Dance for the Dead (34 page)

Timothy Phillips looked out the
window of the red car and watched Jane staring in horror at the other
lady. But as the man who had brought him here started the car, Timmy
saw Jane’s right hand move down beside her leg and beckon to
him.

Timmy got the passenger door of
the red car half open before the driver lunged across the seat and
clutched his shirt to drag him back. The sudden movement was enough.
Jane flung the driver’s door open, delivered a hard jab to his
kidney, and snatched the key out of the ignition.

The driver turned with a pained
snarl and started out the door after her. Jane retreated toward the
front of the car. The driver heard the boy opening the door behind
him again just as his foot touched the ground. He yelled, “Stay
there or I’ll kill you,” but half turning his head to say
it made him a microsecond slower. Jane had time to take a running
step and deliver a hard kick to the driver’s door.

The door caught the driver’s
leg just above the ankle. He winced at the pain, pivoted with his hip
against the door to keep it from coming back at him, and rolled out
onto the ground. He scrambled toward the rear of the car to lure Jane
into an attack. All he had to do was get his hands on any part of her
and swing her onto the freeway.

As she advanced a step, he did
his best to look as though he were hurt and vulnerable. He got her to
take three quick steps toward him while he hobbled backward,
preparing to grasp her and roll back to add momentum as he propelled
her into traffic. Jane took one more step, slipped into the car,
slammed the door, and hammered down the lock buttons.

The man heard the engine start
as he dashed toward her. Just as his fingers brushed the door handle,
the rear wheels spun, bits of loose gravel shot out behind, and he
had to step back to keep from being dragged out into the traffic as
the car shot past him.

“Fasten
your seat belt, Timmy, and don’t be scared,” I said Jane.
She drove as fast as she dared, threading her way between slower
vehicles and accelerating into the clear stretches. Even half an hour
before sunrise there were beginning to be places where knots of cars
jammed all the lanes at once. She turned off the freeway at
White-oak, then shot under the overpass and up the eastbound ramp.
The traffic was heavier heading into the center of the city. She had
intended this as an advantage for Mary, because the slow,
close-spaced stream would make it hard for even a superior driver to
catch up with her. Now Jane was fighting the inertia herself.

She glanced down at the
dashboard. The gas tank was full. Of course it would be. The car
didn’t seem to have a radio, but there was a black box about
the size of one mounted in front of the shifter on the hump for the
drive-shaft. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “How
you got here.”

Timmy shrugged. “They
brought some of my stuff. You know, from the apartment where Mona and
I lived in Chicago. There were things they wanted me to identify that
belonged to Mona. Then there was another box with some of my clothes
and things. The next day I tried to put on my good shoes, but I
couldn’t get one of them on because your note was crumpled up
in the toe.”

“My note?” Once
again Barraclough had been thinking faster than she had. Timmy’s
location had been kept secret, but the Chicago apartment had not.
Barraclough had known that the F.B.I, or the Chicago police would
search it. Because he had been a cop, he had also known that after
they had preserved and labeled everything that could be considered
evidence, there would be a lot left. They would release some of
Timmy’s belongings. Barraclough had even known that if nothing
else got to Timmy, his best shoes would. He was going to have to look
presentable in court.

“Yeah. So I called the
phone number on your note, and the lady told me you weren’t
home but to call again when I could. And she asked me what the
address was. I thought that was kind of odd, but she said you forgot
to tell her. So last night when I called, she told me you wanted me
to meet you.”

Jane held herself in check. It
wasn’t Timmy’s fault. For over two years he had been
surviving by following whatever incomprehensible directions some
adult – Morgan or Mona or Jane – had given him. “What
else did she tell you?’”

“That you told her if I
could make it to the door by the garden, I could crawl along between
the bushes and the house and slip right through the hedge to the next
yard without anybody seeing me. You were right about all of it.
Nobody saw me go. Then I walked over two streets, found this car
right where she said it would be, climbed in the back seat, and lay
down to wait. After a long time that man got in and we drove off. He
said we were going to meet you.”

