“What you been up to?”
“Sittin’ in that van out at Rodet’s, lookin’ and listenin’. The sailor thought that ol’ Rodet and his girlfriend might get snatched by somebody. We were supposed to call him if anybody did that.” He kept talking, nattering on about Mrs. Grafton and how nice she was and all that.
I wasn’t paying much attention to Willie, I’m afraid. I was looking for my Muslim friends as I drove and wondering why Grafton thought that Qasim was a false agent or, even worse, a double agent.
Mrs. Grafton was also waiting on the sidewalk when I pulled up. Seeing her there, a target for anyone who wanted to get even with Grafton, brought me back to full alert. I was going to need all my brain cells to just keep myself, Mrs. Grafton and Willie alive. Grafton was going to have to do the thinking.
“Hello, Willie. Tommy.” She climbed in and shut the door. I muttered a good morning as I watched for a hole in traffic. I got one and rolled as Callie and Willie chattered away like lifelong friends.
When he was with me, Willie Varner didn’t show the slightest interest in Paris, France, Europe, the people, how they lived, any of that. As we rode out of the city he plied Callie with questions. By the time we had left the suburbs behind, they were talking art.
As they visited I began worrying about Cliff Icahn, who was alone in the surveillance van near the Rodet estate. Oh, man, it would be a really bad scene if he were dead when we got there. I dug my cell phone out of my pocket, and as Willie discussed the Impressionists’ use of light and color — please, I am not making this up — I dialed Cliff. He answered on the third ring.
“This is Cliff.”
I relaxed a little. “Tommy. What’s happening?”
“Slow morning. When are you going to get here?”
“Twenty minutes or so.”
“Gardener arrived a half hour or so ago, and a grocery delivery van came by. That’s it. For all I know the folks are still sound asleep.”
“I doubt that. We’ll see you soon.” I slapped the phone shut.
Willie knew more about art than I thought he did, but still, he couldn’t talk it for more than ten minutes. Mrs. Grafton deftly changed the subject, talked about Washington, the city where Willie Varner had spent his life, except when he was in prison. Between the two of them, they knew every nook and cranny of that town, let me tell you.
The van was parked about a mile from the entrance to Rodet’s estate in a little public pull-off about fifty yards up from the three-way intersection on Rodet’s side of the Marne bridge. We could see anyone crossing the bridge and turning east toward Rodet’s. Of course, we couldn’t see traffic coming in from the other direction to Rodet’s entrance, but there was nothing out that way but some camps and old farms. Everyone going to or coming from Paris came this way.
Cliff was sitting behind the wheel of the van wearing a headset when I drove up. He had the window down and was resting his elbow on it. He wriggled a finger at me. There were no other vehicles or people in sight. I parked the government sedan behind him, got my backpack from the back seat and walked over with my hand in my pocket holding the zapper. I had the battery switch on, so the capacitor was charging, just in case.
I faced the door. “Hey.”
Cliff yawned. I didn’t think he’d do that if there were someone behind him with a pistol in his neck, so I relaxed. Still… I leaned in just enough to look. Yep, the van was empty. I motioned to Willie and Callie Grafton, and they got out of the car.
“What’s going on in the house?”
“Not a damn thing,” he said, and opened the door to get out. “They’re listening to music. Classical. I dozed off a couple of times.” He yawned again, then said hi to Willie and nodded at Mrs. Grafton. I introduced him and they chatted a little bit. After I gave Cliff the key to the sedan, he flipped a hand and climbed into the thing, turned it around, crossed the bridge and turned left for Paris.
Willie and Callie got into the back of the van and played with the equipment. I tossed my backpack onto the passenger seat, yet I didn’t want to get in. That thing last night with Elizabeth Conner… nothing else that had happened in Paris had hit me like that. The guy I threw through the clock, the assholes on the motorcycles — they sallied forth to commit mayhem or murder and they got smacked instead. Al and Rich — I felt sorry for them, sure, but…
Conner, strangled … I couldn’t get her face out of my mind.
I walked around the van taking deep breaths and looking at everything. A car came along the road from the northwest and crossed the bridge, then hung a left for Paris.
Now isn’t the time to stress out, Tommy-boy. A few more days, then you can have your breakdown.
It turned out I wasn’t going to make it a few more days. I started retching. I went over in the weeds and put my hands on my knees and heaved my breakfast and kept heaving until there was nothing more in there to come up.
When I got myself more or less under control, I went back to the van. I heard Willie and Callie in there talking, their voices just murmurs.
Okay, Tommy, get it ratcheted up, guy.
Okay. I’m okay!
I took some more deep breaths and climbed behind the wheel. The headset that Cliff had been wearing was lying on the console, so I put it on. A symphony … I didn’t recognize the composer. Not that I know much about music. Truth is, there is a lot I don’t know about.
The stuff I do know about isn’t the kind of stuff that any sane man really wants to know.
Apparently the radio was automatically channel surfing, listening for five seconds or so on each set of bugs. Now it switched again; the symphony was faint. No voices.
At the count of five, it switched again. Nothing on this set. Nor the next. The next was music, faintly, still the symphony.
Then back to the symphony at full cry.
There was a bottle of water in the cup holder on the dash that Cliff had apparently been drinking out of. Hoping he didn’t have anything contagious, I finished it off and felt a little better.
Let’s see, I put those bugs in the office, the library, the two sitting rooms, and the dining room. If the music was in the library or one of the sitting rooms, where were the people?
I turned around. “Can you get the video from the office?” I asked Willie.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, and played with the controls. He reached up and turned the small monitor above his head so I could see it. The little camera was looking at the desk and computer. No one was in the picture.
“Got any more water back there?” I asked.
Callie passed me another bottle. It was warm. I drained it anyway.
Whew!
The leaves were blowing, the branches swaying. The overcast was up high, but it obscured the sun.
Two cars came across the bridge, but they went straight instead of turning toward Rodet’s. They passed the van and the people in the car ignored me; maybe they knew I was an American.
“Something’s not right,” I said as Callie flipped through the audio channels another time. “We should hear some voices unless everyone’s asleep.”
She looked at me, and I saw the guts and intelligence in that face as she asked, “Do you want to call Jake?” Not “Are you sure?” or any of that.
I wasn’t sure, though. Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t. I listened through another round of the channels and wondered if I was going to heave again. Apparently not.
“Not yet,” I told Callie.
But something was wrong. I had that feeling. Or I was breaking out in paranoia again. Is there a pill for that?
Darn, I’ll bet those bastards swept for bugs and found them.
“I’m going in there,” I announced. “Going to see what’s what.” I reached for my backpack, got out of the van and put it on. Willie handed me a radio headset. I turned on the batteries and put the thing on. “Testing, one, two, three.”
“Works fine,” Willie said in my ear.
