Chapter Six
“THANK YOU FOR THIS,” Regina said.
Trotter laughed. “You’re welcome. When I said I was going to stay close to you, that was all I meant. I had no intention of confining you to quarters.”
He waited at the shopping center exit while cars went by. Allan had a new car now, a maroon Mercedes. He didn’t tell her what had happened to the compact he’d been driving before. He was a very cautious driver. He let several openings go by that Regina would have scooted into. Heroically, she restrained herself from commenting about it. Instead, she said, “I really needed this.”
“You have been a little tense,” he said. He finally found enough space to suit him and pulled smoothly out into traffic.
“Of course I have. Nothing to compare with my mother, though.”
“Maybe we should bring her to the movies.”
“Not here,” she said. “Here” was the Gastonville Plaza, a huge shopping mall forty-five miles, two creeks and a river away from Kirkester. “It would take too much time away from the paper. I’m beginning to think she cares more about the Hudson Group than she does about Jimmy and me.”
Allan grunted noncommittally. “How did you like the movies?” They’d formed a resolution to take off and go to the pictures without deciding on a particular one. When they arrived, they learned that one of the mall’s six theaters was showing a double feature of the original version of The Thing and The Day the Earth Stood Still.
“They were fun. How about you?”
“I loved The Thing.”
“What about the other one?”
“Bullshit. Soviet propaganda.”
“How do you figure that? Every time I think you’re sane, deep down, you say something like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like calling that lovely picture Soviet propaganda.”
“Yeah, that lovely picture. Michael Rennie comes to Earth. We’re supposed to admire him. We’re supposed to admire him so much, they call him ‘Carpenter’ and have him die and rise again.”
“I never noticed that.”
“Ha. And then he brings this great message of peace. ‘Surrender your sovereignty to a bunch of robots who know what’s best for you, or die.’ I believe the exact phrase was ‘a burnt-out cinder.’”
“You realize you’ve ruined the movie for me.”
“My heart bleeds.”
She looked at him. “Not your heart.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Anyway, the other movie was propaganda, too—‘Don’t trust them, they’re monsters.’”
“Sure,” Allan conceded. He grinned. “It’s just propaganda I happen to agree with.”
It never occurred to Smolinski to fear that his underlings would know he was disobeying orders until it was already too late to do anything about it if they had known. He was in a car equipped with special radio equipment with two men who seemed American enough to be fathers on television situation comedies. They had been in America for years, and had excellent records. One of them had as a cover an important job at Worldwatch magazine. They could have killed Smolinski in a second or subdued him and bundled him back to Borzov if they were so inclined. They were, however, perfectly content to take his orders. In the meantime they talked about college basketball. One of them, he was a Hudson Group employee, whose name was Mel Famey, a balding blond with a V-neck sweater vest and a bow tie, went so far as to ask Smolinski what he thought of the Sparta University team’s chances for the coming season. Smolinski had favored him with a cold stare, and the man had subsided.
In between talks of “rejection” and “dribbling” and “steals” and “burns” and other unappealing topics, they managed to make their report.
Trotter and the girl had been followed to a mall some miles away. They had attended the cinema (Smolinski’s companions said “movies”) and were now heading back toward Kirkester. To reach home, they would have to pass the checkpoint where Smolinski waited—the Kirk River Bridge, a work of the early 1950s, a cantilevered construction in steel girders. Kirkester clung to the west bank of the Kirk River like a baby to its mother’s breast. There was no way to travel east of town without going over that bridge. Smolinski’s predecessor in this part of New York had known that and realized that the bridge could make a handy trap.
The trap had never been needed before now. Smolinski had found it ready-made and was delighted to use it to extend his usefulness to Borzov.
“How soon before they get here?” Smolinski asked.
The men had been talking about something called “reebs” and had to adjust their train of thought. The one with the mustache and the pipe, who was an English teacher at a regional secondary school, looked at his watch. “B unit just reported they’d crossed Hampton’s creek. Make it about eight or ten minutes.”
Smolinski tried to deny the excitement he felt as unprofessional but couldn’t. He decided at least not to show it. He looked at the bridge, dark gray where the road lights hit the girders, of a darker blackness than the sky where it didn’t. And if he put his forehead against the cold glass of the backseat window, below he could see the rippled surface of the Kirk River, like a shattered mirror, waiting to reflect a million images of the expression on Trotter’s face when he realized he was plunging to his death.
Trotter looked in the rearview mirror and said, “Uh-oh.”
“What’s the matter?”
“A car is following us. Has been for the last couple of miles.”
“So,” Regina said. “What does that mean?”
“It means I screwed up.”
“Oh, God. No. No. I’m going to be calm. How did you screw up?
“I had a little trouble with a guy. I told his boss I was on to him. That usually causes them to lay off for a while. They know that you know, and they have to figure you’ve passed it on. You become too hot to mess with, until they can think of something new.”
“But this time it didn’t work.”
“No, dammit. It didn’t. I wish I could figure out why. They must be nuts. Son of a bitch!”
