Azrael (21 page)

Smolinski pushed the talk button on the microphone. Thrill-sweat had made his hand slick, but he held on long enough to say
now.
In minutes, he would be rehabilitated, and Trotter would pay for mocking him.

It shaped up the way Trotter had figured it would. The car behind him bottling him up, the car from the shoulder forcing him toward the rails, and—yes, here it was now—a truck pulled across the road at the other end to keep him from outrunning them. Not that that was much of a possibility. They were in gas-eating monsters with whole herds of horsepower under the hoods. His brain, as it often did in times of emergency, found something utterly trivial to worry about. Why did such a sturdily built bridge have such feeble guardrails? If they’d made the railings out of the same girders they used for the bridge itself, none of this would have been possible. Of course, if the bridge had been built that way, he would have been facing a different trap, in a different place.

Trotter forced his attention back to the current problem. He did a little side bumping with the car that was trying to force him off the bridge. Just a little. The idea was to make it look good without letting them do too much damage to the Mercedes.

He jerked them along for a while, but the time came when he’d have to get on with it. It made no sense to make a plan you were afraid to carry out. It was easier, of course, when you had no choice.

The time came sooner than he hoped (i.e., never). He was still pretty far from the opposite shore, and the water was deeper than he wanted to deal with.

But the time had come. He’d have to live with it. Or die with it.

“You’re a brave girl, Bash. Remember what I said about staying calm?”

She nodded from behind her hands and drawn-up knees.

“Okay, then, hold on tight.” With that, he cut the wheel sharply to the right. The car smashed the barrier, scraped bottom on an overhanging girder and pancaked down into the river.

“Watch them!” Smolinski said. Instantly, the other cars stopped. The basketball fans drove Smolinski to the scene as four men with guns went to the railing and watched the car.

“Anything?” Smolinski said when he arrived.

“Nothing,” one of the men said. “Probably knocked out when they hit the water.”

“Keep watching.”

“Of course.”

They watched until the car sank, which was a much longer time than Smolinski had anticipated. The motor had stopped, but the headlights remained on, making a swooping ramp of light for Trotter and the young lady to follow to the bottom.

“We’d better go,” one of the men said. “It’s late, but somebody’s going to come by.”

“Put your guns away. Then we are simply motorists who stopped to see if we could help.”

Smolinski watched the lights below the water with a thin smile on his face. Then the lights went out. Very good, he thought. Bravo. Show’s over.

“All right,” he said. “Well done, men.
Now
we can go home.”

T
ROTTER WAS NOT AT
his apartment, and he was not at the Hudson girl’s apartment. Joe Albright had not been content with phone checks to those two places—he took his behind out into the night and checked in person, just in case something had happened. There was a certain amount of risk in that, of course. He wasn’t supposed to know Trotter or Regina Hudson—hell, he
didn’t
know Regina Hudson—and sneaking around prominent citizens’ houses after dark was a good way to change the minds of a lot of townspeople about the wonderfulness of having a black businessman among them. And a pickup truck with your name and address printed on the side is not the perfect infiltration vehicle.

He wished he knew what the hell was going
on,
the particular color and consistency of the shit that had hit the fan back in Washington. Rines had told Joe (before he had so graciously hung up on him, cutting off questions) to
“Find Trotter!
No matter what.”

But did “no matter what” include blowing cover? If Trotter was somewhere that took real looking to find, the best thing to do would be to visit the local cops, show them his FBI decoder ring, and ask for some cooperation. On the other hand, for all he knew, that would ruin everything. So he’d better stay in the Salvage/Reclamation game for the time being.

Besides which, he didn’t
want
to blow his cover. Tina would take it wrong. She’d be hurt; she’d think his relationship with her was just a ploy. It wasn’t. It hadn’t been even at the start. Keeping Tina from further hurt now came right after Duty, Honor, and Country on his list of priorities.

So. Where was Trotter, and how was a humble Salvage/Reclamation man to find him? The thing to do was to get back home and hit the telephone, because they sure weren’t going to let him into the places he had to go now.

He had his list of calls to make, and he had his cover story—a weak one, maybe, but it might get by. It was all he had.

Any more thinking on the topic, he decided, would only make him nervous. He turned on the radio in the truck just in time to catch the beginning of the ten o’clock newscast.

“Shit,” he said. He didn’t turn it off—a man in the field can’t afford to scorn
any
information—but he wouldn’t have minded a song or two before the news came on.

“Tragedy continues to stalk the Hudson Group,” the announcer said.

“Now what the hell?” Joe asked irritably.

The radio answered him. “Weston Charles, driver and bodyguard to Petra Hudson, chairman of the communications conglomerate, was found by State Police ...”

Joe heard the rest of it and shook his head. Now they’d killed the bodyguard. That ought to do it. The radio said suicide, but then they’d said the other ones had been accidents or natural causes, so what the hell. And there was a kicker.

“... and Captain Petersen, while confirming that Charles’s head appeared to be wet, would offer no theory as to why. Mr. Charles served in the United States Army—”

Who pours water on his head before he eats a gas hose? It didn’t make sense.

Joe smiled in spite of himself. He was starting to remind himself of Trotter.

The smile went away. Trotter was this way after the Stein girl turned up dead on his hall steps. Her hair was wet too.

This was something he would be very interested in. Joe would tell him about it, right after he told him about Rines. If, of course, he found him at all.

There was a travel advisory on the radio as Joe pulled into his yard—railing out on the westbound side of the Kirk River Bridge, drive carefully. Joe promised the announcer he would, then snapped off the ignition. He took the stairs two at a time and got on the phone.

Trotter wasn’t at the
Chronicle.
According to the guard at the front gate, he hadn’t entered the grounds of Hudson Group Headquarters at all. The guard had trouble understanding why anybody would be checking with
him
because one of the reporters had a chance to buy an antique clock cheap, even if it did have to be first thing in the morning. Joe didn’t try to explain it to him because it seemed pretty lame to him, too.

Joe pressed on. It was a bad time to call the Hudson residence, perhaps, but what the hell. Reporters did it all the time, as did cops, of which he was one. His trouble, he decided as he dialed, was that he was too much a method actor. He was supposed to be a Salvage/Reclamation man, so he automatically
thought
like a Salvage/Reclamation man.

He asked whoever answered the phone (light Spanish accent, probably a maid) if by any chance Mr. Trotter was there.

“Mr. Trotter? No, he’s not here. Sorry. They tell me to keep the line open for the police. I hang up now—”

Joe was already shrugging and trying to think of someone else to call when he heard a different voice, a man’s voice, some distance from the phone, say, “Wait!” He heard the girl grunt, as if she’d been pushed away from the phone.

“Trotter?” the man said. “Is this Trotter?” If he were any angrier, he would choke.

Joe made his voice calm. “No, it isn’t. I’m just looking for him. My name is Joseph Albright. Who is this?”

“Looking for him, eh? So am I. You tell him I said—”

“If I tell him what you say, I might as well tell him who you are.

“What? Oh. Jimmy Hudson.
James Hudson, Junior
Tell Trotter I know him for what he is! I know he killed my Hannah, and now he’s killed Mr. Charles, and he’d better kill me next, because I’m going to make him
pay
for it! I don’t believe in violence, but I’ll find proof, and when I do, God help him!”

Joe replaced the phone gently. Things were getting very weird, and it all had to do with Trotter. And the earth, it seemed, had swallowed up Trotter and the girl.

There was only one phone call left to make. He’d have to call Rines and tell him he’d failed. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe, after he’d made his report and let wiser brains go to work on this mess, maybe the earth could be persuaded to swallow
him
up.

T
ROTTER DIDN’T KNOW IF
it was control or shock that kept Regina from screaming when the car hit the water. He found out as soon as the river lapped over the top of the roof.

“Oh, my God,” she screamed. She started scrabbling for the door handle. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“We will.” He made sure the electric locks were closed. Thank God for luxury cars. “Now shut up and save air.”

