Spooker

by Dean Ing

  "Not if he has a schedule," Andy said and made a serious mistake. "You followed too soon. He had to check you out." Divulging an unpleasant truth to Mom was always a serious mistake.

  A long silence from Romana. She broke it with, "Have a sampler of beers. See if business is being done. Wait! Compromised?"

  "Not after a change, and never showed my face," he said and crossed the street, mussing his dark hair into an unruly mass. He stopped just inside, waiting for his eyes to accommodate the gloom, and found a stool at the bar. He ordered a sampler, which turned out to be four squat glasses of the local products, paid, and let the bar mirrors help him survey the dark recesses of the place.

  A man two stools away glanced over and grinned after Andy set his second glass down and muttered,

  "No." Andy made a wry face, then selected a third brew, fearful that Hilton had left by that front door seconds behind Romana. He did not spot the client until another man, returning from the men's room, took his seat alone at one of the small tables where a glass of beer sat, half-empty. It was then that the lobbyist revealed himself, standing up from his solitary lair in a shadowed booth thirty feet away, taking his coat which he had folded on the seat beside him, making his way to the men's room. Andy made a mental connection instantly.

  He was watching a classic dubok pass, Andy realized, a transfer the Soviet bloc had perfected, something he had never actually experienced before: a dead drop in a public place where neither party made overt contact. Andy took a gulp from his beer and said, "Yes!" with great satisfaction, nodding approval at his glass.

  "Finally got one that suits you," said the other patron.

  Andy smiled and nodded, moving to the adjacent seat, glad of this chance to use conversation as cover.

  "I need only a few drops to tell," he said, knowing Romana was listening, hoping she would enjoy the pun.

  "But this may be the one, right here." With that, he held up his glass. "I must say it goes down very smoothly." Only Mom would appreciate these double entendres.

  In his ear, disbelieving: "The connection is right there?"

  Andy took another sip, smacked his lips, set the glass down. "Mm, yes," he said.

  Andy's companion began to talk of favorite brews: Sam Adams, Full Sail Ale, Kulmbacher. Andy needed to do little more than look interested, nodding, smiling, keeping his gaze centered on the bridge of the man's nose while his mind remained focused on his peripheral vision. Alone at his table, Hilton's contact tried to avoid being too obvious as his eyes searched the Rathcellar for signs of interested patrons. He seemed to take in Andy's conversation without really seeing it, his gaze passing on, birdlike in its intensity.

  When Hilton came in sight again, he had his coat on and went straight to the side exit, leaving without pause or gesture. Andy leaned back, took up the darkest of the brews, sipped, and let the glass fall over in bogus clumsiness. "No! Well, it's gone now," he said, having spilled no more than an ounce. "No matter, I have a better one." At the same time, he saw what he had expected to see. The man who had preceded Hilton to the men's room stood up, draining his glass, and returned to the alcove too quickly. If there had been any doubt before, it was gone now. Must remember to tell Mom he's the anxious type. Poor tradecraft; when it's his turn, she'll take him down like a light snack.

  The man was gone for perhaps a minute, barely long enough to fool any casual onlooker. Probably still new' at this, Andy thought, making mental notes. He noted that this new contact was short and pudgy, in tan slacks and open shirt with wisps of dark hair arranged artfully across a nearly bald scalp. No wig from this one, Andy told himself.

  When the short man emerged again, he made his way out the front door, walking with exaggerated calm. He could be seen through the Rathcellar windows as he ambled off down the street toward the railroad museum, stopping once to glance behind him. Andy looked at his wristwatch, shook his head, then smiled and nodded at his seatmate as he exited.

  By crossing the street as he described his new quarry, Andy kept the man in sight, donning the watch cap, stopping behind a van to reverse his jacket again and to inform Romana of his progress. By now it was obvious that the quarry's goal was near the museum. "I say yes," Romana's voice intoned with something like grim satisfaction.

  "Your location?"

  "Rental," she said, and Andy laughed softly, elated with this twist after a near-disaster in the alley. If she were in the rental car, she had sensibly abandoned Hilton and was already in the museum parking lot.

