“Ouch,” he said, and gave me a little push, and I got my feet back where they belonged.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just — I don’t know what happened.”
“You violated my civil rights there,” he told me. “That’s what happened.” But he said it with his usual toothy grin.
What was this? For once, I decided to confront the weirdness head-on. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m not a cop, then,” I told him, “so I can violate your civil rights.”
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I’ve been wondering what you do for a living. I know it’s nosy of me, but I can’t ever help trying to figure people out. I’m Jim Henderson, by the way. I’m a high school math teacher.”
He didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did I, because I was mostly trying to find an alternate occupation for myself. I decided to borrow my sister’s husband’s. “Fred Barnes,” I lied. “I’m a bus driver. I just got off my tour.”
“Ah,” he said. “I’ve been scoring math tests. Wanted to get away from it for a while.”
Mathematicians in front of me and behind me — another coincidence. It’s all coincidence, I told myself, nothing to worry about.
“I teach,” Jim Henderson went on, “up at St. Sebastian’s.”
I stared at him. “St. Sebastian’s?”
“Sure. You know it, don’t you? Up on Rome Road.”
“Oh, sure,” I said.
The furious mother behind us said, “Move the line up, will ya?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, and looked around, and my girl math student had moved forward and was now second on line behind the person giving an order. So I was third, and the goof was fourth, and I didn’t have much time to think about St. Sebastian’s.
Was something up, or not? If I made a move and Jim Henderson was merely Jim Henderson, just like he’d said, I could be in big trouble, and the whole stakeout operation would definitely be compromised. But if I didn’t make a move, and Jim Henderson actually turned out to be the courier or somebody else connected to Francois Figuer, and I let him slip through my fingers, I could be in big trouble all over again.
I realized now that it had never occurred to any of us that anybody else might listen in on our walkie-talkie conversations, even though we all knew they weren’t secure. From time to time, on the walkie-talkies, we’d heard construction crews, a street-paving crew, even a movie crew on location, as they passed through our territory, talking to one another. But the idea that Francois Figuer, inside his house, might have his own walkie-talkie, or even a scanner, and might listen to us had never crossed our minds. Not that we talked much, on duty, back and forth, except to complain about the assignment or arrange for our evening meal…
Our evening meal.
Who was Jim Henderson? What was he? I wished now I’d studied the picture of Francois Figuer more closely, but it had always been nighttime in that damn car. I’d never even read the material on the back of the picture. Who was Francois Figuer? Was he the kind of guy who would do… whatever this was?
Was all this — please, God — after all, just coincidence?
The customer at the counter got his sack of stuff and left. The math girl stood before the irritable Whopper girl and murmured her order, her voice too soft for me to hear — on purpose, I think. She didn’t want to share anything, that girl.
I didn’t have much more time to think, to plan, to decide. Soon it would be my turn at the counter. What did I have to base a suspicion on? Coincidence, that’s all. Odd phrases, nothing more. If coincidences didn’t happen, we wouldn’t need a word for them.
All right. I’m ahead of Jim Henderson. I’ll place my order, I’ll get my food, I’ll go outside, I’ll wait in the car. When he comes out, I’ll follow him. We’ll see for sure who he is and where he goes.
Relieved, I was smiling when the math girl turned with her sack. She saw me, saw my smile and gave me a contemptuous glare. But her good opinion was not as important as my knowing I now had a plan, I could now become easier in my mind.
I stepped up to the counter, fishing the list out of my pants pocket. Seven guys and we all wanted something different. I announced it all, while the irritable girl spiked the register as though wishing it were my eyes, and throughout the process I kept thinking.
Where did Jim Henderson live? Could I find out by subtle interrogation techniques? Well, I would say to him, we’re almost done here. You got far to go?
I turned, “Well,” I said, and watched the mother whack one of the children across the top of the head, possibly in an effort to make him as stupid as she was. I saw this action very clearly because there was no one else in the way.
Henderson! Whoever! Where was he? All this time on line and just when he’s about to reach the counter, he leaves?
“That man!” I spluttered at the furious mother, and pointed this way and that way, more or less at random. “He— Where— He—”
The whole family gave me a look of utter, unalterable, treelike incomprehension. They were going to be no help at all.
Oh, hell, oh, damn, oh, goldarn it! Henderson, my eye! He’s, he’s, he’s either Figuer himself or somebody connected to him, and I let the damn man escape!
“Wennysen fory-three.”
I started around the family, toward the distant door. The line of waiting people extended almost all the way down to the exit. Henderson was nowhere in sight.
“Hey!”
“Hey!”
The first “hey” was from the irritable Whopper girl, who’d also been the one who’d said “Wennysen fory-three,” and the second “hey” was from the furious mother. Neither of them wanted me to complicate the routine.
“You gah pay futhis.”
Oh, God, oh, God. Time is fleeting. Where’s he gotten to? I grabbed at my hip pocket for my wallet, and it wasn’t there.
He’d picked my pocket. Probably when I stepped on his foot. Son of a gun. Money. ID…
“Cancel the order!” I cried, and ran for the door.
Many people behind me shouted that I couldn’t do what I was already doing. I ignored them, pelted out of the Burger Whopper, ran through the swirling fog toward my car, my face and hands already clammy when I got there, and unlocked my way in.
Local police backup, that’s what I needed. I slid behind the wheel, reached for the police-radio microphone and it wasn’t there. I scraped my knuckles on the housing, expecting the microphone to be there, and it wasn’t.
I switched on the interior light. The curly black cord from the mike to the radio was cut and dangling. He’d been in the car. Damn him. I slapped open the manila folder on the passenger seat and wasn’t at all surprised that the photo of Francois Figuer was gone.
Would my walkie-talkie reach from here to the neighborhood of the stakeout? I had no idea, but it was my last means of communication, so I grabbed it up from its leather holster dangling from the dashboard — at least he hadn’t taken that — thumbed the side down and said, “Tome here. Do you read me? Calling anybody. Tome here.”
And then I noticed, when I thumbed the side down to broadcast, the little red light didn’t come on.
Oh, that bastard. Oh, that French—
I slid open the panel on the back of the walkie-talkie, and of course the battery pack that was supposed to be in there was gone. But the space wasn’t empty, oh no. A piece of paper was crumpled up inside there, where the battery pack usually goes.
I took the paper out of the walkie-talkie and smoothed it on the passenger seat beside me. It was the Figuer photo. I gazed at it. Without the thick black eyeglasses, without the buckteeth, without the carroty hair sticking out all around from under the turned-around baseball cap, this was him. It was him.