Flight of the Fox

by Gray Basnight

  “Very good,” she said. “I think we’re close.”

  “Try to read what we’ve got so far.”

  “Okay. It says, ‘Dear John, today your infiltration of the something society resulted in the arrest of a founding somebody. You something, something. You are such…’ Ah! ‘…you are such a nasty—BITCH.’ Sam, that’s it. It says, ‘you are such a nasty bitch.’ And it’s signed, ‘I love you, CAT.’ Who calls someone a bitch, then professes their love?”

  “I hate to say it, but married people do that.”

  “Come to think of it, I said that to Ernest just last month,” she said. “But then he deserved it. He really can be a bitch, though he’s a sweet man most of the time.”

  Having finished dinner, he leaned over and kissed her. They put their crossword-jumble aside and embraced.

  During the night, they made love twice, once on the small porch where they could observe the surface of the lake, and once in the boathouse daybed. She opened the sliding-glass door so they could hear the sounds of the night wind on the lake while her forty-five-year-old body loved his forty-nine-year-old body with kindness and passion. He reciprocated with gratitude and passion.

  She departed in the pre-dawn darkness for her chalet on the opposite side of the lake.

  “Not bad for a guy about to become a half-century old,” she said, leaning down to kiss him goodbye.

  “Mmm,” he groaned. “More courtroom action today?”

  “Always,” she said. “People trying to get even are my bread and butter.” She kissed him again. “I’ll see you tonight. And keep the curtains drawn. The one thing we know for certain is that your hound dogs have the resources to chase down every trail.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Wednesday, July 24, 2019

  It was total happenstance.

  Teagarden didn’t intend to check her rented chalet across the lake that morning. He’d naturally monitor her bathroom window later in the evening, after she arrived home from work. He was making coffee and staring at the sunrise when he saw, or thought he saw, distant movement in the chalet window. He picked up the binoculars and focused on the bathroom window.

  And there it was. The bright blue pot holding a stout green cactus was perched on the windowsill. On the other side of the chalet was a bumper-to-bumper jam of black, unmarked cars and several New Jersey State Police patrol cars. Because of the lack of space, two vehicles were parked in the circular driveway of the mansion next door. Near them was Harry’s boxy truck with big tires and lettering that read “Harry’s Heating and A/C Repair.” Teagarden’s brain immediately landed on the only possible explanation.

  Bruce! It had to be Bruce Kasarian, his colleague at Columbia.

  He again blamed himself for not thinking of it earlier. Of course. They’d grilled everyone who knew him at Columbia. When questioning his fellow math professor, they learned that he had set up the introduction to Cynthia. It could only be Kasarian who would drag her into the mess.

  Oh, Bruce, please say you didn’t tell them we slept together at The Argonaut Hotel. I should never have told you that, but you were such a relentless snoop.

  Whether Kasarian gave up all details or not, it was a natural that once they learned about her, they’d show up unannounced. She must have excused herself to use the bathroom to put the cactus in the window. It was a good thing she left the boathouse when she did. Otherwise, they’d want to know where she’d been and why she was just getting home at that hour.

  What am I supposed to do now? There aren’t any crowded city parks or subway stations in affluent, suburban New Jersey.

  He pulled the drapes tight on the sliding glass doors so no one could see him spying on the chalet in case they were training their own binoculars on the lake and its surroundings.

  He quickly tried to fit the pieces together. They probably had a search warrant for her rented chalet, and if they knew about her they certainly knew about her estranged husband, which meant they had a warrant for the big colonial next door. He went to the rear window of the boathouse to check the road behind the colonial.

  It was not a welcome sight.

  There were unmarked fed cars and more state troopers vying for parking on the narrow road. But there was something else. It was another truck. The same model, the same efficient-looking boxy design with big tires.

  Now there are two of them?

  He trained the binoculars on the truck: Durgan’s Lawn & Garden Service, 555-GARDENS.

