Authors: Rex Burns
“Thanks, Mrs. O.” I cradled the fragrant mass in my hands. “You haven’t noticed either of those two men hanging around, have you?”
“No, and it’s a good thing for them I haven’t. How’s your head?”
“It’s fine now, no little thanks to you. I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s possible those people may come back. They’d be after me, but I wouldn’t like you to be taken by surprise.”
“Oh? I thought you told me detectives led pretty quiet lives.”
That’s what I told her when I moved in. “Yes, ma’am. Generally, we do. But these two men seem to have some kind of vendetta against me. I don’t think they’ll try anything here—not with you around. But you might keep an eye out for strangers in the neighborhood.”
“You bet I will! And I’m glad your life is getting a little more exciting. Strapping young man like you needs that. And don’t you worry about me. I got a good sharp pair of eyes, and I’m a little old lady in tennis shoes who doesn’t intend to surrender my way of living to any bunch of hoodlums.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I placed the lilac stems in a vase of water and telephoned Margaret.
“Hi—good to hear from you!”
I didn’t merely imagine the warmth in her voice and it honed my worry for her. “Margaret, I won’t be able to make dinner tonight.”
“Oh—I’m disappointed. The children will be too. But thanks for calling. Can you come by later?”
“It might not be a good idea for me to see you too soon.”
The line was silent and then she said quietly, “That’s up to you, Devlin, of course.”
“Hey, whoa—it’s not what you think!”
“Then what is it?”
“Some people are following me. I don’t want to give them a chance to try anything when I’m with you or the kids.”
“What do you mean, ‘try anything’?”
I told her about Susan.
“Oh, Devlin, I’m so sorry! Is there some way I can help?”
“No. She’s in good hands and Bunch is with her. I’ll be checking with him soon. She was hurt because she was near me, Margaret. I don’t want to take any chances with you.”
“I understand, Devlin. And I appreciate it. Are you certain that it’s safe? For Austin and Shauna, I mean. One reads so many horrible things …”
“I’m sure they’ll be all right, and so will you. But if you do notice anyone or if you have any fears at all, call me. You have my numbers.”
“All right.” She asked, “Devlin, will we be able to see each other at all?”
“Sure. We’ll just have to be careful, that’s all. And this won’t last long—I promise you that.”
The meeting with the subs took the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening; at the office in the morning I was on the telephone chasing down the inevitable loose threads that turned up in last night’s meetings. I had a session with Martin, the construction manager, and spent a long time on the series of calls that always had to be made when the pace of a project sped up and the installation dates came due. But all the activity couldn’t keep my thoughts from returning to Susan and to what her injuries meant for Margaret. The fence, the guard at the entrance to the compound, these were slender protection, but it was better than nothing. Still, I’d feel better if I could arrange some kind of surveillance—something that she didn’t have to know about and worry over. There were a couple of p.i.’s who were good enough to trust—people I’d worked with before. But the best protection would be a bodyguard. Though that wasn’t too likely. Before we’d hung up, I mentioned the possibility to Margaret, but she did not want one. Definitely. After all, she said, I’d told her they were after me, not anyone else; she would be careful; she felt safe in her home with its own security devices. It was me she was worried about, and she wanted me to be very careful. “We’ve just discovered each other, Dev. I don’t want to lose that.”
“What are you smiling at?” Uncle Wyn tossed his wool cap on the desk and eyed me. “A young man staring out the window with a goofy smile like that—it must be springtime.”
“Just something personal, Uncle. There’s not much to smile at, anyway.”
“I heard about Susan on the car radio. A hit and run?”
“Yeah. But she was just unlucky. It was me they wanted.”
“Oh, Christ, Devlin.” He stifled whatever he was going to say, the lips under the long, crooked nose pinching shut. Then he shook his head. “Just be careful, my boy.”
“Don’t worry, Uncle.”
“Easier said than done, but I’ll give it a shot. How’s Susan?”
“She’s still in intensive care and still unconscious. I talked to Bunch this morning and he’ll call when he knows something.”
“If there’s anything I can do …”
“There’s not much anyone can do right now. We just wait and see.”
