by Dean Ing
Gary agreed and broke the connection thinking, Poor bastard, it's as bad for him as it was for the Lowerys. Now they at least know enough to bury hope. For all this guy knows, his high-stepping daughter occupies a shallow grave somewhere in Nevada. Or a villa in Cannes; and he doesn't know how or where to start looking. Well, if she's doing that to him, I sure hope he deserves it.
Revenge, Gary decided, should at least be deliberate.
The name of the plain jane with the sunburst smile was SEIBOULDT, LINDA MARSH, nickname
"Dottie." Uh-huh; somebody smoothed over one of Hoss's little jokes for the yearbook. Probably because he had already disappeared, Gary told himself. There was only one Seibouldt in the directory, but it was a bingo. Her mother answered. Oh no, Linda hadn't been home since Christmas. Had her degree from Fresno State, teaching third-graders in Porterville. Was the caller, perhaps, one of her old classmates?
Pride was evident in Mrs. Seibouldt's voice.
Gary, as "Garrett," said he hadn't dated Linda, but liked her. Already he was asking himself whether to call or visit the girl - now a full-grown woman. If she lived more than an hour's drive south of Fresno, she might very well miss whatever surge of gossip might attend the news of Steele Lowery's death; perhaps he could wait a few days for that interview. Gary was slightly familiar with Porterville, a farming and oil boomtown on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley, bursting its old boundaries, some miles off the main highway on an approach to Sequoia National Park.
Linda's mother hoped it wasn't unpleasant news, she said, that Linda was married now.
Gary thought fast. "Not to somebody like the guys she talked about from high school, I hope," he said.
"Some guy named Lowery?"
A merry laugh. "Lord, I should say not! She married Gavin Tate in Porterville." Settling comfortably into gossip on a prized topic now, in a tone of confidentiality: "I take it you knew Linda in Fresno State, not at Briant."
Curious but wary: "How'd you guess?" Gary asked.
"Well, Linda was a late bloomer, as they say. She wasn't always so attractive, not till her junior year at State. Physically, I mean. She was always popular with her friends, of course. But if you knew the Lowery boy, you must've - "
Uh-oh, a little damage control needed here, Gary thought. "Never knew him. I just recalled the name and made a bad guess. I gathered Lowery was the big man on their high-school campus."
"Big pain, is what he was. When Linda found out he had dated her just to settle a score with Andy, another boy she was dating - you don't like to hear your daughter cry, Mr. Garrett."
"I believe it. Hey, you don't mean Andy Gossett," he said, picking a surname at random.
"Anderson," the mother corrected. "Virgil, but we called him Andy. Nice boy, but you wouldn't have known him at Fresno State. He got a scholarship to CalTech, believe it or not. Even though they broke up over that dreadful boy who later ran away from home, I sometimes wonder if Andy still carries a torch for Linda." Her tone suggested that it would suit her just fine if that were the case.
Gary passed a few more moments of pleasantries with the woman, moving away from the Lowery focus, wondering aloud if Linda had children, whether she was happy in Porterville.
Mrs. Seibouldt's last advice was a chuckled, "You might as well give it up, Mr. Garrett. Linda's very happy, but thanks for asking. I'll tell her you called."
Gary left the phone and sat in fading sunlight by the pool, privately convinced that he had reason for a glimmer of suspicion toward the Anderson boy. And how many others? Hard to say; maybe Linda Seibouldt Tate could help. More likely, Andy Anderson could.
He found ANDERSON, VIRGIL PEASE among the Xeroxes; nickname "Andy." Dumbo ears, hair combed straight back from a high forehead, long slender neck, not merely smiling but laughing into the camera. Young Mr. Anderson had been salutatorian of his class, a member of the basketball squad, the band, the National Honor Society, and president of Mathpath. Gary caught himself, for the first time, faintly sympathizing with Steele "Hoss" Lowery. The Anderson boy had excelled in one thing that Lowery had not: dedicated scholarship. I know how you felt, Hoss. Must've made you want to kick some butt. But I think somebody finally kicked yours.
