Aphrodite (17 page)
Trying to keep everything as normal as he could, he said to Deena, “Check out the glove compartment, will you? Why don’t you put on a CD?”
She opened the compartment, picked through the musical selections. “Tom Petty?” she asked.
“Perfect,” Justin told her.
Deena took the CD out of its plastic holder and squinted at the radio/CD player inserted into the dashboard, trying to figure out exactly how to work it.
“Give it to me,” Justin told her.
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
She leaned over to get a better look at the controls. And the second her head bowed down, the window on her side of the car exploded.
Deena didn’t seem to understand what had happened. She started to bob back up but Justin grabbed the top of her head with his right hand and shoved her back down toward the floor. Her back—along with the car seat and the entire front of the car—was covered with shards of sparkling glass. He glanced back, making sure that Kendall was all right. Her eyes were as wide as they could be and she had a small trickle of blood on her cheek, where she’d been cut by a piece of flying glass. But she wasn’t hurt badly and she didn’t look hysterical, only confused.
Justin realized his foot was pushed down hard on the accelerator and the car swerved to the left, crossing over the single yellow line. A truck was coming in the opposite direction, bearing down straight at them. The truck driver had his hand on the horn and the deep, violent blare cut through the silence of the afternoon. It also cut through Justin’s paralysis. He tried frantically to steer with his left hand, realized he was losing control, let go of Deena to grab the wheel with his right, and turned hard. He wasn’t sure it was going to hold. The back of the car hung back—for a moment it felt like they weren’t moving at all, like they were simply hovering on the wrong side of the road—then they straightened out and jerked forward and Justin yanked the wheel again, hard right. As he slipped back across the yellow line, the truck roared past. The driver still had the horn pushed down, and he was screaming obscenities at Justin out the window. But Justin didn’t pay any attention to him.
A car had been parked on the shoulder of the road. It was nondescript. Dark color. Some kind of American boxy piece of crap. The Civic had driven by it at the exact moment the window had exploded. And he realized now that the same car had passed them a couple of minutes earlier, sped past them at one of the few straightaways on the curvy back road. It had passed them just to park on the shoulder. He checked the rearview mirror. The dark car wasn’t parked any longer. Now it was back on the road. It was in hot pursuit.
Justin floored the accelerator, kept it floored until he came to the first turnoff he could take. A small road leading up into the woods. He didn’t know where it led, but he decided to take it. And to take it at full speed. The dark car followed, its tires squealing as it made the sharp turn. Justin heard the ping of metal hitting metal. There had to be two men in the car because shots were being fired from the passenger seat, probably trying to take out a tire. He kept his foot pressed down, urging the car forward. A quarter of a mile later, he saw another turnoff and he took that, too. It led through an open iron gate. The Civic was pushing seventy, and now it was slicing through the grounds of some kind of institution. Justin saw a building ahead of them and drove straight for it. In the mirror he saw the dark car appear and make the turn. He jammed his foot down on the pedal as hard as he could. When he went over the first speed bump he thought Deena might actually go flying right through the roof. But he refused to slow down and she grabbed at the door handle for something to hold on to. He saw the dark car stop short. He watched as it quickly went into reverse, backed out of the gate, turned, and disappeared. By the time Justin screeched to a full stop he realized they were safe. The dark car had called it quits.
He tried to orient himself. They were surrounded by acres of lush green grass, with patches of water and sand scattered about. Then it hit him. They had stopped in front of the austere clubhouse of the East End Golf and Tennis Club. The serenity was startling. There was no noise at this place. No movement. Certainly no sense of any urgency or that anything more crucial than a makable three-foot putt might be happening anywhere in the world. He looked out through the windshield, which was badly cracked now, to see every caddy, golfer, and pro-shop worker standing in place, frozen, staring at the car.
The whole thing, from the moment the bullet had hit the window until now, had taken maybe sixty seconds.
“Are you all right?” he asked Deena.
She turned to the backseat, reached behind her, and pulled Kendall back up to her, squeezing her even harder than she had before and saying, “Are you all right, baby?”
