“That’s right. And I was told one thing, absolutely clear, too.”
“What was that?”
“If anyone ever, anytime that day or years ahead, ever came asking about the deal or the old couple or the three children that nobody ever saw, I was supposed to call a number.”
“Did they give you a name?”
“No, just a number in Manhattan. And then about six, seven years later, a man calls me one day, out of the blue, and tells me that the number has changed. Gives me another New York City number. Then, maybe a few years after that, same guy, calls up, gives me another number, only this time it’s in upstate New York. He asks me if anyone has ever come visiting. I tell him no. He says great. Reminds me of the arrangement, and says there will be a bonus if anyone ever does. But it never happens until the other day when this guy Lazarus shows up. Asks his questions, and I run him out. Then I call the number. Man picks up the phone. Old man, now, you can hear it in his voice. Real old. Says thank you for the information. Maybe two minutes later, I get another call. This time it’s some young woman. She says she’s sending me some cash, like a grand, and that if I can find Lazarus and keep him there, there’s another grand. I tell her he’s probably staying at one of maybe three or four motels. And that’s it, until you show up. And I still don’t know who the hell you are, mister.”
“Lazarus is my brother,” Ricky said quietly.
He hesitated, thinking, adding years to an equation that reverberated deep within him. Finally he asked, “The number you called, what is it?”
The man rattled off all ten numbers rapidly.
“Thank you,” Ricky said coldly. He didn’t need to write it down. It was a number he knew.
He gestured with the pistol for the man to roll over.
“Place your hands behind your back,” Ricky instructed.
“Oh, come on, man. I told you everything. Whatever this is all about, hell, I ain’t important.”
“That’s for certain.”
“So, just let me go.”
“I just need to restrict your activity for a few minutes. Like long enough to depart, before you can get up, find some bolt cutters, and let Brutus there loose. I’m thinking that perhaps he’d like to have a moment or two alone with me in the dark.”
This made the kennel owner grin. “He’s the only dog I ever known that carries a grudge. Okay. Do what you got to.”
Ricky secured the man’s hands with duct tape. Then he stood up.
“You’ll call them, won’t you?”
The man nodded. “If I said I wouldn’t you’d just get pissed because you’d know I was lying.”
Ricky smiled. “A bit of insight. Quite correct.”
He paused, considering precisely what he wanted the kennel owner to say. Rhymes leaped into his imagination. “All right, here’s what you need to tell them:
“That sounds like a poem,” the man said, as he lay on his stomach on the gravel, trying to turn his head to see Ricky.
“A kind of poem. Now we’re going to have a lesson. Repeat it for me.”
It took several efforts for the kennel owner to get it more or less straight.
“I don’t get it,” the man said, after mastering the poem. “What’s going on?”
“Do you play chess?” Ricky asked.
The man nodded. “Not too good, though.”
“Well,” Ricky said, “be thankful that you are just a pawn. And you don’t need to know any more than a pawn needs to know. Because what’s the object of chess?”
“Capture the queen and kill the king.”
Ricky smiled. “Close enough. Nice speaking to you and Brutus there. Can I give you one piece of advice?”
“What’s that?”
“Make the call. Recite the poem. Go out and try to collect all the dogs that have run away. That should take you some time. Then tomorrow wake up and forget any of this ever happened. Go back to the life you have for yourself, and don’t think about all this ever again.”
The kennel owner shifted about uncomfortably, making a scrabbling sound in the gravel driveway. “That might be hard.”
“Perhaps,” Ricky said. “But it might be wise to make the effort.”
He stood up, leaving the man on the ground. Some of the other dogs had stretched out, and they stirred when he moved. Replacing the weapon in the backpack, Ricky kept the flashlight in his hand, and started to jog down the driveway. When he disappeared from any of the light that flooded the front area of the kennel, he picked up his pace, turning onto the darkened roadway, and heading fast toward the cemetery where he’d parked his car. His feet made slapping sounds against the black pavement beneath him, and he switched off the flashlight, so that he ran in the pitch-dark country. It was a little like swimming in a storm-tossed sea, he thought, cutting through waves that tugged at him from every direction. Despite the night that swallowed him, he felt illuminated by a single, glowing piece of information. The telephone number. It was, to Ricky in that second, as if everything from the first letter delivered to his office, right through that instant, was suddenly part of the same great, sweeping current. And then, he realized, perhaps it went much further. Months and years into his past, where something was catching him up and sweeping him along, but he had been unaware of it. The knowledge should have exhausted him, he thought, but instead, he felt an odd energy, and an equally odd release. He thought the understanding that he’d been surrounded by lies, and suddenly had seen some truth, was like a fuel, pushing him ahead.
He had miles to travel that night, he thought. Highway miles and heart miles. Both leading into his past, and pointing the way to his future. He hurried, like a marathon racer who senses the finish line ahead, beyond his sight, but measured in the pain in his feet and legs, the exhaustion creeping into his every breath.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was a little after midnight when Ricky reached the tollbooth on the western side of the Hudson River, just to the north of Kingston, New York. He had driven quickly, pushing right to the limit of where he thought he could, but not be pulled over by some irritated New York state trooper. It was, he imagined, a bit of a microcosm for much of his past life. He wanted to speed, but wasn’t quite willing to take the chance of truly flying. He thought the created persona of Frederick Lazarus would have pumped the rental car up to a hundred miles per hour, but he couldn’t bring himself to that. It was as if both men, Richard Lively, who hid, and Frederick Lazarus, who was willing to fight, were on this particular drive. He realized that since he’d constructed his own death, he’d balanced between the uncertainty of taking risks, and the security of hiding. But he knew that he was probably no longer as invisible as he once believed he was. He guessed that the man searching for him was close behind, that all the crumbs and threads of clues and indications had been found, from New Hampshire straight back down the
