Spiral (39 page)

Haydon continued looking at her silhouette, the slope of her forehead, which was almost Indian. "What made you think about that?" he asked.

She didn't say anything.

"Come on," he said. He stood, then pulled her to her feet, and holding hands, they walked out of the arbor of the bathhouse, through the path of cherry laurels, and onto the grass in the moonlight. It was warmer on the lawn than sitting directly under the bathhouse fan.

The moon was so bright it threw shadows under the trees, and so large it could not for a moment be forgotten. They skirted the orchard of lime trees, whose heavy fragrance hung in the shadows, scenting the air. Turning out of the trees, they crossed a stretch of rising lawn, to the sprawling canopy of a flamboyana. By a trick of night vision the moonlight had shattered, fallen through the filigree of tropical leaves, and lay on the lawn in pointillistic luminosity, a counterpoint pattern of the flamboyana's shadow.

They stopped, standing on the splinters of light, and Haydon moved the silk off her shoulders and let it fall of its own liquid weight to the grass. They lay there, and he touched her, the long, dusky grace of her, and was grateful to her again for being what she was. Breathing in her smell, he kissed her, saw the pieces of the moon coming up through her from the grass so that in those places she was translucent It was a blue moon, that rare lunar occurrence of every two or three years, the second full moon in a single month, and they lay on the pieces of it, unafraid of its penetrating light.

Chapter 39

D
ANIEL FERRETIS
slumped in the driver's seat of the old Volvo so that only his eyes showed above the door and looked out the lowered window to the pale-lighted parking garage. He was sweating profusely, from fear and heat, and his heavy eyeglasses kept sliding down on his small nose. It didn't do any good simply to push them up with a practiced shove of his middle finger, because the bridge was so oily they slid down immediately. He had to take them off and wipe them dry with the tail of his
guayabera.
The tail was the only part of it that was dry. The rest of it was soaked with perspiration and clung to his white, flabby flesh like cellophane. But he wasn't complaining. Considering the afternoon's events that had led to his being here, he was fortunate that he was still around to sweat at all.

By a stroke of bad luck, he was having to teach one course in the second semester of summer school. It was a required sophomore course, and no one was in there because he was interested in it. Like swallowing nasty-tasting medicine, they simply wanted it over with. And so did he; he had other preoccupations. To make matters worse, it was a midafternoon class. A down time of day for him, especially in the heat of the summer. So they agreed to agree, and every day he showed up at class, handed out several sheets of information that they should memorize for the test at the end of the week, and after asking if there were any questions—there never were—he dismissed class.

That was the way it had been until today. He had noticed the girl the first day, not for what she had, but for what she didn't have. She did not have large, round breasts. She did not have a nice round ass. She did not have blond hair, or black hair, or auburn hair, but weak, lusterless straw hair the color of old newspapers. In short, she was not a candidate for grade-point improvement in private consultation. Today when he had asked if there were any questions, she had timidly but resolutely raised her thin little arm.

It took him twenty minutes to answer her. Not because he was verbose, but she had a follow-up question, and then another, and another. He responded with restrained patience—she
could
have beer an administrative spy—and gave her her money's worth, which the little bitch seemed determined to get. Whereas he usually was back in his office fifteen minutes after convening class, today he had gotten back thirty-five minutes later, and just in time to round the corner of the hallway where his office was located and see two men standing a his office door. One was bent over the lock, picking it, and the othe was keeping watch, though in the split second it took Ferretis to see and understand what was happening and to jump back, the man on guard was looking down the hall in the opposite direction.

Ferretis ran down the stairs, across the yard separating Erby Hall from the building north of it, and climbed to the second floor where he searched for an empty classroom on the south side. When he found one, he locked the door behind him and glued himself the windows, after closing the Venetian blinds to a sliver of visibility from where he could see both entrances to Erby Hall. His heart was throwing a fit, and his side hurt from running. He hadn't run that much in fifteen years. He probed his potbelly, wishing he had continued his long-abandoned routine of riding the stationary bicycle in the garage.

