Musing on these weighty matters, I became aware of a white sedan three cars back that was keeping pace with me as I rolled east on the interstate. The other cars darted in and out of traffic and occasionally peeled off to dart down an exit, but this guy stayed back, matching my speed.
Tommy, don’t be paranoid.
I allowed my speed to creep up another five mph, just for grins. The guy didn’t fall back.
I changed lanes, slid over behind a semi, which meant I had to slow down about five. The sedan changed lanes, too, yet he fell back a little when two cars cut in between us. They took the next exit, which left about fifty yards between me and the white sedan.
Just when I was starting to get worried, the white sedan dropped down the next exit, leaving me to motor along with my random companions. No one else seemed to be following.
It was late in the afternoon when I parked on the top deck of the close-in parking at BWI and rode the elevator down to the pedestrian bridge that led to the terminal. I was sitting in the lobby across from the airline counter when I saw them approaching. I handed Dorsey her passport.
“That’s all you brought?”
“I don’t believe in overpacking. That other stuff would just weigh you down.”
She bit her lip and tossed her hair. Grafton and I stood in line with her to present her passport and get her seat assignment. I told her that someone had removed the bodies from her house, and she nodded. I felt like the Roto-Rooter man telling her the drain was open.
After she did her business at the counter, Grafton and I escorted her to the security gate.
“You didn’t bring that thirty-eight along, did you?” I asked, trying to be casual. It would be just my luck for her to be arrested for smuggling a shooter through security. She would spill her guts in a heartbeat. Grafton and I wouldn’t make it out of the terminal.
“I left it at the admiral’s house,” she said distractedly.
She shook Grafton’s hand, then held out a hand to me. “Good-bye, Tommy.”
Well, what the hey! I wasn’t the guy for her, and she certainly wasn’t the gal for me. “So long, kid,” I told her, shaking her hand.
She went through the metal detector okay, but the security personnel decided to search her handbag. Probably thought they saw a nail clipper in there.
“Think they’ll send someone to Europe after her?” I said, referring to the hit men.
“Not a chance in a thousand,” Grafton said. “Don’t worry about it.”
The security guard finished stirring through Dorsey’s purse and returned it to her. She picked up her carry-on bag and joined the throng going down the concourse. She didn’t look back.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jake Grafton said, turning away.
As we walked I told him, “On the way over here I thought someone followed me from Dorsey’s, then they turned off.”
He walked on, didn’t say anything.
“Maybe I’m being an idiot.”
That’s when Grafton spoke. “If they’re any good they have three or four cars on you. No one follows along as if he’s on a leash.”
“If they were watching Dorsey’s place, they may be on me.”
“The bodies were gone from Dorsey’s?”
“Whoever took them away did a pretty good job cleaning up,” I told the admiral. “No visible blood inside and just traces on the lawn, which will wash away in the next rain shower.”
Grafton gave me his cell number and the telephone number at the beach house. I wrote them on my left hand. “We’ll go separately,” he added. “Don’t go to the beach house unless you are absolutely sure you are not being followed.”
As we rode up in the parking garage elevator, I asked, “What do you think, Admiral?” Perhaps I wanted some reassurance. If so, I didn’t get it.
“I think you and Kelly are in a hell of a tight spot,” Jake Grafton said, then got off the elevator on the fourth floor. The guy sugarcoats everything.
Up on the roof I stepped out of the elevator and hiked a foot up on the nearest trash can. While I worked on my shoelace I scanned the scene, looking for… I wasn’t sure what. People were getting into and out of cars, walking toward the elevator carrying and pulling luggage; several cars were cruising around looking for spaces near the elevator, even though the entire back row of the area was empty.
I plopped my foot down and headed for my car, trying to hike along as if I hadn’t a care in the world except crabgrass in the lawn.
It’s just that I had this itch between my shoulders, one I couldn’t reach to scratch. Maybe it was nothing, but it was there, this feeling that things were going badly wrong and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I wanted to shout, “I don’t know anything! Erlanger doesn’t know anything! Leave us alone.”
Leave us alone — isn’t that the prayer that defines our age? We ask it of the government, the people with causes, the addicted, the crazy, and the starving and oppressed in all those third-world sewers. Leave us alone! Let us live our comfortable little lives without your burdens. Please.
That’s the prayer, and no one ever listens.
I didn’t see Grafton’s car — I wasn’t really looking. I was trying to figure out if anyone was following me. Crazy how your mind works — it seemed as if everyone was following, everyone was looking at me, everyone was going where I wanted to go. When I changed lanes, the car behind me did, too. The guy or gal in front drifted over into the right lane for the off-ramp to Annapolis and the Bay Bridge.
Paranoid. I was paranoid. Relax, I told myself. Drive safely and normally and relax, for Christ’s sake.
So I was doing just that, motoring along at the speed limit like the good citizen I will never be, when a police cruiser changed lanes to get behind me. I glanced at him in the rear view mirror and saw that he was using his handheld mike.
Oh, great!
I checked the other mirrors, looked at the terrain, thought about flooring the accelerator to try to outrun the guy. In this heap?
After a minute and a half the dome light of the cruiser illuminated and began flashing. I drove for another twenty seconds or so, then put on the blinker and began slowing. I pulled off the road, stopped, put the car in park, and lowered the driver’s window.
I watched the cop walk toward me in the driver’s side window. Mid- to late twenties, cool wraparound shades, a buzz cut, wearing a bulletproof vest under his uniform shirt. I’d opened my mouth to ask him what the problem was when he drew his service pistol and said loudly, “Out of the car, slow and easy, hands where I can see them.”
“Officer, what—”
“Out! Now!”
I took my left hand off the wheel, unlatched the door. He backed off just enough to let me open it. I did so, then got out.
He had the pistol leveled in a two-handed combat stance. “Take two steps toward the front of the car, turn toward the hood, and put your hands on it. Now!”
This guy was spring-loaded to shoot. Since I had no choice, I did as he said. “What’s this all about, officer?”
“The computer says your car is stolen, sir. Please cooperate and we’ll get this all straightened out.”
He got too close and I could have knocked the pistol away and decked him, but I didn’t. Ten seconds later, when he kicked my feet aft and deftly pulled the automatic from behind my belt, I wished I had. My opportunity was gone by then, of course.
“On the ground. Lie on your face.”
If he got those cuffs on me, I was dead meat, with a life expectancy that could be measured in hours. The heck of it was I didn’t want to hurt or kill him.
As he snapped one of the cuffs around my left wrist, I rolled hard into him. He fell, grunted as he hit the ground.