Mr. S. accepted his apology with a curt nod of the head.
"This man is strong and dangerous. Paulo?"
"No, Mr. S. He's not. Not at all."
"And there is no question in your mind that you and Pietro can deal with him in any circumstance that you can think of?"
"I don't even need Pietro, Mr. S."
"Nevertheless, I want Pietro to go along with us."
"Right, Mr. S."
"I don't want this man to see me, for obvious reasons," Mr. S. said. "Or to hear my voice."
"No problem, Mr. S."
"Although I doubt it very much, he may have had nothing to do with the problems my granddaughter is having. I don't want to close any doors that might have to later be opened, you understand?"
"Absolutely, Mr. S."
"And, of course, we don't want to be interrupted while we are talking with him."
"I understand."
"I wondered if someone saw the vehicle you previously used there if it might not cause curiosity."
"I see what you mean, Mr. S. Let me think a minute."
Mr. Savarese waited patiently.
"How about a Chevy station wagon, Mr. S.? We got a couple of them. At a big funeral, we use them to haul flowers ahead of the procession, you know, enough to cover the phony grass by the grave-"
"They are black, like the Suburban?" Mr. Savarese interrupted him.
Paulo nodded. "And they don't have any signs painted on them or anything."
"I was thinking of something more on the order of a utility vehicle."
Again he waited patiently for Paulo to give that some thought.
"What we do have is a Ford pickup, Mr. S. We keep it around with a jack and a couple of spare wheels and tires in the back, in case a hearse or a flower car has a flat."
"Does that happen often, Paulo?"
"No, Mr. S. But sometimes, you know, you get a bad tire or pick up a nail."
"Yes," Mr. Savarese said, understanding. Then he gave a dry chuckle. "The final indignity of life, Paulo, a flat tire on your way to your last resting place."
"Yeah, I see what you mean, Mr. S."
"Is there room for the three of us in this flat-tire truck?"
"You know, it's a regular pickup truck. It would be a tight squeeze. And it's sometimes dirty."
"The upholstery, you mean?"
Pietro finally came to the table and sat down.
"You heard what we have been talking about, Pietro?" Mr. Savarese asked.
"We could put a blanket or something on the seats, if they're dirty, Mr. S.," Pietro said.
"You understand, Mr. S.," Paulo explained, "we get a call there's a flat, one of the mechanics drops whatever he's doing and jumps in the pickup-"
Mr. Savarese held out his hand in such a manner as to indicate that a further explanation was not necessary.
"What I think we should do," Mr. Savarese said, "unless this interferes with your plans, Paulo…"
"My time is your time, Mr. S., you know that."
"… is send Pietro to the garage, where he will clean this flat-tire truck up as well as he can, and if necessary, as he suggested, put a clean blanket over the dirty seats, and then bring it here. By then it will be dark."
"Good thinking, Mr. S.," Paulo said.
"And in the meantime, you and I will discuss what you're going to talk to this man about."
"Right, Mr. S.," Paulo said.
Paulo Cassandro's prediction that it would be a tight squeeze in the front of the Ford pickup truck proved to be true, and the blankets-he had sent one of the Classic Livery mechanics to a dry goods store to get two nice ones-proved to be hot and slippery when installed over the greasy upholstery, and Paulo knew Mr. S. was uncomfortable.
But Mr. S. hadn't said anything. Paulo interpreted this to be another manifestation of Mr. S.'s being fair. Mr. S. knew that he was the one who had ordered the pickup, so it wouldn't be right to bitch about what happened when he got what he asked for.
At five minutes to eight, the pickup stopped outside a ten-foot-high hurricane fence in a field south of the Philadelphia International Airport. There were metal signs reading, U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN UNDER PENALTY OF LAW attached at twenty-five-foot intervals to the fence.
As they had driven up to the fence, Mr. Savarese had seen where there once had been provision for floodlights to illuminate the entire perimeter of the fenced-in area. They were no longer in use. Neither was what had been contained inside the fence: a battery (four launcher emplacements) of U.S. Army antiaircraft weaponry.
During a particularly tense period of the Cold War, the installation had been one of many such batteries surrounding Philadelphia and from which, should the Russian bombers have come, NIKE rockets would have been launched to blow them out of the sky.
Roughly in the center of the four launcher emplacements (their launching mechanisms long since removed) was a windowless concrete building. Its thick concrete walls had been designed to resist anything short of a direct hit from a low-yield nuclear weapon. When the site had been active, the building had held, in four interior rooms, an additional dozen NIKE rockets, as well as some maintenance supplies and equipment.
The dozen NIKEs were to be used to reload the four launchers, a process that would take-presuming the launchers and their crews were still intact after the first Russian assault-about twenty minutes. The possibility had occurred to the planners that the shock waves generated by the first bombs dropped would almost certainly put any elevator system bringing the spare NIKEs from underground storage out of whack, even if there was, immediately post-strike, any electricity to power the elevator.
So the spare NIKEs were stored at ground level, behind thick concrete walls and heavy steel doors, in rooms from which they could be manhandled to the launchers.
Paulo Cassandro was impressed-but not surprised-when Mr. Savarese had told him about the NIKE sites, and how he thought they might come in useful at some time for some purpose. Mr. S. had said he thought they would be around for some years, deserted but in reasonably intact condition.
Wherever possible, Mr. S. had told him, they had been built on land that was cheap, which meant that no one could see much that could be done with it, and for which there was still not much demand. Now that use of the areas would require the demolition-very expensive demolition-of thick, steel-reinforced concrete before anything else could be erected on it, the land was even less desirable.
But what he had found really interesting about the NIKE sites, Mr. S. had told him, was that they were federal property, much like Fort Dix over in New Jersey. Local police did not have authority on federal property. Which meant not only that the Philadelphia police would not be patrolling the NIKE sites, but also that the federal authorities, with nothing to protect but empty, and practically indestructible, buildings, would not be giving them very much attention, either.
Mr. Savarese had told Paulo to put an eye on several of the NIKE sites and determine which of them could be put to use while attracting the least attention. And after that, to keep an eye on it, in case anything should change.
After making a careful survey of the abandoned NIKE sites, Cassandro had come up with two that seemed to meet about equally the criteria Mr. Savarese had set up. They were in reasonably remote areas, and not readily visible from the streets and highways. He had gone to Mr. Savarese and suggested that while it would obviously take twice as much manpower to keep an eye on both sites, he recommended this course of action, as it would give them two convenient places. Mr. Savarese had agreed to this, with the caveat that he did not wish to use the sites routinely, but rather as sort of emergency support, and therefore he wished to be consulted before either of the sites was used at all.
Mr. Savarese had given permission to use the sites only twice. The first time was to store a hijacked tractor-trailer load of whiskey for five days until the heat was off. In this case, the driver of the truck had been a fucking fool who had gotten brave, and when struck in the head with a crowbar suffered more severe cranial injuries than was planned, which in turn caused more police attention than was anticipated.