  He went back to the drapes covering the sliding glass door and turned the field glasses on the other truck: Harry’s Heating and A/C Repair, 555-FURNACE.

  It appeared these dark-ops people were hard pressed for inventive cover. Then again, he guessed the truck façades must be effective because who would suspect them of being anything other than what they claim.

  There was nowhere to run. He’d be shot in three seconds if he made a break for woods or water. Seeing no exterior opportunity, he took the only interior option that came to mind. He cleaned all evidence of boathouse habitation. The job went quickly because there wasn’t much. He stuffed his sports coat and laptop into the backpack and straightened the daybed. He poured out the coffee, wiped down the small counter and tightly bagged the garbage from last night’s dinner.

  If there were dogs, the garbage would be a problem. They’d smell it from outside the boathouse. But they’d smell him and her and their lovemaking too. So what difference did some garbage make?

  Peeking through a narrow crack in the shades, he could see them inside the colonial. They milled about in the glass-enclosed porch where he’d stood with Cynthia the night before last while she watered her husband’s plants. He guessed they were impressed by the extravagance, the built-in bureau, skylight, huge TV, and particularly the elevator.

  Two minutes later, state troopers and plain-clothed cops were in the backyard inspecting the sloping yard and boat launch at the end of the narrow pier. They too had binoculars, which they used to scan the lake shore in all directions. The only good news was that he didn’t see any dogs. If they brought dogs, his minutes were numbered.

  He could hear the troopers yelling as they moved about the adjacent property.

  “What about the boat down there?”

  “Just a rowboat and a canoe. Empty.”

  “The lake?”

  “We’re working it.”

  “There’s an island over there.”

  “We’re working it.”

  “The woods?”

  “We’re working that too.”

  Teagarden stepped closer to the side window. Uniformed police were filtering back to the house. Plainclothes men hung at the lake’s edge, eyeing the water with interest and suspicion. One of them waved a signal to another. A few sailboats on the lake were big enough to have lower berth compartments. He guessed they’d all be summoned to the shore for inspection before the police were satisfied.

  The vulnerability of his position was obvious. They’d naturally be drawn to the little building in the woods next to the big colonial. The boathouse probably wasn’t on their list of properties, and they probably didn’t have a search warrant because it wasn’t linked to the names of Cynthia or Ernest Blair. She sensed that was best. Now it didn’t matter. That quaint little building would naturally lure anyone in the crowd who knew how to see what they were looking at.

  Teagarden gave the backyard one final glimpse through the side window. And there he was.

  Standing right there.

  It’s him.

  McCanliss, the tenacious sociopath, tall, balding, with the long arms of an orangutan, and that grossly disfiguring lip scar, was standing in the middle of the sloping backyard. He looked like a statue. He wasn’t giving orders or participating in the search. Instead, he was staring at the boathouse. For a terrifying moment, Teagarden thought McCanliss was staring—directly at him.

  He backed away from the window shade. Though still sufferin
g the after-effects of two broken knees, he scaled the ladder to the storage loft with the alacrity of a gymnast, hauling his backpack and plastic garbage bag with him. He silently pulled up the narrow ladder, scooted from the loft’s edge, and crawled behind two large, corrugated storage boxes, bumping one as he went. The cardboard was so fragile with age that it burst a seam, sending out a flood of musty old magazines.

  But wait, McCanliss’s truck was on the other side of the lake near Cynthia’s rental. Yet he was here in Ernest Blair’s backyard. Maybe he got a lift in a patrol car because of the parking jam in the mansion’s circular drive. Or maybe it was something more strategic, like wanting the truck to be seen in one location, while he staked out another. Thinking about that possibility was interrupted by knuckles rapping three times on the yard-side door of the boathouse.

  Bam, bam, bam.

  Seconds later, the same loud rattling came against the sliding glass door on the lakeside.

  Bam, bam, bam.

  “Hello. Hello.”

  “Anything?” a second voice called from a distance.

