“I have it all written down.”
“Good.” Driscoll glanced over at the group of hippies, who were now approaching along the path that led past their bench. He waited until they had passed before he spoke again. “But I need a commitment from you, Danny. I’m going to need your help with this Ed situation, and you can’t go halfway on it. Will you support me on that?”
“You want me to be a mole?”
Driscoll shrugged noncommittally. “I’d use the word ‘informant.’ We have to rein this guy in. He’ll hurt more people if we don’t. He could hurt Lizzie. Oh, and Lizzie’s not a saint, either, you know.”
“She told me she killed an agent.”
“That she did. I knew him. His name was Relin.”
“How? What happened?”
Agent Driscoll flicked his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it. “We were trying to bring her in to ask her some questions about Terwilliger. She fought back.”
Danny stared at Driscoll with his mouth hanging open. “Did she shoot him or something?”
“No, she was unarmed. There’s more to her than meets the eye.”
Little Lizzie, who must have been all of a hundred pounds. This didn’t make any sense, but Danny let it go for now. “I don’t want you bothering Lizzie. Do whatever you want with this Ed person, but part of the deal is that Lizzie has to go free.”
Driscoll gave this some thought. He was clearly not happy about it. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll leave her alone. Ed’s the one we want.”
“And I get my sister back.”
“You get your sister and your freedom from the criminals. I’ll need whatever intel you have on Kingfisher. But nothing happens until you get me something good on Terwilliger’s whereabouts. You understand that, don’t you?”
Danny sighed. “Yeah.”
“Whatever information you give me about Terwilliger, I have to pass to my superiors.” Danny briefly received a faint image of a middle-aged man with white hair. “It’s ultimately their call whether what you’ve given me is useful. If they think it’s enough, then I’m authorized to complete the transaction with you. But that decision is out of my hands.”
“Well, hold on a minute,” Danny blurted. “How do I know your ‘superiors’ are honest? If I give you good info, I want some kind of guarantee you’ll hold up your end.”
Driscoll raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “All I can give you is my word.”
Danny followed Driscoll’s thoughts for a long time, trying to judge the man’s intentions. The agent’s almost unnatural calmness made it difficult, but as far as he could tell, Driscoll was being perfectly forthright.
It would be a betrayal; no matter how he justified it, Danny couldn’t escape that simple fact. He knew Lizzie would never forgive him if she found out about this deal. “Lizzie can’t ever know about this,” he said.
“She won’t.”
“And whatever happens, you have to leave her alone from now on. Even if you don’t catch him.”
Driscoll nodded. “Done.”
Maybe it wouldn’t come to anything, Danny thought. He still hadn’t fully committed himself. Unless he actually learned something useful and passed it to Driscoll, this deal was entirely theoretical. There was no betrayal until that happened. If and when it came to that—well, if he had to choose between saving his sister and protecting a man he’d never met, the choice was simple.
He swallowed hard, held out his hand, and Driscoll shook it. “Thanks for doing the right thing,” Driscoll said.
It didn’t feel that way to Danny.
38
A Fair Trade
Sarah’s face was aching from smiling at the customers. That was one of Mr. Orphanides’ two rules: Smile Always. The other rule was Be Late Never. Sarah was better at the second rule than the first, especially when the customers got fresh with her.
Tonight she was doing pretty well at rule number one, and Mr. Orphanides, the lecherous middle-aged owner, was watching her with approval as she navigated the tight spaces between tables carrying a tall stack of empty plates. Scratch that, she thought, he’s watching my ass with approval. It was for this reason she’d selected a uniform that was two sizes too large; everything was left to the imagination. It didn’t stop him from looking, though. So far, lucky for him, he hadn’t ever tried anything other than looking.
Her stack of plates wobbled, and she forced herself to focus on the task at hand—although she did try to keep her backside pointed away from the old man after that.
The last few customers sat around for what felt like hours, sipping coffee (Mr. Orphanides had lost his alcohol license after an unfortunate dispute with a health inspector), which Sarah refilled endlessly until they all finally paid their bills and went home. She and Trina cleaned up and piled the dirty dishes for the dishwashers to worry about. Trina, a sullen one who never smiled at the customers, stayed in Mr. Orphanides’ good graces by sleeping with him. That was Sarah’s theory, at any rate. She said good night to Trina on her way out. Trina flashed her a fake smile that barely stayed on her face for two seconds. It only took thirteen muscles to smile, or so Sarah had heard; it seemed Trina had been born without all thirteen of them.
She walked home in the dark, watching the alleys for muggers and FBI agents, and looking back over her shoulder every minute or so. Muggers were only a danger if they caught her by surprise. It was only a few blocks to her apartment, and no one bothered her.
Danny was looking at that letter again. That seemed to be all he did in the three days since he’d been staying with her: he read his letter and he watched TV. Well, he also cleaned up her apartment sometimes, and he did the dishes. He wasn’t bad as houseguests went. But the longer his sister was held by that man Li, the more Danny stayed inside and did nothing but brood.
