Liars & Thieves (26 page)

The Sunday papers were still there piled up, and since I hadn’t read them, I pulled out the latest and turned on the reading light. After I went through the baseball standings and read about the latest tour event, I glanced through the political news.

Normally I don’t read political stuff. Just not interested. Maybe that’s the sign of a poor education, but I’ve only got one piddly little vote and one stomach lining, so I sleep better not knowing what the elected ones are doing on a daily basis. If you avoid television, as I do, they are remarkably easy to ignore.

The storyline du jour was the possibility of a female vice-presidential candidate. The five women the pundits thought most eligible for a political mating were three senators and two governors, who were given a lot of column inches.

A page over I stopped to read Jack Yocke’s column. I had met him at Grafton’s house a year or so ago, and he seemed like a decent sort. He had a different slant on the woman veep issue, however. According to Yocke’s unnamed sources—journalese for rumor—the president was considering the possibility of nominating his wife, Zooey Sonnenberg, for the vice-presidential spot.

Wow! If it happened, that would really be news. Not the biggest story since the resurrection, but close. Sonnenberg, who didn’t use her husband’s name, was a politician in her own right, and a controversial one. When she was young she had used her position as the female scion of a prominent wealthy family to make a big splash in the antiwar movement during the height of the Vietnam protests. She had advocated leftist causes in the years since, although she had been moderating her stances since her husband got elected to drive the bus. According to Yocke.

He went on to analyze the political chemistry. The president’s strongest support was from the conservative wing of his party. Zooey would strengthen him with the liberals, the theory went. She would even steal votes from women of the other party, which was a politician’s nirvana. Jack Yocke said that Zooey Sonnenberg on the ticket would be just what the doctor ordered to reelect the president.

I tossed the paper down and turned off the light, wondering where Yocke had gotten that tidbit.

The country was overdue for a woman vice president, but Zooey Sonnenberg? The first lady? The president’s wife?

After a while Grafton joined me in the darkness. “Callie says Goncharov has his memory back.”

“Thank God,” I whispered fervently. “What did he say?” I said, speaking louder.

“She didn’t question him about the files. Didn’t think this was the time.”

I took a sip of beer to hide my disappointment.

I saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness as he grinned at me. “This is going to work out, Tommy. We’ll get these people.”

“How?”

“You’ll see. Just bug that hotel. Pick up Sarah Houston at her apartment on your way to New York and take her along. She can’t be of much help if she stays in her office.”

“I have to go back to Washington tomorrow,” I told the admiral, “to make some preparations. Probably spend the night with Willie Varner, leave for New York the following morning. Do you think I should ask Joe Billy Dunn to help?”

“You’re worried he’s talking to people at Langley?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you decide if a person can be trusted?”

I took a deep breath as I thought about the answer to that one. I’d made my share of mistakes through the years. Kelly Erlanger sprang immediately to mind. “Gut feeling, I suppose.”

“How much help do you need?”

“One or two other people. Willie can work the van. I can teach him enough in half an hour to stand in for me.”

“Who would you use if you decide not to use Dunn?”

“There’s a couple of folks who helped me on a couple of things in the past. Man and woman who run a little electrical business, Scout and Arlene.”

“Are they honest?”

“Arlene used to be a crackhead. Was a street-corner hooker to pay for her habit. She beat it, though, which puts her pretty damned high in my book. Scout’s a thief. Willie sent me to them a couple years ago, says they’re good people. I can understand a guy like Scout, maybe because he’s so much like me. I know when he might be tempted and when he wouldn’t. And he thinks I’ll kill him if he crosses me.”

‘Dunn doesn’t believe that, does he?”

“Well, he might,” I said, thinking of his reaction to the pistol I shoved in his face. “On the other hand, he might think he can kill me first. The thing is, I don’t know who he’s been talking to, what he really thinks, if he can be bought.”

“Can you be bought?” Grafton asked.

