Just as I was about to walk back to my truck, a sleek, black Trans Am bolted from the alley where I had seen Sai enter moments earlier. It was now moving away from my position. Once more my superior detective acumen kicked in and informed my intuition so that I could construe that a sleek, black Trans Am would likely be Sai’s vehicle of choice. Aha.
The dark tinted windows allowed me no such verification of my skillful notion. Therefore, I ran back to the truck and decided to follow the sleek, black Trans Am.
Five minutes later I had her in my sights once again. At least I had the Trans Am in my sights. She was several blocks in front of me and heading into the throes of the downtown District of Columbia. As soon as the traffic converged and made my tailing more difficult, I sped up in an effort to move closer to the Trans Am. The idea was easier than the reality.
After much deft maneuvering and not a few horns blowing hatred in my direction, I somehow managed to position myself a mere four car links behind her.
I subsequently deduced that downtown D.C. was not the destination. She was traveling towards Maryland. As soon as we crossed into Maryland, she turned off the main road and headed into a densely populated neighborhood. I assumed the people count was high in that particular neighborhood since there were rows and rows of houses on both sides of the street. I followed several car-links behind the black Trans Am.
Ms. Sai turned right on yet another street thick with houses. Since I was just a few seconds behind the highly suspicious Trans Am, I slowed the Silverado and approached the street cautiously. Oh, so cautiously. I wanted to make sure that she had continued on down that avenue. I slowed the truck and waited to allow her to increase some distance between us. I eased the truck to the street opening and discovered that the Trans Am was now parked next to the curb on the right not too far away from my present position. Her motor was still running.
I backed up and eased the truck next to the curb moving along at a snail’s pace in reverse. I stopped and waited there for a few moments. Nothing was happening. My impatience grew thin, so I turned off the motor and exited the Silverado. I moved to the sidewalk and took a couple of steps toward the street where she had turned so I could see the Trans Am. It was still parked alongside the curb with the motor running.
“You were following me,” a voice said.
I turned around quickly to see Sai Leekpai coming towards me from the direction of my truck. How did she get behind me? Maybe she moonlights as a magician’s assistant among her other talents. I didn’t have time to ponder than line of thinking.
“I don’t think so,” I said in an effort to divert her accusation. “I’m new to D.C. I got lost.”
“This is Maryland. We left D.C.”
“See, I told you I was lost.”
“Why were you following me?”
“I just happened to be behind you.”
“All the way from that Hunan restaurant near Georgetown?”
Yikes. My tailing expertise was suddenly brought into question.
I smiled. She held fast to the fierceness of her facial demeanor. She seemed to have more curiosity than anger. And yet, she seemed to radiate fierceness.
“You are not really interested in me, are you?” she asked after studying me for a few moments.
“Why do you say that?” I asked. Since I had failed to convince her that I was just another lost tourist in the D.C. area, I decided I might as well engage her overtly.
“You were sitting at a table in the restaurant,” she said.
“I do that sometimes.”
“Listening intently to someone else’s conversation.”
“Do tell.”
“I think you heard what you needed to hear.”
“Sometimes that happens.”
“And you observed us.”
“Us?”
“Quite so. Wilkerson and myself.”
“So you believe that I was spying on you,” I said.
“Not so much on me, but I think your focus was on Wilkerson.”
“Perhaps, but I’d like to know more about you,” I said.
“That could be costly for you.”
“Call me curious.”
“To what end?” she asked.
“Knowledge is true power.”
“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” she said.
“Depends on how one applies that learning. And who said I wanted only a little.”
“What do you want to know?’
“Who do you work for?”
“You are not interested in that. Like I said before, Thaddeus Wilkerson is the person of interest to you.”
“You keep coming back to that.”
“I suspect that Wilkerson’s banking information was primary for you. It has nothing to do with me.”
“You paid him a handsome sum,” I said.
“I did.”
“I would like to have that data-device you bought from him.”
“Forgive my presumptuousness here, but you do not appear to be a person who has two billion dollars to buy such luxury.”
“Should I take that as an insult?”
“Merely an observation,” she said and almost smiled.
Almost as quickly as spoke, she pulled an unusual knife-like weapon from somewhere hidden in her flowing garments. She then assumed some karate-type position foreign to my academy training. Rogers’ earlier description helped me recognize some familiarity with the weapon despite my never having seen it before this occasion.
“Dangerous looking knife you have there,” I said.
“It is not a knife. It is a sai, an ancient martial arts device used in fighting.”
I had not made any plans to engage myself in a knife or sai fight with another woman. Especially this woman. I drew the Glock from my back holster and pointed the barrel to the ground at my side.
“You know the old adage about bringing a knife to a gunfight,” I said.
“I repeat, this is not a knife.”
“Well, unless you can throw that horrible looking device faster than a speeding bullet, this will not be much of a fight.”
