Cowboy Angels (12 page)

‘I remember how you and my father used to joke about things like that.’

‘Back in the good old days.’

Stone didn’t entirely trust Linda. She was inexperienced and naive, and David Welch was almost certainly using her to get close to him, but he was pretty sure that he was going to need some help tomorrow and, at bottom, they both wanted the same thing. They both wanted to find Tom Waverly before the locals did, and bring him in alive.

He said, ‘When did you last see your father?’

‘Three years ago. Just before he went through the mirror for the last time. He disappeared, those insurgents claimed to have captured him, and then he was officially declared dead.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘A little quieter than usual, a little preoccupied, but maybe that’s only hindsight. You know how he was. It was always hard to know what he was really thinking.’

‘Did you happen to see his apartment after he disappeared?’

‘It was cleared out by the Company, in case he’d left sensitive information lying around. They sent on a few of boxes of personal stuff, mostly clothes and disks.’

‘No computer stuff? Notebooks? Files? Letters?’

Linda shook her head. ‘We had a couple of phone conversations just before he disappeared. He talked about a motorbike he was thinking of buying, a long road trip he wanted to make. I can’t help thinking that what happened to him, the reason he disappeared, wasn’t something planned. He could have gotten caught up in something against his will. He could have been brainwashed.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘But you don’t think so.’

Stone smiled. ‘I plan to ask him about it, first chance I get.’

The two musicians took to the stage again. The woman told the audience they had but one number left, and in the expectant hush began a long, yearning song about dreaming of a highway that would take her home, take her back to her lost love. A highway like a winding ribbon, a winding ribbon with a band of gold. A highway back to you. For a little while, everything except the music seemed to stop; only the music kept time moving forward.

Stone was so caught up in its spell that he didn’t at first realise that the trilling noise was coming from the cell phone in the pocket of his pea jacket. He pulled it out, saw that Welch was calling him, pressed the
yes
button and said, ‘Wait up,’ and walked through the crowd to the restroom in back, disturbing a couple of teenagers in ruffled silk shirts and eyeliner who were sharing a marijuana cigarette. Stone locked himself in a vacant cubicle and told Welch to go ahead.

Welch’s voice scratched in his ear. ‘What are you doing down in Atom City?’

‘Did Linda Waverly tell you where we were going, or do you have goons following me too?’

‘The phone tells me where you are.’

The strong sweet smell of pot coiled through the stink of urine and disinfectant. Stone said, ‘Does it also tell you I’m off duty?’

‘I don’t think you are. I think you’re following up a lead from that little clue you found tonight.’

‘I guess Mr Lar got around to telling you about it.’

‘I thought we had an agreement, Adam. Anything you found, you’d tell me first.’

‘The locals were tailing me. They pounced as soon as they realised I’d found something. And maybe I’m just a little pissed off at you, David, because you gave Tom’s daughter the job of driving me around town.’

‘I forgot to ask. How’s that working out?’

Stone heard the amusement in Welch’s voice, pictured his sly smile.

‘Tom hasn’t tried to get close to her, if that’s what you mean.’

‘She’s no more bait than you are, Adam.’

‘We need to talk about that. Get it straightened out.’

‘Good idea. I’ll meet you for breakfast at the hotel tomorrow, six-thirty. Ed Lar will be stopping by at seven. You can thank me for persuading him to let you stake out the phone.’

‘The one in Duffy Square? Of course I’m going to stake it out. Tom expects me to be there tomorrow morning. Me, and no one else. If he sees that I’m being shadowed by the local law, he’ll call the whole thing off.’

Stone was certain that Tom wouldn’t be anywhere near Duffy Square, but he didn’t want to waste time evading local surveillance after he found out where Tom wanted him to go.

Welch said, ‘We have to cooperate with the locals, Adam. That’s how it is now.’

‘If you can’t call off Lar and his men, things could go bad very quickly.’

‘I’m sure you’ll be able to find a way around it. We’ll talk tomorrow and see what we can come up with.’

‘Maybe you can tell me something now. Why are so many of the old gang involved? There’s Tom, of course, and you and me, Nathan Tate . . . I wonder how many more. I wonder if it has something to do with the Old Man.’

‘Knightly is stroked out. Most of his brain is shut down. He couldn’t plot his way out of his diapers.’

