Hal was in the waiting room of a dentist’s office. Armando Lopez-Lima, DDS. Over the years he’d discovered that doctors’ offices were good places to wait. No one bothered you. No one cared if you were there or not there.
He was sitting with five other people, all of them with toothaches. No one looked happy. Everyone was reading a magazine except for one young woman who was on a cell phone, talking in loud Spanish. He sat next to the window of the dentist office so he could see the door of the restaurant where Hannah was eating lunch. She was eating with a fat guy. A very fat guy. They had been in the gun range down at the shopping center and then they went to the restaurant and now the fat guy was walking out the door of the restaurant and heading across the parking lot.
Hal had been looking at the pictures in an issue of National Geographic he’d picked off the dentist’s magazine rack, an article about bees. About a dance the explorer bee did when it returned to the hive after finding a patch of flowers. Bees had two different dances. One to tell the other bees that the flowers were nearby and another dance to tell the bees that the flowers were a long distance away. Inside the hive the other bees were arranged in a circle, all facing inward, and the bee with the flower information did his dance in the center of the circle with all his bee friends watching.
It was called a waggle dance because the dancing bee waggled his rear end in a certain way and made certain movements that told the other bees exactly which direction they should fly to find the new nectar. The dancing bee showed them in his dance where the flowers were in relation to the sun. The exact angle they should take to find them.
While waiting for Hannah Keller to finish lunch, Hal read the article about bees three times. It took him that long to understand everything. He still wasn’t sure about how the waggle dance worked, how that one bee told the other bees the exact angle to take to get to the flowers. He was about to read the article a fourth time when he saw the fat guy waddle out of the restaurant.
He sat there a minute more watching the fat guy wedge himself into his blue Ford. Hal didn’t know what to do. He wanted to know who the fat guy was. But he didn’t want to lose sight of Hannah either.
He also wanted to read the article about bees a fourth time. But work came first. His job. To find J. J. Fielding and recover the money. So he stood up and looked around the waiting room at all the unhappy people waiting to see the dentist.
A couple of them looked up at Hal, then looked quickly back at their magazines. Hal decided to follow the fat guy. He knew where Hannah Keller lived, and he was fairly sure she would be going to pick up her kid at school and take him back home, so that gave Hal a little while to follow the fat guy and find out who he was. Plus, it occurred to him that he could take the copy of National Geographic with him and read the article about bees a fourth time later on. The receptionist was behind a frosted glass window and hadn’t even noticed him when he came in and took a seat, so she probably wouldn’t see him steal the magazine.
He walked to the door with the magazine in his hand.
Hal was proud of himself. Proud he’d figured out a way to do two of the things he wanted to do. Two out of three. Follow the fat guy, learn more about the dance of the bees.
Hal didn’t care for bees in real life. He’d been stung a few times and it hurt like hell. But he liked reading about them. There were lessons to be learned from reading about wildlife. Hal Bonner was a slow reader and had to read things over and over before they finally sank in. But that was okay. He didn’t waste his time on other subjects, Hollywood stars or singers or athletes or current events. He was a specialist. He just read about animals and insects and birds. There was a time long ago when he’d been illiterate. In school he couldn’t read much more than a few words here and there. None of it made much sense. He might’ve spent his whole life that way if he hadn’t found that book with pictures of animals in it ten years ago. He was on an airplane, flying from one place to another, and the skinny book was in the seat pocket in front of him. Somebody had left it behind. It was a book for kids with big print and not many words, but Hal enjoyed it. The animals were brightly colored and some of them looked dangerous. Hunting, slinking low through the grass, pouncing on their prey. Hal studied the pictures carefully, but he wanted very much to read the captions below the pictures. He wanted to know about these golden animals, these red-faced creatures, these large winged birds. So right then he started to teach himself to read. He sounded out the words in his head like they’d tried to get him to do in school. He put his finger on each word until he’d brought it into his mind and knew what it meant. And now, ten years later, he didn’t need to use his finger anymore. He knew a lot of words by sight. He was still a slow reader, but he could usually figure out most of the articles he wanted to figure out. It took him a while, but he could do it.
Sometimes he watched the nature shows on television, but he preferred reading, even though it was difficult. In books the pictures held still. You could study them, look at them as long as you liked, put yourself right there with the animal. On television everything happened too fast.
