Regina's Song

by David Eddings

  “Would that actually work, Sergeant West?” Judge Compson asked Bob.

  “I hate to admit it, Your Honor, but my kid brother’s probably come up with the best solution to the problem. That sobriety checkpoint idea of his is brilliant. Nobody goes through one of those without stopping, and if he even tries, he goes straight to jail.”

  “I like it,” the judge said with a sudden smile.

  “I’ve got another little gimmick in mind that’ll add to the confusion, Your Honor,” Charlie added. “It’s not some major violation, but it does bend certain rules just a teensy-weensy little bit. It’ll definitely confuse hell out of the reporters, I can flat-out guarantee that.”

  “Maybe we’ll leave the logistical details to you, Mr. West,” the judge said.

  “It might be best,” he agreed. “Now, we’ll need five official-looking nut-keepers.”

  “The term is ‘attendants,’ Mr. West,” Doc Fallon said with a pained expression.

  “Sorry, Doc,” Charlie apologized. “Anyway, I think that Miss Mary should suit up in those white clothes so that she’ll be the one in the real Twinkie-mobile. Mark’s going to be the driver, and Father O will have to go along to give directions. Nobody, and I really mean nobody, will get any information out of those three. We’ll keep Father O out of sight, because we don’t want anybody making any church connection. The decoy limos will each need a fake Twinkie, a driver, and somebody wearing attendant clothes. Trish can be one of our Twinkie decoys, and if we put a blond wig on Erika, she can be another. We’ll dress Sylvia in a white uniform to play attendant, and James and I can drive two of the decoy limos. All we need now are two more drivers, another two fake Twinkies, and three more attendants.”

  “You’ll also need somebody to foot the bill,” James added. “This might be expensive.”

  “That’s my department, James,” Les Greenleaf told him.

  “I was hoping you’d see it that way, Mr. Greenleaf,” Charlie said. “Now, I’ve spent quite a bit of this past week cruising around on all the roads that’ll be involved, and I’ve pretty well pinpointed the locations for those sobriety checks. Mark’s going to have to get in touch with Father O, and they’ll decide where to set up checkpoint number five—the important one. I talked with the guy who owns a fleet of limos up in Everett, and his cars are all equipped with radios, so we’ll all be able to stay in touch. We might want to use some code words about the crucial stuff, but that’s just window dressing. I’ll need a little time to take each driver out in a plain car to show him the exact route to follow on D-Day, and we’ll need some pretty exact times so that the sobriety checks coincide. We’ll want all the reporters stopped at exactly the same time so that nobody gets any advance warning. If we can arrange it with Snohomish County, I’d like to have my big brother running mission control. He knows the whole scoop, and he can smooth over any boo-boos that crop up along the way.”

  “You have a gift for this sort of thing, Mr. West,” Judge Compson said. “Your scheme’s fairly elaborate, but if it works the way you’ve laid it out, I don’t think any reporter’s going to be able to evade you.”

  “That was the whole idea, Your Honor,” Charlie replied. “We’ll need a few practice runs to make sure everybody knows what’s going on, but one of us is going to be in each of those limos, and we’ll be calling the shots on the radio.”

  Judge Compson looked at Rankin, then at Les Greenleaf. “What do you gentlemen think?” she asked them.

  “Let’s go for it,” Les replied shortly.

  “All right, Charlie,” Erika said when we got back down to the parking garage, “What’s this gimmick you didn’t want to talk about?”

  “Somehow I knew you’d be the one who’d ask, Erika,” Charlie said. “OK, I spent a few hours in one of the shops at Boeing last Saturday evening, and I managed to counterfeit five sets of license plates.”

  “What on earth for?” she demanded.

  “All five sets have the same number, babe,” he said with his trademark smirk. “Those five limos are really going to be identical, and the reporters are going to discover that there’s this magical limousine out there that can be in five different places all at the same time.”

