The Assassin

SIXTEEN

Officer Jesus Martinez drove into the parking lot of the Airport Police Station in his five-year-old Oldsmobile 98 about two minutes before Corporal Vito Lanza pulled in at the wheel of his not-quite-ayear-old Cadillac Fleetwood.

Martinez would not have seen Lanza arrive had he not noticed that his power antenna hadn't completely retracted. Jesus took great pride in his car, and things like that bothered him. He unlocked the car and got back in and turned the ignition on and ran the antenna up and down by turning the radio on and off.

It retracted completely the last couple of times, which made him think, to his relief, that there was nothing wrong with the antenna, that it was probably just a little dirty. As soon as he got home, he would get some alcohol and wet a rag with it, and wipe the antenna clean, and then lubricate it with some silicone lubricant.

He was in the process of relocking the Olds's door when Corporal Lanza pulled in beside him.

That's a new Cadillac. Where the fuck does he get the money for a new Cadillac?

"Whaddaya say, Corporal?"

"Hey! How they hanging, Gomez?"

"It's Martinez, Corporal."

"Sorry."

"Nice wheels."

"Yeah, it's all right. Nothing like a Caddy."

"What's something like that worth?"

"What the fuck is the matter with you? It's not polite to ask people what things cost."

"Sorry, Corporal. Just curious."

"A lot," Lanza said. "Save your pennies, Martinez."

"Yeah."

"Or get lucky, which is how I got that fucker."

"Excuse me?"

"Las Vegas. You want a Caddy like that, you go to Las Vegas and get lucky."

"Yeah, I guess."

"So how do you like the Airport?"

"I haven't been out here long enough to really know. So far it's great. I was in Highway."

How the fuck did a little Spic like you get into Highway? You don' t look big enough to straddle a motorcycle.

"Yeah, I heard. So why did you leave Highway?"

"They made it plain to me that maybe I would be happier someplace else. Which was all right with me. I wasn't too happy in Highway."

They didn't want you in Highway as little as you are. Those fuckers all think they're John Wayne. And John Wayne, you're not, GomMartinez

"Well, walking around an air-conditioned building telling tourists "where they can find the pisser sure beats riding a motorcycle in the rain."

"You said it. Corporal."

"The next time they announce a corporal's exam, you ought to have a shot at it."

"Yeah, well, I'm not too good at taking examinations."

"Some people are, and some people aren't. Don't worry about it."

It wasn't until a few minutes after midnight, when he put the key in the Caddy's door, that Vito, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, realized that he had done something really fucking stupid.

He pulled the door open and slid across the seat, and then, cursing, lifted the fold-down armrest out of the way and put his finger on the glove compartment button.

Shit, it's locked. I don't remember locking the sonofabitch.

He found the key and unlocked the glove compartment, and exhaled audibly with relief. The Flamingo Hotel amp; Casino envelope was still there, right where he'd shoved it when he got in the car.

He took it out and glanced into it. There was enough light from the tiny glove compartment bulb to see the comforting thick wad of fifties and hundreds. He closed the envelope and stuck it in his pocket.

Not that much of it is still mine anymore.

I know goddamned well 1 didn't lock that compartment. Maybe, this is a Caddy, after all, it locks automatically.

He closed the glove compartment door, slid back across the seat behind the wheel, put the ignition key in, and started the engine.

Starts right fucking off! There really is nothing like a Caddy.

He backed out of the parking slot, noticed that the old Olds the Spic kid drove was still there. Well, at least he knew what he was doing in the Airport Unit. The little fucker was too dumb to pass the detective's exam, and too little to be a real Highway Patrolman, so they eased him out. They tossed him Airport Unit as a bone. He wondered if the little Spic was smart enough to know how lucky he was to be in Airport; they could just as easily have sent him to one of the districts, or somewhere else really shitty.

Vito decided he would be nice to the kid. Make sure he knows what a good deal he had fallen into. He might come in useful sometime.

He drove up South Broad Street and then made an illegal left turn onto Spruce.

