Collision, page 27
“I don’t get to rough your face up,” Jackie said. “But I’m still going to hurt you.” He leaned down and pulled the cell phone from Ben’s pants pocket, tucked it into his dark jacket. He was dressed in black, with black cowboy boots. His face was braced with a nose guard and bandages.
“Clear,” Jackie called to the other side of the door.
Sam Hector stepped inside, holding a woman in front of him. She was fiftyish, graying hair, a generous mouth, haunted blue eyes.
“Sam…,” Ben started.
Sam’s smile was a crooked slash of arrogance.
Jackie hauled Ben up by his shirt, shoved him to the living room floor. Now the futon was four feet away from him; the pillow, hiding the gun, was at the opposite end. The woman-Teach, he presumed-sat on a chair, pushed there by Hector.
Hector stepped between him and the futon. He held a gun, aimed at the floor.
“It would have been easier if you came to my house, like I asked. The customer’s always right, Ben.”
“I hate being wrong,” Ben said, “and I was wrong about you.”
Hector gave a twitch of a shrug. “You’ve been wrong about a great deal, old friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” Ben said.
“True. And you’re not going to grow old.”
“Like Adam and Delia and your own guards down in Austin. You’re a murderer.”
Hector raised a hand, waved his fingers. “My hands are clean. Where’s your new friend?”
“Gone for good.”
“Give him his answers.” Jackie yanked Ben up from the floor, delivered a savage blow to the face that slammed Ben’s head into the wall. Ben felt a tooth loosen; blood oozed from his nose. The tip of the knife skimmed down to his stomach. “Or I’m playing cut-the-dick with you.”
A trickle of blood from his nose tickled Ben’s lip. “What did I ever do to you, Sam, except make your sorry ass richer…”
“You know I loathe people who delay. Where is Pilgrim, when’s he coming back?”
“He’s not coming back.”
“Jackie, check the laptop, see what he was doing,” Hector said.
Jackie went to the laptop, opened the recent documents menu item. “Writing a report about you and your contracts. Not very nice one. Paints you a real bastard, it does.”
“Delete it. See if there’s anything else interesting on the hard drive, then wipe it clean.” Hector tried the smile again. “You have been an unpleasant surprise, Ben. Seriously. I knew you had a brain, but I didn’t suspect the spine.” He eased down in front of Ben. “Where did Pilgrim go, Ben? I won’t let Jackie play with his knife on you if you tell me.”
Every time death loomed in the past two days, Ben had felt terror touch his bones, adrenaline igniting his blood. But now-the knowledge of death, no escape here-an odd calm gripped him. He had to protect Pilgrim, no matter what they did to him with knife or gun. The realization settled him. The lie was easy: “He went to your house to find Teach.”
Hector’s face-the mask that had fooled Ben for years-betrayed no reaction. Then Ben saw the barest twitch at the corner of Sam Hector’s mouth, a whisper of rage. “He’s not that stupid. Neither are you.”
Delay him. “How do you pretend to be a normal human being when you’re so clearly not, Sam? I trusted you, I was your friend…”
“Basic math: People are either help or hindrance.” He slid a sealed envelope from his jacket, tossed it on Ben’s lap. “If you don’t want to cooperate, Ben, so be it. I’ll show my cards.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You are. Open it.”
Ben tore open the envelope, pulled a set of photos free. The images hit him like a giant’s fist, crushing his lungs, flattening every thought in his brain.
Emily. Photographed with a telescopic lens, standing in the kitchen window in the Maui house in the moments before she died. Next photo. The same. Next photo, her clicking off the phone, looking pensive, almost looking up at the camera, a frown on her face. Then a photo of the kitchen window, a bullet hole marring the glass, Emily sprawled on the tiles.
The photos spilled from his hands onto the floor. His throat thickened, his chest tightened. “Why?”
Hector laughed.
“Why did you… Why?”
“You mean who?” Hector laughed, the cat batting the dying mouse.