“That poor girl. And damn anyone who would do that.”
That was something else that had been buzzing around in my thoughts.
“How are you and Mrs. Haas getting along?”
I looked up. “Fine. I was thinking of her when you came in.”
“Yeah. That’s what I figured.” He stood, a pending figure in a light gray topcoat considering carefully his next words. “I try not to stick my nose in your life, Devlin. You know that. But since Douglas died, I’ve sort of adopted you whether you like it or not. It’s because I do care. You understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Maybe. Why don’t you just say it?”
“Right. Okay, I will. Mrs. Haas is a wonderful woman. You wouldn’t care for her unless she was. And even if I don’t know anything about the security business, I do know a little something about women. You know,” he added with awkward formality, “affairs of the heart.”
“‘Affairs of the heart? That’s an old-fashioned phrase, Uncle.”
“Yeah, well, damn it, this is serious and I’m trying to be serious. A regular Dutch uncle. So believe me—I know a little something about women. I’m sure a woman like her isn’t interested in a quick affair. Just like I know you wouldn’t take advantage of … of her bereavement for that.”
I waited.
“So you of course are considering marriage.”
I waited.
“Yeah … ah … of course. What I want to know is, how much you’ve thought about the responsibilities, Devlin. Marrying a woman with two children is not only expensive but a tremendous responsibility.”
“I have thought about it, Uncle.”
“Well then, have you thought about what it means for your line of work? Somebody tried to kill you yesterday, you tell me, and they’re still out there.”
I waited.
“Well, damn it, here’s what I’m trying to say, and you’re not making it easy: have you considered what your line of work would mean for Mrs. Haas and her children?”
“Yes, I have. I knew a number of Secret Service agents who were married, Uncle. And if it was a good marriage, it lasted. It will be a strain, but other people have managed in similar situations, and from what I know of Margaret, we would too.”
He hesitated again. “This should be asked too: have you faced the idea that the kids are by another man?”
I considered that. “I like those kids, Uncle. Very much. I don’t doubt that I could love them as my own. For one thing, they’re a part of Margaret. For another, they’re new souls just entering into a pretty harsh world. And I’d like to do what I can to guide and help and—yes—love them toward what they’ll have to face.”
Uncle Wyn heaved a deep breath, his face tilted down to study the waxed top of the desk. “I know a little bit about jealousy, too. But you just taught me something of magnanimity. And you put words on something I feel about you, Dev.” He looked up, a slight smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “I think I worry more about you than about Ellen or Brenda or Allan. Well, maybe not Allan. But since he moved out to the Coast, you got to carry his share of my worry, too.”
“I understand, Uncle. And I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not be too magnanimous. But think about this: in a lot of ways, you still got a lot to learn about this world, Dev. Hell, we all do. But you’re in a dangerous line of work and now you’re thinking about getting instant family.”
“Uncle—”
“Let me finish—I just want you to hear this: there’s room in my firm for you. And not make work, either. It’s got responsibility and a lot of money in the future for some very hard work. It’s something I know you can handle. Wait a minute—I’ll be finished in a minute. I’m not leaning on you for an answer now; I just want you to know you got this alternative. If things go the way they seem and you find a problem between your present business and what you’ll owe Mrs. Haas and her children, the offer’s there. Always.”
“Thanks, Uncle.”
We talked about a few other things, but the man had said what he came to say. And when the door closed behind him, I sighed and got busy on the telephone.
When, late in the afternoon just before I closed the office, the telephone rang, I picked it up expecting a call from one of the electronics suppliers in California. But it was Bunch.
“She’s still unconscious, Dev. But the doc says her reflex actions are improving. He expects her to come out of it soon.” Bunch added, “I called her mother. She’s coming in tonight from Des Moines.”
“Want me to meet her at the airport?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem. What about the CAT scan?”
“The doc decided to wait.” Somewhere behind Bunch’s voice a flat metallic quack paged doctor somebody. “Dev, we’re not letting this one slide.”
“I’ve been doing some thinking about that.”
“And?”
“And I figure they still want me.”
