Back at the railroad station, having double-checked that Briscoe and the van were still there, he U-turned and parked up the block, out of her sight, and spread out the maps on the steering wheel to see where he was and where they might all be headed.
And the first thing he saw was a big bridge just a couple miles north, and no passenger service on the other side of the river. So Briscoe could be planning to cart Noon somewhere over there. But not too far, or this wouldn't be the right train stop.
Finished with the maps, he went through the two newspapers, and was about to turn to Playboy for the haberdashery tips when a disgorgement of cars up from the railroad station told him the next New York train had arrived. Dropping the magazine, he waited and watched, but after the last of the cars and taxis had come up and run off, the van had still not appeared.
Barney got out of the Impala and walked back to where he could see down the driveway, and there it was, still there, Briscoe still at the wheel. Shit. He went back to the car to look at the schedule, and it would be another three hours before the next train. Dammit, the local people ought to complain, they really ought to, get themselves better service.
Barney almost missed it. He was just picking up Playboy when a tiny movement in his rearview mirror caught his eye, and when he looked there was Briscoe, walking up out of the driveway, stopping at the top to look left and right, then turning right to walk along past the upper-level parking area.
Now what? Barney watched in the mirror, and Briscoe took the same route he'd taken earlier, down to the next cross street, then right toward the rear entrance to the station.
He had to know what was happening, but he also had to be very damn careful. Getting out of the Impala, he walked back toward the station, following her. He could see the top of her head far away on the cross street, past the cars parked in the upper area. He hung back until she'd disappeared past the corner of the building, then followed, and when he got to the corner she was well down the street, still going straight. Past the railroad station the street became some kind of overpass, leading to a low wall and a sharp left turn angling down. More cars were parked along there, on the right side; Briscoe walked down the middle of the street to the end, then made the left.
Barney trotted forward once she was out of sight. He saw that this overpass went above the railroad tracks, and that the left turn carried the roadway, now a kind of bridge or ramp, down a long slope to a launching site at the river. A few vans and pickups were parked down there, with empty boat trailers hitched at their backs, and Briscoe was walking straight down to join them.
Had Barney been wrong? Was she waiting for Noon to arrive by boat? Or, worse thought, had he arrived, and they were leaving by boat? That would be a true pain in the ass.
But, no. After a minute, Barney saw what was happening. Briscoe was just killing time, that's all, sightseeing while she waited for the next train. Barney couldn't blame her.
Just in case, though, he kept watching. Briscoe walked on down to the launching area, strolled around there a few minutes, looked out at the river and the green cliffs and white mansions over there on the other side, and Barney leaned against the wall at the top of the overpass, feeling warm in the sunshine in his dark jacket, watching her.
She hung around down there maybe five minutes, and then turned and started the long trudge back up the slope, and Barney retreated all the way to the far corner, past the parking area, waiting there until she made the turn, then moving back again, holding at the head of the station driveway until her head would appear again, over there beyond the parked cars, and it didn't.
He waited. He frowned. He looked down into the blacktop area in front of the station, where the van was parked, and here she came, out of the building. She just hadn't known ahead of time about that back entrance, that's all.
Okay. Time out for everybody. Barney walked back to his car, got behind the wheel, reached for Playboy, and the van drove by.
What? The damn buzzer wasn't working! What a hell of a time to break down! Knowing he'd have to do a visual tail, hating the idea of it, Barney quickly started the engine, shifted into drive, and the car went klomp forward klomp forward klomp forward. A mile an hour. Less. And shaking all over the place.
Barney hit the brakes. The bastards. He already knew, but he got out of the Impala anyway, as the van disappeared around a curve far ahead.
All four tires. Flat. Slashed. And a little later, when he lifted his maps and newspapers and magazines from the front seat, there under them lay the bug, almost as good as new.
25
"I don't like that guy on our necks like that," Freddie said.
He was still dressing in the back of the van, so Peg kept her eyes firmly on Rhinebeck's only traffic light, now red, two cars in front of her.
She said, "He isn't on our necks anymore, Freddie. You took care of that."
"Damn good thing those guys told you about him."
"Yes, it was."
Those guys were the guys in the firehouse, who had told her, when she went to pick up the van this morning, about the cop who'd come in with a cockamamie story that nobody believed for a second, so everybody watched the cop when he was supposedly looking over a blue Toyota, and he was obviously taking too much of an interest in Freddie and Peg's van, and maybe she ought to know about it. The guy, from their description, was the tough cop who'd come to the place yesterday with the lawyer, Leethe.
Because the fire guys had given her that warning, she'd been extremely alert, looking in every direction at once on her way back to the apartment to pick up the stuff they were taking upstate, so that was why she spotted him, lurking in that big old Chevy, a faded green like an old shower curtain or something, parked half a block from her place. I'll have to lose him somehow, she thought, and went on to load up the van.
But then she didn't see him again. Had he been that easy to lose? She drove all the way upstate on the Taconic, and over the local road to Rhinebeck, and never saw him at all. Until all at once, as she was stopped at this very light, there he was, just a few cars behind her.
That was when she realized what he must have done at the firehouse yesterday: put some kind of bug on this car. Every new piece of police technology is immediately described to the citizenry via cop shows on TV, so Peg knew all about long-distance tailing of other cars with these radio bugs. What she didn't know, now that she found the cop in his washed-out green Chevy behind her, was what to do about it. I'll let Freddie decide, she decided, and ignored the cop and his car from that point on.
It was a long wait, all in all — three trains — before at last she heard that whisper in her ear: "Hi, Peg." Then the van sagged beside her, so he was aboard.
Relieved, glad to be reunited, grinning like an idiot, Peg shut the van door, got around to the other side, slid in behind the wheel, got serious, and said, "Freddie, he followed me, he put something on the van."