Authors: Stephen Hunter
Nick let his imaginary trip through the head of Eduardo Lanzman carry him across the main concourse and out to the taxi stand by the street. It was not particularly busy.
You want to get this over with. You’ll just take a cab straight into the Federal Building, right? You’ll ask to see me. If you have to wait, you’ll have to wait, that’s all
.
Nick hailed a cab.
“Yeah?”
“Uh, you know where the Federal Building is? Seven-oh-one Loyola Street, downtown.”
“Sure, man. Hop in.”
Nick climbed in, the cab sped away.
“New to the Big Easy?” the guy asked.
“No,” said Nick, trying to concentrate.
He watched as they left the airport, sped along the access road toward I-10, the big strip of federal highway that transects the shelf of land between the big river and Lake Pontchartrain upon which the city is built.
Along the road there was nothing. It was featureless, nondescript, a little parcel of anonymous America.
As they took the ramp and began to sweep toward a merge on the rush of I-10, Nick could see the gaudy parade of motels over on the right, down Veterans Memorial Boulevard.
“Stop!” he hollered.
“Huh?”
“Stop, dammit! I said pull over.”
“What the—” The cabby, a bald black guy with a gold tooth, fumed, but he obeyed. His name, Nick could tell from the hack license pinned to the right sunshade, was
JERRY NILES
.
“Now what?”
“Just shut up for a second.”
Nick sat there. The cab had slewed onto the shoulder and cars whirled by toward the city ahead.
No, he thought. He didn’t get this far. Because if he’s going to the Palm Court Motel, you can’t get there once you get onto I-70. You’ve got to make your mind up before you take the ramp.
“Buddy?”
“Shut up,” said Nick.
What does that tell you?
That tells you he made his pursuers on the access road, was afraid they’d nail him on the road, and made a snap decision to hunker down before they could do so.
It also meant he knew exactly how desperate they were—that they would be willing to risk some kind of terrible public scene to stop him. Pros prefer to work in private; they only go public with wet business if they have no other choice, unless they’re Colombian drug scum.
“Back up and head down Veterans Boulevard.”
“Hey, mister, I can’t back up and—”
“There’s a fifty in it for you.”
“Okay, but if a cop comes—”
“I am a cop,” said Nick, reflexively, then wished it were still true.
The driver backed up the ramp, executed a Kamikaze-like 240 and managed to get them, after some honking and screeching, headed down Veterans. The Palm Court was the third motel past the turnoff.
“Pull in here,” said Nick.
The driver obeyed.
“You want me to—”
“Just wait a minute.”
Nick sat, thinking.
He’s been made. He knows they’re close. Whatever he’s got—documents, a microchip, photos, whatever—he’s got to dump in some place that he can recover
.
Dump it. Go into the motel before they spot him. Get a room near the Coke machines in case they’ve got electronic penetration capacity, call Nick Memphis, and then wait.
He doesn’t know they’ve got an Electrotek 5400. He doesn’t know they’ll hear his call. He doesn’t know that when the knock on the door comes, and he says who’s there, and the answer comes “Nick Memphis,” he’s letting his own death squad in.
No matter, Nick thought.
The key thing is, he’s got to hide his package.
Something else came to Nick.
Eduardo, you’ve been hit now, you’ve been whacked by guys with axes, they’ve cut your fucking heart out. But somehow—Jesus, man, you had a set of balls on you—somehow you crawl into the bathroom and on the linoleum you write a message in your own blood. No, not the name of your killers, but something else.
You write—
ROM DO
.
What’s it mean? What’s the message?
ROM DO
.
“I want you to go back to the airport where you picked me up, and then repeat this journey.”
“You kidding?”
“I am not.”
“Okay, pal. Hope you got a big expense account.”
The cabby swirled the vehicle around and returned to the terminal.
“Don’t stop. Just follow the same route.”
Nick watchcd the scenery roll by.
Along here you were made, he thought. You looked up, you saw a car following you that wasn’t a taxi, you hit the panic button. You saw them, maybe reading their profiles through the windshield or maybe recognizing the vehicle. But it had to be here, along this dull, limited access road, with no escape, no place to hide, not even a place to stop.
