We knew a fresh shipment of stolen art was on its way, this time from the defenseless churches of Italy and consisting mostly of the second-favorite subject after M&C, being St. Sebastian — you know, the bird condo, the saint with all the arrows sticking out of him for the birds to perch on. Anyway, the Bureau had tracked the St. Sebastian shipment into the U.S. through the entry port at Norfolk, VA, but then had lost it. (Not us seven — some other bunch of screwups.) It was on its way to Figuer and whoever his customer might be, which is why we were there, blanketing his neighborhood, waiting for him to make his move. Meanwhile, it was, as my goofy new friend had suggested, a good night for a steak out.
Seven men, in seven cars, trying to outwait and outwit one wily art smuggler. In each car we had a police radio (in case we needed local backup); we had our walkie-talkie; and we had a manila folder on the passenger seat beside us, containing a map of the immediate area around Figuer’s house and a blown-up surveillance photo of Figuer himself, with a written description on the back.
We sat in our cars, and we waited, and for five days nothing had happened. We knew Figuer was in the house, alone. We knew he and the courier must eventually make contact. We watched the arrivals of deliverymen from the supermarket and the liquor store and the Chinese restaurant, and when we checked, they were all three the normal deliverymen from those establishments. Then we replaced them with our own deliverymen and learned only that Figuer was a lousy tipper.
Did he know he was being watched? No idea, but probably not. In any event, we were here, and there was no alternative. If the courier arrived with a package that looked like a Genoa salami, we would pounce. If, instead, Figuer were to leave his house and go for a stroll or a drive, we would follow.
In the meantime we waited, with nothing to do. Couldn’t read, even if we were permitted to turn on a light. We spoke together briefly on our walkie-talkies, that’s all. And every night around nine, one of us would come here to the Burger Whopper to buy everyone’s dinner. Tonight was my turn.
Apparently everybody in the world felt thick fog created a good night to eat out, to counteract a foggy night’s enforced slowness with some fast food. The line had been longer than usual at the Burger Whopper when I arrived, and now it stretched another dozen people or so behind my new friend and me. A family of four (small, sticky-looking children, dazed father, furious mother), a young couple giggling and rubbing each other’s bodies, another family, a hunched fellow with his hands moving in his raincoat pockets, and now more in line beyond him.
Ahead, however, the end was in sight. Either the Whopper management hadn’t expected such a crowd on such a night, or the fog had kept one or more employees from getting to work; whatever the cause, there was only one cash register in use, run by an irritable fat girl in the clownish garnet-and-gray Burger Whopper costume. Each customer, upon reaching this girl, would sing out his or her order, and she would punch it into the register as if stabbing an enemy in his thousand eyes.
My new friend said, “It can get really boring sitting around in the car, can’t it?”
I’d been miles away, in my own thoughts, brooding about this miserable assignment, and without thinking I answered, “Yeah, it sure can.” But then I immediately caught myself and stared at the goof again and said, “What?”
“Boring sitting around in the car,” he repeated. “And you get all stiff after a while.”
This was true, but how did he know? Thinking, What is going on here? I said, “What do you mean, sitting around in the car? What do you mean?” And at the same time thinking, Should I take him into protective custody?
But the goof spread his hands, gesturing at the Burger Whopper all around us, and said, “That’s why we’re here, right? Instead of four blocks down the street at Radio Special.”
Well, yes. Yes, that was true. Radio Special, another fast-food chain with a franchise joint not far from here, was set up like the drive-in deposit window at the bank. You drove up to the window, called your order into a microphone and a staticky voice told you how much it would cost. You put the money into a bin that slid out and back in, and a little later the bin would slide out a second time with your food and your change.
A lot of people prefer that sort of thing because they feel more secure being inside their own automobile, but us guys on stakeout find it too much of the same old same old. What we want, when there’s any kind of excuse for it, is to be out of the car.
So I had to agree with my carrot-topped friend. “That’s why I’m here, all right,” I told him. “I don’t like sitting around in a car any more than I have to.”
“I’d hate a job like that, I can tell you,” he said.
There was no way to respond to that without blowing my cover, so I just smiled at him and faced front.
The person ahead of me on line was being no trouble at all, for which I was thankful. Slender and attractive, with long, straight, ash-blond hair, she was apparently a college student and had brought along a skinny green loose-leaf binder full of her notes from some sort of math class. Trying to read over her shoulder, I saw nothing I recognized at all. But then she became aware of me and gave a disgusted little growl, and hunched farther over her binder, as though to hide her notes from the eavesdropper. Except that I realized she must have thought I was trying to look down the front of her sweater — it would have been worth the effort, but in fact I hadn’t been — and I suddenly got so embarrassed that I automatically took a quick step backward and tromped down squarely on the goof s right foot.
“Ouch,” he said, and gave me a little push, and I got my feet back where they belonged.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just... I don’t know what happened.”
“You violated my civil rights there,” he told me. “That’s what happened.” But he said it with his usual toothy grin.
What was this? For once, I decided to confront the weirdness head-on. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m not a cop, then,” I told him, “so I can’t violate your civil rights.”
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I’ve been wondering what you do for a living. I know it’s nosy of me, but I can’t ever help trying to figure people out. I’m Jim Henderson, by the way. I’m a high school math teacher.”
He didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did I, because I was mostly trying to find an alternate occupation for myself. I decided to borrow my sister’s husband’s. “Fred Barnes,” I lied. “I’m a bus driver. I just got off my tour.”
“Ah,” he said. “I’ve been scoring math tests. Wanted to get away from it for a while.”
Mathematicians in front of me and behind me — another coincidence. It’s all coincidence, I told myself, nothing to worry about.
“I teach,” Jim Henderson went on, “up at St. Sebastian’s.”
I stared at him. “St. Sebastian’s?”
“Sure. You know it, don’t you? Up on Rome Road.”
“Oh, sure,” I said.
The furious mother behind us said, “Move the line up, will ya?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, and looked around, and my girl math student had moved forward and was now second in line behind the person giving an order. So I was third, and the goof was fourth, and I didn’t have much time to think about this.
Was something up, or not? If I made a move and Jim Henderson was merely Jim Henderson, just like he’d said, I could be in big trouble, and the whole stakeout operation would definitely be compromised. But if I didn’t make a move, and Jim Henderson actually turned out to be the courier or somebody else connected to Francois Figuer, and I let him slip through my fingers, I could be in big trouble all over again.