“Hear what?”
“There was an explosion.” Anita looked around her yard. “I thought…”
“Oh, quit the act, for Pete’s sake.” Tom pointed to a cardboard container next to a pile of grass clippings sitting on the curb. A large jack-in-the-box was in the middle, its head swaying in the still air.
“What in the world?” Anita squinted at the toy. The pop-up part was a teddy bear, and its arms had been bent and cupped in the approximate size of an iPod box.
She quickly scanned the length of the block but saw nothing except her neighbor across the street in his front yard, chatting with the postman, both men smiling and laughing.
The music player must have popped out of the jack-in-the-box; the vast noise she’d heard had been her imagination.
“That was a great surprise.” Tom stood and ruffled Mira’s hair.
“Mommy, thank you thank you thank you.” Mira squeezed her thin arms around her mother, the music player pressed between them. “I knew you didn’t mean it when you said I couldn’t have one.”
“That was awfully spontaneous for you.” Tom smiled. “Great idea, though.”
Anita opened her mouth, but any words of substance died on her lips.
The message was clear. Nothing was safe. Ever. She wanted to tell Tom that she had never seen the cardboard box, nor the iPod. She wanted to tell him about the e-mails. But that meant committing a child’s future to be a repeat of the mother’s past. Which meant that Anita Nazari, MD, had precious few choices left.
She fought away the tears and did what any mother would do. She smiled and said, “Happy birthday, Mira.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Professor was satisfied with his work. Though the target would live another day, a message had been delivered, another layer of the operation complete. The stricken look on Anita Nazari’s face, combined with the clueless laughter of the daughter and boyfriend, was perfect.
He turned off the remote control device and dropped it into the duffel bag along with the secondary scanner. He kept the earpiece for the radio in place on the slight chance that Nazari would contact the police.
The fumes from the particleboard siding, a mixture of formaldehyde and polyvinyl acetate glues, had made him light-headed, almost giddy.
He took shallow breaths and slipped the short-barreled sniper rifle into a protective case before placing it in the duffel and walking toward the hallway and the stairs leading to the first floor.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he stopped, realizing that he had not performed a final search with the thermal imager. The noxious odors had clouded his thinking. He cursed the weakness of his body.
Even as he grew angry at his mistake, he realized the risk was minimal. It was Sunday afternoon at a construction site where no workers were present nor would be for the foreseeable future. The builder had encountered unexpected financial problems, another fringe benefit of an employer with an extremely long reach.
The only danger would come from a nosy neighbor who might see him get into the ten-year-old pickup truck parked behind the privacy fence in the backyard. Even then, the chance of interference was small. Two removable magnetic signs on the doors of the truck were marked PLANO PLUMBING COMPANY. He was dressed in blue work clothes, a name tag on his breast that identified him as Kenny.
He adjusted the sunglasses, making sure they were secure on his face, and walked toward the back of the house.
When he was a few feet from the entrance to what would eventually be the kitchen, he smelled tobacco smoke and heard the heavy subflooring creak. Muffled voices sounded. He stopped and ran through the possible scenarios.
The local police.
Probability: low. He’d heard nothing on the scanner, and with dozens of homes under construction in this area, it was highly unlikely they would have stopped to check out this particular house. Also, police don’t smoke as they investigate a potential crime scene.
Neighbors.
Probability: low to moderate. Though the infiltrators could be teens looking for a place to sneak a cigarette, this scenario didn’t feel right. The people in the kitchen sounded heavyset, like construction workers, though that was impossible.
The Opposition.
Probability: impossible to calculate. Treat as high.
Anyone employed by the other side would be a professional, trained as he had been, maybe even one of his students from long ago. And professionals never smoked while working. On the other hand, the Professor had stayed alive as long as he had by treating the enemy with the utmost respect. Therefore, he decided to proceed as if the people in the next room were the Opposition.
He evaluated the situation. The work clothes he wore would buy him three or four seconds, all that was needed. He slouched his shoulders the way a tired plumber forced to work on a Sunday might do. He walked into the kitchen.
Two men stood there, tool belts slung over their shoulders, one holding a power saw and a bundled orange extension cord. They were beefy, on the edge of fit but not, in their midthirties, wearing the clothes of carpenters, heavy lace-up boots, worn Wrangler jeans, and T-shirts.
The Professor allowed himself to relax slightly. Construction workers. Why they were here, on a closed site, was another matter.
The one with the power saw was a little taller, maybe six-two, with reddish hair. He spoke first, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips.
“You gotta work on a Sunday, too, huh?” His accent didn’t match the clothes, not the typical Texas twang of a blue-collar worker. The syllables had a lilt to them, almost a brogue.
“Yes. Working on Sunday.” The Professor dropped the duffel bag. It landed with a clank. He was now armed with only two weapons, a Microtech automatic knife clipped to his waistband and a SigArms .40-caliber handgun on his hip, covered by his untucked shirt.
The Sig didn’t have a suppressor. Therefore, any action would require the silence of the knife.