  “Don’t seem to be,” came the response. “Locked up. Looks unoccupied.”

  “It’s not on the manifest. You think they want me to call in a warrant?”

  “The king shit feds will tell you if they want it. It’s their show. But they can’t search every house on the lake. If the psycho-punk who killed that kid is in this town, my money says he’s out there in one of those boats.”

  “Yeah, guess so. Trooper Sunderman is putting in the speedboat at the town launch. He’ll be all over the sailboats in a couple of minutes. And they’ll check the island. I bet the son of a bitch is on that island.”

  “Well, if he’s around here, he sure as hell ain’t got nowhere to hide. Besides Jersey troopers, we got county deputies from two states, Sparta cops, and a whole regiment of feds poking behind every bush.”

  “Yeah. It’s a big show, that’s for sure.”

  Teagarden figured he was listening to the voices of New Jersey State Troopers, and that McCanliss was a silent observer of the whole operation, just as he’d been at Madison Park Euro Lodge. After their brief inspection of the boathouse windows, they rejoined the main group and all voices faded to indistinct shouts and curses. He wondered if McCanliss was still standing in the sloping yard, still staring at the boathouse, still seeming to understand the importance of what he was seeing.

  Hours later, after all voices and hubbub concluded, Teagarden stayed where he was. For the balance of the day, he remained concealed in the loft behind a ladder, a plastic bag of garbage and two ancient, ruptured cardboard boxes. It was hot and cramped, but manageable. To pass the time, he read old magazine articles in the slanting light. He read about things he hadn’t studied since high school. Things like race riots, the Cold War, the space race, and Vietnam. When the articles weren’t of much interest, he flipped the pages, looking at the advertisements that seemed from another world. Many promised astonishing health benefits from smoking cigarettes. A woman was orgasmic over her new “heavy duty, electric powered, upright, vacuum cleaner with space age suction.” And a brand new 1957 Chevy Bel Air could be had for $1,850.

  It was late afternoon when an ad for a toy in a boy’s magazine from the mid-twentieth century allowed Teagarden to guess the basis for the master code of the entire Dear John File.

  Chapter Forty

  FBI/CIA Safe House, East 64th Street, New York City

  It was a crash pad for federal agents.

  The FBI safe house near the Central Park Zoo was not exclusive to the FBI. Field agents from the CIA, Secret Service, and NSA frequently passed through. There was even the occasional veteran from Interpol and Britain’s MI6. The cost of New York City hotels and the expense of maintaining a perpetual nationwide state of hyper-security required all agencies to pinch pennies wherever savings could be found.

  There was nothing special about it, except the address. East Sixty-Fourth Street just off Fifth Avenue is about as exclusive as it gets in New York City. The company apartment, as it was called, occupied the entire second floor of a former private mansion, converted to a sitting room, small kitchen, two baths, and six tiny bedrooms. The first floor was occupied by two privately owned apartments; the basement housed medical offices belonging to a dentist and a dermatologist.

  Office talk was discouraged in the apartment, so working agents walked around the block to discuss business. Many preferred to visit the nearby Central Park Zoo to compare notes and speak in confidence. “The seals don’t talk” as one expression put it. “Let’s go walk among the civilized” was another, which cynically placed caged animals on a higher moral ground than humans.

  The younger and shorter of the two FBI agents returned to his room after spending all day in Sparta Township. He’d expected to see his older colleague, but McCanliss wasn’t in his room or the common area. He’d departed Sparta Township that morning without sending a message to the DFC in Washington and without speaking to anyone at the scene, which was a blinking red-light violation of protocol. A call was placed to the office at the Javits Federal Building in lower Manhattan. McCanliss was a no-show there as well.

  Donnursk really didn’t want to speak to either of the two CIA men watching baseball in the main sitting room. He knew them to be sullen and arrogant. But he had no choice. They were lounging on the couch like bored lovers, their ankles overlapping on the ottoman, quart bottles of beer cradled between their thighs.

