Imola (23 page)

“There are three possibilities I can see. One, she’ll show and walk right up to you. Two, she won’t show. In that case, she could just blow you off or stay somewhere in the distance where she can watch you. Three, she could get someone else to come up to you and give you a message.”

“Someone else?”

“A stranger. She’s a sneaky one, particularly if she’s in the Lilin mode. I’m sure she’ll either no-show or get someone to talk to you. Probably stand back and watch in either case.”

“So what should I do if someone else comes up to me?”

“Do you have a hat you normally wear? Something Agnes may have seen?”

“She’s seen me in a Giants baseball hat.”

“Good. Wear that. If someone else comes up and gives you a message, take the hat off with your right hand and wipe your forehead with your right forearm. That’ll be easy to see.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing for you. You just stay put. We’ll go in the search mode—everywhere within view.”

Jason laughed. “What will you have? An army?”

Bransome’s voice rose. “We’ll have every availableperson from three counties, short of the National Guard. I’d have them as well, but you didn’t give me enough notice. We’ll have every street and alley covered and re-covered.”

“And how will you hide the army of officers? She’ll have to walk by at least one of your men.”

“We’ll all be in plainclothes. Tourist clothes. Business clothes. College student clothes. Maybe even a hooker or two thrown in. You won’t know who’s who, so how could she?”

“Okay. What if she doesn’t show and you don’t find her anywhere? Do we all just go home, pop some corn, and put on the TV?”

Bransome snickered. “Pop some extra, because we’ll have a tail on you. If she hangs back and follows you when you leave, we’ll be right there. So just go straight home. Don’t pass Go. Don’t collect two hundred dollars.”

Jason thought for a few seconds. “If she does show, will I be in any danger? If it’s Lilin, she could slice and run.”

Bransome laughed so loud the phone blanked for a moment. “I suggest you wear a turtleneck.”

“I’m serious. How quickly will you get to me if I need help?”

“We’ll have the necessary medical backup. They’ll be close enough to save half of your blood.”

“Gee. I feel better already. I’m serious. Should I take some protection?”

“You plan to screw her in front of the Snoopy statue? A rubber won’t do much good there.” Bransome lost it. His laughs eventually faded in volume.

Jason huffed. “God damn. What’s in your coffee? You just went from ‘shit-shit-shit’ to jokes and hysterical laughter in less than a minute.”

“I’m on a high right now. I’m excited about the job, and about covering all bases. I love challenges like this. You won’t want to talk to me the morning of the job. My wife stays away when I’m like this.”

“I don’t know if that’s comforting or not. If I hadn’t worked with you in Mendocino, I’d back out right here and now.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Look. If she’s in the Lilin mode, you probably won’t even see her. If she’s Agnes, we’ll get to her before she can finish the hug she’ll give you.”

“A hug.” Jason nearly dropped his phone. A Lilin hug could create all sorts of problems, none with a good outcome.

Charlie Brown was four feet tall, and Snoopy stood to his chin. A two-foot pedestal brought Charlie’s bronze, bowling-ball head to Jason’s height. Jason turned away and leaned against the fence that circled the sculpture. The surrounding grass lot gave good visibility in all directions.

Railroad Square was close to the downtown off-ramps of the elevated stretch of Highway 101, which shadowed the dam-like wall of nearby Plaza Mall. Just up the road in a quarter-turn direction was Courthouse Square.

Jason scanned the adjacent parking lot, then spun around to glimpse the brick and stone façades of the businesses that lined the quaint streets, where diagonal parking both increased the packing of cars and added to the antique feel of the old town. This part of downtownwas his favorite, even though the 12 percent business vacancy rate hadn’t declined significantly through the last twenty years of commissions, urban renewal studies, and unfunded action plans. And despite an infusion of trendy restaurants and shops, the stereotypical one-coffee-shop-per-square-half-mile, and the ubiquitous brew pub, pedestrian traffic dried up every night after the dinner rush, sinking the area into an urban coma. The great debate was over the culprit, argued in city council chambers as anything from parking problems, to the mall and adjacent Marketplace, to the roving bands of teens who migrated between Railroad Square and Courthouse Square looking for ways to satiate their group-wide attention deficit disorders that always seemed to emerge from the congregation of three or more normal juveniles.