However, the Anderson kid had won a ticket to CalTech - Nerd City - for his education, and bright kids didn't become bright in Pasadena; they went to that ravine in Pasadena because they were already savvy and highly motivated. Nerd jokes aside, the jock who activated a brilliant techie's appetite for revenge was in effect a monkey with a meat grinder, liable to do his own tail some serious damage. Maybe Hoss finally made one smart enemy too many, one who was ready to test his manhood by the oldest trial of all; killing another young man. Maybe there would be a Virgil P. Anderson - more likely a dozen of them - listed in Southern California directories. Gary now had enough background on the Lowery kid to ask more intelligent questions.
At least that saccharine nickname, Candy Andy, hadn't worked its way into the yearbook, he thought as he hefted the big Fresno-Clovis directory. Chalk up one for the nerds of the world.
23
JUNE 1994
He had worked late in the lab on Tuesday, getting a little ahead in his work. On a disposition slip, he accounted for the tiny sensor relay he stole from lab stock, claiming it had been fried by accident in an overvoltage surge. Andy hated to look like a klutz, but he knew that Erwin Lockhart would only sigh and roll his eyes, and order another replacement. And make another dry witticism about exiling his maladroits to the Federal Wildlife Forensics lab in Oregon, where they could make their mistakes.
Embarrassing for Andy, but it was the only way to expedite the parts Mom demanded.
He had seen from the chalkboard that Lockhart, the lab director, had scheduled a midmorning tour on Wednesday for some environmental group. It would be Andy's turn to play tour guide, a job he pretended to dislike because everyone else did. But, in truth, he enjoyed the way people on a tour of the lab listened to him with such respect, even with admiration. During a tour, he practiced speaking from a bit farther back in his throat, enough to suggest maturity, not enough to be a topic of jokes among the other staff. That was his Mature Andrew character, with the slow, sure gestures. If you couldn't afford to have close friends, respectful admiration would have to do.
Sometimes he would show them his office, not much more than a cubicle but with a few touches that made it uniquely his. The first thing he had brought in was his bookcase, an example of his cabinetry work in cherry wood and blond oak. About ten inches deep, standing some four feet high and five wide, its glass doors were secured by a hidden catch that only Andy understood. Roughly half of the shelf space inside was occupied by books, mostly hardbound, grouped with metal bookends so that the satin finish of the naked shelf, hand-rubbed lovingly by Andy, would show between the bunches of books.
The latest item sat atop the bookshelf as an example of his taxidermy: a hamster, relentlessly cute, erect on its hind legs with false intelligence in its tiny marble eyes, seemingly begging to be petted. The wooden base was inscribed QUEENIE, and within a week admiring visitors, with Andy's permission, had already damaged the pelt with curious fingers. Andy felt it was a small price for admiration from any quarter.
But there would be no admirers today; he had called in sick claiming a toothache, putting it on Lockhart's answering machine before the lab opened. Driving two cars, he and Romana had made it to Sacramento by 11:00, Andy wearing a watch cap with blond curls protruding and jeans with a jacket that matched, but reversed to become dark plaid. His lace-up shoes were fitted with tasseled lacing-spats, like golf brogans. By unsnapping the spats, shoving them with the watch cap-wig into pockets and reversing the jacket, he could complete a lightning transformation in ten seconds.
Romana's tailored jacket was reversible, too, with a dickey that suggested a lace-trimmed blouse when its gray side was out, but became a plain button-front with the black side out. Her smart little beret and wraparound sunglasses would cram qu
ickly into her small shoulder bag, which could double as a purse.
With her high cheekbones, cosmetics, and sunglasses, she could pass for fifteen years younger. It always made Andy uncomfortable to see his mom with her prettiest makeup on, for all the world like some glamourpu - like someone glamorous.
