thirties, cut from the same piece of cloth. Clean-cut, recent haircuts, fit-he could tell from their necks they were lifters. All of them were trying too hard to appear casual in loose shirts and khakis, forcing the pass-the-hash- browns banter. One of them had his fanny pack laid on the table.
None of them looked his way, and he pretended not to look at them. He shuffled his feet and waited by the phone, keeping them in his peripheral field. Agency boys; which agency, he didn’t know. Everything told him to abort, to walk out the back door and keep going, but then what? He had to find Shackleton and this was the only way. He’d have to deal with the lifters. He felt the weight of his gun against his ribs every time he breathed.
Frazier felt a spark of electricity coursing through his body when Will Piper appeared on his monitor. The fanny pack was being manipulated by one of the men to track him, and the monitor showed him standing up against a wall beside a pay phone.
“Okay, DeCorso, that’s good,” Frazier said into his headset mic. “I’ve got him.” He clenched his jaw. He wanted to see the screen fill with the second target, he wanted to fire out the go order and to watch his men take both of them down and bundle them up for special delivery.
Will explored his options. He did his best imitation of a casual saunter and entered the men’s room for a look-see. There were no windows. He splashed some cold water on his face and wiped himself dry. It was still a few minutes before ten. He left the men’s room and headed straight out the back door. He wanted to see if any of the men made a move, but more important, he wanted to scope out his environs. There was an alleyway running between Beverly and Canon that serviced the buildings on both streets. He saw the back entrances of a bookstore, a drugstore, a beauty salon, a shoe store, and a bank all within a stone’s throw. To his left the alley opened up into a parking lot servicing one of the commercial buildings on Canon. There were foot routes that would take him north, south, east, or west. He felt a little less trapped and went back inside.
“There you are!” the hostess called out from the front, startling him. “I got your table.”
The table for two was near the window, but the view to the phone was unimpeded. It was 10:00 A.M. The men at the middle table were getting more coffee.
DeCorso, the team leader, had a buzz cut, heavy black eyebrows, and thick hairy forearms. Frazier was complaining into DeCorso’s earpiece, “It’s time. Where the fuck is Shackleton?”
On his monitor Frazier watched Will pouring coffee from a carafe and stirring in cream.
Five minutes passed.
Will was hungry, so he ordered.
Ten minutes.
He wolfed down eggs and bacon. The men in the middle were lingering.
At ten-fifteen he was beginning to think that Shackleton was playing him. Three cups of coffee had taken their toll-he got up to use the men’s room. The only other person inside was the old man with his cane, moving like a snail. When Will was done, he left and noticed the bulletin board beside the pay phone. It was a paper quilt of business cards, apartment-for-rent flyers, lost cats. He’d seen the board earlier but it hadn’t registered.
It was staring him in the face!
A three-by-five-inch card, the size of a postcard.
A hand-drawn coffin, the Doomsday coffin, and the words: Bev Hills Hotel, Bung 7.
Will swallowed hard and acted on pure impulse.
He snatched the card and dashed out the back door into the alleyway.
Frazier reacted before the men on the scene. “He’s taking off! Goddamn it, he’s taking off!”
The men jumped up and pursued but got hung up when the old man leaving the restroom blocked their way. It was impossible to watch the video images since the camera bag was jostling up and down, but Frazier saw the old man in some frames and screamed, “Don’t slow down! He’ll get away!”
DeCorso lifted the man in a bear grip and deposited him back in the men’s room while his colleagues rushed to the door. When they hit the alleyway it was empty. On DeCorso’s orders, two went right, two went left.
They frantically searched, scouring the alley, running through stores and buildings on Beverly and Canon, checking under parked cars. Frazier was screaming so much into DeCorso’s earpiece that the man begged him, “Malcolm, please calm down. I can’t operate with all the yelling.”
Will was in a bathroom stall in the Via Veneto Hair Salon, one door away from the coffee shop. He stayed put for over ten minutes, half standing on the toilet, his gun drawn. Someone entered shortly after he arrived but left without using the facilities. He exhaled and maintained his uncomfortable pose.
He couldn’t stay there all day and someone was bound to use the toilet, so he left the bathroom and quietly slipped into the salon, where a half-dozen pretty hairdressers were working away on customers and chatting. It looked like a female-only type of shop and he was way out of place.
“Hi!” one of the hairdressers said, surprised. She had severely short blond hair and a micro-mini stretched over strawberry tights. “Didn’t see you.”
“You do walk-ins?” Will asked.
“Not usually,” the girl said, but she liked his looks and wondered if he might be famous. “Do I know you?” she asked.
“Not yet, but if you give me a haircut you will,” he teased. “You do men?”
She was smitten. “I’ll do you myself,” she gushed. “I had a cancellation anyway.”
“I don’t want to sit near the window and I want you to take your time. I’m not in a rush.”
“You’ve got a lot of demands, don’t you?” She laughed. “Well, I will take good care of you, Mr. Bossy Man! You sit right there and I’ll get you a cup of coffee or tea.”
An hour later Will had four things: a good haircut, a manicure, the girl’s phone number, and his freedom. He asked for a cab and when he saw it standing on Canon, he gave her a big tip, sprang into the backseat and sank low. As it pulled away, he felt he’d made a clean escape. He ripped up the slip with the phone number and let the fragments flutter out the window. He’d have to tell Nancy about this act, certifiable proof of his commitment.
Bungalow 7 had a peach-colored door. Will rang the bell. There was a Do Not Disturb tag on the handle and a fresh Saturday paper. He’d slipped his Glock into his waistband for fast access and let his right hand brush against its rough grip.
The peephole darkened for a second then the handle moved. The door opened and the two men looked at each other.
“Hello, Will. You found my message.”
Will was shocked at how haggard and old Mark appeared, almost unrecognizable. He stepped back to let his visitor in. The door closed on its own, leaving them in the semidarkness of the shade-drawn room.
“Hello, Mark.”
Mark saw the butt of Will’s pistol between his parted jacket. “You don’t need a gun.”
“Don’t I?”
Mark sank onto an armchair by the fireplace, too weak to stand. Will went for the sofa. He was tired too.
“The coffee shop was staked out.”
Mark’s eyes bulged. “They didn’t follow you, did they?”
“I think we’re good. For now.”
“They must’ve tapped my call to your daughter. I knew you’d be mad and I’m sorry. It was the only way.”
“Who are they?”
“The people I work for.”
“First tell me this: what if I hadn’t seen your card?”
Mark shrugged. “When you’re in my business you rely on fate.”
“What business is that, Mark? Tell me what business you’re in.”
“The library business.”
Frazier was inconsolable. The operation was blown to hell and he couldn’t think of one thing to do except shriek like a banshee. When his throat became too raw to continue, he hoarsely ordered his men to hold their positions and continue their apparently futile search until he told them otherwise. If he’d been there, this wouldn’t have happened, he brooded. He thought he had professionals. DeCorso was a good operative but clearly a failure as a field leader, and who would take the blame for that? He kept his headset glued to his skull and slowly walked through the empty corridors of Area 51, muttering, “Failure is not a fucking option,” then rode the elevator topside
