At last the recording got underway. As Hoffer had hoped he would, Bridger turned to him first.
‘So, Mr Hoffer, what’s one of New York’s toughest private detectives doing here in England?’
Hoffer shifted in his seat, leaning forward towards Bridger. ‘Well, sir, I think you’re confusing me with this gentleman beside me. See, I’m the gay NFL player.’
There was a desperate glance from Bridger to his producer, the producer shaking his head furiously. Then Bridger, recovering well after a slow start off the blocks, started to laugh, taking the audience with him. They were so out of it, they’d’ve laughed at triple-bypass surgery. The interview went downhill from there. They’d probably edit it down to a couple of minutes by tomorrow.
Afterwards, Hoffer didn’t want to bump into Bridger. Well, that was easily arranged. Bridger stuck around the studio, signing autographs and kissing more old ladies. Hoffer moved with speed to the ‘green room’, as they called their hospitality suite. It was a bare room lined with chairs, a bit like a surgery waiting room. Those still waiting to do their shows were like patients awaiting biopsy results, while Bridger’s guests had just been given the all-clear. Hoffer tipped an inch of Scotch down his throat.
‘I thought he was going to pee himself,’ said the gay footballer of Hoffer’s opening gag.
‘That audience would have lapped it up,’ Hoffer said. ‘I mean, literally.’ He downed another Scotch before collaring the production assistant.
‘Forget the video,’ he told her. ‘You can spring it on me when I’m on This Is Your Life. What about the other stuff?’
‘I’ve got Mandy from Research outside.’
‘Great, I’ll go talk to her.’
‘Fine.’ And don’t bother coming back, her tone said. Hoffer blew her a kiss, then gave her his famous tongue-waggle. She looked suitably unimpressed. This was in danger of turning into an all right day.
Mandy was about nineteen with long blonde hair and a fashionably anorexic figure.
‘You could do with a meat transfusion,’ Hoffer said. ‘What’ve you got there?’
He snatched the large manila envelope from her and drew out a series of xeroxed map grids.
‘I’ve run over it with green marker,’ she said.
Hoffer could see that. Grewelthorpe: marked in green. The hamlets nearest it were Kirkby Malzeard and Mickley. These were to the south and east. To the west, there were only Masham Moor and Hambleton Hill, some reservoirs and stretches of roadless grey. Further south another hamlet caught his eye. It was called Blubberhouses. What was it with these comedy names? More relevantly, the nearest sizeable conurbations to Grewelthorpe were Ripon and Thirsk, the Yorkshire towns where Mark Wesley had made cash withdrawals.
‘Any help?’ Mandy said.
‘Oh, yes, Mandy, these are beautiful, almost as beautiful as you, my pale princess.’ He touched a finger to her cheek and stroked her face. She began to look scared. ‘Now, I want you to do one more thing for me.’
She swallowed and looked dubious. ‘What?’
‘Tell Uncle Leo where Yorkshire is.’
It wasn’t really necessary to clean the Smith & Wesson, but Hoffer cleaned it anyway. He knew if he got close enough to the D-Man, it wouldn’t matter if the assassin was state-of the-art armed, Hoffer would stick a bullet in his gut.
With the gun cleaned and oiled, he did some reading. He’d amassed a lot of reading this trip: stuff about haemophilia, and now stuff about the Disciples of Love. He didn’t see anything in the Disciples’ history that would unduly ruffle the red, white and blue feathers of the CIA or NSC. Yet Kline was over here, so someone somewhere was very worried about something. He imagined the assassin reading the same notes he was reading. What would he be thinking? What would be his next step? Would he take up the investigation where his victim had left off? That sounded way too risky, especially if the Disciples were the ones who’d set him up in the first place.
But then again, the D-Man had taken a lot of risks so far, and every risk brought him closer to the surface. Hoffer had a name and a description, and now he had Max Harrison. He knew Bob Broome wasn’t stupid; he’d make the connection too before long. But Hoffer had a start. The only problem was, it meant driving. There were no rail stations close to his destination, so he’d have to hire a car. He’d booked one for tomorrow morning, and had asked for his bill to be made up. He knew that really he should make a start tonight, but he wasn’t driving at night, not when he was heading into the middle of nowhere on the wrong damned side of the road.
He needed a clear head for tomorrow, so confined himself to smoking a joint in his room and watching some TV. Then he took a Librium to help him worm his way into the sleep of the just. After all, no way should he be there on merit.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Leo,’ he muttered. ‘You’re the good guy. You’re the hero, you must be... Jimmy Bridger told you so.’ He finished the glass of whisky beside his bed and switched off the TV.
On his way to the john, he got a sudden greasy feeling in his gut, and knew what it was. It wasn’t cancer this time, or liquefaction of the bowel. It wasn’t something he’d eaten or something he hadn’t, a bad glass of tap-water or too much hooch.
It was the simple realisation that another day or two would see this whole thing finished.
The car rental firm had the usual selection of cramped boxes, each with as much soul as a fast-food carton.
‘So which is the cheapest?’
‘The Fiesta, sir.’
Hoffer tried to haggle over the Fiesta, but the assistant couldn’t oblige. There wasn’t even the chance of a blank receipt, since the whole system was computerized, so Hoffer couldn’t hike his expense sheet. He quickly got the hang of driving on the left: it was easy if you stuck to one-way streets. But getting out of London was more pain than he’d bargained for. Twice he had to get out of his car at traffic lights and ask the driver behind for help, then suffer the drivers behind sounding their horns when the lights changed.
He got lost so often that after punching the steering wheel a few times he just stopped caring. He didn’t study roadsigns, he just took whichever route looked good. When he stopped for lunch, he yielded to temptation and asked somebody where he was.
‘Rickmansworth.’
So he’d reached his cab driver’s northern frontier. Cheered by this, he reneged and bought a map book, finding that he would have to cut across country a bit to get on to the right road. The whole UK road network looked like a kid had taken a line for a walk. There seemed no order, no sense to it. Driving was easy in the States, once you’d negotiated the cities. But here the cities didn’t seem to end, they just melted each into the other, with preserved blobs of green in between.
As he moved north, however, he changed his mind a little. There was some green land between London and Yorkshire; it was boring green land, but it was definitely green. He relaxed into the driving, and even remembered to ask for petrol and not ‘gas’. It was late afternoon before he got past Leeds. He came off the Al and into Ripon, where he stopped for a break and a mental council of war.
If Max Harrison was like any gun dealer Hoffer knew, then he would have an arsenal like something from Desert Storm. And what did Hoffer have? A .457 and a pocket knife. All he had going for him was the element of surprise. That meant he’d have those few initial moments to size the situation up. If Harrison was toting heavy artillery, it was no contest. Likewise, if the man was not alone, Hoffer would be compelled to hold back. He realized too late that he’d drunk a whole pot of tea while mulling this over. The caffeine started its relentless surge through his bloodstream. He took a downer to balance things out, and regretted it immediately: he’d need to be sharp, not dopey.