I was starting to falter. I’d never fully mastered sprinting with my missing toes, and speed and distance took a toll. But then the shadow stopped, whirled, and crouched, and I knew he had seen me. I hit the ground. But no shot came. I looked up and he was running again.
He doesn’t want police to hear shots. If they do, they’ll move toward the sound.
I got up, heaving, running again. He pulled away.
The sprinkler system suddenly went on all over the golf course. Under the moon, arcing water created a Las Vegas — like display. Clear moon. Bright stars. A flood of water. I looked down and saw that although Tom was distancing himself, the wet grass was flattened where he ran over it. Even if he drew beyond my vision, for a little longer, I could track where he went.
Tom Fargo sped up and glanced back and saw the shadow that was Joe Rush falter. He was outdistancing the older man. The sirens were louder now, closer, and he saw red lights over the silhouetted clubhouse roof, and more above the treetops. Before shooting the pregnant woman and her husband, he’d heard her telling police over the phone to get to the country club.
Tom had been heading for the fence but turned away now, tried a new direction. If he could escape the grounds he could slow down, walk, get the car.
But he had to get off the golf course first. He ran through sprinklers, into a sand trap, and out and over a bunker and, hunched over, across a slanted green. Something moved to his left. He jerked the gun in that direction. He was astounded to see a doglike figure loping by the rough and tree line. The coyote was playing, watching. The fucking police were here and this stupid animal wanted to have fun.
Water ran into his eyes. He kicked his shoes off, stripped off his socks. Barefoot was easier. Otherwise he might slip on the wet. If he made it out of the golf course, he’d be conspicuous, he knew, running through the streets in bare feet, clothing sopping. But he’d deal with that later. Now he just needed to get out.
He plunged into the grassy rough abutting a fairway. Beyond trees and bushes he saw the glint of chain link. But then he saw a red flashing light approaching. More cops.
Tom turned around and tried a new direction.
Running, he thought, It’s not the end. It’s a setback. People will get sick here. I will get back to Brazil. Cardozo will come up with a new batch sooner or later.
The red lights looked farther away now. The golf course was large, so there had to be a way out. He glimpsed a new area of fence, but before he got clear of the bushes he heard the snap-snap of bolt cutters ahead.
Police, coming through the fence.
A possum hissed at him and hurried off with a humpbacked gait. He saw an owl staring down at him from a tree branch. Wildlife, Atlanta style.
But Rush? Rush was gone, left behind, at least.
Tom Fargo stopped, out of breath, in a corner of the golf course where two fence lines converged, beside a private home and backyard. He saw no red lights. But flashlights bobbed far behind him, hundreds of yards away, on a fairway. They were searching the grounds.
The clubhouse was no longer visible. Tom Fargo looked beyond the fence, into a mowed backyard of a lit-up colonial home. He saw a swimming pool and a trampoline, and there were slides and swings and toy guns in the grass. Plastic M4s. The kids who lived here probably shot at each other ten times a week.
Tom reached and felt chain link against his fingers. He fitted his toes into the fence. The top of the fence grew closer. There were no red lights or sirens anymore. He was safe. He was going to get out.
Made it.
Which is when the person behind him hit him, and pulled him down, hard.
I should have killed you, he thought as they began to roll, and fight.
Tom Fargo fell on top of me when I pulled him off the fence. I lost my breath as my back hit the ground. I must have struck a sharp protruding root. I felt it go in, like a spear. My back exploded in pain.
“You!” he cried.
He was a skilled fighter, and strong. I was winded but flooded with adrenaline. His weight drove that root in farther. I tried to buck him off. His gun was on the ground, out of reach. He went for my eyes and I parried, sideswiped his wrist, aimed at his Adam’s apple, but it was not there when my three-finger strike arrived.
With a burst of strength I rolled left and felt the root tear out of my body. But he rode me, still on top. I could hear sprinklers hissing on the fairways. Tomorrow golfers would hit balls into these woods. Maybe, searching for a lost ball, they’d find something else.
I had delayed him and harassed him. I had followed but not stopped him. And now against his fury I felt my strength begin to diminish. I went for his eyes. His face was so close that I smelled onions he’d eaten tonight. A floodlight on the house went on, showed his shadow-banded, frenzied face above me, left eye brown, right eye blue, like a malamute dog’s. A contact lens had fallen out.
His knee slammed into my solar plexus. I heard air rush out as pain flooded in. My left arm was paralyzed. Maybe if I’d been younger, this would have gone better. I heard shouting. Other voices. Coming closer fast. Fargo leaned back and saw that he would not get out of the golf course. He still had a choice. And seconds to make it. Without hesitation he reached for his gun. In the moonlight his eyes were terrible and focused, but no longer on me.
“Police!” a voice cried.
Tom Fargo’s lips were moving.
“Put it down. PUT IT DOWN!”
Tom Fargo smiled bitterly. He reversed the pistol.
“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”
His head jerked back and sideways when he fired.
At the end I’d seen bitter triumph in his eyes. That he’d denied us answers. And kept himself from the windowless rooms. That he’d managed to hold on to secrets.
I hoped, as the police reached me, and voices told me to lie still, he’s bleeding, get a doctor… I hoped, looking up at strangers’ faces, that there was not more to come.
THIRTY-EIGHT
She was still alive, hungry, and smelling the wonderful odors of carbon dioxide and cologne. They made her wings beat almost involuntarily, to try to reach them. All around her, big shadows were moving. Food!
But she couldn’t fly because the water had come suddenly, as she was lighting on an ankle. Her proboscis had touched warm skin just as heavy drops swept her down, pushed her off, pinned her to the floor. Feeble, she struggled to rise.
Inside her, the mutated parasite — only one of its kind in the world — remained in the probiscis. It had had no chance to get out. And it had no more awareness of this than a mindless cell in a stalk of celery.
There were voices all around her.
“Who pulled the alarm? There’s no fire!”
“The gala is ruined!”
She had no sense of a boot heel descending on her, or that the person above her did not even know she was there. And then she had no awareness at all.
The fireman kept walking through the country club. He knew that the police were chasing someone who had run onto the golf course. He hoped they caught the guy. He assumed the man who’d pulled the alarm was the police quarry.
The fireman hated people who pulled false alarms.
THIRTY-NINE