  “It’s a miracle!” she said with feigned awe. “Let’s run and tell the bishop so that he can pass it on to the Vatican.”

  “You’re an evil, evil person, Charlie,” James said.

  And then we all began to laugh.

  CODA

  Pavane

  We spent the rest of that week and the early part of the next one getting to know the back roads in Snohomish County by their first names. Father O’Donnell had told us that Granite Falls was in the general vicinity of the cloister, but that was as much as he would spill. He and Charlie settled on the little town of Verlot as the best location for the roadblock. I guess “need to know” came up fairly often during their discussions.

  Anyway, we finally got it all hammered together, and Trish advised Mr. Rankin and Judge Compson that Thursday, April 16, would be our own personal D-Day.

  I drove to Saint Benedict’s Church about five o’clock that afternoon. Our schedule was pretty tight—like right down to the minute—so I thought that it’d be better to get to Everett early rather than late.

  “Are you certain this is going to work, Mark?” Father O’Donnell asked me as we went north on the interstate.

  “It sure should, Father,” I said. “We’ve been rehearsing for long enough to get all the details down pat. Everything ought to come off right on schedule.”

  “Well, we can always hope.” He still sounded a bit dubious.

  It was about a quarter to six when I parked my old Dodge near the limousine service garage. Charlie and James were inside already, along with a couple of Dr. Fallon’s security guards. We were all wearing suits—Charlie and I had to rent ours—and James handed around those caps chauffeurs put on to make them look official.

  “Check out my phony license plates, Mark,” Charlie said, pointing at the line of limos with a certain pride.

  The counterfeit plates he’d cobbled together were neatly in place on each limo, and they covered the real plates. As nearly as I could tell, they were indistinguishable from genuine plates, and they all showed the same number.

  “Nice job, Charlie,” I congratulated him. “Did you get your training in the official license plate factory, maybe?”

  “Not hardly,” he replied. “That one’s in the state prison over at Walla Walla, and I ain’t been there yet.”

  “It’s only a matter of time, Charlie,” James said in that deep voice. “Just keep on bending rules, kid. You’ll make it—eventually.”

  “Very funny,” Charlie replied sarcastically.

  “When are we going to take off?” I asked him.

  “Bob says we should hit Fallon’s bughouse at about six thirty-three,” Charlie said. “We’ve got a little time to play with when we get there. The rush-hour traffic might delay us, but I built in a pad to cover it. We can either move right along or stall—whichever it takes for us to leave at six fifty-two. The roadblocks are set for seven forty-two. We can all either speed up or slow down to make sure we get to them right on the nose.”

  “Will there still be light enough for Mark and me to find the turnoff to the cloister?” Father O’Donnell asked him. “It isn’t really marked.”

  “That part’s OK,” Charlie assured him, “but you might have to wait a while after you turn Twinkie over to the nuns. We don’t want you coming out of that side road until after dark. Those back roads don’t have very much traffic, so you’ll be able to see the headlights on the reporters’ car if they’re that close behind you. That’s the main reason for this Mickey Mouse time schedule. We don’t want any reporter to see you go in or come out. Once you guys are back on the pavement, we’re home free.” Charlie looked at his watch. “I’d better check in with Bob and let him know that we’re all in place here,” he said, slipping into the front seat of one of the limos
. He picked up the microphone.

  “Are we sure that none of the reporters will be listening in while we’re radioing back and forth?” Father O’Donnell asked me.

  “There’s not much chance of that, Father,” I replied. “We’re using an oddball frequency, and even if some reporter who’s roaming up and down the dial happens to pick us up, he won’t realize what’s going on. We’re going to use chess moves as a code. My official designation is ‘king’s pawn,’ and when I say, ‘king’s pawn to king four,’ it’ll mean that I’ve made my first turnoff. Later, when we come to the roadblock at Verlot, I’ll broadcast, ‘king’s pawn to king six—check.” If the cops manage to stop the reporters, it’s ‘checkmate,’ and we’ve won the game. Trish is queen, James is castle, Erika’s bishop, and Charlie’s rook. If some reporter stumbles across our frequency, he’ll think he’s listening to a couple of people playing a long-range game of chess.”

