hundred twenty-five thousand?”
Laura smiled. “I know it’s obscene, considering the people you could feed with that.”
“Jesus,” Thorne said. There was a new respect in his eyes. “Could you teach me how to do that?” The light mood was broken by the sight of the two agents carrying boxes down the hall toward the stairs.
“I’ll show them where to put that,” Laura said, leaving the ballroom.
“She’s very talented,” Reid said. “They’ll bring ten times that someday.”
“A million dollars! Jeez.”
“It isn’t out of the question.”
“Well, it’s out of my question and answer.” Thorne turned to look at Reid. “I keep thinking that we’ve met before.”
“You’ve met all of me,” Reid said, indicating the painting.
37
Martin had always loved spying because it was the secret sharing of information-information he wasn’t supposed to have. And the more craftily it was taken, the less evidence there was of his having taken it. He found himself out in the open sunshine on St. Charles Avenue a mile from Laura’s house collecting information. If those DEA fools knew what he looked like, he’d be dead. Martin Fletcher shifted in the driver’s seat of his old Chevrolet so he could see down St. Charles Avenue and checked his watch. It was two P.M. Erin’s streetcar would be arriving to pick her up any minute. It had been a long time since he had watched her, but today was important. Thorne and the agents had moved across the street and into Laura’s house. There were agents on the perimeter, and police patrols had been tripled within ten blocks of the house. He had decided that he couldn’t afford to drive by the house anymore until it was time to move in for keeps. He had a plan in case they stayed ensconced inside.
He was hoping they would move the family before his mother took the agents off on the annual parade. He knew that if he was in Paul’s shoes that’s what he would do. They assumed they could follow her to him. But they couldn’t move the family too far, or to a place that was too well protected, because they wouldn’t risk putting them completely out of reach of an attempt. They also couldn’t risk losing a shot at him. No, that meant too much to all the people involved. Not even Paul could order them whisked out of sight completely. He knew what was in Paul’s mind: that if they missed him with his mother, they thought they could get him when he came for the family. They would assume they had two opportunities at him. But he knew something they didn’t know-that there was no way they could possibly succeed. He was on St. Charles Avenue to see how good the new stage of coverage was. So far it looked totally amateurish. Either they weren’t taking him seriously, or they were completely incompetent. It didn’t matter which.
Martin had not been at all upset that the agents had found his bug. He had anticipated it. He had figured correctly that they would then bug the house themselves, and when they had, it had just become a matter of frequency searching until he was able to apprehend the signals being sent to the DEA’s receiver. The laser device didn’t bother him; he’d figured that was the technology they’d use. He listened carefully to the morning’s broadcast, which he picked up from a remote receiver carefully hidden three blocks from Laura’s house in a boarded-up Sunoco station.
“She’s very talented,” Reid was saying. “They’ll bring ten times that someday.”
“A million dollars?”
“A million bucks, aw shucks.” Martin mimicked Thorne’s voice. “Ow fuck me runnin’.”
“It isn’t out of the question,” Reid’s voice answered.
“Once the bitch is dead,” Martin added, “sky’s the limit. Maybe three million.”
“Well, it’s out of my range,” Thorne said.
“So’s Lassie’s IQ.” Martin giggled.
“I keep thinking that we’ve met before,” Thorne said.
“You’ve met all of me,” Reid said.
“Not yet,” Martin said.
Martin snapped off the tape and removed the earphones. He was watching the streetcar stop. He knew Erin’s schedule as well as he knew Reb’s. One day a few weeks earlier he had taken a seat on the streetcar beside Erin. He had been disguised that day as an older man and had spoken to her, turning his most disarming personality into several blocks’ worth of small talk. He could have killed her but let the opportunity pass. The time just hadn’t been right.
He watched as a woman in her late thirties passed, pulling a six- or seven-year-old boy along toward the corner. It triggered a flow of memories, and he closed his eyes and rubbed the sockets gently. He had liked to watch his parents-to spy on their secret world, starting at age four or so. He had especially loved it when they were arguing, because when they argued, they made up with an emotionally charged fuck that made the springs echo through the house, and they snorted and yelled things that were funny.
Martin remembered everything. He had been small, seven or eight, and his ears half again as large as his head as he moved down the narrow hallway toward his parents’ bedroom that night. Martin had stood in the dark hall and peered into the well-lit room from the vertical opening between the jamb and the door’s edge. The door would not close all the way because it was warped, and if he stayed well back in the darkness, he could watch their secret lives.
That evening promised a good making-up session because his father had himself worked up into a rage and he was screaming at his mother, who was sitting on the bed looking into her lap, where she had locked her fingers around some knitting. “We can’t afford it!” he shouted, his face looking like a hot-water bottle filled with all but enough pressure to explode.
“He wanted it,” she replied. “And we can afford it,” she added calmly. “You’re his father, and all the other kids have bicycles and far, far more than he has.” She wagged the needle in his direction, and this further enraged him.
“He’s a fuckin’ pansy. He’ll get hurt on it, and doctors cost money. More’n we got, the way we’re goin’.”
“You’re a skinflint. Marty’s a good boy. And he’s your only son.”
“Son of mine? That punk’ll be trading blow jobs for baseball cards in a few years. And he’s no son of mine. You fooled me, you slutty bitch. His father was more’n likely some clap-drippin’, liver-lip, monkey-dicked nigger from-”
“Don’t you dare speak about him like that!”
“He’s a pencil-dicked fairy, and you’re a dried-up sack of corn husks. You haven’t felt a human emotion since the first time you felt hunger and wanted to suck your mother’s tit.”
“I’m warning you,” she said flatly. “I won’t let this pass if you say any more. That’s all, and you know I’m good as my word.” She might have been reading instructions off the back of a cake-mix box. “Don’t talk about my Martin.”
“Or you’ll what?” He raised his fist over her head. “You cock-suckin’-”
“I’ll kill you.”
He dropped his hands and bent down closer to her face. “He’s a little bed-wetting, turd-eating, cock- suckin’…”
From the hallway the motion Martin caught from his perspective was more like a sneeze than a thrust. Eve jerked her head down and then pushed up with both hands, and then she was standing with a knitting needle in her hand, the tip buried deep in his father’s eye socket. Milton Fletcher’s body lurched as if he had been electrocuted. He collapsed in a heap.
“Oh, dear, now look,” she said. She reached down and tugged at the needle. Then she put her foot on his forehead and pulled hard, and there was a noise like a cork popping and she had pulled the needle out. She wiped it carefully on his pant leg before she put it into the basket on the bed.
“I told you,” she announced. She pointed her finger at the body and wagged it up and down. “I warned you, mister. Don’t say I didn’t.”
Eve turned and saw her son standing in the shaft of light with his hands covering his mouth.
“Come right in here.” She pointed at her feet as if she was commanding a dog. He entered the room, his eyes
