The Road To Ruin Page 10

  “Well,” Kelp said, “there are no guarantees.”

  Green looked surprised. “Really? Usually, there’s guarantees.”

  “Well,” Kelp said, “it isn’t guaranteed to not work.”

  “Okay.” Green seemed to like to nod; he did some more of it, then said, “Did you know Howard?”

  “I’ve known some Howards,” Kelp admitted. “You thinking of any one of them in particular?”

  “Anne Marie’s husband.”

  “Oh, he was Howard? No, he cleared out two days before we met.”

  “He was a jerk,” Green said. “I only met him a couple times, but it only took a couple times.”

  “Yeah, I understand that.”

  “He was a jerk like her father, the Honorable, that I knew a lot better. If you never met Howard, then you never met the father, either, because he was dead by then.”

  “You’re right.”

  “There’s women like that,” Green said. “They start out with a jerk for a father, they go find one just like him, get married. Some do it over and over, keep finding the same exact kind of jerk.”

  “Doesn’t sound like fun,” Kelp said.

  “I was wondering, you see,” Green said, “if Anne Marie would turn out like that.”

  Kelp grinned. “I think she changed her MO,” he said.

  “I think so, too. She’ll be back in a minute, so let me ask you. Is it okay we talk business in front of her?”

  Kelp shrugged. “Saves me repeating everything after you leave.”

  “Okay,” Green said. He did the nodding thing some more. “Let me explain the problem,” he said, and Anne Marie came back in, with Green’s coffee and Kelp’s beer and a glass of pale stuff for herself, all on a little tray. “Thanks,” Green said, and Kelp pointed at the glass of pale stuff. “What’s that?”

  “Apple juice,” she said, and went back to her chair.

  “Right,” Kelp said. “That’s one of your Midwest things.”

  She said, “Jim, do you know why I picked this guy up?”

  Green said, “You picked him up?”

  “Sure.”

  “I helped,” Kelp said.

  Ignoring that, Anne Marie told Green, “He didn’t put anything in his bourbon.”

  “Ahh,” Green said.

  “I put an ice cube,” Kelp said.

  “First man I ever met didn’t want everything he drank to taste like Royal Crown Cola.” Giving Kelp a fond look, she said, “You told me straight bourbon wouldn’t make me drunk unless I had one of those funny chemistries.”

  Kelp nodded. “Yeah, but you didn’t believe me.”

  “No, of course not. But I liked you telling me. Women like a man who puts in the effort to attract her attention. Lies, inflates his part, acts cool. Women don’t believe all the strutting around, but they like it, it’s a compliment to them that he drags out his bag of tricks, just for her.”

  It was Kelp’s turn to show a fond look. “You had a couple tricks in the bag, too, you know.”

  “I thought you were worth it.”

  They smiled at each other, and Jim Green cleared his throat and said, “Uh, I’m still here, you know.”

  They looked at him. “Oh, hi, Jim,” Kelp said. “How you doin?”

  “Fine.”

  “I forgot all about you over there.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jim said. “Happens all the time.” Turning to Anne Marie, he said, “I was just about to explain to Andy the problem.”

  “I’m sorry there’s a problem,” she said.

  “Well, there would be,” he said, and said to Kelp, “The identities I create are very tricky, and you need to find just the right little cranny in the system, and there’s not a lot of them. So I can’t use up four of them—in fact, not even one of them—for short money in front. Not even for a guy that I see is the right guy for Anne Marie.”

  “Well,” Kelp said, “it was a long shot. Thanks, anyway.”

  Anne Marie said, “Jim? You can’t help? I was sure you could help.”

  “Anne Marie, I don’t help,” Green said. “I do a professional job, and I get paid for it.”

  Kelp said, “Anne Marie, he’s right. It was nice of him to come over here and listen, and if there was something he could do, you know he’d do it.”

  “I been thinking,” Green said, “sitting here, looking at you two, sorry I couldn’t do what you want. I been thinking, and what I do have, I have the people that I worked with already, I know everything about who they are now because I made them who they are now.”

  Anne Marie said, “What about them?”

  “Well,” Green said, “every once in a while, not often, somebody stops being who I made them for one reason or another, inheritance, a general amnesty, death of an enemy. People go back to being who they started out as, maybe temporary, maybe forever. Now, I never done this before, I never even thought of doing it, but those identities are already in place, and I can get back at them again.”

  Kelp said, “You mean, we borrow them?”

  “That’s exactly it,” Green said. “Now, you borrow, you could be borrowing trouble. I want you to know that. I’m not in touch with the people, just the identities, so for all I know somebody may suddenly have to go back to being Joe Blow all over again, and there you are, the cuckoo in his nest. The photo on his passport; you. The fingerprint on his top-secret clearance; yours. And who he gets mad at is you, not me, for hacking into his identity, and some of these people have no sense of humor at all.”

  “I can see that,” Kelp said.

  “Another possibility,” Green said, “as long as we’re considering what’s the worst that could happen here, somebody else maybe cracked the new identity. The actual guy’s gone back to who he used to be, and when the assassination team arrives, who they find is you.”

  “Ugh,” Anne Marie said.

  Kelp said, “What are the odds, do you think?”

  “Small,” Green said, “or I wouldn’t make the offer. Very very small, but possible. Like what you were telling me before, no guarantees. But you only want the identity for a month or two.”

  “Maybe even less,” Kelp said. “I hope even less.”

