Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  thousand dollars in hundred-dollar and twenty-dollar bills, and indeed

  that money appeared to be untouched. This was one of eleven emergency

  caches he kept in safe-deposit boxes all over the city. He had set out

  this morning to remove fifteen thousand dollars from each, a total of

  $165,000, which he intended to give away. He opened each of the five

  envelopes and counted the contents with trembling hands. Not a single

  bill was missing.

  Jack was not even slightly relieved. Though his money was still there,

  the presence of the other object proved that his false identity had been

  penetrated, his privacy violated, and his freedom jeopardized. Someone

  knew who "Gregory Farnham" really was, and the item that had been left

  in the box was a bold notification that his elaborately constructed

  cover had been penetrated.

  It was a postcard. There was no writing on the back, no message; the

  presence of the card itself was message enough. On the front was a

  photograph of the Tranquility Motel.

  The summer before last, after he and Branch Pollard and a third man had

  burglarized the Avril McAllister estate in Marin County, north of San

  Francisco, and after Jack paid a profitable visit to Reno, he rented a

  car and drove east, stopping the first night at the Tranquility Motel

  along Interstate 80. He had not thought about the place since, but he

  recognized it the instant he saw the photograph.

  Who could possibly know he had stayed at that motel? Not Branch

  Pollard. He'd never told Branch about Reno or about his decision to

  drive back to New York. And not the third man on the McAllister job, a

  guy named Sal Finrow from Los Angeles; Jack had never seen him again

  after they had split the take from that sour job.

  Then Jack realized that at least three of his phony IDs had been

  penetrated. He rented this safe-deposit box as "Farnham" but he stayed

  at the Tranquility Motel as "Thornton Wainwright." Both noms de guerre

  were now blown, and the only way anyone could have linked them was by

  connecting Jack with his "Phillipe Delon" identity, under which he

  resided at his Fifth Avenue apartment, so that name was blown as well.

  Jesus.

  He sat in the bank cubicle, stunned but thinking furiously, trying to

  decide who his enemy might be. It could not be the police or the FBI or

  any other legitimate authority, for they would simply have arrested him

  once they had accumulated this much evidence; they would not play games.

  Nor could it be any of the men with whom he ever worked on a heist, for

  he took great care to keep his acquaintances in the criminal underworld

  well out of his life on Fifth Avenue. None of them knew where he really

  lived; in the event they scouted a job requiring his planning skills and

  special knowledge, they could reach him only through a series of mail

  drops or through a chain of pseudonymously listed phone numbers backed

  up by answering machines. He was confident of the effectiveness of

  those precautions. Besides, if some hoodlum had gotten into this box,

  he would not have left the twenty-five thousand bucks untouched; he

  would have taken every dollar of it.

  So who's on to me? Jack wondered.

  He focused on the fratellanza warehouse robbery that he and Mort and

  Tommy Sung had pulled off December 3. Was the mafia after him? When

  they wanted to find someone, those boys had more contacts, sources,

  determination, and sheer perseverance than the FBI. And the fratellanza

  would most likely not have taken the twenty-five thousand, leaving it as

  dilominous notice that they wanted more than the money he had stolen

  from them. It was also in character for the fratellanza to leave a

  teaser like the postcard, because those guys enjoyed making a target

  sweat a lot before they finally pulled the trigger.

  On the other hand, even if the mob tracked him down, then somehow

  searched back through his criminal career to see who else he had hit,

  they would not have gone to the trouble of acquiring cards from the

  Tranquility Motel just to put the fear of God in him. If they had

  wanted to leave an upsetting teaser in the safe-deposit box, they would

  have left a photo of the warehouse that he had robbed in New Jersey.

  So it was not the mafia. Then who? Damn it, who?

  The tiny cubicle began to seem even smaller than it was. Jack felt

  claustrophobic and vulnerable. As long as he was in the bank, there was

  nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He stuffed the twenty-five thousand

  into his overcoat pockets, no longer intending to give away any of it;

  suddenly, it had become his escape money. He put the postcard in his

  wallet, closed the empty box, and rang the buzzer for the attendant.

  Two minutes later, he was outside, drawing deep breaths of the freezing

  January air, studying the people on Fifth Avenue for one who might be

  tailing him. He saw no one suspicious.

  For a moment he stood rocklike in the river of people that flowed around

  him. He wanted to get out of the city and the state as quickly as

  possible, flee to an unlikely destination, where they would not look for

  him. Whoever they were. Yet he was not entirely sure that flight was

  necessary. In Ranger training, he had been taught never to act until he

  understood why he was acting and until he knew what he hoped to achieve

  by his actions. Besides, fear of his faceless enemy was outweighed by

  curiosity; he needed to know who he was up against, how they had broken

  his various covers, and what they wanted from him.