Kendall’s only response was “That was fun. And I’m not a baby.”
When Deena kissed the girl on the forehead, she said, “You’re bleeding!” but Kendall brushed her fear aside and said, “I’m okay.” When Deena touched her daughter’s cheek, the girl said, “I’m okay, Mom. Really.”
Deena turned to Justin now and said, “What happened?”
“Somebody took a shot at us. At you.”
“Who …how …where …?”
“I don’t have answers to any of that.”
“What are you going to do? They’re getting away. Aren’t you going to go after them?”
“Not with the little girl here,” he said. “I’d never find them anyway. And I didn’t get the license plate or a real make.”
“I’m not a baby or a little girl,” Kendall said. “I’m almost eight.”
“You’re right,” Justin said. “I apologize.” And then in a stage whisper, he added, “I’m just trying to make your mom feel better.”
The girl nodded at him, understanding. Justin reached into the left front pocket of his pants, was pleased to find his cell phone still there. He dialed the police station. Gary answered the phone and when he heard who it was, he didn’t even bother to answer, just yelled across the room, “It’s Westwood, sir. He’s on the phone.”
Justin heard some vague movement in the background, then Agent Len Rollins was talking to him.
“Where the hell are you?” Rollins said. Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “It doesn’t matter. I want you to get here immediately.”
“No can do, Agent Rollins, sir,” Justin said. “What did you say?”
“I said I can’t … let’s see, how would you FBI assholes put it: I can’t comply with your orders. Sir.”
“Detective Westwood, we have an emergency situation here and I want you at the station immediately.”
“I’m with Ms. Harper,” Justin said. “And her lovely daughter.” He winked at Kendall and she nodded approvingly. “My priority is getting them to a safe place.”
“This station will be plenty damn safe,” Rollins said. “Bring them in now.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard, Agent Rollins, sir. One police officer’s already been killed. …”
“I’ve heard. And I’ve seen.”
“But I don’t think you’ve heard that somebody just did his best to take us out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Somebody just took a shot at us. I’m not feeling as if East End Harbor is the safest place to be at the moment.”
“Where are you?”
“Try another question.”
“Goddammit, Westwood! Where are you taking them?”
“Not sure yet. But when I am …well …I’d like to say you’ll be the first to know, but I’d probably be lying. It’s my belief,
sir
, that the reason my fellow officer had his balls burned off is because you fucked up. So I think I’d rather take my chances on my own for the moment.”
“Detective Westwood, I will personally put out a federal warrant for your arrest. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re going to be in if you don’t get over here and bring your witness with you?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” Justin said. Then he added “sir” one more time. And then he hung up.
They all stayed silent in the car for a few moments. Justin saw several people from the clubhouse now start to move toward them slowly and cautiously. Justin realized he hadn’t turned off the motor. He shifted the car into reverse, backed up and turned around, and slowly began heading back down the long driveway, away from the building and the golfers and East End Harbor’s most visible symbol of luxury and ease.
“What are we going to do?” Deena said, her voice huskier and more tremulous than he’d ever heard it.
“We’re going to find out what the hell is going on,” Justin told her.
“And once we find out?”
“Then we’ll be able to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Get the bad guys, put them in jail, and go back to our normal lives.”
Deena looked at Kendall, who was peering at her anxiously. She forced herself to smile at her daughter and smoothed the dirty-blond hair back off the girl’s forehead. “Do you really believe that?” she asked Justin. “About solving everything and making sure everything’s going to be okay?”
“You don’t know me very well, do you?”
“Is that a yes?” she asked.
The car pulled slowly onto the street and turned left. With his right hand, his shirtsleeve pulled up over his fingers to protect them, Justin wiped some of the broken glass off of the top of the dashboard. With his left hand, he steered the car toward the ferry.
“That’s a big fat no,” he said with a shrug. “But I’ll do the best I can.”
Thanks to the sheer stupidity and laziness of Elron Burton, it was extremely easy to break into the Growth Industries office on the third floor of the Weston, Connecticut, strip mall.
