“Sounds good to me.”
“Great! I’ll take you around. Show you a good time. I promise. You can have grits for the second time. As soon as things settle down.”
“Look forward to it. Remember the Alamo.”
“Remember me.”
Later that day Robin came by, with deli sandwiches and jug wine, a beautiful smile and a soft quick kiss on the lips.
We sat facing each other at the ash burl trestle table she’d hand-carved years ago.
First time in a long time we’d been in the same room. If we’d scheduled it, I’d have spent hours dreading it. But it ended up nice. Nothing physical, nothing covert or calculated or stiff. No excavation of old wounds, debridement of damaged flesh. It wasn’t denial. There just didn’t seem to be any scars either of us could see or feel. Or maybe it was the wine.
We sat talking and eating and drinking, discussing the piss-poor state of the world, occupational hazards, occupational joys. Trading bad jokes. The space between us smooth, soft. Baby-smooth. As if we’d birthed something healthy.
I started to believe friendship was possible.
When she left, my loneliness was tempered by the pleasant confusion of hope. And when Milo came by to pick me up, I was in an amazingly good mood.
38
Surveillance. Numb butts.
But nice to be on the other side.
The first couple of days yielded no results. I learned about cop boredom, about self-doubt. About how even the best of friendships get strained by too much of nothing. But I refused Milo’s repeated offers to drop out.
“What? Your year for masochism?”
“My year for closure.”
“If your guess is right,” he said.
“If.”
“Lots of ifs.”
I said, “If you don’t want to bother, I’ll do it myself.”
He smiled. “Joe Detective?”
“Joe Curious. You think I’m reaching? It was just a look.”
He turned to me. The swelling down, his wounds greening, but one eye was still puffy and wet and his gait was stiff.
“No, Alex,” he said softly. “I think you’re worth listening to. I’ve always thought so. Besides, what do we have to lose except sanity, and not much of that left, right? It’s only been forty-eight hours. Let’s give it at least another couple of days.”
So we sat in the rented car until our butts turned downright frozen. Ate stale fast food, did crossword puzzles, engaged in inane chatter that neither of us would have tolerated under different circumstances.
The second day it happened. The maroon Volvo rolled away from suburbia, the way it always did. But this time it abandoned home territory and headed for the 405 Freeway.
Milo hung back until it had climbed a northbound on-ramp, then followed, hanging back several car lengths.
“You see,” he said, turning the steering wheel with one finger. “This is the way it’s done. Subtly. No way short of psychic powers he’s going to see us.”
Bravado in his voice but he kept checking the rearview mirror.
I said, “How’re your psychic powers?”
“Finely honed.” A moment later. “I knew the Department would buy my story, didn’t I?”
His story. Post-traumatic stress reaction. A need for seclusion.
Escape from L.A.
He’d been thorough. Buying an airplane ticket for Indianapolis. Showing up at LAX only to duck out of line just before boarding. Picking up a rental Cadillac and driving into the Valley. Checking into a motel out in Agoura under the name S. L. Euth.
Then surveillance. The other side.
Picking me up at a preassigned place that changed each day.
Watching. Making sure we weren’t being watched.
Today he had on a brown polo shirt, tan cords, white sneakers, and an old felt Dodgers cap on his head.
“Umm, nice leather,” he said, fondling the mocha-colored armrest that bisected the sedan De Ville’s bench seat. “Nice, even if it does drive mushy. I can see why you hold on to yours.”
“Not too obtrusive for a tail?”
“L.A. Chevy, pal. Your pricier neighborhoods, this is what the help drives.” He smiled. “Besides, it’s brown. Like my fashion statement. Blends in with all the bullshit.”
We followed the Volvo onto the 101 toward Ventura, stayed with it all the way through the west Valley. When it switched to the 23 North just past Westlake Village, Milo sat up straighter and smiled.
I said, “Let’s hear it for educated guesses.”
We sped past an industrial park with high-tech leanings. Vaguely ominous limestone and mirror-glass buildings with nondescript logos, security-gated parking lots, and streets with names like Science Drive and Progress Circle. The Volvo kept going.
When traffic thinned out at Moorpark, Milo pulled over to the shoulder and stopped.
I said, “What is it?”
“Now we are too conspicuous. Gonna give him a mile, then get back on.”
“Not worried about losing him?”
He shook his head. “We know where he’s going, don’t we?”
“If our information’s up to date.”
He said, “The Colonel’s information.” Frowned and checked his watch and got back on the highway. The highway became Grimes Canyon and evolved into a narrow, serpentine mountain pass. No other cars going our way; a few huge tankers coming from the opposite direction. The curves challenged the Cadillac and Milo put two hands on the wheel. Shifting his weight, he said, “Now the mushiness isn’t fun.”
I said, “You could have borrowed the Colonel’s Honda.”
“Right. God knows what kind of crap and gizmos he’s packed it with. Would you feel comfortable talking in something he owned?”
“Nope.”
“Him and his data banks. Guy’s got more info than the IRS. You see how fast he came up with what we wanted? But try to get something on him, and other data banks dry up real fast. I had a very reliable source on it, Alex. Same guy in Washington who helped me trace Kaltenblud. All his computer had to say about the Colonel was name, rank, date of discharge. Ditto with Major Bunyan.”
I said, “New Age warrior becomes New Age entrepreneur. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a colonel.”
“What then? Some clerk? He’s exactly what a colonel is. A general, even. Forget the George C. Scott stuff. Go high enough in any organization, and what you get is assholes exactly like him.”
Suddenly angry again.
I said, “He thinks he saved our lives.”
Milo grunted.
I said, “Maybe he did. But I think we had a pretty good chance without him. That sleeping-beauty act you pulled took me by surprise.”
He grunted again. The road straightened and we were in agricultural country: mountain-rimmed, ruler-edged plots of flat dry lowlands, ready for harvest. Cows grazing side by side with bobbing-grasshopper oil wells. Pig and egg farms; horse breeders, where gorgeous Arabians pranced arrogantly around roadside corrals; acres of citrus being cultivated for Sunkist.
The end point of the view from Howard Burden’s office window.
The maroon Volvo was nowhere in sight.
“Nice,” I said, looking up through the windshield at clean blue sky. “If you have to run, do it in style.”
We crossed a green-hooded bridge over a dry bed of the Santa Clara River and kept going to the 126 junction at Fillmore. Past a business district consisting of well-preserved two-story brick buildings on spotless, empty shopping streets striped with meterless diagonal parking spaces, full-service gas stations staffed by attendants in hats and uniforms, and a Frosty Mug root beer stand that could have been part of the set for American Graffiti. Then a continuation of the highway and more citrus groves, working ranches, and produce stands advertising nuts, olives, tomatoes, corn, and “all natural” beef jerky.
Just a few more miles to the base of the mountains and Piru. The outskirts of town was abandoned railyards and citrus warehouses, derelict auto bodies and lots of dust. A hundred yards in were clumps of small, poor houses. One-and two-room structures set in chockablock randomness on fenced dirt lots. Untrimmed trees lined the road- date palms, plums, beeches, and stocky-limbed carobs that emitted a spermy perfume which insinuated itself into the car’s air-conditioning system and lingered. Chickens in the front yard. Toddlers in hand-me-downs making toys out of found materials. Inflatable wading pools. The few adult faces we saw were sun-beaten and solemn, tending toward elderly and Hispanic.