by Susan Dunlap
Harry played the message four times. It was three in the morning now, four hours before this guy called back. Harry had no answer now and he’d have none at seven.
He dialed Ellen’s hotel in San Francisco, again.
Twenty-One
DEVON MALLOY STARED AT Harry Cooper’s phone number, ground into the notepad. It baited him. But Malloy did not reach for the receiver. Too soon to call again. He turned back to his computer screen and the game of Free Cell on it. Free Cell, no mindless solitaire, but a card game that challenged the intellect.
Play again? the computer beckoned. Malloy’s finger tapped the mouse. He yearned to slip into the closed arena of strategy in diamonds and spades. It would relax him. He moved the arrow to Yes. One game.
No! He clicked the mouse on No. He was too distracted to plan. He could not chance a game now, not and destroy his 100% win record. He turned away from the computer and stared out the window into the dark. Where the fuck was his shipment? Six million dollars of weaponry that would transform twenty smart, committed men into an invasion force, and it was idling somewhere on the rails like an extra caboose. Silvestri was scum, but who could have imagined he would get himself killed? And before he called with the specifics of the shipment!
Malloy chose the transfer spot in Richland. Half an hour before the train sidled through Richland Silvestri was to call him at a Richland number.
Now Silvestri was dead and Malloy had no idea what train his shipment was on, what name it was shipped under, what its contents were listed as, or when it would arrive at Richland grade. He did not have enough data to make his play. All he had was Harry Cooper’s number and now Harry Cooper’s addresses at home and at work.
He squinted out the window, trying to distinguish one shard of black from another. Dawn would not puff over the mountains in this part of Idaho for another two hours. He had told Cooper seven o’clock Central Time—5 A.M. Pacific Time. Malloy eyed his gray sweats. He could run half way across Coeur d’Alene and back by then. A week ago he would have, just to be seen out jogging just like it was a normal day and he was no more than he seemed, a young lawyer intent on keeping in shape, a guy who moved to Coeur for the lake and the good life. And if anyone noticed the dark circles under his gray eyes they might ascribe them to long hours over law books. No one would label them the result of years in the library, on the Web, driving all night to talk to a retired guard or a guy who drove a truck when the Feds were building Unit B at Hanford. What there was to know about the Hanford Nuclear Power site in Richland, Washington, Devon Malloy not only knew but had cross-referenced.
For years taking Hanford had been a pipe dream. He had assessed it the way he did the Free Cell layout before he moved a card. He kept looking for angles. Early on he had realized he was not likely to blast through the walls and walk into the reactor. But every chain has a weak link. He had read about every nuclear facility, then every secret biotech facility in the United States, in Russia, and as much as he could find on India, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, looking always for their weak link, one that might be duplicated at Hanford.
In his legal practice he took on government cases that got him security clearance. The clearance allowed him to check on shipments going in and out of Hanford. When he spotted the name Orel Jasson, a trucker from Coeur who had retired after delivering to Hanford for forty years, he had his man. For once luck had been with him. Jasson’s father had been on the building crew at B-Canyon in the Hanford Engineer Works, as the facility was called in the ’40s. It had taken Malloy months of beers and small talk with Jasson, but he had gleaned enough to layer onto what he knew and figure how to stroll inside. Now that the plant had stopped producing plutonium, security had gotten sloppy. They did not figure they were worthy of attack anymore when all they were doing was letting radioactive iodine seep into the ground turning the flies and rats hot. A few radioactive rats, they did not think that was important at all. Just like when their smokestacks spewed the killer iodine all those years ago.
Malloy took a deep breath. He had trained himself not to get caught up in that. Not now. Just like the beginning of a Free Cell game; this was the time for planning. He picked up the faded Kodak of the little boy, too weak to smile for the camera and let it remind him of his purpose.
Staying in the background pulling the strings was his way. But when he ran into Jay Silvestri called as a witness on a civil trial in Boise, everything changed. Silvestri had been trolling for a buyer, spreading a fine fine net, watching every word as if every salt shaker and ballpoint pen were bugged.