“You goddamned murdering bastard-” Ben yelled, but then Teach bolted from the floor, threw herself at Hector. She closed a hard grip on his throat-Ben saw the astonishment in Hector’s eyes-and Ben jumped up, grabbing for Hector’s gun. Hector wrenched free from them both, kicked Ben in the face, sent him sprawling. Hector powered his pistol into Teach’s stomach and fired.
Teach collapsed, eyes open, mouth clenched. Ben got up again and Hector slammed the pistol into Ben’s face, kicked him in the stomach, to the carpet.
Lying on the floor, Ben’s eyes locked on Teach’s. She blinked once, twice, stopped, tried to speak.
“Jackie.” Hector watched Teach, the gun steady on Ben. When she stopped breathing he prodded her with the foot. “Dump her ass in the bedroom.”
Jackie picked up Teach’s body and carried her into the bedroom.
Ben crawled to the futon. He could hardly breathe. The gun. The pillow. His only chance to get away and to kill the son of a bitch.
“I suppose it’s rude to point out I’ve taken everything from you,” Hector said. “Your wife. Your good name, your business. Your dignity.”
“Why… why?” Make the smug murdering bastard believe he’d broken Ben. He got a hand under the pillow, crouching as though he feared a kick or a blow from Hector. He shivered, spat blood. Emily. She had changed him in life, and now that he knew the truth of her death he felt changed again. Determination filled him like an ache in his bones. Not a moment’s hesitation.
“You’re going to tell me where Pilgrim is, Ben, because I know you. You’re weak. You’ll trade me the information for an easy death. You want to look under Teach’s clothes, see the cuts?”
His fingers touched the gun. Hector would shoot him as soon as he drew it, and even if he stood his ground and managed to kill or wound Hector, Jackie would attack him from the other room. The odds were dismal.
But otherwise, they would kill him and wait for Pilgrim to return. Death was doing nothing. He thought of Pilgrim’s words: Sometimes the smartest move in a fight is to retreat.
“Delia told me all about New Orleans,” Ben said, plainly, and for a moment surprise slackened the clench in Hector’s face. Ben flung the pillow straight at Hector’s head and swung up the gun that lay underneath it. The feathers exploded from the pillow as Hector fired a shot through its center. But Ben emptied the clip in Hector’s direction as he ran for the window. Hector threw himself backward and behind the kitchen counter for cover. Ben’s spray of shots pocked the counter, the wall, punctured the refrigerator, as he ran the ten feet.
Hector rose to return fire but Ben hit the window.
The closed, dusty curtains caught Ben as he jumped through the glass, the heavy fabric protecting him from the jagged shards. His momentum carried him onto the landing. Stopping or taking the time for the stairs meant death, and he rolled without hesitation, slid himself under the metal railing of the walkway, dropped one floor to the grass below.
The apartment stood at a corner, and if he ran to his right he’d be wide open, they could shoot him from the second floor. So he ducked under the walkway, ran in the opposite direction, hit the corner. He could hear their footsteps starting to barrel down the stairs.
Try to do what they don’t expect. He turned a second corner; the chain link dividing the complex from the neighboring construction was just ahead. If he was lucky they’d decide he was still running north, when he was back-tracking south on the opposite side of the building. Ben went over the fence, ignoring the barbed wire that tore at his arms, his khakis.
“There!” Jackie’s voice, from the parking lot to his right. He’d been spotted.
Ben hit the sand and ran into the maze of the construction. The building was U-shaped, as it faced the street, its unfinished sides open to the elements.
Now he looked back. Hector was at the Navigator’s wheel, plowing through a gate on the side of the fence, Jackie running behind the SUV. Drawing his pistol.
Ben dodged wheelbarrows, stacks of drywall, an idle forklift. The Navigator roared behind him. He dodged to the left, and Jackie, behind the Navigator, fired.
It was either get shot or be run down. He kept going straight, the SUV always between him and Jackie, and running through piled debris where the Navigator couldn’t go. Supposedly. He glanced behind him and the Navigator plowed through the construction junk, sawhorses and broken drywall flying, ten feet behind him.
