Spooker

by Dean Ing

  The thermal air currents of Taft, California, are famous for their ability to keep an airplane aloft, engine or no engine. Jan Betancourt got her first taste of sailplaning that afternoon, soaring over the valley with a professional. Gary had never seen her so awed by an experience, one that she claimed was nothing at all like the Cessna. "And that's okay, it's fun with an engine, yet somehow you're still aware that you're just, just buzzing around. But this was what birds do, Gary: this was flying."

  And he claimed to be jealous, and she observed that he could always get a sailplane to compensate, and they had dinner at a Thai place and, with talk of buying aircraft and living together in an airpark, Gary began to realize that he might have the marriage, the life, the woman he wanted - all of it - if he would simply relax and accept their pairing without demanding that they "make it legal." It would require a different mind-set from him. It'll damn sure need a different mind-set on Swede's part, he reflected. But if Gary could manage "without benefit of clergy" - it was astonishing how clichés had grown like shrubs around the institution of marriage until the essence of the thing itself became obscured - he felt certain that, one fine day, Jan would turn to him and say, "I'm ready for the wedding."

  Of course, their kids might be grown by then. Ah, shit, why did I have to think of that? He wanted children, and soon; and he did not want to have to wince at the word "bastard." A common-law marriage might satisfy Jan, but Gary knew he was a long way from accepting it.

  He rode the Kawasaki to the airstrip, Jan tailing him in her Datsun, and left the bike in care of the proprietor. They spent another hour in her mobile home, Jan promising to drive to Fresno the following Friday. Then she drove him to the Greyhound station just in time to make the 10:25 express to Fresno. The talk with Linda Seibouldt Tate would simply have to wait. He dozed part of the way north, listening to strangers explain to one another why they were riding a bus instead of their Cadillacs. Now and then he wondered how Visconti's big bust had gone down, and why a nice-looking bright young guy like Andy Soriano seemed so starved for friendship.

  28

  JUNE 1994

  There had never been any question, from that first scalp-prickling instant when he realized that Chuck Lane was alive, whether Andy would tell Romana. She had reacted first to the news in flat disbelief, then fell silent as he explained. Finally, very quietly, she had gone alone into the tunnel. He had never known her to indulge in a fit of hysterics, but during the next few minutes he had heard her voice raised in hoarse shouts, using words he presumed were Czech. Or maybe Russian - he wasn't sure. He was quite sure the words weren't complimentary.

  A long while later, she returned, her voice husky but calm, and asked him without rancor to help her in the darkroom. It was quite possible, she said soothingly, that Andrew had built a pair of coincidences into a fantasy. She had the look, Andy thought, of a slack-wire walker grimly focused on keeping a precarious balance.

  She took photos of Lane from her files - the best was a telephoto of him locking his helmet to the Kawasaki - and created a matte-finish eight-by-ten head shot in black and white. Her Pasche airbrush rig was a specialty Andy had never mastered, but Romana had used it many times to manufacture false IDs.

  She spent a few minutes of practice while her hand became steadier, trying shades of gray paint from her Winsor & Newton greyscale kit, before beginning to retouch the photograph. Chuck Lane's mustache and long hair were obliterated with white. Then she filled in the upper lip area with a light gray tone.

  He murmured, "He's bleached his hair, but it may just be the sun," before she began on the hair. She airbrushed a "butch" haircut over the scalp in light gray, using a camel's-hair brush by hand on still-fluid spray to suggest individual hairs.

  Her work was not a transformation intended to fool an expert, but one that made Andy tremble as he watched it take place. Finally, to her "Is this your DEA man?," he could only drop his gaze and nod. She continued to stare at the picture, now a near-perfect image of Gary Landis, for a long time. Then, suddenly:

  "Andrew, he doesn't know who you are."

  He wanted to ask several things at once, so all he managed was a stammer. Tapping the photo, she went on; "When we took the man down, all three of us were playing roles. Yours was probably the best disguise of all, and he couldn't have had more than a few seconds with you up close. If he had known who you were today, they probably would have used a group to arrest you, instead of sending a single agent.

