For a few minutes, I was in free fall. There was an air of unreality—no surreality—about all this; as if Marsha would come running out the door, hair flying, arms wide, and scream that it was all a joke and wasn’t it fun and wasn’t it hilarious and let’s do it again sometime, only now let’s go in and climb into bed and go at it like it was rutting season and be in love and laugh and here, baby, let me help you with your shoes and would you like a drink and let me get the body oil because I could use a good shoulder rub before we get into the sweaty stuff, and maybe a long hot bubble bath afterward and we’ll listen to the new Diane Schuur CD.
I even stood in the parking lot staring at her door for a few seconds.
Only it never opened.
Damn.
And I realized the only way I was going to get out of free fall was to grab hold of something and hang on to it, hang on for dear sweet old life, and hope that the roots held and my grip was strong and that age and mileage hadn’t taken too great a toll. Because the rocks below were hard and unforgiving, and there was no help for a wounded man anywhere, no one to get him up to safety and no way to do it if there was anyone. No sir, if Harry survived this one, then it was because somewhere inside him, buried in the guts and the tears and the snot and the sweat was iron, and this time if he didn’t find it, he was lost.
Truly lost
So he did the only thing he knew to do. He went back to work.
“Okay, how sensitive is this thing?” I asked.
Lonnie peeled off another strip of clear plastic tape. “Very,” he said. “Now shut up and be still.”
The microphone was a tiny piece of plastic with a grid in the end, black and smaller than a cigarette filter. A thin black wire not much bigger than a thread ran out of it and down the center of my chest.
Lonnie placed the mike in the center of my sternum, in the middle of my chest on an invisible line connecting my nipples. I don’t have a whole lot of upper body; weight lifting has never been my specialty, so there aren’t two huge mounds of breast-like pectorals to hide anything in. I’ve only got a slight dusting of chest hair as well, which is a comfort given that eventually all this tape will have to be ripped off.
“Hold this,” he instructed.
I held the end of the mike between my thumb and index finger and pressed it into my chest. Lonnie carefully placed the tape on the body of the mike, being careful not to cover the grid with tape, and then pressed it into my skin and ran it over the wire all the way down my chest, stopping at my waistline. I felt the uncomfortable pressure of his fingertips, of someone touching me, and the stickiness and clamminess of the tape.
There was still a foot or two of wire left, with a tiny plug on the end. Lonnie reached over on his desk and grabbed a small gray cylindrical case about the size of a transistor radio battery.
“This is the power pack and transmitter,” he explained. “The mike plugs into it. This little toy will broadcast about five hundred yards if there’s not a lot of metal obstruction around. Got about a two-hour charge. Plenty of time.”
He sat down in a chair and leaned in close to me. “Okay,” he said. “Drop ’em.”
I unhooked my belt and dropped my jeans down to my knees.
“Oooh,” he said, laughing, “love the lingerie.”
“Just shut up and get on with it.”
“Sensitive, aren’t we?” He giggled. “I’ve never seen such colorful trow.”
“Three pair for six-ninety-five at Target.”
“Bet it drives the chicks wild.”
“You bet your ass it does,” I said. “What happens if Sykes decides to frisk me?”
Lonnie looked thoughtful and hummed. “Let’s see,” he said. “Wait, I’ve got it There’s one place I know he won’t look.”
He turned to his desk, opened the center drawer, and started digging around in the junk.
“Now where’s that tube of K-Y jelly?” he intoned.
“Forget it,” I said. “Don’t even think it.”
He shrugged, slammed the desk drawer shut. “Hey, you asked.…”
“I’m serious. What if the bastard decides to frisk me?”
Lonnie laughed again. “Here, turn around.”
“Not a chance,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant. Look, people frisk just like in the movies unless they’ve been trained to do it right. He’ll pat your armpits looking for a gun and he might run his hand down your chest looking for a wire, but I doubt it. The mike here’s small enough that he has to know what he’s doing to find it. Then he’ll run his hands down your legs. So we tape the transmitter to the back of your leg, just below your butt, and run the wire through this provocative pair of panties—”
“Easy, bud—”
“Just kidding, macho man. The power pack’ll be hidden just about where your wallet is. Guy’s gotta really know what he’s doing to find it, okay?”
“All right,” I said, “if you’re sure.”
“Turn around,” he instructed. “I only have one condition to all this.”
“Yeah?”
“Can I rip the tape off when this is over?”
“God,” I said, turning my butt to him. “You’re a sick puppy, Lonnie.”
* * *
There’s a certain amount—and no small amount, either—of trust involved in this kind of operation. You have to trust your tools, that it’s quality equipment you’re working with, and you have to have even greater trust in the other people, or in my case, person, who makes up your team. You have to trust that everything’s been planned as well as it can be, that all options, contingencies, and scenarios have been considered and planned for.
But mostly you have to trust yourself: that you know what you’re doing, that your reflexes and your rapid decision-making skills are intact, and that when something unexpected happens—as it invariably will—you’ll be ready.