Ben jumped up onto the foundation and headed for an interior wall that was already erected; he needed cover. He went around the wall as gunfire hit it with a low, vicious whistle.
He heard the Navigator screech to a buckling stop, then boot heels hitting the concrete. He exited the other side of the shell-a clear path all the way to the next chain-link fence on the opposite side of the lot.
More than enough room for Hector or Jackie to shoot him. But there was nowhere else to go. You can’t outrun him forever and your gun is empty. He’d counted the bullets, like Pilgrim taught him, and the news wasn’t good.
He ran, and louder than his own panting he heard the pounding of footsteps behind him.
Several yards beyond the chain link, he saw a knot of men and women waiting in the shelter of a Dallas Area Rapid Transit bus station. He launched himself onto the fence, using a pole to haul himself upward. Now he spotted a ditch breaking the land between the site and the bus stop.
He scrabbled over the fence, went head over heels, and the shots boomed, one hitting his shoe-a violent jerk rocked his foot-another shot hitting his chest like a hard kick. A third shot nailed the metal pole that lay against his stomach; it thrummed from the force as though an invisible man kicked it. Ben fell, headfirst, stayed low and rolled, went into the ditch. Water and mud, runoff from the site, smeared the bottom.
Ben sucked breath into his lungs, staggered to his feet, heard a man saying, “What the hell?” A woman screamed, and yelled in Spanish, “Gunshots, I heard gunshots.” Ben ran down the ditch, staying low, bending low to crawl through a drainage section that barreled under the street.
The crowd-someone would be calling the police. Please, God, he hoped. He eased out of the opposite end of the drain and clambered up the side of the gulley. He found himself in a vacant lot, with a large sign announcing more office space soon to come.
No sign of Hector. They might have fled as soon as they saw witnesses. Hector would not want anyone identifying him. Hector would be running.
Ben groped for his cell phone. Gone. He remembered Jackie had taken it.
Blood welled from the laces of his running shoes. The pain in his chest throbbed and he probed his flesh, half-afraid to find a bullet hole. His chest ached to the bone, as though it had taken a hammer’s blow. A tear in his shirt pocket. He found a hard rectangle beneath the hole. Pilgrim’s small sketchbook, with the drawings of the young girl, wore a bullet embedded in the leather cover.
He had to find Pilgrim, but he had to get off the streets. He was bloodied and muddied and memorable.
He ran toward a convenience store and the alley behind it.
It was a surprise to learn that homeless people had cell phones. A group of three men stood behind the store. They stopped talking, giving Ben a suspicious glare as he approached them.
“Excuse me,” Ben said, “is there a pay phone nearby?”
“Naw,” one of the men said. “What happened to you?”
“I fell into a ditch. Hurt my foot.” All three men looked down and inspected his foot; blood oozed from the sock.
“Church down the street, they give you some ice for that,” one man said.
“Ice and a prayer,” a second man laughed. “Who you need to call?”
“Friend. He’ll come get me.” Ben glanced over his shoulder. No sign of pursuit. They’d have risked being seen if they’d lingered, with the crowd at the bus station looking for them. It didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be combing the area looking for him.
“You’re the man on the front page,” the first man said.
Ben froze. The three men studied him.
“Yeah,” the second man said.
“We stay informed. Ain’t got much else to do but look at the paper,” the third man said.
“Is there a reward?” the first man asked. The other two moved in a circle, cutting off Ben’s lines of retreat.
“Please. Please don’t report me.” He was begging for a break from people who’d either never had one or never made the most of one they’d gotten. “I’m innocent. Please. I’m trying to stop the people who killed my wife.”
The three men looked at each other. “Like on The Fugitive?” one asked. Ben nodded.
“If there’s a reward, cops’ll figure out a way not to pay us, that’s for damn sure,” the first man said. “I don’t want to be on TV, either. Family’s always looking for me.”
“Here.” The second man dipped in his pocket, pulled out a bulky phone. “You can use mine but no more than one minute. Prepaid. Got mine at Wal-Mart. And nothing personal, but I hold the phone so you don’t run off.”