  Their new quarry was actually walking in her direction.

  He was curious about that drop location and its opportunities for hidden treasure. It would be an empowerment, somehow, to stand in that little space and survey it, guessing at the exact mechanism of the dubok. Of course he would not expect to find anything useful. In her anecdotes, Mom had cited loose bricks, light fixtures, even discarded soft-drink cans and cigarette packages left in trash receptacles.

  "Should I check the drop in the men's room?"

  Now she cut in quickly: "Get your car. White Volvo, old sports station wagon." Moments later, as Andy sprinted back to the pedestrian tunnel, she identified the license plate. By the time he had reached his Pinto, out of breath with his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, Romana was already following the Volvo onto a freeway on ramp.

  Andy did not see either of the vehicles until they turned off from the North Sacramento freeway onto Greenback, a broad straight boulevard on the city's northern edge with too much traffic and too many lights.

  The Pinto's only air-conditioning was an open window but, without his jacket or cap, Sacramento's humid summer heat was bearable. On orders, he overtook Romana in the Olds and settled into a practiced routine, a quarter-mile behind the old P-1800 classic with its huge, unmistakable rear glass. Great taste in cars, but not for this work. Why doesn't he just tape a lit highway flare to his antenna? He was not prepared when the Volvo pulled suddenly from the left lane and turned sharply right at a suburban corner. Andy was blocked from a lane change, giving his mom plenty of time to avoid a similar problem and calmly directing her to the turn. "Hazel Avenue," he told her as he passed it, looking for a place to retrace his path.

  When he was delayed by an interminable traffic signal, and found that Romana had turned left instead of right on Hazel, Andy found himself laughing helplessly, too flushed with their partial success to feel much of a letdown. After all, it was Mom who had made that wrong turn. They spent the afternoon quartering the area, knowing that the effort was almost certainly futile, his mom admitting finally that they had "lost their tail."

  Romana did not upbraid him then, nor while they recovered her Plymouth, nor by radio as they drove back to Fresno. She waited for that until they were back at The Place in twilight, Romana developing her telephoto shots of the dumpy little potential client, taken from a block away as he was unlocking his Volvo.

  "You treated the whole surveillance as a joke," she spat, choosing one of the negatives for enlargement.

  He claimed otherwise, recounting his recovery in that alley. "And I kept you updated, I spotted what was happening, making his drop an hour before he'd said. He probably always does that. I even gave you the local connection," he protested.

  "And didn't you love it, playing your clever word games! Pity you weren't clever enough to give me the right directions later. I could have had his base," she said in a quiet fury as the enlarger threw a magnified negative of their new quarry onto photo paper.

  If he insisted he had steered her correctly, she would only deny it. "Hey, we have his face, his car, his plates; we're almost there with a new client, Mom. You'll have a name and address in a few days." He made his tone plaintive, accommodating. "Now you can set up this Hilton guy - he should be good for a nice piece of change. It was a pretty good day - wasn't it?"

  She operated the enlarger with the adroitness of the expert, breathing heavily through her nose. "Let me tell you when we have a good day, young man. Don't think I haven'
t noticed how independent you're becoming, ignoring my orders as it suits you, enjoying my problems like some detached voyeur. I suppose you think you're ready to branch out on your own!"

  Flushing with a humiliation as old as the relationship: "No, Mom, you know better than that. You've always taught me to improvise; I only did what I had to do. But what more could I have done today?"

  "I'll tell you what you can do tomorrow," she said, ignoring his question, snapping off the enlarger. "You can get that damned pheromone tracker put together. Show me you can take something seriously. Now get out of here. I have a new file to start."

  He left quickly, glad to be out of her sight, waiting until the Pinto was off of reservation land before he gave in to the temptation to pound the steering wheel with his open hands. It seemed to Andy that his relationship with Mom was worsening, not improving, and it was becoming more difficult to quell his demons. Maybe, by going over it in his mind, he could lower his frustration level by analyzing the ways he had pulled his mom's triggers; turned a good day into a bad one.

