He needed to lie down for a few hours. That was it. Get his feet up.
But first he wandered through the house, cataloguing yet again all the things that were missing. If he ever caught up with that cunt, he’d kill her. Maybe after he’d closed the Lincoln deal he could talk Bernie into putting a contract on her black ass.
In the hallway, as he passed the door to the garage, a sense of foreboding came over T. Jefferson Brody. He opened the door and peered into the garage. Empty. Hadn’t he parked the Mercedes in here last night? Or had he left it in the driveway?
He hit the button to open the garage door. The door rose slowly, majestically, revealing an empty driveway.
Oh no! She’d stolen the damned car too!
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Why? Tell me why.”
“Because I wanted it,” Elizabeth snarled. “Is that too difficult for you to understand?”
Thanos Liarakos pinched his nose and stroked an eyebrow. His associates had seen him do this many times in the courtroom, and they knew it was an unconscious mannerism to handle stress. If his wife knew the significance of the gesture, she ignored it now. She hugged her knees and stared at the hospital’s stenciled name on the sheets.
After a moment he said, “That stuff will kill you.”
She sneered.
“What am I supposed to say to you? Should I talk about the kids? Should I tell you how much I love you? Should I tell you once again that you’re playing Russian roulette? And you are going to lose.”
“I’m not one of your half-witted jurors. Spare me the eloquence.”
“You’re prostituting your soul for this white powder, Elizabeth. Prostituting your dignity. Your intelligence. Your humanity. You are! You’re trading everything that makes life worth living for a few minutes of feeling good. God, you are a fool.”
“If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you get out of here? I’m not going to sit quietly while you call me a whore. You bastard!”
“What do you want, Elizabeth?”
She glared at him and wrapped her arms around her chest.
“Do you want to come home?”
She said nothing.
“I’m going to lay it out for you in black and white. You’re a cocaine addict. When they discharge you in a few days you’re going back to that clinic. I’ve already made the phone calls and sent them a check.” This would be her third trip. “You are going to sign yourself in and stay until you are cured, finally, once and for all. You are going to learn to live without cocaine for the rest of your life. Then you may come home.”
“Jesus, you make it sound like I’ve got a nasty virus or a pesky little venereal disease. ‘When the pus in your vagina drys up—’ ”
“You can kick it, Elizabeth.”
“You’re so goddamn certain! I’m the one that’s in here living it. What if I can’t?”
“If you don’t, I’ll file for a divorce. I’ll ask for custody and I’ll get it. You can whore and steal and do whatever else you have to to maintain your addiction, and when the people from the morgue call, the kids and I will see that you get a Christian burial and a nice little marble slab. Every year on Mother’s Day we’ll put flowers on your grave.”
Tears ran down Elizabeth’s face. “Maybe I should just kill myself and get it over with,” she said softly. But too late. Her husband missed this histrionic fillip. He was already halfway through the door.
Before she could say anything else he disappeared down the corridor.
Henry Charon was at the apartment on New Hampshire Avenue at nine a.m. when the truck from the furniture rental company came. Grisella Clifton wasn’t home, and Charon felt vaguely put out. He showed the truck crew where to put the bed, the couch, the dresser, the chairs, and the television, then tipped the driver and his helper a ten-spot each.
At eleven o’clock he was at the apartment he’d rented in Georgetown when the truck from the furniture rental company in Arlington arrived, A-to-Z Rentals. The deliverymen had the furniture inside and arranged by eleven-forty. He tipped both those men and locked the door behind him as he left.
At one he was at the apartment near Lafayette Circle. The telephone company installation person — a woman — showed up a half hour late. She apologized and Charon waved it aside. She had almost finished when the furniture arrived, this time from a rental company in Chevy Chase.
At four p.m. he bought a car from an elderly lady living in Bethesda. He had called five people with cars for sale in the classified section of the newspaper and settled on her because she sounded like an elderly recluse.
She was. Even better, she peered at him myopically. At her daughter’s insistence, she explained at length while he nodded understandingly, she was giving up the car, a seven-year-old Chevrolet two-door sedan, brown. The plates were valid for three more months. He paid her cash and drove it straight to a Sears auto service center where he had the oil and plugs changed, the radiator serviced, all the belts and hoses replaced, and a new battery and new tires installed. While he was waiting he ate a hamburger in the mall.
As he strolled through the evening crowd toward the auto service center at the north end of the mall, he passed an electronics store. In he went. Fifteen minutes later he came out with a police band radio scanner.
That evening at the Lafayette Circle apartment he read the instruction book and played with the dials and switches. The radio worked well whether plugged into the wall socket or on its rechargeable batteries. He stretched out on the bed and listened to the dispatcher and the officers on the street. They routinely used two-digit codes to shorten the transmissions. Tomorrow he would go to the library and try to find a list of the codes. And he would visit more electronics stores and buy more scanners, but only one at each store.
Tomorrow the telephone people were installing phones in the other two apartments. And tomorrow he would have to shop for food and first-aid supplies. Then tomorrow night he would begin moving food, water, and medical supplies to the subway hideout.
Maybe the following night he could put some dried beef and bandages in the cave in Rock Creek Park.
So much to do and so little time.
As he listened to the scanner he mentally went through the checklist one more time.
The real problem was afterward, after the hunt. He did not yet have a solution and he began to worry about it again. The FBI would have his fingerprints — that was inevitable. Henry Charon had no illusions. The fact that the fingerprints the FBI acquired would match not a single set of the tens of millions they had on file would eventually cause the agents to look in the right places. They would have plenty of time — all they needed, in spite of exhortations by politicians and outraged pundits — and the cooperation of every law-enforcement officer in the nation.
Eventually, inevitably, the net would pull him in. Unless he was not there. Or unless the FBI stopped looking because they thought they already had their man. The false clues would not have to hold up forever; indeed, every day that passed would allow the real trail to get colder and colder. A month or so would probably be sufficient.
Why not a red herring?
At three the following afternoon Jack Yocke was finishing a story on the collapse of Second Potomac Savings and Loan. His editor had told him earlier to keep the story tight: space was going to be at a premium in tomorrow’s paper. The Soviets had just announced an immediate cessation of foreign aid to Cuba and Libya. Both nations would be permitted to continue to purchase goods from the Soviet Union but only at world market prices, with hard currency.