“His foot’s bleeding, he runs, it’s a short race,” the first man said and laughed at his own wit.
The man held the phone and, stunned, Ben dialed the number. Then the man moved the phone to Ben’s ear. “Speak up clear, Mr. Fugitive. It’s not the best-quality sound.”
33
The threat of rain hadn’t kept the soccer fields empty; dozens of families and kids, in varying shades of uniforms and ranging from ages four to ten, wandered between the rectangles of green. Mothers, fathers, and siblings stood on the sidelines, chatting among themselves or calling out sweetened encouragement to the players. Coaches clapped and frowned; high school kids serving as referees blew whistles and acted supremely bored.
Dads cheered their daughters. Pilgrim knew Tamara played soccer but he’d never worked up the nerve to watch a game from a distance; the risk was too great. Why did he choose this place, filled with fathers and daughters? Salt in the wound, rubbed there himself.
Pilgrim moved through the crowd. He was dressed in a phone repairman’s shirt and baseball cap, a treasure from his cache, and he stayed on the edge of the crowd.
He spotted two people watching him in the first five minutes: a soccer mom who didn’t seem to know the other moms on her side of the field, standing a bit apart, arms crossed, her eyes not fixed on the glorious play of a child but instead scanning the crowd a bit too often. There was another, a compactly built young man in a referee’s shirt, but the shirt was untucked and hanging loose over long pants. Might be a gun there. He was no bigger than the teenaged refs, but his face was that of an older man. He kept glancing around at the other games.
Neither approached him. They wanted him to talk to Vochek. Probably they would try to take him after they talked, when he left.
But she had broken her promise, or a superior had overruled her. Stupid.
A group of six-year-old boys had finished their match and their obligatory juice box and snack, and they and their parents walked as a herd. He stayed close among them, a cell phone at his ear, pretending to be deep in conversation.
He walked into the parking lot with them and glanced back. The watchers were still in place and he didn’t make anyone else following him. He ducked into his car and didn’t bother backing up. He barreled forward, over the curb and into the grass, and shot out onto the road. He had preprogrammed Vochek’s cell number into his phone. He pressed the button.
“I said come alone,” he said.
A sigh. “I wanted to,” she said. “Got vetoed.”
At least she was smart enough not to deny the obvious. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t deal if you break agreements.”
“I can offer you a deal. How about if you come and talk to me and my boss.”
“I must decline your kind invitation. I’m sorry, you’ve bruised my trust.”
She was quiet for a moment and her voice softened. “Randall. I know you have a daughter. Tamara. I could make it so you can see Tamara again.”
A chill slipped into his chest like a knife. “You stay the hell away from my kid. And my ex-wife.”
“I don’t mean them harm, I’m trying to give you what you want.”
“You don’t know what I want, Vochek.”
“Then you tell me what you want.”
“To talk with someone with the actual power to negotiate with me. Good-bye.”
“Wait, please, I need to know what’s going down in New Orleans.”
“I need to know, too. Good-bye, Vochek.” He hung up and did an immediate U-turn, pulled into a Jack in the Box parking lot, and waited.
Five minutes later, he saw her, in a Ford sedan, pull past. Two other cars, both Fords, stayed close to her.
He pulled out after them. Tailing in Plano was both easy and challenging; the roads tended to be straight shots, but traffic was heavy-it was a suburb of a quarter million people-and drivers wove in and out of lanes for every inch of advantage. The trick was to stay close, not too close, and not lose them in the quickly changing lights. Without showing yourself.
The three cars headed back toward a shopping mall, then turned into a neighborhood across the street. Pilgrim was surprised to see a runway bisecting the neighborhood, a series of hangars with an array of private planes sheltering under the tin roofs. He U-turned hard, saw the cars stop in front of one of the houses.
Found you, he thought. What an interesting place for a safe house, with an airport built right in.
At the shopping center he located a place to perch where he could still see the house. She and her colleagues would go inside, she would call her boss, report failure, perhaps plead for another chance.
