Nine

16

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tuesday, May 20, 2:16 P.M.

“Place it on the counter, please.”

Spooky turned a wide-eyed look of innocence on him. When she saw that her acting skills were unappreciated, she sullenly reached into the pocket of her windbreaker and placed the object she had pilfered on the crowded sales counter.

Spooky calmly met the sales clerk’s startled look of dismay, returning a look that said, Doesn’t everyone shop by placing unpurchased items in their pockets before bringing them to the counter?

It was an unusual shop, but Kit doubted it was quite that unique. Primarily, it sold colorful tiles. But a great many objects of Mexican art were available, too, and it was these that had drawn Kit’s attention to the store. Today it was doing a great business in milagros.

The woman behind the counter had explained that the small, brass, gold, tin, and silver-plated charms were primarily used to petition for miracles. They might be worn as jewelry, or more traditionally, pinned to the robe of a statue of a saint-a Spanish tradition, one that continued in various forms in Central and South America.

Some milagros were body parts-a leg for the healing of one’s leg, for example. But the milagros were of many other shapes, too-for anything for which one prayed for help-houses, animals, fruits, vegetables. There were also saints and praying figures. “And for help with love,” the clerk had said, and handed him a small, silver-plated heart.

Kit, ever aware of the power of charms of any kind, and a strong believer in divine intervention, bought the milagros by handfuls.

While the clerk had been counting up his purchases, Kit kept an eye on Spooky. She was getting rusty, he thought, because he had clearly seen her hand dive into her pocket.

He saw now that the object she had taken was a Day of the Dead figurine, a skeleton dog wearing a saucy, colorful, wide-brimmed hat and a carefully decorated leather shoulder bag. A female dog, then.

“Add that to my purchases, please,” he said to the clerk.

Outside, they walked in silence for a time. She asked for the dog and he gently removed it from the sack and handed it to her.

“Is it Molly?” he asked.

She nodded, not looking at him, studying the figurine. A few minutes later, she tucked it into her jacket. “Thanks for buying it for me,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry about the stealing.”

“I know.”

“If we just go to California-just go by ourselves, you and me, I promise I won’t steal anything more. Ever.”

He paused and turned toward her. He decided to face this head-on. “You know me pretty well. Do you think I’m going to abandon you?”

For several moments, she didn’t reply, and he didn’t like the wait much. But he was also glad she didn’t return a flip answer. She gave him a long, searching look, then said, “No.”

“Good. Because I won’t. Not ever. That was why I became your guardian and we spent all that time in court.”

“They let you because you have so much money.”

“You’re changing the subject. And besides, I don’t care why they ‘let me.’ I’m talking about why we went to court. Why did we go to court?”

“Because,” she said, “you’re crazy.”

He said nothing.

She relented. “Because you wanted to be my big brother.”

“Right. So don’t be afraid of my friends. My friends can never be my sister.”

They walked a little farther. She said, “It’s not like you’re really my brother, though.”

“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it’s like. Genetics aren’t everything-right?”

Despite the warmth of the afternoon, she gave a little shudder. “Right.”

They were almost back to the Suburban now. “By the way, you might want to give up on the stealing anyway,” he said. “I think you’re losing your touch.”

She dropped her head, so that he couldn’t see her face. After a moment, she said, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Good.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and couldn’t find his keys. He patted down his pants pockets, the other pockets of the jacket, then happened to look up to see her clasping both hands over her mouth, stifling laughter.

“Very funny. I suppose you have my wallet, too?”

She fell asleep in the Suburban not long after he started to drive toward the mountains. He called Meghan’s cell phone. They had checked in with each other several times since last night, much to Spooky’s annoyance.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine. The view from my new room is gorgeous, and I want to be outside. Feeling restless, in fact.”

“Just a little while longer. The taxi will pick you up at the service entrance. You’ve cleared that with the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He gave her the name of the man from the security company who would be meeting her. “He will already be in the cab, and he’ll make sure you get safely to the tram.”

She thanked him and started to summarize a soap opera she had just watched. He wasn’t familiar with the show and could make little sense of the story line as she presented it, but he knew she was nervous and going stir-crazy, so he let her talk. Before long, though, he started losing the signal, and they were forced to end the call.

Frederick Whitfield IV was in a foul mood. Grimly, he thought he could wait it out. Since leaving the little victory party in the bar yesterday evening, he had been subject to one mood swing after another.

Stealing the old man’s Thunderbird had not worked out as planned. Frederick suspected the man had figured out he was being followed. Well, perhaps not that, but the damned old geezer had taken so long getting out of his car, he had seen Frederick’s lame-ass rental car drive by, and stared at it in a hard way. “Quit mad-doggin’ me, you old butthole,” Frederick had muttered to himself.

