Mr. Sandman: A Thrilling Novel

by Lyle Howard

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  Lance slid over and held open the blanket for her. “I’m sorry. Was something I said bothering you?”

  Julie worked her way beneath the covers next to him. “You haven’t said anything yet, but I think it’s something you might say that bothers me more.”

  Julie was staring up at the stucco ceiling, trying to pick out odd shapes in the texture, while Lance, lying on his side, studied her soft red hair and the curve of her earlobe. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  Julie swatted his finger away from her ear. “Then tell me what you do know.”

  Lance murmured in her ear. “Well, I know I’m not going to get anymore sleep until we hash this out, right?”

  Julie crossed her arms on her bare chest. “Right.”

  “So, how far back do you want me to go?”

  “As far as you need to.”

  “You know whatever I say can’t go out of this room.”

  “I think I understand that.”

  Lance tipped her head to face him. “Are you sure you want to know? If you want me to, I’ll get dressed and we can just go on with our lives the way we have been.”

  “Except you won’t be here.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Julie turned her eyes back to the ceiling. “You need to find the answers to questions only you can ask, Lance. This city, this house, me … we’re all just a pit stop for you. If it wasn’t now, it would be later, but either way, you’ d have to leave … to make some sense out of your life.”

  Lance brushed away a delicate wisp of red hair from her face. “But I’m happy here.”

  “That’s just it; you shouldn’t be, until you know who you really are.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re special. I’ve seen you rush into burning buildings when other men would have given up. I’ve seen you singlehandedly lift a concrete column off of a fireman’s legs when the floor above him collapsed.”

  “You saw that? I had almost forgotten.”

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  “So you’re saying, you think I’ve become complacent?”

  “I’m saying you’re meant for more, Lance. You’ll never learn the answers you need to know by sitting behind a desk and investigating fires for Broward County. You need to go after those answers, so that you can put your past behind you, and start helping others where you’re needed the most.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “I’m sure you’ll know when the time is right.”

  “But, if I hand myself over to them, they’ll probably turn me into some kind of a lab rat.”

  Julie sat up against the headboard and pulled the blanket over her breasts. “Who said anything about turning yourself in?”

  Lance propped himself up next to her. “I thought that’s what you were driving at.”

  Julie shook her head. “You might have been born with extra strength and extra speed, but you’re a few horns short of a party when it comes to common sense.” Lance frowned. “You said last night that somebody knows about you now.”

  Lance nodded. “From all the press exposure. I can just feel it.”

  “Feel it?” Julie asked suspiciously. “Okay, then … I’d be willing to bet that if Mohammed doesn’t go to the moun­tain…”

  “Then you think they’ll be coming after me … here?”

  Julie held her hand over her forehead like a mind reader trying to ascertain the contents of a sealed envelope. “If your intuition is everything you claim it is.”

  “I can’t run anymore.”

  “You already said that.”

  “I just can’t.”

  “So what’s your first move?”

  Lance shrugged. “A shower … then maybe breakfast.”

  “You’re not going to tell me anymore about yourself, are you?”

  Lance rubbed the back of his hand against Julie’s freckled cheek. “I’m really sorry, Jules, but if I tell you everything I know, which I assure you isn’t much, I might be endangering you, too. I think the less you know, the better off you’ll be.”

  Julie pouted, but she understood. “This decision of yours does not make me a happy camper.”

  Lance threw the covers off himself and stood up beside the bed. As he began his early morning stretching routine, Julie was aware of a fluidity of motion in his muscles that she had never been aware of before. She crawled across the bed and knelt on the edge, watching him perform one-armed push-ups on the floor. “What can I do to help? It’s Saturday morning and the forecast is calling for rain. You’re not going to sit around and wait here like a sitting duck, are you?”

  Lance rolled over onto his back and began doing leg lifts. “I thought you were going to visit Harry Kaplan in the hospital today?” he puffed between lifts.

  Julie leaned over the edge of the bed and looked down at Lance’s face. He was on his fortieth lift and his face showed no sign of any strain. “You don’t expect me to carry on business as usual, do you? Not after all of this?”

  Lance hit fifty reps, and began doing bent-knee sit-ups. “I’m sorry I mentioned anything. You’re shouldn’t be in­volved in any of this.”

  “Like hell I shouldn’t.”

  Lance let his legs fall flat after fifteen sit-ups. “You don’t know these people the way I do. My memories of them are very vivid.”

  Julie reached out her hand. “I’ll always be here for you.”

  Lance grabbed it by the wrist and sat up. “That’s what my mother said.”

  “Your mother?”

  Lance rubbed the back of his neck. “Forget it.”

  “You’ve never mentioned your mother to me before.”

  Lance stood up and removed his underwear. “I’m going in for a shower.”

  Julie watched him as he moved around the foot of the bed. “Tell me about her.”

  Lance opened the top dresser drawer and began rummag­ing through Julie’s underthings. Surely she must have kept a pair of his shorts lying around somewhere. He found them. Navy blue, bleach stained, but wearable. “Nothing to tell you.”

  Julie scrambled across the disheveled bed on her knees to follow him around the room. “She was a special lady, huh?”

