Eyes of Darkness (19 page)

Twisting around in terror, she called Elliot’s name. He was safe, close behind her, knocked off balance by the force of the shock wave, staggering forward, but unhurt.

The garage had gone up first, the big door ripping from its hinges and splintering into the driveway, the roof dissolving in a confetti-shower of shake shingles and flaming debris. But even as Tina looked from Elliot to the fire, before all of the shingles had fallen back to earth, a second explosion slammed through the house, and a billowing cloud of flame roared from one end of the structure to the other, bursting those few windows that had miraculously survived the first blast.

Tina watched, stunned, as flames leaped from a window of the house and ignited dry palm fronds on a nearby tree.

Elliot pushed her away from the Mercedes so he could open the door on the passenger side. “Get in. Quick!”

“But my house is on fire!”

“You can’t save it now.”

“We have to wait for the fire company.”

“The longer we stand here, the better targets we make.”

He grabbed her arm, swung her away from the burning house, the sight of which affected her as much as if it had been a hypnotist’s slowly swinging pocket watch.

“For God’s sake, Tina, get in the car, and let’s go before the shooting starts.”

Frightened, dazed by the incredible speed at which her world had begun to disintegrate, she did as he said.

When she was in the car, he shut her door, ran to the driver’s side, and climbed in behind the steering wheel.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded dumbly.

“At least we’re still alive,” he said.

He put the pistol on his lap, the muzzle facing toward his door, away from Tina. The keys were in the ignition. He started the car. His hands were shaking.

Tina looked out the side window, watching in disbelief as the flames spread from the shattered garage roof to the main roof of the house, long tongues of lambent fire, licking, licking, hungry, bloodred in the last orange light of the afternoon.

19

As ELLIOT DROVE AWAY FROM THE BURNING house, his instinctual sense of danger was as sensitive as it had been in his military days. He was on the thin line that separated animal alertness from nervous frenzy.

He glanced at the rearview mirror and saw a black van pull away from the curb, half a block behind them.

“We’re being followed,” he said.

Tina had been looking back at her house. Now she turned all the way around and stared through the rear window of the sports car. “I’ll bet the bastard who rigged my furnace is in that truck.”

“Probably.”

“If I could get my hands on the son of a bitch, I’d gouge his eyes out.”

Her fury surprised and pleased Elliot. Stupefied by the unexpected violence, by the loss of her house, and by her close brush with death, she had seemed to be in a trance; now she had snapped out of it. He was encouraged by her resilience.

“Put on your seat belt,” he said. “We’ll be moving fast and loose.”

She faced front and buckled up. “Are you going to try to lose them?”

“I’m not just going to
try
.”

In this residential neighborhood the speed limit was twenty-five miles an hour. Elliot tramped on the accelerator, and the low, sleek, two-seat Mercedes jumped forward.

Behind them the van dwindled rapidly, until it was a block and a half away. Then it stopped dwindling as it also accelerated.

“He can’t catch up with us,” Elliot said. “The best he can hope to do is avoid losing more ground.”

Along the street, people came out of their houses, seeking the source of the explosion. Their heads turned as the Mercedes rocketed past.

When Elliot rounded the corner two blocks later, he braked from sixty miles an hour to make the turn. The tires squealed, and the car slid sideways, but the superb suspension and responsive steering held the Mercedes firmly on four wheels all the way through the arc.

“You don’t think they’ll actually start shooting at us?” Tina asked.

“Hell if I know. They wanted it to appear as if you’d died in an accidental gas explosion. And I think they had a fake suicide planned for me. But now that they know we’re on to them, they might panic, might do anything. I don’t know. The only thing I
do
know is they can’t let us just walk away.”

“But who — ”

“I’ll tell you what I know, but later.”

“What do they have to do with Danny?”

“Later,” he said impatiently.

“But it’s all so crazy.”