“Hell, yes. Take a lot of dough, though. Whatever I am, I’m not cheap.”

The admiral chuckled. After a bit he went on. “Dunn’s been talking to your department head. He’s a good man. I think it’s safe to take him along, but if I were you I’d keep this conversation under my hat.”

“Okay.”

Grafton finished his beer in silence. I thought about asking him to level with me, to tell me all of it, but I chickened out.

‘ ‘Night, Tommy,” he said, and rose from his chair and went inside. In a little bit I heard him and Callie go upstairs.

Maybe I just didn’t want to know. Maybe I wanted to think that someone smarter than I was knew where the aces and kings were. Maybe I should just write a letter to Dear Abby. She would probably tell me to get my head examined.

I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the porch swing. Pulled an afghan over me because the evening was cool. The wind was buffeting the building, and I figured it was going to rain soon. Going to be a good night to sleep. I thought about Kelly Erlanger for a while, wondered if she was still alive. Thinking about her was a waste, so I thought about Anna Modin until I dropped off.

Something snapped me wide awake in the middle of the night. I lay frozen, listening. Wind was driving rain against the building, and some of it was blowing in through the screen on me. I was damp, felt the mist of exploded raindrops on my face. But that wasn’t what woke me.

The luminous hands of my watch read a few minutes after two. I turned my head until I could see the street through the porch screen. Rain was driving through the halo of the streetlights, but I couldn’t see anyone. The parked vehicles appeared to be as I remembered them before I went to sleep.

What had awakened me?

Then I heard it above the low moan of the wind, the sound of something dragging along, scraping against.. .

The 1911 automatic was under my pillow. I wrapped my fingers around it, automatically checked that the hammer was back and the thumb safety on.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I eased the afghan away from my legs.

There was that noise again! Something rubbing against the house, it sounded like.

And someone moaning.

I eased myself off the couch and, staying low, slipped past the chairs so I could see the walkway up to the house.

I froze, listening with every fiber of my being.

Scraping again, and a low moan. Right under me.

It was a man lying on the ground, pressed up against the house. At least, it looked a little like a man. Ah, he was wearing a ghillie suit. This was one of Grafton’s snake-eaters who was guarding the house.

With the pistol in hand, I slipped inside and threw the bolt to Grafton’s front door. Pulled it open as slowly as I could, staying very low. I took a deep breath, then eased through, still low.

In seconds I was over the moaning man. He had lost the headpiece of his outfit somewhere. He was white, with stubble for hair. No excess fat, lots of muscle. His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. The rags and tatters of the ghillie garment were wet from the rain. Yet there was a large dark area on his right rear side, near his kidney.

I bent down, trying to see in the dim light. Blood. The stains appeared to be blood. I reached for him, trying to see where he was wounded. He moaned as I touched him, tried ineffectually to fend off my hands.

I tore the ghillie suit with both hands, trying to see.

He had been shot. At least twice. Probably while he was in his hide.

His assailant was probably still out there . . . right now!

My cell phone was in my pocket. The light was too bad to see the numbers. I grabbed the man, hoisted him up over my back and took him into the house, laid him on the couch, ran up the stairs to Grafton’s room.

Jake and Callie came awake as I burst in. “The guy guarding the house tonight has been shot. He’s downstairs on the couch.”

With that I went charging out. I took the stairs three at a time, half expecting to meet the would-be killer in the front room. There was certainly nothing to stop him from coming through the open front door.

No. The living room, kitchen, and porch were empty.

I closed the door, threw the dead bolt, then hurriedly checked he rest of the house.

I paused in the living; room, trying to think. Hunkering down in the house and calling 911 wasn’t an option. Not unless we wanted to end up like the folks at the Greenbrier safe house. There had been only one man on guard duty tonight—and the attacker didn’t know that.

The back door was in the kitchen and led to an outside shower beside the house, a shower screened by an eight-foot board fence.