  “More.”

  “Then why don’t you want to talk about her?”

  “I’m going in for a shower,” Lance said, while walking into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.

  Julie looked at her reflection in the mirror over the dresser and gave herself a thumbs-up. She was making progress.

  Quickly, she threw on a pair of cutoff denim shorts and a New York Mets t-shirt. There was only one thing that would keep Lance talking now… his favorite breakfast.

  Thirty minutes later, they were sitting across the dining room table from each other, feasting on eggs Benedict. Across the living room, a throw rug had been placed down to cover the blood-stained carpeting. “We really need to have that cleaned up,” Lance said.

  Julie turned to inspect the floor. “I think I want to replace all of the carpeting. Something bright and cheery; maybe something in a shade of teal. What do you think?”

  Lance agreed, and then, staring past the plywood boards that partially protected the broken front window, he observed an ordinary-looking white van parked across the street. It was too ordinary, and it hadn’t been there the night before. “We need to get rid of that plywood, too,” he calmly remarked.

  Julie frowned at the makeshift covering. “You’re right. The plywood goes first.”

  Lance stabbed at the Canadian bacon with his fork. The alarm in his head was ringing like a bell in a firehouse. “What time are visiting hours?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “That’s good.” Julie put her napkin down on the table beside her glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. His favorite breakfast wasn’t working. Lance’s mind was a thousand miles away. “Earth to Lance … earth to Lance!”

  Lance looked up vacuously. “
Did you say something to me?”

  “The Martians have just invaded New Jersey, but nobody cares.”

  Lance prodded the yolk of his egg with the tip of his knife and watched as the yellow liquid bled over the edge of the English muffin. “That’s good.”

  “Lance!”

  “Hmmm?”

  She reached across the table and shook his arm. “What is the color of the sky on your planet, Lance? Are you in a coma or what?”

  “Something’s not right,” he murmured.

  Julie felt her throat go dry. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know … I can feel it.” Instinctively, her voice lowered. “Are you sure?”

  Lance slowly lifted his head to lock eyes with her and, if his steely gaze had been as solid as a sword, it would have cut her in two. “Trust me.”

  “What do you want me…” The sudden ringing of the phone startled her. She stared at it on the wall like it was some repulsive insect she was seeing for the first time. She turned to Lance, who calmly blinked his perceptive eyes at her. “Answer it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You’ve got to answer it.”

  The phone was on its sixth ring, and it didn’t appear to be stopping. “I don’t want to … I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be.”

  Julie’s hands were shaking as she pushed herself away from the table. “Why?”

  “It’s a friend.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It always is.”

  “Let me speak to Cutter.”

  Julie covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Manny Garcia.” Lance didn’t look up, but instead continued to shift his focus between his eggs and the van outside.

  Julie tried to sound nonchalant. “Lance? Lance isn’t here, Lieutenant.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Julie. I want to talk to him now!”

  Julie covered the mouthpiece again and looked to Lance for some sort of divine wisdom. He motioned for her to hand the phone to him. Julie stretched the cord to its full length, presenting the phone to Lance.

  “What can I do for you, Manny?”

  Julie leaned against the wall, watching and waiting, unaware that she had begun to bite her fingernails.

  “Um-humm,” Lance responded. Julie watched Lance take in the conversation, gesturing little, expressing less.

  “So they really think it might hit us?” Julie looked puzzled. “Forecasters have been wrong before, Manny.”

  Maybe this conversation didn’t have anything to do with Lance, Julie thought. Maybe her irrational fear and silly apprehension was all for nothing.

  “But what if it veers north or west or south, and com­pletely misses us? I don’t have to tell you that its happened before … many times.”

  Julie watched Lance lean casually back in his chair. “Do you want Julie, too? Oh, I see … me alone.”

  Julie twisted a small section of the phone cord nervously around one of her fingers.

  Lance had his hands covering his eyes and was nodding his head. “The Homestead Air Force Base? Yeah, I guess that would be an appropriate place for the operations center.”

  There followed another tense two minutes that Lance never said a word, but the awful silence seemed unendingly to Julie.

  “I’m sorry, but tomorrow afternoon is the best I can do….” This little charade was going to be played by Lance’s ground rules, or it wasn’t going to be played at all. “…Oth­erwise, get someone else.”

  Lance mockingly stuck his tongue out of his mouth as he pulled the phone from his ear so Julie could hear her lieuten­ant hollering. She wondered how Lance could think any of this was funny.

  “I don’t have to be reminded that the hurricane won’t wait on me, Manny. Right … hangar twelve,” Lance rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m writing it down, hangar twelve … okay, I’ve got it.”

  Lance handed the phone back to Julie and wiggled his eyebrows like a little boy who had just been let in on a secret.

  “Well?”

  Lance set his chair back on all four legs and pushed his uneaten food away from him. Then he wiggled his index finger for Julie to move closer so he could whisper to her. “Poor Manny, he’s only a small fish in a big pond, just following orders. I don’t even think he knew what he was doing.”

  “A set-up?”

  Lance quickly covered her mouth to stifle her. “A big time set-up,” he muttered.