Jane groped under the seat and
beneath the dashboard, and then realized it was a waste of time. If
there had been a gun in the car it couldn’t be anyplace where
the driver could have reached it or she and Timmy would be dead.
Barraclough had made sure the assignment had stayed specific.
Probably what he had feared most was not that Jane would see a gun
and call the meeting off. He would be more afraid that his
court-certified violence-prone trainee would show his initiative by
using a gun where Mary might get hit.

She studied the inside of the
car. “Did you see the driver use this black box?”

“Oh, yeah,” said
Timmy. “He said it was how he knew where we were going to meet
you. See?” He pointed at a dial on the top that looked like the
face of a compass. Jane was on a long, straight stretch of freeway,
and she could see the needle was moving.

“Timmy,” said Jane.
“I didn’t send the note. If I ever come for you again, I
won’t send a note or make a telephone call either. I’ll
make sure you see me. Don’t go to some woman with dark hair who
waves from a hundred feet away. I’ll be up close, so you can
tell.”

He looked alarmed. “You’re
taking me back?”

“I can’t drive you
to a policeman’s house in a stolen car,” said Jane. “I’ll
have to drop you off in a safe place.”

Jane leaned forward a little to
glance at the black box. The needle was moving again. They had swung
around to the east, just as she had. She had only the vaguest idea
how direction finders worked. There was some kind of transmitter in
Barraclough’s car, and the black box received the signal and
pointed out the direction it was coming from. But what could the
range possibly be? A mile? Five miles? As though the machine had read
her thoughts, the needle wavered, then swung to a straight vertical
position and stayed there. It had already lost touch with
Barraclough.

Jane maneuvered through the
crush of vehicles. At any minute Barraclough or one of his
lieutenants would know that she had the car, and they would take the
necessary steps to find it. Probably they would report it stolen and
let the police catch her for them. She had only one way to avoid the
police. She drove to the parking structure at the Burbank airport.

She parked beside the gray
Toyota and took the car keys from under the bumper. For a moment she
considered ripping the black box out of the red car and trying to
install it in her own car. But by now Barraclough certainly knew she
had it. If she got the direction finder to work, eventually she would
find that it was following a transmitter Barraclough had placed where
she could be ambushed. She ushered Timmy into the gray Toyota and
drove out of the parking ramp.

Ten minutes later Jane dialed a
pay telephone and listened to Judge Kramer’s voice. “Hello?”

She said, “Judge, it’s
me. Do you know for sure that your phone is not tapped?”

“I have it swept every
day. No bugs so far. What’s going on? How did you get this
number?”

“Listen carefully. I’m
with Timmy. They found him and lured him out. They know I’ve
got him back and they’re about to start looking for us, if they
aren’t already. I’m leaving him in the waiting area of
the emergency room at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank. He’s
faking a stomachache, so they’ll have to keep him at least long
enough for a doctor to be sure it’s not his appendix.

The guard inside thinks I’m
calling his father to say we got here. Say that’s who you are
when you come for him.”

“But what – ”

“He’ll tell you.
Bye.” She hung up and looked in through the glass doors of the
emergency room at Timmy for a heartbeat, then hurried to her car.

As Jane got back on the freeway
she had to struggle against the feeling that Barraclough was simply
too smart for her. Every time she tried anything, he seemed to have
anticipated it and brought it back to bear on her. She pulled off the
freeway and made her way to the quiet side street in Sherman Oaks.
She climbed the fence with a growing dread. She made her way up the
little hill and crouched beside the freeway. The rented car was still
where Mary had left it, and across the freeway she could see hers
too. She moved to Mary’s car, looked in the windows, then under
the seats and mats and in the glove compartment. Barraclough had won
again. When he had produced Timmy, Mary had gone to him with the
tapes still in her purse.

Jane forced herself to move. She
slipped away from the freeway, leaving the camera, microphone, and
recorders in the brush. She climbed the fence and drove out to
Riverside Drive. Everything depended on her ability to use time
efficiently now.

