Soft Targets

those skits he'd seen on TV; a proper couple of charlies.

Well, they'd be in Denver in another day and then, according to McTaggart, they'd do some surveillance. And after that maybe they would go away, or he could drive them back to Old Southie. Donny would do it, would go anywhere they told him, as long as he only had to drive. He would obey his Da. Surely, surely just driving couldn't get him in much trouble.

FRIDAY, 12 DECEMBER, 1980:

Maurice Everett urged his Mini-Cooper up the ice-slick highway out of Golden, Colorado, the rally tires biting hard through the gentle curves. He needed a weekend of solitude. Briefly and with a touch of cupidity he had thought of hiring Gina Vercours to go along. She was a skier, after all. But he had refused that notion, and the snub-nosed piece in a shoulder holster, on the same grounds: they would both cramp his style and they might call attention to him. He had already caught somebody's attention through the postal service but, during his new celebrity, the Denver office had intercepted only the lone ceramic letter bomb. Perhaps he was exaggerating his importance, but he would feel safer spending his weekend at one of the little rental cabins outside the little town of Empire. Even do a little winter stalking, who could say?

The three who could say, kept well to the rear. For a time the driver sweated to keep in sight of the Mini, settling for occasional glimpses of the tiny vehicle as the terrain permitted. There were few turnouts available after the new snow, and the further Everett isolated himself, the better two of them liked it.

Everett chose the roadhouse on impulse, back­ing the Mini in to assure easy return. The flakes were dusting down again, powdery dry on his face. He ordered coffee and began shucking his furlined coat before he realized that he was alone with the counterman. He slapped snow from the front of his winter hat, then saw the dark blue BMW ease off the highway. Everett took his cof­fee with hands that shook, watching through fogged windows as the sleek sedan began to emulate his parking maneuver. No, not quite; the BMW blocked his Mini, and only one of the car's three occupants emerged. Three coffees to go, or one Commissioner?

Everett saw the tall trenchcoated man cradle his long, gaily-wrapped package, speak briefly to the young driver; Everett noted the Mas­sachusetts license plate and used his time wise­ly. He walked to one end of the roadhouse, far from the windows and counterman, and piled his coat high in the last booth, placing his hat atop it. The coffee steamed in the center of the table, untasted bait.

Everett stepped directly across the aisle from his end booth into the men's room, hoping that his circumstantial case was nothing more than that, hoping that the lean trenchcoated man would get his coffee and go on to Empire, or Georgetown, or hell. He did not close the door or try the light switch.

There was nothing he could see in the semidarkness that would serve as a weapon and as he settled on the toilet, fully clothed and star­ing at his coffee three meters away, he felt the toilet seat move. One of its two attachment wingnuts was gone. Gently, silently, Everett set about removing the other, unconcerned by the stench of urine below his nose. Early or late, he reasoned, the audacious bird gets the worm.

He heard the front door of the roadhouse sigh shut, heard a mumbled exchange—one voice had a high lilt to it—at the counter ten meters from him, heard the counterman open a re­frigerator. So Mr. Trenchcoat wanted more than coffee. Cheeseburgers, or diversion?

Under the clank and scrape of short order cookery, Everett heard soft footfalls. He stood, breathing quickly and lightly through his mouth, gripping the toilet lid with no earthly thought of what he would do with it. He felt like a fool: oh, hello, t was just leaving, sorry about the lid, it didn't fit me anyhow . . . And then Mr. Trenchcoat stepped to Everett's booth as if offer­ing his package, one hand thrust into the false end of the package and he must have seen that he was confronting an uninhabited hat and coat just as Everett swung the lid, edge on, against the base of his skull from behind and to one side.

Everett was appalled at himself for an instant. He had drygulched a harmless holiday drunk, he thought, as the man toppled soundlessly onto Everett's coat. The contents of the package slidbackward onto the floor then, and Everett re­flected that harmless drunks do not usually carry sawed-off automatic shotguns in Christmas packages with false ends.

Everett's snowshoes were in the Mini and without them he would be stupid to run out the back way. The counterman, incredibly, was busy incinerating three steaks and had noticed noth­ing. Everett wrote the BMW license number on his table with catsup, though he could have used blood, and wrestled the trenchcoat from the un­conscious man.

