Watchers (48 page)
He only glanced uninterestedly at Pantangela and the marshals, but he was aware of them giving him the once-over, then dismissing him as harmless. Perfect.
The booths had high padded backs, so from where he sat he could not see Pantangela. But he could hear the cockroach and the marshals talking now and then, mostly about baseball and women.
After a week of surveillance, Vince knew that Pantangela never left the trattoria sooner than two-thirty, usually three o’clock, evidently because he insisted on an appetizer, a salad, a main course, and dessert, the whole works. That gave Vince time for a salad and an order of linguini with clam sauce.
His waitress was about twenty, white-blond, pretty, and as deeply tanned as Vince. She had the hip look and sound of a beach girl, and she started coming on to him right away, while taking his order. He figured she was one of those sand nymphs whose brain was as sun-fried as her body. She probably spent every summer evening on the beach, doing dope of every description, spreading her legs for any stud who vaguely interested her— and most of them would interest her—which meant that, no matter how healthy she looked, she was disease-ridden. Just the idea of humping her made him want to puke, but he had to play out the role he’d chosen for himself, so he flirted with her and tried to look as if he could barely keep from drooling at the thought of her naked, writhing body pinned under him.
At five minutes past two, Vince had finished lunch, and the only other customers in the place were Pantangela and the two marshals. One of the waitresses had left for the day, and the other two were in the kitchen. It could not have been better.
The beach bag was on the booth beside him. He reached into it and withdrew the Uzi pistol.
Pantangela and the marshals were talking about the Dodgers’ chances of getting in the World Series.
Vince got up, stepped around to their booth, and sprayed them with twenty to thirty rounds from the Uzi. The stubby, high-tech silencer worked beautifully, and the shots sounded like nothing more than a stuttering man having trouble pronouncing a word that began with a sibilant. It went down so fast that the marshals didn’t have a chance to reach for their own weapons. They didn’t even have time to be surprised.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Pantangela and his guardians were dead in three seconds.
Vince shuddered with intense pleasure, and was briefly overcome by the wealth of life energy that he had just absorbed. He could not speak. Then in a tremulous and raspy voice, he said, “Thank you.”
When he turned away from the booth, he saw his waitress standing in the middle of the room, frozen in shock. Her wide blue eyes were fixated on the dead men, but now her gaze shifted slowly to Vince.
Before she could scream, he emptied the rest of the magazine into her, maybe ten shots, and she went down in a rain of blood.
Ssssnap.
“Thank you,” he said, then said it again because she had been young and vital and, therefore, of more use to him.
Concerned that someone else would come out of the kitchen—or maybe someone would walk past the restaurant and look in and see the waitress on the floor—Vince stepped quickly to his booth, snatched up the beach bag, and jammed the Uzi pistol under the towel. Putting on his mirrored sunglasses, he got out of there.
He was not worried about fingerprints. He had coated the pads of his fingers with Elmer’s glue. It dried nearly transparent and could not be noticed unless he turned his hands palms-up and called people’s attention to it. The layer of glue was thick enough to fill the minute lines in the skin, leaving the fingertips smooth.
Outside, he walked to the end of the block, turned the corner, and got into his van, which was parked at the curb. As far as he could tell, no one gave him a second look.
He went to the ocean, looking forward to some time in the sun and an invigorating swim. Going to Redondo Beach, two blocks away, seemed too bold, so he followed the Coast Highway south to Bolsa Chica, just north of where he lived in Huntington Beach.
As he drove, he thought about the dog. He was still paying Johnny The Wire to keep tabs on animal pounds, police agencies, and anyone else who might be dragged into the search for the retriever. He knew about the National Security Agency’s bulletin to veterinarians and animal-control authorities in three states, and he also knew that the NSA had so far had no luck.
Maybe the dog had been killed by a car, or by the creature that Hudston had called “The Outsider,” or by a coyote pack in the hills. But Vince didn’t want to believe it was dead because that would mean an end to his dream of making a huge financial killing with the dog either by ransoming it back to the authorities or selling it to a rich showbiz type who could work up an act with it, or by finding some means of using the animal’s secret intelligence to pull a safe and profitable scam on unsuspecting marks.
What he preferred to believe was that someone had found the dog and had taken it home as a pet. If he could just locate the people who had the dog, he could buy it from them—or blow them away and just
take
the mutt.
take
the mutt.
But where the hell was he supposed to look? How was he supposed to find them? If they were findable, the NSA would surely reach them first.
Most likely, if the dog was not already dead, the best way to get his hands on it was to find The Outsider first and let that beast lead him to the dog, which Hudston had seemed to think it would. But that was not an easy task, either.