Interesting they didn’t go back to an office. Vochek, Ben had said, was based in Houston. He wondered if her colleagues were local. If they were, and they left soon…
“Clear,” Jackie called to the other side of the door.
Sam Hector stepped inside, holding a woman in front of him. She was fiftyish, graying hair, a generous mouth, haunted blue eyes.
“Sam…,” Ben started.
Sam’s smile was a crooked slash of arrogance.
Jackie hauled Ben up by his shirt, shoved him to the living room floor. Now the futon was four feet away from him; the pillow, hiding the gun, was at the opposite end. The woman-Teach, he presumed-sat on a chair, pushed there by Hector.
Hector stepped between him and the futon. He held a gun, aimed at the floor.
“It would have been easier if you came to my house, like I asked. The customer’s always right, Ben.”
“I hate being wrong,” Ben said, “and I was wrong about you.”
Hector gave a twitch of a shrug. “You’ve been wrong about a great deal, old friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” Ben said.
“True. And you’re not going to grow old.”
“Like Adam and Delia and your own guards down in Austin. You’re a murderer.”
Hector raised a hand, waved his fingers. “My hands are clean. Where’s your new friend?”
“Gone for good.”
“Give him his answers.” Jackie yanked Ben up from the floor, delivered a savage blow to the face that slammed Ben’s head into the wall. Ben felt a tooth loosen; blood oozed from his nose. The tip of the knife skimmed down to his stomach. “Or I’m playing cut-the-dick with you.”
A trickle of blood from his nose tickled Ben’s lip. “What did I ever do to you, Sam, except make your sorry ass richer…”
“You know I loathe people who delay. Where is Pilgrim, when’s he coming back?”
“He’s not coming back.”
“Jackie, check the laptop, see what he was doing,” Hector said.
Jackie went to the laptop, opened the recent documents menu item. “Writing a report about you and your contracts. Not very nice one. Paints you a real bastard, it does.”
“Delete it. See if there’s anything else interesting on the hard drive, then wipe it clean.” Hector tried the smile again. “You have been an unpleasant surprise, Ben. Seriously. I knew you had a brain, but I didn’t suspect the spine.” He eased down in front of Ben. “Where did Pilgrim go, Ben? I won’t let Jackie play with his knife on you if you tell me.”
Every time death loomed in the past two days, Ben had felt terror touch his bones, adrenaline igniting his blood. But now-the knowledge of death, no escape here-an odd calm gripped him. He had to protect Pilgrim, no matter what they did to him with knife or gun. The realization settled him. The lie was easy: “He went to your house to find Teach.”
Hector’s face-the mask that had fooled Ben for years-betrayed no reaction. Then Ben saw the barest twitch at the corner of Sam Hector’s mouth, a whisper of rage. “He’s not that stupid. Neither are you.”
Delay him. “How do you pretend to be a normal human being when you’re so clearly not, Sam? I trusted you, I was your friend…”
“Basic math: People are either help or hindrance.” He slid a sealed envelope from his jacket, tossed it on Ben’s lap. “If you don’t want to cooperate, Ben, so be it. I’ll show my cards.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You are. Open it.”
Ben tore open the envelope, pulled a set of photos free. The images hit him like a giant’s fist, crushing his lungs, flattening every thought in his brain.
Emily. Photographed with a telescopic lens, standing in the kitchen window in the Maui house in the moments before she died. Next photo. The same. Next photo, her clicking off the phone, looking pensive, almost looking up at the camera, a frown on her face. Then a photo of the kitchen window, a bullet hole marring the glass, Emily sprawled on the tiles.
The photos spilled from his hands onto the floor. His throat thickened, his chest tightened. “Why?”
Hector laughed.
“Why did you… Why?”
“You mean who?” Hector laughed, the cat batting the dying mouse.
“You goddamned murdering bastard-” Ben yelled, but then Teach bolted from the floor, threw herself at Hector. She closed a hard grip on his throat-Ben saw the astonishment in Hector’s eyes-and Ben jumped up, grabbing for Hector’s gun. Hector wrenched free from them both, kicked Ben in the face, sent him sprawling. Hector powered his pistol into Teach’s stomach and fired.
