Everett stared out the window, squinting as headlights swept the roadhouse in the evening murk. "What does the FLQ do now? What do I do? I mean, do they just give up, or is there an underworld all-points bulletin out for the four of us?"
Fulton almost laughed. "Nicely put. We don't know who the FLQ finally set it up with, but there must've been somebody. Which brings me to some very unpleasant news. But first, I think what you should do is take a new ID. That's unofficial, man-to-man, Mr. Everett. But I think you should let us tell the media you did a long yoo-hoo-hoo over the cliff in the BMW. Flaherty won't tell on you; we can put him on more ice than Admiral Byrd."
Headlights swung toward them as a Pontiac Firebird slithered into the parking lot. Everett slapped the table. "That'll be Dave Engels."
"I doubt it," said Fulton, studying his cigar, "unless he's had a recent sex change."
The dark hair that emerged from the Firebird was unfamiliar, but the shoulder bag and the stride could not be forgotten. Everett began to smile as Gina Vercours hurried through the snow.
Her greeting was offhand, unhurried, anodyne for Everett's twanging nerves. Fulton stood up, a thumb tucked under the ornate buckle beneath his vest. "Good thing I remembered about the weather," she said, stamping her feet as she tossed her wrap over a booth. "It was eighty-seven degrees in Phoenix today. And don't tell me what that is in celsius, Maury," she grinned.
"Gina; still old-fashioned," he said, taking her hand in his.
"And you still don't believe me," she countered, then turned to the other man. "Are you agent Fulton?"
Fulton nodded as she said, "I'm Gina Vercours, which Maury will verify, and in lieu of a pass phrase they said to give you this." She offered him the tiny tape machine, which he took after lowering his hand from his midriff. "Better than working with Wally Conklin," she added; "I don't have to rent cars, and at the air terminal they hand you a synopsis on tape with a very sex-y voice."
"Can I hear her?" Everett asked.
"Her? Him, fella." She tossed him a mock-suspicious frown. "So what's the drill, gentlemen?"
"Bury him somewhere," Fulton aimed his cigar at Everett, then clamped down on it again.
"What if I hadn't been me," Gina asked innocently.
"I'd have been disappointed." Fulton tapped his buckle. "Gas projector. You'd be in barf city," he explained. He took his coat and snap-brim hat, adjusting them with care. "And let us know where you bury him, Ms. Vercours, which means stay near a telephone. We may pick up more information for you. They gave you a phone scrambler?"
She nodded, patting the shoulder bag. As Fulton was leaving, Everett recalled their unfinished business, "One more thing, Fulton, if you don't mind. How do you know the Canadians found somebody to take their contracts after the Mafia refused?"
Fulton stopped, glanced toward Gina, then took Everett by the arm. Outside, his breath frosty, Fulton said, "Somebody bagged Dahl D'Este about one ayem this morning in San Francisco."
Everett sagged against the railing. "How?"
"That's what I didn't want to say in front of the lady. D'Este seemed to think he could lose himself among all the other homosexuals in the Gay city—Bay City, that is. He must've been cruising the gay strip near the downtown hotels where they make a lot of pickups off the streets. Pathetic little guys carrying overnight kits, feet hardly touching the pavement, waiting for a score like any other hooker; makes you sad to see it, Mr. Everett," he muttered, smug and sententious.
He picked up his cadence. "Well, we don't know how the contact was made but somebody got into D'Este's Cadillac with him. After shooing the others off the street, maybe, I don't know how. We're checking. Anyway: A little later the Caddie piled into a building on O'Farrell Street. Must've been moving at a crawl. They found D'Este behind the wheel and an overnight kit on the floor.
"And it smelled like he'd been having an orgy with almond extract. Somebody had snuffed him with a dildo. You know, those rubber dicks they fill with who-knows-what? This one was full of hydrocyanic acid, prussic acid, same thing. He'd taken a full shot of it in the face, and they found the dildo in his mouth. Enough cyanide to snuff an elephant, I kid you not. No prints, just rubber goods."
Everett hugged himself and shivered. "Jesus. Oh, Jesus, what a way to go."
"Show me a nice way; I might take it," Fulton grumbled. He started down the steps. "But pass the word, Mr. Everett: beware of almond dildoes."
Everett, his thoughts racing forward, called out: "Fulton!"
The agent stopped at the van, unconsciously coming to attention. "Sir."
"Have you told Althouse and Charlie George about this?"
"Was Edgar Hoover a fed? Of course, Mr. Everett, we're not amateurs. At least Mr. George knows. Nobody's raised the Althouse guy yet but they'll get to him."
"Or somebody will."
"Is that a fact," Fulton said drily, and slammed the door.
Two minutes later, Gina and Everett were arguing. "Anybody could bully us off the road in that crackerbox of yours," she spat.
"If they could catch us in this ice, which they couldn't without a Porsche turbo and front-wheel drive," he returned.
"And besides, how many more crazy Irishmen know you drive that Mini."
"Good God, Vercours, who's the boss here?"
She dropped her shoulders and her voice. "You are, of course. I'll get my things out of the Firebird."
"You will like hell," Everett grunted. "I have the better car, but you have the better argument." He grinned. "Anyhow, the Mini's heater isn't worth a damn. The 'bird it is, ma'am."
They were laughing before his weekend gear was repacked in the Firebird. He drove back down the highway toward Golden, explaining that they needed more food. As they neared the town, she was glancing backward. "When you stop, pull out of sight and face the highway," she suggested.
He pulled in near a market, turning the car end-for-end in a rum-runner's switch on the icy ground. They waited. After several minutes a big tandem rig came steaming past, chains singing on the pavement. Then nothing. "I'll go in," she said; "I know what kind of junk food I like. And you can keep warm with this," she added, laying a compact automatic on the seat.
She was back very soon with a single brown sack, celery poking from its top. Everett eased the Firebird onto the highway, soon passed the roadhouse and his forlorn Mini without a glance. Near Empire they slowed at a neat row of cabins with overhead telephone lines stretching away to the office.
Quickly, then: "None of this two-adjoining rooms crap, Maury. We're together. That's my job."
He nodded and punched the car's nose through crusty snow into the drive. The owner was pleased to rent his best and most secluded cabin to Mr. and Mrs. Marks.
"Soda pop and cigarettes here, Mr. Marks," he said, "but I'll be locking up shortly."
"We'd appreciate it if you'd patch the phone in so I can make calls directly."
"Can't do that." He found that he could indeed, with a fifty-dollar nonrefundable deposit.
"One more thing," Gina said. "We were supposed to meet some folks tomorrow who love to surprise us—and I detest surprises. If anyone asks for us—" A moment's thought "—tell them we're an old couple. And as soon as they leave, please give us a ring."
A collusive smirk spread across the leathery features. "I got it," he said archly, not getting it at all.
Inside the chill cabin, Everett turned up the heat and found a bonus in the dry wood piled beside the fireplace. Gina, blowing on her hands, checked the windows before taking a portable door lock from her bag. She emplaced the heavy steel assembly at breastbone height, wedged into the facing by a heavy setscrew. Then she made a call, using her scrambler over the mouthpiece, which reduced her conversation to gibberish for any monitoring device. Maury Everett imagined himself as a push-pin relocated on some FBI map, and knew he had no real alternative.