by Dean Ing
Her long-envisioned plan had been to disappear wraithlike, without anything resembling close pursuit.
The Chamois, an alter ego of sorts, would have been a tactical millstone around her neck with its short range and the difficulties in keeping it hidden. So it must become hors de combat but only as splinters and ashes, barely enough remnants to provide a goad to her enemies, proving that she had enjoyed the best and freest elements of the good life. That meant, when she set the timers, the circuit in her makeshift hangar must employ the blasting caps with minimal one-second delays because the unfinished house drew its power from The Place - which would ride another thundering firebloom into the clouds seconds later.
She had stocked the tunnel years before with hermetically sealed bags of fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate, telling Andrew it was for a lawn that had never materialized. She doubted if Andrew had ever heard of the Grandcamp, a freighter docked at Texas City, Texas, in April 1947 with a cargo of "fertilizer."
When that cargo detonated, it flattened a small city and was heard almost 100 miles inland. This was the same stuff stockpiled in Romana's tunnel.
Easily poured and handled, the mealy white nitrate was even more effective when mixed with certain metal powders or soaked with the right amount of diesel fuel. Known as a relatively safe "ammonia dynamite," it was used in commercial blasting. Diesel fuel, too, was on hand. Romana had owned a diesel Volkswagen for a time and still kept a hundred-gallon storage tank almost half-full. At any time during the past ten years, Romana could have produced a crater the size of a gymnasium on the Yomo reservation.
What she could not take, she could obliterate.
But what she could take amounted to almost half a ton of treasure in bullion, cash, jewels, identification sets, and other papers of almost incalculable value. In her original scenario, she would leave the country with a condom full of gemstones. It was somehow fitting, she felt, that the condom would be nested up into her body between those old surgical scars and the undescended testicles that had served her so well. She would pack her car with negotiable treasure - several million dollars' worth of it - in a storage unit. For this she particularly favored the town of San Bruno bordering SFO, San Francisco International air terminal, as her storage site while setting up her "legend" - her new identity - in Ottawa. That close to SFO, she could return occasionally for more spoils during layovers between Ottawa and, say, Phoenix or San Diego.
She had spent much of her childhood in Ottawa and, without once mentioning her fondness for it to Andrew, retained an appreciation of its river-flanked hills, its genteel parks, its gothic structures. It reminded her, a little, of Czechoslovakia.
Of course, she had never intended to bring young Andrew, her protective coloration whom she had crafted into a street agent, had now become troublesome in several ways. One of the few details still undecided was whether to terminate him or to leave him in place. Terminated, he could never betray her; but even if he should, he would betray a cold trail unlikely to lead to either San Bruno or a graying lady of leisure in Ottawa, Canada. Or, if it pleased her, a man of leisure.
Left in place, Andrew might continue the work she had taught him, perhaps indefinitely if he was clever enough to relocate ahead of pursuers. If anyone still kept an active case file on her, Andrew's work would make it appear that she was still active, and this idea had great appeal. It had become somewhat less appealing recently, as she noticed more frequent temper flares, more signs of what appeared to be a decay in his personality. Its appeal - and his - crumbled further the next time she visited his garage apartment in his absence.
She needed his help with the Plymouth. There were ways to sell it, but all of them involved some small element of risk. Under the circumstances, one more small risk would be like smoking one more of her Pall Malls in a fireworks factory. Instead, she used one of her ID sets and a cashier's check to buy a Chevy panel van in Stockton, and let Andrew drive it back on Friday.
Together, they disposed of the old Plymouth after sundown by driving it down along the dried-mud verge of Millerton Lake and sinking it. The method of its sinking was largely Andrew's own idea. He located a surplus twelve-man inflatable raft and a fisherman's cheap two-man version, and secured the larger one to the Plymouth's top by plastic tow ropes passed through the open windows. "It'll even look like an accident on our way to launch the raft, if anyone spots it," he said.
Though it was unlikely that anyone would see them in gathering darkness, she had agreed on the principle. A lake whose level rises and falls is a poor grave for an old vehicle because, some dry summer, the car's roof might break the lowered surface again. But driven into the lake, floating gradually away from shore beneath a rubber raft that can support two tons, even the great mass of the Plymouth could be towed very slowly out to deep water by a single-minded young man using paddles.
Despite her technical background, Romana voiced serious doubts that Andrew could tow anything as large as a four-door sedan any distance at all as he paddled alone in the general direction of the lights across Millerton Lake in a tiny inflated craft no larger than a couch. "We should have bought an outboard and put it on the big raft," she worried aloud.
But: "Too loud, too complicated. And it'd leave an oil slick bubbling up so some scuba diver might decide to salvage it. Outboard engines fall off or get sunk all the time; it's one way divers make expenses."
"For that matter, the car will leave an oil slick," she rejoined.
"The basic idea was yours." His shrug implied that he had long since abandoned arguing with her basic ideas. She bit back a scathing rejoinder as he went on: "Anyway, I've talked to scuba guys before. You can salvage an outboard easy, but I never heard of anybody going after two tons of ten-year-old car under a hundred feet of water, even if they find it. Not worth it. No, this is the right way. It takes forever to get started with all that inertia, but it'll work. Trust me, Mom," he said.