The only way out was past the BMW. He hoped it would flee at his first warning shot, then realized that the occupants were waiting to hear that shot. How would Mr. Trenchcoat exit? Backward, no doubt, holding the shotgun on the counterman. Everett's trousers were the wrong shade of gray but he could not afford to dwell on that. The trenchcoat was of a cut he had not seen in years; perhaps they would not think beyond it for a few seconds. Then too, the blowing snow might help mask him for a moment. Or it might not.

He slid into the trenchcoat, which pinched at the armpits, turned its collar up, retrieved the shotgun and checked its safety. Gripped in a glacial calm that he knew would not last, he reminded himself of Pueblo and quashed his fear with one thought: my turn! Everett had time to pity the counterman, but not to question his own sanity, as he moved past windows near the door and turned his back on the door.

Everett's shotgun blast tore a fist-sized hole in the floor and sent a lance of pain through Everett's bad ear. The counterman ran without hesitation out the rear door into a snowdrift, screaming, and Everett backed out the front door fast. The driver of the blue car seemed to be screaming as well. The BMW engine blipped lustily and a voice called, 'In, in, Flaherty, ye fookin' twit,' and Everett spun to see a red-haired man holding a rear door open with one hand, a machine pistol forgotten in the other. Everett did not forget the weapon and aimed for it. His first shot blew the weapon and a hand out the BMW's front window from the inside.

Donegal Flynn accelerated to the highway, the left rear door of the car flapping open, and Ever­ett fired twice more. The next shot sent pellets caroming through the inside of the sedan and his last was a clean miss. Everett flopped hard into the snow and only heard, but could not see, the shiny BMW slide off the highway. It was a long vertical roll to the river and by the time they reached it neither of the occupants minded the cold water, being dead at the time.

Everett burst into the roadhouse to find that his first victim was still unconscious, a stroke of luck since Everett had neglected to check him for concealed weapons. There were things to set right. The counterman must be tamed, the tele­phone must be used; but first things first. He needed that toilet lid for a mundane purpose, and right now.

* * *

By the time the FBI mobile lab was en route from Denver, Highway Patrol units had things well in hand, had taken a sullen silent Irishman away in handcuffs, had even located the ruined sedan some distance down the river in three meters of water. Everett apologized for a dozen things including his prints, muddying those already on the shotgun; the instantaneous defec­tion of Smiley Bohlen, the counterman; and all the trouble he had caused in trying to defend himself. Despite his unquestioned identity, Maury Everett knew he was under informal ar­rest until the unmarked brown van pulled up outside the roadhouse. The atmosphere warmed quickly after that. Two of the FBI men in parkas mapped out the area while the third, an immacu­late cigar-chewing gentleman named Will Ful­ton, sat with Everett over coffee and a tape recorder.

As soon as a tape ended, Fulton would take it to the mobile lab for a fast-track transmission to Denver. Someone located the weapon Everett had blown from the BMW, which tickled Fulton no end even before its analysis in the van. Fi­nally grown hoarse, Everett asked, 'How much longer do we go on, Fulton? I needed a rest before any of this happened, and right now all I want is to get in the Mini and disappear.'

'Hard to say,' said Fulton, glancing at his watch. 'I got a bulletin from the van telling us to wait for a reinforcement. Somebody's flying into Denver, apparently, if the weather'll permit it. Besides, Commissioner, you thought you'd dis­appeared this morning. Care to think again?'

As Everett shook his head, a little fellow in a parka came in with a friendly nod to them both, then dropped a clipboard at Fulton's elbow before returning to the van.

Fulton, shifting the cigar no-hands, scanned the pages at length. 'It was a hit, all right,' he said finally as if to himself. 'A Mr. Flynn owned that four-door BMW in a Boston suburb. Flynn's a naturalized citizen from Belfast, and he's already made a statement. Anxious to cooperate; even more anxious about his son. Would you recognize a facsimile photo when it comes in?'

'Not likely,' Everett admitted. 'I feel rotten about those two guys in the car.'

'Because they didn't get a shot at you?'