“You’re telling
me?
”

He wheeled around another corner, and then another, trying to disappear from the men in the van long enough to leave them with so many choices of streets to follow that they would have to give up the chase in confusion. Too late, he saw the sign at the fourth intersection — NOT A THROUGH STREET—but they were already around the corner and headed down the narrow dead end, with nothing but a row of ten modest stucco houses on each side.

“Damn!”

“Better back out,” she said.

“And run right into them.”

“You’ve got the gun.”

“There’s probably more than one of them, and they’ll be armed.”

At the fifth house on the left, the garage door was open, and there wasn’t a car inside.

“We’ve got to get off the street and out of sight,” Elliot said.

He drove into the open garage as boldly as if it were his own. He switched off the engine, scrambled out of the car, and ran to the big door. It wouldn’t come down. He struggled with it for a moment, and then he realized that it was equipped with an automatic system.

Behind him, Tina said, “Stand back.”

She had gotten out of the car and had located the control button on the garage wall.

He glanced outside, up the street. He couldn’t see the van.

The door rumbled down, concealing them from anyone who might drive past.

Elliot went to her. “That was close.”

She took his hand in hers, squeezed it. Her hand was cold, but her grip was firm.

“So who the hell are they?” she asked,

“I saw Harold Kennebeck, the judge I mentioned. He—”

The door that connected the garage to the house opened without warning, but with a sharp, dry squeak of unoiled hinges.

An imposing, barrel-chested man in rumpled chinos and a white T-shirt snapped on the garage light and peered curiously at them. He had meaty arms; the circumference of one of them almost equaled the circumference of Elliot’s thigh. And there wasn’t a shirt made that could be buttoned easily around his thick, muscular neck. He appeared formidable, even with his beer belly, which bulged over the waistband of his trousers.

First Vince and now this specimen. It was the Day of the Giants.

“Who’re you?” the pituitary-challenged behemoth asked in a soft, gentle voice that didn’t equate with his appearance.

Elliot had the awful feeling that this guy would reach for the button Tina had pushed less than a minute ago, and that the garage door would lift just as the black van was rolling slowly by in the street.

Stalling for time, he said, “Oh, hi. My name’s Elliot, and this is Tina.”

“Tom,” the big man said. “Tom Polumby.”

Tom Polumby didn’t appear to be worried by their presence in his garage; he seemed merely perplexed. A man of his size probably wasn’t frightened any more easily than Godzilla confronted by the pathetic bazooka-wielding soldiers surrounding doomed Tokyo.

“Nice car,” Tom said with an unmistakable trace of reverence in his voice. He gazed covetously at the S600.

Elliot almost laughed.
Nice car!
They pulled into this guy’s garage, parked, closed the door bold as you please, and all he had to say was
Nice car!

“Very nice little number,” Tom said, nodding, licking his lips as he studied the Mercedes.

Apparently Tom couldn’t conceive that burglars, psychopathic killers, and other low-lifes were permitted to purchase a Mercedes-Benz if they had the money for it. To him, evidently, anyone who drove a Mercedes had to be the right kind of people.

Elliot wondered how Tom would have reacted if they had shrieked into his garage in an old battered Chevy.

Pulling his covetous gaze from the car, Tom said, “What’re you doing here?” There was still neither suspicion nor belligerence in his voice.

“We’re expected,” Elliot said.

“Huh? I wasn’t expecting nobody.”

“We’re here . . . about the boat,” Elliot said, not even knowing where he was going to go with that line, ready to say anything to keep Tom from putting up the garage door and throwing them out.

Tom blinked. “What boat?”

“The twenty-footer.”

“I don’t own a twenty-footer.”

“The one with the Evinrude motor.”

“Nothing like that here.”

“You must be mistaken,” Elliot said.

“I figure you’ve got the wrong place,” Tom said, stepping out of the doorway, into the garage, reaching for the button that would raise the big door.

Tina said, “Mr. Polumby, wait. There must be some mistake, really. This is definitely the right place.”

Tom’s hand stopped short of the button.

Tina continued: “You’re just not the man we were supposed to see, that’s all. He probably forgot to tell you about the boat.”

