Bad Guys

by Linwood Barclay

  Sarah glanced over, one cheek puffed out with pork tenderloin. “Urmff?” she said.

  “Trevor Wylie.”

  “Hmmff?”

  “That’s right.” I filled her in on the conversation Lawrence and I had had with the boy. The dog named Morpheus. The satellite program, the six-pack in the backyard.

  Sarah drank some water to clear all the food from her mouth. “I don’t know,” she said. “He does sound a bit weird, but lots of kids are like that, they grow out of it. He’s probably harmless.”

  “You should meet him yourself.”

  “Remember when you were first interested in me, and I lived out on Highway 74, and you came around one night, planning to call up to my window, but when you climbed the fence, you snagged your pants—”

  “I know the story.”

  “—you snagged your pants as you were coming over the other side, and you kept going but your pants got left behind?”

  “I don’t see—”

  “And my dad heard the racket and went out to investigate, and there you were in your Jockeys?”

  I suffered a moment with the memory, then said, “The difference is, you were interested in me, but Angie’s not interested in Trevor.”

  “Actually, at the time, I wasn’t interested in you.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Not really. But you kind of grew on me. And it took a lot of convincing for my dad to accept a guy he’d first found standing in our backyard in his skivvies.”

  “I think you have some of the details wrong. I was wearing a tuck-in shirt that had long tails front and back, so you could hardly even see my shorts.”

  Sarah nodded. “I think you’re right. You were the picture of dignity.”

  “So you’re saying finding Trevor in our backyard isn’t that big a deal?”

  “Did he have his pants on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, he’s one up on you, isn’t he?”

  I finished the last bite of my dinner, rinsed off the plate in the sink and left it sitting in there. This didn’t seem like a good time to tell Sarah about the course of action I was contemplating for after dinner.

  “I have to go,” I said. I gave Sarah a kiss. She said she would leave a note on the counter with the details of where she was going to be for the next two days.

  “And you can always get me on my cell,” she said, and I ran out the door. Sarah’s Camry was parked behind our new Virtue, so I did some driveway car juggling so I could take the new one to show Angie.

  Traffic heading back downtown toward the university was light, and I was down there in about fifteen minutes. It was a nice evening, so I opened the sunroof and occasionally raised the fingers of my right hand into the passing breeze.

  What I’d forgotten was that to pull up in front of Galloway Hall meant paying a parking entrance fee to enter the system of roads within the university grounds. I protested to the gatekeeper who handed me my ticket.

  “I’m just picking someone up,” I said.

  He looked at me with dull eyes. He’d heard this lament before. “If you’re back within five minutes, there’s no charge.”

  Given that I’d shown up ten minutes earlier than Angie had asked me to be there, it looked like I was going to be out the five. Slowly, I drove onto the grounds and past the stately, vine-covered buildings. The Virtue, with its little sewing-machine motor, barely made a sound as I wound my way through the narrow, some of them cobblestone, streets.

  I found Galloway Hall and a curbside spot a short ways down from it. Angie wouldn’t know what car to look for, so I got up and leaned against our new wheels, keeping an eye on the building’s front door.

  Fifteen minutes later, Angie appeared. She spotted me, waved, and walked my way. She gave me a somewhat tentative hug and then stood back to look at the car.

  “I like it,” she said.

  “Tell your brother,” I said.

  “Oh, ignore him. So, I can use this for school?”

  “Not every day, but probably when you need it.”

  “Can I drive it?” She was doing a circle around the car. As I watched her, I felt, as I so rarely do, at ease, relaxed even. She was here, in front of me, safe, far from Trevor, and looking so grown up as she checked out the vehicle.

  I tossed her the keys and she got behind the wheel. I settled in next to her. Angie had slipped the key into the ignition and was familiarizing herself with the controls. “Lights, radio—CD player?”

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  “And a sunroof! I love a sunroof. We’ve never had a car with a sunroof.”

  Angie turned the key, tilted her head, puzzled. “I don’t hear anything,” she said. “Is it on?”

  “It’s on, don’t worry about it. Just put it in gear and go.”

  She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “It’s so quiet,” she said. “I can’t believe how quiet it is.”

  “I know,” I said. “You know they make you pay for parking just to come in here and pick somebody up?”

  “Yeah, they’re real pricks,” Angie said, her chin up in the air as she looked down the short hood. “But not to worry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know another way out.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  Angie smiled mischievously, the way she did when she was a little girl and had taken her brother’s cookie. It was the smile that said she had secrets, that there were parts of her life I knew nothing about.

  “There’s this way, you go down the side of Galloway Hall here”—she turned right—“and just keep your eye open for this kind of alleyway.”

  “Guess who was at the house today when I got home.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “He said he was looking for his dog.”

  “What kind of dog?”

  “This black mangy mutt, I don’t know. It looked like, if he was going to have a dog, that would be the dog.”

  “You know, it’s not like I hate the guy. He’s just a little too out there for me. This whole black-jacket-and-boots thing, I’m just not into that. And he’s— Wait, here it is.”

  She slowed the car, turned into a cobblestone lane that wasn’t much wider than the car, and inched forward.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “I never have to pay for parking. I can almost always get out this way.”