  Even if they hoped to draw you out, they would have sent someone else." A smile full of wisdom: "Almost certainly they would use FBI agents. They would have traced you here. And, as it happens, I was overhead in the Chamois when you arrived. If you had been followed, I would have seen them."

  "How do we know they didn't bug my car?" he asked.

  "Good point. We don't, but we certainly have the means to find out," she replied, rising to peer at the shelves behind her, taking her hand-held transmitter detector from its case. The device, a pricey little AID

  unit with a pistol grip and a digital readout, used a handful of nine-volt alkaline batteries which she tested before leading Andy outside, extending the telescoping antenna as she went. A week previous, she would have let Andy do the checking. Now he could see her trust in him slipping away.

  Ten minutes later, lying on her side behind the Pinto with the detector, she pocketed her flashlight and struggled to her feet with the awkwardness of someone no longer young or supple. "You're clean," she said, collapsing the antenna, brushing dirt from her jacket as she led the way indoors. "And that's a strong indication that our Mr. Landis is still a few steps behind us."

  "But after us," Andy said.

  "Shut up, Andrew. He does not know who he is after." Romana poured herself a cup of coffee; lit and took one drag from a Pall Mall before answering. "We have to operate on that basis, Andrew. He has to know he was injected with a powerful drug; that's sufficient to explain why he would be checking on such things with a local agency that's publicly known to use them."

  "The Thomas Concoction is something we don't share with the media, Mom. It can't be common knowledge."

  Romana's nod was impatient, her mental circuits busy. Andy thanked God for that because it deflected her from raging at him. "He may not know what the drug was; CIA has used injections in the past. I had thought Mr. Lane was CIA. It is still possible that Mr. Landis is drawing two salaries, but if he is seeking information on injections from a state agency, most probably he was simply DEA working with CIA. They do that sometimes." Then, as if to herself, flicking ash into her cup: "I would give a great deal to know what went wrong."

  "I put it all in him, Mom," said Andy, defensive but certain of his competence. "Maybe it doesn't work the same way on humans. There's no data on that in the manual." He backed this up with a smile.

  "That's not funny, Andrew. Next time, we will use tried-and-true methods."

  "Absolutely. From now on - " He blinked. "You don't mean we're going after Gary again."

  "On first-name terms, are we? Yes, I mean exactly that. We can't be sure how much he knows, but we know it's too much."

  Andy's mind protested against this line of reasoning, and he realized why: he had sought and won the friendship of this man. No, he's a client. Keep that foremost in your thoughts. The job would be easier for him at long range. "What about a remote detonation, or a scoped rifle?"

  "Only if we must. That's obviously deliberate, and it would send dozens of agents backtracking his movements. Do you want more of them questioning you in the lab?"

  Andy's head shake was vigorous. "He'll just have to disappear."

  "Too suspicious. No, Andrew, what we need is an accident, something that doesn't set a full-scale investigation in motion."

  Andy's open-handed gesture said, Tell me what?

  "We know he rides a dangerous vehicle. You said he mentioned that he's involved with a woman. It's up to you to learn more about him: his hobbies, his vices."

  An
dy drew a deep breath. Further face-to-face dealings with Landis were among the last things on earth he wanted now. "You taught me to avoid getting that close, Mom."

  "You're already that close, Andrew. And this, you must admit, is a unique situation. It requires a unique approach."

  "Any other time, you'd say I was compromised with this client," Andy insisted.

  Something flickered in her eyes, the equivalent of an instant's hesitation. "But he came to you," she said, with that maddeningly calm smile. "It is he who is compromised. He would see your friendship as sheer coincidence. Anyone would," she said, "except you and me."

  One forlorn hope occurred to him then. "How do you expect us to get on with the Sacramento work if we get involved with this guy?"

  "You are already involved. You will just deepen your involvement while I pursue the Sacramento relationship."

  Stolidly: "How many times have you told me to maintain focus on one thing at a time?" he said.