And, as he had promised, it did work: the Plymouth completely underwater, the big raft puckered by its bindings as it moved off almost imperceptibly into darkness. She had not even got her feet wet. Ten minutes later, Andrew had done the rest with a few slashes of a big razor-edged clasp knife modified in his favorite style, its tip curving like a linoleum-cutter's tool. His deft slashes pierced several airtight pontoon spaces before the whole rig sank with a bubbling rush that Romana heard all the way from shore. Her only complaint was the long walk back to The Place, climbing slippery grass slopes and slapped by branches in darkness, but she made the most of it.
The following day, with Andrew's help, Romana tried out the pheromone tracker again. Some devices were frustrating only until you developed a knack for them. This one, she felt, would never have become reliable enough for her purposes, and she used it now only as an intellectual exercise. A live and exotic insect instrumented as part of a hand-held device; the need to plant a smear of liquid, however mild-scented by human standards, on clothing or the porous materials of a car; the relatively short life of the components - all of it seemed faintly absurd to Romana, though she had to admit the pheromone would defeat electronic sweep devices, and the system did permit her to trail a car at considerable distance.
Someday, better scent trackers might become standard equipment in the intelligence community. Turn-offs and intersections were the crucial problems, but weren't they always?
She had already abandoned her Sacramento clients - without a hint of her decision to Andrew, of course - but it was barely possible that she could effect perfect damage control by putting an end to Gary Landis and his woman as apparent suicides. Andrew spotted the lovers leaving Landis's apartment complex in a Datsun sports car on Saturday afternoon and, after their return, Romana anointed its rubber bumper stripping with a small squeeze bottle. After that it was only a question of Andrew's backtracking the woman, a confirmation of her address.
Using their laser audio pickup from a rental car, a bewigged Andy knew a half-hour before the woman left that she was bound for
Bakersfield on Sunday night. He knew when their leave-taking became lovemaking, envious of Landis, remembering the woman's gracile suppleness as she had slid into her car. He knew her name; and now, with that pitiless audio pickup, he knew her willing sexuality.
And now, too, he fantasized about Janelle Betancourt as he listened.
On the long drive south behind her Datsun, he revisited his fantasy, cursing the vagueness of the pheromone tracker, finally seeing the woman turn in at a mobile home on the outskirts of Bakersfield. It would be so easy, he thought, to gain entrance; to put her at ease with some pathetic story; to - to - but that would completely ruin Mom's plan. And then Mom would know about his guilty secret.
Andy drove home quickly. He did not have a Janelle Betancourt waiting for him, but he did have a new pair of kittens.
Romana spent her Sunday evening in a rigorous appraisal of the tasks she had allotted herself, including items she would pack into her panel van. A trickle charger and extension cord, to keep the van's battery charged while in storage, was first on her list. She might, after all, want to drive it nearer to Canada someday. The replacement value of her tools and electronics was probably over $100,000, but no matter; all of that was behind her now, and Andrew must not notice any of her preparations.
She would have to give Andrew's apartment a subtle toss while he was at work, to make certain it did not reveal anything about her. That would be. among the last things she did; meanwhile, she rearranged the items to be packed so that they could all be moved from tunnel to van in - call it an hour. Bullion low behind the seats, in sturdy ammunition boxes. Cash and documents farther back, and unset gemstones, the special favorite of her, European clients, all transferred to one small metal Jockbox inside a badly scuffed shoulder bag. Philosophically, it did not make sense for ten pounds of shoulder bag to be worth more than six hundred pounds of cash, but the fact was undeniable.
There was much more to be done, but she could do it all on Monday or, at the latest, Tuesday. By that time she would have worked out the details of bringing the star-crossed lovers together for their double suicide. Probably, she thought, the Betancourt client would be the more tractable; Andrew could simply bring her to Fresno, taking special steps to avoid signs of restraint. Forensics experts were very adept at detecting traces of adhesive tape or rope abrasions.
Should she do them in Landis's apartment? Probably not. They could just as easily "choose" to meet their romantic end in the Camaro or the Datsun in the small hours of the night. They would have to be put down within minutes or, better still, even seconds of each other. It should be painless; that would play better than violence. And because Landis was a specimen not to be taken lightly, he should certainly go down first, as quietly as possible. Perhaps they could both be blindfolded. She and Andrew must wear latex gloves this time.
A smile flickered at her mouth as she thought of prussic acid, liquid hydrogen cyanide. It could be squirted from a squeeze bottle. Against the face, it was fatal in seconds. Many suicides chose it, imagining that no pain at all was involved. Romana knew better than that: some of her clients had jerked and flailed for several seconds. But by removing the blindfolds and rearranging the clients as necessary - the squeeze bottle literally in Landis's hand - Romana and Andrew would only have to hold their breaths. In a warm Fresno night, the car windows could be open, the doors closed to avoid the Camaro's interior lights. Yes, it was all coming together.
Romana smiled again reflectively. The secret in all this was reiteration - thinking it out again and again - imagining the scene in detail, making those details change to take in all the possibilities. You might have problems, but a foreseen problem was already half-solved.