It was a different story three weeks later at the gun show. Silvestri must have assumed Malloy would be taking out armories. All Silvestri said was, “You play your games with the Feds, Malloy, but steer clear of L.A., you hear? I’ve got a good life down there and I’m setting up this deal with you so I can afford to keep having one. So you do your overthrowing north of California. I’ll get you weapons like no one in this room ever dreamed of. L.A.P.D. never heard of some of these till they got real lucky and broke up shipments meant for three of the biggest gangs on the west coast. I’m not talking just guns; these are weapons that can take out the side of a building, missiles, explosives, gas: civil unrest in a box, Malloy, every terrorist’s dream.” Silvestri had stared him in the eye like he was calling the shots. “Six million. Cash.”
But he was not the fool Silvestri imagined. With the cash came the upper hand. He set the transfer point—Richland—and the terms—cash on delivery in two suitcases of mixed bills. Hefty suitcases. He tried for the train and its schedule, but Silvestri was no fool either and the best Malloy could get out of him was that he was using a particular freight scheduler. Silvestri thought he was covering himself by mailing the scheduler’s name—Harry Cooper—to Malloy, aiming to get it to him the day after the switch. Mail must go by mule in L.A., Malloy thought smiling, but it moved sharply up here in Coeur, particularly with a friend in the post office looking out for you.
Malloy stared down at the phone. After all these years planning, it was unbelievable to have the whole operation hang on whether he could get the container numbers, the train number and the schedule out of some guy in Kansas City.
He checked his watch again. Five minutes had passed. Still ample time to jog. Malloy leaned back in his chair. No point in jogging; no need to burnish his image. He would be inside Hanford tomorrow. By nightfall he would be hoisting the Nukers, the vermin who ran Hanford, on their own petards. Petards: farts; Malloy did not see the point of humor but the appropriateness of petards did strike him.
He’d grown up on reports of Hanford: the radioactive wind that had blown for thirteen years from the Hanford Nuclear Site; Green Run, the day in 1949 Hanford decided to see what effect radioactive iodine would have on the people downwind, opened the smokestacks wide and spewed out 225 times more radioactive iodine than the 3-mile Island disaster. People died; not right away—thyroid cancer takes time. The dead were not government officials, who had moved their own families out of danger, but babies who drank the milk from the cows who ate the radioactive grass, babies who breathed the air into their tiny lungs, babies like his brother.
Americans were sheep. They did not want to know the truth. They were too ovine to see that the whole 9-11 sham was not the work of foreign terrorists, but of their own government, designed to control the populace, frighten the sheep. It was a sham designed to divert attention away from the government’s own unconscionable crimes, from the poisons of nuclear power and genetically altered food. Herd the sheep by fear, that was the government plan. The terrified sheep closed their eyes to the construction of new nuclear power plants, to the federal vermin pushing China to build nuclear power plants that would spew poison into the air to be carried across the Pacific to the very area Hanford has already poisoned.
But even sheep can be shocked into action.
Hanford would afford him so much more than a bully pulpit. The government had forgotten about all those storage tanks an
d the mixers that kept the gases from settling. He had not. As soon as he made it inside Hanford he would turn off those mixers one by one. It would take time for the heat to build in the storage tanks. The government vermin would be calling him, wanting to negotiate. He would make his demand: that his call be linked onto all the TV networks. He would tell the world what his government had done to its own people.
Once the fuel in the storage tanks started to heat up nothing would stop it. The tanks would blow anyway, one after another after another after another.
A nuclear waste site blowing sky high would bring Homeland Security racing in from every other state—leaving some of those states easy pickings for the Select to act. The Select were ready. After Hanford, the sheep would know the truth. The sheep would follow the Select. The revolution was about to begin.
He looked from the phone, to the clock, to the Kodak. Three hours was too long to wait for an answer he couldn’t control. One phone call would set up a private flight to Kansas City. Devon Malloy picked up the phone.
