Praying this meant his countersurveillance software was firing, Charlie caught up to him.
“What are they called again?” Drummond asked.
“Who?”
“Those birds.”
“What birds?”
“Woodland birds with brown camouflaged plumage. Known for their degree of challenge as game…”
“I hope you don’t mean snipes?”
“That’s it, snipes, thank you.”
Charlie’s heart turned into a jackhammer.
“They search for invertebrates by stabbing at the mud with their bills with a sewing-machine motion,” Drummond went on.
“What made you think of snipes?”
“The woods, I guess. An interesting piece of information is the first sewing machine was invented by a French tailor in 1830. He nearly died when a group of his fellow tailors, fearing unemployment as a result of the invention, burned down his factory.”
Crossing the field, Charlie couldn’t shake the mental image of himself and Drummond seen through crosshairs.
As Drummond ushered him into the store, there was a gunshotlike crack.
Just the door-Drummond had let it fall too fast into the frame in his rush to inspect the snack aisle.
Charlie’s relief lasted maybe a second. The store itself, with five tall aisles and a crowd of large, free- standing racks, had a dark-alley feel. The reedy teenager behind the counter seemed to be the only person present. TUCKER was stitched onto his gas station attendant uniform shirt. Tobacco ballooned one of his cheeks. His sleeves were rolled up past his biceps, revealing a tattooed likeness of racecar driver Dale Earnhardt and a second tattoo of a dagger dripping blood.
After the bodega on Ludlow Street, Charlie couldn’t help wondering whether Tucker was a plant. He quickly dismissed the notion. Vaudeville would do a Tucker with greater subtlety.
When his index finger reached the end of a paragraph in the sports section, Tucker looked up, spat a string of tobacco juice into an oilcan, then took in Charlie and Drummond. Most of their scrapes and bruises, along with the tears in their clothing, had been impossible to cover up.
“How y’all doin’?” he asked warily.
“Better, now that the hunting trip from hell is over,” Charlie said.
“Been there,” Tucker said with understanding. “So whatchy’all be needing?”
“For starters, do you sell any clothes?”
“Yes sir, there’s tons down there.” Tucker waved at the central aisle.
Like the other aisles, it was crammed floor to ceiling with all manner of provisions. This was the sort of store where it’s a challenge to find something they don’t carry, and where there almost always was a Racing Form.
“And magazines?” Charlie asked.
With his newsprint-blackened finger, the kid pointed to the far wall, where a magazine rack ran the length of the store.
Following Charlie to it, Drummond asked, “We were on a hunting trip?”
Thankfully Tucker was engrossed again in his newspaper.
“If being the prey counts,” Charlie replied.
The magazine rack was packed with hundreds of publications. Few weren’t pornography. The Daily Racing Form’s iconic bright red masthead shone like a beacon. While pleased to get it in hand, Charlie felt a trickle of depression that the publication central to his existence was used by clever and righteous men to transmit messages without fear that anyone of consequence would see them.
The masthead appeared to perk up Drummond. He pulled a copy from the rack and flipped as if by habit to the classifieds, which ranged from offerings of services to personals and want ads.
“So I’m guessing it won’t be as simple as ‘Wanted: spy to come in from cold ’?” Charlie said.
“It would be encrypted.”
“Any idea how?”
“Bank code, maybe?”
“What’s bank code?”
Drummond shook his head as if to align his thoughts. “I mean book code.”
“Okay, what’s book code?”
“Take this here.” Drummond pointed to the ad placed by Theodore J. Tepper, a lawyer specializing in quickie divorces. “The numbers in his address or phone number might really be page numbers.”
“Of a book?”
“The first letters of the fourth lines of those pages, say, would spell out the message to us.”
“What’s the book?”
“We would need to know.”
“If your friends know we’re on the lam, would they expect us to go find a Barnes amp; Noble? We were lucky just to get the Racing… ”
Charlie let his voice trail off as Drummond thrust a finger at the ad below the divorce lawyer’s.
Stop Duck Hunting! (212) 054-0871
“Duck means Drummond Clark,” Drummond exclaimed.
“How’s that?”
“If you drop out all but the letters beside D, U, C and-?”
“Got it,” Charlie said with mounting excitement.
Drummond’s brow bunched in skepticism. “On second thought, it doesn’t feel right.”
“Why not? You’re being hunted, the Cavalry’s trying to stop it, and this can’t be a real ad. If you’re an animal rights advocacy group, the Daily Racing Form is the last magazine you’d expect to rally support, save maybe the Daily Cockfighting Form.”
Drummond tried to find the handle on what was troubling him.
Charlie stabbed at the 212 area code. “Also the area code’s Manhattan. Where we were when the Racing Form went to press.”
“There are a lot of organizations in Manhattan.”
“But the only thing anybody hunts for there are apartments that rent for less than two thousand bucks a month.”
“Radio silence is maintained during all battlefront operations,” Drummond said. Another recitation.
Regardless, Charlie got the point. “What’s to lose by calling them?”
Drummond’s eyes widened in alarm. “On the telephone?”
“The Ministry of Voiceprints, right. How about if we have the kid over there speak for us?”
Drummond shrugged. Which was better than a no.
They approached the counter. While pointedly unfolding a twenty-dollar bill, Charlie said to Tucker, “I was hoping you would call a number for me and ask when and where the meeting is. It’s, how can I put it…?” He writhed in discomfort, as he imagined someone calling about an AA meeting would.
“No problem, sir,” said Tucker, happily accepting the twenty.
Charlie wrote the number between the greasy fingerprints on a scrap sales receipt. Tucker uncradled the wall phone, mouthed the numbers to himself as he read them, then dialed. Charlie made out a faint ringing followed by a greeting from a deep male voice.
“Afternoon, sir,” Tucker said into the mouthpiece, “I’m calling for a customer who wants the info for the meeting.” He listened for a moment, studying Charlie and Drummond meanwhile, as if per something the man on the other end was saying. Placing a hand over the mouthpiece, he said to Charlie, “He needs the name of your calculus teacher at Clara Barton.” If Tucker thought the request was strange, he kept it to himself.
Huddling with Drummond, Charlie asked, “What do you make of that?”
“A false subtraction cipher, maybe,” Drummond said.
“What is a false subtraction cipher?”
“I–It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
