Pursuit: A Novel

13

Varney had very carefully, cautiously made the trip to Buffalo in stages. His first step had been to buy a set of clothes that didn’t smell like seawater and gasoline. He didn’t try to get on a big transcontinental airliner like the one he had taken west, because he was intensely aware of what Prescott must be thinking. As soon as Prescott had gotten his message about the people at the hotel in Marina del Rey, he would have gotten into his car again and driven to Los Angeles International Airport. He might think that Varney had gotten out right away, gotten onto a plane and left town, but Prescott had undoubtedly been around long enough to know that things were hardly ever that simple. Chasing a man down often just involved following as well as you could and waiting for something to go wrong for him.

Varney had driven his rental car to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, gotten on a plane belonging to an airline he had never heard of that seated about twenty-five passengers, and flown to Las Vegas. From there, he had flown to Toronto, taken a bus to Niagara Falls, walked across the Rainbow Bridge into the United States, and then taken a cab south to Buffalo.

He had arrived late at night. The house was east of Delaware Avenue, off Hertel Avenue in a neighborhood that was full of big nineteenth-century two-story houses with wooden porches and little squares of front lawn that a person could just about cover with a blanket. Someone had told him once that it had been part of the era when they’d been built: people were just moving off farms and into towns, and the epitome of being modern and prosperous was to be able to walk out the door onto a pavement in as few steps as possible without interference from things that grew in mud.

All of the houses had long ago been broken up into apartments and rented to students and young families. He had spent a couple of days and nights in the neighborhood before he had given it his approval. About half the men he saw on the street were not easy to distinguish at first glance from himself. The bars in the area were mostly old neighborhood taverns that lived off their kitchens. There were two newer establishments that sold draft beer to students, but they didn’t have the sort of music or live entertainment that attracted unruly crowds and the police cars that attended them.

He had bought the house and moved into it without changing the provisions the previous owners had made to split it into an upper apartment and a lower. The lower floor had furniture in it from the last tenant, so he kept it and put timers on the lights to make it look occupied, and to avoid walking into a darkened entry and finding someone waiting. He lived on the upper floor. It had a side entrance with its own staircase, but he had bolted it off so that opening it from the inside required a key, and opening it from the outside was difficult enough to be effectively impossible without causing visible damage.

Varney approached his house on foot and in concentric circles. He studied the cars parked in the neighborhood, then the buildings that were close enough to offer a good view of his windows. This took a bit of time and patience, because nearly all of the houses were rentals, and even in a short period away, a tenant might have been replaced. He connected parked cars with apartments, looked for dog bowls or toys left out, or familiar curtains, lampshades, framed pictures that were visible from the street. The last place he studied was his own.

He had no theory on how Prescott might have gone about finding his real address this quickly, but that did not convince him that it would be impossible. Prescott was the enemy, and the enemy always had the resources of authorities at his disposal. It was the nature of authorities to be shadowy, potentially numberless, and possessed of capabilities that were most worrisome because they were unknown. Authorities didn’t necessarily advertise everything they could do. In Varney’s mind, the authorities did not merely include police agencies but also everyone else who imposed rules: the phone company, the credit card companies, the post office, the airlines.

Varney watched his house patiently as the lights went on and off, the television sets he had tuned to particular stations cast their bluish glow on the upstairs and downstairs ceilings. After he had seen enough, he entered: nothing had been changed, nothing touched since he had left.

Varney waited indoors through the first day, and then another, a gun always within easy reach. He watched from the upper windows of his house, trying to see into each car that passed, to stare at the face of each pedestrian. He slept on a mattress on the floor of the upstairs kitchen beside the door, so he would hear anyone mounting the staircase.

After three days, Varney began to feel assured that Prescott had not used some esoteric method to locate him. Varney had simply been alarmed by the miserable way things had worked out in Los Angeles. He was now convinced that he had let his imagination go too far: he didn’t know the way Prescott could find the address, because there was no way.

He concentrated on analyzing his defeat. He had been overconfident about his ability to fly into a distant city, pop the target, and vanish, all within a few hours. He had done it so many times before that it had come to seem routine, then obligatory. He had not taken into account the fact that this target was more dangerous than usual, and that by killing the two cops, Varney had announced to him that he was on the way. Prescott had been ready for him.