  “This isn’t even a road!” I said. “It’s a walkway! And besides, your mom or I always give you money for parking.”

  “Hey, if you guys want to give me money for parking, I’m not going to turn it down. I put it towards other educational expenses.”

  “Like parties?”

  “Of course not,” she said, looking straight ahead. “Someday they’re going to get smart and close this off and then I’ll need it anyway.”

  “Where does this come out?”

  “Edwards Street. There’s a little chain at the end, and you just have to unhook it to get out, there’s not a lock.”

  “You better hope not or you’re going to have to be very good at backing up long distances down narrow alleys.”

  Like I said, this walkway was only slightly wider than the Virtue, with Galloway Hall on one side and some other building on the other. It wasn’t even suitable for service vehicles, with low, vine-covered archways overhead that I could almost reach sticking my arm out the sunroof. I was starting to feel a bit pissed.

  “This is wrong,” I said to Angie.

  “Dad, you’re such a Boy Scout, you worry about everything. I’m a student. You cut costs any way you can.”

  “What about the ticket you pick up when you enter the grounds? It never gets checked or validated or whatever. You ever hand it in by mistake some other day and you’ll owe hundreds of dollars in parking fees!”

  Angie reached over and touched my knee. “Dad, take your medication. And go unhook that chain up there.”

 
I did as I was told, skulking about like a guilty man, looking over my shoulder for campus security, certain we’d be arrested at any moment. Angie drove through, then I hooked the chain back across and got back into the car.

  “You were saying, about Trevor,” Angie said, pulling onto Edwards.

  “He had some computer thing he wanted to show you.”

  “Any excuse. He’s got some new computer thing every other day. He called me this afternoon, says, guess who? Says it’s Neo, for crying out loud.”

  “Neo?”

  “Keep up, Dad. The character, in the movie. God. Just promise me, Dad, that you won’t do anything stupid again.”

  “You mean, like, with . . .” I struggled to remember the Pool Boy’s name again.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I know you’ve been pissed at me for a long time.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And I’m sorry if you guys broke up over that.”

  Angie shrugged. “Well, I’m sort of seeing . . .” She stopped herself.

  “Sort of seeing?”

  “Never mind.” She gave me a small smile. “I think, from now on, you only get boyfriend information on a need-to-know basis. And right now, you do not need to know.” She gave the car some gas. “It’s cute, but it seems a bit slow.”

  Patiently, I again explained the hybrid concept.

  “So, it’s got, like, batteries in it? Like the TV remote?”

  “Not those kind of batteries. Big batteries, which are constantly recharging to run the electric motor, which takes over from the gas motor. Look, it’s good for the environment, okay?”

  “Maybe we can put our recycling in it,” Angie said.

  When we got home, I told her there was a plate of food waiting for her in the kitchen.

  “I’m going out,” she said, smiling apologetically. “I’ve got to get ready.” And she disappeared up to her room.

  Paul, who’d heard us come in, shouted up from the basement, “Dad! Some Lawrence guy called, said you should call him!”

  I did.

  Lawrence said, “Now that you’re a two-car family, can you get yourself out to Brentwood’s tonight? I’ve got a few things to do and might be heading straight to our little stakeout from the other side of town.”

  “When do you want me there?”

  “How about eleven?” Lawrence said. “And park around the corner or something, not in front of the store.”

  That seemed good. This idea, this plan of action that I’d neglected to mention to Sarah, was forming in my head, and the later I could rendezvous with Lawrence, the better.

  “I think this’ll be the last night for me,” I said. “They’re getting antsy for the story, and the truth is, Sarah’s scared to death, me hanging out with you.”

  Lawrence chuckled softly. “I’m not even optimistic they’ll show. Not after last night. Our friends in the SUV may be going for a lower profile. Although I have to admit, I didn’t think they’d show last night either.”

  “True.”

  “Listen,” Lawrence said. “That Wylie kid. I did a little checking after we had our run-in with him.”

  “You’re kidding,” I whispered, huddling myself secretively around the receiver, even though neither of the kids was in the room with me. “What did you find out?”

  “I think it’d be better if I told you about it later, when we get together. That’ll give me a little more time to check a couple more things.”

  “Can’t you tell me now?”

  “It can wait. Actually, meet me at the doughnut place around ten-thirty. I’ll be in the Buick again. They managed to get a new window in it this afternoon.” And he hung up.

  Shit. He couldn’t tell me now? My daughter’s being dogged by some potential nutcase and he wants to tell me the details later?

  I considered phoning him back, then held off. He was doing this as a favor, no charge, so I didn’t feel I had the right to get pushy. But he had something on the kid, that much was for sure, which only strengthened my resolve to be proactive. By the time I saw Lawrence tonight, I might have a bit of information to share about Trevor Wylie myself.

  There wasn’t all that much to do to prepare for the job I was about to undertake in the hours before I joined Lawrence at Brentwood’s men’s store. He’d explained to me that the most important item for any would-be private detective about to go out on a stakeout was a bottle to pee in.

