The place may be bugged. I’ll search it later. Please go downstairs and throw away all the food in the house. Everything except the stuff in sealed cans. All milk, soda pop, beer, frozen food, coffee, everything.
She read it and looked puzzled.
“I’ll explain later,” he said. “Please, go do it.”
She went.
Jake Grafton sat looking out his window for about fifteen seconds, then he knelt by the safe and opened it. His gun was still there, an old Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum that he had carried when he flew in Vietnam. All the classified documents seemed to be as he had left them. After he closed and locked the safe, he rooted through his bottom desk drawer for the box of shells. He loaded the pistol and stuck it in the small of his back, under the belt.
Downstairs in the kitchen he kissed his wife. “Where are the car keys?”
“In my purse.”
Jake helped himself, then snagged his coat from the hall rack. “I’ll be back in a little while,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“Tarkington’s. There’s a chance those guys stopped here first. They’re delivering messages tonight.”
“Why don’t you call Toad?”
“I want to see these guys again.”
“Jake, be careful.”
“You know me, Callie. I’m always careful.” He kissed her again and let her close the door behind him.
The uniformed guard was walking the beat on the sidewalk. Jake stopped beside him and rolled down his window. “Did you see two men come out of my house?”
“Yessir. They got into a car parked across the street.”
“What kind of car?”
“I don’t know, sir. It was a sedan with government plates. Is there a problem, Admiral?”
“No. No problem. They forgot something, that’s all. Thanks.” He took his foot off the brake and got the car in motion before the man could ask any more questions.
The pistol was a hard lump where his back pressed against the seat.
A white Ford sedan with government plates sat in Tarkington’s driveway behind Rita’s car, which was in the carport. Toad’s Honda Accord was parked at the curb. A light in the living room window made the drapes glow. Jake drove past and parked on the next block.
As he walked back he kept looking in parked cars. He saw no one.
These guys were sloppy. No lookouts, no driver waiting behind the wheel, a government sedan, for Christ’s sake! They were just out putting the fear of God in a few people tonight and not bothering to do it right.
Jake tried the door of the sedan. It was unlocked. He popped the hood latch and eased the door shut. Feeling in the darkness he jerked the leads off the spark plugs, then let the hood down gently. Then he got behind the front of Rita’s car, got the pistol out, and waited.
Jake was under no illusions. This was going to be dicey. He was going to have to get control of this situation quickly before these two clowns had a chance to think about it. If he pulled the trigger the cops would be here in short order, someone was going to be arrested, and someone was going to have a lot of explaining to do. And someone — Jake suspected that he might wind up as this someone — would probably find himself in more trouble than he could get himself out of.
He had waited no more than three minutes when he heard the Tarkingtons’ front door open.
He got down on his hands and knees in front of Rita’s car and looked under it. He saw their feet. They got into the sedan. A muttered oath.
The passenger door opened and a set of feet came around to the front of the car. Grafton straightened and peered through the window of Rita’s car.
The sedan’s hood was up. The blond man was looking into the engine compartment.
Jake went to his left, around Rita’s Mazda. The hood obscured the driver’s view and the blond had his back to Jake. He heard Jake coming at the last instant and started to turn just as the pistol butt thunked into his head. He went down like a sack of potatoes.
Jake grasped the butt of the revolver with his right hand and stepped around to the driver’s door. He jerked it open.
“Get out.”
The dark-haired man looked slightly stunned.
Jake reached with his left hand and got a handful of shirt and tie. He jerked hard. The man half fell out of the seat. Jake jabbed the gun barrel into his ear and kept pulling.
“Jesus, you can’t—”
“Get up and walk or I’ll blow your brains out.” He jabbed savagely with the gun barrel.
The man came along.
“Tarkington,” Jake called. “Get out here.”
The door opened and the stoop light came on.
“Toad, turn off that light and get out here.”
Tarkington came out. He was in his pajamas and they were torn half off his chest. “That one on the ground,” Jake said, nodding. “Clean out his pockets. Everything. Put him into the sedan and bring all the stuff inside.”
Rita held the door.
In the living room Jake hooked the dark-haired man’s leg and sent him sprawling.
“Search him, Rita, and tell me what happened.”
Rita Moravia was wearing a robe over a nightie. Her hair was down. She began pulling things from the man’s pockets as she talked. “They rang the doorbell and told Toad they were from the DIA and you sent them over here. He let them in. I heard a scuffle out here in the living room and came out and they had knocked him down. They made some threats.”
“How long were they here?”
“Seven or eight minutes. No more.” Rita had finished with the man’s rear trouser pockets and side coat pockets. She rolled him over without ceremony and emptied his inside jacket pockets. She turned his front trouser pockets inside out.
“Feel him all over for weapons.”
Rita did so. “Nope. Just the one wallet, and this.” She held up a card encased in plastic attached to a chain. Jake had seen ones like this before. It was a pass to the CIA’s Langley facility.
Jake picked up the wallet and examined it. He extracted the driver’s license and held it out so he could read it. “Okay, Paul Tanana of 2134 North Wood Duck Drive, Burke, Virginia. Want to tell us who sent you on this little errand?”
Rita was finished. She gathered the CIA pass and the change, keys and pens and placed them on a coffee table.
“I asked you a question,” Jake said.
Tanana glowered. “You’ll be sorry for this.”
“I’m sorry I ever laid eyes on you. Who sent you?”
Silence.
“Rita, check on Toad.”
The gun felt heavy in Jake’s hand. He kept it pointed at Tanana, who was rubbing his ear. Jake rubbed his fingers back and forth across the stiff plastic of the driver’s license.
In a moment Rita and Toad came in. “Guy didn’t have a gun,” Toad said. “Just a wallet and a CIA pass and a little pack of lock picks.”
“Who sent you to see me tonight?” Jake asked Tanana.
The man snorted. “You ain’t gonna shoot me.”
What’s wrong here?
Jake looked again at the driver’s license, at the clear plastic, the perfect edges.
He put the license into his pocket and eared back the hammer of the revolver. He approached Tanana. He bent down and placed the barrel of the weapon against the man’s temple.
“You’re right. I’m not going to shoot you tonight. But if anything ever happens to my wife or kid — if you ever get within a mile of my wife or kid — if I ever see you within a mile of my house — I’ll blow your fucking brains out and I’ll take a great deal of pleasure in doing it, Paul-baby. Are you getting the message?”
“I got it.”
Jake rose and backed off. “I jerked the wires off the spark plugs on your car. Put them back on and get the hell out of here.”