  “Gentlemen, anyone seen Harry McCanliss since morning?”

  One of them ignored him. The other gave a begrudging response without turning from the large, flat-screen TV.

  “Fuck no!” he barked.

  Well, that went about as well as he’d expected.

  Donnursk knocked on the door of Thomas Rose, another FBI agent in the DFC whose code name was Box Cutter. He was the company stud, the golden boy with Hollywood good looks, believed to be on the job principally because his cocksmanship put him there. Every office has one. Among this one’s romantic interests was Paula Trippler, chief FBI legal counsel, who had an office on the mysterious tenth floor of the main building in Washington. Because of her influence, or so it was believed, he was working the cushiest job in the DFC, a mission designed to force the bankruptcy and eventual shutdown of The New York Times.

  “Come in.”

  “Hey, Thomas, have you seen McCanliss since morning?”

  “Sorry, Durgan, I haven’t seen Ice Skater since earlier this week. But then I’ve been so busy I’ve spent very little time in the apartment.” He was reclining in the rumpled bed, smoking. A semi-naked woman sat on the opposite edge, her back to him. She’d already put on her panties, and was working bra straps around her shoulders as Rose spoke. “I’ve been racking up overtime. Maybe that’s another reason my gig is called Operation Killtime.” He reached to help his companion connect the strap between her shoulder blades.

  “Okay, thanks,” Donnursk said.

  The woman turned to glance at him before he closed the bedroom door. He recognized her as a frequent guest named Ursula. It was against the rules, but in her case, everyone looked the other way. She charged a hundred dollars per half-hour. That was her “company discount.”

  He went back to his own tiny room and closed the door. After opening his laptop and logging on, there came a knock.

  “Come in.”

  “Hi, Agent Donnursk.” It was Ursula. “How are you?”

  “Fine, Ursula.”

  “Would you like some company?” she asked.

  He closed his laptop.

  “Sure, Ursula, come on in.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  The Boathouse, Sparta Township, NJ

  It was a true eureka moment thanks to a chance discovery buried in a seventy-year-old boy’s magazine. The ad was for a toy decoder ring offered by a children’s radio show that ran from 1947 to 1953 called “Captain Tom Daggers.” He already had a sense th
at the code for the thirty-four pages was simple. Seeing that advertisement, he intuitively grasped exactly how simple.

  He was so absorbed with the discovery that he remained in the cramped loft. He worked all morning while half-a-dozen law enforcement agencies hunted for him in the nearby yards, on the lake and in the woods of the lake’s island. By midday, the noisy action was more nautical in nature with boat horns, loud engines that gunned through choppy lake waters, and distant protestations from boaters being ordered to “heave to.” By late afternoon it had completely ceased. There were no more men rapping at the doors or leaning to peek into the boathouse windows.

  That meant Cynthia had been right. Though curious, they had no way to connect the little building in the woods to her or her husband. Consequently, they did not seek a warrant.

  Bless you, Cynthia. You really sensed the safest path in a worst-case scenario.

  It grew miserably hot in the storage space, but he had no choice except to endure it. Using the large storage boxes to block the laptop’s illumination, he searched the internet to confirm his idea and found proof in seconds. The “Captain Tom Daggers” ring didn’t match any page. There were also decoder rings offered by a chocolate milk company, a popcorn-candy company and a dime novel series about Indian fighters, spies and secret agents. But it was a decoder ring offered by the UWHECO cereal company where Teagarden nailed it.

  It issued a new toy every year from 1899 through 1942. That’s when UWHECO, which stood for Union Wheat Company, was defeated by the competition, went bankrupt, folded and was never heard from again. Every January during their years in business, the back of UWHECO’s “Big Wheat Flakes” cereal box printed a cutout application to be filled-in and mailed to receive the toy “absolutely free.” Customers were urged to “collect them all” and to “hurry, while limited supplies last.” Beginning in January 1933, the back of the box warned, “don’t be left out, but don’t overdo it, only one per customer.”