Flight of the Fox

by Gray Basnight

  “I am sorry, Mr. Samuels,” she said, “but you know that I am a guest in this country, and…”

  “And if the police knew you were helping druggies from Connecticut, they’d deport you? Is that what you mean?”

  The pause in her flat affect was longer this time.

  “I don’t know what you talk about.”

  “Well allow me to help you, Svetlana. Let me tell you what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact that the kids from Westport, and Southport, and Bridgeport, and Eastport, and all the other ports are safe at Madison Park Euro Lodge because you make them safe. How much do you charge them? Do you actually supply their dope, Svetlana? Are you their dealer? Or just their den-momma and watchdog?”

  “I had to tell them it was you,” she said. “I am on temporary visa. I do not want to be deported. I need to stay in America, and I want to—”

  “Svetlana, as soon as one of those kids gets busted, I’m going to see to it that they finger you. Fugitive or not, I can still make that happen. And when those kids get around to telling their full stories, you will do prison time. Only after you spend a decade in maximum lockup with the other ladies will you have to worry about deportation. Those ladies on the cellblock and exercise yard will be fun for you Svetlana.”

  “What do you want, Mr. Samuels?”

  “Video.”

  “Video?”

  “Yes, video. From the lobby security camera. Of the older man. No uniform. He’s tall. Receding hairline. Has a thick scar on his upper lip.”

  “Yes, I saw that one,” she said. “But I did not speak with him.”

  “So you know who I’m talking about? He’s on your security video?”

  “Yes. He stood in the reception area. So I have some video of that one.”

  “Well that’s good, Svetlana. Because if that—one—as you call him, suspected that you had spoken to me again, including this phone call right now, your life would be in serious danger. Do not doubt me on that, Svetlana.”

  “All right. I do not doubt.”

  “Good. So, I ask you again, do you think they’re listening now?”

  Another pause.

  “No.”

  “Svetlana, I’m not fooling around here. That man is a bad man. If you had any business with him, or if he suspected you of having any contact with me, other than checking me in last night, you will be in danger. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes. I hear.”

  “And if you are lying to me, frankly, it would be best for you to head straight to JFK and get on the next flight to Chechnya.”

  “Mr. Samuels, I did not talk to him. He took no interest in me. But I heard one man refer to him as FBI. And I heard him being called by his name. They called him Mr. McCanliss and Special Agent McCanliss.”

  “McCanliss. Okay, that’s good Svetlana. Now here’s the deal. You download a chunk of video that includes his image and send it to me. You do that, and I’ll let you carry on with your job that allows you to buy a healthy breakfast every day for your children in Chechnya.”

  The pause was brief.

  “Where do you want me to send the video?”

  “The Argonaut Hotel in Times Square. Put the disc in an envelope, address it to Tom Samuels, and send it by way of bicycle messenger. Now. Have it dropped off at the front desk at The Argonaut Hotel.”

  “I can e-mail it to you.”

  “No. I need the old-fashioned DVD, Svetlana.”

  “Very well.”

  “Right now, Svetlana. Don’t wait.”

  “I will not wait. I am starting now, while we talk.”

  He could hear the sound of her typing and mouse-clicking.

  “Bicycle messenger. Front desk at The Argonaut. Got it?”

  “Sure. I have got that,” she said. After a moment, she said, “Mr. Samuels?”

  “Yes?”

  “My offer of wine…it…well, if you are still…”

  “Thanks, Svetlana. Maybe some other time.”

  After he hung up, he considered calling his daughter. She’d know by now that he was in trouble and would be desperately worried. But it would have to wait. Any call to her conch house on Key West or to her office at Boca Chica Key, which housed the Naval Air Station, would not only be traced instantly, but would risk drawing her into this mess. That was something to be avoided at all costs.

  No matter what happens to me, I need to keep my daughter and granddaughter out of this—what do I call it? A surrealistic mess? A clusterfuck? A surrealistic clusterfuck? Yeah, that’s what it is.