A man with a knife could merely cut the screen on the porch and come in that way. Or he could be waiting for us to come out. That the killer was still out there was a high probability. His target had to be Mikhail Goncharov, yet he didn’t know how many guards were out there. That was my edge.

I let myself out the back door, half expecting to stop a bullet at any second.

The rain beat at me. The wind was worse than I thought. My hands were shaking and I was breathing a mile a minute.

I didn’t even know where the wounded man’s hide was. Nor that the hunter was there. Or perhaps he was, waiting for someone to come looking.

I crawled on the wet sand around the house and stopped under the porch, where I could see the street.

You need to thinly about this logically, Tommy. The hunter discovered the snake-eater and shot him, but he didn’t know how many guards there were. Even if he did, he didn’t know where the others were. He couldn’t come toward the house until he found and eliminated them. So he was in a position where he could watch and wait until someone revealed himself.

I scanned the houses I could see on the opposite side of the street—the north side—inspected the cars, tried to remember what the houses had looked like on this side of the street, the south side. Most were built on piles and had some kind of skirting between the house and the ground to keep out critters. The hunter could be under any one of them if he found or made a hole in the skirting.

Except for the house on the south side of the street nearest the beach. It had been built too far out, on the dune, and the retreating beach had washed the dune from under it. It stood derelict now on its pilings, the ground floor at least ten feet above the sand. A few more winters or a hurricane would finish it off, cause it to collapse.

There, I thought. In that house or under it. From there he could see Grafton’s front yard and walkway and everything on the street. He could have watched the wounded man crawl toward Grafton’s. If I were him, I would wait there.

The wind was driving the rain in waves. By this time I was soaked and covered with sand . . . and still barefoot. I had forgotten to put on my shoes.

I watched the rain in the streetlights for a moment longer, scanned everything I could see. Okay, I was delaying the inevitable, trying to screw up my courage. The man inside needed medical attention, and the only way to get it to him was to call an ambulance or take him to the hospital. With a killer out there, neither option looked good.

I took a deep breath, then scurried forward and rounded the end of the fence, and ran into the next yard to the east. When I was completely hidden from that house at the end of the street, I slowed, made my way to the next fence, prepared to do it again.

If he was in or under the derelict home, he must have seen me dart around Grafton’s fence. This time he might be ready.

I went. Fast.

Made it, with a pounding heart. As I rounded the back of this house I decided the third time would be the charm—he’d pop me then. I was only about eighty yards from the place I thought he might be.

Shielded between two houses, I scaled the fence and dropped onto the other side. Got a ton of splinters in my hands and ripped my trousers. Sneaked around the corner of the house and did the fence trick again. Now only one house lay between me and the derelict.

I heard a dog barking in the house beside me. Terrific. Sounded like a small dog, a yapper. If I could hear it, the hunter could, too.

Oh, boy.

I just hoped the householder didn’t call the law and report a prowler. A patrol car in the street was the last thing I wanted.

I used both hands to chin myself on the fence, take a squint over the top. Heard something zing by my head. I knew damn well what it was and let go of the fence as if it were electrified with a thousand volts. A bullet. He had shot at me with some kind of silenced weapon.

I didn’t wait. I rounded the fence and sprinted by the front of the adjoining house in my best imitation of a juking halfback as two more bullets went by like angry bees. I didn’t stop. Kept going, across the sand toward the dark hulking presence of the derelict house as the driving rain pounded on my face.

He fired one more time, and I saw the muzzle flash. It wasn’t much, no more light than a firefly would make, but it was enough. He was in the derelict house, on the second story.

I dove under it and rolled to a stop. Blew on the pistol to clean the sand out of the hammer channel.

Getting into that house was a mistake. He was trapped in there. Unless he killed me.

Trapped unless he had a pal out here. That thought tightened every muscle in me.

In the darkness, amid the rain and wind, I could see nothing that moved. The beach seemed to reflect what little light there was, and it was empty.