When she saw Frank Sheffield coming across the parking lot, tan slacks, a black polo shirt, ambling along casually as if he were headed to Garcia’s Café for lunch with nothing more serious on his mind than fried plantains and black beans and rice, Hannah closed her eyes and shook her head to clear the image, certain it was some kind of panic-induced mirage.
Then Frank was there, standing over her, giving off a faint whiff of cologne, a musky lime.
“Let’s get out of here before the cops come and we’re stuck all afternoon.”
“Jesus Christ, Frank. Get down.”
“The shooter’s gone.”
She peered out at the lot. People hustling to their cars. Others ducking behind shelter.
“You’re sure of that?”
“He was in a white Chevy Caprice. He’s gone.”
“You saw him?”
“I saw the car. Called it in. Come on, Hannah, let’s move.”
With a hand on her elbow, he helped her up from her crouch.
Sirens had begun to wail in the distance. The two girls in the pink frocks were both crying now, people bent over their grandmother.
“Where’s your car parked?”
She motioned with her chin along the front row. He steered her toward the Porsche amid the tire-squealing turmoil in the lot.
“You’ve been following me.”
He hesitated a moment, watching a skinny man on a big black Harley rumble past. Then took her elbow again and hustled her on toward the car.
“Okay, yes. I was tailing you.”
“You didn’t trust me. You thought I’d manufactured this whole thing.”
“I was concerned,” he said. “Concerned for your safety.”
She gave him a disbelieving frown. They were at the car. She clicked the locks open.
“Can you drive?” he said. “Or should I?”
“What? You’re going to leave your car here?”
“Don’t worry about it, Hannah. Can you drive?”
“I can drive. Of course I can drive. You think I’m some fragile flower, a couple of bullets whizzing by my face is going to make me too weak to drive?”
“So drive,” he said.
She got in the car and he eased into the passenger seat.
They passed the EMS truck on their way out of the lot.
She swerved into traffic, headed east to the Palmetto Expressway, gunned it up the ramp faster than she needed to, burning some rubber. Frank looked over at her, tightened his seat belt, but said nothing. She jumped into the speed lane and stayed ahead of the traffic till the expressway ended and emptied out onto Dixie Highway.
“Okay, okay, so you’re a tough cookie. I’m convinced.”
“Am I scaring you, Frank?”
“Scared isn’t the word I would’ve chosen. I was thinking more along the lines of terrified.”
She slowed, cutting into the shady neighborhoods of Pinecrest, large ranch-style homes on acre lots, taking them south, then east, until they hit the flashing yellow lights of a school zone and she pulled off onto the shoulder amid a throng of vans and big SUVs. She parked, turned off the engine. They sat in silence for a moment.
Frank said, “You’re the only Porsche.”
Hannah’s pulse was still staggering. Breathing off the top of her lungs, unable to get a full breath.
“I’m not exactly the soccer-mom type. Thirty years in Miami, I haven’t needed four-wheel drive yet.”
“So you buy a two-seater” Frank said. “No room for a third party.”
“Randall can squeeze into the jump seat.”
“But you see my point. You pay all this money for a car, it’s a pretty blatant statement. Two seats, that’s all I require. Just me and my boy, no room for anyone else.”
Hannah glanced at Frank. His smile was faltering around the edges.
“Suddenly you get serious.”
“Just making conversation,” he said. “Distracting you a little with my psychological acumen.”
“I like two-seaters, Frank. I like sports cars, always have, something I inherited from my father. He always wanted a Porsche, but he could never afford one. So now that I can, I decided to indulge myself. Nothing more complicated than that. It’s not symbolic, it’s not a statement to the world. It’s just a car.”
“A nice car.”
“Yeah,” she said. “A damn nice car.”
“With only two seats.”
A Pinecrest police cruiser pulled up a half a block ahead, and switched on its flashing blue lights. The female officer got out and stood on the edge of the road watching the traffic pass slowly in front of the school. Going to let it flash for the next hour, slow down speeders.
“Was the guy in the white car shooting at me, Frank?”
“Hard to tell. But I doubt it.”
“Two shots, both of them close. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet.”
“In this town, who knows? He could’ve been signaling for a left turn.”
“Both shots missed me by less than a foot.”
“Yeah, well. Could be a coincidence.”
“You’re a big believer in coincidences, are you?”
“We’ll know something when the plates get back,”
“They’ll be stolen,” Hannah said. “They always are.”
“Man, you’re glum.”
“I think I’ve got something to be glum about.”
“You’re alive. The shots missed. carpe diem.”
“Carpe your own diem. I’m dealing with it the best I can.”