They reached the parking lot of the motel again.
“Okay, pal?”
“Shut up,” said Nick.
He sat there, trying to think.
ROM DO
.
ROM DO
.
He looked around for
ROM DO
. But the only words he could see from the parking lot were inside the cab.
JERRY NILES
, it read, in caps, up there on the sun visor.
Dobbler felt absurd. Here he was among country types in the very small and rude town of Blue Eye, Arkansas, a few hours west of Hot Springs. There was nothing friendly about the place. What had happened to the famous American small-town hospitality? People looked at him sullenly. It was one of those one-horse places, a scabby, peeling town square around a Confederate monument. A banner floated above the main street, proclaiming to all the world
THE BUCKS ARE STOPPED HERE
. Hunting. Dobbler shivered. He felt trapped in this
godforsaken nightmare, sealed in by the mountains everywhere he looked, towering claustrophobically over the town.
The mountains scared him. Heavily encrusted with pines and on this rainy morning shrouded in mist, they looked as if they could kill you. He didn’t want to go up there but he had to. That’s where Bob would be.
Dobbler really had no idea what to do. With the cassette in his briefcase, he knew the only safety lay here. That is, if he could find Bob Lee Swagger. No one else could stop them. That was the irony. In America, with its FBI and its hundreds of police forces, no one could stop them except Bob Lee Swagger, the man with the rifle.
If these people knew anything they weren’t talking, especially to an outsider like him, in his lumpy suit, with his eastern beard. They probably thought he was gay. He’d better watch himself. High school boys might beat him to death with shovels or festoon him in a dress and drag him behind a pickup truck through town to the boundary of Polk County. But he had to have a plan. There had to be a plan.
He had thought he might go back to the now-notorious Bob sites, the burned church, Bob’s own still-sealed-off trailer eight miles out of town or the Polk County Health Complex, where Bob had so flummoxed the FBI—and RamDyne. But when he’d visited all these places that morning, he’d found them returned to banality, their brush with glory and the national media completely over.
Maybe guns were the hook. He had gone to a gun store on the edge of town and tried to start up a conversation. This was a big mistake. The owner looked at him as if he were from Mars, and asked him rudely if he wanted to see something or what.
“That one,” he said nervously.
The man took a large rifle off the rack, opened the bolt, and handed it over.
It was very heavy.
“Is this like the one Bob Lee Swagger used?” Dobbler asked.
The old man’s eyes narrowed. Then he allowed, “Sir, in these parts some folks don’t think Bob done what they all say he done. They say if Bob had taken a shot at the president, we’d be havin’ ourselves a new president. Now that rifle’s a Savage 110 in thirty-ought-six. Are you serious about buying or do you just want to cuddle on up to it and pretend you’re Bob Lee Swaggcr?”
This hostility had frightened Dobbler; he handed the rifle back and fumbled his way out of the shop. Now it was three hours later and all he’d done since was to wander around foolishly, wishing to hell he knew what to do.
I know he’s here
, he thought.
This is where he’d go, he’d have to go
.
Dobbler looked up into the mountains. They all looked the same to him, menacing. It reminded him of his first glance into the yard at Norfolk State, the terror and vulnerability he felt. He resolved to develop some steel. He resolved to be courageous. He determined to go up to the mountains, yes, to go up there and somehow face the man he had to face. Tomorrow.
Dobbler got into his rented car and drove back to the motel, feeling utterly beaten. He went to his room, realizing he’d wasted his first day entirely and that it wouldn’t take Shreck and his goons long to figure out where he’d run to. He had no place else to go.
He got out of the car and walked to his room. He fumbled with the lock and stepped into darkness. He wished he had stopped to buy something to eat, feeling suddenly feeble.
He turned on the light.
“Hello, little buddy,” said Bob the Nailer. “Believe you and I have some talking to do.”
He was afraid she’d have a date or a car pool arrangement, or something. But Nick was lucky as he sat parked just across the street from the Federal Building on Loyola at 5:35
P.M
. Sally came out of the building alone, crossed the street, went into the Payless Parking Garage, and emerged three minutes later in a gold Honda Civic.