This time she actually smiled, but it was not long-lasting. She then replaced the sai somewhere inside her flowing garments. She did it so deftly that I marveled at the grace of her movements. It was as if she was performing for me, like a magician. Perhaps my earlier observation was on to something. It was as much slight-of-hand as it was functional. Then, as if on cue, she bowed and walked towards me.
“I still have my gun,” I said to clarify the obvious. I had no idea what she intended to do or not to do as she headed in my direction.
“Good for you,” she said.
“I could shoot you.”
She continued past me as I slowly turned in an effort to keep an eye on her. She stopped a few yards away, and then turned to face me once more.
“Yes, you could shoot me. But, you will not shoot me. Your ethics will not permit such an improper thing. I, on the other hand, would kill you without much thought if you were in my way and I needed to remove you.”
I hated it when people surmised my ethical weaknesses. I also hated it when they bragged about doing me in and I knew of course that they could.
“Don’t regard my caution here as an ethical weakness,” I said. “I don’t like to waste ammunition if the occasion doesn’t call for it.”
“I have no doubt that if these were different circumstances you could shoot me, and would in all probability. But not today, Clancy Evans. Not today.”
She turned and walked down the side street where she had left her Trans Am parked with the motor running. She was about to move out of my line of sight, so I took a few steps to maintain my vision of her.
“Where are you taking that flash drive?” I said.
She did not stop, turn around, or answer me. She simply continued her walk to the black car. I watched it move away slowly. I halfway expected a rapid u-turn and an abrupt exit while burning rubber close to my position.
That didn’t happen. Maybe she hadn’t seen as many 1950 high school flicks as I had seen.
I watched Sai and her mysterious black car disappear from sight. She was perhaps more mysterious than the vehicle she drove.
41
“Where are you and are you okay?” Rogers said.
I was sitting in Diamond’s Silverado in front of my Motel 6 room waiting on some inspiration to hit me. It is always a little unnerving whenever someone you have never met, someone who appears as a potential adversary, someone who shows up in the investigation as it unravels, knows me. The fact that Sai Leekpai was from another part of the globe added to the intrigue. Although intrigue was not quite what I was feeling at the present. I had a super computer with skills beyond anything imagined except by brilliant scientists who dream outside of the box. Rogers could inform me of just about anything given enough time and files to search. But how did Sai Leekpai know about me? And how did she know that I was only interested in Thaddeus Wilkerson? Maybe she was a good guesser. Then again, she did not appear to be guessing.
“I’m in Falls Church, Virginia. I’m physically okay.”
“Driving through town?”
“Not at present. I am meditating.”
“Eastern influences?”
“To say the least, but more like Eastern-caused influences.”
“Influences are influences, however they happen. Still, I don’t follow you,” she said.
I explained my confusion and wondering. I told her about my little run-in with Sai Leekpai.
“She did her homework,” she said.
“But how did she know to do her homework? That’s the question. How do you suppose my name surfaced for her or for her boss Phueng Pen-Chan?”
“Good question. I could do some counter-surveillance,” Rogers said.
“Tell me you have the money in tow,” I said.
“Precisely.”
“And did you find anything revelatory about his bank account you hacked?”
“Hacked is not really the correct term for what I did, but, to the point, no, nothing revelatory about the account. If there are multiple owners, there was nothing to help support that. Wilkerson we know is attached to it. Those offshore banks truly guard the privacy of their clientele.”
“And the land offshore on which the bank is located?”
“Cyprus.”
“And you removed it without being noticed?”
“Oh, well, Thaddeus will notice it soon enough, but I doubt if anyone noticed that it was being transferred from his to ours during that transaction.”
“So the two billion is safe,” I said.
“You mean the one point something billion. As safe as it could possibly be.”
“Now, about that counter-surveillance you suggested earlier, you may proceed on that. Let me know as quickly as you can where my lovely but deadly Sai Leekpai learned about me.”
“And you’re going where now?”
“To sleep and then back to the mountains. I need to talk with Rosey face to face.”
“Not coming around the old home place on this trip back east?” Rogers asked.
“Not this time. Stay alert. Strange forces are about,” I said and ended the call.
Just as I was falling to sleep later that evening, the ubiquitous ringing of the mobile phone startled me into awareness. I could never get used to Starnes’ unit.
“Clancy here,” I muttered in my half-awake state.
“This is Marvin Dillingham.”
“Hello, Marvin. How are you?” I said without much enthusiasm. I would rather be sleeping than talking to Marvin.
“I am nervous. And you?”
“Sleepy. Something happening on your edge of the planet?”
“You could say that. Your friend, Mr. Washington is here in my home with me. He asked me to call you. So, I am calling.”
“I can tell. Does he want to speak to me?”
A moment’s pause.
“Not right this moment. But he does want me to convey a word to you.”
“Okay. Convey.”
“Come quickly.”
“That would be two words, Marvin, but I get the drift. Tell him I shall leave first light.”