‘The last time I talked to him, in the middle of that mess over SWIFT SWORD, he told me that he was in need of a few good men. He never got around to explaining what he wanted them for, but I can’t help wondering now if some of his cowboy angels might still be working for him. And I also can’t help wondering if this might have something to do with the Company’s current internal problem.’

‘We can ask Tom about it, when we bring him in,’ Welch said, and cut the connection.

Linda was waiting outside the restroom. Stone said, ‘I’m sorry I missed the rest of that song.’

He was, too.

‘You attracted some attention,’ Linda said. ‘Only Men in Black carry cell phones.’

‘Men in Black?’

‘It’s what unfriendly locals call us. Like the guy who got in my face just now, asking why I was hanging out with the enemy. It’s okay, he was just some drunk, easy enough to deal with. But I think we should get out of here before someone decides to start some real trouble.’

They’d gone less than a block when a battered four-door sedan with fat chrome bumpers and rocket-ship fins sharked up onto the sidewalk. Three young men climbed out. With their shaven heads, chests bare under army-surplus camo jackets, and black jeans tucked into heavy combat boots, they looked like brothers from an ill-favoured family. The tallest had a tattoo of the Confederate flag on the side of his neck and flicked open a butterfly knife as he walked toward Stone; the other two circled wide, beating the ends of their aluminium baseball bats on the sidewalk while the kid with the knife told Stone that he was going to find out what colour his guts were.

‘If you’re going to do it, son, do it,’ Stone said.

He stepped inside the knife’s wild swing, caught the kid’s wrist and spun him around, bearing down on his arm and twisting it until the shoulder joint gave with a sharp click. The kid squealed and dropped his knife; Stone shoved him away and pulled out his Colt .45.

Linda had drawn her pistol, too. The two boys with the baseball bats were backing away from her. Stone watched the kid with the dislocated arm stumble after them, watched as they fell into their car and squealed away with a defiant blare of their horn.

‘You did all right,’ Stone told Linda.

She had a little trouble sliding her pistol, a sleek little Beretta, into the holster under the hem of her green shirt, and her smile was shaky. ‘At least we know we really did blow off Mr Lar’s people. They would have been all over those idiots.’

‘Why don’t you take me somewhere where we can have a quiet drink? We need to talk about what we have to do tomorrow.’

‘It sounds like you had a run-in with representatives of the local version of the Minutemen,’ David Welch said, after Stone had finished telling him about the brief tussle with the three thugs. ‘They used to be a gang of white supremacists. Now they’re a self-styled patriotic movement that’s taken to targeting anyone from the Real - they claimed responsibility for nail-bombing a Red Cross walk-in clinic in Newark a couple of days ago. Frankly, no one would have made any fuss if you’d terminated them right there on the sidewalk.’

They were in the hotel’s dining room. The lights in the crystal chandeliers seemed too bright at this early hour. Waiters were laying silverware on tables spread with white linen. Welch was working his way through a stack of pancakes with a side order of Canadian bacon, pausing every now and then to take a drag from the cigarette burning in the crystal ashtray by his elbow.

‘You’ll regret that heavy breakfast if we have to go chasing after Tom,’ Stone said. He’d eaten half a grapefruit and was sipping black coffee laced with sugar.

‘I don’t plan to go chasing after anyone,’ Welch said, ‘and I don’t expect you to go chasing after anyone either. All that’s going to happen, Tom is going to phone you, and you’re going to talk to him and work out a way of bringing him in alive.’

‘Tom wants to talk to me, that much we can agree on. But how do you know he wants to talk about surrendering himself?’

Welch dabbed a forkful of pancake in the pool of maple syrup on the side of his plate and pushed it into his mouth. ‘Tom was a good field officer in his day, one of the best, but he’s no Superman. He knows he can’t get out of this sheaf and he knows the net is closing around him. That’s why he left that message at the scene of the crime. He wants to talk to someone he knows and trusts because he wants to work out a way of coming in safely.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Of course I’m right. Ed Lar will have had his psychologists up all night, working out ways to play Tom, writing scripts for different scenarios. But you’re his friend, Adam. You don’t need any scripts or coaching. All you have to do is let him talk. Encourage him, be sympathetic, agree to anything he demands. Above all, convince him that you’re on his side. It shouldn’t be that difficult. After all, he took some trouble to reach out to you. It was unfortunate Ed Lar found out about the matchbook, but the important thing is that you found it in the first place. It’s a bona fide cry for help if ever I saw one.’