Johnny The Wire was also still providing him with information about particularly violent killings of people and animals throughout southern California. Vince knew about the slaughter at the Irvine Park petting zoo, the murder of Wes Dalberg, and the men at Bordeaux Ridge. Johnny had turned up the rash of reports about mutilated pets in the Diamond Bar area, and Vince had actually seen the TV news story about the young couple who had encountered what they thought was an extraterrestrial in the wilds below Johnstone Peak. Three weeks ago, two hikers had been found horribly mauled in the Angeles National Forest, and by hacking his way into the NSA’s own computers, Johnny had confirmed that they had taken over jurisdiction in that case, too, which meant it had to be the work of The Outsider.
Since then, nothing.
Vince was not ready to give up. Not by a long shot. He was a patient man. Patience was part of his job. He would wait, watch, keep Johnny The Wire at work, and sooner or later he would get what he was after. He was sure of it. He had decided that the dog, like immortality, was part of his great destiny.
At Bolsa Chica State Beach, he stood for a while with the surf pounding against his thighs, staring out at the great dark masses of surging water. He felt as powerful as the sea. He was filled with scores of lives. He would not have been surprised if electricity had suddenly leaped from his fingertips the way thunderbolts flashed from the hands of the gods in mythology.
Finally, he threw himself forward, into the water, and swam against the powerful incoming waves. He went far out before turning parallel to the shore, swimming first south and then north, keeping at it until, exhausted, he at last allowed the tide to carry him back to shore.
He dozed for a while in the hot afternoon sun. He dreamed of a pregnant woman, her stomach large and round, and in the dream he strangled her to death.
He often dreamed of killing children or, even better, the unborn children of pregnant women because it was something he longed to do in real life. Child murder was, of course, much too dangerous; it was a pleasure he had to deny himself, though a child’s life energy would be the richest, the purest, the most worthy of absorption. Too dangerous by far. He couldn’t indulge in infanticide until he was certain he had achieved immortality, whereupon he would no longer need to fear the police or anyone else.
Although he often had such dreams, the one he woke from on Bolsa Chica Beach struck him as more meaningful than others of its type. It felt . . . different. Prophetic. He sat yawning and blinking in the westering sun, pretending not to notice the bikinied girls who were giving him the eye, and he told himself that this dream was a glimpse of pleasure to come. One day he would actually feel his hands around the throat of a pregnant woman like the one in the dream, and he would know the ultimate thrill, receive the ultimate gift, not only her life energy but the pure, untapped energy of the unborn in her womb.
Feeling like a million bucks, he returned to his van, drove home, showered, and went out to dinner at the nearest Stuart Anderson steak house, where he treated himself to filet mignon.
Einstein bolted past Travis, out of the kitchen, across the small dining room, disappearing into the living room. Carrying the leash, Travis went after him. Einstein was hiding behind the sofa.
Travis said, “Listen, it’s not going to hurt.”
The dog watched him warily.
“We’ve got to take care of this before we go off to Vegas. The vet will give you a couple of shots, vaccinate you against distemper and rabies. It’s for your own good, and it really won’t hurt. Really. Then we’ll get you a license, which we should’ve done weeks ago.”
One bark.
No.
No.
“Yes, we will.”
No.
Crouching, holding the leash by the clip with which he would attach it to the collar, Travis took a step toward Einstein.
The retriever scrambled away. He ran to the armchair, leaped up, and stood on that observation platform, watching Travis intently.
Coming slowly out from behind the sofa, Travis said, “Now, you listen up, fur face. I’m your master—”
One bark.
Frowning, Travis said, “Oh, yes, I
am
your master. You may be one damn smart dog—but you’re still the dog, and I’m the man, and I’m telling you that we’re going to the vet.”
am
your master. You may be one damn smart dog—but you’re still the dog, and I’m the man, and I’m telling you that we’re going to the vet.”
One bark.
Leaning against the dining-room archway, arms folded, smiling, Nora said, “I think he’s trying to give you a taste of what children are like, in case we ever decide to have any.”
Travis lunged toward the dog.
Einstein flew off his perch and was already out of the room when Travis, unable to halt, fell over the armchair.
Laughing, Nora said, “This is vastly entertaining.”
“Where’d he go?” Travis demanded.
She pointed to the hallway that led to the two bedrooms and bath.
He found the retriever in the master bedroom, standing on the bed, facing the doorway. “You can’t win,” Travis said. “This is for your own good, damn it, and you’re going to have those shots whether you like it or not.”
Einstein lifted one hind leg and peed on the bed.
Astonished, Travis said, “What in the hell are you doing?”
Einstein stopped peeing, stepped away from the puddle that was soaking into the quilted bedspread, and stared defiantly at Travis.
Travis had heard stories of dogs and cats expressing extreme displeasure by stunts like this. When he had owned the real-estate agency, one of his saleswomen had boarded her miniature collie in a kennel for two weeks while away on vacation. When she returned and bailed out the dog, it punished her by urinating on both her favorite chair and her bed.
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