This was the part I was having trouble with. Given what had happened to me over the past few months, and especially the past few days, something inside me had been shaken. I’d been in tight spots before, even back before taking up private investigating. As an investigative reporter, I once had an aristocratic Old Gentleman, who was a key behind-the-scenes player in a soon to be discredited gubernatorial administration, threaten to scrape together some pocket change and have me killed. He had offered me some of the clearest, purest, most devilishly deadly moonshine ever made in the Tennessee hills in the parking lot outside his son’s wedding. We toasted the newlyweds and then he warned me not to print what I had learned, which was that the counsel to the governor was the guy you wanted to see in Nashville if you wanted to buy your way out of prison. Even reporters, he explained, could be silenced. For pocket change …
I printed it anyway, and I’m still breathing today and the governor went to prison and the Old Gentleman retired to his farm in Hamilton County. But I was younger then, and still in a place where that which didn’t kill me made me stronger. Only problem was, so many things had nearly killed me.
How damn strong was I supposed to get?
I rounded the curve off Old Natchez Trace that went around the polo field and led to R. J. Reed’s country house. It was nine fifty and as dark and black as the Old Gentleman’s heart. The borrowed cell phone on the seat next to me chirped.
“In place,” Lonnie said.
“Look, what if the guy just decides to shoot me?” I asked, suddenly wondering if this was such a good idea. We’d considered my wearing the Kevlar vest, then decided that not only would it interfere with the wire, it might also set Sykes off.
“I’d suggest ducking.”
“Where are you?”
“You don’t need to know that. It’s better if you don’t,” he said. “That way, you won’t be unconsciously looking around. Just pretend you’re alone.”
“Yeah,” I said, approaching the gate to Reed’s, “that’s easy for you to say.”
“Now tell me about this guy Sykes again.”
“He’s tall, thin, almost wizened, with a strange foreign accent. German maybe. Eastern European? Hell, I don’t know. And he wears a goatee and has a burr haircut.”
“And you know the drill, right? You’re going to take the money, get him to confess if you can, and then we go straight to Lieutenant D’Angelo’s house with the tape and the cash.”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling down the window and reaching out to tap in the security code on the keypad. “I got it, okay? Look, I’m entering the property now. You should see me pull behind the house in about thirty seconds.”
“Cool,” he said. “And Harry?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently.
“Watch your ass.”
“Right,” I said. “I’d hate to ruin your favorite pair of underwear.”
I clicked off the cell phone as the gate swung open in front of me and drove quickly down the long driveway. The Reeds’ house was quiet, dark. I backed the Mustang into a slot, doused the lights, and killed the engine. Cicadas chirruped loudly and in the distance mournful bovine bellowing mixed in this time with the bass profundo of bullfrogs. My feet scraped across the drive as I walked over to the patio. I leaned against a chair and set the briefcase with Reed’s files on the cement next to me. Lonnie and I figured we’d actually make the transfer; that way D’Angelo could get a search warrant and find the files, clearly marked with my name in invisible ink. Just one more bit of proof, we figured.
I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. The only light came from the soft glow of some outdoor ground lights around the perimeter of the patio.
I tried to relax. I couldn’t sit down for the time being, not with the transmitter taped to the back of my leg. I scanned the area once again to make sure I was alone, then reached down through my jeans and pressed the button to start the wire. The clock was running now: two hours.
“I hope you can hear me,” I said quietly. “I hope this thing works.”
I smiled; this was all going on tape and would be delivered to D’Angelo. Perhaps I should be careful, watch my language, not say the first thing that comes to mind, which is my usual practice in unguarded moments.
Minutes dragged by. I pressed the button on my cheap wristwatch that made it glow a dim green: nine fifty-eight.
“He’s still got a couple of minutes,” I said. “Just for the taped record, it’s nine fifty-eight P.M., May 16, and I’m in the backyard of R. J. Reed’s house on Old Natchez Trace.”
Then I hummed a few bars. Of what, I don’t know. Just nervous humming.
I walked over and leaned against the redwood siding of the Jacuzzi, where, what seemed like months ago, I found R. J. Reed facedown. The lights in the pool were off, the motors silent. I’d heard that death by drowning involved several stages, from fear to panic to rabid desperation and clawing, climaxing with a final, almost sweet surrender to death, a relaxation of the body and a letting go.
It sounded like a rotten way to die, although truth be told, I can’t imagine many ways that aren’t.
Behind me, I heard the distant hum of electric motors and a slight metallic scraping sound.
“Show time,” I said to the middle of my chest. “I believe that’s the sound of a gate opening.”
I crossed the patio, grabbed my briefcase, and stepped over to the corner of the house, secreting myself between two tall shrubs. In a moment, the flicker of approaching headlights danced against the hill behind the house and glittered off the high chain-link fence surrounding the tennis court just in front of it. I heard the sound of tires on aggregate, a kind of muted crunching sound, and then a silver Mercedes sedan pulled into the parking area, turned to point the headlights at the patio, and stopped in front of the garage. The driver cut the engine but left the headlights on. The car door opened. My eyes struggled to adjust to the headlights’ glare. I could barely make out the figure climbing out from behind the steering wheel of the car.
But I knew it wasn’t Karl Sykes.
I shifted my weight and slipped in the dewy grass, causing the shrubs to rustle against each other.
“Denton?” a voice called out. It took me a second, but I figured it out.
It was Webber. Travis Webber.