I found nothing under the front seat, but digging down in the seat, in front, my fingers touched something small and cool. I withdrew a matchbook. It was bright red. In black its shiny surface said THE EMBERS. There was no address, but there was a phone number, and the area code-309-was an Illinois one-that included the Quad Cities.
I pocketed the matchbook and felt my face make something that might have been a smile.
Pros these boys had not been. Even driving a brand-new car, they had managed to leave a trail of stupidity all the way back home. They were lucky they were already dead, or I’d be killing them again.
One at a time, I spread the Illinois and Iowa maps out on the hood of the car; there were no markings on either. On the Wisconsin map, however, highways and roads en route were traced in pen and Paradise Lake was circled.
I folded the maps back up and tucked them under my arm. I walked back into the hotel, the cold air whipping at me, a jet screaming overhead. In the gift shop I found a blue Chicago Bears windbreaker, inappropriate for the time of year, but it would do till I had a chance to stop and buy a real jacket.
Not a hunting one this time, even though that would be appropriate.
I also picked up the Sun Times and the Tribune. The latter had a small inside story about the incident, but in the former, in true tabloid tradition, MULTIPLE MURDERS FOLLOWED BY FIRE
had made page two, and had some details, including a few pictures: what seemed to be a high school picture of Linda looking impossibly young, pretty and innocent (like usual) and a shot of firemen working hoses on the burning house; fire must’ve lasted a while, because it was a daylight pic. No pictures of me. There weren’t any, that I knew of, under that name; or dental records or anything else, if they went looking.
I was sitting on the bed, reading the articles a second time, the TV tuned to the “Eyewitness” news, when an update came on.
The glow of the TV was on my face like the set was a hearth I was sitting in front of. A black reporter in a gray topcoat and a black tie was speaking earnestly into a microphone, his breath smoking with cold. Behind him was my A-frame, not recognizably an A anymore, smoking with heat. Even now.
“No official statement has been made,” the reporter was saying, “but one Twin Lakes fire department investigator, who wished to remain anonymous, speculated that the blaze may have begun as an accidental side effect of a ‘fight to the death’ between the man of the house and an intruder. That as yet unidentified intruder apparently stole an undisclosed amount of cash from a safe in the Wilson home, after killing Mrs. Wilson and her visiting brother, Christopher Blakely. Apparently Jack Wilson, the husband, came upon the scene and struggled with the intruder. Both Wilson and the intruder were killed; their struggle, near a roaring fire in a fireplace, may have led to the conflagration.”
Cut to Charley, behind the bar at the Inn, looking haggard, shattered.
“Jack did keep money in his house,” Charley said. “How much, I don’t know. I do know that his brother-in-law and wife were alone in that house that evening, before he joined them about midnight.”
Cut to a closer-up shot of the black reporter. “Wilson apparently killed the intruder by smashing his head against the edge of the metal fireplace. But Wilson was shot during the struggle and was probably dead before the fire flared up.”
Cut back to Charley.
“I don’t know much about Jack’s background,” he said. His voice was quavering. I felt bad about putting him through this. Well, when he discovered the Welcome Inn’s ownership reverted to him upon my death, that would cheer him up some.
“I do know that he saw combat in Vietnam,” Charley was saying, “and he kept guns in his house. It don’t surprise me Jack took the bastard with him.”
Local news. They could leave words like “bastard” in. Was this one of those ratings “sweep” weeks, I wondered, or did they routinely go “in depth” into exploitable tragedies like this?
“Locals say this is the first murder at Paradise Lake since the late 1800s,” the reporter was wrapping up, “when two trappers fought over fur-trading rights. And it may be the most bizarre and tragic multiple homicide the Lake Geneva area has ever seen. Len Myers, Eyewitness News.”
Then some asshole came on and talked about the weather. It was going to get colder.
6
I left the Buick in one of the parking ramps at O’Hare, where it could sit for a good long time before anybody discovered it had been abandoned. Then I paid cash for a seat on an evening flight, via Air Wisconsin to Moline, Illinois. On my way to the concourse I paid five bucks to the clean-cut young men hawking Preston Freed’s Democratic Action party literature. The forty-five minute flight allowed me to inform myself on the evils of abortion, the need for prayer in school, the Royal Family’s role in global drug traffic, the Zionist-inspired banking crisis and the approaching nuclear apocalypse. All Freed’s world outlook lacked was a white rabbit looking frantically at his watch.
The Moline airport terminal was a massive modern rambling structure, ridiculously outsized for what it was. The structure was relatively new-in the old terminal, which was still standing nearby, a building that was modern in the 1950s sense, I had done a job once. One of my last jobs for the Broker. Killed a priest in the men’s room, only he was just a guy passing for a priest.
I was passing for John Ryan, a name I had I.D. for, including a driver’s license. Even though I was out of the business all those years, I kept a spare identity active. One never knew, did one, when it would come in handy.
Ryan was supposed to live in Milwaukee, though the address was just a P.O. box. He had money in the bank-time certificates, mostly. His profession, should anyone ask, was sales. He owned his own small company and sold auto parts. That was the story. It wouldn’t hold up if I was in serious trouble, but if I was in serious trouble, I’d be past needing it to hold up.
But I had my driver’s license, Social Security number, and several credit cards. And that’s all anybody needs in the United States to qualify as a real person. It felt great being a real person. Real persons can rent cars, and I did, from National, another Buick, this one light blue. I wondered if National bought their cars locally, in which case it may have come from Best Buy over in Davenport. Everybody sing: it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all….
It was eleven when I checked in at the Howard Johnson’s near the airport. I’d been here before, too, years ago, but it had been remodeled some, not that I gave a shit. Remodeling a Howard Johnson’s is like a homely woman getting a facelift; sure she looks younger, but why the fuck bother?
I was feeling alert and awake, the Seconal hangover easing off. I had slept some on the plane, nodding off half-way through a Freed article explaining the link between the Zionists and the Illuminati. But before I’d dropped off, I learned something extremely interesting about extremist Freed: his home base was right here in the Quad Cities. His campaign headquarters for the coming presidential election was a suite of offices in the Blackhawk Hotel. His private estate was nearby, “just outside Buffalo, Iowa, in America’s heartland.”
Well, somebody in America’s heartland wanted Freed dead. And if I could figure out who that was, I’d know who I wanted dead.
I sat on the bed in the motel room, knowing I wouldn’t need to sleep for a while, and decided to get to work. I checked the phone book for Victor Werner, but there was no listing. It figured that he’d be unlisted. I had an address for him, in the Broker’s papers, but it was ten years old, that address. Would he still be there?
Only one way to find out.
I had left the Browning nine-millimeter behind, of course, but the other two, a matched pair of Smith and Wessons, were still with me. So was an Automatic Weapons Company HP-9 suppressor, a dark round tube that attached to the end of about any nine-millimeter, my S amp; Ws included. With a silencer like this, all a nine- millimeter made was a little thump you could sleep through. Forever, if necessary.
I attached the suppressor to one of the nine-millimeters and rolled the gun up in a bathroom towel. I still had my shoulder holster, but the silenced weapon was too bulky to wear that way. I had a dark blue sweatshirt along, which I put on, still wearing the jeans, and threw the lighter blue CHICAGO BEARS windbreaker over that. With the