Twenty-Two
ELLEN STOOD OUTSIDE THE restaurant bathroom in the beige hallway so narrow the phone box was a major intrusion. Already she’d had to jam her stomach against it to let a waiter pass on his way to the bathroom. Ammonia wafted by when he let the door swing closed. She sighed and punched in O and the number and set up a collect call.
The phone was whirring and hissing before it occurred to her that this was no longer Saturday night. It was Sunday morning and even Harry Cooper might choose to sleep in after six, particularly after his hectic weekend at work. He’d known he wouldn’t finish the emergency rerouting in time for the opera. If he’d made it home before midnight she’d have been surprised.
She should hang up before she woke him, she thought, momentarily drawn into the illusion of a normal Sunday. The receiver was shaking in her hand and she could feel the tears she hadn’t shed when Larry Best had her pinned on the bed, when Liza saved her, when she knew she was safe in the car; now they were threatening to burst out of her eyes. She had taken Harry for granted. When he’d accused her of it—more a sad statement of fact than accusation really—she’d known there was no way to contradict him. Before she even had distinguished him from the other middle-aged Portlanders in her apartment complex he had yearned for her. Before she agreed to a movie, he’d loved her, so he’d told her and she’d believed him. She’d never loved him; he was never the one she’d lain awake nights thinking of. She’d never had the urge to call to hear his voice. Until now. Now if she could have one ticket for teleportation in her life, she’d use it up to be back in Kansas City lying awkwardly in his arms, listening to his gently rumbling breathing and happily feeling the cold air shoot down the space where the covers spanned the gap between her back and his chest. She’d catch whiffs of the lemon polish his cleaning lady used on the bedside tables, even smile at the sirens from the firehouse around the corner which was what made his house such a steal. She’d know that things too good to be true weren’t true and she’d be happy, truly happy with what she had.
Pulling her skin angrily with her knuckles, she wiped at the tears. No need to make a scene. She swallowed and followed it with a deep breath. Okay, now she was better.
The phone was ringing. She’d tell him she missed him first. The receiver was right by his bed; all he had to do was reach out an arm.
She hadn’t counted the rings and it shocked her when the operator announced rotely: “Your party does not answer. Would you like to hang up and try your call later?”
“Right. Thanks.” She’d almost hung up before it occurred to her that knowing she was gone, he’d probably decided to work through the night, sleep in his office if he had to, and be there to catch any of the unexpected repercussions a massive rerouting always brings. “Try his office number.” She repeated the ten digits, listened to the buzz and grumble of the phone, the ringing, the operator telling her that that number had no answer. Yes, she said, she would try later.
The ladies’ room was two steps down the hall. She walked in and stood in front of the mirror staring at the detritus of the face she had creamed and penciled, ever so lightly rouged and powdered eight hours ago. Now the make-up was caked, the cheek color gone and she looked like she’d been embalmed. The mirror showed the tan bathroom walls behind her and as she stared she saw the tan hotel room walls. The gurgling of the plumbing seemed to echo Larry Best’s friends chortling as they egged him to hurry up. Her stomach lurched and she thought she was going to throw up. And when nothing came up but shame, she tried to force the vomit up and out of her by will. If there were a shower she’d have ripped off the black dress she would never wear again, and scrubbed her skin till it bled.
But there wasn’t of course. She yanked a handful of paper towels out of the dispenser, wet them with cold water and scraped every dot of make-up off her face. Tears gushed. She pushed the rough towels up and down her skin for two minutes, for ten minutes or twenty, she had no idea.
When she finally stopped, not because she was done but because her arms were exhausted, her face was red as if she’d had a bad sunburn, a huge scab, a disease. She splashed it with cold water, blotted with a few more paper towels, and walked out.
Liza didn’t have to ask Ellen how her call went; she could read it on her face: Nothing good.
“Harry didn’t answer.” Ellen slid into the booth and pushed her dishes away. The burst of energy that had driven her to the phone clearly was gone. Her hair was limp, her face was limp; even the fabric of her black dress looked like it had had half an hour in the steamer. “He’s not at home, not in his office.”