  "How many times have I also told you that Mom knows best?"

  "Too many."

  Again that glitter in her eyes; then an elaborately slow sip of coffee. "You are collapsing now? You, who enjoy playing your roles, would turn down the role of a lifetime, Andrew? You would throw your responsibility onto the shoulders of an . . . old woman?"

  He knew that the phrase had to be hateful to her, knew also that she was manipulating him with it. Yet somehow that knowledge did not lessen the impact. "No, Mom," he said, his voice breaking as he reached out to her.

  She stood unmoving, echoing his tiny bleats of misery with her own, but at last he felt her free hand pressing oh, so gently, between his shoulders. That was when he felt the shudder coming, and he pulled away so that she would not feel it.

  "This will take some time," he said, wiping his nose.

  "Make it count," she said.

  29

  JUNE 1994

  Paul Visconti had once observed to Gary that among the most profound changes in the life of a field agent is the shift from happy lone wolf to hearth-loving pooch. Generally, Visconti said, a woman becomes part of the sea change at some point. Sometimes the agent begins to lean toward domesticity and, as a natural part of the process, finds a like-minded mate; in other cases, a woman, already a part of his equation, urges him toward the hearth - often with a "me or the job" ultimatum.

  Reflecting on his own case, Gary vaguely understood that the first scenario fitted him best. Perhaps because Jan Betancourt herself was only half-domesticated, she had urged no changes. And with no urging toward changes from her, Gary Landis had given it very little thought until recently.

  What made him think about it now were little things. He no longer chafed so much over the paperwork that threatened to submerge federal agents. He was starting to chafe, instead, at the many little impediments to the life his "civilian" neighbors took for granted. It was a common irritant among many law-enforcement men that, in some ways, they lived like escaped felons. Gary had a personal Visa card, but its charges were handled by a standard Justice Department cutout that prevented tracing him. A few times, the delays had forced him to pay late charges he could ill afford.

  In the mold of most other people active in the intelligence community, Gary knew it was good practice to keep himself out of the data banks of business, everybody's Big Brother, particularly American Express credit cards and volumes such as the Polk and Cole directories that were readily available in public libraries.

  In the blue-sheet numerical listings, his telephone number would typically be followed by a simple "Not Verified"; no name, no address. Nor was he listed in the "vanilla" white Alpha, or alphabetical, listings. In the green-tinted street listings as well, his apartment number had usually carried a Not Verified comment.

  On one occasion some years previous, a naive young apartment manager innocently gave him up to a canvasser calling herself a city directory employee. Finding himself in the listings during a routine check, Gary had demanded a change of apartment and raised hell to the man, explaining that while the telephone company had its own sources in the users, a "city directory" usually was a copyrighted commercial volume that might cost hundreds of dollars a copy. After that, he was careful to explain to apartment managers while moving in that, as a "revenue man," he wanted anonymity. If managers and landlords chose to interpret this as federal Internal Revenue employment, it had been no skin off Gary's ass, and it was simply amazing how anxious those managers became to keep him happy.

  Even Gary's California DMV license and his vehicle registrations fell into a special law-enforcement category, maintained separately by the state. People empowered to check on those items needed the right ID - the kind that allowed backtracking. It was all quite rational and necessary, but for Gary it would be a major pain in the backside when he decided to trade his Caffiaro. Gary had accepted these and other circumventions as necessary evils, merely part of the territory. Only now had he begun to view them as problems.

  For Romana, they were problems she had dealt with a hundred times. The simplest solutions usually proving best, she merely began with what she knew and gave Andy the tasks of broadening her file. She identified the Landis Camaro that Andy had described by driving past Fresno's fenced DEA parking lot, then followed the man home on Tuesday, giving him plenty of space. When he keyed himself into a second-floor apartment in Northwest Fresno, she made careful note. On Wednesday, while Gary was at work, a slender middle-aged fellow with Romana's aquiline nose and cheekbones walked through both of the vacant apartments in Gary's complex with the manager. The apartment layouts were mirror images of each other, so she had the approximate dimensions of his apartment as well. Romana did not rent either apartment; it was obvious from her notes that she could bug the edge of Gary's living-room window from the parking lot using an infrared laser pickup. In this way she avoided more dangerous ploys. At this stage of the surveillance, she did not know what datum might prove crucial, and of all her client relationships this one seemed fraught with the greatest potential for danger.