What the hell it was after midnight, there was no traffic, and he was in his uniform, nobody was going to give him a ticket, even if some cop saw him.

He did decide to put the Caddy in a parking garage. If he didn't, sure as Christ made little apples, some asshole, jealous of the Caddy, would run a key down the side or across the hood. Or steal the fucking hubcaps.

When he parked the car, he remembered this was the garage where the mob blew away a guy, one of their own, who had pissed somebody off. Tony the Zee DeZego. They got him with a shotgun.

Tony met him at the door of her apartment in a negligee. Nicelooking one. Vito had never seen her in it before.

"You didn't have to wait up for me, baby," Vito said.

"I went to bed," she said, kissing him, but moving her body away when he tried to slip his hand under the negligee, "but Uncle Joe called me, and then I couldn't get back to sleep."

"What did he want?"

"He's worried about those markers you signed at Oaks and Pines Lodge."

"Why should he be worried? I'm good for them. And he set it up too, didn't he?"

"Well, that's what happened. He didn't set it up. They just thought he did. But because he sent you there, they told him they were holding him responsible. So he's worried. Six thousand dollars is a lot of money."

"Hey! I'm good for it. I got it in my pocket. You call him up and ask if he wants me to come over there right now with it, or whether he can wait until the morning."

"I'm sure it will be okay," Tony said.

"Call him!" Vito said. "Tell him the only reason I didn't make those markers good sooner was that I had to work."

"Okay, honey," Tony said. "Whatever you say."

Penelope Detweiler, wearing only the most brief of underpants, her naked bosom bouncing not at all unattractively, was chasing Matthew M. Payne around the upstairs sitting room of the Detweiler mansion in Chestnut Hill when the doorbell, actually a rather unpleasant-sounding buzzer, went off.

Matt Payne sat up in his bed suddenly.

Who the hell is that?

He looked up at the ceiling, where a clever little clock his sister Amy had given him projected the time by a beam of light. It was almost half past one.

Christ, don't tell me Evelyn's come back!

He threw the blankets back angrily and marched naked through the kitchen to the button by the head of the stairs that operated the door lock solenoid and pushed it.

The door opened and Detective Charley McFadden started up the stairs. On his heels was Officer Jesus Martinez, in uniform.

"You took your fucking time answering the doorbell," Detective McFadden said, by way of apology for disturbing Matt's sleep.

"I'll try to do better the next time."

"I thought maybe you had a broad up here," McFadden said as he reached the head of the stairs.

Not anymore. She finally went home, after reluctantly concluding that the only way she was going to be able to make it stand up again was to put it in a splint.

That being the case, where did that erotic dream about Precious Penny come from?

"If there was, you'd still be down there leaning on the doorbell," Matt said. "What do you say, Hay-zus?"

Martinez did not reply.

"You got a beer or something?" McFadden asked. "And why don't you put a bathrobe on or something?"

"Are we going to have a party?"

"No. This is business. We got to talk."

"You know where the beer is," Matt said, and went in the bedroom for his robe.

It smells in here. Essence de Sex.

"You got a Coke or something?" Martinez asked.

"There's ginger ale, Hay-zus," Matt said. "I don't think there's any Coke."

He went to the refrigerator and found a small bottle of ginger ale and handed it to Martinez.

"Thank you."

"Hay-zus thinks he's found a dirty cop at the airport," McFadden said.

Then he probably has. But why tell me?

"Tell Internal Affairs," Matt said.

"I can't go to Internal Affairs. I haven't caught him doing anything, but I got the gut feeling he's dirty," Martinez said.

"I don't understand what you're doing here," Matt said.

"Charley said I should talk to you."

"I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about," Matt said. "You want to take it from the beginning?"

"Tell him what you told me, Hay-zus," Charley said, lowering himself with a grunt into Matt's upholstered chair.

"There's a corporal out there," Jesus said. "A flashy Guinea named Lanza, Vito Lanza."

Matt did not reply.

"Just bought himself a new Cadillac," Jesus said. "You can't buy a Caddy on a corporal's pay."

