Neither the young brawler nor the gimpy old coot noticed Maynard Chalk watching with his men a hundred yards up the path to the little town of Ewell. Chalk’s eels were taking a post-havoc constitutional around the island, studying the lay of the place. That lady cop seemed so upset that she’d also missed the interlopers before she shoved off. But Chalk had seen her. Now she was definitely on his screen.
Chalk was riveted in place there on the path. That tall guy in his thirties. The build was the same. The Paul Bunyan shoulders. The clean-and-jerk power-lifter thighs. This one even had the same striding gait as the traitorous Richard Willem Blackshaw. Chalk felt like the ornithologist who gets the GISS, or General Impression Size and Shape, of a tiny bird, and can identify it on the wing from a hundred yards away. He just knew. Like father, like son. That guy had to be Dick Blackshaw’s brat. And that lady cop might prove useful in getting the brat’s attention.
Chalk’s cell phone rang. The funky bounce of the King Tut ringtone. Chalk answered, and heard puffing on the other end of the line. It sounded like an obscene phone caller who measured his freak in breaths per minute. Or like someone running.
“Maynard. They know!” It was Yusef, of course. Not at his best.
“How do you mean, Yoos?”
“They know. They know!” There was a series of rapid popping sounds in the background. Then the line, rather like Yusef himself, Chalk imagined, went dead.
The hod of bricks descended toward Chalk’s head. He stashed his phone, hissed his orders. He detailed a squad made up of Simon Clynch, Dar Gavin, and Tug Parnell to double-time back to the Harrises’. They were to verify that Hiram’s thirty-foot deadrise, the Palestrina, was seaworthy. If the damn thing would stay afloat for at least a couple of hours, those boys had to get back on the water fast to run a very special errand.
Bill Slagget and The Kid accompanied Chalk down the path toward Ben’s saltbox. Chalk’s shoulders rounded and tensed with anger. His fists balled and flexed. He was ready to throw down.