  He departed the hotel and crossed the intersection. He bought coffee from a sidewalk vendor and stood at the nearest subway entrance to observe the hotel’s front door. After twenty minutes, a bicycle messenger arrived, parked, locked his bike to a pole, and entered the lobby with his shoulder bag. One minute later, he emerged, unlocked his bike, mounted up and rode off.

  Teagarden let another hour go by. Nothing more happened. That meant Svetlana believed him. She had done what he told her.

  He picked up the package being held for Tom Samuels. When the receptionist hesitated, he mentioned that he’d been a resident at The Argonaut the previous week for the math conference at the Marriott. That, and a twenty-dollar bill got the package handed over without further question.

  What was the name Svetlana overheard in the commotion of her small lobby? Was it McCanliss? That’s it. What kind of a name was McCanliss? It didn’t seem like a killer’s name. He had no idea what a killer’s name sounded like. Moriarty, maybe. Mr. Hyde, Ahab, or Adolf. But McCanliss? It sounded so—not evil.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  He took two NSAID tablets.

  Needing a place to work, and confident now that it was temporarily safe, Teagarden returned to The Argonaut lobby and settled onto one of the musty sofas that reeked from decades of stale cigarette smoke. In the middle of the new Times Square Theatre District, it really was the hotel that time forgot.

  I wish my knee-joints could be the bones that time forgot.

  He selected a spot angled toward the back wall near an emergency fire exit. From there, visitors could not see his face, but he could still observe the center of the room. He inserted the DVD into the CD/DVD-ROM slot of his laptop and cued it up. The video was only seventeen seconds long. But that was enough. Uniformed police and firefighters milled about the small reception area at Madison Park Euro Lodge, as did the man with the pronounced lip scar.

  And there was someone else in the video. Directly behind the man Svetlana called McCanliss, was the big, flat-screen TV. At that moment, the all-news station was again airing the wanted poster of him—Sam Teagarden. It was the same side-by-side images: him with facial hair, and photoshopped rendering of him without it. The screen was directly behind the same man he saw in the boxy truck with big tires as he departed Bethel on his way to Walmart in a van with the Hasidim.

  He was in his early sixties, tall, perhaps six-three. His lower jaw was sharply recessed, probably because of an overbite. The lip scar was thick and wide, indicating an imperfect surgical correction of what must have been an extreme cleft palate. The hairline was receding, but he had plenty of hair elsewhere on his head, though it was so closely cut that he looked balder than he really was.

  Teagarden copied the video to his hard drive and watched it again.

  He saw, too, that McCanliss had a strong body and long, powerful arms. He wore casual clothing, including some sort of over shirt on top of a basic pullover. The over shirt likely covered a firearm cradled on his waist or in an armpit.

  Teagarden moved to his next task. He clicked the SolarRay browser, logged onto Orange Circle as Dan Jones, and typed the password “yellow4submarine.”

  Once again, he couldn’t resist. He opened the string between Dan and his family in Missouri.

  From: sandyjones@orangecircle.com

  To: danjones@orangecircle.com

  Dear Dan,

  If
you won’t call, please keep e-mailing so at least we will know that you are alive.

  We are desperately worried. And you are not dishonest. Why do you imply that you are?

  Your mom, of course, doesn’t understand, but your daughter misses and needs you. I lie and tell her you are working in that city.

  Please come home.

  Love,

  Your wife, Sandy.

  From: danjones@orangecircle.com

  To: sandyjones@orangecircle.com

  I like it here. The people are honest, even the scumbags are honest because they don’t pretend to be anything else, unlike me.

  From: sandyjones@orangecircle.com

  To: danjones@orangecircle.com

  Dear Dan,

  We are all so worried. What are you doing in that New York City. I am very worried for your safety.

  There are too many Muslims there. It’s a bad place….

  He stopped reading when he came to the message he’d seen already.

  Wow, Dan. You’re having a major mid-lifer. My heart goes out to you, my friend. I hope you’re not headed for the George Washington Bridge or the Empire State Building.

