?”
“La Jolla. La Valencia hotel.”
“Stay there. We’re going to send some people.”
“I’ve been through that already. No
, thanks.”
“We’re not bringing you in. It’s for your protection. Trust me. Whatever you do, do not approach or confront these guys. They are no joke, all right?”
In the background, someone asked Hall about the bomb squad.
“Stay by this phone.” He hung up.
The manager had overheard my tirade, and it hadn’t helped matters. I spent a minute or two trying to calm him down. He disappeared and came back ten minutes later with two security guards.
“I’m calling the police,” he said.
Sirens filled the street.
“They’re already here,” I said, and Kelly and I walked outside.
A black Chevy Tahoe parked in front of the hotel and a black Suburban pulled up behind it. Patrol cars cut across the two nearest intersections, lights flashing, and blocked them off. Traffic came to a halt.
Cruz stepped out of the Tahoe and started giving commands to the cops. They spread out, scanning the roofs of buildings and the streets.
The man in the gray suit, Hall, walked up to me. “You all right?” he asked.
“Never better,” I said. “Though it sounds like I have a decent risk of being detonated.”
“It could be worse, much worse. I’m sorry about the confusion and the incident back at the station. The local cops can get a little worked up when we come by. They like to show off. What did the man who was following you look like?”
“I’m not helping you. I have no idea what you idiots landed me in the middle of.” I had blood on my hands, but that was from years ago. It had nothing to do with whatever these cops were so afraid of right now.
“Tall?” Hall asked. “Well-built but lean, like a backpacker? Bearded, or maybe recently shaved, pale around here?” He indicated his chin.
That was the man who had crashed into me. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”
“During the truck ambush last night, a shipment related to national security was stolen. Based on military records, we thought you might possibly have links to the men who took it. And you were in the area. Those men may now be following you.”
Cold Barrel Zero Page 5