On this weekday at noon, the area around Railroad Square was lively. Elderly tourists arrived in buses and General Motors sedans. The statue seemed to slow their sightseeing in favor of nostalgic recollections of how the old days carried a simpler tune. Local businessmen and businesswomen took advantage of the warm weather to grab a bite or to conduct cell phone business on a park bench or patch of dry grass.

Jason chose this area of downtown, and the Snoopy statue, for the openness and the relative quiet. The dull hum of tires on the elevated 101 was muffled and quickly ignored, like the buzz of fluorescent lights in a Walgreen’s drugstore. The homeless preferred the greater expanse of Courthouse Square, so only the odd derelict stopped to pay respects to Snoopy and his master. It was the perfect place for a clandestine meeting, and for a stakeout and ambush.

The mall was too public for the meeting and was without good escape routes. Jason thought it would be too claustrophobic for Lilin. Courthouse Square was too busy and too large. And the deafening, staccato thumping of tires on the faux cobblestone roadway that bisected the park was best tolerated by sensory-dull drunks and groups of young men with dueling boom boxes.

Jason paced in front of the statue, then stopped and leaned against the short fence. His wristwatch read 11:58. If Agnes was out there, would she show up? Probably. If it was Lilin? Probably not. At least not without a disguise.

He spun around and scanned a group of elderly tourists and paused to inspect each of the women, looking for any inconsistency of appearance. It wouldn’t be a wig. The hairstyles of most elderly women looked too much like mediocre wigs overdone with wind-resistant curls. And anything could be hidden in the clothing. Including a razor. Jason shivered as he walked to the side of the octagonal fence opposite the herd of picture takers.

He zeroed in on the women’s legs, the ankles, and he had to walk back around the fence to get a good view. Itwould be hard to hide Lilin’s shapely ankles. A few steps onto the grass and his pulse picked up to a mid-workout pace. The fence, like Linus’s blanket, was a comfort, but more. It was Jason’s station in a game of espionage. His safe house. As long as he stayed near it, his people were close, watching.

A step back toward the statue, and a jogger nearly banged into him. She wore a seafoam green, velour running outfit with matching headband. Too much for a warm day like today. And she wasn’t drenched in sweat. Probably one of Bransome’s recruits. If so, it was a terrible disguise—too unique for more than a single pass through the square.

Now Jason’s attention, and imagination, turned to the good guys. Who were the cops? The two men in business suits who sat on a bench at the far end of the grass? One talked nonstop on a cell phone while the other stabbed at the keypad of a Blackberry. The hippie girl next to a small throw rug covered with rows of silver bracelets and earrings? She danced to imaginary music. Was Lilin standing off somewhere, watching, playing the same game of who-are-the-cops?

The warmth of the afternoon burst through Jason’s clothing like a soaker hose. Without shade, the sun turned up the thermostat a good ten degrees. His Levi’s felt sticky, and a vertical line of sweat stuck his shirt to his back along the length of his spine. On breeze-lessdays like this, the downtown air had a whiff of staleness. It was the kind of smell that drove most residents west, to the ocean beaches.

The tickle of sweat bubbles ringed the headband of his San Francisco Giants baseball hat. He was a true fan: the hat was fitted, 7¼, not one of the generic ones with the adjustable strap in the back. He wanted to lift the hat and wipe his brow with his forearm, like Barry Bonds taking a curtain call from the dugout after blasting a fastball to a splash-down in McCovey Cove. But that was his signal to Bransome’s crew. No matter how much the black hat made him sweat, he had to leave it in place until a contact was made. He forced his mind back to the Giants. Like many local fans, he had mixed feelings about Barry’s departure. Glad he was gone because of his personality, but sorry to see such talent lost to baseball, chemical enhancement or not.

A bum swaggered toward the statue, his filthy jeans topped with a tattered sport coat, opened to show the front of a T-shirt that had probably been white at one time. Jason’s eyes shot to the man’s fingernails. The true test. They were long and stained brown, ringed in black like someone had traced their outlines with an eyeliner pen. Definitely not a cop. It was easy to grease the hair, and to make a long beard look stringy. But there was no way to fake the fingernails.