Teach collapsed, eyes open, mouth clenched. Ben got up again and Hector slammed the pistol into Ben’s face, kicked him in the stomach, to the carpet.
Lying on the floor, Ben’s eyes locked on Teach’s. She blinked once, twice, stopped, tried to speak.
“Jackie.” Hector watched Teach, the gun steady on Ben. When she stopped breathing he prodded her with the foot. “Dump her ass in the bedroom.”
Jackie picked up Teach’s body and carried her into the bedroom.
Ben crawled to the futon. He could hardly breathe. The gun. The pillow. His only chance to get away and to kill the son of a bitch.
“I suppose it’s rude to point out I’ve taken everything from you,” Hector said. “Your wife. Your good name, your business. Your dignity.”
“Why… why?” Make the smug murdering bastard believe he’d broken Ben. He got a hand under the pillow, crouching as though he feared a kick or a blow from Hector. He shivered, spat blood. Emily. She had changed him in life, and now that he knew the truth of her death he felt changed again. Determination filled him like an ache in his bones. Not a moment’s hesitation.
“You’re going to tell me where Pilgrim is, Ben, because I know you. You’re weak. You’ll trade me the information for an easy death. You want to look under Teach’s clothes, see the cuts?”
His fingers touched the gun. Hector would shoot him as soon as he drew it, and even if he stood his ground and managed to kill or wound Hector, Jackie would attack him from the other room. The odds were dismal.
But otherwise, they would kill him and wait for Pilgrim to return. Death was doing nothing. He thought of Pilgrim’s words: Sometimes the smartest move in a fight is to retreat.
“Delia told me all about New Orleans,” Ben said, plainly, and for a moment surprise slackened the clench in Hector’s face. Ben flung the pillow straight at Hector’s head and swung up the gun that lay underneath it. The feathers exploded from the pillow as Hector fired a shot through its center. But Ben emptied the clip in Hector’s direction as he ran for the window. Hector threw himself backward and behind the kitchen counter for cover. Ben’s spray of shots pocked the counter, the wall, punctured the refrigerator, as he ran the ten feet.
Hector rose to return fire but Ben hit the window.
The closed, dusty curtains caught Ben as he jumped through the glass, the heavy fabric protecting him from the jagged shards. His momentum carried him onto the landing. Stopping or taking the time for the stairs meant death, and he rolled without hesitation, slid himself under the metal railing of the walkway, dropped one floor to the grass below.
The apartment stood at a corner, and if he ran to his right he’d be wide open, they could shoot him from the second floor. So he ducked under the walkway, ran in the opposite direction, hit the corner. He could hear their footsteps starting to barrel down the stairs.
Try to do what they don’t expect. He turned a second corner; the chain link dividing the complex from the neighboring construction was just ahead. If he was lucky they’d decide he was still running north, when he was back-tracking south on the opposite side of the building. Ben went over the fence, ignoring the barbed wire that tore at his arms, his khakis.
“There!” Jackie’s voice, from the parking lot to his right. He’d been spotted.
Ben hit the sand and ran into the maze of the construction. The building was U-shaped, as it faced the street, its unfinished sides open to the elements.
Now he looked back. Hector was at the Navigator’s wheel, plowing through a gate on the side of the fence, Jackie running behind the SUV. Drawing his pistol.
Ben dodged wheelbarrows, stacks of drywall, an idle forklift. The Navigator roared behind him. He dodged to the left, and Jackie, behind the Navigator, fired.
It was either get shot or be run down. He kept going straight, the SUV always between him and Jackie, and running through piled debris where the Navigator couldn’t go. Supposedly. He glanced behind him and the Navigator plowed through the construction junk, sawhorses and broken drywall flying, ten feet behind him.
Ben jumped up onto the foundation and headed for an interior wall that was already erected; he needed cover. He went around the wall as gunfire hit it with a low, vicious whistle.