  By the time he pulled up before his garage doors and doused his headlights, he understood the day better. He had made no errors; she had, and needed someone to blame for them. An old and infuriating pattern, he thought, made worse by the fact that he could see no hope of its ever changing. And he no longer had any of his darlings to sacrifice on this night. He was beginning to need them more than ever.

  Well, he could still improvise, he decided, as a familiar presence nuzzled his shin. "Hi, Princess," he said to the Labrador bitch, a shape blacker than the deepest shadow of his garage, her tail thumping against his leg as he reached down to pat her head.

  Andy got the garage door closed, murmuring to the dog, scratching her behind the ears, squatting before the old refrigerator he used chiefly for paint storage. The lone carton of milk, two weeks old, had not soured yet. He emptied the carton into a stainless-steel bowl to hold the animal's interest while he spread filmy plastic onto the workshop floor. The bitch might not follow him upstairs into his apartment, and if he left her enclosed in the garage for even a moment, she might bark. Well, never mind; he could clean up later. Here in the welcoming dark he soothed the friendly bitch with soft murmurs, sank down cross-legged on the plastic, pulled the knife with its specially modified slitting blade from his pocket and began to scratch the dog's flanks, pulling her nearer, then running a hand over her muzzle before pinioning her jaws, improvising a relief from his frustrations.

  24

  JUNE 1994

  Visconti might have selected any of several agents to check possible sources of the Thomas Concoction, but none of the others wore a temporary forearm cast so it was Gary who drew some of the least physical tasks. He began with the yellow pages under veterinary services, focusing on those that seemed likely to deal with large animals: herd consultants, practices limited to exotic animals, the Equine Clinic. Only one of the vets he canvassed had ever heard of that particular lethal injection, but she and another clinic both referred him to a local lab that manufactured veterinary supplies.

  In all of these queries, he had a hidden agenda. Though the DEA could get just about anything it needed through official channels, there had to be other channels not so official. It was possible that, deadly or not, the stuff could be obtained easily. So, in these calls, Gary presented himself as a man with acreage in the Sierra foothills near the town of Sanger, a man whose liberal views had been sorely tested by coyotes.

  They ate his son's pet rabbit; the family dog had not been seen for days. He had heard of something quick and painless called the Thomas Concoction. How did one go about obtaining such a thing?

  Ivy Laboratories accepted his story, but denied his petition firmly. "It's not a commonly accepted drug,"

  the lab man told him. "I mean, not even in the veterinary community. Of course in Alaska you could probably get your hands on some, and the Canadians have used it in darts against polar bears that develop a fondness for people."

  "You mean fondness, like in yum-yum?" Gary supplied.

  "That's it. Some do acquire the taste, you know; and when something with paws the size of razor-tipped dinner plates is breaking down people's front doors, the Mounties tend to take extreme measures. That's what the Thomas Concoction is, an extreme measure; not that it's so much more deadly, but I understand it works quicker than other methods. The rumor is, a number of labs could brew up. such stuff, given the correct proportions, but it would have to be for a state or federal agency, and I believe they concoct their own. Sorry we can't help you. What you need is Animal Control."

  "Look, I've, ah, I can afford it, if that's the problem," Gary said.

  Now the man's voice developed a brittle edge - not angry, but no longer accommodating. "Perhaps you can, mister, but we don't know what goes into it, and if we did, I do know that even divulging it is illegal; and we can't afford that. I hope you're not about to suggest something that we'd have to report because it's a pain in the backside. Am I being perfectly clear?"

  "Perfectly," Gary said and rang off, not at all discouraged. He was pleased to discover how difficult it was for private citizens to obtain the drug and wondered whether there might be a black market in it. So far, he had gotten much the same responses he might have expected had he asked how to make high explosives in his kitchen; few knew, and those who did weren't helping.

  That left his hole card: the state's wildlife forensics labs; one in Sacramento and another across town in Fresno. Those guys were law enforcement of a limited sort, much the same as the federal lab in Ashland, Oregon. On a hunch, he first called the Oregon lab, identified himself properly, and asked for what federal agencies called "mutual aid." The director heard his request, then asked for his office telephone number and promised to call back.