“Allan,” Regina said. “I’m being calm. I’m confused and afraid and I want very badly to scream. The least you could do is stay calm as well.”
“You’re right. I will.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Keep driving. Hope they’re just following us.”
“Just following us! What if they jump us when we stop?”
“We drive onto your mother’s estate. The security people will keep them from following. We can have armed men guarding us when we get out of the car.”
Trotter had his eyes on the road, but he could feel tension coming off the young woman in drops, like rain.
“This really is what you do all the time,” she said.
“Not all the time. Every time you say that you sound surprised.”
“You act like it’s routine.”
“Keeping calm is important. You’re doing very well.”
“It isn’t easy.”
Trotter took a look at her. In a few seconds, he was going to have to tell her it didn’t look as if it would be getting any easier.
Professional or not, Smolinski was gloating. They had passed the last turnoff, his man was behind them blocking off retreat, and the rest was ready. They—especially Trotter—were as good as dead.
“There are no more turnoffs before the bridge, are there?”
“No, we’ll be able to see it—there it is now. Why?”
“Because I think they’re probably going to try to force us off the bridge. Stay calm.”
“Stay calm? Allan, what are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Haven’t decided?” She grabbed his arm, ignoring him when he said, “Don’t do that.”
“Haven’t decided?” she said again. “Allan, are you fucking crazy? You have to pull over! You have to fight them!”
“I thought you were going to stay calm.�
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“Not when you’re going to let me drown!”
“I’m not going to let you drown. Anyway, I can’t fight them.”
“Why not? It looks like there’s only one or two people in that car.” She twisted around under her seat belt to look directly at it. He didn’t bother to tell her to stop. Not only did he doubt she’d listen, but he realized there was nothing to be gained by trying to make the men in the car believe they hadn’t been noticed.
“Yes,” Regina said. “There are only two of them.”
“They have guns.”
It took her a few seconds to find her tongue. “You don’t have a gun? What kind of spy are you? I’m going to die because—”
“You are not going to die for any reason. Now shut up and listen.”
She shut up. He wasn’t sure how much listening she was doing. She looked catatonic.
“You have to stay calm. No matter what they do, and especially no matter what I do, you have to stay calm or you’ll kill us both. If you stay calm, I promise, I’ll get you out of this.”
She looked at him. She wasn’t exactly calm, but at least she was quiet.
“Did you get that?”
“Stay calm,” she said numbly.
“No matter what. Besides, it might be nothing. Then we can all go home and laugh about this.”
“Laugh,” Regina said.
Then he had no more time to spare for her. They were at the Kirk River Bridge.
Smolinski pushed the talk button on the microphone. Thrill-sweat had made his hand slick, but he held on long enough to say now. In minutes, he would be rehabilitated, and Trotter would pay for mocking him.
It shaped up the way Trotter had figured it would. The car behind him bottling him up, the car from the shoulder forcing him toward the rails, and—yes, here it was now—a truck pulled across the road at the other end to keep him from outrunning them. Not that that was much of a possibility. They were in gas-eating monsters with whole herds of horsepower under the hoods. His brain, as it often did in times of emergency, found something utterly trivial to worry about. Why did such a sturdily built bridge have such feeble guardrails? If they’d made the railings out of the same girders they used for the bridge itself, none of this would have been possible. Of course, if the bridge had been built that way, he would have been facing a different trap, in a different place.
Trotter forced his attention back to the current problem. He did a little side bumping with the car that was trying to force him off the bridge. Just a little. The idea was to make it look good without letting them do too much damage to the Mercedes.
He jerked them along for a while, but the time came when he’d have to get on with it. It made no sense to make a plan you were afraid to carry out. It was easier, of course, when you had no choice.
The time came sooner than he hoped (i.e., never). He was still pretty far from the opposite shore, and the water was deeper than he wanted to deal with.
But the time had come. He’d have to live with it. Or die with it.
“You’re a brave girl, Bash. Remember what I said about staying calm?”
She nodded from behind her hands and drawn-up knees.
“Okay, then, hold on tight.” With that, he cut the wheel sharply to the right. The car smashed the barrier, scraped bottom on an overhanging girder and pancaked down into the river.
“Watch them!” Smolinski said. Instantly, the other cars stopped. The basketball fans drove Smolinski to the scene as four men with guns went to the railing and watched the car.
“Anything?” Smolinski said when he arrived.
“Nothing,” one of the men said. “Probably knocked out when they hit the water.”
“Keep watching.”
“Of course.”
They watched until the car sank, which was a much longer time than Smolinski had anticipated. The motor had stopped, but the headlights remained on, making a swooping ramp of light for Trotter and the young lady to follow to the bottom.
“We’d better go,” one of the men said. “It’s late, but somebody’s going to come by.”
“Put your guns away. Then we are simply motorists who stopped to see if we could help.”
Smolinski watched the lights below the water with a thin smile on his face. Then the lights went out. Very good, he thought. Bravo. Show’s over.
“All right,” he said. “Well done, men. Now we can go home.”