Lately, when he spoke to her at all, he’d been asking about Ed. What Ed was like, why they had taken him. How she had dealt with losing him. It wasn’t hard to see why he was so curious; he was going through something akin to the loss Sarah herself had experienced, and was trying to figure out how she had handled it. She wished there was something she could say to reassure him. With every passing day he was becoming more certain that his sister would never be released—if she was even still alive—and if they did let her go, that the girl would be permanently altered by the horrors she had been put through.
He stuffed the letter into his pocket, but not before she managed to read the words in large print at the top of the page. She understood, now, why he’d become so despondent these last few days. That letter had undoubtedly drained the last few ounces of hope he may have had.
“Off work early?” he asked.
She checked her watch. “No, it’s the usual time.” He probably hadn’t moved from that spot since she’d left for work. “Did you eat anything today?”
His only answer was a slight shrug of the shoulders. Sighing, Sarah hung her house key on the hook by the door and went to fix a sandwich for each of them. They sat on the floor and ate, the silence broken only by her occasional attempts to start a conversation.
After the sandwiches and some glasses of milk (which her nose told her was on the verge of spoiling, if it hadn’t already), he finally started talking. “Do you ever think he might get out?”
It took her a moment to figure out who he meant. “I don’t think people like them ever let people out.”
“What if he escaped?”
Sarah leaned in toward him and whispered, “I told you, don’t talk about that here. They’re listening!”
“Yeah,” he said, lowering his voice slightly—but not as much as she would have liked. “There’s something I don’t understand. You’ve seen that FBI agent following you. They know where you are. But he hasn’t arrested you. Why not? Didn’t you say you killed one of them?”
“I don’t know why they do what they do. Can we please not talk about this here?”
Danny got up and motioned for her to follow hi
m. She took her keys back off the hook and locked the door on the way out. They went down to the street, Danny leading the way. He said nothing more until they were safely away from Driscoll’s ears. Even then, he walked on in silence for another minute. Now that she looked at him more closely, he seemed to be more pensive this evening than he’d been before—if that was possible.
“Lizzie, I think he might have gotten out,” he said.
Sarah’s heart leapt at the thought, but she quickly suppressed her reaction. She knew better than to get her hopes up. Her father had taught her that.
“Think about it,” he continued as they crossed the street and turned north on 6th Avenue. “Driscoll knows where you are, but he’s been leaving you alone. Why would he do that? If it was just about you, he’d pick you up and make you disappear just like... I think he got out, and they’re waiting to see if he’ll come find you.”
Sarah let her defenses down, just for a second, and let herself imagine the possibility that Ed was out there somewhere. How would he find her? She was sure she’d told him she had always dreamed of moving to New York, but New York was a big place. He’d probably think she’d just forgotten him and moved on. Which couldn’t be farther from the truth, really.
Could he find her using other methods? She thought of the dreams Ed had told her about. Maybe he could find her by dreaming about her.
This was pointless speculation. Worse than pointless. Men like Kajdas didn’t let you go once they had their hooks into you. “It’s just not possible. There has to be some other explanation.” She just couldn’t think of one off the top of her head, that was all.
But Danny kept at it. He seemed almost desperate for it to be true. “Did you ever work out a plan with him? Someplace to meet if things went wrong and you got separated?”
Sarah laughed. “We never planned that far ahead! After the Guru died...” She trailed off. She’d never told Danny about the Guru. Talking about the Guru would mean talking about how he’d died. She sidestepped a metal grate in the sidewalk, a habit she’d developed soon after moving to the city. They looked solid, those grates, but she didn’t trust them.
“Isn’t there anyplace you think he might have gone? Someplace he’d look for you?”
“No.” She thought for a minute. “Well, there was his dream.”
Danny stopped so suddenly that she took three more steps before noticing he’d fallen behind. He had an odd look on his face. “Dream? Who did he dream about?”
“Not who. Where. There was a city he kept dreaming about. He always thought it was a place he was supposed to go.”
Danny started walking again, and she had to step quickly to catch up. “What city?” he asked. “Why did he need to go there?”
“We never figured out where it is. Not for lack of trying. He knew what the city looked like. We looked at every map in every library in L.A. As for why―” She cursed as she noticed a glob of spit on the ground, too late to avoid stepping in it. “People are disgusting,” she muttered. “He was never clear on why he was supposed to go there. He just said it was important, there was something he had to do there.”
Danny walked on, deep in thought as they rounded another corner. He kept looking over at her, apparently waiting for her to say something more. Then, for no reason that Lizzie could see, he winced as if in pain.
“Listen,” Sarah said, pulling him to a stop beside her. “Don’t ask about him anymore, all right? Not in the apartment, and not anywhere else. But especially not there.”
He’d been acting strangely during their whole conversation. Now he blinked at her several times and the expression on his face changed from one of deep concentration to one of sudden understanding. The expression was there only for an instant, and then his face was normal again. No, not normal; he didn’t look any happier than before, but he seemed to have come to a decision about something.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am. I won’t talk about him anymore.” He seemed like he wanted to say more, but he turned abruptly and headed back toward her apartment. Sarah had to jog to keep up.