  “Oh, that’s clever,” he said admiringly.

  “Naturally. James and Charlie play chess quite a bit, and they worked it out between them. The boardinghouse gang’s going to be manning all five radios, and we’ve got all the moves memorized.”

  “What if something goes wrong and a reporter evades that roadblock at Verlot?” the priest asked me.

  I shrugged. “We all turn around and go back to Doc Fallon’s sanitarium. Then we’ll wait six months or so and try again—maybe with delivery trucks or ambulances. You and I’ll be calling the shots, and we won’t take the cloister turnoff unless we’re absolutely sure that nobody’s behind us.”

  We hauled out of the limousine service garage at 5:52, and we probably looked like a funeral procession—or maybe an impending Mafia convention—as we drove east through Everett on Hewitt Avenue. We went across the flats to Cavalero’s Corner and then up the hill toward Lake Stevens.

  We made the turnoff to Fallon’s place, and Bob’s voice came crackling over the radio. “Black king to castle three,” he announced. Bob was monitoring the reporters’ frequency.

  “The reporters have spotted us,” I translated for Father O’Donnell. “It was bound to happen, I guess.”

  We all followed Charlie into the courtyard and parked the limousines in a neat row, being careful to make sure that none of the license plates were visible.

  “Stay out of sight, Father,” I cautioned. “We don’t want any reporter to find out that you’re here.”

  “Right,” he agreed. “This is sort of exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Only if it works the way it’s supposed to.” I slid out of the limo, and the five of us who were driving went inside to Fallon’s office.

  Trish and Erika were both wearing hooded sweatshirts, and Erika sported a blond wig that didn’t look very good on her. Two other tall blond girls were there as well; I recognized one as a nurse who worked for Doc Fallon.

  Mary and Sylvia were wearing those standard white pants and shirts that sanitarium employees always seem to wear, and the three other attendants weren’t acting—they really were sanitarium employees. When you get right down to it, Sylvia was sort of redundant: We only needed five people to man the limo radios. We’d been smart enough not to mention it to Sylvia, though. She had a real short fuse, and we sure didn’t want to light it. She’d be riding with James, who was probably best qualified to keep her calm.

  “Where’s Twinkie?” Charlie asked, looking around.

  “She’ll be along in just a few moments,” Dr. Fallon replied. “Have there been any foul-ups so far? If we’re going to have to scratch this, there’s not much point in getting her all dressed-up and ready to go. I don’t think she’ll get agitated, but let’s not take any chances if we don’t have to. Is everything going the way it’s supposed to so far?”

  “Yup,” Charlie said. “There’s probably four or five long-range TV cameras zeroed in on the courtyard right now. We made sure that they won’t be able to pick up the license plates, so everything’s going just the way we want it to.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got nine minutes before we have to take off.”

  “Did you get longer cords for the microphones, Charlie?” Trish asked him. “Erika and I will be in the backseats, you know.”

  “Got it covered,” he replied. “And everybody remember to step right along when we go out the front door to the limos. We don’t want to give those cameras more than thirty seconds to home in on us. We’ll let Mark, Mary, and Twinkie lead off. Let’s get them out of sight as quickly as we can. Each of the other limos will have a driver, an attendant, and a Twinkie look-alike inside. Let’s keep those chess-move code sheets handy. You’ll confuse the hell out of Bob if you happen to call in a wrong move. If you’re talking about Snohomish and you use the chess move for Arlington by mistake, he’ll think you just sprouted wings.”

  “Charlie,” James said in a pained tone, “we’ve already been through this several dozen times. You’re beating a dead horse.”

  “Well—” Charlie said defensively.

