inset in the driver’s door. It was dark.
He got into the car and started the engine and backed out onto the street.
“I want to run by the Richards house and pick up Gerald.” The boy had spent the night with a friend.
“Why? He can walk home this afternoon and he has a key to the house.”
“I’m taking you two to the airport. I want you to go visit your mother for a week or two.”
“But I’m not packed! The PTA has a benefit on Thurs—“
“I want you both out of town for a while. Don’t argue. I mean it.”
“What about our clothes?” his wife protested. “We can’t—“
“Oh yes you can! Buy some more clothes. You have your check- book.”
“Luis, what is this all about?”
He pulled over to the side of the street and put the car in neutral. He turned in the seat to face his wife. “I’m working a case. The people we’re after know where I live. I’d just feel a whole lot better if you and Gerald weren’t home until I wrap this up. Now there’s no danger, but why take a chance?”
“You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Mother — how will I explain dropping in on her and Dad like this?”
“Tell them we had a fight and you want some time alone.”
“Mom won’t believe that! She knows you too well to—“
“You think of something. Tell them we’re redoing the downstairs and you’ve developed an allergy to paint. I don’t care. Just don’t tell the truth. Your mother’ll spill it to every one other friends, and it’s a very small world.” He put the car in gear and rolled.
Sally chewed on her lip and twisted the strap of her purse. “I don’t like this, Luis.”
“I don’t either, but this is the way it has to be.”
Smoke Judy was sipping beer in a booth at his favorite bar when he saw Harlan Albright come in and ask for change for the parking meter. Judy waited several minutes, paid his tab and left.
Albright was behind the wheel of his car. Judy opened the pas- senger door and sat down. “Hi.”
“Want to take a little ride?”
“Sure. Why not?” Smoke took his sunglasses from the neck of his shirt, where they hung suspended by an earpiece, cleaned them on a shirttail, then put them on. He tossed his gym bag onto the backseat
After several blocks, Albright glanced at Judy and asked, “How’s things at the office? Hear you guys had a crash.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, people talk.”
Judy shrugged.
“Got anything on today?”
“Not really.”
“Want to go over on the Eastern Shore and get some dinner? I know a great little place that serves the best crab in Maryland.”
“They’ll serve us like this?” Both men were in jeans. Albright was wearing a pullover shirt that sported a Redskins logo.
“I think so.”
“Why not?”
Albright drove to the beltway and got on it headed east. Traffic was heavy, as usual. He took the exit toward Annapolis and en- gaged the cruise control. Judy turned on the radio and found a ball game. The Orioles, only the second inning.
Judy noticed that Albright kept checking the rearview mirrors, but he quit after a while and drove with his left elbow out the window. “Can’t stand air conditioning,” he muttered, and Judy nodded.
Luis Camacho sat in his backyard with a beer in his hand. He had carried out the portable TV that Sally normally watched in the kitchen, and rigged up the extension cord. He had the Orioles game on.
When he returned from the airport, Albright’s car was missing. He had called the office and got Dreyfus. “Where is he?”
“On the beltway heading east. Picked up a guy at a bar in Alex- andria, but we don’t know who. Couldn’t get close enough.”
“Okay. Any idea where they’re going?”
“He made no phone calls before he left the house. Didnt say anything. About thirty minutes after you left for the airport, he got in his car and drove off. He went over to Reston and stopped by the Gourmet Market.”
“Heard from Susan yet?” Susan was the wife of an FBI agent She and her husband owned the market, and Camacho had en- listed their help. Susan was the skinniest woman Camacho had ever met, but to the best of his knowledge she was not suffering from anorexia.
“Yeah. Said he came in and bought some things, stood and chat- ted, said he was new in the neighborhood. Spent about fifteen min- utes in the store. She says he never asked about Caplinger or any- one else, and she didn’t volunteer. She wants to know if you think he’ll be back.”
“Tell her probably not. I think Albright just wanted some tangi- ble verification of my little tale.”
“Okay. I’ll call you back when he gets to wherever he’s going and let you know.”
“Dreyfus, I meant what I said yesterday. Under no circum- stances, none. do I want him to burn the tail. Lose him if you have to, but don’t give him a chance to figure out we’re watching.”
“Gotcha, boss.”
Now Camacho sat in his backyard with the TV going. He nursed the beer and paid no attention to the game.
Everything that could be done had been done. Nothing had been rushed. The situation had been allowed to ripen naturally, and now all was in readiness. Including Dreyfus, he had sixty-five agents on this case. They were in the main telephone exchange in case Al- bright used a pay phone, Albright’s house was wired and continu- ously monitored, a fleet of unmarked cars was at this very minute preceding and following Albright as he drove the highways, two vans full of cameras and parabolic listening devices trailed the car- avan, two helicopters were airborne, Dreyfus had a stack of signed John Doe warrants in the desk. What else? Oh yes, all the top lab technicians were on call.
He sipped his beer and tried to think of something else that should be done, some contingency that he had not foreseen. He could think of nothing. Well, that wasn’t really true. This whole operation could fizzle, any operation could, but it wouldn’t be be- cause he hadn’t prepared as well as possible. His worst handicap was the requirement to stay loose on Albright, to remain com- pletely hidden. Well, that was the only way it could be, so no use worrying.
But he was worried. When he could sit still no longer, he got the lawn rake from the garage and set to work on the grass clippings as the ball-park announcer chanted the summer myth yet again and the afternoon heat continued to build.
Smoke Judy was impressed. The building wasn’t much, but the prices on the menu were reasonable and the seafood heaped on the plates of the early diners looked scrumptious and smelled the same. Didn’t they call this decor “rustic”? Unfinished boards on the inte- rior walls, with fishing nets and crab pots hanging from the ceiling. Subdued lighting. ‘The food’s great,” Aibright assured him. “Dev- iled crab is the house specialty.”
They had ordered their dinner and were sipping the foam off frosty glasses of beer when Albright said, “Got a little proposition for you, if you’re interested.”
Judy wiped off his foam mustache with a finger. “Depends.”
“Did you ever hear the term ‘kilderkin’?”
Smoke set the beer mug down and straightened in his chair. He looked around at the other guests with interest. Two or three looked like they could be the right age and level of fitness. His eyes swung back to Albright. “Let’s go to the John.”
He rose and led the way.
It was a one-seater with a urinal and a sink. Not the cleanest rest room he was ever in, but better than most. And it was empty. Judy turned and set his feet, the right slightly behind the left. He got his weight up on the balls of his feet and bent his knees slightly.
