Lancer is going to Miami.
Mary Frances moved past the doorway. Then she ran water in the kitchen. He heard her looking for something on the back stairway. He heard the kitchen radio. He waited for her to pass by the porch window with the watering can. It was an old metal can, gray and dented, and he waited to hear her walk across the porch. He listened carefully. She was still in the kitchen. That was all right.
As long as he knew where she was. She had to be close and he had to know where she was. Those were the two inner rules.
He heard an old familiar voice on the kitchen radio, some voice from the old days of radio, couldn't quite recall the man's name, but famous and familiar, with laughter in the background, and he sat very still as if to draw out the moment, struck by the complex emotion carried on a voice from another era, tender and shattering, a three-line joke that brings back everything.
He turned another page.
There was no date set for the President's trip. But it is definitely going to happen, said Parmenter. He wants to go to Florida because the state voted Republican in 1960 and because the whole South is pissing blood over his civil-rights program. Cape Canaveral, Tampa, Miami. There'll be a motorcade in Miami.
Mary Frances was in the doorway wearing rubber gloves, a scrub brush in her hand.
"Something odd lately? I don't know."
"What?" he said.
"Suzanne? Although it's probably nothing."
"It's not like you."
"Worry over nothing."
"She's all right. She's fine. She's a healthy child."
"With a morbid streak."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. Lately she seems."
"What?"
"She's always going off with Missy Tyler. They practically hide from me at times. I don't know, it's just, I think she's so preoccupied lately, so inner, and I wonder if there's something unhealthy there."
"Missy's the skinny little redhead,"
"Adopted. They hide in corners and whisper solemnly. There's a kind of mood that descends whenever Missy's here. Very sort of haunted-house. Awestruck. Something walks the halls. I get the feeling it's me. I'm a very suspicious presence in this house. The girls hush up when they hear rne coming."
"They have their own world. She's dreamy," he said.
"She listens to a Dallas disc jockey named the Weird Beard."
"What does he play?"
"It's not what he plays. He plays top forty. It's what he says between records."
"Example."
"Impossible to duplicate. He just like, here I am, on and on. It's a completely other language. But she is fixed to the radio."
"Inka dinka dink."
"I know. It's not like me. Most of my worrying makes sense."
"She read to me for forty minutes nonstop and it was remarkable, remarkable."
" 'Please, Daddy, I want to read some more.''
"Are you handling plutonium with those gloves?"
"'Daddy, Daddy, please.'"
He went upstairs, moving slowly in his light and silent way. Miami has an impact, a resonance. City of exiles, unhealed wounds. The President wants a motorcade because the polls show he is losing popularity by the minute. Appear among the multitudes in his long blue Lincoln, men on motorcycles to trim the crowds, men in sunglasses dangling from the sides of the follow-up car. Lancer stands to wave. It is necessary to wing a bystander or Secret Service man in order to validate our credentials. This is how we show them it is real. Plots. The ancients shared in nature by echoing the violence of a windstorm or thunder squall. To share in nature is the oldest human trick. A thought for bedtime.
The watering can was gritty metal with an ugly snub spout.
He found Suzanne awake when he looked inside. There was a cloth-and-vinyl toy at the end of the bed, a football player they'd named Willie Wonder, with padded shoulders and polished chino pants. Win turned the key at Willie's back and sent him on a broken-field run the length of the bed. He broadcast the run in an urgent voice, described missed tackles and downfield blocks, added the roar of the crowd, became the official who signaled touchdown when the toy spun backwards into a pillow. Suzanne showed a pleasure that seemed to start at her feet and creep up her body and into her eyes, making them large and bright. If he could only keep surprising her, she would have a reason to love him forever.
Mackey drove across a drawbridge over the Miami River. The tires wailed on the iron grid. A white sloop moved upriver in the dark, a little mystery of grace and stealth. Two blocks south of the bridge he saw the first Volveremos bumper sticker. Empty streets. His hands sticking to the wheel.
He parked on a sidestreet and walked around the comer to a vast car lot. It took him ten minutes to find Wayne Elko stupidly sprawled in the back seat of a red Impala. The top was down and Wayne was gazing into the night.
"How did I get in here so easy?"
"T-Jay."
"You're the watchman, I hear."
"Where'd you come from?"
"I drove nearly a thousand miles just to see you, Wayne."
"I about gave you up."
Mackey leaned against the car and looked off toward the street as if the sight of the bedraggled Wayne Elko, in bare feet, with clothes and other possessions strewn about, was a little too bleak to take in right now.
"I saw Raymo and what's-his-name. I spent time with them training in the Glades, man. There is Alpha 66 people infesting the Glades. We trained with them a little bit. I never turned my back except to pee."
"Alpha won't bother us. I have long-time contacts in Alpha."
"Are you Agency, T-Jay, or what?"
"Not no more, Bubba. Sold my peewee trailer for small change and here I am. What do they call us, retirees?"
"We train with real shit weapons."
"Weapons are coming."
"The stars are fucking fantastic. I love the Glades for the clear nights. It's a whole other world out there. See those hawks zoom.
I wouldn't mind going out again. My back's messed up from sleeping in the car."
"We have a friendly source of funds will come through for you soon."
"When I was with Interpen, we had hotel and casino money."
"We have a fellow in New Orleans."
Mackey didn't trust Guy Banister. Guy was past it now, a once able man who'd grown fierce and unsteady in his hatreds. He was delivering money and weapons but would not support the operation blindly. Mackey would have to tell him who the target was or else invent a target. Either way he risked betrayal. Guy was deep in causes and affiliations. He had influence in a dozen directions. It was not reasonable to expect a man like that to sit and watch the event unfold. He'd want to take an active hand. He'd set loose forces that would threaten the self-contained system Mackey wanted to create.
He didn't trust Wayne Elko. Not that Wayne would knowingly turn. It was a question of temperament, unpredictability. Wayne had a gift for the celebrated fuck-up. He also had a nature that went violent in a flash. There was something a little viperish about him. He drawled and rambled and looked sleepy-eyed, stroking his lean jaw, then suddenly took offense. He was a man who took offense in a serious way. Scraggly and lank. Those ripe eyes bulging. An idea of himself as born to the warrior class. Mackey was sure he could get Wayne to do just about anything he wanted, just so long as it challenged his sense of limits.