He heard the Navigator screech to a buckling stop, then boot heels hitting the concrete. He exited the other side of the shell-a clear path all the way to the next chain-link fence on the opposite side of the lot.
More than enough room for Hector or Jackie to shoot him. But there was nowhere else to go. You can’t outrun him forever and your gun is empty. He’d counted the bullets, like Pilgrim taught him, and the news wasn’t good.
He ran, and louder than his own panting he heard the pounding of footsteps behind him.
Several yards beyond the chain link, he saw a knot of men and women waiting in the shelter of a Dallas Area Rapid Transit bus station. He launched himself onto the fence, using a pole to haul himself upward. Now he spotted a ditch breaking the land between the site and the bus stop.
He scrabbled over the fence, went head over heels, and the shots boomed, one hitting his shoe-a violent jerk rocked his foot-another shot hitting his chest like a hard kick. A third shot nailed the metal pole that lay against his stomach; it thrummed from the force as though an invisible man kicked it. Ben fell, headfirst, stayed low and rolled, went into the ditch. Water and mud, runoff from the site, smeared the bottom.
Ben sucked breath into his lungs, staggered to his feet, heard a man saying, “What the hell?” A woman screamed, and yelled in Spanish, “Gunshots, I heard gunshots.” Ben ran down the ditch, staying low, bending low to crawl through a drainage section that barreled under the street.
The crowd-someone would be calling the police. Please, God, he hoped. He eased out of the opposite end of the drain and clambered up the side of the gulley. He found himself in a vacant lot, with a large sign announcing more office space soon to come.
No sign of Hector. They might have fled as soon as they saw witnesses. Hector would not want anyone identifying him. Hector would be running.
Ben groped for his cell phone. Gone. He remembered Jackie had taken it.
Blood welled from the laces of his running shoes. The pain in his chest throbbed and he probed his flesh, half-afraid to find a bullet hole. His chest ached to the bone, as though it had taken a hammer’s blow. A tear in his shirt pocket. He found a hard rectangle beneath the hole. Pilgrim’s small sketchbook, with the drawings of the young girl, wore a bullet embedded in the leather cover.
He had to find Pilgrim, but he had to get off the streets. He was bloodied and muddied and memorable.
He ran toward a convenience store and the alley behind it.
It was a surprise to learn that homeless people had cell phones. A group of three men stood behind the store. They stopped talking, giving Ben a suspicious glare as he approached them.
“Excuse me,” Ben said, “is there a pay phone nearby?”
“Naw,” one of the men said. “What happened to you?”
“I fell into a ditch. Hurt my foot.” All three men looked down and inspected his foot; blood oozed from the sock.
“Church down the street, they give you some ice for that,” one man said.
“Ice and a prayer,” a second man laughed. “Who you need to call?”
“Friend. He’ll come get me.” Ben glanced over his shoulder. No sign of pursuit. They’d have risked being seen if they’d lingered, with the crowd at the bus station looking for them. It didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be combing the area looking for him.
“You’re the man on the front page,” the first man said.
Ben froze. The three men studied him.
“Yeah,” the second man said.
“We stay informed. Ain’t got much else to do but look at the paper,” the third man said.
“Is there a reward?” the first man asked. The other two moved in a circle, cutting off Ben’s lines of retreat.
“Please. Please don’t report me.” He was begging for a break from people who’d either never had one or never made the most of one they’d gotten. “I’m innocent. Please. I’m trying to stop the people who killed my wife.”
The three men looked at each other. “Like on The Fugitive?” one asked. Ben nodded.
“If there’s a reward, cops’ll figure out a way not to pay us, that’s for damn sure,” the first man said. “I don’t want to be on TV, either. Family’s always looking for me.”
“Here.” The second man dipped in his pocket, pulled out a bulky phone. “You can use mine but no more than one minute. Prepaid. Got mine at Wal-Mart. And nothing personal, but I hold the phone so you don’t run off.”
“His foot’s bleeding, he runs, it’s a short race,” the first man said and laughed at his own wit.