  Gary knew the drill and was happy to see it used. Too many unofficial folks knew how to pose on a phone line as a DEA man in Fresno, and somewhere in Ashland, Oregon, that director was checking Gary out.

  He got his callback in less than five minutes from Director Goddard, a gent of rollicking good humor who frankly said he'd never heard of the Thomas Concoction until Gary asked about it. "But when I checked you out with DEA's crime lab in San Francisco, they asked me about the bloody stuff, too!

  Apparently, in their minds at least, you're already connected with it. What are you guys doing down there, tracking Godzilla?"

  "Might be simpler if we were," Gary admitted. "The drug was used on a federal agent, but we'd like to keep that among ourselves. It's beginning to look like the perps could have an official source unless it turns out to be a precise mixture of commonly available chemicals. If that's the case, just the recipe itself might be enough."

  "Maybe I don't want to know it," Goddard replied with relentless whimsy, "and don't tell my wife either.

  But let me redirect your call to our chief chemist - he'll know what's what. He knows the guys in both the Sacramento and Fresno wildlife labs too; may even know if they have this stuff on hand."

  Moments later, the chemist was on the line, and his tone changed the moment he heard Gary's request.

  "You, uh, have some of the stuff with you?"

  "Not anymore," Gary said.

  "You want to be awfully careful if you do," the chemist warned. Asked how a private citizen might come by the Thomas Concoction, the chemist chuckled. "Theft, bribery, mugging a game warden, which I definitely don't recommend. Have I left anything out?"

  "Legitimate texts, maybe?" Gary hazarded.

  "Not in open literature. I can't discuss the proportions, and you aren't even supposed to know the ingredients, regardless of proportions; but I can provide a supply for a warden."

  "Then it's not kept on hand?"

  "No. Actually, I believe it has been, on occasion, in California; some problem with big mean seals along the California coast, as I recall."

  "Well, it's not much, but it's something," Gary sighed. "This is sensitive information. A serious crime has been commit
ted with the drug, and we'd like to know how the perps got hold of it."

  "Good God! Just a minute." Gary could hear fingers tapping on a keyboard. After a long moment, the chemist went on: "I didn't think we had it on hand, and my records confirm that we don't. There aren't that many labs of our kind anywhere, but California and Alaska would be my guesses, in that order. Does that help?"

  "It's a lead," Gary agreed. "So I guess what I need to find out is who keeps it or kept it, and where, and whether any of it is unaccounted for. Could you check on that without raising any eyebrows at the other labs?"

  "Um, yes, I see your problem. If it was taken from a state lab, somebody in that lab may be very alert to this line of questioning. Tell you what: coming from me - better still, from one of our people in Fairbanks - a query might seem more routine. Why don't you let us work on it? Uh, Fairbanks is, what, an hour behind us, or two? Never mind - let me get back to you."

  Gary made himself a cup of hot chocolate and drank it in Visconti's office, filling his supervisor in on the little he had learned. The resident agent's phone interrupted them several times and Gary opted for brevity, leaving quickly. The callback from Oregon hadn't materialized by lunchtime, but Gary did not want to miss it, so he sent out for a calzone and buttermilk. For all the good that did, he might as well have taken a long lunch at the Basque Hotel.

  He was gnawed by a suspicion that the damned Thomas Concoction was an exercise in futility, what Swede Halvorsen would call a red herring. If the trail led to Alaska, where big predators were more populous than humans in some regions, the effective rules might be a lot different from those on the books.

  Alaskans tended to make their own rules, on the grounds that a federal statute cobbled up in a paneled room 4,000 miles away might not reflect the "real world" of one-ton bears, six-month winters, and killer whales that launched themselves out of the surf - huge torpedoes with peg teeth - to snatch a meal on the shore.

  Late in the afternoon, Gary found and excised a brief piece in a back page of the Fresno Bee, about the finding of the Lowery boy: