“He’s not going to hurt her, she’s carrying his bloodline,” Monks said, although the fear that he was wrong was another bitter gnawing in his heart.
“I just want it over,” Sara said shakily. “Lia back home again, everything like it used to be.”
“Soon,” Monks said, stroking her hair. “The net’s closing on Freeboot.”
“I want him dead,” she whispered.
41
Six days later, late in the afternoon, Monks was driving back to his house from Sara’s and stopped for gas in Santa Rosa, at one of those big plazas with a dozen pumps and a convenience store. The price of gasoline had gone up ten or fifteen cents per gallon since he’d last filled up, a couple of weeks earlier. He put thirty-four dollars’ worth into the Bronco and went inside to pay.
The clerk at the cash register was a woman who had to be at least seventy years old. She was carefully made up and groomed, and her dignified bearing was very much a lady’s, in spite of the store employees’ clownlike uniform of a pink polka-dotted shirt and a bow tie. It seemed odd that she’d be working at all, let alone in a place like this, probably for minimum wage. Skyrocketing living expenses on a fixed income, Monks thought, or maybe a gutted 401K, and this was the only kind of job she could get.
Feeling vaguely guilty, he walked back outside. His path was intersected by a man coming toward him-skinny, with lank shoulder-length hair, jeans and T-shirt that had been worn for days, and several highly visible tattoos.
“Hey, pardner,” he called to Monks. “Me and my friends got a little car trouble. We need a couple bucks for some oil. Could you help us out?” He jerked his head toward a big old sedan pulled up outside the store. Two other men of roughly the same description were leaning against it.
Monks hesitated, then said, “Sure.” He was used to being tapped by street people in San Francisco -it could cost several bucks to get across Union Square at night, paying tolls at every street corner-and when he was there, he carried folded one-dollar bills in his pocket. But here he was unprepared. He pulled out his wallet, extracted two singles, and handed them over.
“How about making it twenty?” the skinny man said, eyeing the other bills inside.
Monks blinked, taken aback. “Sorry. That’s going to have to do it.”
“Come on, man. You got plenty.”
“I’m glad to help within reason,” Monks said. “But I need money, too.” He started to put the wallet back in his pocket.
The man took hold of his wrist with a clawlike grip of surprising strength. He might have been thirty and was certainly not yet forty, but his thin, sallow face was ageless, his eyes burning with dead black fire from another world.
“Are you threatening me?” Monks said in amazement.
“Threat? Don’t insult me, man. I’m asking very politely.” The hand stayed on Monks’s wrist. His buddies who had been leaning against the car were walking closer now.
Monks almost laughed at the sheer outrageousness of this.
“You realize I can go back into that store and have police here in two minutes?” he said.
The skinny man’s mouth tightened, and his eyes drilled into Monks’s for a few more seconds. Then he let go his grip and went back to his car. The other men gave Monks measuring looks before they turned around, too.
He got into the Bronco and drove away, checking his mirror in case they followed. But they were back to leaning against their vehicle-probably waiting for the next mark, who might be more cooperative.
He realized that he was shaken, more so than he should have been. Partly, it was the brazenness of what had almost amounted to robbery, in a public place, in broad daylight. But something else disturbed him more deeply. He had to think for a minute to grasp it, but then it came-the way the skinny man’s mouth had tightened, and that final searing gaze. That was not just anger. It was a look that said, Okay, asshole, if you want to play hardball, that’s how it’s going to be.
The Bronco’s radio was tuned to a Golden Oldies station. Monks usually preferred quiet while he drove, but these past days he’d been keeping up with the news constantly, hoping for the welcome word that Freeboot had been captured.
After a few minutes, he caught an update.
“One of the largest manhunts in California history continues, for a charismatic ex-convict named James Reese, known to his followers as Freeboot,” the news announcer said. “Law-enforcement officials believe that Reese is the mastermind behind the Calamity Jane killings, as well as last week’s riot at Bodega Bay, which left twenty-one dead, including six police officers, with many more injured, and a damage toll in the millions of dollars.
“A San Francisco police car was attacked with gunfire earlier today, while making a drug-related arrest. The shots apparently came from a nearby building, but police were unable to locate a suspect. No one was injured.”
Monks turned the radio off. What the announcer hadn’t mentioned was that there had been two similar incidents during the past days, one in Philadelphia and one in Miami, where police cars had been fired on. The one in Miami had had the aspect of an ambush, with cops lured in on a phony call. An officer was killed and another wounded. There had also been a spate of random shootings in several cities-cars driving around at night, firing into parked vehicles, store windows, even private homes. No one yet had been hurt during those, but if they continued, it was only a matter of time.
In general, there was a sense that whatever mysterious societal force held chaos in check-not just law enforcement, but the awareness that there were lines that couldn’t be crossed-was eroding, fast.
He had been keeping in touch with Pietowski, and so he knew that FBI informants in the fringe world were aware of a sort of verbal underground newspaper that was developing, a word-of-mouth communication that spread through the country with amazing speed. It was urging the stockpiling of weapons and ammunition, attacks on law-enforcement officers, and random violence, especially against the affluent. It also threatened more incidents like Bodega Bay. Authorities admitted that they’d been caught napping, and vowed that nothing like it would happen again. But if thousands of people just started showing up someplace, what could be done? Call out the National Guard? Haul them all off to jail?
What if they started shooting?
Pietowski had hinted that behind the scenes in the political world the alarm was even more acute. The president himself had made a veiled allusion to Bodega Bay at a press conference, repeating his insistence that the United States government would not tolerate terrorism.
But these weren’t terrorists. These were citizens.
Monks turned off Highway 101 at Petaluma, relieved as always to get off the freeway onto two-lane country roads. Traffic thinned as he drove farther west, with the thick canopy of oaks, laurels, redwoods, and eucalyptus groves bringing an early dusk. It started to sink into him how exhausted he was. With all the troubles that still hammered at him, he felt a kind of numb joy at getting back to his own home. The world might be going crazy-crazier-but here, all was serene.
When he stepped inside his house, he was immediately hit by an ugly, fetid smell. It wasn’t one he encountered often, but he never forgot it.
Rotting flesh.
“Just like old times, huh?” Freeboot said from the darkened living room.
Monks had been cautious about his own security at first, but as the days passed, he had decided that the risk of Freeboot’s coming after him were nil, and the FBI had a lot more important people to protect. His gaze swung toward the telephone. It was dead, its lights out.