Duarte owned a twenty-two-foot Boston Whaler Guardian, with a haze-gray hull, just like the American Coast Guard, but without the Coast Guard's bow-mounted fifty-caliber machine gun. The hull color, which was standard, was the closest thing on earth to the Romulans' cloaking device-from twenty feet, on a dark night, it was invisible. Juan put the body in the boat, waited for dark, then idled up the coast to a spot distinguished only by its GPS coordinates. He found the Lawtons with their sails backed, quietly waiting, a couple of cigarette coals glowing in the dark. Though the Star of Omaha 's hull was white, they were very nearly as invisible as the Whaler.
'Dude,' Duarte called, using the international sailboat hailing sign.
'Juan, how are you?'
Juan tossed a bowline over the sailboat's foredeck and Tom used it to pull the two boats together; the Lawtons had dropped foam fenders over the side to keep them from knocking too hard. The body threw a bag into the sailboat, then clambered up and over the side into the sailboat's cockpit.
'Nice to see you,' Tom said, nodding at her in the dark. The body nodded back; she could smell tobacco on him, a pleasant odor. Michelle passed a small package to Juan: 'It's an olive-wood rosary from Jerusalem, for your mom. It was blessed in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Mt. Calvary is. Jimmy brought it back,' she said.
'Thank him for me,' Juan said.
'You good?' Tom called down to Juan.
Juan held up a hand, meaning that he'd been paid, and said, 'Cast me off, there.' Tom tossed the bowline back in the Whaler, and they drifted apart again. 'See you,' Juan called. 'Maybe got something week after next.'
'Call me,' Tom said.
That was pretty much all there was to it. The Lawtons gave the body a peanut-butter-and-tangerine- marmalade sandwich, which she'd ordered in advance, through Duarte. They talked in a desultory way, as they loafed through the night. The body had a nice husky whiskey voice, and Tom thought if she kept talking he might get a little wood on the sound alone, though he'd never tell Michelle that. Tom turned on the running lights a few miles north of the rendezvous. They saw boats coming and going; nothing came close.
By morning, they were off Long Beach again, and they took their time going in. There was always a chance that they'd be stopped by the Coasties, but the passenger's documents were good and the boat was clean. Tom had no idea who the body was-his one really salient criminal characteristic was a determined lack of curiosity about his cargoes.
He was not even interested in why an American wanted to be smuggled back into the country. There were any number of people who preferred to come and go without unnecessary time-wasting bureaucratic entanglements, and Tom really didn't blame them. We were the home of the free, were we not?
A few minutes after eight o'clock in the morning, the body walked down the dock, a cheap TWA flight bag on her shoulder. The Lawtons were still on the boat, stowing equipment. The $3,000 that the body left behind was taped to Michelle's butt, just in case. Michelle last saw the other woman walking toward the corner of the ship's store. When she looked back again, a moment later, the body was gone.
RINKER CAUGHT A CAB to LAX, and from LAX, another to Venice, and from Venice, after getting a quick lunch on the beach and walking along some narrow, canal-lined streets for a while, watching her back, she caught another one out to the industrial flats in Downey. The driver didn't much want to go there, but when Rinker showed him a fifty, he took the money and dropped her in front of Jackie Burke's store. Burke ran a full-time custom hotrod shop on the front side of his warehouse, and a part-time stolen-car chop shop in the back. Rinker had once solved a desperate problem for him.
Burke was a chunky man, strong, dark-complected, balding, tough as a lug nut; his store smelled of spray paint and welding fumes. He was standing beside the cash register, sweating and talking over a hardboard counter to a young Japanese-American kid about putting a nitrox tank in the kid's Honda.
He didn't recognize Rinker for a moment. Women didn't often come into the shop, and he sort of nodded and said, 'Be with you in a minute,' and went back to the kid and then suddenly looked back. Rinker lifted her sunglasses and smiled. Burke said, 'Holy shit,' and then to the kid, 'Let me put you with one of my guys. I gotta talk to this lady.'
