The voice smoothly transitioned to English. "May I tell her who is calling?"
"Tell her Lang Reilly's in town and would like to buy her dinner."
"Lang!" Gurt shouted moments later. If she wasn't happy to hear from him, she had added acting to her list of achievements. "What carries you to Rome?"
Gurt still had not totally mastered the English idiom.
"What brought me here was seeing you again."
She gave a giggle almost girlish in tone. "Still the Shiest…, er, thrower of bullshit, Lang." He could imagine her cocking an eyebrow. "And have you brought your wife with you to see me?"
No way to explain without staying on the line a lot longer than he intended. "Not married anymore. You free for dinner?"
"For you, if not free, at least inexpensive."
She had mastered lines that died with vaudeville.
They had no common history in Rome, no place he could designate by reference in case someone was monitoring the perpetual tap on all Agency lines. Lang's choices were a secluded place where he could be sure neither had been followed or a very crowded spot where they would be more difficult to spot. The more potential witnesses would also mean more safety.
Crowds won.
"The Piazza Navona, you know it?"
"Of course. It is one of the most famous…"
"Fountain of the Three Rivers. Say about eighteen hundred hours?"
"Isn't that a bit early for dinner?"
Most Italians don't even think about the evening meal until nine o'clock, 2100 on the twenty-four-hour clock common in Europe. They do, however, begin to consume aperitifs long before.
"Want to see you in the sunlight, Gurt. You always looked best in the light."
He hung up before she could reply.
Like most lawyers, Lang was connected to the womb of his office by the umbilical cord of the telephone. He could have no more failed to call in than a fetus could fail to take sustenance. He had not had the time to purchase an international calling card, so the call was going to require considerable patience in dealing with an overseas operator whose English might be marginal.
Sara answered on the second ring. "Mr. Reilly's office."
Lang glanced at his watch and subtracted five hours. It was shortly after nine A.M. in Atlanta.
"Me, Sara. Anything I need to know, any problems?"
"Lang?" Her voice was brittle with tension. "Mr. Chen called."
Chen? Lang didn't have any client… Wait. He had had a client, Lo Chen, several years ago. The man had been accused of involvement with the growing number of Asian mobs in the Atlanta area. Not believing any authority would be stupid enough not to tap the line of the lawyer representing a man accused of a crime, Chen had insisted Lang use pay phones to call him at a rotating list of phone booths. Complying with his client's wishes, Lang used one of the phones in the lobby of the building.
What did Sara mean?
"Do you remember Mr. Chen's number?" Sara sounded as though she was about to cry.
"I'm not sure…"
Sara said something, words directed away from the phone. A man's voice asked, "Mr. Reilly?"
"Who the hell are you?" Lang demanded, angry that someone would interrupt a call to his own office. There was a mirthless chuckle. "Surprised you didn't recognize me, Mr. Reilly." Lang felt his lunch sink. There had to be something wrong, terribly wrong. "Morse?"
"The same, Mr. Reilly. Now, where be you?"
"What the hell are you doing in my office?"
"Trying to find you, Mr. Reilly."
"You got more questions, I'll answer ' em when I get home. Or on your dime."
"And just when might you be coming home?" There was something in the tone, a come-here-little-fish-all-I-want-to-do-is-gut-you quality to the question that activated Lang's paranoia like a tripped burglar alarm.
"You're asking so you can meet my plane with a brass band, right?"
There was a pause, one of those moments the writers of bodice-rippers described as pregnant. Lang would have called this one plain ominous.
Then Sara apparently took the phone back. "They're here to arrest you, Lang!"
"Arrest? Lemme talk to Morse."
When the detective was back on the line, Lang's concern was beginning to outweigh anger. "What is this B.S.? You sure as hell can't begin to prove I've obstructed your investigation."
In fact, with the Fulton County prosecutor's conviction rate, it was doubtful he could convince a jury of Hannibal Lecter's violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
There was another dry chuckle, the sound of wind through dead leaves. "Proovin' not be my job, Mr. Reilly. Arrestin'is. Shouldn't come as any big surprise I got a murder warrant here with your name on it. Where were you 'round noon yesterday?"
On my way to Dallas with a false passport as!D, Lang thought sourly. There would be no record that Lang Reilly had been on that plane.
"Murder?" Lang asked. "Of who, er, whom?"
Even stress doesn't excuse poor grammar.
"Richard Halvorson."
"Who is he?"
"Was. He was the doorman at that fancy highrise of yours."
Lang had never asked Richard's last name. 'That's absurd! Why would I kill the doorman?"
"Not for me to say. Mebbe he didn't get your car fast enough."
Just what the world needed: another Lennie Briscoe.
"And I didn't hear you say where you were yesterday," Morse added.
"I barely knew him," Lang protested.
"Musta known him fairly welclass="underline" left your dog with him. And he was shot with a large-caliber automatic just like the Browning be in your bedside table."
Lang fought the urge to simply drop the phone and run.
The more he knew, the better he could refute what appeared to be absurd charges. "If you've been into my bedside table, I assume you had a warrant."
"Uh-huh. Nice and legal. Got it when your fingerprints showed up on the shell casings. Gun's been fired recently but ballistics report won't be back till tomorrow. I'm bettin' be your gun killed him." Morse was enjoying this. "You got somethin' to say, you come back here an' say it. FBI gets involved, you become a fugitive. You don't want them on your trail."
Me and Richard Kimble, Lang thought.
Lang knew he should sever the connection as quickly as possible but he couldn't, not just yet. "The dog I left with. Richard…?"
Apparently Sara could hear at least part of the conversation. Her voice was clear in the background. "I've got him, Lang, don't you…"
Lang hung up with at least one problem solved and walked away in a daze. They had done it, of course, killed Richard with his Browning – the one Lang had loaded, leaving his prints on the shells – and replacing it where it was sure to be found. Clever. Now every cop connected to the Internet anywhere in the world would be looking for him. Interpol, the Italian Policia, everyone would be doing their work for them.
How long had Lang been on the phone? Long enough for a trace? Unlike the old movies, computers could race through area switchboards with the speed of light. But an international call involved satellites, no wires connected to specific telephones. The best the computer could do was give general coordinates as to location. The bad news was that a trace would reveal Lang wasn't in the U.S. of A., something Morse would have had to wait to find out after getting the record of the Miami-Rome flight in the check of credit cards that was standard procedure in any fugitive hunt. Without a current bogus passport, Lang had had to use his real name and plastic for that leg. In today's terror conscious environment, paying cash for an international flight would have subjected him to scrutiny he had not wanted.
2
Atlanta
Twenty minutes later
Detective Franklin Morse stared at the fax again, although he had already studied every detail of both pages. The quality was poor, but good enough to recognize a copy of an airline ticket from Miami to Rome. The name of the passenger was clear enough: Langford Reilly. So was the transmitted photograph, grainy and streaked.