Conspiracy (18 page)

“Take it on up,” she said to Fat Max, indicating the camera and equipment. “You’ll probably need the light bar— the room’s just in front of the elevator, so you get no light from the hall windows. Set up and wait for me.”

Without stopping to watch Max depart, she turned to Walter J. “All right,” she said. “You remember what I told you?”

“I got it, Miss Q.” Walter grinned, not knowing it was Alec in the room of the Bates woman. That was something Rachel would have to face down later, she thought: the sympathy, the knowing looks after she and Alec were no longer a pair. But by doing it this way, at least Rachel could feel she had retained the initiative somehow, by being the one to take action. It was that motive, she told herself, rather than revenge, that spurred her to use the “Women in Waiting” program as more than a device to discover the meaning of the number 702 on the napkin in Alec’s pocket. Certainly she was jealous, certainly she was angry at what Helen Bates had done. 

But Rachel did not believe her anger was deep enough to make her actually release for broadcast the tape of what the UBC camera was about to record. She could picture the consequences for Helen: the ostracism from the wives of the other British soccer players, and from the Britishers back home, for the indiscretion of being caught; the beating Helen would be sure to get from her brutish husband; the further stories and scandal that such retaliation on his part would be certain to stir up . . . all within Rachel’s power to release. Would she?

She smiled to herself a little as she approached the house phones, Walter J. at her side. Perhaps she would. For some reason, she thought of the book she had been reading; of her recurring fantasy of motherhood that she had recently begun to indulge; of the ruin Alec’s infidelity had brought to that soft little pink-and-blue dream image. Foolish to think Alec, could be a father; perhaps just as foolish to think Rachel Quinn could ever take care of a baby.

She broke off the thought, irritated at the feeling of reluctance that she was building up inside her, and picked up the house phone. She did not bother to speak Spanish. Operators in hotels like the Ritz were trained to accommodate foreigners. “Seven-oh-two,” she said, her voice authoritative.

Then she handed the phone to Walter J.

Lying on his side, his arms embracing Helen’s thighs and his head between them, Alec was at peace. He drifted in a lazy reverie as his body responded to her hands and mouth. Helen had come; now it was Alec’s turn, and he was savoring the slow delight of gathering sensations. Warmth, soft, tingling warmth, and wetness, and gentle manipulation that coaxed, tremors of pleasure from distant corners of his being.

The shattering clamor of the telephone bell brought Alec’s pleasure to an abrupt halt. Helen had the grace not to move suddenly, but she had to move nonetheless, to answer the phone, and Alec had to sit up to avoid feeling ridiculous. “Sorry, he’s out of town,” Alec heard her say, and felt a moment of relief; the interruption would be done with. She was already starting to hang up.

Then they both heard the voice, with its rich overlay of dialect: “You sho? Derek tol’ me he be stoppin’ in fo’ a quick ovanight, gettin’ in ’bout six. He ax me to call. You sho’ he ain’t in yet?”

Helen paled. Somehow she kept her voice steady. “No, but try again in about a half hour.”

She hung up the phone before there could be any further conversation.

Alec was already out of bed and reaching for his shorts. “I heard,” he said, when she looked at him.

She only nodded. As Alec dressed, he marveled at the skill of her movements: letting her brassiere cup her breasts and then fastening the straps behind her back; working each leg of the pantyhose into a doughnut-shaped fold that slipped on over her foot. Only one thing lovelier than watching a woman dress after bed, he thought, and that was watching her undress before. Too bad he hadn’t been able to come yet another time this afternoon, but there would be others. He slipped on his own coat and loafers; he had not worn a tie. “I guess I’d best be off,” he said, and moved to the door.

“Look through the peephole first,” she said quietly. “You can see the elevator.” She was stripping the sheets from the bed.

He slid the brass cover plate aside and peered through the fisheye lens, half expecting to see the gorilla-like form of her husband looming in the doorway. Instead he saw elevator doors, closed, and hallway carpet, empty, lit by the late-afternoon sun.

“Looks clear,” he said.

