I did just that. "All right. See you tomorrow."
And he didn't answer. He just kept on walking, a vet and a man who had once been in the service of a grateful nation.
I turned and went the short distance home.
Chapter Sixteen
After cleaning up my face and locking the doors and windows, I sat down to make some phone calls. The first was to Laura Reeves, and once again, she was not available. Gus Turner --- ever cheerful, though no doubt still wishing he were fighting the forces of evil in an Iraqi desert --- asked if he could help. I said no, having earlier decided that this was between me and Laura. And besides, I wasn't sure how much I could trust Keith. He had seemed coherent and cogent in talking to me about what he knew about the missing uranium. The problem was, I still remembered how he had looked earlier that day, threatening his father at the museum.
Besides, if things did go well, I didn't think Keith would appreciate the extra company while we went out to the so-called "dark place" where the uranium was hidden, and by now, so close to getting the prize, I didn't want to jeopardize anything.
My next call was to Paula Quinn, who wasn't home. I hung up and thought things through again, and then made another call. “Paula, it’s Lewis. Look, I know I haven’t been the best of friends or companions these past few days. Things are going on that I can’t talk about right now, but I do promise I’ll explain it as best I can when it's over. And I promise to make it up to you. Honest."
I hung up and then sat for a while, remembering the look on Paula's face when last we talked in the
Chronicle
parking lot. If I really wanted to make it up to her, I should grab some flowers and take-out Chinese and camp out in front of her apartment building on High Street.
Sure, I thought. That'd be a lot of fun. Right up to the point where the mystery sniper blows off my head in front of her, and then decides to kill her for good measure.
Not the kind of relationship that gets written up in Cosmo. Then I made a fourth call, and the person I was looking for wasn't home. So another message was left, and then I sat again, in my empty home. Waiting.
I got up and even though it was pleasant enough, I built a fire in the fireplace, and then rustled up dinner. My insides were still tense and quivery from the day's events, so I had a couple of scrambled eggs and mixed in some cheddar cheese and bits of ham, with two pieces of toast on the side. I ate in the living room, in front of the fireplace, and the night dragged on as I tried to get tired, tried to get sleepy.
But a lot of thoughts were racing through my mind like cheetahs, coming and going, and mostly I thought of an ancient ocean halfway across the world. I imagined the ships in formation, steaming to the southwest, heading for a place that we had fought over many times before, once almost two hundred years ago. Shores of Tripoli and all that. Plans were being prepared, missiles aimed, and aircraft armed. And in the desert, men and women were at work or at sleep, not knowing that they were days away from being obliterated.
All because of what had been lost here in my own land, decades ago.
I stretched out on the couch, watched the flames flicker and begin to die away. Years ago, when I had worked at the Pentagon, I had experienced the same feeling. A hollowed-out gaunt feeling, where you sense forces and people are on the move, all because of what you have or haven’t done, and you are powerless to stop what is about to happen. I swallowed, felt the taste of fear. It had been easier, back then in the Pentagon. At least I had been part of a section, part of a department, part of an entire defense structure. Back then I had a lot of other shoulders at hand to share the burden.
But not tonight. I felt terribly alone, terribly responsible. The phone rang, jangling me up in terror. Again and again
it rang, and I answered it.
"You rang?" the voice on the other end said.
"Yes," I said. "I need to see you. I... I need some help."
"All right. When?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"An early breakfast suit you?"
Yes, it does."
"All right." And after a time and place had been settled, I hung up the phone and lay down on the couch again. I stared at the dying flames for a while, and then went upstairs and got a thin down comforter. Back on the couch I went and I pulled the comforter over me. I think I fell asleep, for when my eyes looked at the fireplace again, the logs were dead, charred black, and light was coming in through the shades on the windows facing east, to the ocean. I lay there still, listening to the sounds of the waves, the killer waves, waiting for all of us.
At the Breakfast Nook on Atlantic Avenue in Wallis, we sat in a rear booth, Felix Tinios across from me. The windows in this tiny restaurant usually have a great view of the ocean just above Wallis Harbor, but a heavy rainstorm was obscuring almost everything. The place was doing a reasonable business this early in tourist season, and on such a rainy day. Felix had a cheese-and-vegetable omelet that seemed about the size of my head, while I made do with scrambled eggs, yet again. My cholesterol level was no doubt taking a serious hit this week, but I had more important things to worry about.
Felix sighed as he drank from a big mug of coffee. "You've had an interesting few days. You want to remind me again why you haven’t packed up and taken a flight to Bermuda for a week or two?”
"Because I feel responsible, that's why."
He shook his head. "That's the way the feds operate," he said. "It's practically a seduction, the way they get you into their power and control. Smartest thing you could do is to tell them to go to hell, and watch out for number one."
"Sure," I said. "Then they'll take my house, my job and my savings account. Maybe even put me in jail to round everything off."
"Yeah, and you'll still be breathing. I'd miss not having you around, but if you did get into prison, I'd make sure to visit you at least once a month, and I'd make sure you got protected on the inside."
I munched on the last piece of toast. "For a moment, I almost took you seriously."
"You should've, because I was quite serious. Sure I can't change your mind?"
"Positive."
Another sigh. He reached into his coat pocket, took out a cell phone not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. "Here you go. Are you sure you know all the nice little features of this before I pass it over to you?"
"Yes."
"Good," he said, sliding it across the breakfast table.
"Because it's quite special and quite expensive, and Uncle Felix doesn't want to have to go through all the time and trouble to replace it if you lose it."
"Thanks," I said, picking up the phone and putting it in an inside pocket of my jacket. "I won't lose it. How's things with you and Mickey?"
"Great," he said, wiping his hands on a napkin. "We're seeing each other for lunch today, but I'll be available if you need anything. All right?"