He consoled himself with the thought that the whole episode could be considered less than a defeat. Prescott was supposed to be the best, the invincible hunter, after all, and Varney had walked into his office under his nose, taken out the two armed security guards, and walked out again. He wasn’t sure how he had failed to erase the videotape that showed his rental car in the parking garage, but it had been a new building with a complicated system. When Prescott had tried to ambush him at the motel, Varney had left him standing around like a moron. The more Varney thought about it, the more certain he was. The mistakes he had made had not been so shameful. The hours he had spent shivering in the water under the dock were his own secret. Prescott didn’t know how he had escaped: he had vanished like a ghost. Varney had won: he had made Prescott look sick. It was time to forget about Prescott and go back to his regular life.

The next morning, Varney went to the grocery store to buy fresh food, then walked to breakfast at Sterling’s Diner. He bought the Buffalo News and carried it under his arm until he got to his booth, taking pride in each act of normalcy as he completed it. Going after Prescott had just been a momentary lapse in judgment, that was all.

He resumed his usual warm-weather routine. He ran in Delaware Park for an hour, and ended the run at the gym. He had spent two days doing very little for his body, so he decided to make this a full workout day. In a few days he would probably be working again, but a few days could easily stretch into months. Discipline was the reason for his success. He kept himself alert, busy, and in training during the slow periods.

He ran the circuit of the park around the small lake, past the marble columns at the back of the History Museum, down near the old pavilion by the shore, along Delaware Avenue, then beside the high, spike-tipped brick wall around the zoo.

Sometimes he could hear the animals on the other side of the wall, but he could always smell them. There was a thick, acrid barnyard smell that made him veer outward a bit. There were always a couple of soccer games on the flats, and he looked without slowing down. The white-and-black ball looked big and bright on the deep green lawns. While Varney was running each day, he often thought of the park as his. That was why he usually didn’t run in the early morning or the evening. He didn’t like it when other people were jogging too. The people who were doing other things were simply sights, put there to amuse him, but the joggers tended to follow him—even to try, with futile gasping breaths, to run with him for a stretch.

He checked his watch now and then to be sure he was running long enough at this speed to complete at least five miles. Then he left the park, crossed Delaware, and ran south a few blocks to the gym. Today he was pleased when he reached the gym. He was winded and puffing hard, feeling the sweat dripping down his nose and chin to his soaked T-shirt. He would do some stretches, cool down, and then complete a few reps on the machines before he jogged the last few blocks home.

He pulled open the glass door and stepped into the cooler, climate-controlled atmosphere. He could see the row of older men along the back wall on treadmills and stationary bikes, doing what their cardiologists had been begging them to since way before their heart attacks. Off to the right, through the glassed-in aerobic area, there was a class of thin, wiry young women dancing around, kicking and punching the air to music that he couldn’t quite hear. There were a couple of gay guys who worked nights as waiters spotting for each other on the weight bench, but the big machines were clear. He took a step toward the desk and glanced at the bulletin board.

There, in the middle of the board, among the flyers advertising rock-climbing trips, hang-gliding lessons, and concerts, was a picture of Varney—an eight-by-ten glossy color photograph. He glanced at the young man on duty at the desk and felt heat grow in his temples and wash down the sides of his neck to his shoulders. The young man wasn’t looking up, but Varney didn’t recognize him. He must have been hired recently, or transferred from an evening shift.

Varney walked past the board, bent to adjust the weight on the nearest machine, saw the young man turn to gaze at the women in the exercise class, snatched the picture down, and shoved it into the back of his shirt. He went into the men’s room, stepped inside a stall, and took the picture out.

It had looked at first like a photograph of him, but his mind rebelled at the proposition. He had never posed to have a professional picture taken. He looked more closely, and formed a different theory. It was a fake of some sort, maybe a computer-enhancement of some tape in a security camera that had caught him during the past few days. His heart was still pounding from his run, and the sweat was still coming, but his body’s reaction seemed to intensify. He read the print at the bottom of the picture.

“Do you know this man? Age 25–30, five feet ten to six feet, 175 lbs., and in good physical condition. Substantial cash reward offered for reliable information.” Varney studied the telephone number. Area code 716. It was a local number. Prescott was here.