  I looked at my watch. “It’s getting close,” I said tersely. “Let’s crank it up.”

  Doc Fallon nodded and pressed the buzzer on his intercom.

  A couple moments later one of the orderlies led Renata into the office. She was still rambling on in twin-speak, and she didn’t seem to even see any of us. That’s assuming that she really was Renata, of course. If, as James had suggested, she just happened to be Regina, who could possibly know what she saw or whom she recognized?

  Mary took her gently by the arm, then pulled up the hood of her grey sweatshirt to cover her face, leaving only a bit of blond hair showing. The decoy girls all rearranged their hoods to duplicate Renata as closely as they could.

  “What do you think, Mark?” Charlie asked me.

  “It should be close enough,” I replied. “It’s only about fifteen or twenty feet from the front door to my limo. I should have Renata out of sight before the cameras can zoom in, and the rest of you won’t be far behind. I don’t think those cameras will get much detail.”

  “Let’s hit the bricks, then,” he said.

  Mary and I hustled Renata out the front door, and we had her stashed in the backseat with Mary beside her in under fifteen seconds. You’d be surprised how fast you can move if you have to. I kept my chauffeur’s cap pulled down to hide my face and slid into the driver’s seat while the decoys all got into their limos and closed the doors.

  Father O’Donnell was scrunched over on the passenger’s side of the front seat.

  “You don’t actually have to crouch, Father,” I told him. “These are one-way windows. We can see out, but they can’t see in.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it?”

  “Rook to queen three,” Charlie’s voice came over the radio.

  “Knight’s gambit acknowledged,” Bob replied.

  “That’s our go-ahead,” I told Mary and Father O’Donnell. I checked the dashboard clock. “Six fifty-two right on the nose,” I said. “We aren’t even a half minute off schedule.”

  Charlie’s limo led the way out of the courtyard, naturally, and the rest of us fell in behind him down the long driveway to the public road.

  “Rook to bishop five,” Charlie reported to Bob, advising him that we’d left the grounds of the sanitarium.

  “Where do we go from here?” Father O’Donnell asked me.

  “Back to Cavalero’s Corner,” I replied. “There’s a half dozen highways that fan out from there. That’s where we scatter.”

  “Black king to castle,” Bob told us tersely.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Farther O’Donnell asked.

  “Bob’s monitoring the conversations of the reporters,” I explained. “Evidently, they’re calling for backup. We’ve probably got reporters and TV camera crews homing in on us. This is where we start juggling our positions. James is going to drop back, and I’ll pass him. Then Erika’s car will pass both of us, and so on. One or two of those reporters out there might have been
hanging around the courthouse during those hearings, so they might have recognized a couple of us when we were out in plain sight back at the sanitarium. We’ll keep changing places in the line, so that they won’t know which one of us is in which car.”

  “Shrewd,” Father O’Donnell said.

  “That’s Charlie for you,” I replied.

  “Black queen to king’s rook four,” Trish announced from the rear of our convoy.

  “We’ve got cars following us,” I translated. “Anytime one of us identifies the color of the chess piece as black, it means that we’re talking about the reporters. We’re starting to get down to the nitty-gritty.”

  “Have there been any black knight gambits on the board yet?” Charlie called in.

  “Not so far,” Bob answered. “I’ll keep you advised.”

  “We must have caught them off base,” I told Mary and Father O’Donnell. “They haven’t got any helicopters up yet. Once we split up and scatter at Cavalero’s Corner, I think we’re home free.”

  When we got down to the bottom of the hill, we fanned out. I was in the middle of the pack, and I held back to let Charlie and Erika get ahead of me. Then I turned right onto Sunnyside Boulevard and drove on in the general direction of Marysville. James and Trish moved up quickly to fill in the gap. During our planning sessions, we’d kicked around the possibility that I might be able to slip out of the column without being noticed, but we hadn’t wanted to bet the farm on it.