He had a roving 800 fax number built into his computer and a non-area-specific cell phone number as well. When he needed to give out such information, there would be no way to trace his actual location. His means of communication traveled with him.
Everything was set. Everything except the final phone call. And when that was completed, he’d have enough money to live on comfortably for quite a few years, depending on how thrifty he wanted to be. Four years should be long enough to see how it all played out. He’d know if it was safe to surface. If not, if he lasted that long, he’d certainly have figured out a way to make a living by then. If he needed to.
Harry picked up his cell phone and dialed the number he’d committed to memory. It was exactly sixty minutes since he’d hung up after his last call.
“You’re very precise,” the man on the other end of the phone said.
“You can skip the flattery. Was the transfer made?”
“All done,” the voice said, “You can check to confirm.”
“I intend to,” Harry said.
There was a pause. “Well, then,” the voice said. “I suppose I wish you luck.”
“I don’t need luck,” Harry said. “All I need is twenty-four hours.”
He hung up the phone. Immediately he went to his notebook computer, called up his financial service, and honed in on the proper bank account. Yes, there it was. Five million dollars. It was done. Tomorrow morning he’d be leaving. He would step into his little Cessna at eight A.M. It would take him four days of glorious, solitary flying, stopping in little airports across the country, to get to La Jolla, California. There he’d sell the plane to a less-than-reputable dealer he’d hooked up with on the Net. The price was half of what it was worth, but it was an all-cash deal and the recently counterfeited registration would not be looked at too closely, if at all. Then one night in San Diego. Then a four-hour commercial flight.
And then he’d be in Honolulu.
At long last he’d get to surf.
Hey
, he thought,
maybe I finally will learn to hula
.
And with that thought lingering, Harry Wagner decided he’d treat himself to one final celebration. Why not? He’d thought of everything. He’d done all that he could. He was as good as gone.
And suddenly Harry realized something. Something that, just fifteen minutes ago, he would not have thought possible.
He was no longer afraid.
They were still there.
The matches Harry had left behind on Carl’s desk that day a million years ago. Carl had pocketed them while he stood, dazed and confused, in the ruins of what had once been his apartment. Now he dug them out of his rumpled, filthy blazer, along with Harry’s celebratory cigar, which had miraculously remained whole inside its cellophane wrapper. He brought these to Amanda’s dining table and laid them out there for the two of them to examine.
The matchbook was shiny and black. The striking surface was unused. There were three initials stamped across the face in raised gold lettering.
P.O.E.
Underneath, also in gold was written the words
Port of Entry
. Nothing else was written on the front. The back was blank.
“Mean anything to you?” he asked Amanda as the two of them stood there studying it.
“Not a thing, other than the obvious nautical reference. You?”
“Could be where he buys his cigars,” Carl suggested. “A store. A direct distributor. Maybe even some kind of wholesale outlet.”
“Good answer. I like it. Based where, in New York?”
“Maybe. I’ve never heard of it, but then I’m not exactly a cigar maven.”
Amanda considered this a moment. “Hmm …”
He peered at her curiously, knowing this particular doubtful sound only too well. “Yes?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking—wouldn’t they have put their phone number on there? Or their address? If it were a business, I mean.”
“You’d think so,” he allowed, dropping the matchbook back into his pocket.
They turned their attention to the cigar. It was long. It was slim. It was Dominican. And it was no help.
“There must be
something
else,” Amanda encouraged. “Something distinctive about him.”
“What I mostly remember about Harry is he’s really large and he makes a great omelet.”
“Does he have any kind of an accent? Any inflection in his voice that might indicate what his background is?”
“None and no.”
“
Concentrate
, Carl,” she commanded, turning sterner. “Focus. Come on. Something the man said. Something the man did …”
Carl shook his head at her slowly. Until, abruptly, he snapped his fingers and said, “Would you settle for something he
wore
?”
She cocked her head at him, intrigued. “Explain.”
“The name of his clothier. I saw it stitched on the inside pocket of his jacket once. It was Italian … it was …” Carl closed his eyes tight, trying to picture that expensive linen blazer hanging on the back of his bathroom door. Damn it, what was the name? What was the name? What was … “Marco,” he exclaimed, his voice rising with triumph. “Marco Buonamico.”