He held up a finger, stuck his head through a door in the back, yelled, 'Hey Chuck, c'mere.' Chuck came, Burke put him with the kid, then led Rinker into the back and to a ten-by-twenty-foot plywood-enclosed office in the back. He shut the door behind them and said, again, 'Holy shit. Clara. I hope, uh…'
'I need a clean car that'll run good, with good papers. Something dull like a Taurus or some kind of Buick. Sort of in a hurry,' she said. 'I was hoping you could help me.'
His eyes drifted toward the doors, as though they might suddenly splinter. 'Are the cops…?'
'No.' She smiled again. 'No cops. I just got back in the country, and I need a car. Not that you should mention it, if you happen to bump into a cop.'
'No problem there,' Burke said. He relaxed a couple of degrees. He liked Clara all right, but she was not a woman he would choose to hang out with. 'I can get you something off a used-car lot. The guy'll have to file the papers on it, but he can push the date back-for a while, anyway.'
'Not forever?'
'No, he'll have to put them through sooner or later, 'cause of bank inventories. If you only needed it for a month or so, he could fake it out that far. Then, if somebody inquired, the papers would show the transfer to the dealer, and he'd show the transfer to you, but there wouldn't be any license or insurance checks or anything. I can guarantee you that it'd be in perfect condition.'
'That'd work. I won't need it for more than a month anyway,' she said. 'Where do I find the used-car guy?'
'I'll drive you over,' Burke said. 'You paying cash?'
'You think he'd take a check?' she asked.
Burke grinned, not bothering to answer the mildly sarcastic question, and said, 'You're looking pretty good.'
She smiled back and said, 'Thank you. I've been down in Mexico for a while. Got the tan.'
'Look like you've been working out. You've lost a little weight since… you know.'
'Cut off a couple pounds, maybe,' she said. 'Got a little sick down there.'
'Montezuma's revenge.'
'More or less,' she said; but her eyes were melancholy, and Burke had the feeling that the sickness had been more serious than that. He didn't ask, and after a pause, Rinker asked, 'So where's your used-car guy?'
MUCH LATER THAT afternoon, as they were parting, she tossed her new Rand McNally road atlas onto the passenger seat and said, 'If anybody from St. Louis calls, you never saw me.'
'I never saw you ever,' Burke said. 'Don't take this the wrong way, but you make me nervous.'
'No reason for it,' she said. 'Not unless you cross me.'
Burke looked at her for a long three seconds and said, finally, 'Tell you what, honey. If there was enough money in it, I might mess with the guys in St. Louis. But I'm nowhere stupid enough to mess with you.'
'Good,' she said. She stepped closer, stood on her tiptoes, and pecked him on the cheek. 'Jackie, I owe you. I will get back to you someday and we will work something out that will make you happy.'
She waved, got into the beet-red Olds she'd bought for $13,200, and drove away, carefully, like a little old lady from Iowa, down toward the freeway entrance. Burke went back inside his shop, dug behind a stack of old phone books, got his stash, got his papers, rolled a joint, and walked out back to smoke it. Cool his nerves.
Clara fuckin' Rinker, Burke thought. She was pissed about something. God help somebody; and thank God it wasn't him.
RINKER WAS HEADED east to St. Louis-but not that minute. Instead she drove north on I-5, taking her time, watching her speed. She spent a bad night in Coalinga, rolling around in a king-sized bed, thinking about old friends and Paulo and wishing she still smoked. In the morning, tired, her stomach scar aching, she cut west toward the coast and took the 101 into San Francisco.
Jimmy Cricket was a golf pro with a closet-sized downtown shop called Jimmy Cricket's Pro-Line Golf. He was folding Claiborne golf shirts when Rinker walked in, and he smiled and said, 'Can I help you?' He was wearing a royal-blue V-necked sweater that nearly matched his eyes, and dark khaki golf slacks that nearly matched his tan. He had the too-friendly attitude of a man who would give you a half-stroke a hole without asking to see your
