“I made a mistake,” Max conceded, shoulders slumped. “I left town and got thirty miles away before I realized they were after Dave. By the time I got back, it was too late.”
“So your method isn’t foolproof, it seems,” Fine said. “You aren’t Superman.”
“He’s pretty close,” Tauber said and that seemed to break the mood, at least shake it up. “He does things we never did.”
“Of course he does,” she said. “He can’t help himself. So you feel responsible-”
“To an extent, yes. Dave was my friend.”
“-and you’re going to make amends? By deciding the old team is in danger-based on what, you’ve no idea-and taking it upon yourself to be noble and save us?” Sarcasm dripped from her voice; the words seemed to hit him like blows.
But something must have struck him funny, too, because his head rose and he was watching Fine now the same way Tauber had been watching him, sizing her up as though he’d never seen her before. “Dave left a trail,” he said. “Based on the trail and the way it was presented and the feelings I got from it, I’m here. You know as well as I do that we can’t rationalize everything we know. I didn’t take anything on myself-Dave left me the list.”
“It seems to me he left Greg the list,” Fine said and Max turned immediately to Tauber, accusing.
“She got that out of your head,” he glared.
Tauber raised his arms in protest. “She’s my teammate,” he said. “I don’t block her.”
“So Greg’s the list,” Fine repeated and suddenly I felt that warm feeling in the back of my head again, though it wasn’t as sharp as before, more of a mellow, sympathetic feeling. It would be so nice to have someone looking out for me. She was looking at me in a way that was more than sympathetic. I’d never thought much about older women but she probably had a good TV and really nice sheets. “The list led you to me, is that it?” she continued. “So maybe I’m supposed to make some decisions now.”
“It’s supposed to help us get the old team together, so we can fight the killers,” I said.
“That’s his interpretation,” Fine said. “How do you know? Maybe the list needs to be heard by other people. Maybe it needs to be thought about and examined in a peaceful setting, instead of running all over creation like chickens with your heads cut off. Doesn’t that make sense?” With the look she was throwing me, it made lots of sense.
“Greg,” Max said, “when you gave me the first name, we both knew we had to go find him. I didn’t force you-you knew it was the answer. You felt it like I did.”
“Based on what?” Fine asked. “What facts do you have for that decision?”
“We don’t work on facts!” Max spat. “We know what we know! Intuition, embedded emotion and experience.”
“He’s powerful, Miriam,” Tauber told her. “He’s not a conscript. He’s a natural.”
“Oh, no question about it,” she said. “He’s the natural. The greatest there ever was.” And now Max looked distinctly uncomfortable again.
“You know him?” Tauber said, sitting up in his chair.
“Of course I do. I’ve seen his picture a thousand times. It’s Renn!”
“Renn?!!” Tauber sat up like the name had attacked his spine. The look on his face mixed awe and horror. I felt like Rip Van Winkle, the alien wanderer, the visitor who didn’t speak the language anymore.
“Renn,” Fine repeated, holding the name on the end of her tongue. “The cream of the crop, the man who knows everything. Look at him now-tired, poor, hiding from the world. So paranoid he didn’t even realize old Dave Monaghan had enemies of his own. Because everything’s about him, has to be about him.”
Renn-I was just getting used to Max-stared at her, sullen but not denying anything she said. Not even trying.
“Renn-all the stories we heard! And now here you are, not even powerful enough to get whatever Dave left in this one’s head.” Fine’s voice was ringing, commanding, hypnotic. It had been that way, I realized, for several minutes.
“I came in good faith,” Renn said after a long moment. “If I had bad intent, I could have dumped them on the front lawn and left them for you to deal with, couldn’t I?”
“Why didn’t you?” Fine asked.
“I don’t know,” Renn muttered, looking around the room as though he was lost. “It would have been pretty easy.” Then he stopped, staring at me. “Because I had to know,” he said all at once, his voice gaining strength, gaining its usual power back. “Dave was murdered. I have to know why. And whoever did it has to pay.”
“Right,” I said immediately. “That’s right.” It’s why I’d come, despite all my doubts about him, about everyone around me, despite all the fucked-up things that had happened. We were going to rally the old team, whoever they were, and go after the bad guys, whoever they were. It was as though the sun had just popped through the clouds, as though my head had suddenly cleared.
I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting you,” Fine continued. She looked older all of a sudden, her put-together coming slightly apart. “If you’d come from the North, we’d have foreseen…but, no matter.”
Suddenly it seemed like Max’s head had cleared too. He leapt from his chair to the window. I saw nothing going on outside, but he was ramrod straight with that miles-away expression I’d seen in the car. I knew all at once that, whatever had grabbed his attention, it wasn’t miles away.
“The great Max Renn,” Fine narrated, “not even powerful enough to see what was right in front of his nose.”
Max jumped from the window and grabbed my arm. “They’re coming!” he called. “We have to go!”
“Too late,” Fine clucked.
“ Now!” Renn yelled, hurtling toward the back door. I turned-Tauber stood next to Fine, an apologetic look on his face but not moving.
“You don’t have to go,” Fine told me pointedly. “You’re not wanted for anything. We can get that unwanted information out of your head.”
I wavered for a moment-all those feelings I’d had a moment earlier flashed through my head. She had every reason to feel good about herself. So organized. So put-together. I could see her lying rumpled and naked on those nice thousand-threadcount sheets-boy, I saw that real clear all of a sudden. What unwanted information? Get it out of my head how?
Fine’s face was a look of triumph and that tipped the balance for me. Every time I’d ever seen triumph on somebody’s face, it always seemed to involve marching toward the machine guns.
I ran for the back of the house. Max threw the door open and we bounced across the short lawn and into the woods, just ahead of the sound of cars screeching to a halt, doors slamming, voices shouting and footsteps coming up fast behind us.
Five
We plunged into the thick brush, the boots pounding out the back door and tearing through Fine’s yard, trampling all the neat greenery while voices barked orders from every direction. Max was running really hard-I was puffing just trying to keep up with him. I’d spent a year in the Everglades, where even tree branches get lazy. But the undergrowth was so thick here under the trees that it was dim as dusk at nine in the morning. In such a place, a couple yards might be enough for us to get away.
The footsteps behind were so close, I didn’t even dare look back at first. But we started to pull away and I realized that, as Max-Renn-approached bushes and trees, they were actually bending out of his way, like he was projecting some invisible shell ahead of him-and whipped back with a vengeance once we passed, which really helped gain us some space. I heard angry voices cursing and shouting behind my back. And then I was startled by a whooshing sound and turned to see, just a few feet away, a twister sprung right up out of the ground. It was a little one, not one of those Hollywood ones that swallow gymnasiums, but it was enough, sucking up the forest floor and whipping the whole mess-leaves, twigs, bark, branches, pine cones, berries, vines, dust and moss-into a smoky column skittering interference between us and them.