The two men were in the building half an hour, but it seem like the rest of the afternoon. It was long enough for him to imagine that these two men might well fit into any number of scenarios that would herald the beginning of the end. He was not an excitable man but that was not to say that he was incapable of getting excited. Now he was dumbfounded. They knew about him. Really, he had never thought he would be connected to this. He had planned it so
carefully
. So cleverly. They? He didn't know who they were. Still, he was surprised
anyone
suspected. But there could be no other explanation. Why else would someone break into his office?

When the men emerged from the east end of the building flinched. He got a good look at them, and then rushed to the door, plowing, stumbling through desks, leaving a wake of them behind. He lurched down the stairs and outside onto the mall, which was luckily, busy. He spotted them immediately, and followed them through the crowds of students from fifty yards back. When entered one of the parking lots, he took a shortcut across to the exit and was there, crouching and looking at them through the windows of the surrounding cars when they drove out. He noted the license-plate number.

A quick call from a pay telephone in the nearby student union building to the state motor vehicle division told him that the car was registered to a Mr. Ramon Sosa Real.

He didn't return to his office. He didn't do anything for nearly fifteen minutes while he tried to calm down, tried to decide what to do next. If Negrete knew where his office was, then he would know almost everything else too. Where he lived. What kind of car he drove.

This last problem he settled by putting another quarter in the telephone and calling Lucinda Breman, a rangy, long-legged, high-hipped fellow professor whose office was just down the hall from his. He told her his car had had to be hauled to the shop, and he was without wheels for a couple of days. Could he borrow her second one? Lucinda's husband, Cliff, had recently run off with another woman, leaving her with her credit-card accounts run up to the limit, an apartment she couldn't afford on her salary alone, and his 1968 Volvo with a broken air conditioner.

She picked him up at a gas station a block from campus—he told her that's where his car had been towed from—and took him to her apartment. She had started talking about her "situation" on the way, and by the time they got there and he went up with her to get the keys, she was in tears, and astonished him by suddenly and without preamble beginning to undress, weeping and undressing, pleading with him to go to bed with her. He felt as if he were watching a movie, that it was happening to someone else. It was an odd experience, having intercourse with a sobbing woman who nevertheless managed to whip herself up to a surprising frenzy of passion that he wouldn't have expected of her in even the most ideal circumstances. Afterward, she conjured up another kind of passion, screaming for him to get out, standing naked on her bed, throwing his clothes at him, then staggering to a clothes chest and throwing Cliff's clothes at him, too. He dressed in the living room, tying his shoes as he listened to her bawling in the bedroom. Then he took the keys off the dining-room table and left.

The Volvo's gas tank was empty, of course. Cliff really was a bastard. He filled it at the self-serve pumps of an Exxon station, spilling some gasoline on his shoes, soaking one of them, but finally getting the little latch that kept the nozzle running to hold while he walked over to the pay telephone and called home. He told Melva he was going to be late, something about curriculum staff meetings. It didn'1 matter what he said. He lied to her all the time and she accepted everything.

The next thing he did was to try to get in touch with Bias Medrano. Cordero was gone, so that left only himself and Bias and Rubio. Since he had no idea where Bias was, the dead drop was the only means of communication. He needed to know if Bias knew anything about this latest development. Now he could see that he hac been wrong to think Haydon's knowledge of Rubio Arizpe's exis tence hadn't been important enough to relay to Bias through the deac drop. Now he had twice as much reason to use it. There had been i leak somewhere. He needed to know if Bias himself had been taken.