‘The locals had me under close surveillance,’ Stone said, resenting the way Welch had twisted things around. ‘They knew I’d found something and I wasn’t in a position to deny it.’

Welch folded another forkful of pancake into his mouth and said around it, ‘Ed Lar will want you to keep Tom on the line long enough to get a trace. He’ll want you to get Tom to agree to a meeting, and he’ll probably suggest a couple of possible venues. Cooperate with him as far as you can, but remember that the locals don’t have Tom’s best interests in mind. They don’t want to bring him in alive. They want to put him in clear view of one of their sharpshooters.’

Stone was worried that David Welch - or the people for whom Welch was working - didn’t have Tom Waverly’s best interests in mind either. He had already decided that he would meet up with Tom on his own terms, no one else’s. See what his old friend had to say for himself, and take it from there.

He said, ‘I guess you have a plan to get around the locals.’

Welch picked up his cigarette and took a drag. His smile so white in his tanned face, so sly. He was in his element, playing one side against another. Stone was sure that he knew a lot more about Tom Waverly’s killing spree than he’d so far let on, but was also sure that, if challenged, Welch would deny everything without altering his smile by so much as a fraction of an inch.

‘There’s a farm out in the sticks we used for covert entry into this sheaf before we made ourselves known to the government,’ Welch said. ‘The gate’s no longer there, but we still own the place. Tom knows all about it. When he calls you at this pay phone, you should suggest meeting him there at the old farm. He’ll know exactly what you mean, but the locals won’t have clue one. Tell him you’ll be there for him, alone and unarmed. Tell him you’ll go in bare-ass naked if that’s what he wants. And if he insists on another venue, make sure he understands that you can’t guarantee that it won’t be compromised by the locals.’

Stone said, because he knew that Welch would be suspicious if
he
didn’t seem suspicious, ‘Will this old farm be compromised? Will there be Company sharpshooters waiting for Tom to show?’

‘Remember what the Old Man used to say about working in the field? That thing he claimed to have borrowed from Kipling?’

‘ “Not to trust anyone: that is the whole of the law.” ’

‘There you go. I understand why you’re anxious, Adam. I don’t blame you. But you have to believe me when I say that the Company really does want Tom to come in safely.’

‘Is that because he knows something about this internal problem that’s causing so much trouble right now?’

Welch skated right past that. ‘Listen to what Tom has to say. He’ll probably assume the phone line is tapped, but make sure he knows it anyway. Float the idea of meeting at the old farm. And if you have to abort the call for any reason, make sure that Tom knows why. Make sure he knows you’ll be waiting for him to get back in contact.’

‘Or I could tell him I’m holding a gun to his daughter’s head. Tell him she’ll get it if he doesn’t surrender himself.’

‘I guess you’re still sore about my little surprise. Listen, Adam, if I thought threatening Linda would bring Tom in from the cold, I’d be happy for you to do it, and I’m sure Linda would agree to it, too. But Tom
wants
to come in, so it isn’t necessary. What we have to do is make sure he can do it safely.’ Welch looked at something behind Stone, then glanced at his Rolex and said, ‘He’s a little early. Anxious to get in his five cents’ worth, I bet.’

Stone turned and saw Ed Lar bearing down on them, leading a small group of civilians and men in police uniforms through the ranks of empty tables.

‘Listen to what they have to say, but don’t take any shit from them,’ Welch said.

‘I don’t plan on taking shit from anyone,’ Stone said.

 

The number Tom Waverly had written on the matchbook cover was for one of the pay phones that stood in a short row on the triangular traffic island of Duffy Square, at the northern end of Times Square. Stone sat on the plinth of the life-sized statue of George M. Cohan, right in front of the phones, leafing through a copy of the
New York Times
. He was wearing his black suit, an earpiece and a throat microphone. A radio transmitter was clipped to his belt. As he turned pages, the idle chatter of Ed Lar’s chase team whispered in his earpiece. Traffic shuddered past on either side, a stop-go avalanche of metal and exhaust fumes and braying horns. Yellow taxis, buses, army trucks repainted in the blue-and-white livery of the Reconstruction and Reconciliation Corps, a scattering of private vehicles. Swarms of cyclists blew whistles and rang bells as they wove through stationary lines of vehicles, shot red lights, and skimmed past clots of pedestrians.