It worked for about a quarter of a second. Then a stream of bubbles erupted from the trunk, and the weight of the engine pulled the nose of the car the twenty feet or so to the bottom. The buoyancy of the air in the passenger compartment left them facing down at a forty-five-degree angle. The thump brought new screams out of her, without words this time.

The worst thing about being in a situation where someone panics (however justified the panic may be) is that it forces you to keep your own fear hidden. Trotter hadn’t done this because he was looking forward to it. It was just that the alternative was worse.

Right now, he was afraid Regina was going to use up all the oxygen, and they’d either suffocate or have to leave the car too soon and be shot.

“Shut
up,”
he commanded. “Dammit, Regina, I know what I’m doing!”
Would I lie to you?
he thought.

It had no effect at all. He hit her. Punched her hard on the left shoulder, twice.

She shut up. She sat rubbing her shoulder and looking at him in the bottom-reflected glow of the headlights.

“You done?” he asked quietly. She looked at him. “Because I’ll knock you out if I have to.”

“Kill me,” she whispered. “Please. I have nightmares about dying like this.”

“You won’t anymore.”

“Of course not, I’ll be dead.”

Trotter started to take a deep breath and stopped himself. Shallow breaths would do. He looked at the seals around the edges of the windows. There was a slow, tiny leak. This was a well-made car.

Regina was starting to whimper. He almost wished she’d start screaming again. He could hold it against her when she screamed.

It was inevitable. Talking wasted air, but he was going to have to talk to her.

“I’m going to unlock the door now,” he said. Regina’s head came up; she had a kind of wild hope in her eyes that died when Trotter went on to say, “But the doors won’t open. Water pressure.”

“And we’ll die.”

“We will not die.” It was ridiculous. She was starting to sap
his
confidence. It occurred to him he would feel better punching her again, or punching something, but he decided it would be counterproductive.

He hit the switch in the console to his left and unlocked the doors. It wasn’t until he’d done that he remembered the water might have shorted out some of the circuits.

Which reminded him of something else. “I’m going to turn off the headlights now.” He could feel water coming through the window, coating the inside of the door like a coat of paint and soaking his sleeve.

“What difference will that make?” Regina said.

“It will leave us in pitch blackness. Don’t scream, just keep listening.” He turned out the lights and surprised himself with how right he was. It was darker than the inside of a black velvet bag, and it suddenly seemed colder. Trotter suppressed a shiver. Keep talking. Had to keep talking.

“Water coming in on your side?” he asked brightly.

“Y-yes.”

“You won’t believe it, but that’s good. Now, Bash, the reason we’re down here is that this is the one place they can’t follow us. They think we’re dead now, probably thought so the second the lights went out.”

“That’s why you—”

“That’s why I turned the lights off. Now, I figure we had about fifteen minutes of air when we came down here—”

“How long ago was that?” The voice quavered, but the question was relevant, and it showed maybe a little trace of hope.

The radium slashes on Trotter’s watch were the only light in the world. “Not quite five minutes.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. Honest. Now. I’m figuring they’ve gone away by now up there, and talking cuts our time down a little, so we’ll start getting out of here right away.”

“You know how?”

“I know how. If Mary Jo Kopechne knew what I know, Ted Kennedy would be President by now.”

“That’s sick. You’re sick.”

“But accurate. Now do what I tell you. Unbuckle your seat belt and climb over into the back seat.” He heard the click and the rustling. She kicked him in the head going over in the pitch blackness.

“Excuse me.”

“It’s all right. Now I have to let water into the car. Can you swim?”

“Hell of a time to ask. Yes, I can swim.”

“That’s good, but we could have done this even if you couldn’t. Now, as soon as enough water is in the car, the pressure will equalize and we can get the doors open. The air will be trapped up where you are, so you can keep breathing until the last second. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, as if she had a choice.

“I’m going to open the front windows, now,” he said.

Five seconds later, Regina said, “Go ahead.”

“I changed my mind,” he told her. Which was true. He changed his mind because the circuit that operated the power windows
had
shorted out.