I put on my jeans, Nikes, and the red sweatshirt, stenciled with I LOVE ARKANSAS in green below a Tweety Bird, that I’d gotten at the Discount Den during Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings. I like to be stylish, even in the middle of the night. I went downstairs to make coffee.
I filled my travel mug, grabbed a two-pack of Twinkies, and went outside. A Crown Victoria, black in the white light of the moon, was in the usual spot, a hundred yards down. I recognized Agent Other behind the wheel, Agent Blonder riding shotgun. I smiled at them, held up my Twinkies in salute, and rejected the idea of asking them for an update about Gateville. They wouldn’t tell me; zipper-lips was the first commandment of being a junior G-man. No matter, things were under control.
I walked down to the bench by the river. Behind me, the Crown Victoria started up and eased quietly forward to keep me in sight. I sat on the bench, and the car’s engine stopped.
I sipped coffee and took small bites of a Twinkie, making it last.For the first time since Stanley Novak had come to see me in June, the greasy tingle of impending disaster was gone from my gut. I felt good, rested. Things were going to get better.
Trucks rumbled along the tollway. Somewhere closer a railroad signal clanged, and Rolling Stones music filtered out of one of the joints along Thompson Avenue. Mick was complaining about getting no satisfaction. Right, Mick. And from a car parked in the dark fringes of the city hall lot, a woman laughed, not in joy but in need. Too bad she couldn’t hook up with Mick, I thought; they could do each other some good.
Normal sounds; Rivertown sounds.
I slid the second Twinkie out of the package. It was cool for the end of August, and I was glad for the sweatshirt. I looked up. The sky was that startling black that comes when there is a full moon and the summer air has suddenly gone crisp. The lights along the river stood out bright in the night, temporarily freed from the humid haze that shrouds them in summer. It was a good night, a clear night.
I watched the river reflect lazy silver ripples in the moonlight, ate slowly at the Twinkie. By now, Till’s men were in the tunnels. I imagined dozens of them hand-digging, pulling out wires and packets of D.X.12. With luck, they’d also be pulling out evidence that would lead them to the bastard that had set off the bombs. And that would finish it forever. There would be epic battles with insurance companies, and people like Bob Ballsard were going to lose a lot more than his inventory of boat shoes, and Amanda might lose her house. But she’d still have the art. And no one else would die.
I checked my watch. One thirty. I finished the last of the creamy white nutrient they inject for health reasons into Twinkies and went back up to the turret. I waved at Blonder and Other. They didn’t smile.
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, thinking Till might take mycall. He’d still be at Gateville, far enough along to have made some real progress. He’d have to thank me for the tip on where to start digging; he might even drop his stony facade to congratulate me on the brilliant sleuthing that had yielded the presence of those long-abandoned tunnels. It was probably just oversight that he hadn’t contacted Blonder and Other to call off the surveillance on me.
The cell phone wasn’t on the wood table by my cot. I checked the floor and poked under the mound of clothes on the chair. Not there, either. I thought back. The last call I’d had was from Stanley, in the Jeep, when I’d told him where to hunt for the bombs. I went downstairs and outside. Blonder and Other watched me from the Crown Victoria. Blonder picked up his phone.
I looked through the plastic passenger window of the Jeep. The cell phone lay face up on the seat. I opened the door, turned on the phone, and sat on the passenger seat. The message indicator started flashing. I punched in the code.
“Hi, Dek.” Amanda’s voice was guarded. “I don’t know if I should be calling you. I have no one else to call. I don’t want to put you at risk, but I have to know what’s going on. Two weeks ago, Stanley Novak called me, saying there have been bomb threats at Crystal Waters. He also said that your storage shed blew up and that you are being falsely considered a suspect. He told me there was no danger of any bombs actually going off and that you would be cleared shortly. Then he said that you would be better off if I avoided contact with you. I asked him how long that would take. He said less than a month. I didn’t understand, but I said fine, I would wait one month for him to give me the go-ahead to call you. Now somebody from my father’s office just called and said there’s been an explosion at Crystal Waters. He said it’s all over the news, that the police are going to search my house, and that I should get my paintings out of there. What is going on, Dek? I’m over Ohio now. I’ll call you when I get to O’Hare.”
I held the phone tight while I listened to the second message. “Where are you, Dek? I’m in a cab on the tollway. I’ll be at Crystal Waters by ten thirty. Call me on this cell phone.”
Something sick danced in my head.
She hadn’t known about the bombs. Stanley had called her a couple of weeks before but had said nothing about the Farraday house or the lamppost. He hadn’t told her to get her paintings removed.
Maybe that was understandable, if I had the time to think.
But the time of her last message wasn’t, at least not why she hadn’t called again.
She’d said she’d be at Gateville at ten thirty. That meant she would have been stopped around then, at a police roadblock or at the gate, and told that her house was off-limits. She would have become furious. She would have stayed right there, demanding to be let in to get the Monet, the Renoir, and the other works safely out of her house. She wouldn’t have walked away. Her artworks were her soul. She wouldn’t have left them.
“If there were ever a fire, I would get the Monet out of the house before I’d call the fire department,” she’d said the first time I’d come to Gateville. Never had I doubted that.
She would have grabbed her cell phone in a fury, to call her father to use his pull to get her inside Gateville. She would have called Ballsard, and every other Board member she could locate, to bully to get her in.
And, in her rage, she would have called me again, demanding to know what was going on.
She hadn’t. There was no third message. No call demanding information. No call saying she’d gotten in, had grabbed her oils, was safe, and would call me tomorrow.
I called her cell phone, listened to four long, slow rings, got the voice mail message.
It was wrong. She should have picked up.
I waited a minute, redialed. Again I got the voice mail. I leaned over to look in the rearview mirror. Back in the Crown Victoria, Blonder and Other were watching me.
My mind flitted across options. The smart move was to get out of the Jeep, walk back, and get Blonder and Other to call Gateville and ask at the guardhouse if Amanda had arrived. But that would take time, assuming they would even do it.
The dumb move was to charge out to Gateville myself. Dumb. But fast.
I slid onto the driver’s seat, fumbling in my pants pocket for the ignition key. Before my fingers could close on it, headlamps flashed from the Crown Victoria as it shot forward to stop diagonally across my left front fender. Blonder and Other jumped out with their guns drawn. I pulled my hand out of my pocket. It hadn’t even touched the key.
Blonder was just outside the driver’s door. “Step out of the car, Mr. Elstrom,” he yelled through the plastic window.