Put a Lid on It (3 page)

Meehan turned in that direction, the ditty bag bouncing against the front of his thighs, both hands holding the handle. He just had time to notice that all those guys were still in their orange or brown jumpsuits when the guard on that side of him gave him a poke on the shoulder and pointed. “That way.”

What way? What other way was there? There was never anything but one way.

But why had they put him in civvies? Meehan looked where the guard pointed, and a small anonymous black sedan was there, within the loading area but pointed out, exhaust puffing from its tail pipe.

The devil you know. Meehan looked over his shoulder at what looked now like the safety of the Otisville bus, but shuffled the other way instead, toward the black sedan, trailed by the guards.

They approached the sedan from its right side, and as they got near, the front door on this side opened and a very tall skinny guy in a dark suit and tie and black topcoat got out. Not quite looking at Meehan, he opened the rear door, and Meehan understood that was where he was supposed to go. He shuffled to the car, paused to figure out how to get into the back seat, and the tall skinny guy took the ditty bag from his hands, saying, “Allow me,” still not exactly looking at Meehan.

“Thanks.”

Meehan bent down, to judge his approach, and was not completely surprised to see Jeffords in there, smiling a welcome at him from the far side of the back seat.

4

O
NCE MEEHAN MANAGED
to get his shackled feet into the car and flat on the floor, the tall skinny guy shut his door and carried himself and Meehan's ditty bag to the front seat, where he put the bag on the floor next to his own feet, then shut his door. A solid
clunk
sounded inside the door beside Meehan, and, he realized, the same sound came from all the other doors as well. “So we're child-proof now,” he said, and Jeffords chuckled.

They were four in the car, the other being the driver; what Meehan could see of him was meaty shoulders in dark wool, flat ears, fat rolls on the back of the neck, and a Dick Tracy hat squared off on his head. He lifted that head to look at Jeffords in the mirror and say, “All set?”

“Ready to roll,” Jeffords told him.

The driver put the sedan in gear and drove out to St. George Place, where there was never any traffic, because it was a one-way street, it was one block long, and it went from nowhere to nowhere under the enclosed third-floor walkway that led from the MCC over to the courts. The driver steered them back into the world of streets that went somewhere, then directly onto the Brooklyn Bridge; so long, Manhattan Correctional Center, and so long, Manhattan.

Meehan had assumed Jeffords would say something, this being his party, but they were across the bridge and onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Long Island-bound, and Jeffords still did nothing but gaze kind of dreamily out at twilight New York City, October of the year, Manhattan very dramatic from here, so Meehan finally cleared his throat and rattled his chains and said, “Uh, Mr. Jeffords.”

Jeffords turned mild eyes his way. “Yes?”

Meehan rattled his chains again. “We're doing sixty,” he pointed out, “and the doors are double-locked. Do I have to have these things on?”

Jeffords seemed surprised the shackles were still there. “No, of course not,” he said. “Jimmy,” he called to the skinny guy up front, “give me the key to these things.”

Jimmy turned halfway around, showing Meehan his beaky nose. “What things?”

“These, these chains things.”

“Shackles,” Meehan prompted.

“Shackles,” Jeffords agreed. “Meehan doesn't need them now, give me the key.”

“
I
don't have the key,” Jimmy said.

Jeffords was aghast. “You don't have the
key?
”

“No,” Jimmy said. “Why would
I
have the key?”

Jeffords frowned at one of the driver's neck rolls. “Buster? Do you have the key, to these cuff things?”

“I haven't carried cuff keys in eight years,” the driver said, confirming Meehan's suspicion the guy was an ex-cop. Not a cop? An ex-cop? And Jeffords not a lawyer. He wondered what Jimmy wasn't.

Smart. Jimmy said, “Should I radio?”

Jeffords hated that idea. “What? Radio who? You don't radio in the New York City area, it's like a party line around here.”

Jimmy said, “Maybe when you get to Norfolk—”

“Norfolk!” Everything Jimmy said appalled Jeffords. “We can't leave this man in chains all the way to Norfolk!”

Norfolk, Meehan thought. Isn't that in Virginia? What the hell am I gonna do in Norfolk?