They had selected one of the parking garages on a quiet street in the area north of Hermann Park. On the northeast corner of the garage there was a landscaped area between the curb and the garage itself in which grew a cluster of palmettos. Next to the palmettos was a cement post, a hexagonal stele left over from the 1940s, which held the street sign, and which was girded with two metal bands to discourage cracking. If there was to be a message in the dead drop, a small piece of paper folded in a triangle would be placed in the higher of the two metal bands. The message itself would be on the second floor of the garage, wedged between the cement pillar and the wall of parking space 28.

Ferretis drove to the designated dead drop and circled the block the ratty Volvo interior filled with the heavy, resinous odor of gasoline from his soaked shoes. He saw nothing on the cement post, even after circling the block a second time and gazing down at the ground beneath the sign in case the paper triangle had accidentally fallen from its signal perch. But there was nothing. Okay. He then drove to Hermann Park and stopped the Volvo under the shade of a catalp tree. Looking around in the car he found a steno pad in the back sea and ripped out a sheet of paper. As he reached for the felt-tip pe he always carried in his
guayabera
, he realized with a jolt that he couldn't code the message. The code key was hidden in his garage a home. And he sure as hell couldn't risk going by there to get it. He hesitated. Shit! Well, it couldn't be helped. There wasn't that much time left. He had to take the chance. Christ. Everything was falling apart. He started scribbling the message to Bias.

C fled to Mexico. Police know A is involved and looking for him. Negrete's men broke into my office and looking for me. Cannot go home. Has there been a leak? Need to know. Be careful. Am floating until I hear from you. F.

It took him only moments to write the message. The sweat from his hands smeared some of the ink as he fumbled with the paper, folding it, but it was perfectly legible. He was so slick with perspiration he began to smell a dank odor overriding that of the gasoline. It was not the stench of body odor—for some reason, chemical he guessed, he had never had that problem—but something like the smell of damp wool.

He jerked his eyes up from the paper. Jesus Christ, he thought suddenly. What a ludicrous idea. Wool was a neglected commodity in Houston, certainly in July. There wasn't any smell besides the gasoline. What in the hell was the matter with him? Was this the way it started, reality and hallucination jumping back and forth across their boundaries, short-circuiting? Was he loosing his grip on this? Could he trust himself? Jesus. He couldn't start thinking like that now. He wouldn't let himself.

Looking down at the paper again, he tried to think if there was anything else he should have said in the message. He decided not. Anything more would have sounded unprofessional. He tore another sheet of paper from Cliff's notebook and folded it into a triangle, reminding him at this moment, but never before, of those little hats his older brother used to make for him out of folded newspapers. Closing the car door, which he had opened to dissipate his collection of odors and, he hoped, to catch a stray wisp of air, he started the car and drove back to the garage. He circled the block clockwise this time, so he would be in the lane next to the landscaping. He stopped and got out, leaving the Volvo running as he stood on his toes and jammed the paper triangle into the metal band.

The only drawback to having a dead drop in a parking garage was that it cost you a minimum of $1.25 every time you delivered or picked up a message. He took his ticket from the machine, waited for the arm to rise, and drove up to the second floor. A car was parked in space 28, so he stopped, left the Volvo idling again, and slipped the folded note behind the pillar, making sure it couldn't be seen from the aisle, making sure it was wedged tightly and wouldn't fall out. When he got back into the car he drove up to the top floor and found an empty parking space facing downtown. He had paid for an hour anyway, and he had nowhere to go. In fact, it was best if he stayed "hidden."

The top floor was almost empty, and he found a parking space with empty spaces on either side so he could open the front doors on the Volvo once again. He stared across the tops of the trees to the stalagmites of downtown. He needed to take stock. What the hell had happened? All of a sudden everything was falling apart. What did he really think were his odds of coming out of this unscathed? Always before, when he had imagined the aftermath of the assassination, he had pictured himself opening the newspaper the next morning and reading about it. Of all the city's inhabitants, only he would know the truth. Smugly, he would follow the investigation in the newspapers and on television, knowing the heady feeling of true, anonymous power. The man behind the scenes. The highest position of real authority.