I didn’t glance toward the park on my way back to the car. I knew what I’d seen, and even more what I’d felt, and there was everything to lose by spreading it around.
I drove aimlessly, admiring the Victorian and Edwardian houses in the neighborhood, the frozen American flags hanging as stiff as galvanized sheets from their staffs, counting the bicycles and basketball hoops. A nice community, on the surface. In ancient times and in other places the city fathers had erected walls around them to keep things that way.
When I got tired of that I ate a sandwich in a tavern in the little downtown area, a place with pewter steins on a shelf above the bar, drank two beers, and went back to the car to light a cigarette. Then I drove back to the park, this time along the street on the other side. The slots were deserted that time of day at that time of year, and I had my choice. I finished smoking and ditched the butt when I got out.
The grass was still green; the light snow covering had insulated it from the cold without killing it, but it crunched underfoot like the fake kind they put in Easter baskets. A set of footprints showed clearly going in the opposite direction from mine. I’m no Daniel Boone, but the temperature was climbing above freezing so they couldn’t have been there more than a few minutes, and the same tracks, roughly a man’s size ten, had been made in the paper-thin layer of frost that slicked the wooden planks that made up the floor of the gazebo.
The man who belonged to them had stood for a while in front of the railing across from the window I’d passed in front of; he’d changed positions a few times, overlapping his own prints, before turning and leaving.
That was as much as I could get. Whether he’d just looked or took time to take some more pictures—possibly of me—I could only guess. I had to guess he’d brought his camera, but it didn’t matter either way. I’d been made, or would be soon.
Well, it had to happen sometime. An invisible bodyguard isn’t much of a deterrent. I’d just hoped, if the job came about, I’d be settled in and ready before I got famous. Now I’d run out of time.
I was still employed, whether Laurie Macklin approved or not.
The Chief’s Special rode heavy next to my right kidney. It wouldn’t be back in the safe or in its other place in the niche under the glove compartment for a while. Apart from the change of clothes and indestructible provisions I keep in the car for emergencies, it was as much luggage as I’d had the opportunity to pack.
He’d go straight to Macklin, his son or whoever he was if not him, probably upping the ante, and when that didn’t work he’d be back here to prove he wasn’t out just for fun. Whatever I thought of professional killers, or for that matter the women who put up with them, standing pat wasn’t an option.
I left the car where it was, crossed through the park on foot, and buzzed 310 again from the foyer.
She was expecting me. Probably she’d seen me from her window coming across the street. “What now?”
I wasn’t alone. A woman with the face of a born widow, sour and suspicious, was unlocking the mailbox next to hers. Her cloth coat smelled like onions. The ear nearest me was cocked forward like a German shepherd’s.
“Another minute of your time,” I said into the speaker.
“What difference would another minute make?”
“Maybe none. Maybe plenty.”
“Come ahead, then.”
This time I didn’t see the pistol, but her right hand rested in the pocket of the blue robe. She had the door open just wide enough for me to see that.
I said, “I think you’d better tell me about Leroy.”