Not an hour later, these words would seem prophetic. Sure that he had given the old man enough time to stop worrying about his T-bird, Frederick moved nearer to the car, ready to pop the lock and hotwire that baby, simple tools at hand. He hadn’t stolen a vehicle in a few years, and as he pulled his gloves on, he found himself joyfully anticipating this test of his old skills. In the next instant, he heard a screen door open, and turned to see a ferocious, noisy mutt bearing down on him, barking loudly. The dog had been allowed to chase Frederick back to the rental car. To be forced to haul ass out of perfect setups twice in one day was nearly more than Frederick could stand.

So, using the handheld GPS device he had with him, he drove to the closest shopping mall that had a big theater complex in it. He watched a middle-aged couple leave their pickup truck and walk to the theater box office. It took less than ten minutes to transfer his belongings from the rental car into the truck and be on his way.

The cab of the truck, though, was redolent with an odor he could hardly withstand, an aroma emanating, he was sure, from the half-empty bags of corn chips, wadded-up Kleenexes, and other souvenirs that awaited him courtesy of the previous occupants. He felt some punishment was due, and, reaching into the glove compartment, learned the owners’ address for the car registration. He used the GPS again, drove to the address, and spent a therapeutic forty-five minutes tossing the place completely. He made the happy discovery of a Ford Bronco in the garage. Not only did he now have keys for it, it was cleaner than the pickup truck. He switched vehicles and gleefully drove off.

He found a room for the night in a small but clean hotel. He had no intention of sleeping there. He merely shampooed in the hair color he had brought with him, coming closer to his natural blond. He wasn’t especially pleased with the result. He considered another set of tinted contact lenses, but he was uneasy about these props after the mishap at the Sandia Towers. He yawned at the face in the mirror, a wide, uninhibited donkey yawn. Everett would have hated to see him show such a lack of refinement.

“Tough,” he said aloud.

He lay on the lumpy mattress to watch the latest update on CNN, thinking he would see happier news of himself, but he fell asleep during a stock market report.

At four in the morning, angry at himself for having dozed off, he peered cautiously outside, saw no one else stirring, and quickly changed into jeans, a white T-shirt, worn leather aviator jacket, and black boots. The pair of Ray-Bans that went with this outfit were already in the jacket’s right pocket. He didn’t put them on now, but knew that when he did, he’d looked an awful lot like James Dean. A really buff James Dean. He left the room.

He realized that if he showed up in the parking lot at the Sandia Towers at this time of day, he would attract undue attention. He drove to the highway, eventually found a truck stop, and ate a hearty and-he could not help but believe-manly breakfast. He mistook the other patrons’ quick dismissal of him as a sign that his aura of dangerousness had been perceived. After all, he hadn’t shaved that morning, so he was probably looking pretty much like a bad-ass kind of guy.

Don’t even think about messing with me, he thought, as a beefy-armed trucker went by. I have killed, and I will not hesitate to kill again.

He wished he could say that aloud, stand up on the table and shout it.

Much better, though, to know something others didn’t know. Frederick had always loved secrets, both keeping and finding them. Everett called Frederick his spy. He always said it with respect, with gratitude. Frederick had never met anyone who appreciated his talents as much as Ev did.

He wondered briefly what Ev would make of his disobedience. The thought made him uneasy, and he paid his bill in cash and went back out to the Bronco.

He stopped at a twenty-four-hour supermarket to buy a few supplies to help him survive the hours of surveillance ahead of him. He bought a cheap foam cooler, some ice, and a lot of bottled water. He bought some bread, a small jar of mayo, cheese, some lettuce, some sandwich meat, and a knife.

He felt pride in his purchases. He hadn’t learned to make a sandwich until he met Everett. Everett had no more need to prepare his own food than Frederick did, but he had forced the members of Project Nine to learn, as he put it, to “stop acting rich,” for those times when they would need to blend in with less important people. Thinking of Ev as he entered the checkout lane, he placed two packs of nearly every brand of chewing gum into his basket. This was another act of defiance-Ev hated gum chewing.

He prepared his new cooler and then drove over to the Sandia Towers Hotel. He had managed to kill about four hours. Eight in the morning was not such an odd time, though, so he approached the parking lot attendant’s booth. He was a little disappointed to see that a different attendant was on duty, because he had looked forward to testing his change of appearance. He found a space from which he could watch Meghan’s car. He rustled through the plastic shopping bag with the gum in it and began a taste test.

At noon, he called his parents, who were staying in their Italian villa through the end of the summer, when they planned to return to France, where they lived most of the time. Since he had rarely contacted them after the day he turned twenty-one-and received the bulk of his grandmother’s estate-he surprised them. They had not forgiven him for suddenly becoming wealthier than they were. He understood that completely. He hoped his mother would mention the big news about the FBI’s Most Wanted list, but when he asked if they had watched any news of the U.S., she told him that they had decided that the only way they would ever really relax and enjoy life was to go on what she called “a media fast.” When he (quoting Everett) told her that intentional ignorance was the opium of the coward, she hung up on him. This was not a first.

