on the coffee table.
'Use the car radio,' Carr said.
Kelly rushed out the door.
With two fingers, Carr closed Linda's eyes. He traced the tiny crow's-feet. He pulled his hand away.
The woman in rollers edged in the door. Her hands flew to her face and she started to wail. Carr waved her back. She retreated like a wounded animal.
Carr felt cold. He rubbed his eyes for a moment. He was drained, exhausted after twenty years on the street.
Carr sat on the edge of a paper-covered examination table in the hospital's emergency room. Outside the room a nurse kept telling a sobbing child not to rub something or it would get worse. There was the smell of witch hazel. A young woman doctor with a nose that protruded almost as much as her ponytail stood in front of him holding a curved needle. She said, 'This is going to hurt a little,' as she took a stitch in his forehead. She was right.
Kelly barged in through a set of swinging doors. 'LaMonica's key fit one the safe-deposit boxes in the bank,' he said, 'but as I'm sure you've probably guessed by now, the box was empty.'
'Don't move your head, dammit,' the doctor said.
'Sorry,' Carr mumbled.
'That LaMonica is a fast thinker,' Kelly said. 'He thought up that whole little act after we arrested him.' He shook his head. 'Who would have figured him to go straight back over to Linda's, though? Any normal crook would have hot-footed it out of town without looking back. But not LaMonica; the first thing that came to his mind was revenge. He's vicious, a real animal.'
The doctor stuck the needle in again and Carr winced.
'I bet that smarts,' Kelly said. 'You look like death warmed over.'
The doctor stopped sewing. She pointed the needle at Kelly. 'Sir, would you mind getting the hell out of this room?'
Kelly raised his hands and backed out the door.
Paul LaMonica sat next to the window in the seat behind the bus driver. He rubbed his wrists. As the bus chugged along Hollywood Boulevard he felt anonymous, safe for the time being. He knew that cops did not stop buses to look for escapees.
The sight of a police radio car cruising next to the bus startled him. He stared down at the vehicle as if viewing an alligator from a jungle barge. The radio car turned onto a side street.
A half hour later, the bus pulled into the busy L.A. Airport traffic circle and inched along in the bumper-to- bumper crush. Finally it stopped. Paul LaMonica stepped off the crowded bus and smelled jet fuel. He blended into the bustling crowd heading for the international departures terminal. Inside, he stopped for a moment in front of a flight information screen and noted the departure gate number for a Paris-bound flight. He followed another crowd down a tiled corridor and up an escalator. At the top of the conveyance was a gift shop wedged next to a cocktail lounge. He strolled into the gift shop and purchased two newspapers and a cheap flight bag. After stuffing the papers into the bag, he zipped it up.
Casually he sauntered out of the gift shop and into the cocktail lounge. It was a dark place with a long bar and windows that faced the airport runway. Travelers of all ages huddled around the tables in the room. There were lots of clocks on the walls. LaMonica wound his way across the floor, surveying the patrons. Finally, he sat down at a table next to an auburn-haired woman of medium build. She was about his age and dressed in a conservative dark skirt and blouse. An enormous purse and an overnight case were in the chair next to her. The case had a Paris baggage tag.
When a young waitress approached, he ordered a straight soda. She returned with the drink and he paid. As she walked away, LaMonica hefted his glass to the woman sitting next to him. 'Happy travels,' he said with a fatherly wink.
The woman hesitated, then picked up her glass. 'Same to you,' she said. She sipped and set the glass down.
'Paris?' he said.
She nodded. 'My first trip.'
'You'll love Paris. It's a beautiful city. I'm a pilot; I fly there every other week. I'm going over today to pick up a flight.'
'I just can't wait to get there. It's my first trip to Europe.
LaMonica smiled. Nothing was said for a while.
'Are the lines at the ticket counter always so long?' she asked.
'I'm afraid I wouldn't know. As a pilot I'm not required to check in at the ticket counter.'
'Of course,' she said in a slightly embarrassed tone.
'But I did see an extremely long line at the passport office. I'm lucky enough to have a friend who works there, so I just dropped off my passport. He told me he'd stamp it and I could pick it up just before departure time.'
The woman's hands plunged into her purse. She pulled out her passport. 'A stamp?' she said as she flipped through the pages.
'It's a new requirement,' he said. 'A passport officer places a trip stamp on the last page of each passport. If one arrives in France without such a stamp, it causes nothing but problems.'
The woman looked worried. 'My travel agent didn't tell me. Where is the passport office?'
'It's right next to the pilots' check-in office,' he said. 'I'm on my way to pick up my passport right now. I'll be happy to show you the way.'
'Thank you,' the woman said. She struggled to pick up her luggage.
'If you'd like, I can have your passport stamped while I'm there. It'll save you carting all your luggage.'
The woman furrowed her brow.
'And perhaps you'd be kind enough to keep an eye on my flight bag while I'm gone.'
The woman hesitated for a moment. She gazed at the flight bag. 'Uh, yes. That would be very kind.'
LaMonica held out his hand and she gave him the passport. She stuffed it into his shirt pocket. 'Be back in a few minutes.' He went down the escalator and joined the crowd of travelers heading for the street. At a rental-car desk near the ticket counters, he used a credit card to rent a sedan. From the airport, he drove directly to a printing supply house on Sepulveda Boulevard and picked up the inks and bond paper he had ordered. Having loaded the items neatly into the trunk of the rented car, he drove to the San Diego freeway and headed south.
After stopping for lunch at a coffee shop, he entered a bank and purchased one $500-denomination traveler's check. Taking care not to fold it, he slipped the check into an envelope. Back on the freeway again, he went over the supply list in his mind. Unless he was wrong, he had everything he needed.
Chapter 6
So far, the interview was going pretty much as Carr had figured it would. After warning him of his rights, Special Agent in Charge Norbert Waeves, fortified behind a desk covered with nameplates, photo cubes, and pipe paraphernalia, had asked Carr to recount his activities for the entire day 'in question' and followed up with an inquiry about how the case had originated. With each of Carr's answers, Waeves would make a little puff of pipe smoke and jot something down on his ever-present yellow notepad. A tape recorder sat on the desk between them like a large black magnet.
Waeves, a kinky-haired, freckled man who was a few years younger than Carr, held up his pencil like a dart. 'Again,'he said. 'What time was it when the prisoner escaped?'
'About five,' Carr replied. His eyes were on the wall behind the desk, where Waeves's framed headquarters commendation letters (the preprinted kind other agents threw away) and photographs of his gun collection were displayed.
'I'd like a more accurate estimate. Was it closer to after five or before five?' Waeves said. His smile was