“I thought this site was shut down.” The second man frowned slightly when he spoke. “The owner said his contractor was screwing him. Nobody else was supposed to be here.”
“Hey. What do I know?” The Professor smiled, trying to put the men at ease as he slipped closer.
“The plumbing’s just stubbed in.” Red Hair looked at the blank space where the kitchen sink would go. “What were you doing upstairs?”
The Professor estimated the distances and angles and knew he could neutralize both men. He hated deleting civilians, but the integrity of the mission was paramount.
In one smooth motion, he waved his left hand in a you’re-not-gonna-believe-this gesture and moved toward the second man, the closer. He pulled the switchblade from his waistband.
Red Hair yelled and dropped the extension cord.
The Professor flicked the knife once across the throat of the second worker, jumping away before the blood spray got him, preparing to head for the next target.
Red Hair reacted quicker than expected. He threw the power saw, connecting with a glancing blow to the side of the Professor’s head and knocking him to the floor.
The Professor’s glasses fell off. The knife slipped from his grip.
Red Hair looked at his fallen partner and then at the assailant. “What the…?”
The Professor shook his head a couple of times trying to clear the fog and double vision. He managed to grab the knife and stand up.
Red Hair scurried backward for a few feet until he tripped over a spool of electrical cord.
The Professor saw two identical figures sprawled on the floor. He made a choice and lunged toward the one on the left. He landed with a thud on an empty section of plywood flooring.
Red Hair was to his right, scrambling backward, swearing in a language the Professor had never heard before, though it seemed oddly familiar, like the man’s out-of-place accent.
The Professor lashed out with the blade. Felt it slice through something soft. Heard a yell. He blinked several times until his vis
ion returned more or less to normal.
Red Hair was limping as fast as possible across the backyard.
The Professor stood up. His vision went double again. He shook his head and worked his way to the rear entrance. When he looked in the backyard again, he saw the red-haired worker, blurry and indistinct like a mirage, holding on to his wounded leg.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. The veins in his legs throbbed, the result of the toxins in the air. When he opened his eyes he could see normally.
The backyard was empty.
From his breast pocket he pulled out another pair of sunglasses and put them on. He briefly evaluated his options and then began the cleanup process.
CHAPTER FIVE
Anita Nazari sat on a high-back bar stool, elbows resting on the dark gray granite countertop covering the island in the center of her kitchen. With one finger she idly traced the pattern in the polished stone, amazed at how important the choice of counters seemed only a few months ago.
She looked over to the Sub-Zero refrigerator where Tom Maguire stood, popping the tab on a can of Miller Lite. He took a long drink before walking to the island and sitting down next to her.
“How is your beer?” Anita arched one eyebrow and made a point of staring at the can.
“Jeez, Anita.” The man sighed. “It’s Sunday afternoon. The Rangers are gonna play in a little bit.”
“Life is just one big game to you, isn’t it?”
Tom had the beer halfway to his mouth but stopped. He put the can down on the counter. The sound of aluminum against rock was loud in the quiet kitchen.
“Suppose you tell me what’s going on?”
“Never mind.” Anita rubbed her temples. Even though he was attractive and attentive to her needs, she grew weary of Tom’s simple and often clueless attitude toward life. She wondered why she spent so much time with him. The answer, as it always did, hit her like a spike in the chest.
Loneliness.
“You’ve sure been acting weird lately.”
Anita imagined moving again, somewhere near the water. Maybe San Diego or Florida. Mira had always wanted to live by a beach. But they had moved too many times, a lifetime on the run, it seemed, and it wouldn’t matter anyway.
“What time’s the party tonight?” Tom drained the beer and tossed it like a basketball into the stainless-steel trash can a few feet away.
“There won’t be any party this evening.” Anita had planned a small get-together at Mi Cocina, a local Tex-Mex restaurant wildly popular with most of the neighborhood and Mira’s school chums. After today, there was no way she was going to let a party happen.
“What are you talking about?” Tom had that slightly befuddled look that annoyed her so much.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” Anita shook her head. She smelled her own sweat and the grass on her temple from when she had tripped over the bag of fertilizer. Her knee had suffered a minor abrasion and throbbed.
“You’re unbelievable, you know that.” Tom stood up.
“I-I’m sorry.” Anita looked at him. “You need to give me a little time.”
“Whatever the hell ever you want.” Tom Maguire walked to the back door but stopped before leaving. He turned around. “Tell Mira happy birthday for me, okay?”
After Tom left, Anita placed a kettle of water on the front burner of the range and turned the flame to high. She pulled a chipped Wedge-wood coffee cup from behind the row of gleaming mugs she’d bought at Pottery Barn.
The cup had originally been blue, but the years had dulled the intricate pattern to a pale gray. It was one of the last items she possessed that had belonged to her mother, and the only piece of china to survive all the midnight departures over the years.
She rinsed the heirloom in hot water before placing several grams of organic green tea into a stainless-steel infuser and easing the meshed device into the bottom of the cup. When the kettle whistled, she poured steaming water over the infuser, sniffing the aroma of fresh tea steeping.