“Could he have turned off the phone?”
“Oh, no, Harry would never be that rude. He’d run out of the shower to catch the phone. I don’t know—”
“Okay, don’t worry. What we do is put some distance between ourselves and San Francisco. We start north—”
“No.”
“What?”
“No!” Ellen thrust herself up straight. “No, Liza, we are not running aimlessly. I’ve done what I can; now you do the same. Call the police inspector.”
“I told you why I can’t.”
“Not good enough!”
“Ellen, police tap phones. If I call him I might as well invite him to pull up a chair.”
“Then we’d know what was going on. Now we have no idea. Killers could be anywhere. That old woman on the stool over there, she could be after us. Is this how you want to live? How you want me to have to live because of you? Do you—”
Liza put her hand on Ellen’s arm. She didn’t look at Ellen; she couldn’t bring herself to do that, too. It was all she could do to swallow hard and get her mouth wet enough to speak. “I can’t call Bentec. I told you about robbing the jewelry store. What I didn’t tell you was Pope, the jeweler, was killed.”
Ellen didn’t gasp. She looked too shocked to make any sound. Finally, she asked, “Your father shot him?”
“No, Ellen. My father didn’t shoot him. I did.”
“But how—”
Liza pressed down on her arm to silence her. She had described this night before, but only to people who were paid to judge her. She’d learned to speak without wavering, and not to make eye contact. That connection could pull her over the edge. She started speaking. “When my father burst into the store, the alarms went off. Pope had a gun behind the counter. He grabbed for it. His pants were around his knees. The muzzle got caught in the fabric. Daddy was yelling big sloppy, liquory threats. His breath smelled like something rotting and it blasted me every time he yelled. The alarm was shrieking. Pope was yanking at the gun, trying to get it free, all the time screaming at Daddy that he’d blow his fucking head off.”
“Oh my God, Liza.”
Liza was back in the jewelry store, on her knees, staring stunned at the jeweler’s naked crotch, his limp and tiny penis, the mass of brown fabric swirling on his thighs as she yanked at the gun in futile panic. She felt the hard floor cuttin
g her knees and then she didn’t sense herself at all, just the maelstrom around her and the vision of what she had to do. “I didn’t even have to take the gun out of his hands; I only had to turn it. His finger was still in the trigger when I shot him.” Now she took a long breath. “If I hadn’t stolen the pendant the state wouldn’t have pressed charges, or at least that’s what they said. But taking the pendant thrust me into a whole different class of villain. I wasn’t a pretty little innocent lured by a known pedophile; I was a conniving killer just too young to go to the gas chamber.”
“But if it was his finger on the trigger—”
“That did help. When the story hit the newspaper two women volunteered to testify that Pope had molested them years earlier. That helped, too.” She forced herself to check Ellen’s face for signs of disgust and was amazed to find none. It was not her habit to reveal more than necessary, but she went on, “What really saved me was my father.”
“His death? The car accident?”
“No accident.” She swallowed hard. This she’d never said before and she wasn’t sure she could tear it out of herself without ripping off the scar tissue that had held her together for the last twelve years. “It was Thanksgiving, ten days after the jewelry store. Thanksgiving Day with my grandmother was like a contest to see who would break first. She lived to condemn. Her answer to every problem was abstinence. The house was cold because my grandmother didn’t believe in heat in California. The food was bland because spices were luxury, and of course there was no liquor. Normally my parents would have been angry or sulking. This day they were just quiet; I assumed it was the result of the murder. They still didn’t know what would happen to me, or to Daddy. They were subdued but Grandma was going at it double time, how I had disgraced her, how she’d have to move, how she should have known about me, known when Daddy married a woman he met in a bar, and on and on. Neither Mom nor Daddy answered at all.” Liza swallowed. “I should have realized something was off. I used to lay awake replaying the day minute by minute trying to find the time I could have changed things. But the truth is I couldn’t have changed anything at all.”