He slowed way down, opening up the distance. He had his lights off ever since they’d entered the Great Boggy or whatever it was called. There was plenty of moonlight and his quarry wasn’t going anywhere without him.
The truck had slowed to about five miles per hour, the right turn indicator flashing now. He was pulling over, all right and now Homer saw why.
There was a small, old-fashioned filling station coming up. Nothing more than a falling down shack with a couple of pumps out front. Homer made a decision. He slowed way down and pulled off on the shoulder into a stand of live oaks with a view down the road. The station was about a thousand yards away. He was low on gas, too, the needle hovering just above E. But he wanted to see what the heck would happen at the pump. His blood was pumping. He was on the damned case now, all right. And he wasn’t scared, either. Not at all.
He sat behind the wheel of the Vic and waited, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He wasn’t expecting anyone to get out of the Slugger and he wasn’t disappointed. No one did.
A minute later, though, a guy came out of the little office. He paused a second on the doorstep, looking at the big rig parked at his little pump. He raised his right hand to his ear for about fifteen seconds. Talking on his cell phone, Homer guessed. Then he shoved the phone in the back pocket of his jeans and shambled down the steps. He was big, maybe two-fifty, and walked slowly out to see what he could do his customer for.
Unusual for a pump jockey, he was smoking a cigarette. Other funny thing was, the guy didn’t go around to the driver’s window and say, “What’ll it be?” Didn’t ask anything, he just did it. Went right to the diesel pump and pulled the nozzle out and started pumping fuel into the silent rig. Which told you something, too.
It took a while to fill that big polished aluminum hundred-gallon tank. Homer, still behind the wheel of the Vic, was in no hurry, except he did have to whizz like a racehorse. Just as he was getting out of his car to answer that important call, the station guy yanked the nozzle out of the Slugger’s tank and stuck it back in the pump. Then he waddled back up the steps and into the office. Never even looked at the truck again.
Never said word one to his customer, which told Homer the fat man already knew there was no one behind the wheel of the truck at his pump. Knew it all along. Homer’s brain was ticking now and he knew he was beginning to understand. Maybe not all of it. But some of it.
This pit stop was prearranged way ahead of time. A little gas station on a deserted road in the middle of the night. Made a lot of sense if you didn’t want anybody messing into your business. Whoever was behind all this knew what they were doing. Organized crime, had to be. With very deep pockets. He’d thought drugs all along, and now he was sure of it. Somebody was moving huge amounts of Number Four heroin around the country, running on back roads at night.
He looked at his watch. 0200 hours. He wondered if all the trucks in the convoy were stopping now. At little out of the way stations just like this one. The whole thing was getting curiouser and curiouser.
Homer jumped back behind the wheel and pulled back out of the trees and back onto the highway. He accelerated smoothly the short distance up to the station, tucking in behind the Slugger.
He got out, and removed his service weapon. Then he walked forward to the driver’s window and rapped on the black glass with his left hand. Once. Twice. Nothing.
There was a sudden flat blatting sound from the engine, puffs of smoke from the tall chrome stacks, and the Yankee Slugger, in no hurry at all, slowly pulled ahead and out of the station. Her right hand turn signal went on and then she rumbled back onto the highway. Homer had a funny thought, watching the truck head north still, and taking her easy as always: if he ever did meet up with one of these drivers, he was going to try to get them to teach a driver’s ed course! They were good!
Homer turned and looked at the small office building. He needed gas and he knew he wasn’t taking too much of a chance if he let the Slugger get a few miles down the road. He’d catch up quickly and they’d continue their cat and mouse game just like before.
“Hello?” he shouted. “You got another customer!”
Nobody came out so he walked between the pumps and across the cracked tarmac to the front steps. There was a neon sign buzzing on and off over the door. It said CITGO. He pushed the screen door open and stepped inside, his gun out in front of him. There wasn’t much to see. There was a single light bulb hanging on a wire over a counter. It had a green metal shade and was swaying slightly as if someone had just touched it.
There was nobody at all behind the counter.
“Anybody home? Hello? I could use some gas anybody cares.”
No response.
Not taking it personally, Homer walked around the plywood counter. There was door behind it, presumably leading to the back office itself. The door was cracked and he opened it the rest of the way.
A coppery smell, blood, instantly assaulted his nostrils.
The old man who had owned the station was slumped forward over his cheap wooden desk. He was missing the top half of his head. His brains were leaking out on to a AAA map of Louisiana, the blood already soaking the paper and spreading across the desktop.
Homer pressed his fingers behind the man’s ear, feeling like he had to check for a pulse. There was of course no pulse but—
A powerful motorcycle started up just outside the rear door to the station. Big chopper with straight pipes. Damn, he hadn’t even looked out there! Before he could even replace the man’s arm, the big bike roared around the side of the office and headed toward the highway. Homer, in his excitement, almost slipped in the blood puddle on the floor around the desk. He raced out the door he’d entered by, vaulted over the counter and down the front steps.
He was just in time to see the blinking red lights of the fishtailing chopper disappear up the black road headed south for God knows where.
He had to get moving. Call this in. Right. Fill up the Vic’s tank, get on his radio and call local law enforcement with the crime scene location, a description of the victim, the perpetrator, and his motorcycle. With any luck, they’d have the biker in custody within half an hour. He couldn’t wait around. He had to go catch the Yankee Slugger. Then he was going to bust him wide open.
61
MANAUS, BRAZIL
I t was pitch black outside, nothing but the dripping leaves of the overgrown banana trees in the lush hotel garden. Steady rain was hammering the canvas roof above his head and hissing on the river running beside the deeply rutted hotel drive. Of course it was raining. He was in the bloody rain forest.
Ambrose and Stokely were en route to some kind of hospital, moldering away out in the countryside. It was called the St. James Infirmary, which he found a charming name, but apparently the institution itself was not. It was said to be a wretched place, formerly a home for indigent children.
Harry Brock and another man, a local chap named Saladin, had been standing on the hotel dock to help with the luggage and mooring lines when the Blue Goose first arrived from Key West. Harry Brock and this other chap had arrived in Manaus four days ago. At Hawke’s request, they had been doing all the preliminary legwork on the widow. It had not been easy, Harry said. He’d been shown a badly decomposed corpse with a death certificate attached. The name on it was Hildegard Zimmermann.
Saladin wasn’t buying it. He had zero confidence in the local police; they’d kept looking.
Harry had told Ambrose, as they stood on the dock under an umbrella, he and Saladin now felt there was a reasonable chance they might find Hildegard Zimmermann still alive in a secret hospital currently used by the military. Congreve had thanked him for all his hard work and then asked for a car. He and Stokely would leave for the hospital immediately after checking in and having a bite to eat.
“How long do you think it will take us to get there?” he asked Stokely. They had reached the end of the long hotel drive and were about to turn right onto the primary road along the Rio Negro.
“About an hour upriver. Then we go into the jungle. If the road isn’t too washed out, we’ll be all right. That’s what Brock said.”