“Have you seen them? By Christ—”
“Not yet. But I want them to know I’m healthy. That they got the wrong one.”
“I see.” Bunch thought it over. “We want to be careful with this one. I don’t want those bastards to get away.”
Neither did I. Nor did I want to scare them off by going after them too quickly. That had been behind my earlier call to an acquaintance at a radio station that featured twenty-four-hour news: local woman jogger injured in hit-run accident; two people running with her escaped injury. The joggers were unable to give police a description of the vehicle. I thought that if one news source decided it was a story, others would follow; and, sure enough, the six o’clock local coverage on one of the television stations had a three-second item, while another station used it to lead into a thirty-second editorial against the growing animosity between joggers and drivers.
“You think that’ll bring them back?” Restless, Bunch strode back and forth in front of the fireplace, his bulk shrinking my living room.
“It’s all we have to go with right now. I can’t see us walking up and down Colfax Avenue with pistols in hand and yelling for them to come out and fight.”
“Yeah. Well. Maybe we should just go over to Neeley’s office and wipe the goddamn place up.”
“Evidence, Bunch. We want to know for certain he did hire them. Besides, I think it’s a personal thing with those two scumbags now. That’s why they’ll take the bait—getting Susan wasn’t enough. They’re after me because they couldn’t do it right the first time.”
Susan regained consciousness, more or less, for a little while in the early evening, and when I turned up at her bedside with her mother, Mrs. Faulk, we all had the satisfaction of a groggy smile from her fever-cracked lips. Then the nurse shooed Bunch and me out of the ICU and I talked him into a drink at my house. There wasn’t much he could do walking up and down the corridor except get in the way of the nurses.
“They’re talking brain damage, Dev.”
“What?”
“The concussion. It did a lot of damage, and they’re not sure how she’ll come out of it.”
“Jesus, Bunch.”
“Jesus doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. I learned that a long time ago when I saw what Jesus let people do to children.” Bunch crossed the room again and slammed the heel of his hand against the wall, rattling the window in its frame.
“It’s too early to tell how badly she’s affected, Bunch.”
“Yeah. Right. Except I’ve seen people, Dev: car accidents, bullet wounds, blunt instruments—all that crap that scrambles the brains. It does things—they can’t remember words, they can’t thread a needle or even hold a pencil. Sometimes they can’t even wipe themselves.”
Bunch’s voice did not rise and he talked as if he were reading stock-market quotations, but the man’s hand had a slight tremor as it balled into a large fist against the stuccoed wall.
“The docs don’t know yet, Bunch. They can’t know. It’s too soon to tell how bad the damage is.”
“Yeah. I know.” The fist relaxed and Bunch dragged the hand across his sleepless face. “They told me I could come back at eight. I’m going to grab something to eat and go on over.”
“I’ll be by after I check the job.”
He nodded. “How’s AeroLabs? Anything you want me to do?”
“No. I went over it all with Martin this morning. He’s set to go tonight.” The idea was to do much of the wiring and remodeling at night when the company was closed, both so production wouldn’t be disturbed and for security purposes. “I’ll see how it’s going and then come by the hospital.”
Susan was asleep when, half-lost in the maze of softly lit corridors, I finally located room 522 where she had been moved since the afternoon. Mrs. Faulk, a slender woman in her fifties, looked up from a magazine and smiled welcome as I came in.
“Asleep?”
She nodded. “It’s the best thing for her.”
Susan’s tanned and healthy face already had that yellowish cast that came from illness and hospitals. The swirl of blond hair over the pillow seemed limp and lifeless as well, and one of Bunch’s large fingers stroked a tendril of it gently. I set a potted plant on a table already crowded with flowers. “Has she said anything? Any change?”
“She said hello to her mother,” said Bunch. “Mostly she’s been sleeping.”
We watched the motionless form on the high, efficient-looking hospital bed.
“Why don’t you two go on,” said Mrs. Faulk. “I know you’re working tonight, and there’s not a thing to do while she’s asleep like this.”
But Bunch was reluctant to go and it was another half-hour before the two of us rode down the oversize elevator for the lobby and the parking lot across the street where the Ford sat in nondescript anonymity.