"Maybe his number hit," Matt said, slightly sarcastic.

"He said he won the money in Las Vegas," Jesus said.

'That's possible," Matt said.

"Look at him. He won six thousand when he was out there," McFadden said.

"Yeah, I thought about that. But he's not Lanza."

"What does that mean?" Matt asked.

"You're fucking rich. You don't really give a shit whether you win or lose, and you came home with only six thousand."

"Onlysix thousand? I wish to Christ I had won six thousand," Charley said.

"There's more," Jesus said.

"Like what more?"

"He had almost ten thousand in cash, ninety-four hundred, to be exact, in his car tonight."

"How do you know that?"

"I looked."

"What do you mean, you looked?"

"When Charley and I were in Narcotics, we stopped a guy one night and took a car thief's friend from him," Jesus said. "I kept it."

A car thief's friend, sometimes called a "Slim-Jim," was a flat piece of metal, most commonly stainless steel, suitably shaped so that when inserted into an automobile door, sliding it downward in the window channel, it defeated the door lock.

"In other words, you broke into this guy's car, is that what you' re saying?"

"Yeah, and he had ninety-four hundred dollars in an envelope in the glove compartment, an ashtray full of cigarette butts with lipstick on them, and this."

Martinez threw something at Matt who caught it. It was a book of matches.Oaks and Pines Resort Lodge.

"What's this?"

"It's a fancy place in the Poconos," Jesus said.

"So?"

"I called a guy I know in Vice and asked him did he ever hear about it, and he told me that there's a room in the back for high rollers; that the word is that the Mob owns it."

"So?"

"This doesn't smell to you, Payne?" Martinez said, seemingly torn between surprise and contempt.

"I take back what I said before. You should not go to Internal Affairs. What you have is a guy that gambles. At this lodge, and in Las Vegas. And right now, he's lucky. The only thing I can see he's done illegally is gamble in the Poconos. That's a misdemeanor, as opposed to a felony. Like being in possession of burglar tools is a felony."

"What did I tell you he'd say, Hay-zus?" Charley McFadden said.

"I got thefeeling, Charley," Jesus said. "This guy is dirty."

"What's he doing?"

"They're smuggling drugs through the airport, most likely off Eastern Airlines flights from Puerto Rico, and probably from Mexico City flights too."

"Youknow this?"

"Everybody knows it, Matt," Charley said. "The feds, Customs Service, and the Bureau of Drugs and Dangerous Narcotics…"

"Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs," Jesus interrupted to correct him.

"Whatever the fuck they are, they're all over the place."

"They haven't caught this guy, then, have they?" Matt responded.

"Iwant to catch this fucker," Jesus said.

You're not a detective, Martinez- You're a simple police officer who took the detective's exam and flunked it.

You are an arrogant, self-satisfied shit, aren't you, Matthew Payne? Martinez is not only not a rookie, he's spent a lot of time dealing with drug people when he was in Narcotics. He knows what he's talking about.

"What do you want from me, Hay-zus?"

"I told him he ought to go to Wohl," Charley said. "He says he doesn't want to."

"Why not?" Matt asked, meeting Martinez's eyes.

"I don't work for Wohl anymore, for one thing. And even if I did, how the hell could I go to Wohl and tell him the reason I know this fucker runs around with almost ten thousand in his glove compartment is because I looked?"

"'Broke into his car' are the words you're looking for," Matt said.

"I told Hay-zus Wohl, or at least Pekach, would listen to him. And he could tell them the car was unlocked."

"That's splitting a hair," Matt thought out loud. "That wouldn't wash with either Wohl or Pekach. And I suppose you know that if you'd found ten thousand dollars' worth of cocaine in his glove compartment, it would be inadmissible evidence."

"Hey, I was a Narc when you were Mr. Joe College Payne," Jesus said. "I know what's admissible and what isn't."

"Hay-zus, you don't have a thing on this guy," Matt said.

"He wants to follow him, andget something on him," Charley said.

"You mean, he wantsus to surveil this guy, right?"

"I told you he'd tell us to go fuck ourselves," Martinez said.