  “Homestead Air Force Base?” she mumbled.

  “Could you think of a better spot?” Then he raised his voice to its normal level. “Your lieutenant says they’re using the base to coordinate evacuation and relief efforts in case the hurricane should hit South Florida. They’re planning on combining all Dade and Broward County rescue agencies into one large response unit, and they want me there.”

  Julie still whispered. “It sounds legitimate to me.”

  Lance would never forget that it was a pair of Air Force officers who had chased him and his mother around the Washington National Airport ten years earlier. “It sure does, doesn’t it?” he answered in a hushed tone.

  Julie sat down across the table from him and barely mouthed the words. “What can I do to help?”

  Lance reached out with both of his hands and Julie cradled them in her palms. The volume of his voice was once again back to normal. “I’m still planning on going with you to the hospital today.”

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “Of course I am!” Lance motioned to her that he wanted a pad and pen. When Julie returned from the kitchen with the requested items, Lance began writing: “Everything must appear normal, you never know who might be watching or listening.”

  Then he continued to speak in a calm, disinterested tone. “We’ll take your car. Pull it into the garage so I can load those old clothes into the trunk that we wanted to donate to the hospital. While you’re doing that, I’ll get my hat.”

  Julie looked perplexed, but quickly caught on. “Oh yeah, the old clothes.” Then she scribbled on the pad, “Really?”

  Lance nodded, yes. Julie couldn’t help but feel uneasy as she started writing again. “What is waiting in hangar twelve?”

  Lance shrugged, and wrote a single word in all capital letters: “ANSWERS.”

  TWENTY NINE

  An intense young surveillance expert named Cliff Travers, pressed the earpiece into his ear and held it there, firmly.

  “What are they doing now?” his partner, Harvey Mason, asked. Mason, a middle-aged veteran of countless stakeouts, was sitting next to Travers in the van’s lone passenger seat.

  Travers motioned for Mason to quiet down. “Aim the directional mike toward the garage … I can’t hear anything in the house.”

  Mason reached down to a small notched dial between the two seats and methodically began turning the knob to the right. Outside the van, the conventional-looking radio an­tenna spun a few imperceptible degrees to the east.

  “That’s it … stop right there,” Travers instructed.

  Mason was becoming impatient. He leaned his elbow on the partially opened passenger’s window and wiped some perspiration off his forehead with a handkerchief. “I can’t believe how muggy it is today. I don’t know why we don’t just go in there and get this clown Cutter. A few more minutes in this sauna and I’ll be able to grow rice under my armpits.”

  Travers gave the seasoned agent a dirty look. “Pipe down, I’m trying to listen!”

  Mason reached down by his feet and picked up his camera again. Now there was only one car in front of the house since the red-haired woman had come out and pulled the second one into the garage. Did they want another picture of a single car just sitting in the driveway? Why take a chance? He squeezed off another shot through the front windshield. “What’s going on, Travers? What are they doing?”

  Travers was concentrating hard to hear everything being said inside. Something, possibly a radio or some other elec­tronic device nearby, was causing some slight interference. Sometimes,
even the metal studs used in these newer houses could wreak havoc with the reception too. “He’s giving the woman directions.”

  Mason set the camera down on his lap. “Directions? Why would he be giving her directions?”

  “Shh … I’m trying to listen….”

  What a way to spend a Saturday morning, Mason thought to himself. Instead of being on the fourth hole at Doral, he was cooped up in this sweat box, taking pictures of parked cars.

  Travers pressed on his earpiece. “I think … they’re leav­ing.”

  Mason nodded his head in gratitude. “Finally, some action. Is the bug working?”

  Travers looked over at Mason. “Yeah, I can hear every­thing in the car. You want to drive?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’ve got to listen.”

  “You can’t listen and drive at the same time?”

  Travers frowned. “Come on … switch seats with me.”

  Mason quickly jumped out of the van and ran around to the driver’s side, while Travers crawled over into the passenger’s seat. “Look,” Travers said, pointing to the rising garage door, “don’t lose them, but don’t get too close either.”

  Mason started the van. “Kid, I was tailing people when you were still feeding on your mama’s tit. So don’t tell me how to do my job.”

  The green Ford Bronco pulled out of the driveway and headed east on Eaglebrook Drive. Mason waited until the wagon was half a block ahead of them before he put the van into gear. “Are they both in there?” he asked, squinting into the early morning sun. “Those windows are tinted awfully dark.”

  Travers nodded. “Yeah, they’re both in there, I can hear Cutter talking.”

  Mason was careful to maintain his distance, letting other cars pull in front of him and then passing again. “Where do you think they’re headed?”

  Travers shrugged. “She’s driving … I think I heard her mention going to a hospital.”

  “I think you should call this in.”

  Travers agreed; he dialed the private number on his scrambled line. Mason eavesdropped on his partner’s con­versation as he turned the van north onto a busy thoroughfare called Flamingo Road.

  “They’ve been on the move for about ten minutes now,” Travers reported. “No sign of evasion … they’re maintaining the posted speed limits … they don’t appear to be in any hurry.”