No. Not there, Linda ordered herself-don’t go there. Stick to your job while you still have one. “Okay, say a minimum of two hours. If it was me, I’d have spilled my guts in two
“And she had your new address?”
“Yeah-I’m staying at Ed Pender’s place.”
“Out by the canal?”
“Yeah.”
“Think he’ll come after you?”
“If she told him I was Skairdykat, definitely. If she also told him I was FBI, probably not.”
“It might be worth a shot, though,” said Buchanan eagerly. “I know that place-it’d be perfect for an ambush. One road in, one road out, plenty of cover for the snipers-he comes after you there, his ass is ours.”
Buchanan’s excitement was contagious. “He’d probably come around back,” Linda offered. “I could be up on the porch. Then when he-What?”
Buchanan was shaking his head. “As my daughter would say, that is
“C’mon, I could-”
Another agent interrupted them. “Okay if I check the redial now?”
“Did you dust it yet?”
“No, Joe, I’m a complete idiot,” the man said, taking the wall phone off the hook. “Of course I dusted it, what do you think?” He pushed a button on the handset, listened for a second or two, then asked whoever had picked up: “Actually, operator, I need to know what city
“Atlantic City?” Linda’s head jerked around so swiftly she almost gave herself another Lhermitte’s.
“Yeah, I-”
“Never mind, I know who he was calling.”
“Who?”
“His mother lives in Atlantic City-he was calling his mother.”
Buchanan already had his cell phone out; he punched a speed-dial number. “This is Buchanan. Get me the R.A. in Atlantic City. If nobody’s there, track ’em down-this is crash priority.” He looked over at Buchanan, who was still on hold. “When the supervisor comes back on the line, get a phone number and an address for…?”He looked back to Linda.
“Delamour,” said Linda. “Rosie Delamour.”
“How much does she know?”
“As of four o’clock yesterday, diddly-squat.”
“Well, let’s hope she’s still blissfully-” Then, into the phone: “Yeah? Yeah, okay…LaFeo, this is Buchanan from Washington. We think Simon Childs might be heading your way.”
4
After taking care of a few minor housekeeping details (yes, the patio door of 1211 Baja Way had been unlocked; no, Pender hadn’t broken in; yes, Pender had had reason to believe Mr. Carpenter might have been in immediate physical danger; no, Miss Bell hadn’t intentionally misled the mailman into thinking she was a federal agent-that sort of thing), Pender and Dorie drove back to Carmel.
He didn’t offer any details as to what had been in the bathroom; she didn’t ask. But that wasn’t the real elephant-that-nobody’s-talking-about in the car on the drive down; the real elephant for Dorie was that this was going to be their last night together-Pender had booked an eight o’clock flight out of San Francisco tomorrow morning.
So it took her completely by surprise when he asked her, hypothetically speaking of course, how long it would take her to pack.
“For what?” she asked suspiciously.
“Hypothetically? Call it a little vacation.”
“How long?”
“I dunno, a week or two-that’d be up to you.”
“Leaving when?”
“Tomorrow-with me; I got us two tickets.” Then, before she could mount a protest: “Look, scout, the hardest part is the anticipation, right? By not telling you, I’ve already pared that down to the bare minimum. We pick up a pizza on the way home, you pack, ask Mrs. Whatsername next door, Mrs. Tibsen, to keep an eye on the place. Four-thirty in the morning, bing, we’re on the road, and this time tomorrow we’re sitting on my back porch eating crab cakes and watching the sun go down over the canal. And your aviophobia’s a thing of the past, like your prosophono-your proposono-whatever the hell you-”
“Okay.”
“-call it. What?”
“I said okay. I’ll do it. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s my girl,” said Pender. “Heart of a lion, guts of a burglar, cornflower blue eyes to die for, and a rack that won’t quit.”
“Pender.”
“What?”
“Shut the hell up before I change my mind.”
5
Once again, time demonstrated its essentially elastic nature for Linda, as she and Buchanan waited for the callback from Larry LaFeo. Fifteen minutes, he said-it would take him fifteen minutes to get to Rosie Delamour’s apartment. That was at eight-thirty, but the Danish Modern clock in the Gees’ kitchen might as well have been a Dali watch, as slowly as time seemed to be passing.
Guilt, of course, was no stranger to a good Catholic girl like Linda, but even when you’re only beating yourself up, you still get to rest between rounds. And being an FBI agent, Buchanan reminded her, was like being a surgeon or an air traffic controller: you make a mistake, sometimes people die. Comes with the territory-you don’t like it, maybe you should go into advertising, where the worst that happens, somebody buys a crummy car.
Which didn’t mean OPR wasn’t going to have her on the griddle-but neither, given the current climate, were they going to be eager to broadcast the fact that one of their agents had endangered two civilians, with fatal results. They’d probably settle for a medical retirement, and there was a provision in her federal health coverage plan that would-
Buchanan’s cell phone beeped; they both jumped.
“Buchanan…Yeah, that’s the one…Okay…Okay, got it…Affirmative, keep me in the loop….”He hit the disconnect, but didn’t put the phone back in his pocket.
“Well?” said Linda. “I’m dyin’ heah.”
“The Lexus is parked out front of the building. Atlantic City PD is bringing up their tac squad.”
More Dali’s-clock watching. Buchanan left the kitchen, returned with two cups of hot coffee from God- knows-where. Linda switched from feeling guilty about the Gees to trying to decide whether she’d been negligent in not having Rosie put under surveillance. But yesterday, she reminded herself, there was no reason to believe Childs was even west of the Mississippi. So maybe she could let herself off on that one.