She glanced at her watch. It was
six-thirty a.m. and the sun glinted on the windows ahead as she drove
west. She tried to think of all of the facts that carried with them
some bit of hope. Timmy was alive. Barraclough would never have
kidnapped him if he had not expected the driver to take him somewhere
and kill him quietly as soon as Barraclough had Mary. Mary was also
alive, and would stay alive as long as she was able to keep from
giving Barraclough the last dime she had stolen. This thought led
Jane in a direction she did not want to go, so she forced herself
away from it. Even the black box might help. If Barraclough thought
Jane had it, he would try to use it to trap her. This would take some
of his time and attention, and anything that accomplished that would
help to neutralize the enormous advantage he had.

Jane had an advantage too, and
she began to concentrate on it. There was no way that Barraclough
could know that the young man she had met in the housing project had
told her about Enterprise Development. He had said 5122 Van Nuys
Boulevard. She turned right on Van Nuys Boulevard and watched for the
building.

When it came up on her right,
she could see the car Barraclough had been driving. It was parked on
the street near the side door of the small, four-story building. Jane
took a breath and felt the air keep coming and coming, expanding in
her chest with a feeling of joy. Maybe Barraclough had finally done
something foolish. She had assumed he would take Mary to a safe house
somewhere. Maybe he had gotten overconfident and stopped at Van Nuys
Boulevard to direct the search for Jane. Maybe the driver of the red
car had not been heard from yet and Barraclough assumed she and Timmy
were dead. Even as she formulated the idea she knew it was
impossible. Barraclough had stopped here just long enough to change
cars. She pulled her car around the corner out of sight, then went
across the street into a coffee shop.

She waited in the coffee shop
and watched Enterprise Development for half an hour before a man came
out the door of the building. She checked her watch. It was exactly
eight. Something prearranged was going on. The chance that someone
would happen to emerge from the building on the stroke of the hour
was exactly fifty-nine to one against. As the man approached
Barraclough’s car she studied his wiry gray hair, the
razorsharp crease of his pants, the cocky toe-out walk and impeccably
shined shoes.

He must be Farrell, the one who
called himself the training officer at Intercontinental but who ran
the undercover operation out of this building. He took a set of keys
out of his pocket, pretended to look down to select the right one
while his eyes scanned the block, then got in and drove off. Jane was
confused for an instant. Of all the people Barraclough had working
for him, Farrell was the only one she had been sure would not be
here. He would be where Mary was.

Jane made up her mind quickly,
hurried to her car, and drove after him. She had gone only a couple
of blocks before she noticed the second car. It was black and
nondescript, with one man in it. She turned off Van Nuys Boulevard,
then left up the parallel street and watched her mirror, but he
didn’t follow. She pulled back onto Van Nuys Boulevard two
blocks behind him. When Farrell turned right on Victory Boulevard and
he followed, she realized that the black car had not been following
her; it was following Farrell.

After the turn Jane pulled a
little closer to the black car. Even if he was the star graduate of
the police auto-surveillance team he couldn’t follow a car
ahead of him and watch his own back at the same time.

Then Farrell’s gray car
reached its destination. Jane watched the second car pull to the curb
ten feet from the entrance. She drove another two blocks before she
parked and watched them in her rearview mirror. Farrell was returning
Barraclough’s gray car to the agency from which it had been
rented. A few minutes later he emerged from the little building,
walked out to the street, and got into the black car with the other
man. Jane drove around a block to come out behind them on Van Nuys
Boulevard. They continued south only as far as the Enterprise
Development building and turned in at the parking lot.

Even as Jane winced with
frustration and disappointment, she knew she had been right. Farrell
was the one Barraclough trusted to manage his separate
under-the-surface operation. He was the one to select and recruit
young thugs, deliver pep talks, and give them the skills to do his
hunting. He was the one who talked about potential, initiative,
motivation, and all the nonsense that made them think that whatever
qualities they had gone to jail for were now going to make them rich.
He was the specialist in the psychology of brutality. He would be the
one person Barraclough was sure to want with him for the
interrogation of Mary Perkins.