“Buster,” Jeffords said, leaning forward, speaking earnestly to Buster's neck rolls, “we've gotta go back.”

Jimmy said, “Pat, you sure?” He still hadn't made direct eye contact with Meehan.

Buster said, “The plane—”

“It isn't a goddam scheduled flight,” Jeffords snapped, “and yes, Jimmy, I'm sure. We're asking for this man's cooperation. We can't keep him chained up like a, a, a Doberman pinscher! Buster, turn us around, we'll drive back, wait for me out front on Park Row. I'll go in and get the key.”

“You're the boss,” Buster said, not as though he thought that was such a good thing.

“There's an exit up ahead,” Jeffords said.

“I see it,” Buster said.

Meehan was beginning to lose faith in these people.

5

T
HEY HAD TO
unclunk the doors when they got to the main entrance to the MCC, in the gathering gloom of twilight. “Keep an eye on him,” Jeffords advised, and climbed out of the car to trot over to and through the grim entrance, with its anti-suicide-truck row of round concrete posts along the sidewalk out front like parts of some low-tech board game, and the mirrored windows on the second floor, so you never knew who or what was watching.

Well, Jimmy was watching, keeping the eye on Meehan that Jeffords had ordered, but he didn't look comfortable about it, and he managed to do it while still avoiding eye contact. Meehan ignored him to look out at his former home, his fixed abode for the last eleven days.

The MCC was the Bastille writ small, the runt of the same litter, tall, dark, concrete, with rounded corners rather than sharp edges. It had a closed-in look, like the kind of maniac that listens to voices in his teeth a lot. When the French decided to give freedom a shot, they tore their Bastille down; when the Americans opted for freedom, they put up the MCC. Go figure.

Jeffords came trotting out of the building and toward the car, looking as though the structure hadn't harmed him very much in the three or four minutes he'd been inside. When he slid into the car, though, Meehan could see he was a bit ruffled, as though he'd had a conversation inside there that hadn't been completely pleasant. Trying to sound cheerful and confident, he said, “Okay, Buster, all set now,” and as Buster silently sent them off into traffic, reheaded for the Brooklyn Bridge, Jeffords flashed the flat steel key and said, “Just a sec, now.”

It took more than a sec, since Jeffords had clearly never had dealings with shackles before, but it didn't take long, and they were barely on the bridge before Meehan was rubbing his chafed wrists and moving his feet around just for the fun of it, saying, “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

“Mr. Meehan,” Jeffords said, “as I think you've already figured out, my job earlier today was to check you out, see if you were the man we want. That you're here shows my belief that you
are
the man we want. You just go on behaving like the intelligent guy I know you are, and you'll never see another shackle all your born days.”

“That sounds good,” Meehan said. “Of course, I don't know what you
mean
by the man you want. The man you want for what?”

Jeffords leaned a little closer, which Meehan didn't like, and murmured, “Not everybody in this car is cleared for this.”

Since Meehan had no idea what “this” was, he assumed he was one of those in the car not cleared for it, so he decided to leave that alone, and say instead, “You were talking before about Norfolk. Going to Norfolk.”

“That's right,” Jeffords said, as though glad Meehan had reminded him of something important. “Now, on the plane,” he said, “we should be the only passengers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But it's a contributor's plane,” Jeffords explained, “so you never know. So if there
is
somebody else there, or somebody in the crew says something to you, just go along with it.”

“Sure,” Meehan said.

“I doubt anybody will talk to you at all,” Jeffords said. “But if anybody asks, you're an Internet technician.”

It would be hard for Meehan to imagine anything further from himself than an Internet technician. He said, “What if they want to know what that means?”

Jeffords laughed. “Nobody wants to expose their ignorance,” he said. “Just say you're working on the streaming technology on the Internet.”

“The streaming technology on the Internet,” Meehan echoed.

Up front, Jimmy showed his beaky profile again, saying, “Pat, do you really think he can bring that off?”

“I'm sure he can,” Jeffords said.

Turning a bit farther, Jimmy almost but not quite made eye contact, his glance brushing across Meehan's cheek as he said, with what sounded a bit like petulance, “Of course, I'm not to know what we want him for—”

“All in good time, Jimmy,” Jeffords assured him. “I know you, as much as anybody, understand the need for security here.”