Her face broke into a smile. “That’s good, Carl. That’s really good.”
“You know the name?”
“No, but I know someone who will—the fashion editor at the paper.” Amanda started to reach for the phone on the kitchen counter, but Carl beat her to it.
“Wait!” he cautioned, and she froze in her tracks. His hand grabbed hers and guided it away from the receiver. “There’s a good chance they’re tapping your phone now.”
“You really think so?”
“I do.”
Amanda considered this a moment, her eyes narrowing. Then she shook her head. “They haven’t had time to get a court order yet. And furthermore, I’m not even sure a judge would—”
“Time out. You’re talking about the feebies.”
“Well, yeah. Aren’t you?”
“No,” he said with quiet intensity. “I’m not.”
She leveled a worried gaze at him, swallowing. “I see,” she said. “You’re talking about
they
.”
“Whoever
they
are, that’s who I’m talking about.”
She reached for her cigarettes on the counter and lit one, dragged deeply on it. “There’s always my cell phone … no, scratch that. Those are even easier to listen in on.” Now she glanced at her watch. “I can go on-line,” she said. “She should still be at the office.”
“They can intercept e-mail, too,” he said.
“No prob. I’ll make it sound so totally innocuous that even if someone is intercepting my e-mail, they won’t suspect a thing. It won’t have anything to do with you. It’ll just sound like I’m working on a story at home. Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Go for it.”
She sat at her desk, fired up her computer, and logged on. Carl began pacing around the room, which was silent now except for the sound of her fingers racing madly over the keyboard. Amanda had worked her way through college typing term papers and dissertations. She was the fastest typist Carl had ever seen. Outside the window, it was dark. Inside, the air-conditioned little house seemed totally cut off from clock, from calendar, from reality. Briefly it reminded Carl of his own stint in college as a night-owl DJ on a radio station in Ithaca. Perched as the console in that sound-proofed booth, there was no sense of time. No sense of yesterday or tomorrow. Only right now.
Amanda fell silent at the keyboard, her eyes never leaving the screen. After a moment’s pause, she said, “Come look.” There was an edge of anticipation in her voice.
He hurried over to her. Standing over her shoulder, he read the reply.
Marco Buonamico is a très chic menswear boutique based in Miami. Customers include Pat Riley, Sly Stallone, and their reptilian ilk. Import their own line from Milan. Do a decent catalog business. May expand to Beverly Hills soon. What’s your interest? Inquiring minds want to know.
“Well, shit,” Carl fumed. “How am I going to get to Miami? It may as well be Mars. That’s no help.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” Amanda said excitedly. “We are rolling now. Prepare to kick tush. Badda-boom!” She was not totally up—animated, enthusiastic, alive, cheeks flushed with color, nostrils flaring, eyes bright. The woman positively crackled with energy. She always got this way when she was hot after a story. It was one of the things that had first drawn Carl to her. Again her fingers started to fly over the keyboard. “I just have to find me Shaneesa.”
“And who exactly is Shaneesa?”
“One of my babies. Straight out of the projects. She’s six foot three with legs up to her neck, and the mayor gets silly every time she walks into the room. Her series on the D.C. government mess is going to earn her a Pulitzer nomination if I have anything to say about it.”
“Okay, but what—”
“Do you remember that story last year about the sixteen-year-old boy from the projects who was arrested for rat-fucking the CIA’s central computer?”
“Sure.”
“Her baby brother. And guess what—it’s a family gift.”
“She’s a hacker?”
Amanda nodded. “These days there isn’t a major metropolitan daily in America that doesn’t have one. We can’t keep up with the tabloids without a hacker. They should teach a course on it at Columbia Journalism School. But in the meantime, it’s a dirty little secret. Shaneesa is ours. Make that mine. I’m the one who found her. Aha! Got her …”
Carl read over Amanda’s shoulder as they conversed online
[What up, girlfriend?]
[What is it, back at ya.]
[Can you download catalog mailing list for male thread emporium called Marco Buonamico and kick it my way?]
[Hmmm … may take a while, sweetness.]
[Define a while.]
[Three minutes?]
[God, you’re good!]