The school bell began to blare and almost immediately a sea of kids broke from the side doors, pouring into the playground. Hannah bent the rearview mirror down to look at her face, rubbing at the skin around her eyes to smooth away any remaining traces of panic.
“You look fine,” Frank said. “Kind of tight around the edges, but other than that, Randall won’t know what happened unless you tell him.”
“No one’s going to tell him anything.”
“And what’s my cover story? Why am I here?”
“You’re helping me find J. J. Fielding.”
“You told him about that? He knows what’s going on?”
“Randall’s the one who decoded those numbers in the book. He knows. I couldn’t hide it from him if I tried.”
“Whatever you want,” Frank said. “You’re the parent.”
“I certainly am.”
On the other side of 124th, Randall was waiting with a group of children and mothers for the crossing guard to stop traffic. He wasn’t talking to anyone. He wasn’t looking around. Frank got out of the car just as the group was crossing.
Randall was wearing baggy blue jeans and a green long-sleeve shirt, the tail hanging out in the sloppy fashion of the moment. He walked with the same loose-gaited stride as the other boys, the cocky strut of the ghetto, a don’t-fuck-with-me insouciance that seemed sadly comic in this privileged neighborhood.
Frank stood beside the car, holding the door open.
As Randall approached, Frank put out hand for a shake or high-five, but Randall gave him a distrustful once-over, then dipped his head down to take a look at Hannah.
“You okay, Mom?”
“Fine,” she said. “We’re just working on something, Frank and I. He’s coming over to the house for a while.”
Randall sighed, then he let the front seat down and climbed into the narrow jump seat.
Frank got in, buckled up.
Hannah cranked the engine, eased out into the traffic.
“You’re an FBI agent,” Randall said.
“Twenty-one years,” Frank said. “And counting.”
Randall leaned forward.
“So how many people have you killed?”
Hannah stopped at the four-way street, waited her turn.
“That’s not polite, Randall, asking something like that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s okay,” Frank said. “The answer is none, a big zero. I stepped on a few cockroaches around my motel room, but beyond that, no, it’s been a pretty nonviolent career.”
“I thought that was why people became cops, so they could shoot people.”
Hannah took a long breath and let it out. Wincing at the acid in his voice.
“Oh, yeah,” Frank said. “Now I remember, there was this one guy I killed a few years ago. It almost slipped my mind. The guy was so short.”
“Short?” Randall said.
Hannah slowed for the light at Ludlam Road, waiting behind a UPS truck.
“Yeah, this guy was incredibly short. Fantastically, amazingly short. This guy was so short if he stood in water up to his waist he’d drown.”
Randall craned forward to get a look at Frank’s face, see if he was smiling.
“He was so short,” Frank said, “he could drop his wallet and pick it up without bending over. This guy was so short he used to get armpit stains on his shoes. In fact, the guy was so damn short he had to climb up on a ladder just to eat a pancake.”
“That’s goofy,” Randall said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Frank said. “So I shot him. Man, this guy was so short, when I shot him, he didn’t even fall down.”
“That’s not funny,” Randall said. “You shouldn’t make jokes about shooting people.”
Frank turned in his seat, gave Randall a quick look.
“Now that, young man, is the first sensible thing you’ve said.”
Hannah looked over at Frank. He turned back around and stared straight ahead out the windshield. In her rearview mirror she could see her son’s face. She knew the look. Randall was pissed. Thinking hard of some rejoinder, some slashing irony. But after a moment his face went slack. He’d given up. He knew he’d been outwitted, something Hannah rarely managed. Outmaneuvered by humor, joked into submission by an FBI agent.
She drove silently the five remaining blocks to her house on Pinecrest Lane, feeling the strain in the air, the unspoken alpha dog tension between these two males.
“Pretty day,” she said, as she was pulling in the brick driveway.
Frank hummed his agreement. Randall was silent.
Frank got out first, held the door open for Randall, but he stayed in the jump seat until Hannah opened her door, then he climbed out through her side. He marched past her up to the back door, used his own key to let himself in, and stalked through the kitchen and dining room heading back to his computer. Frank followed Hannah into the house and watched her as she set her purse and keys on the kitchen table.
“Well, I certainly made a good impression,” he said.
“You were fine.”
“Was I? I thought maybe I was a little brusque.”
“You were fine. Funny and fine. Exactly brusque enough.”
“I say things sometimes, I don’t know how it’s going to sound till it’s already out there. Low impulse control. Works okay at parties, but it’s not exactly a treasured skill in day-to-day life.”
“You thirsty, hungry?”
