Willy sat back, smiling like an idiot. “Saw it in a movie once. Couldn’t resist it.”
“What’re you doing here?” I asked, already checking up and down the street.
“Don’t worry,” Willy said. “I’m not as dumb as you guys. Nobody knows I’m around.” He pulled a portable radio from his inner pocket and keyed the mike. “You there, Sam?”
“10-4” came the familiar voice.
“They’re baaaaack,” Willy announced, laughing at the end.
He replaced the radio. “Except her, of course.”
I pulled at my ear and sighed. “I should’ve expected this. You’ll probably get fired-you know that.”
Willy’s eyes grew wide. “Ooh, that’s a scary thought.”
“You selfish bastard,” I told him. “What about Sammie?”
He laughed again. “You know goddamn well she’s why we’re here. She thinks you set the friggin’ sun, which you probably will before we’re done. What’s the plan, anyway?”
“I take it you found us ’cause of the car.”
“Brilliant. Only took an hour or so. Small town. ’Course, there were two of us, and we knew to look around the college. I gotta say, though, for a guy with a price on his head, and the place crawling with law, you’re not too discreet.”
“How crawling is that, exactly?”
“The department here’s got about ten or so. We spotted maybe three or four state cops as well. If you figure they divided the town up between ’em all, not counting the ones at the crime scene and a few to man headquarters, you get six or seven cruisers rollin’ around. And I wouldn’t doubt they got more coming.”
“And you’re sure nobody saw you?”
“Yup.” He reached into his other pocket, pulled out a second radio, and dropped it on the front seat between us. “In case we get split up.”
I picked up the radio and examined it. It was labeled “NewBrook Fire Department.”
“What the hell?”
“I borrowed ’em,” Willy admitted. “On my way through Newfane. I know the combination to their firehouse. They only carry a couple of miles, but I figured we might need a private frequency to talk on. We checked ’em out as soon as we got here-called around, pretending we were up shit creek. Nobody heard us as far as we could tell. So-you even have a plan? You been here long enough.”
Rarig scowled at this rapid patter, but I was used to it. “As far as you’re concerned, the plan is to go back home. We’ve got one long shot to check out, and then we’ll probably be doing the same.”
“Great. I like long shots.”
I twisted around to face him fully. “Willy, I appreciate the gesture. I should’ve expected it. And if I really thought we had a chance of pulling this off, I’d even let you stick around. But things aren’t going too well. We were discovered by one of Middlebury’s finest and had to lock him up. You don’t want to be a part of this anymore, and I don’t want it on my conscience.”
Willy was laughing again. “No shit. That’s like kidnapping. And a cop, no less. Boy-you think you know a guy. No wonder you keep me around.”
Now even I was getting irritated. “Willy, for Christ’s sake. Fucking around is one thing-if you stick with us, you’ll be an accessory. That’s jail time.”
Not bothering to argue, he opened the back door and got out. “We figured you’d say that.” He pointed to the radio I was still holding in my hand. “You need any help, just turn it on. We’ll hear ya. If nothing else, make sure it gets back to NewBrook. Don’t want you busted for theft again. Bye.”
He waved at us both and walked quickly down the street.
After a long, stunned silence, Rarig said, “I don’t like that man.”
“Yeah-well, he’s an acquired taste. I wouldn’t be without him, obviously whether I like it or not.” I slipped Willy’s radio into my pocket, turned off. “So where’s the CFA?”
Rarig pursed his lips, and for a moment I thought the competitive edge between us was going to rear up into the open. The sudden appearance of two of my own troops, uncontrollable, unseen, and-to him-of unknown quality, obviously rubbed him wrong.
To head him off, I patted my pocket and said, “I’m not going to use it, whatever happens.”
That gave him an out. “You may want to eat those words.”
“Then so be it. I’m not going to turn my own professional suicide into mass murder.”
He contemplated that for a moment and then pointed down the street. “Straight ahead across the intersection. Take a right when you hit South Main.”
The CFA-Middlebury College’s Center for Fine Arts-is one of three large structures lining the east side of South Main, just before it turns into Route 30 and heads off into the countryside. As a result of their location, they stand against miles of rolling fields, a lush green golf course, and have a spectacular view of the Green Mountains-all of which contrast violently with the buildings’ bizarre architecture.
The southernmost two are athletic field houses, one looking like a soiled cluster of glued-together teepees, the other a Quonset hut with several Tootsie Rolls stuck to it. Both are connected by a tube-shaped umbilical cord.
Our destination was the newest of the three-as dissimilar from them as they are from each other, except in overall appeal. The Center for Fine Arts is a cob job of every building style known to Western civilization. In parts, its roof is flat, sloped, crenelated, and dormered, and apparently clad in everything from painted metal to slate. Similarly, its walls run from granite to brick to metal to peeling white clapboard, all butting together in cramped chaos. The front, with the most coherent appearance, is a shades-of-brown combination of frontier blockhouse, Norman castle, and federal office building, topped by a roof reminiscent of the sloped hull of the Confederate ironclad Merrimac, complete with gunports.
It is also cavernously huge, being built into the hillside, and at this time of year and day was largely dark and empty. When John Rarig and I stepped through one of the side entrances from the parking lot, I felt like a visitor who’d been shut in after closing time.
The art center’s interior is its soaring redemption. As jumbled as the outside, here the architectural crisscross between new and old, granite and wood, seems playful, airy, amusing, and self-confident. From the building’s middle space, an enormous stone wall thrusts up three floors to an elegant, fan-shaped wooden ceiling, lending to everything around it a paradoxical sense of lightness. Juxtaposed throughout this lofty, weighty, castle-like space are pits and balconies, masses of oddly placed and sized interior windows-some glassed in, some wide open-and an assortment of staircases, clinging to the walls as to a ship’s side.
At present, it was all mysteriously dark, quiet, and foreboding.
That impression grew as we ventured from empty, overarching vestibule to silent, dim hallway to totally dark performance hall. There were several of the latter, some large, others built for either practice or black-box theater, but none containing the man we were after.
At each stop, depending on the lighting and the layout, we either looked around or Rarig shouted Lew’s name into the void, identifying himself-only to hear his voice swallowed up by the gloom.
Finally, after an hour of this, frustrated by our lack of manpower and our ignorance of the floor plan, we were about to admit defeat. Rarig especially seemed to be running on ebbing resources. His mood, ever changing, had finally settled into a taciturn glumness, and mine was close behind. Failure here not only meant that Lew Corbin-Teich had spun away on his own, but it entailed my returning home empty handed, to a reception probably rivaling the surrender of a child killer.
It was therefore with some relief that we finally got an answer to Rarig’s last call.
We were standing in a doorway leading to the balcony section of what appeared to be-had there been any light-a very large stage area. Rarig’s voice had just disappeared as usual, without echo or response, when after a pause we clearly heard the name “John” float by as if carried on a breeze.