  Outside the Citibank Building, Jack hailed a cab and went to the corner

  of Wall Street and William Street, in the heart of the financial

  district, where he had six safe-deposit boxes in six banks. He went to

  five of them, from each of which he collected twenty-five thousand

  dollars and a postcard of the Tranquility Motel.

  He decided to stop after the fifth, because his coat pockets were

  already bulging with $125,000, a sufficiently dangerous sum to be

  carrying, and because, by now, he knew beyond a doubt that his other six

  phony identities and clandestine safe-deposit boxes had been found out

  as well. He had enough money with which to travel, and he was not

  particularly worried about leaving the remaining $150,000 in the other

  six boxes. For one thing, Jack had four million in his Swiss accounts;

  and for another thing, the distributor of the postcards would already

  have taken the available money if that had been his intention.

  By now, he'd had time to think about that motel out in Nevada, and he

  had begun to realize something was strange about the time that he had

  spent at the place. He had remained there for three days, relaxing,

  enjoying the quiet and the scenery. But now, for the first time, it

  seemed to him that he would have done no such thing. Not with so much

  cash in the trunk of his rental car. Not when he had already been away

  from New York (and Jenny) for two weeks. He would have driven straight

  home from Reno. Now that he was forced to contemplate it, the three-day

  stay at the Tranquility Motel did not make much sense.

&n
bsp; Another taxi conveyed him to his Fifth Avenue apartment building, where

  he arrived shortly before eleven. He promptly telephoned Elite Flights,

  a company that chartered small jets, with whom he had dealt previously,

  and he was relieved to discover that, fortuitously, they had an unhooked

  Lear available for departure at his convenience.

  He took the twenty-five thousand from the secret compartment in the back

  of his bedroom closet. With the funds he had removed from the

  safe-deposit boxes, he now had $150,000 in immediate operating capital,

  enough to deal with virtually any contingency that might arise.

  He hurriedly packed three suitcases, distributing a few clothes in each,

  but leaving most of the space for other items. He stowed away two

  handguns: a Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnum, chambered for the

  .357 Magnum cartridge but also capable of firing .38 Special cartridges

  with considerably less kick; and a .32 Beretta Model 70, its stubby

  barrel grooved to accept a screw-on, pipe-type silencer, of which Jack

  included two. He also took an Uzi submachine gun, which he'd illegally

  modified for full automatic fire, plus plenty of ammunition.

  Jack's newly acquired guilt had substantially transformed him during the

  past forty-eight hours, but it had not overwhelmed him to such an extent

  that he was incapable of dealing violently with those who might deal

  violently with him. His determination to be an honest and upstanding

  citizen did not interfere with his instinct for self-preservation. And

  considering his background, no one was better prepared to preserve

  himself than Jack Twist.

  Besides, after eight years of alienation and loneliness, he had begun to

  rejoin society, had begun to hope for a normal life. He would not let

  anyone destroy what might be his last chance for happiness.

  He also packed the portable SLICKS computer, which he had used to get

  through the armored transport's sophisticated electronic lock the night

  before last in Connecticut. In addition, he decided he might need a

  Police Lock Release Gun, a tool that could instantly open any type of

  pin-tumbler lockmushroom, spool, or regular-without damaging the

  mechanism, and which was sold only to law-enforcement agencies, And a

  Star Tron MK 202A, a compact, hand-held "night vision" device that could

  also be rifle-mounted. And a few other things.

  Although he distributed the heaviest weapons and equipment equally among

  the three large suitcases, none of the bags was light when he finally

  closed and locked them. Any one who helped him with his luggage might

  wonder about the contents, but no one would ask embarrassing questions

  or raise an alarm. That was the advantage of leasing a Lear jet for the

  journey: He would not be required to pass through airport security, and

  no one would inspect his baggage.

  From his apartment, he taxied to La Guardia.

  The waiting Lear would take him to Salt Lake City, Utah, the nearest

  major airport to Elko, a shade closer than Reno International, and a lot

  closer if you considered the necessity of overflying to Reno and then

  doubling back in a conventional-engine commuter plane to Elko. Elite

  Flights had told him that Reno was anticipating a major snowstorm that

  might close them down later in the day, and the same was true of the two

  smaller fields in southern Idaho that were capable of handling Lear-size

  jets. But the weather forecast for Salt Lake City was good throughout

  the day. At Jack's request, Elite was already arranging the lease of a

  conventional-engine plane from a Utah company to carry him from Salt

  Lake to the little county airport in Elko. Although it was in the

  easternmost fourth of Nevada, Elko was still within the Pacific time

  zone, so he would benefit from a gain of three hours, though he did not

  think he would arrive in Elko much before nightfall.

