Bailey's instincts were good, Buchanan thought, as he checked a map in his car and steered from the mini-mall, heading toward his next destination. The truth was, Buchanan did have a team keeping track of him. Their mission was to follow Bailey after the money was handed over and to try to find where he was keeping the video tape, the photographs, and the negatives, especially the ones depicting Buchanan on the yacht with the colonel, the major, and the captain. The colonel had been very emphatic about that point when he'd hastily returned Buchanan's phone call. The images of Buchanan with the colonel had to be destroyed.
As Buchanan headed east on Broward Boulevard, he again glanced in his rearview mirror to see if he was being followed. He looked for Bailey, not the team that was keeping track of him, for there was no way he could spot the team, he knew. They had a way to follow him and later Bailey that permitted them to stay far back, out of visual contact, and that method was the reason Bailey's protective tactic, no matter how shrewd, wouldn't work. Bailey would never see the team at any of the potential rendezvous sites. He could never possibly detect the team as they followed him after he received the money. No matter what evasion procedures he attempted, he would not be able to elude them.
Because they didn't need to keep him in sight. All they had to do was study an audio-visual monitor and follow the homing signals they received from a battery-powered location transmitter concealed within the plastic bottom of the small picnic cooler that contained the money.
Friday night traffic was dense. Amid gleaming headlights, Buchanan reached the glass-and-steel Tower Hotel two minutes ahead of schedule. Telling the parking attendant that he would probably need the car right away, he darted inside the plush lobby and found his jeans, nylon jacket, and picnic cooler being sternly assessed by a group of men and women wearing tuxedos and glittering evening gowns. Sure, Buchanan thought. There's a reception going on. Bailey found out and took advantage of it. He wants me and especially anyone following me to be conspicuous.
Used to being inconspicuous, Buchanan felt self-conscious as he waited in the lobby. He looked for Bailey among the guests, not expecting to find him, wondering how Bailey would contact him this time. The clock behind the check-in counter showed twenty after nine, exactly when Buchanan was supposed to.
'Mr Grant?' a uniformed bellhop asked.
Buchanan had noticed the short, middle-aged man moving from guest to guest in the lobby, speaking softly to each. 'That's right.'
'A friend of yours left this envelope for you.'
Finding a deserted corner, Buchanan ripped it open.
At quarter to ten, be at the entrance to Shirttail Charlie's restaurant on.
16
Three stops later, at eleven o'clock, Buchanan arrived at the Riverside Hotel on Las Olas, a street that seemed the local equivalent of Beverly Hills' Rodeo Drive. From information in the terracotta-floored lobby, he learned that the hotel had been built in 1936, a date which was very old by Fort Lauderdale standards. A few decades before, this area had been wilderness. The wicker furniture and coral fireplaces exuded a sense of history, no matter how recent.
Buchanan had a chance to learn these facts and notice these details because Bailey didn't contact him on schedule. By twenty after eleven, Bailey still hadn't been in touch. The lobby was deserted.
'Mr Grant?'
Buchanan looked up from where he sat on a rattan chair near glass patio doors, a location that he'd chosen because it allowed him to be observed from outside. A woman behind the small reception counter was speaking to him, her eyebrows raised.
'Yes.'
'I have a phone call for you.'
Buchanan carried the picnic cooler to the counter and took the phone from the receptionist.
'Go out the rear door, cross the street, and walk through the gate, then past the swimming pool.' Bailey's curt instructions were followed by the sudden hum of the dial tone.
Buchanan handed the telephone back to the receptionist, thanked her, and used the rear exit. Outside, he saw the gate across the street and a walkway through a small, murky park beside the swimming pool, although the swimming pool itself was deserted, its lights off.
Moving closer, enveloped by the shadows of palm trees, he expected Bailey's voice to drift from the darkness, to give him instructions to leave the money on a barely visible poolside table and continue to stroll as if he hadn't been contacted.
The only lights were ahead, from occasional arclamps along the canal as well as from a cabin cruiser and a houseboat moored there. He heard an engine rumbling. Then he heard a man call, 'Mr Grant? Is that you over there, Mr Grant?'
Buchanan continued forward, away from the swimming pool, toward the canal. He immediately realized that the rumbling engine belonged to a water taxi that was temporarily docked, bow first, between the cabin cruiser and the houseboat. The water taxi was yellow, twenty feet long with poles along the gunwales supporting a yellow and green, striped canvas roof. In daylight, the roof would shade passengers from the glare and heat of the sun. But at night, it shut out the little illumination that the arclamps along the canal provided and prevented Buchanan from seeing who was in there.
Certainly there were passengers. At least fifteen. Their shadowy outlines were evident. But Buchanan had no way to identify them. The canvas roof muffled what they said to each other, although their slurred rhythms made him suspect they were on a Friday-night round of parties and bars.
'That's right. My name is Grant,' Buchanan said to the driver, who sat at controls in front of the passengers.
'Well, your friend's already aboard. I wondered if you were going to show up. I was just about to leave.'
Buchanan strained to see through the darkness beneath the water taxi's roof, then stepped onto the gangplank that extended from the canal to the bow. With his right hand, he gripped a rope railing for balance while he held the picnic cooler in his left and climbed down a few steps into the taxi. Passengers in their early twenties, dressed casually but expensively for an evening out, sat on benches along each side.
The stern remained shrouded by darkness.
'How much do I owe you?' Buchanan asked the driver.
'Your friend already paid for you.'
'How generous.'
'Back here, Vic,' a crusty voice called from the gloomy stern.
As the driver retracted the gangplank, Buchanan made his way past a group of young men on his left and stopped at the stern, his eyes now sufficiently adjusted to the darkness to see Bailey slouched on a bench.
Bailey waved a beefy hand. 'How ya doin', buddy?'
Buchanan sat and placed the picnic cooler between them.
'You didn't need to bring your lunch,' Bailey said.
Buchanan just stared at him as the driver backed the water taxi from between the cabin cruiser and the houseboat, then increased speed along the canal. Slick, Buchanan thought. I'm separated from my backup team. They couldn't have gotten to the water taxi in time, and certainly they couldn't have hurried on board without making Bailey suspicious.
Now that Buchanan's eyes had become even more accustomed to the darkness, the glow from condominiums, restaurants, and boats along the canal seemed to increase in brightness. But Buchanan was interested in the spectacle only because the illumination allowed him to see the cellular telephone that Bailey folded and placed in a pouch attached to his belt.