Marshall approached the table, his leather identification folder already open in his hand. He stopped beside Jardine and held it in front of his face. “Hello, Mr. Jardine. John Marshall, F.B.I.”
Jardine’s eyes squinted at the ID, then looked up at Marshall. His eyes were guarded, not quite daring to be hostile, but the brain behind them was already aware that this was not likely to be good news.
Marshall said, “I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes.”
Jardine made his eyes flick from side to side, already convinced that the arrival of the tall man in the dark suit had frightened off some valuable quarry. “This is kind of an awkward place,” he said. “Can we go somewhere away from the gates?”
“If you’d like,” said Marshall. He stepped back and waited while Jardine closed his briefcase and stood up. Marshall stepped off toward the concourse and let Jardine follow.
Marshall entered the cafeteria, sat down at a table, then gave Jardine an inquiring look. Jardine nodded and sat down. He had used the short walk to regain his composure. He leaned back in his seat comfortably, as though he were about to light a cigar and pass the brandy. “What can I do for you?” asked Jardine. He looked into Marshall’s eyes and saw something that dispelled his confidence. His wariness returned. He straightened and sat in his chair with the palms of his hands on the table.
Marshall opened the manila envelope. “You’re probably anxious to get back to what you were doing, so I’ll try to make this quick.” He turned the impenetrable light brown eyes on Jardine. “And I know you’ll help me.”
Marshall set three enlarged photographs on the table and spun them around, one after the other, so they faced Jardine. The pictures were grainy, so Jardine knew they must have been transferred from a videotape. But they were unarguably pictures of him with Jane in Lot C.
In the first, the two were standing beside his car talking. In the second the doors were open. She was seated and he was getting into the car. In the third, Jardine was driving out the gate with her in the passenger seat. Jardine looked up at Marshall.
“Who is she?” asked Marshall.
Jardine feigned a smile while he looked at Marshall and considered his answer. This man wasn’t about to screw around listening to him say he didn’t know. He knew that Jardine knew, and he was sitting here with his palms sweating, just waiting to catch Jardine in a lie. “I don’t know a whole lot about her. The name she gave me is Jane.”
Marshall’s gaze seemed to lose some of its chill. He looked interested. “What was your business with her?”
Jardine felt cheated. It was just like the damned taxes. You owned something as long as the government felt like ignoring the fact that you had it, but you were just taking care of it for them. If they wanted it, they just came to you like this and took it. She was worth money to him. She might be the difference between retiring in a big house with a pool table in the basement and freezing to death in some alley in a cardboard box. He resisted. “Is there a reward for information leading to her apprehension and conviction?”
Marshall shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Is there a bench warrant for her? Bail bondsman involved?”
“No,” said Marshall. “She’s just somebody we’d like to talk to. She might have information about a fugitive we’re looking for.”
“Who is it?”
Jardine detected that Marshall’s patience had been exhausted. The look in his eyes returned. “This is a friendly inquiry. We would like to know why you were meeting with her the other night in Lot C.”
Jardine felt alarm seeping into his veins to speed up his heart and slow his mind. The F.B.I. knew she was a criminal and had pictures to prove he had been with her alone. He stared down at the three photographs. They made it look as though he had met her at the airport and taken her somewhere. That was aiding the escape of a felon. It occurred to him that the appearance was exactly what had happened.
But she had been holding a gun on him. Why couldn’t you see it in the pictures? He remembered she had been shielding it with her body when he had approached. Then she had backed up to keep it on him and her body was turned to the side. He had assumed at the time that she just didn’t want a shuttle bus driver to notice, or a passenger starting his car to turn on his headlights and see it. But she had known exactly where the cameras were mounted, and had kept her back to them.
He searched for a way out. The F.B.I. could have his license pulled in a second, but that wasn’t what worried him most. This guy could probably get him held in county jail on suspicion for a couple of days while he dreamed up a charge. Jardine thought about the prospect of being placed in the general population behind the walls on Vignes Street. The population always included a few who knew him professionally. He would never get out alive.
It was a gross injustice. Any kind of cop who got sent up would be put in solitary on a special block where the other prisoners couldn’t get at him. Jardine was just as much a part of the justice system as any of them, but he wouldn’t get special treatment.
He had to survive. “Here’s the way it was,” he said. “I don’t really know her at all. She came off a plane. She looked a little bit like a woman who was wanted in Illinois. If I remember right, it was mail fraud and forgery, but I could be wrong. Anyway, she had that look. It was a slow night, and so I decided to tail her until I could make sure.”
“How?”
“First on foot, then in my car.”
“No,” said Marshall. “How were you going to make sure? If you couldn’t tell by looking at her in a lighted airport, what new information were you going to get?”
“I carry a collection of posters and circulars.” Jardine swung his briefcase onto the table and opened it for Marshall. Clipped to the lid were rows of photographs reproduced on a copying machine. On some pictures, subtleties of skin tone and shading had been left out by the copier, and on others, shadows and textured details like hair had become dark blurs, but Marshall recognized a few of the faces. Richard Dahlman was one. “I thought I’d get really close—maybe talk to her, and see.”
Marshall closed the briefcase. “So what happened?”
“I was wrong. I got to the C lot, pulled up, got out, and she looked straight at me. I had come too close to get out of it without saying something. She looked startled, so I was afraid she was going to scream or mace me or something. I said I mistook her for somebody, and was about to move on. Then she said she couldn’t find her keys. Would I give her a ride?”
“A ride to where?”
“To her motel.”
Marshall’s face was expressionless. “Did that strike you as odd?” The eyes never seemed to blink. “The next shuttle bus would have come along in five minutes and taken her to the airport. She could have stepped out of it and walked ten feet to a cab.”
Jardine felt hot and panicky. He had let himself get overconfident again, while he had described a procedure he had used many times. Spotting fugitives was a chancy business, so he had spent many evenings trying to get a second, closer look. He had gone too far. No woman with more brains than a ham sandwich who saw a stranger pull up in that parking lot at night would ask him for a ride. It had never happened, could never happen.
He had to get out of this hole. The F.B.I. knew who she was, but he couldn’t let them know he did. “I was just getting to that,” he said. “I thought, ‘This isn’t right.’ ” He glanced at the eyes to see how he was doing, and he judged that he wasn’t out yet. “I thought maybe I ought to get out of there. Maybe she was one of those decoys that get you someplace dark and then a big guy with a tire iron cracks your skull and goes through your pockets.”
“But you didn’t leave.”
Jardine shrugged. “It occurred to me that there were other possibilities. I thought it could be that she was another kind of decoy.”
“What kind?”
“She didn’t seem surprised enough, or in the right way. Maybe she knew who I was, or at least what I had been doing at the airport, and came through first to get my attention and lead me away before somebody else came through.”
Marshall’s face showed Jardine nothing, but he knew that Marshall had to be considering it. The only reason the F.B.I. would be interested in Jane was that they knew what she did for a living, and that was what she did.