  That was all right. He'd need darkness for what he was planning.

  To Jack, the taunting postcards, retrieved from his safedeposit boxes,

  implied there were people in Nevada who had learned everything worth

  knowing about his criminal life. The cards seemed to be saying that he

  could reach those people through the Tranquility Motel or perhaps find

  them in residence there. The postcard was an invitation. Or a summons.

  Either way, he could ignore it only at his peril.

  He did not know if he was being followed to La Guardia; he did not

  bother looking for a tail. If his apartment phone was tapped, they knew

  he was coming the moment he called Elite Flights. He wanted them to see

  him approaching openly, for then they might be off-guard when, on

  arrival in Elko, he suddenly shook loose of them and went underground.

  Monday morning, after breakfast, Dom and Ginger went into Elko, to the

  offices of the Sentinel, the county's only news paper. The biggest town

  in the county, Elko boasted a population of less than ten thousand, so

  its newspaper's offices were not housed in a gleaming glass high-rise

  but in a humble one-story concrete-block building on a quiet street.

  Like most papers, the Sentinel provided access to its backissue files to

  anyone with legitimate research needs, though permission for the use of

  the files was granted judiciously.

  In spite of the financial success of his first novel, Dom still had

  difficulty identifying himself as a writer. To his own ears, he sounded

  pretentious and phony, though he realized his uneasiness was a holdover

  from his days as an excessively self-effacing Milquetoast.

  The receptionist, Brenda Hennerling, did not recognize his name, but

  when he mentioned the title of his novel that Random House had just

  shipped to the stores, she said, "It's the book-club selection this

  month! You wrote it? Really?"

  She had ordered it a month ago from the Literary Guild, and it had just

  arrived in the mail. She was (she said) an avid reader, two books a

  week, and it was truly a thrill to meet a genuine novelist. Her

  enthusiasm only added to Dom's embarrassment. He was of a mind with

  Robert Louis Stevenson, who had said, "The important thing is the tale,

  the well-told tale, not he who tells it."

  The Sentinel's back-issue files were kept in a narrow, windowless

  chamber. There were two desks with typewriters, a microfilm reader, a

  file of microfilm spools, and six tall filing cabinets with oversize

  drawers containing those editions of the newspaper that had not yet been

  transferred to film. The exposed concrete-block walls were painted pale

  gray, and the acoustic-tile ceiling was gray, too, and the fluorescent

  lights shed a cold glare. Dom had the odd sensation that they were in a

  submarine, far beneath the surface of the sea.

  After Brenda Hennerling explained the filing system to them and left

  them alone to do their work, Ginger said, "I'm so caught up in our

  problems that I keep forgetting you're a famous author."

  "So do I," Dom said, reading the labels on the filing cabinets that held

  issues of past Sentinels. "But of course, I'm not famous."

  "Soon will be. It's a shame: With all that's happening to us, you're

  getti
ng no chance to savour the publication of your first novel."

  He shrugged. "This isn't a picnic for any of us. You've had to put an

  entire medical career on hold."

  "Yes, but now I know I'll be able to go back to medicine once we've dug

  to the bottom of this," Ginger said, as if there was no doubt they would

  triumph over their enemies. By now, Dom knew that conviction and

  determination were as much a part of her as the blueness of her eyes.

  "But this is your first book."

  Dom had not yet recovered from his embarrassment at being treated like a

  celebrity by the receptionist. Now Ginger's kind comments kept a blush

  on his cheeks. However, this was not the mark of embarrassment; it was

  an indication of the intense pleasure he took in being the object of her

  concern. No woman had ever affected him as this one did.

  Together, they went through the file drawers and removed the pertinent

  back issues of the Sentinel. They would not need to use the microfilm

  reader, for the newspaper was running two years behind in the

  transferral to film. They withdrew a full week's editions, beginning

  with Saturday, July 7, of the summer before last, and took them to one

  of the desks, where they both pulled up chairs.

  Although the unremembered event that they had witnessed, and the

  possible contamination, and the closure of I80 had happened on Friday

  night, July 6, the Saturday paper carried no report of the toxic spill.

  The Sentinel was primarily a source of local and state news and, though

  it included some national and international material, was not interested

  in fastbreaking stories. Its halls would never ring with that dramatic

  cry, "Stop press!" There would be no last-minute recomposition of the