"He can't do it himself, this Dago knows him."

"We're wasting our time. Let's get out of here," Martinez said.

"Hay-zus is usually right, when he smells something," McFadden went on.

"Come on, let's get out of here," Martinez repeated.

"What do you expect to find, Martinez, if we start to follow this guy around?" Matt asked.

"Association with known criminals," Martinez said. "That would give me enough to go to Wohl or Internal Affairs."

He keeps bringing up Wohl. Why? He doesn't work for Wohl anymore. But I do. That's what this is all about. He figures I could go to Wohl.

"For the sake of argument, Hay-zus," Matt said. "Let's suppose we follow this guy, and either he spots us before we catch him with some Mob type, or that you're wrong. He'd really be pissed. And we would have some explaining to do."

"In other words, no, right?"

"I didn't say that," Matt said. "I said what if."

"Then I would take my lumps."

"Weall would takeour lumps," Matt said.

"This guy is dirty," Martinez said. "We're cops."

Matt exhaled audibly.

"What have you got in mind?"

"You don't look like a cop," Martinez said. "You drive a Porsche. You could get into this place in the Poconos."

"How would we know when he was going to be there? And if we did, what am I supposed to do, tell Wohl I want the day off to take a ride to the Poconos?"

"I don't think he'd be going up there in the daytime," Martinez said. "Except over the weekend. He's got Friday-Saturday off. With a little bit of luck, he'd go up there then."

"And what if he just came across this book of matches someplace? Picked it up in a bar or something? You don'tknow that he's ever even been in this place." Matt picked up the matchbook. "Oaks and Pines Resort Lodge."

"Then I'll think of something else," Martinez said.

"Okay, Hay-zus," Matt said. "Let me know what you want me to do, and when you want me to do it."

"See, Hay-zus," McFadden said. "I told you."

"But don't let your Latin-American temper get out of joint if I can't jump when you call. I may be doing a lot of overtime."

"Overtime, you?" McFadden asked.

That was an honest question, Matt decided, not a challenge.

"Special Operations has been given Dignitary Protection. The Vice President's coming to Philly. There's a looney tune out there that wants to blow him up."

"No shit?" McFadden asked.

"Yeah, and the Secret Service thinks this guy is for real."

"What's that got to do with you?"

"Malone is in charge. For the time being, I'm working for Malone."

"We'll just have to see what happens," Martinez said. "If you're working, you're working."

When Joe Fierello drove his Mercedes-Benz onto the lot of Fierello Fine Cars at quarter to nine in the morning, he found Vito Lanza waiting for him.

"Don't tell me," Joe said as he got out of his car, "the transmission fell out."

"Not yet," Vito said. "I wanted to take care of my markers."

"Tony tell you I called?" Joe asked, but before Vito could answer, he went on, "Come on in the office. I'm not worth a shit in the morning until I have my coffee."

Fierello's secretary smiled at them as they walked past.

"Darlene, get us some coffee, will you?" Joe said, and as he walked behind his desk, he waved Vito into a chair in front of his desk. "Take a load off. You take anything in your coffee?"

Vito shook his head, no.

"Black both times, darling," Joe called out.

Darlene delivered the coffee and then left, closing the door behind her.

"Nice," Vito said.

"My wife's sister's girl," Joe said. "Anice girl."

"That's what I meant," Vito said.

Joe Fierello smiled at Vito. Vito did not like the smile.

"Like Tony," he said.

"Darlene doesn't go off overnight to the Poconos," Joe said. "You understand?"

"Absolutely."

"Don't misunderstand me, Tony's a nice girl. She's over twenty-one and she can do what she likes.

"I'm sorry there was that confusion about the markers," Joe said.

"They offered me the markers," Vito said. "I didn't ask for them."

"You went up there as my guest; they're holding me responsible for the markers. You're a nice fellow, Vito, but I don't like you six big ones worth. How soon can you make them good?"

"Right now, Joe. That's what I came here for."

He reached in his pocket and took out the envelope from the Flamingo.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"I'm making good my markers," Vito said, now very confused.