"Fine," I said. "Look, Felix, I really---"
He waved a hand, "Spare me the thanks and good wishes. First, it's good to stretch my mind and abilities. You stay stagnant, you rust. Second, you can pick up the check for breakfast and we’ll call it even. Deal?”
"Deal," I said, and when the waitress dropped off the check not five minutes later, I left a ten-dollar bill on the tabletop and we went outside, to the front steps. The rain was still coming down steadily and I drew my collar up. Felix stood next to me as we looked out over the parking lot. "Remind me again how much you're getting paid for this little adventure?"
"Not a thing."
He shook his head. "A hell of a way to run a business. If I pulled something like that... well, what's this?"
A black Lincoln Town Car with Massachusetts license plates came into the restaurant parking lot and pulled to the side, away from the parking spots. The windshield wipers moved back and forth in a quick rhythm, and the driver flashed the car's headlights at us, and then honked the horn. The window rolled down and a heavyset man in front beckoned at us.
I said, "A friend of yours?"
Felix seemed to squint his eyes. "You know ... hold on, I'll be right back"
He sprinted across the parking lot, splashing through two puddles, before he reached the driver's side. Felix leaned over, hunched up against the rain, and talked to the driver. He motioned with his hands a few time, and then sprinted back, as the Town Car sped off and made a right onto Atlantic Avenue. When Felix came back up to the steps, his face was flushed and his eyes were dark. He didn't look particularly happy.
"Jerk," he murmured, stamping the water off his shoes.
"What was that all about?"
"Jesus, look how wet I got ... " He wiped his face with a handkerchief and said, "From the Town Car's plates and the way the driver looked, I thought it was an acquaintance of mine from down south. But no, it was a lost tourist, looking for the fabulous dining room of your neighborhood hotel."
"The Lafayette House?"
Felix blew his nose. "The one and only. So the guy honks at us and expects me to come over in the rain and give him detailed directions one where he can go for a nice hot brunch, all the while sitting fat and dry in his car.”
I thought over what I had just seen and said, "But he turned right."
"Huh?"
"The Town Car turned right, heading north. He should
have turned left, and gone south. To Tyler Beach."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't feeling in a particularly charitable mood and when he started bugging me about where the Lafayette place was, I gave him detailed and firm directions that should, if he's lucky, bring him to the Porter Town Dump in about an hour. You all set?"
The rain seemed to be slowing down. "About as set as I'll ever be. And you?"
Now he smiled. "You know what I say. Every day you're alive and breathing is a good day." He gently tapped me on the shoulder. "And malting sure you end the day alive and breathing is even better."
"Thanks for the advice." "Well, it's free."
"Sometimes that's the best kind," I said, and I headed off to my Ford.
The rain stopped as I made my way north. I checked the dashboard clock of the Explorer as I headed up 1-95 to Porter, now feeling a bit of a buzz of excitement, thinking that maybe everything could be wrapped up before lunchtime. It was quarter of ten and I would be in Porter in just a couple of minutes to meet up with Keith. From there, if he had kept his promise to be home and sober, it would just be a short time indeed to get the missing uranium and make that wonderful phone call to Laura Reeves.
I got off at the Porter traffic circle, and after some nimble driving through the rotary I was in a part of Porter that the tourist dollars had passed by. There were a couple of brick factory buildings, shuttered up and closed, the windows broken and doors boarded over. A few abandoned cars, resting on flat tires, were scattered along the narrow street. The apartment buildings here were built close together, with clotheslines flapping in the breeze from porches on each of the three floors. Knowing the history of this city, I knew these buildings had been tossed up around the turn of the nineteenth century for the immigrant population coming in to work in the mills and shops. A century later, these buildings had hardly changed.
I made it onto Seward Street and slowed down until I found number 14, where I stopped the Ford and switched off the engine. Number 14 was four stories tall and built like one large white box, with tiny windows that didn't even have shutters. I got out and walked across the street, noting the crumpled beer cans and other trash in the gutter. A couple of blocks away were places where tourists bought five-dollar cups of coffee and designer T-shirts that could pay my grocery bill for a month, and for all the differences between that place and here, I could have been on Mars.
The door to the foyer rolled back with no problem, the spring being broken. Small black mailboxes on the walls, overflowing trash cans, and a bicycle missing its front wheel cluttered the entranceway. I went upstairs, hearing the noise of a television as somebody listened to one of these mid-morning talk shows that --- hard to believe --- featured guests who had even stranger stories to tell about their lives than I did. The stairs and the hallways smelled of wet carpeting and disinfectant, and then I found number 12, up on the third floor.
I knocked on the door. No answer.
"Keith?" I called out. "It's Lewis Cole. It's ten o'clock. You in there?"
Still no answer. I checked my watch, saw that it was running, and then turned around, looked up and down the hallway. Nobody. I rubbed at my face, knocked again.
No answer. Damn.
I was debating in my mind whether to wait up here in the hallway, or downstairs in my Ford, when I reached down and gave the doorknob a spin.
And it spun quite smoothly, and the door to number 12 opened right up.
“Keith?” I called out. Still no reply. I softly stepped in and closed the door behind me.
Then I started breathing through my mouth. The odor in the small apartment was overwhelming, even though a window in the kitchen that overlooked the fire escape was half open. I stepped in, looked to the left and then the right. Clear. To the right was a small living room. The carpeting was a yellow shag type that had been popular back at a time when most dance floors had spinning ceiling bulbs. The furniture included a heavy wooden coffee table, a black leather couch repaired in several places with gray duct tape, and a television set. There were also walls filled with bookshelves, paperbacks clustered one upon the other, spilling out even on the floor. Magazines and newspapers were piled up in tottering piles that looked as if they would collapse if a heavy truck drove by. '