Chapter Seven
TROTTER WAS NOT AT his apartment, and he was not at the Hudson girl’s apartment. Joe Albright had not been content with phone checks to those two places—he took his behind out into the night and checked in person, just in case something had happened. There was a certain amount of risk in that, of course. He wasn’t supposed to know Trotter or Regina Hudson—hell, he didn’t know Regina Hudson—and sneaking around prominent citizens’ houses after dark was a good way to change the minds of a lot of townspeople about the wonderfulness of having a black businessman among them. And a pickup truck with your name and address printed on the side is not the perfect infiltration vehicle.
He wished he knew what the hell was going on, the particular color and consistency of the shit that had hit the fan back in Washington. Rines had told Joe (before he had so graciously hung up on him, cutting off questions) to “Find Trotter! No matter what.”
But did “no matter what” include blowing cover? If Trotter was somewhere that took real looking to find, the best thing to do would be to visit the local cops, show them his FBI decoder ring, and ask for some cooperation. On the other hand, for all he knew, that would ruin everything. So he’d better stay in the Salvage/Reclamation game for the time being.
Besides which, he didn’t want to blow his cover. Tina would take it wrong. She’d be hurt; she’d think his relationship with her was just a ploy. It wasn’t. It hadn’t been even at the start. Keeping Tina from further hurt now came right after Duty, Honor, and Country on his list of priorities.
So. Where was Trotter, and how was a humble Salvage/Reclamation man to find him? The thing to do was to get back home and hit the telephone, because they sure weren’t going to let him into the places he had to go now.
He had his list of calls to make, and he had his cover story—a weak one, maybe, but it might get by. It was all he had.
Any more thinking on the topic, he decided, would only make him nervous. He turned on the radio in the truck just in time to catch the beginning of the ten o’clock newscast.
“Shit,” he said. He didn’t turn it off—a man in the field can’t afford to scorn any information—but he wouldn’t have minded a song or two before the news came on.
“Tragedy continues to stalk the Hudson Group,” the announcer said.
“Now what the hell?” Joe asked irritably.
The radio answered him. “Weston Charles, driver and bodyguard to Petra Hudson, chairman of the communications conglomerate, was found by State Police ...”
Joe heard the rest of it and shook his head. Now they’d killed the bodyguard. That ought to do it. The radio said suicide, but then they’d said the other ones had been accidents or natural causes, so what the hell. And there was a kicker.
“... and Captain Petersen, while confirming that Charles’s head appeared to be wet, would offer no theory as to why. Mr. Charles served in the United States Army—”
Who pours water on his head before he eats a gas hose? It didn’t make sense.
Joe smiled in spite of himself. He was starting to remind himself of Trotter.
The smile went away. Trotter was this way after the Stein girl turned up dead on his hall steps. Her hair was wet too.
This was something he would be very interested in. Joe would tell him about it, right after he told him about Rines. If, of course, he found him at all.
There was a travel advisory on the radio as Joe pulled into his yard—railing out on the westbound side of the Kirk River Bridge, drive carefully. Joe promised the announcer he would, then snapped off the ign
ition. He took the stairs two at a time and got on the phone.
Trotter wasn’t at the Chronicle. According to the guard at the front gate, he hadn’t entered the grounds of Hudson Group Headquarters at all. The guard had trouble understanding why anybody would be checking with him because one of the reporters had a chance to buy an antique clock cheap, even if it did have to be first thing in the morning. Joe didn’t try to explain it to him because it seemed pretty lame to him, too.
Joe pressed on. It was a bad time to call the Hudson residence, perhaps, but what the hell. Reporters did it all the time, as did cops, of which he was one. His trouble, he decided as he dialed, was that he was too much a method actor. He was supposed to be a Salvage/Reclamation man, so he automatically thought like a Salvage/Reclamation man.
He asked whoever answered the phone (light Spanish accent, probably a maid) if by any chance Mr. Trotter was there.
“Mr. Trotter? No, he’s not here. Sorry. They tell me to keep the line open for the police. I hang up now—”
Joe was already shrugging and trying to think of someone else to call when he heard a different voice, a man’s voice, some distance from the phone, say, “Wait!” He heard the girl grunt, as if she’d been pushed away from the phone.
“Trotter?” the man said. “Is this Trotter?” If he were any angrier, he would choke.
Joe made his voice calm. “No, it isn’t. I’m just looking for him. My name is Joseph Albright. Who is this?”
“Looking for him, eh? So am I. You tell him I said—”
“If I tell him what you say, I might as well tell him who you are.
“What? Oh. Jimmy Hudson. James Hudson, Junior Tell Trotter I know him for what he is! I know he killed my Hannah, and now he’s killed Mr. Charles, and he’d better kill me next, because I’m going to make him pay for it! I don’t believe in violence, but I’ll find proof, and when I do, God help him!”
Joe replaced the phone gently. Things were getting very weird, and it all had to do with Trotter. And the earth, it seemed, had swallowed up Trotter and the girl.
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