“Hey, this is some house. Oozing with character. Tin roof, wood siding, you don’t see that much anymore. Nice kitchen, that old-fashioned country look, oak floors, cherry cabinets.”
“Charm is my middle name.”
“A Coke would be nice, or a sandwich if you got one. I missed lunch.”
“Yeah, too busy standing around parking lots spying on people.”
Hannah opened the refrigerator, took out some sliced turkey, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mustard, a can of Coke.
“Who was the big guy? The one you were having lunch with.”
“Marcus Shoenfeldt’s his name. I wanted him to look at the handwriting, see what he could tell me. He does graphology for Miami PD, an old friend.”
“And?”
“Toasted or regular?” She held up the loaf of whole wheat.
“I don’t care, surprise me.”
“Marcus claimed the handwriting was done by a woman. A somewhat unbalanced woman. Mentally unstable.”
Frank grinned. He leaned his elbows on one of the counters. She watched him as his gaze prowled the room, the row of brightly colored Ball jars lining the tops of the shelves. A couple of philodendron vines running around the window.
“Why is that funny?”
“Not funny, it’s just that I like your style. You don’t let Fielding dictate the shots. He’s trying to get you to follow the stuff in the book, solve the riddle, go from point A to point B, around the Stations of the Cross or some bullshit, and you’re off at the gun range analyzing the handwriting. That’s good independent thinking.”
“Marcus said the handwriting is fake. Meant to look one way when actually it’s another.”
“Fake?”
“The woman who wrote it wanted to appear agitated but in truth she was very deliberate. Like some kind of con.”
“All that from the handwriting?”
“This guy is good.”
“Well, he’s big. I saw that much.”
“Big and good,” she said.
Hannah put the bread in the toaster oven, got out a plate. Took a handful of ice from the freezer and dumped it into a glass.
“Okay, you’re all set,” she said. “Here’s the stuff. This is a make-it-your-own-damn-self household.”
“Great.”
Frank moved over to the counter and started assembling the sandwich. Heavy on the mustard, an inch of turkey slices. Big eater. Of course it had been a long time since she’d had a man in her kitchen. Her dates were usually the fancy-restaurant type, trying to impress her. None of them had gotten as far as making sandwiches back at her house.
“Listen, I should go check on Randall. He’s taking this hard. Doesn’t want me chasing after this stuff ’cause it brings back all the bad memories.”
“And all of a sudden there’s this big bad FBI agent hanging around,” Frank said. “He’s not exactly rapturous about that either.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Then we can sit down with the book, go over the code, figure out the next step.”
“It’s a date,” he said.
Hannah shot him a look. Frank with an innocent twinkle in his smile.
“I didn’t mean date-date. I meant like it’s a deal. You know, like that.”
“This is not social, Frank. I’m one hundred percent dead serious about this.”
“So am I, Hannah. As serious as I get.”
“You gave Fielding’s Web address to your computer jocks?”
“I did.”
“I suppose you haven’t heard anything yet.”
“Apparently it takes a while to track this back to its source. It’s a good deal more complicated than a phone trace. They’re working on it. Top priority.”
“We should go back on-line,” she said. “Keep monitoring Fielding’s site. I just hope he doesn’t die before I can get my hands around his throat.”
Frank poured his Coke and as the foam died he took a bite of his sandwich. A layer of pickles, Swiss cheese, lettuce, a thick slice of tomato. Having a guy like this around would double her grocery bills. He tore off a sheet of paper towel and wiped the mustard off his mouth.
“Something worries me,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Fielding mentioned my name.”
“So?”
“It was only my first name, so it’s not that important. But who knows how long he’s been on the Net, broadcasting his bullshit. He might have mentioned my whole name before. Might’ve mentioned Miami. Given out my street address, for all we know.”
Frank took another bite of his sandwich and gave her a so-what shrug.
“In case you’ve forgotten, Frank, other people are after Fielding. If they found out about that Web site, that Fielding was sending some woman secret messages about how to locate him, they’d be on my tail in a second.”
He set the sandwich down, wiped his mouth again.
“You mean the drug people.”
“That’s right, the drug people. Those happy-go-lucky fellows from Cali.”
“I doubt they pay a lot of attention to the Internet down there. Not much surfing going on in Colombia.”
“You’re sure of that, Frank?”
“Not sure, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet.”
“There must be a way to check previous transmissions on a Web site like that. Randall would know how to do it. If I could bully him into it.”
Frank took a long breath, lowered his eyes to the floor as if he were hiding his reaction.