By noon they had a burgundy Olds for a rental, parked in the open near the railroad museum in the Old Sacramento district downtown. They had left Romana's Plymouth in a development on Sacramento's east side near Bradshaw and Highway 50, because the Aerojet rocket-development complex lay farther in that direction and Romana suspected that her client's domestic contact might be employed there; no one in the area needed metallurgical specialists more than Aerojet. If they managed to tail the client that far, an exchange of cars would be important. Back in the city's center, they parked Andy's Pinto in the public parking structure between the Capitol mall and Old Sacramento, a quaint jumble of brick-fronted shops in the 1900s style and something of a tourist trap.
Romana's problem was the evasiveness of her client, a well-dressed lobbyist named Hilton whose photos Andy had studied with care. She did not think Hilton was aware of her, but was merely using good tradecraft. Good, but not perfect, because he had developed a set pattern for his evasions that began among those old buildings now occupied by small shops: candies, clothing stores, a beer hall, a hobby shop. Twice before, Romana had followed Hilton from his office near the mall at times when she knew he had an exchange scheduled. On both occasions, he had left his office more than an hour before the scheduled time, walking at a leisurely pace along the mall, easily trailed, then presented her with a dilemma. Once he quickened his pace through the echoing pedestrian tunnel under the nearby freeway, the tunnel's length forcing Romana to hang well back. He had turned right as he exited the tunnel and entered the old town district, then simply disappeared. The second time she had worn running togs, jogging away far ahead of him and through the tunnel, expecting him to emerge from it a few minutes later. He never entered the tunnel, but she caught one glimpse of him soon after as he entered the old town district by another route.
Today, when she spotted Hilton leaving his office building, Romana would proceed to that alternate crosswalk at the limit of visual surveillance and would use their specially built radios to alert Andy, who would be waiting on the opposite side of the tunnel. Whatever he did next, one of Hilton's protective pawns would be swept from the board without his knowledge because there was no other practical means of reaching the old district afoot from the mall.
Hilton was a registered lobbyist in Sacramento, but his real wealth came from trading chemical-processing secrets to the Brazilians, who had a fledgling aerospace industry of their own. Romana had identified the man through that link, but his domestic connection was still a riddle and Hilton seemed to know the twists and turns of Old Sacramento better than the rats in its basements. By bugging his car and bungalow in suburban Fair Oaks, Romana had learned enough to pull his plug, but as usual she would not do it before she discovered the man's local connection in the rare metals-processing industry. The Brazilian connection which had led her to Hilton was only half of the puzzle. Once she had a line on his connection at the domestic end of this very profitable arrangement, she could flush Hilton and then, in good time, select other clients in the network. After a year or so, any resonant ripples of nervousness over Hilton's disappearance should have faded nicely.
The Pinto was cherry on this job, but Romana thought her big Plymouth could have been compromised when she had followed Hilton to work, early in the "relationship." Today, with a second tail on him, she might be more successful; and if that happened the Plymouth could become a liability. She suspected that Hilton, too, had a second car nearby because the tiny transmitter on the chassis of his Toyota proved that he did not use it for these rendezvous. If they could spot him in another car, with the rental parked two blocks away in one direction and the Pinto two blocks in the other, one of them could run to a car while the other waited to see which arterial Hilton took. Using their dedicated-frequency radios in the cars, they had a good chance at a breakthrough. Without Andy's help, Romana's chances were poor, at best.
Romana knew that Hilton gave himself that extra hour, having clocked him when she knew his rendezvous times. Andy's radio, built into a Walkman frame, had its lavalier mike set in the ornate cross hanging at his throat.
Andy was studying the workmanship of model trains in a shop window of the old district when his upscale Walkman spoke in his ear, inaudible to passersby. "Option A, solo brown wrapper, one-twenty or so."
He repeated it back to her in a murmur, continuing to study the shop display. If it had been option B, he would have set off down an alley to place himself nearer to that distant crosswalk, but option A was the tunnel. In roughly one hundred twenty seconds, their client should emerge from it alone, wearing a brown coat. Andy turned and ambled off to a candy shop across the street, stepping into its windowed recess where he could see the tunnel entrance through a window while inspecting old-fashioned stick candies ranked in antique jars. This is the fun part, he thought, feeling the surge of excitement under his ribs, confident of his prowess.
