“And the first place they can get off?”
“Here, about two hundred yards up, at this intersection.
Otherwise they could dip down through the underpass here and head up Route 1 or turn off here at 128. We can put a couple of people at each place.”
“And a walkie-talkie up on the hill with the glasses?”
Healy nodded. “We’ll put an unmarked car here.” He put a cross on the map at the intersection of Route 1 and Salem Street. “Here, here, he could U-turn at the lights. So here, southbound.” Healy marked out eleven positions on the map.
“That’s a lot of cars,” Trask said.
“I know. We’ll have your people use their own cars and supply them with walkie-talkies. How many people can you give me?”
“Everybody; twelve men. But who’s going to pay them per them?”
Healy looked at him. “Per them?”
“For the cars. They’re supposed to get a per them mileage allowance for the use of their own cars on official business. This could mount up if all of them do it. And I have to answer to a town meeting every year.” I said, “Do you accept Master Charge?”
Trask said, “It’s not funny. You’ve never had to answer to a town meeting. They’re a bunch of unreasonable bastards at those things.”
Healy said, “The state will rent the cars. I’ll sign a voucher. But if you screw this up, you’ll learn what an unreasonable bastard really is.”
“There won’t be any screw-up. I’ll be right on top of every move my people make.”
“Yeah,” Healy said.
“Who you going to put into the stable?” I asked Healy.
“You want to do it? You’re the least likely to be recognized.”
“Yeah.”
“You know anything about horses?”
“Only what I read in the green sheet.”
“It doesn’t matter We’ll go up and look around.”
Healy put on his coat, tightened his tie, put the snap-brimmed straw hat squarely on his head, and we went out.
The rain had started again. Healy ignored it. “We’ll go in your car,” he said. “No need to have them looking at the radio car parked up there. Stick here, Miles,” he said to the cop leaning against the cruiser. He had on a yellow rain slicker now. “I’ll be back.”
“Yes, sir,” Miles said.
I backed out, pulling the car up on the grass to get around the state cruiser.
“Your roof leaks,” Healy said.
“Maybe I can get the state to give me per them payment for a new one,” I said.
Healy said nothing. The stable was about ten minutes from the Bartletts’ home. We drove there in silence. I pulled into the parking lot in front of the stable, parked, and shut off the motor. The stable was maybe one hundred yards in from the road. The access to it was between a restaurant and a liquor store. The restaurant was roadside colonial: brick, dark wood and white plastic, flat-roofed. In front was an enormous incongruous red and yellow sign that advertised home cooking and family-style dining and cocktails. The store was glass-fronted; the rest was artificial fieldstone. It too had a flat roof rimmed in white plastic. In the window was an inflated panda with a sign around his neck advertising a summer cooler. Across the top of the store was a sign that said Package Store in pink neon. Two of the letters were out. The parking lot narrowed to a driveway near the stable.
The stable looked like someplace you’d go to rent a donkey. It was a one-story building with faded maroon siding, the kind that goes on in four-by-eight pregrooved panels. The trim was white, and the nails had bled through so that it was rust streaked. The roof was shingled partly in red and partly in black. Through it poked three tin chimneys. Next to it was a riding ring of unpainted boards and the trailer part of a tractor trailer rig, rusted and tireless on cinder blocks. In front of the stable parked among the weeds were five horse trailers, an old green dump truck with V-8 on the front, an aqua-colored ‘65 Chevy hardtop, a new Cadillac convertible, and a tan ’62 Chevy wagon. A sign, Solid Fill Wanted, stood at the edge of the road, and a pile of old asphalt, bricks, paving stones, tree stumps, gravel, crushed stone, sewer pipe, a rusting hot water tank, three railroad ties, and a bicycle frame settled into the marshy ground behind it. Marlboro country.
Healy looked at it all without speaking. Carefully. A sea gull lit on the containerized garbage back of the restaurant and began working on a chunk of something I couldn’t identify through the rain.
“Let’s get out,” Healy said. We did. The rain was steady and warm and vertical. No wind slanted it. Healy had on no raincoat but seemed not to notice. I turned the collar up on my raincoat. We walked down toward the stable. The bare earth around it had been softened into a swamp of mud, and it became hard to walk. On the other side of the riding ring a handmade sign said Bridle Path, and an arrow pointed to a narrow trail that led into the woods. We walked back out to the parking lot and stood at the edge of Route 1 at the spot where Mrs. Bartlett was to stand. Cars rushed past in a hiss of wet pavement. To the left the road curved out of sight beyond a hill. To the right it dipped into a tunnel with a service road branching off to the right and parallel. Two hundred yards down was a light on the service road and a cross street.
Healy turned and headed back toward the stable. I followed. Healy seemed to assume I would. I walked a little faster so I’d be beside him, not behind him. I was beginning to feel like a trainee.
At the far end of the stable was a door marked Office. The torn screen door was shut, but the wooden door inside was open and a television set was tuned to a talk show. “Were you first into transcendental meditation
