The Consummata

Now you stand here and waste even more time...”

Somebody swore, then the husky voice again: “Jesus, lady...stand here and listen to your nonsense and we are wasting time...Jack, Roger, go out there through the back, where she indicated. Lou, call the locals to close in around the area. I’ll take Marty and Pete and shake this place down.”

The one called Lou said, “Relax, Bud. Everybody’s converging. We’re on top of this.”

“Are we really? You could fool me.”

“Bud, a bat couldn’t fly out of here now.”

A disgusted grunt. “You must think we’re playing with a kid, Lou. Did you read the damn data? This Morgan character’s a regular Houdini. How do you think he engineered that last escape?”

“This isn’t the last escape.”

“No, it’s a brand-new one.” A deep sigh. “Special Agent in Charge Crowley made it clear—he wants Morgan caught, and turned over. He wants some other agency to hold the damn receipt for Morgan’s body.”

Standing there in total darkness, like a tin soldier in a too-tight toy box, I felt my mouth twist in a grin.

So it was Crowley—the guy who was supposed to have delivered me back into a thirty-year stretch, after I did Uncle Sam that little favor that cut my sentence in half. Or would have, if I hadn’t escaped instead.

The last time I saw Crowley, he had a wild, surprised look, finding himself stretched out on the cabin floor, a look that got even more surprised as I bailed out over the ocean....

Crowley. I’d have to keep him in mind. At the time, he’d struck me as a guy with the bland face of a professional who would kill if necessary and who you couldn’t easily fake out.

A top hand—and he’d have to be, if they’d selected him to take delivery on Morgan the Raider. My mission had been a joint venture of the CIA and FBI and assorted other government alphabet soup, and losing a prisoner this important was not going to help out Crowley’s career path...

Maybe I’d been wrong about the capture priority. Maybe everything was on the line now, and this time Crowley wouldn’t worry too much about taking me alive, forty mil or no forty mil. After all, that receipt just specified my body.

Being alive or dead wasn’t mentioned.

I could only wonder how long I was going to have to play mummy in this sarcophagus. Hours ago I had gotten cramped from remaining immobile and managed to work myself into a half-squat, knees and back jammed against the sides of the enclosure to relieve my aching muscles.

The passage of time I could only figure from the smells. Two times the odors of cooking drifted into my tiny compartment, so I must have been stuffed in there for the rest of the day—thank God I’d emptied my bladder before leaving the safe house this morning.

At first the food smells had been a source of annoyance, thick and spicy enough to be an irritant, making me want to sneeze. Now they were tantalizing tempters because my stomach was flat in its emptiness and what at first had seemed distasteful now seemed potentially delicious.

I had lived with thirst before and knew how to control it. Right now, though, I could use a drink, and it wasn’t water I wanted, but a tall, cold beer in a frosted glass with the suds running down the sides....

For some reason the cramped quarters weren’t as stifling hot as I had expected them to get. The floorboards didn’t join and a coolness seemed to seep upward, musty but easy to live with, like being stuck in an old root cellar.

During the first eight hours, dozens of feet had tramped through the premises, adding to the confusion of voices. Somebody was continually chasing the kids out, trying to mollify the protests of the residents. Twice, agents had stood right outside my cubicle and discussed the search, angry voices muffled but very audible.

“These spics snowed us,” the husky-voiced one called Bud had said. “They were in on it.”

“You think these people arranged Morgan’s escape?”

That was the one called Lou, and I found myself grinning. Bud and Lou. Abbott and Costello. I began picturing them that way.

“That’s what I think,” Bud said.

“How the hell did they manage it?”

“The kids were in on it.”

“Get serious! The kids? They’re too little, too young. They couldn’t organize a burping contest.”

“Those little bastards did it, Lou, I’m telling you.”

“No way, Bud—there wasn’t time to plan.”

“They didn’t plan it, Lou—the grown-ups did.”

“Bud, kids don’t react to orders like that! Not in a matter of seconds. Morgan spotted his tail, took advantage of the situation, used those kids for cover, and somehow got through the cordon.”

“But how did he get through the cordon?”

Who’s on first?

A neighborhood house-to-house search was instituted and the feds went through the routine again. Then I heard a voice that echoed back from the recent past and I felt that grin pull at my mouth again.

Crowley.

The big cheese had taken personal charge and everybody was catching hell. As a matter of policy, they were going to station some people around in case I was still holed up, but their own damn self-assurance in their techniques was going to screw the pooch for them.

“It’s just precautionary,” Crowley said, referring to keeping a minimal presence in the neighborhood. His voice was as bland as my memory of his face. “Morgan’s gone. He knew he was being tailed, and walked us into an area where he had allies and resources, and he’s far, far gone. You all know his dossier—if we want him back, we have to start from scratch.”

So I stayed where I was and listened to the sounds coming back to normal. It would be dark out now, and supper was finished. Faintly, the sounds of a television program came through to me—seemed my saviors watched Johnny Carson, like all good Americans, so I knew it was after eleven o’clock.

I waited.

I changed positions a few times.

And I waited some more.

Then I heard the scratching at the boards in front of my face. I had been in the dark so long my night vision was at its fullest and I saw the section move and slide outward and looked at the funny little guy with the scraggly mustache in the loose light-blue short-sleeve shirt and baggy darker blue pants, standing there trying to peer inside like some fool searching for a missing cat.

He said, “Senor...?”

“I’m here.” After all those hours, my voice was scratchy.

His bandito mustache rose in a big smile. “Ha, I knew you were not going anywhere, senor! But at first I thought you might have lose the conscious...or maybe you were wounded and we did not know, and some terrible thing happen and...”

“Amigo, I’ve never been better. Nothing wounded but my pride.”

A relieved sigh.

Then he pulled the boards back farther. “Come out now, quickly, please. It is all right.”

I shouldered through the opening, watched while he fitted what appeared to be part of the wall back in place. Then he shoved a carton of garbage up against it and I followed him through a grocery storeroom and up a dark flight of stairs, and into more darkness.

After he bolted the door behind us, he flicked on a yellow-shaded lamp beside an ancient radio console. The room was small but not tiny, with adobe-type walls, second-hand furniture and Catholic wall decorations.

Then my host turned to study me, his face bright with pleasure.

His half-bow was almost comic. “Allow me to present myself, senor. I am Pedro Navarro, formerly of Cuba, but now a citizen of your country by choice.”

“I’m Morgan,” I said.

That smile blossomed under the mustache again—somewhat yellow, like the lamp shade. He was a smoker —the smell of cigars was on him. Well, he was Cuban....