"You don't understand," Joe said. "I'm a businessman. You don't make your markers good with me."

"With who, then?"

"You really don't know, do you?"

"You got me pretty confused, to tell you the truth," Vito confessed.

"Let me make a call," Joe said.

He took a small leather notebook from his jacket pocket, found a number, and dialed it.

"This is Joe Fierello," he said when someone answered. "Could I talk to Mr. Cassandro, please?" He covered the microphone with his hand. "Mr. Cassandro is sort of like the local business agent, you know what I mean?"

Vito nodded.

Business agent, my ass; this Cassandro guy is with the mob.

"Paulo? Joe Fierello. You know those financial documents you were a little concerned about? Well, don't worry. They're good. Mr.Lanza is right here with me now, and he's anxious to take care of them."

He started nodding, and again covered the microphone with his hand. "He says he's sorry, I don't know what the fuck he means."

He removed his hand from the microphone.

"I'm sure Mr. Lanza would be perfectly willing to come wherever you tell him, Paulo," Fierello said, and there was a reply, and then he went on: "Whatever you say, Paulo. He'll be here."

He hung up the telephone and looked at Vito.

"He's coming right over. He said there was some kind of a mix-up, and he wants to make it right. It'll take him five, ten minutes. You got to be someplace else?"

Vito shook his head. "I really don't understand this," he said.

"Neither do I," Joe Fierello said. "So we'll have our cup of coffee, and in five, ten minutes, we'll both know."

Ten minutes later, a silver Jaguar drove up the driveway into Fierello Fine Cars, and stopped beside Joe Fierello's Mercedes-Benz. Paulo Cassandro, wearing a turtleneck sweater and a tweed sports coat with matching cap, got out of the back seat.

He looked toward the window of Joe Fierello's office.

"I think he wants you to come out there," Joe said.

Somewhat uncomfortable, but not quite sure why he was, Vito nodded at Joe Fierello and walked out of the building and down the stairs.

Joe Fierello opened the drawer of his desk, took out a 35-mm camera in a leather case, went to the window, and started snapping pictures.

"Mr. Lanza, I'm Paulo Cassandro," Paulo said. "I'm sorry about this."

"I don't understand," Vito said.

"We thought you were somebody else," Paulo said. "Lanza is a pretty common name. You, Mario the singer, and a lot of other people, right?"

"I guess so."

"I hate to tell you this," Paulo said, draping a friendly arm around Vito's shoulders, "but one of your cousins, maybe a second cousin, is a deadbeat. He owes everybody and his fucking brother. We thought it was you."

"I can't think of who that would be," Vito said.

"It doesn't matter. With a little bit of luck, you'll never run into him."

"Yeah," Vito said.

"We're sorry we made the mistake. We never should have bothered you or Joe with this. I hope you ain't pissed?"

"No. Of course not. I just want to make my markers good."

"There's no hurry. Take your time. Once we found out you wasn' tAnthony Lanza, we asked around a little, andyour credit is as good as gold."

"I always try to pay my debts," Vito said. "I like to think I got a good reputation."

"And now we know that," Paulo said. "So, whenever it's convenient, make the markers good. It don't have to be now. Next month sometime would be fine."

"Let me take care of them now," Vito said. "I already brung the cash."

"You don't have to, but if you got it, and it's convenient, that'd straighten everything out."

Vito handed him the six thousand dollars. Paulo very carefully counted it.

"No offense, me counting it?"

"No. Not at all."

"Watch the fifties, and the hundreds will take care of themselves, right?"

"Right."

Paulo put the money in the pocket of his tweed jacket.

"I want to give you this," he said, and took out a business card. "You want to loan me your back?"

Vito, after a moment, understood that Cassandro wanted to use his back as a desk, and turned around.

"Okay," Paulo said, and Vito turned around again.

Cassandro handed him the card. Vito read it. It said Paulo Cassandro, President, Classic Livery, Distinguished Motor Cars For All Occasions.