[And God knows it, too. Now if only he’d pass the word on to Mr. Grant Hill for me. Later.]
Amanda got up from her desk chair, arching her back, and went into the kitchen to put on more coffee. Carl paced the room like a caged animal, his eyes never leaving that computer screen.
Shaneesa was off a little bit in her prediction. It didn’t take her three minutes to hack her way into the clothier’s mailing list. It took her two.
“Success,” reported Carl, who jumped into the pilot’s seat and started scanning. “Here are the
U
’s …
V
’s … Check this out—Jim Varney buys his clothes there … Wachtel … Waggoner …
Wagner
, H. Harrison. Amanda, you are not going to believe this.”
She came out of the kitchen toward him. “He’s a size forty-four long?”
“He lives in Bethesda.”
“Maryland? That’s less than ten miles from here.”
Carl contemplated the implications of this, his exhausted mind racing. Was Harry associated with the government? If so, in what capacity? Who was he? What was he?
“Do you have a phone book?”
She bent down to the bottom drawer of the big desk and pulled out a stack of D.C. area phone books—Arlington, Alexandria, Annapolis, Silver Spring, and Bethesda. The only problem was that Harry had an unlisted number. He wasn’t in the book.
“Looks like I’m going to pay the man a visit.”
“
You’re
going to pay him a visit?”
“That’s right.”
“Without me?”
“That’s definitely right.”
She already had her car keys out and her purse thrown over her shoulder. “I don’t think so.”
“Amanda—” was all he managed to get out.
“I’m going, Carl. That’s all there is to it.”
“Give me the car keys, will you?”
“No.”
“This is a bad idea. A really bad idea. Trust me on this. You do not want to—”
“Whatever you think it is I don’t want to do, believe me, I’m already doing it. And what do you think
you’re
going to do? Just drive through the center of town, nice and slow, stopping at every stop sign so you can let everybody in town take a good look at a face that’s been on the front page of every paper in the country and staring out at them from their television sets for the last twenty-four hours? Good thinking.” She spun on her heel and started for the door to the garage. “Besides, it’s my car and I’m driving it. Now, let’s go.”
“God, you’re stubborn,” he muttered.
She stopped, turned back to him, and smiled. “You missed me, didn’t you?”
“Let’s go!” he barked
Carl got into the car first. Amanda waited for him to fold his large blond self—or try to fold his large blond self—into the leg space down under the Subaru’s glove compartment before she hit the button that opened the garage door. If anyone were staking the place out, it would appear as if she were leaving the house alone.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked, concerned at the awkward way in which he was squashed in.
“Fine,” he groaned.
“I didn’t know the human neck could bend that way.”
“It can’t. Just go, will you?”
The engine wouldn’t kick over on the first try. Or the second.
“Glad to see you’ve had it serviced since I saw you last.”
Ignoring him, she concentrated on turning the key in the ignition. On the fourth try the heap kicked over and she backed it out into the alley, her headlights off, her engine knocking. She aimed her remote control, clicked it, and the garage door slid closed. There was a crazy honeycomb of alleys behind her house. Here was where the service alleys built not only for the big Klingle houses but for the ones on Cleveland Avenue, Cathedral Avenue, and Thirty-second Street all butted into each other, converged, merged, and then broke off into a million different directions. They existed on no map, but Amanda had gotten to know them well, even in the dark. Carl could feel every bump as she steered the little wagon at breakneck speed in between trash cans, around parked cars, and alongside garden fences. She veered into the alley behind Cleveland on two wheels, brakes screeching, then floored it, braked again, and came out on Cathedral, where they joined the flow of conventional, law-abiding evening traffic.
No one was on their tail.
“I think I missed my calling,” she burbled excitedly, flicking on the headlights. “I should have been a cabdriver.”
Carl sat up in his seat like a person and tried to stretch the kinks out of nearly every part of his body. They drove in silence for several minutes. They were now out in the real world. No more strategizing, no more planning, no more Clint Eastwood-like fast rides through back alleys. They were stepping into a hole, and they didn’t know how big or how deep or how dangerous it really was. He glanced at Amanda, who was a picture of intense concentration as she piloted the car through the city streets, her small, delicate hands tightly gripping the wheel.