Well, she would play the suicides back to herself several times in the next few days, with Andrew's input. She had still not decided whether to tell Andrew that the first person to enter The Place, after she took leave of it, would be scattered halfway across Millerton Lake. She was estimating the time required to fill a hundred one-gallon plastic paint buckets with ammonium nitrate and diesel oil when her phone rang.
Andrew had returned to his apartment after "delivering his packages." All was well, he said. Yet, as she put the phone down, Romana could not miss the tension in his voice.
On Monday, Romana met Andrew by arrangement for a picnic lunch in Fresno's Carozza Park, suitably distant from the lab. She had prepared his favorite sandwiches, thick with turkey, bacon, and cheese, and she did not forget the milk. They talked casually, even pleasantly, about her plans for their new clients.
Andrew seemed a bit withdrawn, but no longer under so much tension. He did overreact, she thought, when she teased him about his call the night before. "You may not know it, Andrew, but you were jumpy as a cat," she said, and saw him wince as though she had struck him.
Because she wanted him thoughtful and unstressed, she changed the subject, asking him about his schedule for the next few days. He expected lab work to go as usual, he said, then recanted. "No, it won't, either, with Lockhart out of the lab. It'll be all spit and polish and nothing getting done because Doug Isaacs is in charge."
"We can rarely choose our supervision, Andrew," Romana said.
"Damn straight, 'scuse me, Mom," Andrew replied. "The guy's a nitpicker. The day he's promoted is the day I ask for a transfer."
A week before, she would have worried at any suggestion of Andrew's relocating. Now her retirement plans seemed to be developing a life of their own, a kind of rolling inertia that was carrying her happily along, like a stone downhill in a growing snowball. She did not care whether Andrew transferred to Oregon or to Mars. "Will you be able to take some time off?"
He rolled his eyes. "That's a laugh. It's eight to twelve and one to five; and if I'm a minute late after this lunch, I'll see a bitch slip. 'No goofing off on Doug Isaac's watch,'" he added in a crackling parody that sounded totally unlike Andrew. "I've got a little work on scenery flats in the evenings but I'll leave at eight.
See you tonight by eight-thirty without fail."
Romana did not want to tempt fate by complaining about the McCarran woman; not with Andrew so increasingly volatile these days. "Go over what we've covered on your own," she told him, handing him a napkin, accommodating him in her occasional role as Solicitous Mom. "Come over late Wednesday as well."
He agreed, and Romana was soon cruising back to the reservation, estimating the time available for her tasks. Because she had never actually set up a large-scale ammonia dynamite blast by herself, she had allotted ninety minutes for the circuit and explosives around her beloved Chamois. After that she would know exactly how long it would take to mine The Place itself, gallons and gallons of damp chemical lined up and down the hall in plastic containers. Andrew would have no reason to visit the Chamois and, if he had one, she would simply forbid him. Was she still master in her own home, or wasn't she? Those were her thoughts on Monday afternoon.
All those thoughts changed radically Tuesday at mid-morning, after she had parked a block from Andrew's apartment and let herself in, hoping that Andrew's temporary supervisor was as unyielding as he was painted. Of course she had an excuse for being there, if Andrew did come gliding up those stairs.
Wearing surgical gloves that made her hands sweat, she spent an hour querying his computer, and most of another searching his files: coursework from Cal Davis, articles on taxidermy, more on stagecraft. Then she put in some time searching stash-drops, places she had taught him to hide things. His sugar and salt containers held nothing but sugar and salt; none of his books were hollow and she already knew about the videocassette that hid his derringer. Checking the time before heading for the kitchen again, she had a brief fright until she realized that his desktop clock was an hour ahead. She chuckled at herself while ascertaining that Andrew's ice trays held only ice.
And then she checked in the meat tray and saw what was wrapped in bloody butcher paper, and something told her that this was not an ordinary exercise in taxidermy - not the way the ti
ny bodies had been mutilated.
She saw, still not entirely mixed with other body fluids, a milky substance; knew what it was by sheer intuition. And now, for the first time in her life, she trembled in honest fear at what she had created.
Romana could not stop her hands from trembling as she refolded and replaced the pathetic, sickening evidence of Andrew's decay. She pulled the front door shut behind her before stripping off her gloves and, shortly after noon, drove the new panel van into her garage thinking furiously, no longer content with her previous schedule.
Her schedule now had a deadline of 8:00 P.M., because the little monster had promised to leave his scenery work at eight "without fail." Thanks to his training, Andrew's punctuality could be depended on. If she left The Place as he was leaving the playhouse, he would miss her by a safe half-hour. She smiled grimly, knowing that he would elect to come in as usual, and if she were still within ten miles she would know the moment he did it.
The need to cut her timing so close was repugnant to her as a professional. Still, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that, though a stunning new circumstance had curtailed her schedule, she was equal to the challenge. She might have to leave some of the papers if she was to set the circuitry to her blasting caps - but perhaps not. The inexorable sweep of her chronometer would make that decision.
Arranging the explosives took her nearly three hours because the heavy containers grew so heavy after the first fifty or so. The circuitry itself would be the last thing.