Another pause.
“I think he likes that idea,” Marvin said.
“And Marvin,” I said.
“Yes?”
“To be safe, destroy the phone that you are using.”
“This unit cost me a lot of money.”
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
“It’s rather expensive, Miss Evans,” he said using a formal tone. It struck me as odd. It didn’t sound like my Marvin.
“I’ll come up with the funds. See you noon-ish tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” he said and the click on his end of the line was the last sound I remembered.
42
Starnes greeted me when I arrived at Marvin K. Dillingham’s home in the Dillingham community close to Barnardsville, North Carolina. It was late afternoon and I was still tired. Too much driving and not enough laughter. I hadn’t had much cause for laughter the last few weeks.
Starnes was sitting in a rocking chair on Marvin’s front porch. His home was surrounded by a grove of trees which provided great shade for the house and yard. The first days of April were especially warm. The shade was comforting.
“You been here long?” I said as I approached the porch.
“An hour or so, I think.”
“You have Rod Summers’ cell number?”
“What for?”
“I want to call him and see if the dogs are still out in the hunt.”
“No need.”
“You know something?”
“I do.”
“Let me have it.”
“All is forgiven and forgotten.”
“What is forgiven and forgotten?”
“Apparently their need for Rosey.”
“Precisely what have they forgiven?”
“Summers didn’t say,” Starnes said as she closed her eyes and rocked slowly.
“So the manhunt has ended.”
“That’s what he said.”
“Never have I known the Feds to give up and go away.”
“I know. Weird isn’t it?”
“Smells funny.”
“That’s an odd expression.”
“This whole thing is odd,” I said.
“No, really. How can something smell funny? Something can sound funny or something can smell bad, but it cannot smell funny.”
“What is wrong with you?” I said.
“I’m relaxing,” Starnes said.
“And you don’t think this whole affair with the Feds chasing Rosey and shooting at us and trying to kill us is not something out of a stupid B movie?”
“Don’t watch B movies,” Starnes said, “but, you do have a point. This whole mess is an enigma.”
“Somewhat.”
“But we can relax for now. Rosey is off the hook. No one is trying to kill him, as far as we know.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You’re not going to leave it alone, are you?”
I was focused on one of the large maple trees Marvin had around his place. I could feel Starnes gazing intently at me. She likely read my mind.
“Sometimes I wish you weren’t you,” Starnes said.
“Who would I be?”
“It doesn’t matter as long as you were somebody else.”
“That smells funny too,” I said.
While we were discussing things in life that smelled funny, Rosey, Marvin, Laurel, along with Sam and Dog approached the front yard from the road. Marvin was carrying a grocery bag. Apparently they had all gone for a walk.
“Welcome back,” Marvin said as the small group meandered toward the porch. “I’m grilling hamburgers for supper.”
He sounded chipper and bounced a little when he walked into the house. I looked at Starnes and she shrugged.
“He thinks it�
��s over,” she said.
“Hiking to the grocery store?” I said to Rosey.
“Just a mile or two,” he said.
“One might think that you have had enough hiking for awhile,” I said.
“Man on a mission. Had to hunt down supper,” he said.
Rosey sat in the swing at the other end of the porch. Laurel joined him. The dogs roamed around the yard sniffing out whatever fragrances would strike their fancy. Dog was already used to her new gate because of the missing leg. I felt sorry for her, but she apparently did not need my sympathy. She was doing quite well with her new mobility scheme.
“You have a good trip to D.C.?” Laurel said to me.
“Interesting, to say the least. It remains to be seen whether it was good or not.”
“Did you accomplish anything?” she said.
“Added another piece to the giant puzzle.”
“Is a picture coming into focus?” she said.
“Not a clear one. A bit distorted. Hard to make heads or tails of it at the moment,” I said.
“Not sure I like that at the moment phrase,” Rosey said as he and Laurel began to swing together.
“We’ll talk about it.”
“Yes, we will,” Rosey said.
Marvin Dillingham was a master of many skills. His grilled burgers were something to write home about. While Marvin was busy exercising his outdoor grilling techniques to perfection, Rosey was in the kitchen preparing his version of Southern baked beans. Laurel was helping him. Starnes was walking the perimeter of the property with the two dogs. I was leaning against the old maple I had been studying from the porch. It reminded me of some old maples we had in our yard in Clancyville, Virginia when I was a girl. We grew tall together before they decided to grow beyond what I could achieve.
Rogers called me.
“I hope you have something to get me out of this dither,” I said.
“What has put you in a dither, my love?” Rogers said.
“The Feds have called off the dogs, so to speak, from chasing Rosey. Apparently, we no longer have to fear for our lives from the Federal government. They have called a halt to their unsuccessful manhunt for our friend.”
“Shut the front door!” she said.
I smiled.
“Picking up colloquialisms, are we?”
Out Jumps Jack Death: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 8) Page 22