“Good.” She pressed the bundle of rolled-up sheets into his arms. “Dump that in front of one of the other doors, would you, love? I’ll call you tomorrow—they’ve a game at four, and he’ll need to take the plane by noon at the latest.”

A peck on the cheek, and she was propelling him out. He stepped into the hallway and then realized that what he had thought was the sun coming from a hall window somewhere to the right of the doorway was really a photographer’s light bar. The light hurt his eyes. He squinted and looked around for whoever was being photographed down the hall. He felt vaguely awkward for having passed between the photographer and his picture, but really it was their own damn fault for setting up in a place like this.

Down the hall to his left was nothing—only empty corridor and closed doors, with trays of dishes here and there for room service to pick up.

It dawned on Alec that the camera had been set up to photograph him. At the same instant he realized he was still holding the soiled sheets from Helen’s bed.

“Why, you bloody swine!” he cried, and then rushed at the lights. The film, he thought, he would tear out the film and stuff it down the meddling bastard’s throat!

Fat Max moved with surprising agility to one side, avoiding Alec’s charge. With a skill honed by nine seasons of dodging runners and tackles on the sidelines of American football games, he back-pedaled with the camera, managing to keep Alec in focus, and put out one foot, catching Alec’s instep as he bolted past. The blond-haired Britisher went sprawling. The armful of rolled-up sheets, up to now barely visible against the background of Alec’s white jacket and shirt, was now clearly displayed against the darker surface of the hotel carpet.

Alec flung the sheets to one side, pushed himself up on his hands, and looked back at his tormenter. By now his eyes, no longer blinded, could see that the camera was a television porta-pack, and that the man holding the camera was in uniform. Alec’s eyes focused on the uniform insignia: UBC.

“Bleeding bastard!” he cried again, and charged. This time he made contact, but not with the camera he was trying to break open. A strong hand grappled at his coat collar, held him at arm’s length, and spun him around with unexpected force. Alec caromed off the wall, stumbling. What the hell kind of apes did they have for cameramen? He tried to get his breath.

Then the elevator door opened. Still thinking that the camera in the hallway was some kind of awful coincidence, Alec recoiled in fear, expecting Derek Bates to stride forward and demand explanations.

Instead he saw Rachel Quinn standing with another UBC cameraman, this one a black man. Carefully controlled surprise came over her face. “Alec!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”

9

By Sunday afternoon, when he reached the Greyhound bus terminal in New Orleans, Eugene Groves’s full confidence had returned. The wound in his arm had pained him Thursday night and Friday, but he had changed the dressings twice and picked up some timed-release aspirin that helped dissipate the hard edge of the ache. In St. Louis he yielded to temptation and picked up a pint of whiskey on the two-hour layover, in hopes of getting some real sleep. But his better judgment prevailed and he did not drink it. 

Instead he invested in a giant-size tube of burn ointment, the label of which fairly oozed with antibiotic and anesthetic ingredients. He used the ointment liberally the next time he changed the dressings. In Cincinnati he stood on line for the southbound bus, and went straight to the rearmost seat that stretched across the full width of the bus. When the steward came on to hawk his pillows and blankets, Groves bought two of each. Then he lay down and slept without dreaming for some three hundred fifty miles.

Now, swinging his suitcase above the tops of the seats as he shuffled down the narrow center aisle, Groves was certain he would be on time for his rendezvous on the Costa del Sol. The inactivity of bus travel would normally have weakened him, but with the wound to recuperate from, bed rest had been just what the doctor ordered. He felt good. It was an effort to hold the suitcase up this high for an extended period, but he could rest it on the seats as he moved past them one by one. All were empty; their former occupants were now in line in front of Groves, also shuffling forward.

He realized that the line was moving more slowly than it ought to be. It’s nothing, he told himself, you’re out of the woods now, but all the same he slid across the two seats on his right and pressed his cheek against the window glass to see what was going on outside the door up at the front of the bus.

What he saw made his stomach start pumping hot bile up into his throat. Two men, dressed in suits and ties despite the sultry Louisiana air, stood beside the bus driver. They were questioning the passengers as they debarked. Cops, certainly; FBI, probably, thought Groves—they had that well-conditioned, bright-eyed look. And they were taking no trouble to conceal the bulges under their coats where their guns would be holstered. 