The Dell laptop sat on the far counter, plugged into the same socket as the coffeemaker. Anita stared at the computer as she blew on her tea. The screen saver was a picture of Mira in her soccer uniform. She took a quick sip, burned her tongue slightly, and put the cup down. The room was suddenly chilly, but she no longer wanted any tea. She poured the remainder into the sink and carefully washed and dried the cup before returning it to its proper place.
When she was finished, she opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle of white Bordeaux. It was half empty; she and Tom had drunk a glass each the previous evening, to go with the rotisserie chicken she’d gotten from the grocery store.
She poured a large measure of wine into a crystal glass and walked over to the computer. She drank half of the wine in one gulp before clicking on her e-mail program.
The message was there, as she knew it would be.
She drained the glass and began to cry.
CHAPTER SIX
My name is Lee Henry Oswald, Hank to most people. I bear no kinship to the other Oswald, the man who changed the course of our nation’s history so many years ago. My father was also named Lee Henry, and for reasons only he could articulate, he chose to bestow the moniker on his only son just a few years after President Kennedy met his grisly demise on the streets of Dallas.
In another time, I made my living as an investigator, a righter of wrongs, a would-be knight in rusted armor, the fix-it man of last resort for those greedy or vain or stupid enough to believe that riches and fame could be mined from the thin black soil of North Texas with only a winning smile and a trusting nature.
I was successful because these people soon found that the streets of Dallas were plated with a cheap layer of chrome, the hope of gold and silver and a never-sinking real estate market just so much spin from the chamber of commerce types. Except for the lucky few, the city promised diamonds but delivered rhinestones.
Dallas at the dawn of the new millennium was the land of leased luxury automobiles, zero-down, five-year interest-only loans, and a millionaire’s lifestyle financed by the nice people at Visa.
I no longer operated as an investigator because I became like the people I served: vain and greedy and stupid enough to believe certain immutable physical laws did not apply to me.
I believed that a bad person could make a good choice, if only due to the force of my will.
I was wrong and people died. I lost my home, my place of business, and the needle to whatever moral compass I might at one point have possessed.
That was six months ago.
I tried for a while to carry on, but the edge was gone, my street radar damaged, a dangerous condition for one who dealt with dangerous people.
So I pared down what was left of my belongings and my expectations in life, and as my fortieth year on earth drew ever closer, I found work as a bartender at a chain restaurant next door to a multiscreen movie theater.
Now I served draft beer, margaritas, and watery drinks to men with BlackBerries on their belts and Mercedeses in the valet line, men who might or might not have been successful, and to tanned young women with silicone-enhanced chests who might or might not have been prostitutes.
Either way it was hard to tell, as the line between the dark and the light was so very thin. At any rate, the work was mindless and relatively stress free, a pleasant change from my former occupation.
The woman’s name was Rhonda. She stood at the foot of my lumpy queen-sized bed in the Studio Six extended-stay motel near Dallas Love Field. She was in her late twenties, a Phoenix-based flight attendant for Southwest Airlines. She had a flight to Little Rock in two hours and would return later that afternoon.
At the moment she was wearing nothing but a black thong, a slim gold chain dangling between her perky breasts, and that slightly silly smile that women get when they start to cross the line from casually dating to being in a R-e-l-a-t-i-o-n-s-h-i-p.
Last night had been our fourth date and second time to sl
eep together.
She dug through her overnight bag and pulled out a bra that matched her panties. She put it on backward and then rotated it around to the proper position, a casual and intimate movement that never failed to fascinate me.
“About tonight, Hank.” She maneuvered her left breast into its proper place inside the sheer black nylon.
“Tonight?” I sat up in bed and looked at the alarm clock.
“The party.” She situated the right breast and then bent over and pulled a shirt from her bag. “At my friend Missy’s house in Frisco.”
“Oh yeah. That party.” I rubbed my chin and tried to look thoughtful. Missy was another Southwest flight attendant. She lived in the suburbs of Frisco, Texas, a faraway land of cookie-cutter homes, PTA meetings, and strip malls with cutesy names like the Shoppes of this or that.
“I really want you to meet my friends.” Rhonda shrugged on the shirt. “And Missy’s husband has a construction company. It might be good for you to, you know, talk to him.”
“Hmm.” I got out of bed and stretched.
“Maybe see about getting a job.” Rhonda crossed her arms. “You told me you didn’t want to be a bartender for the rest of your life.”
“Right. A job.” I passed her on the way to the bathroom.
“I’m glad you’re gonna go.” Rhonda leaned against the door frame. “You’ll really like everybody. And their house has this cool media room.”
“Rhonda, here’s the deal.” I squeezed an inch of Colgate onto my toothbrush. “I’m supposed to work a double shift today.”
“But you promised.” She stuck out her bottom lip.
“Actually, I didn’t.” I turned on the tap and held the brush under the thin stream of water. “You assumed.”
“So you’re not going to the party with me?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have to work.”
“Okaaaaay.” She nodded and got a confused look on her face, like there was too much data to process at one time. “Then when am I going to see you again?”
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