  Then he remembered that a barrier was installed long ago on the Empire State’s eighty-sixth floor observatory. He’d have to climb it before making the big leap and Dan didn’t sound like the type for that. But there was no such barrier on the bridge.

  He logged off Dan’s e-mail and logged onto deepdecipher.com where he entered his first partial decryption of the pages. After he submitted it, the screen turned into a series of moving arrows indicating that the website was processing the request.

  Teagarden hadn’t realized it, but the lobby was actually a cocktail lounge. When the waiter approached, he ordered lunch: a pint of beer and a sandwich. Thankfully, few others were about. At this time of day, all tourists were off visiting the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, Bloomingdale’s and Strawberry Fields. He knew about the hotel because it was known to students for being clean and less pricey. He had first stayed there as a precocious nineteen-year-old undergraduate senior from Chapel Hill looking to see more of America and the wider world. In those days, Times Square wasn’t for the suburban minded. With Cynthia the previous week, she remarked how easy it was to imagine wanted fugitives using The Argonaut as a getaway. Little did she know how close to home that statement would hit just a week later.

  Their encounter in room 306 that night brought a surge of new experiences, emotional and carnal. She was his first sexual partner since losing his wife, and his first in nearly three decades with anyone other than his wife. It could have been horribly awkward. For most, it probably would have been, yet it wasn’t because of her intelligence and kindness. She somehow understood the corners of the box he was living in, the fragile sadness that haunted his waking each morning. That awareness allowed their love making to alternate between tenderness and a passion of the flesh that united and finally enveloped them in comforting embrace.

  When the sandwich and beer arrived, he removed the cotton balls from inside his cheeks. The website finished while he was eating. He clicked on the results. The web program filled-in only the letter I.

  That was the best he was going to get from a general public decoding website. As every Scrabble player knows, the vowels are easy. It’s what comes after the vowels where things get dicey.

  He turned off the laptop and stared at the numbers, seeing a couple of possibilities worth playing with. He opened the paper napkin that came with his sandwich and bore the words The Argonaut, a Taste of Old New York. Jotting down letters, he worked on the puzzle the old-fashioned way, transcribing the numbers by hand just as he’d done in the park opposite Madison Park Euro Lodge before he let slip the dogs of chaos.

  This time, he wrote in the letter possibilities, turning the number 84 into the letter T, and number 41 into the letter S.

  Starting with the last letter in the first line, it seemed reasonable to turn D A 99 I N J 15 N E into DAY IN JUNE.

  That allowed him to enter the letters Y and U throughout the message.

  D-E-A-R-J-O-H-N

  O-N-T-H-I-S-66-O-94-E-66-Y-D-A-Y-I-N-J-U-N-E-Y-O-U 14-E-34-A-N-R-E-6-R-U-I-T-41-E-N-T-16-O-R-O-96-E-R-A-T-I-O-N-O-94-E-R-E-A-S-Y-I-66-66-E-34-A-66-A-S-14-A-T-H-T-U-14-34-I-N-U-S-E--24-T-O-14-E-I-66-O-94-E-Y-O-U-6-A-T

  60/20/6010

  That opened up a line of intuitive, logical guesses. The letter P seemed to work for 96, B for 14, and L for 66.

  He spaced the words and letters for legibility.

  He didn’t bother with the other numbers. No need to spin the wheel to buy another vowel. He was ready to solve the puzzle, including punctuation.

  Dear John,

  On this lovely day in June, you began recruitment for operation over-easy, illegal as bathtub gin used to be.

  I love you,

  CAT

  60/20/6010

  Not bad for a solo working lunch.

  Now he only needed to determine the date at the end. Better yet, knowing this one passage would make decoding other entries on that same page much easier. Unfortunately, it didn’t explain the purpose of Operation Over Easy, or identify the author. The person who wrote this file was someone named, code-named, or nicknamed “CAT.” And he still faced the task of analyzing all other pages, each of them encrypted in their own unique code. A simple one-number-for-one-letter substitution required time, something he didn’t have a lot of. The job would go much quicker if he could nail the original translation source.