"You ever get back up to the Lodge, you just give that to the manager," Paulo said. "Turn it over."

Vito turned it over. On it, Cassandro had written, "Vito Lanza is a friend of mine. And I owe him a big one. "

"You didn't have to do nothing like this," Vito said, embarrassed.

"I don't have to do nothing but pay taxes and die," Paulo said. " Just take that as my apology for making a mistake. Maybe they'll give you a free ice cream or something."

"Well, thank you," Vito said.

"I'm glad we could straighten this out," Paulo said, and wrapped his arm around Vito's shoulder.

Vito felt pretty good until he got to the goddamned plumber's. The sonofabitch was waiting for him, and overnight, he'd gone back on his word. Now he wanted twenty-five hundred before he would fix a fucking thing at the house. That left him with nine hundred. The plumber said it would probably run another thousand, maybe fifteen hundred, for the labor and incidentals.

There isn't a plumber in the fucking world who ever brought a job in for less than the estimate, and even if this sonofabitch did, that would leave me, if he wants fifteen hundred, six hundred short.

I've got eleven, twelve hundred in the PSFS account, and I can always borrow against the Caddy.

Jesus, I hate to put a loan against the Caddy.

Why the fuck didn't I take Cassandro's offer to take my time making the markers good? I really didn't have to pay them off that quick. My credit is good.

The absence of inhabitants in most of the Pine Barrens does not obviate the need for police patrols. The physical principle that nature abhors a vacuum has a tangential application to an unoccupied area. People tend to dump things that they would rather not be connected to in areas where they believe they are unlikely to be found in the near future.

Enterprising youth, for example, who wish to earn a little pocket money by stealing someone's automobile, and removing therefrom parts that have resale value, drive the cars into the Pine Barrens and strip them there.

And, in the winter, more than one passionate back seat dalliance in an auto with a leaking exhaust system has ended in tragedy by carbon monoxide poisoning.

And the Pine Barrens is a good place to shoot someone and dispose of the body. The chances that a shot will be heard are remote, and a shallow grave even desultorily concealed stands a very good chance of never being discovered.

There had been an incident of this nature just about a year before, which Deputy Sheriff Daniel J. Springs was thinking about as he drove, touching sixty, on a routine patrol in his three-year-old Ford, down one of the dirt roads that crosses the Barrens.

Dan Springs, a heavyset, somewhat jowly man who was fifty and had been with the Sheriff's Department more than twenty years, tried to cover all the roads in his area at least once every three days. Nine times out of ten, he saw nothing but the scrubby pines and the dirt road, and his mind tended to wander.

One of Springs's fellow deputies, making a routine patrol not far from here, had come across a nearly new Jaguar sedan abandoned by the side of the road, the keys still in the ignition, battery hot, with half a tank full of gas.

That meant somebody had dumped the car there, and driven away in a second car. They'd put the Pennsylvania plate on the FBI's NCIC (National Crime Information Center) computer and got a hit.

The cops in Philadelphia were looking for the car. It was owned by a rich guy, a white guy, who had been found carved up in his apartment. The cops were looking for the car, and for the white guy's black boyfriend.

Springs had been called in on the job then, to help with working the crime scene, and to keep civilians from getting in the way. Springs never ceased to be amazed how civilians came out of the woodwork, even in the Pine Barrens, when something happened.

Everybody came in on that job. The State Police, and even the FBI. There was a possibility of a kidnapping, which was a federal offense, even if state lines didn't get crossed, and here it was pretty evident, with a Philadelphia car abandoned in New Jersey, that state lines had been crossed.

Plus, of course, the Philadelphia Homicide detectives working the job. Springs remembered one of them, an enormous black guy dressed like a banker. Springs remembered him because he was the only one of the hotshots who did not go along with the thinking that because the car had been foundhere, that if therewas a body, it had been dumped/ buried anywherebut here, and the chances of finding it were zilch.

The black Philadelphia Homicide detective had said he was pretty sure (a) that there was a body and (b) they were going to find it right around where they had found the Jaguar.

