Collateral Damage (22 page)

“Yes,” Hannibal said, turning his smile to Cindy. “And there's one other important thing you could do, sweetheart. I sure wish you'd go to Oscar's funeral. It's likely to be a pretty thin turnout.”

It was more of a light mist than actual rain, but it would still ruin Cindy's hair. She stepped out of her taxi and straightened the skirt of her black suit, the one she only wore on occasions like this one. She stepped up the path toward Oscar Peters' final resting place, balancing carefully on her heels which sank hazardously into the immaculately cared for turf. She had to admit there was no more beautiful or more solemn place for a burial than Arlington National Cemetery.

Oscar, of course, had no military experience. But she knew that being the son of a retired soldier he was entitled to a space in a national military cemetery. Someday his parents would certainly join him in that hallowed space. Still, she knew the schedule here was cramped, and remaining spaces few. Retired Sergeant Major Peters must have made at least one influential friend to get his son buried here, and to make it happen so quickly.

Traffic on the George Washington Parkway had been heavy for a Sunday morning and Cindy was barely on time. She would not reach the chairs beside the grave much before the pallbearers who were stepping slowly from the other direction, carrying their load with easy and palpable dignity. The Old Guard was the ultimate burial honor, ramrod straight soldiers of the same height in their dress blues and white gloves, glittering shoes and grim expressions. Their precision always took Cindy's breath away.

Two women stood at the graveside as she approached and for a moment she was unsure which was in mourning. Hannibal had described Mrs. Emma Peters well: bluish tinted
hair, slightly bent posture, soft, warm features. The other woman was taller with a cloud of white hair and thick glasses. She would be one of the Arlington Ladies, a little known group of veterans' widows with a most charitable mission. One of these women attends every funeral at Arlington, to make sure no service member is ever buried here without someone on hand to mourn him. When a widow is present, they are there to comfort her.

Cindy stopped at the edge of the rows of chairs, observing the ceremony from behind the two women. She had not expected the man. He and Mrs. Peters were of the same generation and at first Cindy thought her husband must have come to his senses at the last minute. But this was not the man she met in Germany. They stood closely enough to make it clear that he was familiar. An old family friend perhaps, who hurried to her side when he learned she would attend her son's funeral unescorted.

Well, she could not simply stand back and observe. Cindy shook herself into action and moved forward to introduce herself to Mrs. Peters before the chaplain began his service.

On the outskirts of Las Vegas, Hannibal stared at his twenty-fourth license plate of the day, then checked the number off on his list. All of the numbers on the list were similar, and one of them could well match the license plate on the car he saw only in the dark in Virginia. The plate he was looking at was number twenty-four on his long list of possibilities, but he was sure the gleaming new Lincoln Town Car attached to it was not the vehicle that nearly ran over him back home. There was no need to knock on the door looking for the tall, dark-haired driver

Pale yellow sunbeams reached over the edge of the earth and poked in around the frames of his sunglasses as he returned to his rented Ford Taurus and consulted the map laid open on the passenger seat. He had hoped his quest would not continue beyond dinnertime, but here he was, still
crisscrossing Las Vegas' dusty streets. This kind of legwork was boring, even in a nice town.

After living in Berlin, New York and Washington, Hannibal found Las Vegas unexpectedly stale. Berlin was an ancient city, dating back to the thirteenth century. New York had three hundred years of history. Even Washington, the planned community that was young compared to most national capitols, went back a couple of hundred years. They all had their run down areas, their aging quarters. But they all had grown and aged through a normal life span, if cities can be said to have such things.

By contrast, Las Vegas was an infant, incorporated as a city almost a dozen years into this century. And while the other cities grew to adulthood in the normal, legitimate way, Las Vegas was corrupted when it was adopted by the criminal mastermind Benjamin Siegal, called Bugsy by the press of the time. So, while the city rose anew out of the desert in nineteen forty-six, it was corrupted by organized crime. And so decay had set in early. The city had grown up and grown old in a very short time. It showed all the signs of decay generally found in cities several times older. Like prematurely aging women, Las Vegas wore way too much gaudy makeup. And like many aging women, it was not hard to look past the makeup, to see the damage time was wreaking underneath.

Hannibal and his small team had stepped off the plane into intense morning sunshine. His first act after renting cars for them all was to buy several maps. After seeing just how small the town really was, he had divided it between Quaker, Sarge, Virgil and himself. Each had a map rectangle to cover, about fifty miles long and maybe ten miles wide. Within that space, they each had a list of fifty some odd plates to check out. The job was even bigger than it seemed. Hannibal had prowled the city's back streets and pocket neighborhoods all day, whittling down his list of possible license plates. Now, the neon fronted gambling houses were just lighting up, like the flying insect traps he had seen hanging in suburban
backyards. He saw the night flies hovering at the entrances, not even trying to avoid being drawn in and zapped.

