Nelson Van Horn heard the beep of the keypad outside the Com room’s door and looked up to see Denise Green enter. She leaned back against the door as it closed, head shaking.
“Can you believe it?”
“No,” Van Horn said. “I can’t.”
“Jefferson?” Green asked the air. “I don’t know…”
“Why are you here?” Van Horn asked. “Aren’t you off Saturdays this month?”
Green nodded. “There’s a lot of Saturdays here today. I think people just wanted to be here, to be around each other.”
Van Horn nodded. He understood perfectly.
“I was just working something for him,” Green said.
Van Horn recalled his own recent involvement with the A-SAC, and how he’d been asked not to mention what was discussed with anyone. Unusual only in that confidentiality was requested at all. That was a given in the job.
“He seemed normal, just Jefferson,” Green commented.
“Yeah,” Van Horn agreed. But was he acting normal? And if not, why not? And, still gnawing at Van Horn, the question as to just where the A-SAC had laid his hands on the KIWI ciphertext.
And, the biggest question of them alclass="underline" Should he tell Lomax about it?
“I’ve got a lot of stuff to take care of, Denise.”
“Sure. I just wanted to say hi. If you want to grab a bite for lunch, I’ll still be around.”
“Okay.”
The door beeped as it closed and locked. Van Horn wheeled himself back from the main terminal and let his head flop back, eyes to the ceiling, mind working through the pros and cons of breaking his trust with the A-SAC. With a man wanted by his and every law enforcement agency in the land.
He found that no answer offered itself up for easy selection.
Lunch that day would have to wait.
Kudrow was back in his office an hour after finishing with Keiko Kimura and on the phone with Section Chief Willis.
“Cover his family, friends, everyone close to him, and move out from there,” Kudrow instructed.
This time the usually affirming Willis did not reply with a snappy ‘Yes sir.’ “Our resources are not limitless.”
Surprised, Kudrow squeezed the handset. “I don’t care what your resources are, get more if you have to.” He waited, wondering if there would be any further hint of reluctance, if there would be any need for him to mention Willis’s unfortunate dalliance with the wife of a Czech diplomat. She wasn’t a spy, but the mere act itself suggested all that needed to be suggested. “Are you clear on that?”
“Yes sir,” Willis answered in a resigned monotone.
Kudrow hung up without another word. None was required. Willis had confirmed that he still knew who was in charge. Of everything.
At seventy-six, Pooks Underhill was the dean of dominoes at the daily gathering in Palmer Park on Chicago’s south side. He was the master. The king. A slammer of the highest caliber. When it came to the spotted black rectangles, everyone knew he was the best.
And everyone knew he cheated.
“Got you, you old son of an old mother,” Pooks taunted, knees coming up to be slapped and a smile that lacked a fair number of teeth opening a hole in his dark brown leathery face. “Got you! Got you!”
People played him to find out how he cheated, to solve the mysteries of mysteries.
Pooks’ opponent, a thick man some twenty years his junior, hung his head as the revelry continued across the picnic table.
The mystery would remain just that.
Suddenly, in the midst of the joy, Pooks leaned on the table, laughing over, face serious, one eye cocked oddly askew of the other, and his hand out. “Five. Come on, you owe me five.”
The opponent handed it over, and Pooks got the requisite backslaps from the onlookers as the defeated slinked away. But with one hand on his back there came a whisper in his ear.
“Hey, Pooks, some kid wants to talk to you,” Jersey Chuck said, pointing back toward a group of trees ringing three overturned garbage cans. Birds picked at the spilled trash. A jittery white boy stared at the birds.
“Who’s that?” Pooks asked.
“How the hell should I know? He scared the shit out of me as I was comin’ over. Who you think knocked those cans over?”
Pooks’ old eyes squinted at the kid. “I don’t know him.”
“Well, he asked for you,” Jersey Chuck said.
Pooks stood from the bench, making sure he had his winning safely stashed in his pocket, and walked over to the kid. “Who are you? What you want with me?”
Simon turned, his wandering gaze flashing over the man who might be a friend. He held his cards at chest level. “Simon is looking for Pooks Underh ill.”
“Are you Simon?” Pooks asked, bending to get a look at the kid’s face. He found it to be an impossible endeavor. “Shit, boy, you the damn squirreliest boy I’ve ever seen.”
“Simon is looking for Pooks Underhill,” Simon repeated, following the instructions on the top card.
“Well, squirrel boy, if you is Simon, then you found the Pooks.”
The top card was flipped back. “An old friend wants to see you.”
“An old…” The kid turned and began walking toward a pickup truck in the lot. “Where you going?”
Simon stopped halfway to the truck, flipped another card, and made a This Way windmilling motion with one arm.
“Shit,” Pooks said. If this wasn’t the strangest damn thing, he didn’t know what was. “An old friend, you say. Well, let’s see.”
By the time Pooks got to the pickup, Simon had already climbed in. Pooks stopped at the passenger door, peeking in gingerly at first, past the squirrely kid to the person behind the wheel.
“Well, son of a son of someone else’s bitch!” Pooks’ few sallow teeth showed through another smile as he almost crawled through the open window, poking his hand past Simon.
“Good to see you, Pooks,” Art said, shaking the old con man’s hand.
“Son of a — shee-it.” Pooks looked to Simon. “He ain’t yours…”
Art shook his head and checked the area around the lot once again. “Pooks, listen, I need some help.”
“I watchez the television, mister,” Pooks offered. “I should say you do.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Art said, thinking how absurd it was that he was professing his innocence to Pooks Underhill, a man he’d busted for running a credit card fraud ring almost twenty years before. Simply having to do so churned an uncomfortable warmth in his stomach.
“Hell, you think I thought you’d do anything that ain’t A one hundred percent over the top and through the woods straight? No way!” Pooks’ head shook in wide sweeps, the skin of his narrow face sliding over each cheek with the motion. “You’s the man, Jefferson.”
“And you are the Pooks,” Art said.
Again Pooks’ attention turned to Simon. “So who is he?”
“Someone I’m protecting.”
Pooks bent his body into the truck and tried as he had outside to get a good look at the kid’s face. “He don’t like looking, or what?” he asked, pulling back.
“Long story,” Art said. “Pooks, listen, I need some help.”
“Going to Mexico?” Pooks wondered conspiratorially. “Canada? Africa?”
“No, I just need some help until I can clear all this up. A place to stay. A different car. Maybe, if you know who might have access to them, some credit cards. The basic fugitive package.”
Pooks laughed without restraint. “Where’s that Funt guy?” the old man asked, pretend primping for a nonexistent camera.