'No,' Sapp said. 'Here's where you want me to be.'
With his pencil Sapp marked a blue road that wound more or less parallel to Route 20, a mile or so to the north.
'Piece of the old state road,' Sapp said. 'Was the main drag before the Interstate. I can park over here.' He made a small circle. 'And walk in behind them. About a mile maybe, mile and a half.'
Sapp poured me some more coffee. I stirred in cream and sugar and I took another donut.
'When you have a couple donuts,' Sapp said, 'you know you've eaten something.'
'Figured you for a dozen raw eggs a day,' I said.
'And a good case of salmonella. I don't believe all that protein crap. You do the work, you get the muscle.'
'Good,' I said. 'Gimme another one.'
'I'll plan to get there early.'
'Yes,' I said. 'Might be nice to walk the mile and a half in daylight.'
'Yep. Country's not real rough, but there's trees and some ground cover. Easier in the light.'
We drank coffee and cleaned up the last of the donuts. It was a little after eight-thirty in the morning.
'I got a vest,' Sapp said. 'Left over from my cop days.'
'Thanks,' I said. 'I know this isn't your fight.'
'I'm sure the bastards are homophobes,' Sapp said.
'I'm sure they are,' I said.
Sapp disappeared again and came back with a dark blue Kevlar vest.
'If Delroy's there,' I said, 'let's try not to kill him.'
'Man,' Sapp said, 'you spoil everything.'
'I know,' I said. 'But if he's alive I can turn him in and the thing is done.'
'Business before pleasure,' Sapp said. 'What you should do is get something that's not obvious, and put it on the roadside at the twenty-mile spot, so I'll have a marker when I come in from the back.'
I stood, and picked up the vest.
'I'll buy a cheap tire,' I said, 'and put it there. People see old tires on the highway all the time.'
'I'll look for it,' Sapp said. 'You want a kiss goodbye?'
'From you?'
'Yes.'
'I'd rather die,' I said.
FIFTY-SIX
I WAS RESTLESS the rest of the day. I cleaned both my guns-the short-barreled.38 I usually carried, and the Browning nine-millimeter I had for high-volume backup. I reloaded both guns, and thumbed cartridges into an extra clip for the nine. I tried on the vest. Sapp and I were more or less the same size, so the vest fit. I did some push- ups. I stood in the motel doorway and looked up at the sky, which by midafternoon had begun to darken. I turned on the television set and found The Weather Channel. After about fifteen minutes of learning far more than I ever cared to know about a low-pressure area in the Texas panhandle, I heard them prophesying rain in Georgia. I did some more push-ups. I called Susan and, using a flawless southern accent, left a sexually explicit message on her answering machine. I took a walk. After the walk I went to the motel coffee shop and had a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. It started to rain. I stood in the doorway of my room and watched it for a while. It was a nice rain, steady but not too aggressive. Falling straight. The weather cooled. I took a nap.
When I woke up the afternoon had begun to turn into evening and the rain was unyielding. I took a shower and put on clean clothes and checked both guns again. The meeting on Route 20 could be a feint, of course, and they in fact intended to buzz me as I walked to my car to drive out there. Probably not. It was probably too clever for Delroy. But probably is not the same as certainly. If they intended to do that, how soon would they show up? Probably about ten-thirty. I thought about another sandwich, but I wasn't hungry. I had coffee instead. I didn't want to be sleepy later on. Then I went back to my room and strapped on both guns. The Browning I wore behind my right hipbone. The.38 I wore butt forward in front of my left hipbone. I put the extra clip in my hip pocket and a handful of.38 special ammunition in my pants pocket. Then, carrying the vest over my arm, I walked to my car and got in and pulled out of the parking lot. Nobody followed me. It was about nine o'clock-too early.
I drove out Route 20 to the designated spot. Maybe a mile before I got there there was a rest stop where a few cars and a lot of trailer trucks were parked. If I had been planning this, I'd have had a car with a car phone waiting, and as I approached I would have had the tail car that had followed me from the motel call, and when I went by, the second would pull out and follow me, and when I stopped, the two cars would park in front and behind at an angle, blocking me. They'd have to be a lot more alert now, since I had left too early, and they had apparently not counted on that. Maybe it would throw them and they'd call it off. I didn't want that. At the next exit I turned around and headed back to Lamarr. I couldn't risk confusing them so much that they didn't make their try at me. They'd been stupid enough to announce this one. The next time they might not. I called Susan on my car phone.
When she answered I said, 'Spenser, Mobil Unit South.'
'Oh good,' she said. 'Someone claiming to be one of your body parts left me a disgusting message in a fake southern accent on my answering machine this afternoon, while I was healing people.'