The guidebook told Hannibal that Las Vegas was a city of barely a quarter of a million people, not counting tourists. The tiny District of Columbia held two and a half times as many people. To Hannibal, Las Vegas looked like a frontier town from a western movie. The Hollywood style main street was a series of gaudy flats. Behind them, you could see the sagebrush between houses. There were no condemned buildings standing in a row, their shoulders pressed together to remain upright the way they were back home. But he was surprised at the number of addresses that turned out to be trailers surrounded by sand. And when the houses really were houses, they seemed too far away for his taste.

He had to admit, driving down uncluttered blacktops with the desert receding flat and brown in every direction, that his body liked it out here. The air tasted different, sweeter than he was used to. It was warmer, but dry enough to keep his clothes from sticking to him. And every time he stopped his car, the silence fell in on him, as refreshing as a massage. And when people saw him staring at their cars, or at them, they smiled. Dropping back into his seat and pulling the door closed he considered it again. His body really liked it here.

His mind, however, was restless. It was like some form of sensory deprivation. He realized that some part of him craved clutter, needed the background noise a real functioning city provides. So he breathed easier as the nightlife stirred into wakefulness. And he found himself smiling when his telephone rang.

“Hey Hannibal!” Quaker's frantic voice jumped into Hannibal's ear. “I think we got a pretty good suspect here. Tall guy inside. Big black car outside. Come take a look.”

Hannibal reached the address Quaker gave him in less than two minutes. The old, rambling house was styled like an old Mexican hacienda with stucco walls and a low-pillared porch.
There were no other structures within easy walking distance, giving the impression that this one grew up out of the desert sand of its own accord. Frantic music pouring out of the building did not cover the laughter or the sound of dancing feet. Rolling slowly past, Hannibal saw two figures dancing spastically on the porch, shadowed by the light behind them. They were certainly dancing together, but by form both were clearly male.

A low wall wrapped its stone arms around the large parking lot just past the house. Quaker sat atop it not far from the entrance. As Hannibal approached, he stood, his gangly arms waving Hannibal in. As he brought the car to a stop, Hannibal powered his window down.

“This is somebody's house?”

Quaker thrust his face forward, wearing a weary grin. “Nope. I was stopped behind this guy at a light and I noticed the plate was like the ones we were looking for. The car kind of looked right, so I followed him. When he parked here I called you. Come on around inside and I'll lead you to the car. Sure hope it ain't another false alarm.”

“Amen to that,” Hannibal murmured. He had already done this eight times that day, on occasions when Quaker, or Sarge, had found a car that could be right, but could not find the owner to confirm they fit the description.

As Hannibal turned the wheel to follow Quaker across the hard ground of the parking lot, another Ford slid up behind him. Headlights bounced off his rear bumper, allowed him to see Sarge's silhouette in his rear view mirror. Seconds later he saw yet another similar vehicle fall into line behind Sarge. Their short convoy bounced along the path through close-parked cars, reminding Hannibal of a trip through a drive-in theater's grounds. The cars were mostly new and expensive at the beginning of his journey. As they neared the back of the lot they approached a small gathering of older models.

Finally Quaker stopped and pointed at a large, dark-colored vehicle. The space beside it on the driver's side was vacant, and Hannibal pulled into it, stopping too close to the target car. Sarge parked in the nearest space, seven cars away.
The other car, Virgil's, passed him to park in the next row. Hannibal killed the engine, listening again to the way the open spaces seemed to suck the sound away. Voices carried clearly from the house nearly a hundred yards away. And as he opened the door he stared up into a very clear, star-speckled night sky. A broad full moon hung directly overhead. Just what I need, Hannibal thought.

Sarge's footsteps crunched toward them, the beam from the flashlight in his beefy fist jiggling across the ground to finally rest on the bumper of the big car Hannibal now stood behind. Hannibal nodded slowly. Bright silver characters raised against a cobalt blue background: 902, a dot, then JZB. More importantly, he recognized the shape of the deep blue vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car at least a decade old. The differences between this car and the new vehicles he had seen earlier in the day were subtle but at the same time obvious. Very quietly he hissed, “Yes. This is the car that almost hit me.”

“Neat ain't it?” Quaker said. “Now we know the guy you want's a fag.”

“Excuse me?”

“This place is a gay club,” Quaker said, his pale angular face a grinning death's head in the moonlight. “If he's in there, he's a fag.”

Hannibal paced a few feet away. “A customer you think?”

Virgil's gravely voice rumbling in from behind him. “Not by this car. A hustler. Working the crowd.”

“Sure,” Hannibal muttered, looking around himself. “This is where the hired help park.”

“So, you'll know him when you see him?” Sarge asked. When Hannibal nodded, he added, “So I guess we go in and get him.”

Hannibal leaned against his car's trunk. “That might not be the best plan. He might have a lot of friends in there, he might recognize me… it could get messy.”

“Well, I sure ain't up to waiting out here all night until he decides his night is over,” Sarge said.

“Besides,” Quaker added, “when he does come out, he'll probably have company, if you know what I mean.”

Virgil listened to the others, then took a deep breath and let out a long breath through his nose. “I'll go get him,” he said in a low monotone.

“But you don't even know what this guy looks like,” Hannibal said.

“Doesn't matter.”