Andy's silent count had reached one thirty-two when a gent in tan sport coat and brown tie strode from the tunnel, turned right, and quickened his pace crossing the street a half-block from Andy's post. "Yes,"
said Andy, recognizing Hilton's general features, heading up the street as the client passed from view. He heard Romana acknowledge his message. She would be hurrying forward by now, perhaps within a block or two.
Before he reached the corner: "I say yes," Romana said, indicating that she now had visual contact.
"You say yes, I say no," Andy replied, turned on his heel, and retraced his steps in a brisk walk, avoiding eye contact with other pedestrians. Once he reached the alley he could lope along fast enough to watch Hilton's next move. If the man did not pass the alley, he would be isolated in one of a few shops in a half-block area. If Romana had him sighted, she would know which shop contained him. Their expectation was that he would head for a car.
Andy's blood was pumping pleasantly, his glands responding to the chase. Mom had trained him wonderfully well, teaching him constant awareness of available cover. That is why he did not literally collide with Hilton. Andy saw that the next block was an open greensward adjoining the railroad museum, and that Hilton would be easy to surveil from a distance. Andy had moved up behind a pile of flattened cardboard boxes that protruded from garbage cans in the alley, squatting to seek a hidden viewpoint, when the sport-jacketed Hilton came into view with the suddenness of a thunderclap. Hilton turned into the alley toward the waiting Andy, walking quickly back parallel to the street from which he had come.
Andy, fifty feet up the alley, sank onto the grime and turned his face to the shop wall, drawing himself as quietly as possible into the fetal curl of a comatose wino, one arm hiding, his face. He heard footfalls on grit, approaching, then a subtle shift of their rhythm as they passed him, not stopping but perhaps a startled reaction to the drunk sleeping it off among the other garbage. Andy emitted a soft snore. The footfalls continued, the rhythm regained.
Ten seconds later, Andy said, very softly, "Doubled back in my alley. It's yours while I change." He did not dare look around yet; Hilton might be watching over his shoulder. Romana would realize that, if Andy needed time to change his costume, the pass had been very close. If she could not pick Hilton up now, perhaps their day had been wasted.
"Yes," he heard, Mom's voice betraying a quiet excitement as she spotted her client somewhere beyond the alley. After a subtle peek, Andy was on his feet, ripping away the spats, turning his jacket inside out, cramming the knitted cap with its blond curls into a pocket. He hurried back the way he had come - not twisting his head, but letting his eyes search fruitlessly for a sight of Hilton or Romana as he emerged onto the street.
"No. I say no, from my position one," he said, letting her know he w
as again window-shopping. There was no reply. Sometimes it worked that way, some metal structure impeding the transmission, or perhaps a situation where she could not afford to break her silence.
He wondered if Hilton had doubled back through the tunnel and was moving in that direction when she said, "Inside Rathcellar," very softly. "Hold your position." He knew then that Romana had followed her client into a corner microbrewery not fifty paces distant. She would be rummaging in her bag to speak, or inspecting her lipstick in her compact mirror. Andy realized that he might be seen from one of the Rathcellar windows and, if Hilton was judging passersby, Andy was one of the few to be judged.
Regardless of her orders, it was essential that he move on, and without delay. "I'll look for a parking place," he said. More of their jargon. He strolled away, then saw a pedestrian bench far down the block and finally settled into it, peering up the street now and then as though expecting to be picked up momentarily.
For ten minutes he sat, emotionally wired, noting that the Rathcellar's side entrance was visible, realizing, too, that its service entrance was, by sheer luck, barely in sight. Then Mom: "Conference.
Location?"
"Near the crossing at your position one." Almost immediately, he saw her turning the corner toward him, and he knew that stiff stride all too well. Something had gone badly.
He stood up and stretched, showing himself to her, then sat down again. She walked on, too wise to meet him face to face, stopping only when she had turned the next corner. "Can you believe," she stormed softly. "He tried to pick me up!"