With the magazine in his hand, Hal walked out the door of the dentist office, and went down the walkway of the shopping plaza and got on his motorcycle. He tucked the magazine under the bungee cord on the seat. He watched the fat guy back out of his space and head out of the parking lot toward the main street. Hal kick-started the dirt bike and pulled on his helmet and flipped his dark visor down.
He thought about that bee coming back to the hive all excited by his discovery. Flowers, flowers, flowers. They’re out there a hundred yards, just a little to the right of the sun, a bunch of daisies. He’d like to tell Misty Fielding about the bee dance. He thought she might like to know about the way they waggled their stingers in a certain way to communicate with the other bees. She would probably make a joke about that. She made jokes. Hal wasn’t always sure what was funny and what was not, sometimes he laughed at the wrong places, but he liked that Misty had a sense of humor. She’d like the bee stuff, that one bee waggling in front of the other bees, shaking his stinger in their faces. He’d tell her about that later and she’d make a joke. He was almost sure of it.
Hal shifted through the gears. He kept the fat guy’s car in sight. The motor racing between his legs, buzzing like a bee.
Just after noon on Tuesday, hour thirty-six of Operation Joanie. Thirty-six to go, and Frank didn’t think he could make it till midnight tomorrow without strangling the whole idiotic bunch of them.
Frank, Helen, Andy Barth, Ackerman, and Roosevelt R. Jackson were in the back of the UPS truck being used today as the mobile headquarters. Rosie Jackson was Frank’s boss, Special Agent in Charge of the Miami field office. First African-American to hold that post. Twenty-odd years earlier Rosie was starting quarterback for Coral Gables High when Frank Sheffield, outsized and outweighed by every lineman he faced, was Rosie’s center. He snapped the ball into Rosie’s hands, then dropped back to block the mean dumb linemen who were determined to tear off Rosie Jackson’s helmet with his head still inside. Two seasons together and Frank didn’t allow a single sack. Now it was Rosie’s turn. For the last decade he’d been running interference for Frank. Among other things he composed Frank’s yearly reviews with as charitable an interpretation of Sheffield’s performance as one could hope for. They had a silent understanding. Frank wouldn’t let his lack of ambition turn into gross negligence, and Roosevelt Jackson would do his best to see that Frank made it through to retirement, four more years.
Rosie wore dark cotton Dockers, a white button-down shirt, red tie. Sweating heavily as he usually did when he was out of the air-conditioning. He had a mountain of paperwork he should’ve been attending to back at the office, but apparently he wanted to have a firsthand look at the high-profile shenanigans taking place in his district. Helen, Andy, and the senator were coolly polite, but basically ignored Jackson. And after ten minutes or so, he was shooting Frank Sheffield looks. How the hell do you put up with these people?
Andy and Helen were both wearing their one-ear headsets, listening to the street chatter from the fifteen other agents scattered throughout the parking lot, the adjoining streets. Both choppers were aloft again, hanging back at a two- or three-mile distance. Even a motorcycle today, a big black Harley. Andy Barth sat at the computer console, tapping keys, changing screens.
“His name is Marcus Shoenfeldt,” Rosie Jackson said. “He’s with Miami PD, a handwriting technician, graphology. I believe he’s on medical leave at the moment. Nice guy, a little weird around the edges.”
“Handwriting expert?” said Helen. “Would someone please tell me why the hell she’s having lunch with a handwriting expert?”
“She’s being a good cop,” Frank said. “Following the leads she’s been given.”
“What can she expect to learn from the goddamn handwriting?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ackerman said. “If she wants to vary from the scenario, there’s nothing we can do about it. Anyway, we’re looking for Hal, remember? We’re not concerned if Ms. Keller follows the program in lockstep fashion.”
“Well, I’m concerned about it,” Helen said “Our locations were chosen very deliberately because they all have good, safe perimeters, we can see anyone coming or going, block all avenues of escape. Now this is getting too fluid, too chaotic. We need to get her back on track.”
“You’re something else, Shane,” Frank said. “You cook up some cute little scheme in your quiet D.C. office and expect it to unfold on the streets just like you dreamed it up. That’s a bit unrealistic, don’t you think?”
“I know what I’m doing, Frank.”
“Do you?”
“It’s called Virtual Paradigms, Sheffield,” said Andy Barth. “You wouldn’t understand it.”
“That complex, is it? Would go right over my head.”
“You know anything about gaming theory, artificial intelligence programming?” Andy said.
“Gaming theory?” Frank said. “What, like video games?”
He glanced at Rosie Jackson. The big man was staring up at the roof of the UPS truck summoning his patience.