And they had. Not a hundred yards from the Jaguar they had found a shallow grave with a black guy in it.

Springs had spoken to the big Homicide detective:

"How come you were so sure we'd find a body, and find it here?"

"I'm Detective Jason Washington," the black guy had said, introducing himself, offering a hand that could conceal a baseball. " How do you do, Deputy Springs? We're grateful for your cooperation."

"Why did you know the body would be here?" Springs had pursued as he shook hands. "Call me Dan."

"I didn't know it would be here," Washington had explained. "But I thought it would be."

"Why?"

"Well, I started with the idea that the doers were not very smart. They would never have stolen the Jaguar, an easy-to-spot vehicle, for example, if they were smart. And I'm reasonably sure they were drunk. And people who get drunk doing something wrong invariably sober up, and then get worried about what they've done. That would apply whether they shot this fellow back in Philadelphia, en route here, or here. They would therefore be anxious to get rid of the car, and the body, as quickly as possible. I would not have been surprised if we had found the body in, or beside, the car. And they are both lazy, and by now hung over. I thought it unlikely that they would drag a twohundred-odd-pound corpse very far."

Just like Sherlock Holmes, Springs had thought. He haddeduced what probably had happened. Smart guy, as smart as Springs had ever met.

They'd caught the guys, two colored guys, who had shot the one in the Barrens, a couple of days later, in Atlantic City. They had been using the dead white guy's credit cards, which proved Detective Washington's theory that they were not very smart.

They'd copped a plea, and been sentenced to twenty years to life, which meant they would be out in seven, eight years, but Springs now recalled hearing somewhere that they had been indicted for kidnapping, and were to be tried in federal court for that. The white boy's father had political clout, he owned a newspaper, newspapers, and he wanted to make sure that the guys who chopped up his son didn't get out in seven or eight years.

Deputy Springs was thinking of the enormous black Homicide detective who dressed like a banker and talked like a college professor, wondering if he was still around Philadelphia, when suddenly the steering wheel was torn out of his hands, and the Ford skidded out of control off the dirt road and into a scraggly pine tree before he could do anything about it.

He hit the four-inch-thick pine tree squarely. He was thrown forward onto the steering wheel, and felt the air being knocked out of him. The Ford bent the pine tree, and then rode up the trunk for a couple feet, and then the tree trunk snapped, and the car settled on the stump.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Deputy Springs exclaimed. For a moment, he could see the branches of the pine tree, and then, accompanied by the smell of the water/antifreeze mixture turning to steam, the windshield clouded over.

There was a screeching from the engine compartment as the blades of the fan dug into the radiator.

Springs switched off the ignition, unfastened his seat belt, and pushed his door open. He got out and walked several feet away from the car and stood there for a moment, taking tentative deep breaths to see if he'd broken a rib or something, and bending his knees to see if they were all right.

Then he walked around the front of the car and examined the bumper.

They're not bumpers, they're goddamned decoration is all they are. Look at the way that "bumper" is bent!

He walked to the right side of the car and saw what had happened.

He'd blown a tire. The wheel was off the ground, and still spinning, and he could see the steel and nylon, or polyethylene or whatever they were, cords just hanging out of the tire.

That sonofabitch really blew. It must have been defective from the factory. Christ, it could have blown when I was chasing some speeder on the highway, and I would have been up shit creek.

He walked back to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and turned the ignition key on. The radio lights went on.

He called in, reporting that he'd had an accident, and approximately where, and that he'd need a wrecker.

They said they'd send someone as quick as they could, and asked if he was hurt. He told them no, he was all right, he had been lucky. He also told them he was going off the air, that he didn't want to have the ignition and the radios on, he might have got a gas line.

They told him to take it easy, they were going to send a State Trooper who was only ten, fifteen miles away, and that the wrecker should be there in thirty, thirty-five minutes.

He turned the ignition off and got out of the car again. He took another look at the shredded tire, and then walked twenty yards away and sat down against another pine tree.

He then offered a little prayer of thanks for not getting hurt or killed, and settled down to wait for the Trooper and the wrecker.