"You find what you were looking for?"
"Yeah, there's a unit train leaving at ten tonight. It's a priority train, full of expensive products, mostly Japanese cars. It should travel twice as fast as the grain train Kincaid's on."
"Why is that?"
"Important trains carry what they call 'Time Sensitive Freight.' All the cars on this train are worth millions. The interest on all that money means they have to get to market fast. That grain train Kincaid is on will have to 'go into the hole' to let a hotshot train like this pass. It'll slow him way down, and with some luck, we'll overtake him."
She sat down on the bed and started to dry her hair with the towel she had around her neck. "Why don't we just take the car?"
"Lotta reasons. First, we're not sure he's going all the way to New Orleans." He pointed to the map. "It's possible that Kincaid will switch trains in Dallas or Shreveport or Jackson. At any of those hubs he could change destinations-we'd be going to New Orleans, while he'd be heading off someplace else, I'm gonna have to get off and ask around at each of those hubs. Also, the rails are at least as fast, especially if we can catch this hot train at ten tonight."
She nodded, stood, and moved around the room, ending at the picture window. "It was nice of Buddy to get this room. It's beautiful." Cris nodded, but didn't say anything. He was starting to think that having Buddy along was a bad mistake.
The suite was a large corner room that overlooked a shopping center. The subtle colors and rich antiques were restful. The air-conditioning hissed perfect temperature.
She moved over and sat on the bed near Cris. "You don't look so good."
"Knock it off with the compliments-you're making me blush."
"You've lost even more weight since we met."
He dropped his head, and his eyes found the maps and carbon sheets on the bedspread.
"Cris, we need you. The three of us are in this alone, and the people at Fort Detrick have too much power. Plus, the Pentagon and God knows who else is involved. Conceivably, it could go all the way up to the President. They couldn't run a program this big without a lot of important people in the loop. We call the FBI, we could get locked up instead of listened to."
"I'm okay," he said. "I'll make it."
"You gotta eat. I'm ordering from room service. I'll get you some soup, maybe some oatmeal or yogurt."
"Okay," he smiled, "but I think I'll skip the yogurt."
"There's two showers in there. Go on, get washed up, and I'll get something up here for you."
He nodded, and got slowly off the bed. He had to admit he was getting weaker by the hour. He opened the bathroom door.
Buddy Brazil was naked and wrapped in a towel, standing by the sink with a rolled bill jammed up his nose. Two lines of chopped cocaine were tracked out on the tile counter. Buddy snapped his head up and grinned. "Oops," he said. "Kick that door closed, will ya? I've gotta Hoover up these two lines."
Anger flashed in Cris. He suddenly reached down and grabbed Buddy, spun him around, and threw him out of the bathroom into the suite. The towel fell off and he hit the floor naked, with the bill still up his nose. Buddy yanked the quilt off the bed and covered himself, then snatched the rolled-up bill out of his nose, as Stacy stood over him.
"This asshole was in there taking a sleigh ride," Cris said, adrenaline fueling his aching body.
"This is bullshit," Buddy shrieked, pulling the quilt all the way off the bed and wrapping it around him. The maps and carbon sheets fluttered to the floor.
"What other drugs have you got in there?" Cris demanded, as he moved into the bathroom and grabbed Buddy's shaving kit.
Buddy quickly moved after him, dragging the large quilt like a bridal train. Cris grabbed five or six prescription bottles out of his shaving kit and held them up to read the labels as Stacy joined Buddy at the door.
"It's for my asthma," Buddy chirped.
" 'Take one every four hours for depression,' " Cris said, reading the labels. "Morphine sulfate, Dexedrine, Clonidine. All of it prescribed by the poor asshole you shot in your backyard." He threw the bottles at Buddy. They hit him in the chest, then bounced on the floor.
"Look, I got medical problems."
"We all got problems. I'm vomiting up my breakfast 'cause my system's so shot I can't hold anything down. This is a joke. We're running a fucking clinic here. How're we ever gonna pull this off?"
"Please," Stacy said. "Please, let's stop shouting."
Cris moved out of the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed, while Buddy slid into his pants and got down on the floor to gather up the vials of prescribed drugs.
"Flush them down the toilet," Stacy said.
"These are prescriptions," he whined. "I need these." Then, as he stood with the plastic bottles in his hand, he saw the disappointment in her eyes.
"I'm outta here. I'm goin' home." Buddy took the pills, threw them back into his shaving kit, and zipped it up. Then he packed up his stuff, dressed, and turned to leave.
"You can't leave. We need your help," Stacy pleaded. "They killed your son."
"I hardly knew him. The room's paid for until tomorrow." Then Buddy walked out, slammed the door, and left them standing there.
Chapter 35
Buddy had left more out of embarrassment than anger. Now, as he sat in the Blazer under the porte-cochere of the Four Seasons with the engine idling, he was stuck for his next move. The sour-sweet taste was there again, filling the back of his mouth like sewer runoff; he was staggered by an unfathomable sense of loneliness so vast and full of self-hate that it pressed against him like a fateful warning.
His accumulated list of personal negatives was mind-boggling. He was a coward and a drug addict. He had no commitment to himself or to his craft. He had not one single relationship in his life that he valued or cared to maintain. All of his "intimate" associations were bought and paid for, professional friends who circled him like airliners stacked above a foggy field, waiting for his instructions, not one of them willing to give him a moment of unselfish concern. Buddy knew that it was his fault. He had constructed a world that was only about him. Buddy suspected that the hateful truth was that to gain respect, it was also necessary to give it. If he continued to focus everything inward, he would be nourished by nothing. Now, as the Blazer's engine idled, he had no place to go. He could not pick a new course of action. He only knew that he was through hiding; if he did not choose the right path, he would sacrifice what was left of himself.
He began grasping for solutions. Maybe he should call the Pelican, he thought.
Anthony Pelicano had been on his payroll on and off for almost fifteen years. The L. A. private eye had managed to get several actors and directors out of tight spots and drug busts while they were working on Buddy's pictures. Pelicano flushed more Hollywood toilets than the Polo Lounge bathroom attendant. Buddy had first employed the detective during his divorce. The Pelican had managed to turn up Tova's one lesbian affair, which Buddy hung over her like a sword of damnation during the property settlement negotiations. Pelicano would know what to do.
Buddy was startled by a tapping at his passenger window. He snapped his head around and saw a doorman in a high-collared braided coat, faintly reminiscent of his old Scientology uniform.
"Would you like me to park your car again for you, sir?" the attendant asked, smiling professionally.
Buddy shook his head and put the car in gear, pulling out from under the heavy stone awning into the shimmering Texas heat.
"I don't give a fuck what his office told you. Tell him it's critical I speak to him," Buddy screamed at Alicia Profit, who had just informed him, after ten minutes on hold, that the Pelican was in New Mexico getting one of Dick Zanuck's stars unhooked from a mescaline bust.