“Simulations,” Andy said. “The Bureau has been using them for years. I guess they haven’t made it to the boondocks yet.”
“Oh, sure, simulations. The kind where you chase cartoon monsters down those narrow hallways, splatter their guts against the wall.”
“A little more sophisticated than that, Sheffield.”
“Jesus Christ. You people are a bunch of depraved ten-year-olds. You should be hanging out at a video arcade somewhere, not working the streets.”
“Their success rate is more than ninety percent, Frank.” Ackerman was rolling up the sleeves on his blue work shirt, watching the parking lot through the dark tinted window. “The program is a proven winner.”
Helen gave Sheffield a barracuda smile.
“Frank fancies himself a humanist. Doesn’t believe behavior can be reduced or explained. Isn’t that right, Frank? Everyone’s so complicated.”
“Some people are.”
“Wrong, Frank. Once you know the inner dynamics, what makes someone twitch, the one thing in their personality that overrides everything else, the rest is easy. Write them a part they can’t resist, the one thing that motivates the hell out of them, then plug them into the scripts and away we go.”
“Like dead frogs,” Andy said. “Zap the right nerve, the leg jerks.”
“Doesn’t look to me like Hannah’s playing along so neatly.”
“Oh, sure, she’s a little off track at the moment, but she’ll get back to it. I’m not worried. She’ll be back in the groove in no time. Just watch.”
“Why riddles, Helen?”
“Riddles?”
“Yeah, why the bullshit riddles like some kind of high school scavenger hunt?”
“Think about it, Frank. You’re a shrewd investigator.”
“Why don’t you just tell me, Shane? Save me the energy drain.”
“She’s a mystery writer, isn’t she?”
“So?”
“So she likes puzzles.”
“You ever bother to read one of her books?”
“I looked at them. Enough to get the idea.”
“Well, I’ve read a couple, all the way through, and I could’ve told you, Helen, her books are about people, not plots. Not riddles.”
“And your point would be what?”
“Well, what I think she’s doing, Shane, and this is funny, this is very very cute, Hannah’s not solving the riddle. She’s not going after Fielding at all.”
“Okay, hotshot, so what’s she doing?”
“She’s coming after you, Helen. The woman’s tracking your ass down.”
Helen met his eyes, gave him one of her death ray blasts. Frank got his shield up in time, deflected it back at her with a grin.
“Hey, Sheffield,” Andy said. “When you were driving the UPS truck yesterday, didn’t you have a guy behind you on a motorcycle? Agent Scruggs wants to know.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “A tailgating asshole on a red bike.”
“Scruggs is on the west end of the shopping center. Says a guy fitting Hal’s general description just got on a red dirt bike and drove out of the parking lot. You want to track him, Helen?”
“He’s leaving the scene?”
“That’s right. Going east on Bird Road.”
“Where was he? How long was he in the vicinity? I need more information.”
“Scruggs said he came out of a dentist’s office.”
Helen scowled at Sheffield for a moment, then shook her head.
“Forget the motorcycle. Guy had a cavity filled, that’s all.”
“Target has left the restaurant,” Andy said. “Hannah’s outside, walking over to a pay phone. Looks like she’s going to make a call.”
Helen kept Frank in her glare for a second or two longer, then turned away, raised her binoculars, and focused them out the tinted window.
“Christ,” she said. “Now what?”
“We should put somebody on that dirt bike.” Frank was trying to bring the image back, the guy he’d seen out his big rearview mirror. But he was pretty sure the biker had on a dark visor.
“He’s leaving the scene,” Helen said. “He’s not our boy.”
“Unless he made us,” Frank said.
“He didn’t make us.”
“I say we put somebody on him. We can spare one guy. Use one of the choppers.”
“Drop it, Sheffield. This is my call.”
“And you’re making the wrong one.”
“All right, you two,” Ackerman said. “Put a lid on it. Keep your focus.”
Helen strafed Sheffield with another look, then turned her binoculars back to the scene.
Frank stepped behind her, watched over her shoulder as Hannah looped a strand of hair over her ear and pressed the phone to it. At this distance it was a little hard to see, but it looked like a lovely ear. A guy could whisper into an ear like that. Sweet nothings. The mumbo jumbo of romance. Not something Frank was particularly good at, but with a woman like Hannah, he might find the inspiration. He could even see pushing the envelope of his three-week romance routine. Maybe extend it to a month, two months. What the hell. His shoulder was still tingling from last night. That had to mean something.