The man had a thick stack of papers folded over hisleft forearm. The large photo on the top sheet was of four young men in the non-posed pose of a rock band publicity shot.

The man zigzagged through the throng of people, licking the pad of his right index finger before peeling off the top sheet and shoving it toward the hand of the next person he approached. Every one of his victims hesitated, then grasped the sheet in a thumb-and-forefinger vice. Most swiveled their heads, apparently looking for the nearest trash bin, before looking at what was printed on the leaflet.

The man approached. A bead of Jason’s sweat turned into a gusher, rolling down his forehead, around his eyebrow, and onto his cheek. He watched the man’s forefinger brush his tongue and grip the corner of another sheet.

The man adjusted the stack of sheets on his forearm before thrusting a sheet in Jason’s direction. Not wanting to insult the fellow, Jason accepted the flyer, but dropped his hand to his side without a glance at the paper. The local venue for up-and-coming rock bands, one step up from the garage, was four blocks from the new old downtown, in a direction that changed from quaint to scary within two of the four blocks.

The old man barely moved past before Jason spotted the tastefully decorated garbage can, fifteen feet off to his right. He fell into a single-file line of six tourists, all apparently intent on recycling the derelict’s offering. His turnat the receptacle, Jason dropped the sheet without crumpling it, and watched it flutter through the narrow opening.

Two large words, alone in the middle of the clean white sheet, caught his attention. There was no picture, as there had been on all of the other flyers. He jammed his arm down into the bin and grasped for the paper. His hand clamped on several sheets as something wet coated the back of his wrist. He yanked his hand upward and held the handful of papers at arm’s length. The top piece had the photo of the band, as did the bottom three. He spread them in his fingers like cards in a poker hand. The second sheet was nearly blank except for something printed in large font, probably 64-point, in the middle of the page.

Jason returned the extra flyers to the can with a disgusted wrist-flip. He grabbed the remaining sheet, one hand on the top, the other on the bottom, as if he was trying to stretch it lengthwise. Two words were perfectly centered on the sheet. “Nice Try.”

His right hand shot to the brim of his hat and pulled it straight upward at full arm’s length. He didn’t bother to mop his brow. Still gripping the sheet in his left hand, he extended the arm with a straight index finger, pointing in the direction of the bum. The old man was halfway down the block, still passing out leaflets to everyone he passed on the sidewalk.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jason saw the twosuited men jump from the park bench and run in his direction. When they came close, he shouted. “The old man. Passing out papers.”

The two suits set out in a sprint and Jason fell in, half a dozen steps behind them.

The old man seemed oblivious to the approach of the two men, and he hardly flinched as they each grabbed an arm and dragged him around the street corner. The flyers fell from his arm and landed in a fanned stack, unfettered but stationary in the motionless air.

Jason rounded the corner to find the old man pinned to the brick wall of a corner business. One of the two men shouted at the man, though Jason couldn’t tell which one. He panted up to the trio and drew a stern look from the man holding the bum’s left arm. “We’ll handle this,” the suited man said.

Jason didn’t pull back. “It was my ass out there. I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

The suits turned back to the old man.

“Where did you get the flyers? Who told you to pass them out?”

The old man’s eyes were wide, and a thin line of spittle fell from his lips as he mouthed silent words. He was trembling from head to foot.

One of the suits leaned close. “Who gave you the flyers?” He pulled back as soon as the words were out.

“S-s-some wo-woman. G-gave me tw-twenty bucks.”

“Where is she?”

The old man looked down at the ground as his knees buckled. He dipped, but the two men pulled him back up by his arms. The man’s eyes rolled upward, and his head flopped forward. He slumped, limp, in the grips of the two suits. They gently lowered him to the ground.

“Great,” the man on the left said.

“Is he breathing?” said the other.

“I’m not giving him mouth-to-mouth.”

The man stirred, let out a burp, and went limp again.

The suit with the cell phone brought the phone up to his lips. “Got a problem here. Send a meat wagon. On Third, just off Wilson. And come up the back way. No lights or siren. She’s around somewhere, but he didn’t say where.”