The man held the phone and, stunned, Ben dialed the number. Then the man moved the phone to Ben’s ear. “Speak up clear, Mr. Fugitive. It’s not the best-quality sound.”
33
The threat of rain hadn’t kept the soccer fields empty; dozens of families and kids, in varying shades of uniforms and ranging from ages four to ten, wandered between the rectangles of green. Mothers, fathers, and siblings stood on the sidelines, chatting among themselves or calling out sweetened encouragement to the players. Coaches clapped and frowned; high school kids serving as referees blew whistles and acted supremely bored.
Dads cheered their daughters. Pilgrim knew Tamara played soccer but he’d never worked up the nerve to watch a game from a distance; the risk was too great. Why did he choose this place, filled with fathers and daughters? Salt in the wound, rubbed there himself.
Pilgrim moved through the crowd. He was dressed in a phone repairman’s shirt and baseball cap, a treasure from his cache, and he stayed on the edge of the crowd.
He spotted two people watching him in the first five minutes: a soccer mom who didn’t seem to know the other moms on her side of the field, standing a bit apart, arms crossed, her eyes not fixed on the glorious play of a child but instead scanning the crowd a bit too often. There was another, a compactly built young man in a referee’s shirt, but the shirt was untucked and hanging loose over long pants. Might be a gun there. He was no bigger than the teenaged refs, but his face was that of an older man. He kept glancing around at the other games.
Neither approached him. They wanted him to talk to Vochek. Probably they would try to take him after they talked, when he left.
But she had broken her promise, or a superior had overruled her. Stupid.
A group of six-year-old boys had finished their match and their obligatory juice box and snack, and they and their parents walked as a herd. He stayed close among them, a cell phone at his ear, pretending to be deep in conversation.
He walked into the parking lot with them and glanced back. The watchers were still in place and he didn’t make anyone else following him. He ducked into his car and didn’t bother backing up. He barreled forward, over the curb and into the grass, and shot out onto the road. He had preprogrammed Vochek’s cell number into his phone. He pressed the button.
“I said come alone,” he said.
A sigh. “I wanted to,” she said. “Got vetoed.”
At least she was smart enough not to deny the obvious. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t deal if you break agreements.”
“I can offer you a deal. How about if you come and talk to me and my boss.”
“I must decline your kind invitation. I’m sorry, you’ve bruised my trust.”
She was quiet for a moment and her voice softened. “Randall. I know you have a daughter. Tamara. I could make it so you can see Tamara again.”
A chill slipped into his chest like a knife. “You stay the hell away from my kid. And my ex-wife.”
“I don’t mean them harm, I’m trying to give you what you want.”
“You don’t know what I want, Vochek.”
“Then you tell me what you want.”
“To talk with someone with the actual power to negotiate with me. Good-bye.”
“Wait, please, I need to know what’s going down in New Orleans.”
“I need to know, too. Good-bye, Vochek.” He hung up and did an immediate U-turn, pulled into a Jack in the Box parking lot, and waited.
Five minutes later, he saw her, in a Ford sedan, pull past. Two other cars, both Fords, stayed close to her.
He pulled out after them. Tailing in Plano was both easy and challenging; the roads tended to be straight shots, but traffic was heavy-it was a suburb of a quarter million people-and drivers wove in and out of lanes for every inch of advantage. The trick was to stay close, not too close, and not lose them in the quickly changing lights. Without showing yourself.
The three cars headed back toward a shopping mall, then turned into a neighborhood across the street. Pilgrim was surprised to see a runway bisecting the neighborhood, a series of hangars with an array of private planes sheltering under the tin roofs. He U-turned hard, saw the cars stop in front of one of the houses.
Found you, he thought. What an interesting place for a safe house, with an airport built right in.
At the shopping center he located a place to perch where he could still see the house. She and her colleagues would go inside, she would call her boss, report failure, perhaps plead for another chance.
Interesting they didn’t go back to an office. Vochek, Ben had said, was based in Houston. He wondered if her colleagues were local. If they were, and they left soon…
