“Called?”
“Alliance Investigative.”
“Who’s your contact?”
“A guy called Dulwater. We phone him now and then.”
“You bugged my house?”
“What?”
“Did you bug my house?”
The man blinked at him and mouthed the word no. Reeve let him drop. Lardface was unconscious. Reeve regained his composure and took the scene in-the prone bodies, the silence, the horror on Manny’s face… and something like idolatry on the youth’s.
“I could’ve taken them,” the youth said. “But thanks anyway.”
“The police…” Manny said, but quietly, making it sound like a request.
Reeve turned to him. “I’ll see you all right about the breakages,” he said. He looked down at Spikehead. “I don’t think our friends here will be pressing charges. They were in a car smash, that’s all. You might direct them to the nearest doctor, but that’ll be the last you hear about this.” He smiled. “I promise.”
He drove south until he reached a pay phone, and called Joan to check she was all right. She had arrived safely at her sister’s, but still wanted to know what he was going to do. He remained vague, and she grew angry.
“This isn’t just about you, Gordon!” she yelled. “Not now. It’s about Allan and me, too. I deserve to know!”
“And I’m saying that the less you know the better. Trust me on this.” He was still trembling, his body pumping adrenaline. He didn’t want to think about how good he had felt laying into the two private eyes.
It had felt wonderful.
He argued a few more minutes with Joan, and was about to plead that he was running out of money when she remembered something.
“I called an hour or two ago,” she said. “I got the answering machine, so checked it for messages.”
“And?”
“There was one there from a woman. She sounded foreign.”
Marie Villambard! He’d forgotten all about her. He’d left his home telephone number on her machine.
“She left a number where you can reach her,” Joan said.
Reeve cursed silently. That meant whoever was bugging his phone would have her number, too. He took down the details Joan gave, told her he had to go, and dug in his pockets for more change.
“Allo?”
“It’s Gordon Reeve here, Madam Villambard. Thank you for getting back to me, but there’s a problem.”
“Yes?”
“The line was compromised.” Two cars went past at speed. Reeve watched them disappear.
“You mean people were listening?”
“Yes.” He looked back along the dark road. No lights. Nothing. The only light, he realized, was the bare bulb in the old-style phone booth. He pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket and used it to disconnect the bulb.
“It is a military term, compromised?”
“I suppose it is. I was in the army.” The darkness felt better. “Listen, can we meet?”
“In France?”
“I could drive overnight, catch a ferry at Dover.”
“I live near Limoges. Do you know it?”
“I’ll buy a map. Is your telephone-?”
“Compromised? I think not. We can make a rendezvous safely.”
“Let’s do it then.”
“Okay, drive into the center of Limoges and follow signs to the Gare SNCF, the station itself is called Bénédictins.”
“Got it. How long will the drive take from Calais?”
“That depends on how often you stop. If you hurry… six hours.”
Reeve did a quick calculation. If he didn’t encounter congestion or construction, he might make it to the south coast in eight or nine hours. He could sleep on the boat, then another six hours. Add a couple of hours for sailing, embarkation and disembarkation, plus an hour because France was one hour ahead… seventeen or eighteen hours. He’d flown to Los Angeles in about half that. The luminous hands of his watch told him it was a little after eight.
“Late afternoon,” he said, allowing himself a margin.
“I’ll be waiting in the station at four,” she said. “I’ll wait two hours, best look for me in the bar.”
“Listen, there’s one more thing. They recorded your call; they know your name now.”
“Yes?”
“I’m saying be careful.”
“Thank you, Mr. Reeve. See you tomorrow.”
His money was finished anyway. He put down the receiver, wondering how they would recognize each other. Then he laughed. He’d have driven a thousand miles straight; she’d recognize him by the bloodshot eyes and body tremors.
But he was worried that “they” would know she’d called. He should have destroyed the transmitters as soon as he located them. Instead, he’d tried playing games, playing for time. These were not people who appreciated games. He pushed the lightbulb home and opened the iron-framed door.
One more thing worried him. The private eyes. They were working for an outfit called Alliance, an American outfit, and he had no idea who’d hired Alliance in the first place.
Plus, if Lardface and Spikehead hadn’t planted those bugs… who had?
TWELVE
JEFFREY ALLERDYCE WAS LUNCHING WITH one of the few United States senators he regarded with anything other than utter loathing. That was because Senator Cal Waits was the only clean senator Allerdyce had ever had dealings with. Waits had never had to call on Alliance’s services, and had never found himself under investigation by them. He didn’t appear to be in any corporation’s pocket, and had little time-at least in public-for Washington’s veritable army of slick besuited lobbyists.
Maybe that was because Cal Waits didn’t need the money or the attention. He didn’t need the money because his grandfather had owned the largest banking group in the Southwest, and he didn’t need the attention because his style in the Senate got him plenty of that anyway. He was a large middle-aged man with a store of homespun stories that he was keen on recounting, most of them very funny, most of them making some telling point about the subject under discussion in the Senate. He was always being quoted, sound-bitten, edited into fifteen seconds of usable television for the midevening news. He was, as more than one newspaper had put it, “an institution.”
They ate at Allerdyce’s favorite restaurant, Ma Petite Maison. He liked the crab cakes there; he also had a 10 percent share in the place (though this was not widely known), and so liked to keep an eye on business. Business wasn’t bad, but at short notice Allerdyce had still been able to get a booth, one of the ones at the back usually reserved for parties of five or more. A journalist from the Wall Street Journal had been moved to one of the lesser tables, but would be kept sweet by seeing his eventual tab reduced by 10 percent.
Allerdyce couldn’t tell Cal Waits that he’d had someone moved. Some luncheon companions would have been impressed, honored-but not Waits. Waits would have protested, maybe even walked out. Allerdyce didn’t want him to walk, he wanted him to talk. But first there was the other crap to be got through, the so-called excuse for their lunch engagement: catching up on family, mutual acquaintances, old times. Allerdyce noticed how some of the other diners stared at them, seeing two scarred old warhorses with their noses in the feedbag.
And then the main courses arrived-cassoulet for Waits, magret d’oie for Allerdyce-and it was almost time.
Waits looked at his plate. “The hell with healthy eating.” He chortled. “This health kick we’ve been on for the past-what?-twenty years: it’s killing this country. I don’t mean with cholesterol or whatever new bodily disaster or poison the scientists are coming up with, I mean people aren’t eating for fun anymore. Dammit, Jeffrey, eating used to be a pastime for America. Steaks and burgers, pizzas and ribs… fun food. Surf ‘n’ turf, that sort of thing. And now everybody looks at you in horror if you so much as suck on a drumstick. Well hell, I told my doctors-you notice you don’t just need one doctor these days, you need a whole rank of them, same thing with lawyers-I told them I wouldn’t diet. I’d do anything else they told me to do, but I would not stop eating the food I’ve been eating my whole goddamned life.”