“Maybe it’s my imagination,” she said, “but I’ve had the feeling in the last couple of days that I was being watched. Maybe followed.”
He lifted his eyes.
“Yeah? Why do you say that?”
“I saw a guy yesterday and then again today.”
“What guy?”
His lips were tightening.
“Yesterday in the Gables, walking down the street I got a glimpse of this guy in a deli, he had a motorcycle helmet sitting up on the counter next to him.”
“Motorcycle helmet.”
“Bright red with dark visor.”
“Yeah? What else?”
“I was a little spooked at the time, had a little prickle on the neck like I was being spied on. This guy with the helmet just caught my eye for a second and I passed on. I forgot all about him until this morning after I left the Bayshore place. Then I saw a guy behind me in traffic, a few cars back on a dirt bike, and he was wearing a red helmet. He came and he went, but he was back there for a good while.”
“No other description of him?”
“What? Do you know this guy, Frank?”
“Did you get a look at him, Hannah? In the deli when you were passing by. Did he have a beard, long hair, what?”
“Close-cropped hair, I think. Other than that, no. I just got a quick glimpse.”
“Listen, can I use your phone?”
“Sure. But what’s going on, Frank?”
“Probably nothing. But maybe you’re right. Maybe some Cali guys have come to town. I just need to check in, pass this along. Have them put it on the street.”
“Put what on the street? A guy on a motorcycle, buzz cut. What good’s that going to do?”
“Look, I’ll just be a minute.”
“Is someone trying to kill me, Frank?”
He looked at her for a long moment and said nothing. His lips twitched as if he was struggling to give her a consoling grin but couldn’t manage it.
“Phone’s in the living room,” she said. “Take your time. I need to talk to Randall anyway.”
Frank said, “Nobody’s trying to kill you, Hannah. Those shots, they weren’t about you.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’m sure. Absolutely.”
He nodded and after a second she nodded back. But he wasn’t sure. She could see it in his naked eyes. For a career FBI guy, Frank Sheffield was one lousy liar.
Shane answered with a quick, “Go.”
“Those plates on the shooter’s Chevy Caprice. You get them back yet?”
“Is that you, Sheffield?”
“The plates, Shane. Tell me.”
“Stolen from a hotel parking lot on Miami Beach. A rental car registered to a tourist from Europe.”
“You got an all-points on the car, right?”
“The shooter dumped the car two blocks from the shopping plaza. Miami PD is working the area right now, checking for witnesses.”
“You should’ve chased him, Shane. We had the manpower.”
“Miami PD is doing the fiber and prints now. If there’s anything in the car, we’ll know in a few hours.”
Frank said, “So are you guys still mad at me?”
She paused a second or two, then said, “You assaulted a United States senator, Frank.”
“I believe what happened was a civilian was trying to interfere with a federal agent in the performance of his duties.”
She said, “I think you better start planning your retirement.”
“The guy on the motorcycle,” he said. “Hannah’s spotted him twice. Yesterday in the Gables and this morning leaving the Bayshore address. Probably the same guy we saw at the shopping plaza.”
Helen was silent.
“But he left the scene,” she said finally. “A long time before she did.”
“Like I said, Helen, he probably made us. But that’s our guy. Close-cropped hair. Red helmet, dark sun visor, red dirt bike.”
Helen covered the receiver and spoke to someone. He couldn’t make out her muffled words.
When she came back she said, “All right, we can run all recent purchases or reported thefts of red dirt bikes.”
“Sure,” Frank said, “for all the good it’ll do. The guy’s not that dumb.”
“You got some other idea?”
“I’m hanging up, Shane. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“What’re you doing now, Frank? Where are you taking this?”
Frank leaned around the door, peered down the hallway, but it was empty. Hannah was still back there with Randall.
“I’m going to get Hannah back to your script, Shane. Point A, point B. Will that make you happy?”
“Frank, you’re fucked, any way you look at it. If you think going back to the plan will get you out of this, you’re dead wrong. When this is over, there’s going to be a full review at the most senior level. Believe me, Frank, you’re totally fucked. Kiss your pension good-bye. You’ll be lucky to dodge jail time.”
Frank saw Hannah appear in the doorway of Randall’s room. Standing there talking to the kid, a few last words.
“Nice talking to you, Shane. Oh, by the way, the handwriting guy, he analyzed your scribbling. I got the skinny anytime you want it, your full profile. Sounds to me like the guy’s got a pretty good handle on you. The short version is, he thinks you should probably increase your visits to the shrink from two times a week to three.”
“Fuck you, Frank.”
“I’ll be talking to you, sweet pea.”
She clicked off before he had a chance.