When the car ferry landed on the other side of the sound, Justin drove toward the mall, taking the most circuitous route possible to make certain that no one was following them. No one was.
When he finally felt comfortable enough to drive along the main road, they immediately hit a stretch of pure Americana: nothing but fast-food restaurants and enormous car lots. At the second lot they came to, Justin turned in. He told Deena and Kendall to feel free to stretch their legs, said he’d be back in a few minutes, then walked over to the white and blue trailer that served as the main sales office. Fifteen minutes later, Justin returned holding a set of car keys. He pointed at a blue-gray 1997 Buick Regal sedan.
“What’s this?” Deena asked.
“Our new car,” he said. When her eyes widened, he pointed to the shattered window on his battered Civic and said, “This is not what you’d call traveling incognito.”
He opened the door to the Buick and as she stepped inside, Deena said, “You can afford to just buy a new car?”
“It’s amazing what a cop ID can do,” he said. “It not only lowers the price, it gives you good value on a trade-in.”
“I’ll try it next time I’m in the market,” she said.
He pulled back onto the main road, and three blocks away from their final destination he found a perfectly acceptable-looking but non-descript motel, a Hampton Inn. He checked in—into two adjoining rooms—and took the keys. He didn’t bother to put their small bags in the rooms. He didn’t even bother to
look
at the rooms. He just got back in the Buick, where Deena and Kendall were waiting, and drove away.
Justin’s next stop was the mall, where he hit a men’s clothing store and bought himself a long-sleeved dress shirt and a sport jacket. Deena made a face at the tie he picked out for himself, so he let her put it back on the table and make another selection. He had to admit—actually, she made him admit—that she had superior taste in ties. He told her what he had in mind and they decided his jeans and running shoes would suffice.
Two stores down from the clothing store was a place called the Ultimate Wireless Connection. Justin popped in and twenty minutes later popped out carrying two new cell phones. He got another questioning look from Deena and said, “Anything that makes us harder to trace, that’s the idea.”
The third stop was a liquor store where Justin bought a bottle of scotch.
Then it was on to Growth Industries.
As they stood in the parking lot, twenty feet or so away from the building, Justin hoped desperately that the same dullard of a security guard would be on duty, then he told Deena exactly what he wanted her to do and say. She nodded dubiously. They both looked at Kendall, who nodded solemnly and said to both of them, “Don’t worry. It sounds like a good plan.”
Then Justin headed off to another part of the mall. Deena and Kendall waited exactly fifteen minutes, as instructed, then Kendall reached out, took her mother’s hand, and they started walking.
As Deena and Kendall strode past the security guard, Deena gave him a big smile and said, “Hi, Elron.” He smiled familiarly, nodding as if he recognized her. Elron rarely recognized anyone; there were too many people who came in and out. He knew the really fat guy who worked on the second floor and always wore a bright yellow tie. And there was an old guy he remembered because he was always complaining about something, usually Elron. Other than that, he was fairly oblivious. But he always liked it when someone said hello to him, and he always made it a point to respond in kind with a friendly nod or even a “How-de-do.” He had no memory of ever seeing this one before, but he’d never let her know that. He was a professional, after all.
“Can you believe it?” Deena said, lingering by Elron’s podium. “Mr. Hemmings is making me work tonight. He just called me, told me to meet him here. I was supposed to have the day off. Now I’m supposed to come, just like that, at six o’clock. My guess is he won’t even stay. He’ll just dump everything on me and head off. I’ll probably be here till nine or ten! I mean, what could be so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
“Doesn’t seem fair, does it?” Elron said.
“It’s
not
fair. I couldn’t even get a sitter. Now my daughter’s got to spend her evening in the office!”
“Cute little one,” Elron said. “What’s her name?”
“Lucy,” Kendall piped up. “Nice to meet you.”
“Well, try not to work too hard,” Elron said, as Deena and Kendall headed toward the elevators. “Either one of you.”
As the elevator door closed behind them, Deena looked at her daughter and said, “Lucy?”