“That was him,” she said. “He says to meet him in the Delta parking lot at La Guardia. All the way in the back, against the fence. He’ll be in a white Taurus sedan.”
“When?”
“Now. He said he’ll give you an hour.”
“Okay,” I said, climbing into my clothes.
“An hour isn’t—”
“This time of night? No problem,” I assured her.
She knelt at my feet, carefully threaded the laces of my work boots, tied each one precisely. “Burke, he didn’t say anything about calling you. He had to know you were here.”
“He’s calling from the meeting place,” I told her. “He’s already there. Probably been there for hours. In a war zone, names don’t matter, just addresses. It’s the only way he can be sure I don’t fill the parking lot with my own people. He’s not watching outside—he was just guessing about me being here. Not a bad guess anyway, right? I told him I was your man, remember? Or maybe he thought you could find me on the phone right away.”
“Or maybe he has people of his own,” she whispered.
“Maybe.”
She stood against me in the dark. Her skin was silky, warm with the blood beneath it. I kissed her tattoo and left her there.
I took the Brooklyn Bridge to the BQE, the Plymouth gobbling ground effortlessly. It was still cold out, but the pavement was dry and traction was no problem. I kept near the speed limit until a bright- orange Mustang with a huge rear wing shot by me, a white Camaro with a broad red racing stripe in close pursuit. They were doing at least a hundred. Not racing—just screwing around, pushing each other. The BQE isn’t a race road—too many giant potholes, too many reverse-graded curves. When the dragsters want to really throw down, they go over to Rockaway or work the deep end of Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens. But those fools were all the interference I’d ever need on the off-chance some highway cop was lurking in the night. Which I’d never seen on the BQE in my entire life anyway.
As I went by the McGinnis Boulevard cutoff, the back of the rear seat popped out and Max emerged from the trunk. He climbed into the front seat, dressed in full night-runner gear—a modified ninja outfit, light-eating black, complete with hood and face mask. I handed him the key and he opened the glove compartment. Took out a little square box made out of gunmetal-gray Lexan with a row of tiny Braille-style dots across the top. Max tripped the switch and the dots flashed in sequence before they settled down to only one glowing steady. Green. Pryce didn’t have a tracking device planted anywhere on the Plymouth—the Mole’s technology was as good as anything the government had. Better, probably. Underground research is pure Darwinism—no grants, no bureaucracy, no politics. It works or it dies.
I checked the rearview mirror. Empty. I rolled over the Kosciuszko Bridge and pulled up on the shoulder just past the LIE turnoff, playing it safe, watching the sparse traffic roll by.
Nothing.
Max kept watch as I sketched a rough map of what I wanted. He took one quick look, nodded okay—he’d been there before. I put the Plymouth in gear and pulled back on the highway. Max tore the hand-drawn map into tiny pieces, let them trail from his hand out the open window.
Plenty of time. I turned off the BQE to the Grand Central, followed it to Ninety-fourth Street, exited and ran parallel to the highway through East Elmhurst until I was well past the airport. I doubled back through the interchange at Northern Boulevard and grabbed the Grand Central again, heading back toward Manhattan. I kept sliding right until I picked up the service road that leads to a highway gas station. I pulled over just before I reached it. There’s a small parking area there. Limo drivers use it when they have a long wait for a flight—they’re not allowed in the taxi line. At almost one in the morning, the lot was deserted—La Guardia doesn’t handle international flights and it’s usually out of business by midnight. I let Max off. Checked my watch. I still had almost twenty minutes.
I punched Crystal Beth’s number into the cell phone.
It rang a dozen times. No answer.
I smoked a cigarette. Slowly, all the way through. Then I went to meet whatever was waiting.
The Delta lot is all the way at the east end of La Guardia, the last piece of solid ground before the whole place turns to swamp. I pulled a ticket from the automatic vending machine and the gate lifted to let me in. The lot was sporadically dotted with cars, almost all of them clustered near the exit to the terminal, probably airline personnel. In the warm weather, some people use this lot as a four-dollar-an-hour motel, a Lovers’ Lane where you don’t have to worry about prowlers. But in the winter, it’s all business. I let the Plymouth poke along between the rows of parked cars, feathering the throttle, watching. Halfway through the lot, it turned empty. Except for a white Taurus sedan standing all by itself against the back fence, front end aimed in my direction.
I docked the Plymouth about five car-widths away, stepped out and walked to the Taurus. Saw it was a SHO model, about thirty-five grand worth of high-speed anonymity. Quick enough for pursuit work, generic enough for shadowing, comfortable for stakeouts. A pro’s choice, even the color—more white cars than any other out there now. The windows were deep-tinted—couldn’t see inside. But I figured he could see out, so I just stood there, looking at the windshield, holding my hands far away from my body, my jacket zipped up tight.
Nothing.
I heard pebbles crunch, sensed movement behind me. Not stealthy—letting me know he was coming. I turned around slowly. Pryce was walking toward me from the corner of the lot, hands as empty as mine.
I wondered if his heart was too.
“Sorry,” he said as he got close enough to speak. “I had to take a leak.”
I spread my arms wider, going for a Christ-on-the cross position. “Let’s get this part over with quick,” I said. “It’s too cold to be standing around playing games.”
He stood there looking at me, his featureless face calm. “I couldn’t do an adequate job out here,” he said. “You know that.”
“Then do what I’m gonna do,” I told him.
“Which is?”
“Don’t say anything you don’t want on tape.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. You want to talk in the car?”
“Sure.”
In the silver leather passenger seat, I turned my right shoulder to the windshield so that I was almost facing him. “Okay if I smoke?” I asked him.
He turned the ignition key, hit the switch for the power windows. The glass behind me whispered down. Step one. He shifted position so that he was facing me. Two. “I’ve got an idea,” I told him. “But first I have to know some stuff.”
“Ask your questions,” he said.
“It all comes down to this,” I started, exhaling a heavy puff of clove-cigarette smoke in his direction. His expression didn’t change, but he pushed the switch, taking his own window down. Three. “Is this Lothar guy the whole machine, or just a tool?” I finished.
“He’s a tool,” Pryce said without hesitation.
“Tell me what you’re willing to,” I said. “If there’s blanks, then I’ll ask, okay?”
He scratched absently at the tip of his nose. Phantom itch? Like you get from an amputated limb. Or plastic surgery. The tip of the nose changes the face radically, a doctor told me once. “Larry James Bretton,” he said. “Now known as Lothar Bucholtz. He changed it legally. I don’t believe his wife knows about the surname, but he’s been calling himself Lothar publicly for some time now. General failure. Trained as a printer, but fired from three straight jobs for using company facilities to put out various propaganda sheets for extremist groups. He doesn’t write the stuff himself—he hasn’t got brains enough even for the intellectual challenge of using ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ in the same sentence. But he’s a true-believer all the way. You know the party line: If the government can be destabilized, if the artificial restraints come off, the streets will run with blood. Knock ZOG off and the kikes won’t be able to stop the