* * *
Danny lay awake most of that night with a pounding headache, tossing and turning on the floor. Around two in the morning he gave up and sat on the bean-bag chair instead. He switched on the little black and white television—Lizzie stirred at the sound of it and he quickly turned down the volume—and browsed the channels, but most were off the air for the night. He left it tuned to a documentary about whales on channel 7.
Two things were on his mind, as always: Alice (who could be dead by now, for all he knew) and the letter. He took out the letter again, unfolded the envelope and removed the paper inside. ORDER TO REPORT FOR INDUCTION, it said at the top. Below, it gave him a deadline: AUGUST 11, 1969.
Four days.
He hadn’t mentioned the letter to anyone. It would be the last straw for his mother if she found out. When she found out. He had to go or they’d put him in jail. But how could he leave now? Unless he skipped out on the draft, he had only three days left to help Alice. He’d been mulling his options for more than two weeks, and no brilliant ideas had come to him. Now he was out of time.
He wished he could be sure about his suspicion that Lizzie’s pencil sketch was the key to what Driscoll was looking for. But every attempt to delve into Lizzie’s thoughts had given him such a terrible jolt of pain that he came up with nothing. He would have to go with his best guess.
He must have dozed off in that chair, because he awoke in the early morning hours with his chin on his chest and the visage of Blake flashing through his mind. Lizzie was brushing her teeth over the stained and moldy kitchen sink. She didn’t notice that he was awake, so he pretended to sleep until she had gotten dressed and left. Then he stood up, slid the letter back in his pocket, and massaged his stiff neck.
He went over to the refrigerator and looked at the picture. This had to be what Driscoll was seeking: a map of the city that Terwilliger would be searching for. Surely Driscoll could figure out what city it was, even if Lizzie couldn’t. Danny removed the pencil drawing from its magnets and held it up to the light from the dirty little window. It looked like no city he could identify, but then he wasn’t much of a geographer. His sister would probably be able to identify it instantly. She was much better read than he was, and always had a book nearby.
Carefully, he put the map back in its place and looked out the window. The sun was up—he could see it shining on the street below—but except for a few minutes of sunlight in the morning, Lizzie’s apartment usually stayed in the shadow of the building next door.
Early in the night he had decided not to call Driscoll after all. The idea of betraying Lizzie, after all she’d done for him, was repulsive. Later on, as the prospect of reporting for military duty threatened to overwhelm him, he’d changed his mind. She didn’t know her friend was free; what harm would it do for him to be captured again? Was it better for this Terwilliger person to go free while Danny’s sister remained a prisoner of gangster thugs? Alice was innocent, after all; Terwilliger, if Driscoll could be believed, was anything but. Danny didn’t know Terwilliger, and when it came down to it, he had a duty to his family. To his mother. It was his own failure that had brought all these troubles down on their heads. He had to be the one to make it right.
Back and forth he wavered all night, but in the end it was the draft letter that made up his mind. Did Driscoll have any strings he could pull inside the government? Danny didn’t know if what he was hoping for was even possible. But he would ask. If Driscoll would promise to make the Selective Service System leave him alone, Danny would tell him about the map in Lizzie’s apartment. If not, he would keep silent. Maybe it was wrong to trade Terwilliger’s freedom for his sister’s. But if Danny’s own freedom was on the line too, his and Alice’s both, wouldn’t it be a fairer trade—two of them for one Terwilliger? Danny made the decision and closed the debate in his head.
Then he picked up the phone and, feeling only a litt
le foolish, spoke to the dial tone.
* * *
“Kajdas.”
It sounded to Driscoll like he’d just woken up. That was all right; this news would be worth getting out of bed for.
“I’ve got something for you.”
“Terwilliger?”
Driscoll was sitting at his desk with a poster-sized replica of the map that Sarah Greenbaum kept in her apartment. The map was stuck to the girl’s refrigerator with magnets in the shapes of Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd, whose enlarged likenesses were visible in the upper corners of the image. Driscoll’s men, sneaking into the girl’s apartment while she was at work, had photographed the map without moving it.
“My informant pointed me to a map of Toronto the girl says was drawn by Terwilliger. She doesn’t know what it’s a map of.” Terwilliger’s sketch was oriented with North pointing toward the lower right of the image, so the lake stretched off to the left of the city. It was a disorienting viewpoint when you were used to seeing North at the top.
“Toronto’s one of the places on my list.” Driscoll heard Kajdas shuffling some papers. “You’re sure?”
“Sure as I can be, sir. I wouldn’t call you otherwise. There’s―”
“Nice work. He’s been running around loose for too long. Go ahead and compensate your informant.”
“There’s one other thing. I promised my informant you’d help him with something. He’s supposed to report for the draft in a few days.”
“Give me his name and address. I’ll take care of it.”
He had known Kajdas would say that; otherwise he would never had made the promise to Danny. Driscoll had no idea who Albert Wensel answered to, but he knew it wasn’t J. Edgar Hoover. Whoever was heading this operation was well above Hoover’s head. “Thank you, sir.”
Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1) Page 36