At one o’clock, hotel checkout time, he stretched. Seeing that Meghan hadn’t brought her luggage down to her car, and concluding that this meant she was staying another night, he devised a ruse that he thought might work well. He would disguise his voice, ask for her room, and when connected, ask her if she wanted extra towels. In his experience, women always did want them, if you suggested it. “That’s room seven-eighteen, right?” he would say, and she would correct him and tell him her new room number. He would grab a stack of towels from a housekeeping cart and hold them in front of his face so that she couldn’t see him. She would answer the door. Then he would make her tell him where Gabe was hiding these days.

But when he called and asked for her room, the operator said that he would have to leave a message with her, as Ms. Taggert was not accepting calls.

He was angry, so he said, “Ask her if she wants more towels,” and hung up.

At about three o’clock, a disturbing thought occurred to him. What if Meghan planned to meet Gabe without ever driving anywhere? What if they were up in her hotel room right now?

But then he thought back to the previous evening’s first fiasco. The reactions of the people at the front desk, the guard who chased him-Meghan had obviously been in touch with hotel security, and now they were keeping an eye on her. Somehow, he doubted she would bring her fugitive brother here under those circumstances.

His uneasiness grew, however, when he considered other possibilities. He decided to drive around the hotel perimeter to better assess the situation. When he used the ticket to exit, he remembered his impatience with the gate the day before and saw that parking in the garage itself might be a bad idea. If Meghan got into her Beemer, he would see her, but if he followed her out, she would very likely see him, and even if she didn’t recognize him, she would notice that a guy who looked a lot like James Dean was following her in a Bronco. And if he waited to follow, by the time he got past the parking gate, he’d lose track of her.

So he put on his shades and looked for a good surveillance spot.

Shortly after he left the garage, he found a wide alley that ran along the back of the hotel. Several dozen floral centerpieces were being delivered at a receiving area. Frederick considered for a time all the ways he could gain entry through the back of the hotel, disguise himself in an employee’s uniform, and work at learning Meghan’s room number. None of these seemed like pleasant undertakings, or even likely to pay off, but he didn’t mind having backup plans.

Driving along the front of the hotel, he saw two taxicabs parked in the shade of the area near the lobby entrance. This made him consider another complication: Taxicabs were another means by which Meghan could evade his watchful eye.

He eventually found a place along the street that would allow him to watch both the front entrance of the hotel and the exit for the parking garage.

About twenty minutes later, just as he had decided he was tired of the confines of the Bronco, that he’d just go home and forget all about Meghan, his attention was caught. A taxicab with a male passenger started to pull into the front drive, then suddenly veered away from the entrance, the passenger gesturing as he spoke to the driver. Frederick tried to get a better look at the passenger but failed. The driver then drove to the alley behind the hotel. Curious, Frederick started the Bronco and then moved it so that he could watch the cab without going down the alley itself or being too easily observed by its occupants.

The passenger did not get out. Frederick began to be sure this was Gabe, waiting for Meghan. He considered going down the alley right now and kidnapping him, or even killing him outright. But he’d have to kill the cabdriver and anyone else who might be around the area, and he had no gun with him. He hadn’t tried to obtain one here, either, an oversight he was regretting. But why should he have to skulk around a strange town arranging in low-life bars to buy untried weapons, when he had perfectly good guns at home? If he’d been able to bring his personal arsenal along with him, he would have had plenty of firepower to accomplish the task. For at least two full minutes, his thoughts were taken up with the injustice of the various measures that impinged upon rights guaranteed to him and every other American by the Second Amendment.

Just then he saw Meghan Taggert, escorted by a hotel security guard, leave the hotel through a service entrance door and walk toward the cab. The guard was carrying a small overnight bag. The cabdriver got out, put the bag in the trunk, and-after she shook hands with the guard-Meghan got into the cab.

Frederick noted the cab number, then moved a little farther down the street.

His heart was beating faster now, the thrill of taking up the hunt in earnest singing through every nerve. The cab came out of the alley and moved down the street, nothing indicating a fear of pursuit.

“That’s where you’re wrong, you fucking idiots. I’m after you now!”

He pulled smoothly and slowly away from the curb, following at a discreet distance. He nearly lost them once, then saw that they were getting on to Interstate 40. It was easier for Frederick to hide the Bronco in the freeway traffic, and there were few taxis on it. He smiled and hummed the William Tell Overture.

The cab exited on Tramway Boulevard. Frederick stayed farther back now but had no difficulty keeping the cab in sight. When it pulled into the Sandia Peak Tramway parking lot, he kept driving. He waited, found a place to park along the road, and pulled out a set of high-powered binoculars.

The cab pulled into a passenger unloading area. As the driver got out to retrieve the bag, both Meghan and the male passenger exited. A burly man with graying sideburns-not Gabe.

The truth was instantly clear to Frederick. Meghan was going up to the mountains to this big dude’s cabin, where he was going to fuck her brains out. Obviously the guy was married and cheating on his wife with Meghan, or they wouldn’t have met behind the hotel. It was really sordid. Frederick had a hard on thinking about it.

He decided that he’d let the man take her up there, let them start to drink a little, let them get naked, and then he’d give the big old dude the last surprise of his life. For Meghan, he had many other surprises in store.