Elliot blinked at her, amazed by her natural facility for deception.

“Who’s this guy you’re supposed to see?” Tom asked, frowning.

Appearing to be somewhat amazed herself, Tina hesitated not at all before she said, “Sol Fitzpatrick.”

“Nobody here by that name.”

“But this is the address he gave us. He said the garage door would be open and that we were to pull right inside.”

Elliot wanted to hug her. “Yeah. Sol said we were to pull in, out of the driveway, so that he’d have a place to put the boat when he got here with it.”

Tom scratched his head, then pulled on one ear. “Fitz-patrick?”

“Yeah.”

“Never heard of him,” Tom said. “What’s he bringing a boat here for, anyway?”

“We’re buying it from him,” Tina said.

Tom shook his head. “No. I mean, why
here
?”

“Well,” Elliot said, “the way we understood it, this was where he lived.”

“But he doesn’t,” Tom said. “I live here. Me and my wife and our little girl. They’re out right now, and there’s nobody ever been here named Fitzpatrick.”

“Well, why would he tell us this was his address?” Tina asked, scowling.

“Lady,” Tom said, “I don’t have the foggiest. Unless maybe . . . Did you already pay him for the boat?”

“Well . . .”

“Maybe just a down payment?” Tom asked.

“We did give him two thousand on deposit,” Elliot said.

Tina said, “It was a refundable deposit.”

“Yeah. Just to hold the boat until we could see it and make up our minds.”

Smiling, Tom said, “I think the deposit might not turn out to be as refundable as you thought.”

Pretending surprise, Tina said, “You don’t mean Mr. Fitzpatrick would cheat us?”

Obviously it pleased Tom to think that people who could afford a Mercedes were not so smart after all. “If you gave him a deposit, and if he gave you this address and claimed he lived here, then it’s not very likely this Sol Fitzpatrick even owns any boat in the first place.”

“Damn,” Elliot said.

“We were swindled?” Tina asked, feigning shock, buying time.

Grinning broadly now, Tom said, “Well, you can look at it that way if you want. Or you can think of it as an important lesson this here Fitzpatrick fella taught you.”

“Swindled,” Tina said, shaking her head.

“Sure as the sun will come up tomorrow,” Tom said.

Tina turned to Elliot. “What do you think?”

Elliot glanced at the garage door, then at his watch. He said, “I think it’s safe to leave.”

“Safe?” Tom asked.

Tina stepped lightly past Tom Polumby and pressed the button that raised the garage door. She smiled at her bewildered host and went to the passenger side of the car while Elliot opened the driver’s door.

Polumby looked from Elliot to Tina to Elliot, puzzled. “Safe?”

Elliot said, “I sure hope it is, Tom. Thanks for your help.” He got in the car and backed it out of the garage.

Any amusement he felt at the way they had handled Polumby evaporated instantly as he reversed warily out of sanctuary, down the driveway, and into the street. He sat stiffly behind the wheel, clenching his teeth, wondering if a bullet would crack through the windshield and shatter his face.

He wasn’t accustomed to this tension. Physically, he was still hard, tough; but mentally and emotionally, he was softer than he had been in his prime. A long time had passed since his years in military intelligence, since the nights of fear in the Persian Gulf and in countless cities scattered around the Mideast and Asia. Then, he’d had the resiliency of youth and had been less burdened with respect for death than he was now. In those days it had been easy to play the hunter. He had taken pleasure in stalking human prey; hell, there had even been a measure of joy in
being
stalked, for it gave him the opportunity to prove himself by outwitting the hunter on his trail. Much had changed. He was soft. A successful, civilized attorney. Living the good life. He had never expected to play that game again. But once more, incredibly, he was being hunted, and he wondered how long he could survive.

Tina glanced both ways along the street as Elliot swung the car out of the driveway. “No black van,” she said.

“So far.”

Several blocks to the north, an ugly column of smoke rose into the twilight sky from what was left of Tina’s house, roiling, night-black, the upper reaches tinted around the edges by the last pinkish rays of the setting sun.