He followed her into the traffic, trying to remember where she lived, or if she’d ever said. He simply latched on behind as she headed out I-10, east, until she reached the lakeside, then followed the sign that pointed the way to Gentilly Woods. He watched as she stopped at a Fill-a-Sack. When she came out a few minutes later with two plastic bags, he decided it was time to move.
“Sally! Hey, Sally!”
He dashed across the parking lot to her, but when she heard his voice and he saw suspicion flee across her pretty face, he knew in a second he had no chance at all of pretending he’d just bumped into her.
“Nick! Are you trying to get me fired! What are you doing here? You followed me. You
followed
me!”
“All right. Yeah, I did.”
“Well, you’re lucky I didn’t have a date.”
“I know that. You’re the most popular woman in New Orleans, I keep forgetting.”
“Nick, you’re in a lot of trouble. You could get me in a lot of trouble.”
“You haven’t told anyone I’ve been talking to you on the phone?”
“Hold it right there. You haven’t exactly been
talking
to me on the phone. When you
want
something, like a
top secret government report, then you talk to me on the phone. When you don’t want anything, then you don’t have the decency to give me the time of day. And why do I think you’re here now? To tell me how much you like my dress?”
“It’s very pretty.”
“To tell me how much you like my new cologne?”
“Hey, it smells great.”
“To tell me how you’ve missed me?”
“I’ve missed you a lot.”
“What do you want, Nick? You always
want
something. And it’s not even me. You don’t want to kiss me or sleep with me or anything. You just want some favor that’s going to cost me my job.”
“It’s real easy. It’s
so
easy. It’ll take you two minutes. I know you can do it.”
“What is it? Steal Mr. Utey’s billfold? Sneak an M-16 out of the armory?”
“Run some numbers for me. You can do it. You’re tied into the municipal numbers, I know you are.”
“I knew it. Boy, if you aren’t the predictable one. Nick, I just can’t—”
“Do you think I’d do this if it weren’t important?”
“It’s always important. It’s always just one more little thing. Why don’t you just go to Hap Fencl and explain. He
likes
you. Everybody
likes
you.”
“Ah … it just wouldn’t work out. Trust me. Sally, I need you to get into the New Orleans Municipal Motor Vehicles Registry. I need a name or a number or … well, I don’t know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh. Taxis. Didn’t I say that?
Taxis
. I’m looking for … well, I don’t quite know what.”
“When?”
“When?”
“When! When do you need it by?”
“I was hoping … I was hoping you’d let me take you out to dinner. Then I was hoping you’d let me drive you back downtown. Then I was hoping you’d run upstairs. And run the numbers tonight.”
“God, Nick, you deserve some sort of award for shamelessness. I mean, this sets a new record even by your standards.”
“Sally … I can’t even tell you what this is about or what I’ve been up to or who I’ve been with. But—please, trust me. This is
so
important.”
“Oh, Christ, Nick. Do you have a quarter?”
“A quarter?”
“A quarter.”
“Yes.”
“Give it here, then.”
“Sure. What—”
“I
do
have a date. I’ll go break it.”
“Oh, um—hey, with
who
?”
“Norm Fesper.”
“That
guy? He’s a defense lawyer, for Christ’s sake. Oh, come on, you can do better than that!”
“I just did,” she said, walking away to make the call.
They kept her locked in a room in a Quonset hut. The room smelled of rust and old paint, but it was warm and dry. She had a television. They brought her food three times a day, bland, nutritious institutional stuff. They brought her magazines, and someone changed the linen every third day. Between eleven and twelve and then again between three and four, they took her for long walks across the empty, rolling fields. She could see mountains in the distance.
She had two guards. Both were dour Latino men who avoided direct eye contact and treated her with what might be called gentle firmness. She was a practical woman: she understood that hating them was pointless.
“Where are we?” she asked. “Are we in Virginia or Maryland? I know it’s somewhere in the East.”
They would not answer. But she knew it was the East, because it was turning cold. She had forgotten the cold, living all those years in the desert. But now the cold insinuated itself into her life, crawling down the black wool sweater they’d given her to wear over a jumpsuit, or into the bed when she slept. There was frost on the window when she awoke, and the days were hard and crisp, the sky aching blue.