“I'm not asking,” Jimmy said, and faced front, and Meehan caught Buster looking at him in the interior rearview mirror, a tight little smile on his bulldog face. Buster didn't need to know the details either; he already knew all he needed to know about Francis Xavier Meehan.

He did, too. Meehan looked away from those ex-cop eyes and out his window, to watch industrial Queens race by.

Contributor's plane. What the hell was a contributor's plane?

6

A
CORPORATE JET
.

Buster led them along unknown back alleys at JFK International airport, big planes hunched in the distance like dozing wasps, then angled around a chain-link fence to stop next to a sleek smallish jet that looked like a mini-Concorde. It was all white, and had only numbers on it, no names. The door in its side had been opened down to become the entrance stairs.

All four got out of the car, though two wouldn't be flying today, but everybody wanted to help watch Meehan. Jeffords, meeting him around the hood of the car, smiled cheerfully and gestured at the waiting plane. “You first.”

“I know,” Meehan said.

The interior was all carpet in different shades of ecru and beige and tan, floor and walls alike. There were eight low broad overstuffed beige armchairs in this mellow-lit tube, four on each side, each with its own portholish window and its own side table. And in the first chairs, to right and left, were people.

The more interesting one was the woman on the right, a big-chested ash blonde of not yet thirty with very red lipstick and a very short pink skirt. Eleven days in the slammer can be a long time, sometimes.

So she was the more interesting one, but the more important one was clearly the man on the left. Maybe fifty, gym-trim, almost completely bald except for a low-lying hedge of black, dressed in tassel loafers and knife-edge slacks and a gray-blue sports jacket over a blue-black polo shirt, he looked at the world through pale blue tinted designer spectacles and he gave off, from the first second you looked at him, an air of absolute self-assurance so total your first reaction was to kick him in the nuts just to see what he'd do.

This fellow offered Meehan a tight unpleasant smile, as though daring him to kick him in the nuts, and said, “I guess you're who we're waiting for.”

“I guess so,” Meehan said, as Jeffords bounded up and into the plane, saying, “Hi, there,” extending his hand, saying, “Pat Jeffords.”

“Howie Briggs,” the guy answered, not standing, but accepting the handshake, clearly seeing that Jeffords, like himself, was the more important member of the duo. “And this is Cindy.”

“Hi,” said Cindy, in the kind of voice she would have.

“Arthur wanted us to hitch a ride,” Howie Briggs said, “meet him down at Hilton Head.”

“I envy you,” Jeffords said, with a happy smile. “And this is Frank.”

“How are you?”

“Good,” Meehan said.

Jeffords might be irritating with the “Frank” business, but in some ways he seemed to know what he was doing. For instance, he seated himself behind Howie Briggs and Meehan behind Cindy, so it would be harder for Briggs to engage Meehan in conversation. And Cindy, of course, would know better than to engage anybody but Briggs in conversation, so it was unlikely Meehan would have to demonstrate for anybody his expertise in streaming technology on the Internet.

The plane jolted forward, to start what would eventually turn out to be a very long taxi, and Meehan settled down, grinning a little, thinking this place was a lot better than the place he'd come from. Also, he discovered, the seat swiveled.

Keen.

7

I
N NORFOLK
, IT was totally night. Full of macadamia nuts and club soda, Meehan stepped down from the contributor's plane (still had no idea what
that
meant) in this remote corner of Norfolk International to find
two
Busters in topcoats and Dick Tracy hats waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. A little way off, Howie Briggs and Cindy were getting into a white limo. Behind Meehan, Jeffords came cheerfully down the stairs and said, “Well, let's go. Where's our transportation?”

“There, sir,” said one of the Busters, pointing.

“Good. Let's do it.”

Without anybody saying anything one way or another, the new Busters walked to either side of Meehan, with Jeffords coming along behind. They moved toward the white limo, which then drove away, to reveal another black sedan parked beyond it, but this one larger and newer-looking than the one in New York. A Buster held the rear door open, and Meehan entered, followed by Jeffords. The Buster shut the door, the two Busters got in front, and the drive began.