Recoil

The boy turned reluctantly.

“Are you listening?”

“Sure I am.”

“Put a little trust in your old man. I’m going to pin these bastards like butterflies. They’ll never touch us again. I want you to stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you don’t, you’ll feel like a damn fool afterward—all that sour worry for nothing. Understand me?”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt. You don’t even have a gun.”

“Guns don’t answer any questions, Ron.”

“Who’s asking questions? They just want to kill us.”

“They won’t get the chance. Believe that.”

“All right.”

“I mean it now.”

But the boy wasn’t convinced and he couldn’t think of any way to reassure him.

Jan said, “You’ll miss your plane.” It was the next thing to a whisper.

He kissed her again, trying to mean it. Then he walked away from them to the car.

Vasquez got in behind the wheel.

Homer held the passenger door. Mathieson shook his hand. “I’ll see you in Washington.”

“And me in little old New York,” Roger said. “Ride easy, old horse.”

“You know this is going to work,” Mathieson said.

“Damn right I do.” Roger smiled a little; of them all Roger was the one who had no reservations.

“Take care now, old horse.”

Vasquez drove him down past the paddock fence. Behind them Jan and Ro

They rolled very fast down the gravel track. The dust lifted high and their passage exploded birds out of the trees. Vasquez said, “I’ll have four men down here by tonight to keep watch. Don’t alarm yourself over their safety. No one will get through to them. If there’s an attempt my men have orders to use their weapons.”

“If there’s no other choice.”

“There won’t be if Pastor’s men come here again. They’ll come only if they know they’ve got the right place. But I still believe they’re safest here. Pastor has already searched it—he’ll have no reason to come back.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Vasquez slowed for the turning into the county road. “You’re one of the most closely guarded people I’ve ever met. Have you always been remote or is it something that’s happened since these attacks began?”

“You’re a great one to talk.”

“I haven’t got a marriage to save.”

Mathieson closed his eyes. Vasquez’s smugness made him want to snarl. “You’ve got a wife.”

“In name,” Vasquez said. “We don’t share premises. You’re evading the point.”

“I don’t need two-pe

“You’re frightened. It’s understandable. But aren’t you confusing the source of your fears? It’s not your friends or your wife you need to fear.”

2

When the flight was called he left Vasquez and went along to the boarding gate, being careful to stay in the center of the crowd, neither first nor last.

The plane was not crowded; to his relief the seat next to his was empty. Stewardesses went down the aisle looking at passengers’ seat belts and offering magazines and headphones. At takeoff he felt a belly-churning sensation when the wheels thudded up into their sockets while the plane still seemed only inches off the ground. Then they were climbing steeply and he relaxed his grip on the arms of the seat.

He spent the three hours neither sleeping nor reading; he stared at the clouds and worked out pieces of the scheme in his mind. But anxious thoughts about Jan kept distracting him.

At O’Hare he took the first taxi in the rank. He was empty-handed; the bag was checked through and he had four hours between planes.

The taxi dropped him at the John Hancock tower. It was a chill bleak day, the heavy overcast scudding quickly overhead, pedestrians chasing their hats in the Chicago winds.

He went into the tower and cruised through the basement arcade of shops, making an aimless circuit, emerging from the side entrance and crossing briskly to the hotel garage opposite; he hired a nondescript small car there and drove it down Lake Shore Drive to the Loop.

He was not particularly well acquainted with Chicago but he knew the main landmarks and found his way without difficulty to his destination. He had arrived early for the meeting in order to see who went into the hotel. He recognized no one until he saw Bradleigh step out of a taxi and walk inside, hatless and ruddy, the tails of his open topcoat flapping in the gray wind.

He gave Bradleigh a five-minute lead, saw nothing that alarmed him, got out of the car, locked it and crossed the street just as rain began to slant onto the pavement. By the time he reached the hotel it was pouring.

Bradleigh was in the bar at a side table, cigarette smoke trailing from his mouth and nostrils. Mathieson went straight to him but Bradleigh’s glance passed over him twice without recognition until he was within three paces; then Bradleigh beamed, humor in the gentle eyes: “I didn’t recognize you.”

“That’s good.” He pulled the chair out and sat down.

“It’s not just the hair and the moustache. You move differently. Have you lost weight?”

“Redistributed it.”

“You look ten years younger.”

“I’m in a little bit of a hurry, Gle

“Do you want a drink?”

“No. I’d like to know what you’ve found out—how things are going, if anywhere.”

“That’s a little brusque, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t got much time.”

“I’m begi

“Gle

Bradleigh smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I took all the standard measures and then some. We’re not being watched.”

“Not unless someone found out about this appointment.”

“No one did. Count on it.” The ritual lighting of a fresh filter tip; then Bradleigh said, “We’ve picked up a few tidbits on C. K. Gillespie. We’ll be ready to nail him before long. When we do we expect him to sing.”

“How long before you pounce?”

“A week, ten days. It depends on developments. If he doesn’t let a few more things slip where our bugs can pick them up, we’ll use what we’ve got and grab him anyway. We’ve got leads on at least four men who probably were involved in the Los Angeles business and the Oklahoma shooting——”

“Including Deffeldorf and Tyrone?”

Bradleigh’s jaw dropped. “Where did you get those names?”

“A Ouija board.”

“Have you been playing at amateur sleuth?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t get—”

“Just out of curiosity, who are the other two you’re investigating? Aside from Tyrone and Deffeldorf?”

“A motorcycle freak named Ortiz and a friend of his by the name of Tony Se

“Angelinos?”

“From the area, yes. Burbank.”

“Have you got hard evidence?”

“We’re building a pretty good case.”

“I hope you make it stick.”

“We will. We’re taking our time, we want to make sure it’s airtight before we make the grab. The biggest break was Ortiz’s rifle. We found it where he ditched it in a street trash can. He’d broken it down into components but we got enough to prove it’s the rifle that fired at you—and the serial numbers that trace it back to Ortiz.”

“Fingerprints?”

“No. Nobody’s that stupid. It’s mainly circumstantial at the moment but we’re convinced they’re the right men. We’ll take all four of them simultaneously. Then we’ll work on them individually. Whichever one cracks, that’s the one we’ll use to pin the other three to the wall. OK, that’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that there’s no chance any of them will ever be able to lead us back to Frank Pastor in a way that would stand up in court.”

“We knew that before.”

Bradleigh shook his head. “I get my nocturnal emissions from dreaming that someday I’ll find enough rope around Pastor’s neck to hang him with.”