Killer Summer

2

Christopher Cantell couldn’t avoid looking at himself in a mirror-any mirror-a window’s reflection, a shiny hubcap. Waiting in the Sun Valley Airport’s parking lot, he was unaware that he’d turned the rearview mirror of the rented Yukon his direction. It wasn’t that he considered himself outrageously handsome. In fact, his attention focused on the flaws: the crow’s-feet framing his dark eyes; the fans at the base of his earlobes, the asymmetrical black eyebrows, the smirk on his thin lips that so many found offensive when it was nothing more than genetics, his father having suffered the same slash mouth. But the habit of looking was a tic, a kind of illness he suffered, that he couldn’t stop, that he hated so much he lived in constant denial of its existence. It wasn’t really him, this vanity. And if not him, then someone else, which implied a case of mild schizophrenia, something more troubling than the vanity itself. The busier he kept, the better: more focused, less self-aware. All his adult life he’d sought out impossible tasks with enormous consequences. Some might call him an everyday thief, but he considered that an insult. He could outsmart the smartest and steal what couldn’t be stolen. He thought of himself more as a magician, making valuable objects, including cash, disappear. The bigger the risk, the better. Anything to keep him from seeing those two faces in the mirror.

The courier wasn’t much to look at either. He had a purple birthmark on his neck that extended beyond the open collar of his green golf shirt. And he looked a little soft, though Cantell wasn’t buying it: couriers with Branson Risk knew their stuff. This guy was certain to put up a fight, if given half a chance. But Cantell’s plan eliminated chance altogether. The courier mustn’t be allowed to place a call or use a pager. Cantell suspected he was carrying two GPS transmitters-one inside his phone or BlackBerry; the other secreted in the oversized black carbon-fiber briefcase in his custody. Cantell watched as the courier slipped behind the wheel of a Ford Taurus. Cantell had expected a bigger rental: an Expedition, Suburban, or Yukon like his, but neither the make nor the size of the car bothered him. His team was well prepared. He’d spent the past two months and a good deal of money planning and scripting the events of the next few days. He liked to make things complicated. Law enforcement couldn’t handle complicated. Theirs was a world of systems, records, and repetition.

He adjusted the rearview mirror-what the hell was it aiming at him for?-to see out the back of the Yukon. He used the Nextel’s direct-connect feature to broadcast his report to the others.

“It’s a metallic-blue Taurus. Leaving now. Idaho plate Victor-alpha-five-seven-two. I’m the black Yukon, pulling up right behind him. Matt?”

“In position,” came the nasal reply.

“Lorraine?” said Cantell.

“The full cycle is two minutes twenty. On my mark we’re currently forty-five seconds into green,” she said. Cantell tracked the second hand on his watch. “Mark! I’m in position.”

“Pulling up to the attendant now,” Cantell reported. “Okay, the Taurus is in play.” Cantell rolled down his window and handed over his parking ticket to the woman attendant, who clearly didn’t catch that Cantell was holding it by the edges to avoid leaving prints. The first half hour of parking was free. The display showed AMOUNT YOU OWE: 0.00.

“Have a nice day,” the attendant said.

Cantell rolled up the window. The red-and-white-striped restraining bar lifted. The Yukon followed the Taurus out through a light-industrial park.

The airport access road passed the Hailey Post Office, where the two vehicles stopped for a red light. On the green, they turned left onto Main Street-State Highway 75-with the Taurus now behind a red tow truck. Cantell pulled even with the wrecker, preventing the Taurus or any other vehicle from passing. Traffic was moving at a steady twenty-five miles per hour, just as the posted signs required.

Small towns, he thought.

As Main Street angled north, passing a medical clinic, Cantell got a good look at the town’s main traffic light. It was yellow.

Two blocks to go.

“Passing Elm,” Cantell announced.

Each of his three team members checked in. The operation was a go.

The light changed to red.

Traffic slowed and stopped. Cantell looked out at the pavement between his Yukon and the wrecker to the left. The evening light made a shadow on the road that came snaking from under the wrecker. It was cast by Matt Salvo, who hung upside down from the undercarriage. Salvo was already moving toward the back of the tow truck. Had the light stayed red only a few seconds longer… But it was not to be.

The light turned green, and traffic rolled.

“I’ve got your twenty,” Lorraine announced. “Showtime.”

Cantell spotted five feet seven inches of well-packed California girl on the next corner. She had her hands on a baby carriage and her eyes on the prize.

He’d met her at the Telluride Film Festival, and had been with her for the three years since.

She pushed the stroller off the curb and into the pedestrian crossing. Idaho law required traffic to yield. He and the wrecker braked. Together they blocked all trailing traffic. Not a single car horn sounded in protest.

Small towns.

Cantell watched Matt’s shadow move all the way to the back of the wrecker.

Lorraine, in the pedestrian crossing now, dropped her bag. Hitting the pavement, it spilled out Pampers, a baby’s bottle, and a stuffed toy. As she scrambled to reclaim the contents, Cantell popped his door and hurried to help her before some other good-natured soul felt obliged to do so.

Small towns.

He made a dramatic effort to search beneath the wrecker, as if something had been lost under there. He then stood and motioned for the driver to back up the tow truck to where it nearly hit the Taurus. He looked again and came up with one of the stuffed animals-all a ruse.

Beneath the wrecker, Matt Salvo released his harness and dropped to the pavement. He quickly fed a tube through the Taurus’s grille and into the vehicle’s fresh-air intake. He then turned the valve on a small tank the size of a fire extinguisher that was attached to the wrecker’s undercarriage. He freed the tow truck’s hook, reached under the Taurus, and found the tow ring with it.

“Hook’s on,” he announced into his headset.

“Ten seconds to green,” Lorraine told Cantell under her breath. She made a show of thanking him for his help.

He hurried back into the Yukon just as the traffic light changed.

Salvo grabbed the undercarriage and clipped himself back into the harness. He worked the hydraulic controls from there as the wrecker’s engine labored. The Taurus’s front tires lifted off the pavement.

Cantell, once again behind the wheel of the Yukon, stole a look at the Taurus: the driver was slumped against the side window.

“We’re a go,” he announced into the Nextel. He fastened his seat belt, stretching to sneak a look at his face in the rearview mirror.

The traffic light’s left-lane arrow turned green.

Roger threw his hand out the window of the tow truck and made the turn from the center lane. Tethered to the truck in front of it, the Taurus swung left.