  Still, he’d made moderate progress, which he celebrated with a long gulp of beer.

  Chapter Thirty

  Being a teacher, his professorial instincts kicked in.

  It was time for a test. Nothing major. Not a mid-term, just a pop-quiz to see if everyone was doing their homework. In this case, his test needed to pose a little pushback on Mr. Harry McCanliss. In return, he might learn if his personality assessment of the bad man with the ugly lip scar was correct.

  Teagarden withdrew his cellphone and turned it on for the first time since Sunday morning in the woods when he spoke with Sheriff Klumm while staring bleary-eyed at the opossum. The device buzzed to life.

  First he logged onto his e-mail, ignoring every entry except one in his spam folder.

  To: Sam Teagarden

  From: movieinthemail.com

  Received your complaint about an unplayable version of “Dogfight Girl.”

  A replacement is now in the mail.

  Please let us know if there is anything further we can do.

  Well, the return address wasn’t from movieinthemail.com. But neither was it directly from her personal e-mail address. She’d sent it from some unrecognizable third-party address at the Naval air station: naskeywestpublicrelations@usnavy.mil.

  Good.

  That meant she received the previous day’s message and fully understood. He logged off e-mail and tapped to open an incoming text message.

  From: Harry’s Heating and A/C Repair

  found your crossword puzzle in progress.

  nice work w/dogs.

  No surprise there. He figured the sociopath McCanliss would again taunt him about escaping a third time.

  He clicked reply and typed.

  finished that partic. puzzle.

  will leave proof f/u’r enjoyment at present location.

  me? i’m gonna tell the world about operation over easy.

  ha-ha

  He tapped send. Half-a-minute later, he walked through The Argonaut’s main revolving door as the response arrived.

  From: Harry’s Heating and A/C Repair

  u r fun.

  i like this.

  i like u 2.

  Gee, thanks, Harry. I’m just wild about you, too.

  There it was again. Imperious macho. He sensed it had to be this man’s Achilles heel. The problem was in figuring how to capitalize on the knowledge.

  He turned off the phone and r
eturned the moist cotton balls to the inside of his cheeks. He crossed Eighth Avenue where he partially descended the steps at the subway entrance, leaving only his head above sidewalk level. From that safe distance, he again kept watch on the hotel like a fox poking from the burrow’s entrance to monitor for trouble.

  A few seconds later, when trouble arrived, it wasn’t a matter of who, but—what. And this time, there was no mistaking it.

  It buzzed west from Times Square. Unlike the mini-choppers that attacked him in his yard, this drone had a traditional fixed-wing design. Unable to hover, it overflew the hotel entrance and climbed sharply to gain altitude so it could turn and make a second approach. Teagarden descended a few more steps. On the machine’s return buzz, he saw with a quick glance from deeper in his concrete burrow that it was an older, cheaper model. The 360-degree bottom-mounted camera spun frantically, scanning every face on the street. Accustomed to the routine patrol of traffic drones, drivers and pedestrians took little notice. Teagarden turned away from the camera as it passed overhead.

  After two low-level flyovers of The Argonaut’s front door, it continued east. He guessed the remote-control pilot would have it circle the surrounding blocks to scan the more heavily populated Times Square. It was natural to assume he was hiding in that bustling tourist crowd, instead of one block west on Eighth Avenue.

  He counted the minutes. The drone had arrived in less than two. The first NYPD patrol car screeched to a halt less than a minute after the drone and was followed almost immediately by two more. It took the truck a little longer, about three minutes more to get to the site in Midtown. He could see the driver where he double-parked at the corner and stepped outside.

  It was McCanliss—the same man he’d seen in Bethel and sitting in traffic at Union Square. The same man in the video sent by Svetlana.

  And he’d been correct about the height. During his walk from the truck to the hotel entrance, Teagarden saw that Harry was about six-three and built like a boxer with long, draping arms, giving him a reach that would rival Muhammad Ali.