In the split second after Groves first saw the two men, his mind raced in several patterns at once: how they had followed his trail; how he could bluff his way past; how he could escape. By the time he saw the passenger who was currently being questioned open his carry-on bag for inspection, Groves had eliminated bluff as a possible course of action. That left escape. And to hell with how they got onto me, Groves thought, as he lurched back into the center aisle and moved toward the rear of the bus. The line of passengers continued to edge forward. None of them turned to watch him, for which Groves was very grateful.

He went first to the back seat, where he retrieved the pillows he had slept on after leaving Cincinnati. Then he walked forward a few seats until he found a window on the bus’s left side with “Emergency Exit” instructions printed on a sticker below the glass. One hell of an emergency, he thought grimly as he followed the instructions. The aluminized metal window frame did not move readily when he pushed at it. Nervous sweat trickled down his underarms as he tried to move the window again. Still nothing.

Desperate now, with the last person in the passenger line only about one-fourth of the length of the bus away from the door, Groves struck the frame with the heel of his hand, using a corner of the pillow to muffle the sound of the impact. No movement. Groves was about to give up and hurl his suitcase through the glass and make a run for it when he saw the small metal hinge at the base of the frame handle. The clamp! He had forgotten to loosen the clamp!

His breath coming rapidly now, he flipped up the clamp and then tried the window frame again. This time it gave way readily. Groves pushed it out halfway and then lifted it up, twisting it so the frame would come in the window. He set the frame, glass still intact, on the seat where he knelt, resting it against the seat-back. Then he tossed out one of the pillows. Taking a deep breath of the hot, fume-laden terminal air, he lifted the Cobor-filled suitcase out the window, leaned out after it as far as he could without falling onto the hot tarmac below him, and lowered the suitcase toward the ground, dropping it the last few feet onto the waiting pillow. Then he pulled himself back inside. 

For a moment he considered putting the window back in from here and rejoining the line, but then he mentally played through the questions he would get. No luggage, sir? All the way from Cincinnati? May we see some identification? And there he would be with the IDs of two men who had been killed in Utah, or, if he chose to ditch the two cards now, with no IDs at all. That would mean that he could be detained for some more questions, and even if he managed to talk his way out around those, there would be the suitcase sitting there on the pavement beside the bus for anyone to find and walk off with—or turn in to the authorities.

The bus was parked with its left side facing a row of more parking bays and a dingy, gray-painted storage wing that appeared to be closed on Sundays. No one was watching. The passenger line had; progressed forward; four or five more people were still inside the bus. It’s going to be a pisser with this arm, Groves thought as he put his left leg out of the window. The edge was a hard thing to sit astraddle of, and Groves wasted no time grabbing the window frame from the seat, squeezing it past his belly, and fitting its upper edge into place inside the metal groove at the top of the window opening. That was the hard part, because he had to use his bad left arm and hold the window up like it was a trap door over his head.

Then he swung his right leg through, slid painfully off the edge, and eased himself down the side of the bus, finding the top of a rear tire with his shoe and supporting himself. 

He lowered the window until it was about to slam on his right hand. Then he let go with his right, winced with effort as he pushed the window bottom into place with his left, and dropped to the pavement beside the suitcase.

No one had seen.

His eye went back to the window, and his heart sank. A crack of about one inch was visible at the bottom. The hinged clamp again. The damn thing must have failed to open far enough to catch and hold, so that the window frame bounced out part way instead of locking into place.

The urge to run for it seized him, but he pictured the consequences. The passenger count in this bus would be one person short. The FBI men would naturally make a routine check to be certain no one was still on board, hiding behind the seats. They would not fail to spot the opened emergency-exit window. They would know someone had bolted, and then the heat would really be on. So he jumped, reaching the base of the window with his hand at the top of his leap, like a jump shot in basketball, slamming the window frame into place before he came down. The first try didn’t work, but the second one did; the window stayed shut.