  Because it was more dangerous, Romana was careful to make more use of her remote systems - and the best of hers, by far, was Andrew Soriano. The best thing about remote systems was that she could, if necessary, cut them loose leaving no trace of an umbilicus; in a phrase, unplug them. What Romana did not consider, despite her formidable background, was that Andrew was a self-monitoring system capable of fully autonomous operation. As she placed herself farther from the focus of danger, Andrew became more vulnerable. Because she had trained him very, very well to be paranoid, his mental circuits grew ever nearer to a constant overload. And, sensing this, Andy clamped down on himself more tightly. Sooner or later, that kind of feedback was bound to make Romana's finest remote system fail in unpredictable ways.

  Comfortably remote, unaware of Andrew's "relationships" with animals, she increased that overload.

  Thursday afternoon, Gary took a call from the Cal Fish & Game lab. It was young Andy Soriano, saying he had rounded up copies of more data on some of the most potent tranquilizers. Andy claimed an appointment with the Valley Players after work but, he said with a chuckle, sometimes little problems in stagecraft took hours to fix. Would Gary be home that evening? Well, then, Andy would be happy to drop off the Xeroxes at Gary's apartment afterward. Maybe bring a six-pack if it wasn't too late, and what was that address?

  Gary replaced the receiver with a sigh. Soriano had the friendliness of a puppy, the kind of guy you hated to deny. And whatthehell, Soriano was law enforcement himself, if you stretched the point a little.

  Gary's call to Bakersfield reached only Jan's answering machine. "Your turn to make a nut call," he told it.

  "I should be in all evening." Then he broke out the feta cheese and made a passable attempt at a Greek salad.

  He was dozing in the gloom with a paperback around 9:30 when the door buzzer roused him. He opened the door to find Andy Soriano on the landing with a manila folder under one arm, a six-pack of Sam Adams, and
a guilty smile. "I know it's late. I tried to phone you, give you a chance to say no, but you're not in the book," he said.

  "No problem," Gary replied, then realized that Andy Soriano might stand outside forever without an explicit invitation. "Come on in. You'll get mugged standing out there with all that good yuppie brew."

  Soriano was decked out in sport coat and tie, almost as if for a date, or a role in that play. At Gary's suggestion, he removed both items, folding them with conspicuous neatness. So he's anal retentive, Gary thought. I could use a little of that, stashing bottles in his refrigerator, opening the remaining two. "To crime" - he touched Soriano's bottle with his - "and punishment."

  He accepted the manila folder with thanks, dropping it on his living-room desk without opening it. "I can study that tomorrow, Andy. Hey, I've got some old trunks if you want to take a few laps in the pool."

  But Andy was not a swimmer, he said. When the talk proceeded to sports, it became clear that Andy did not spend much time with the sports pages. "I'm pretty good with my hands, though," he said shyly. "The scenery flats are looking great, she said."

  He stammered when Gary pounced on the "she." "Oh . . . woman who kinda supports the Valley Players. Older woman," Andy added quickly. "Queen-bee type."

  "They'd be in deep shit without worker bees," Gary retorted, with a glance toward the sport coat. "Why do I get the idea you've got your eye on one of the, uh, whatchamacallit, ingénues?"

  Still shy, Andy admitted that he hadn't decided which of the pretty young players he preferred. The vague impression he left was that he dated them now and then. "I could probably fix you up," he said finally.

  "No, no," Gary laughed, finishing off his beer, raising his voice as he retrieved another pair of Sam Adamses from the kitchen. "One relationship at a time for me," he claimed.

  For some reason, Andy found this worth a laugh. "Well," said the younger man, "there are relationships and relationships. This one must be special."