  I stepped into the little mudroom we have between the kitchen and the back door, where we keep our two blue recycling boxes: one for bottles and cans and one for newspapers. There was, in the box for bottles and cans, nothing but the glass Snapple apple juice bottle I’d dropped in there the morning before. There was clearly more work to be done to make this family environmentally conscious.

  I leaned over and grabbed the bottle. The screw-on cap was still attached, so it would do. I was ready to go on my first stakeout.

  13

  It was just as well that Sarah had left for her retreat by the time I’d gotten back home with Angie. I don’t quite know how I would have explained what I was about to do. Given the recentness of the Pool Boy incident, not very well.

  “Where you off to?” Sarah asks.

  “Oh, just going to tail Angie wherever she goes, see if that Trevor kid really is stalking her.”

  “Well, you just have a nice time, okay?”

  The truth is, Sarah would have viewed such a plan as intrusive. An invasion of privacy. Wrongheaded. Difficult to justify, even for concerned parents.

  Okay, perhaps.

  But that was not what this was about. This was not about finding out what my daughter was up to. This was about finding out what Trevor Wylie was up to. And it made the most sense to follow Angie to find that out. I didn’t need to know what Trevor Wylie did every minute of the day. I just wanted to know whether he was targeting Angie.

  Of course, I could have been up-front with her. I could have told her my plan. I could have explained to her that she should just go about her business as she normally would, that I didn’t care in the least what she was up to.

  But being up-front presented a number of problems. Angie, who was now a young woman, might be of the view that having her father trail her cramped her style, and persuading her otherwise might present something of a challenge. The smartest thing, I decided, was to deal with this on my own. See what was going on. And, depending on what transpired, be up-front later if certain decisions had to be made. Like, for one, calling the cops about Trevor Wylie if he proved to be an actual threat.

  About half an hour after I’d brought her home, Angie came bounding down the stairs. She’d touched up her makeup, brushed her hair, changed her clothes. She looked, I’d have to say, quite beautiful, and like most fathers, I have mixed feelings about having a beautiful daughter. There’s pride, and then there’s the business of not being able to sleep at night.

  “I’m heading out in a couple of minutes,” she told me. I was in the family room off the kitchen, sitting in the recliner, watching the news, drinking some coffee. Doing my nonchalant thing. Doing it very well.

  “Uh, actually, so am I,” I said, sensing the time had come to launch Operation Trevor, and stood up out of the chair. “I might as well take off now, too.”

  I grabbed my jacket from the closet. I’d already tucked the Snapple bottle into a pocket, making it bulge out conspicuously. “Where you off to?” Angie asked.

  “I just got a few things to do, and I’m meeting up with Lawrence, that detective I’m writing about, in a little while.”

  “What’s in your pocket?” she asked, noticing the huge lump in my jacket.

  “Just bringing a bottled water, something to drink in case I get thirsty,” I said.

  Paul appeared in the front hall as I was about to leave. “Where you going?”

  “I just told your sister. I’m doing a couple of things, then meeting up with Lawrence Jones.” The guilt I felt at not being
totally honest with my son was offset by the six-pack of beer hidden in the backyard, I suspected, specifically for him. Trevor was doubtless old enough to buy booze, and was probably helping Paul get some.

  Paul and I would definitely be having a chat about this. But not now. I had more pressing matters to deal with. I had a job to do. I was heading out into that dark night, a kind of Philip Marlowe, a private eye, going it alone against the forces of—

  Enough.

  “What if I need a ride tonight?” Paul asked. “Angie’s going out, you’re going out, Mom’s not here, there’s no car.”

  I pulled out my wallet and handed him a twenty. Paul looked at it in his hand, not sure whether to believe his eyes. “If you run into a jam, grab a cab,” I said.

  “A cab?” Paul said. “An actual cab? What if I end up not going out tonight?”

  “Then you can give me the twenty back.”

  Paul nodded quickly. “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be going out.”

  “Can I have the Virtue?” Angie asked, calling out from the kitchen. I glanced out and saw that it was at the end of the drive, blocking the Camry. I didn’t want to take the time to switch cars around.

  “I’m taking it tonight,” I said.

  “Aww. It’s got the sunroof.”

  I said goodbye, got in the Virtue, moved the Snapple bottle from my jacket pocket to the cup holder, and slipped the key into the ignition. I turned it forward.

  Whir whir.

  What the? I turned the key again.

  Whir whir.

  What the hell was this? My new car didn’t want to start? I turned the key a third time, and it proved to be my lucky attempt. The engine turned over. It was, I told myself, just a fluke. I backed down the drive and headed south on Crandall. Once I was out of sight of the house, I tromped on the accelerator, although in a hybrid, that didn’t accomplish a lot. The car took its own time getting up to speed, making me anxious about circling the block in time to see Angie pull out.

  But I managed to get around the block with a few seconds to spare before the Camry, with Angie at the wheel, backed out onto Crandall and headed south. Good, good, I thought. Everything was going okay. I was pumped. I was getting into it. At one point, I realized I’d been saying “Hello, shweetheart” under my breath unconsciously. But that was Sam Spade, wasn’t it, from The Maltese Falcon? Not Philip Marlowe.