  “I could see what I could do,” Green said. “But first I got to meet your three friends, and take their pictures, and do stuff like that. Would you all like to come up to Connecticut?”

  “We prefer to stay in the five boroughs, if we can,” Kelp said. “But you’re the one doing the favor, so it’s up to you.”

  “Come to think of it,” Green said, “I probably couldn’t fit all four of you in the trunk anyway. So could we think of a place here in town? I’d prefer someplace private within someplace public, if you could think of anything like that.”

  “There’s a bar I happen to know,” Kelp said, “that I think you’ll like.”

  19

  “HERE IT COMES,” Mark said.

  Os was driving today, even though Mark considered Os a bit too volatile to be a completely reliable driver in a tight spot. On the other hand, the little two-seater Porsche they were in, hiding behind its gleaming whiteness, actually belonged to Os, so Mark had only limited control over who would drive the beast.

  At least they’d discussed strategy ahead of time, so that Os knew, the instant Mark said, in re the green Subaru station wagon, “Here it comes,” that he should drive forward away from the compound entrance, in the direction the Subaru always took, already moving off when the Subaru made its turn onto the road behind them.

  This had been Mark’s idea; start out in front of the Subaru and then, at the first passing zone some three miles down the road, permit it to pass, so that the driver of that car would have no reason to suspect they were following him, not if he’d first seen them out in front. Mark was very pleased with himself for this clever bit of misdirection.

  Looking over his shoulder, he saw the Subaru grow larger as it overtook them. But it seemed to him it was growing larger more slowly than
it should. Their earlier sightings of the Subaru had suggested its driver liked to go fast, and so he did, but at the moment so did the Porsche, which was not the plan.

  “Os,” Mark said, “we’re not in a race. You want him to pass, remember?”

  “He’ll pass. We’re not there yet.”

  Nevertheless, here came the passing zone, and Mark could see just how hard it was for Os to ease his foot on the accelerator, lose momentum, permit another human being to go on by him without a fight. Os’s teeth were clenched, his eyes fixed on the road so he wouldn’t even see that overtaking hunk of Japanese green, and it was Mark who watched the Subaru bustle by, its lantern-jawed driver just as intent as Os.

  “That’s fine, then,” Mark said, and at the very end of the passing zone, with in fact a big brown United Parcel truck thundering toward them the other way, a second car rushed past them, crowding Os to get itself back into lane before it would become a hood ornament on the United Parcel truck. The United Parcel truck bawled its outrage, the second car weaved but then got control of itself, and off it hurried after the Subaru.

  Mark stared at that second car, now receding. That mud-colored Taurus. “Os!” he cried, as outraged as the United Parcel driver. “It’s the union!”

  “Well, goddamn them,” Os said. “Almost put me in the ditch.”

  “Os, they had the same idea we had!”

  “Looks that way.”

  “But they didn’t tell us!”

  Os, crowding up closer to the Taurus, said, “We didn’t tell them either, Mark.”

  “It’s not the same thing. Os, don’t get so close.”

  “I can’t see the Subaru.”

  “Forget the Subaru,” Mark told him. “The union doesn’t know about this car, so they won’t recognize us. They’re following the Subaru. You follow them. That way, you can stay farther back, and nobody’s going to know we’re here.”

  “Not bad,” Os agreed, and slacked off.

  For the next twenty minutes, their little caravan roamed rural Pennsylvania, farmland, woods, the occasional dorp, the green Subaru to lead the way, the mud-colored Taurus not far behind, the gleaming white Porsche some considerable way to the rear. It was all beginning to get boring when the Taurus’s brake lights all of a sudden went on.

  Mark sat up: “Something’s happening.”

  “About time.”

  The Taurus had slowed. Behind it, the Porsche slowed. Then, after a minute, the Taurus accelerated again, so the Porsche hurried to catch up.

  Mark said, “What was that all about?”

  “False alarm.”

  Another fifteen minutes on the road, and they approached a town, and this time it was the right turn signal the Taurus began to flash. Os obediently slowed, slowed even more, and they watched the Taurus turn in at a diner’s parking lot, stop in a slot, and the three start to get out. The Subaru was nowhere in sight.

  There was other traffic around them, light but insistent, so they had no choice but to drive on, Mark glaring furiously back at the diner parking lot, the three chunky men moving toward the entrance, gabbing together, obviously following nobody.

  Mark turned his glare to the front. “What happened?” he demanded. “What happened?”

  “We fucked up,” Os said, grimly looking at the road. They were deeper into the town now, with side streets, so Os took one.

  Mark said, “We? We fucked up? How? All we did was follow them.”

  “Wrong them,” Os said, and pulled to the curb. There was no traffic on this little residential street “We were following the union guys. What we were supposed to follow was the Subaru.”

  “They were following the Subaru.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Os, they almost cut you off in that passing zone, almost got themselves creamed by that truck. They were trying to catch up with the Subaru.”

  “Maybe,” Os said.

  “Stop saying maybe,” Mark told him. “They were following the Subaru. So what went wrong?”

  Os didn’t have an answer for that, any more than Mark did, so they sat in broody silence a few minutes, and then Os said, “Brake lights.”

  “Yes?”

  “Their brake lights went on, back there somewhere,” Os said, and waved a hand generally at the world.

  “You’re right, they did.”

  “So that’s,” Os said, “when the Subaru turned off.”

  “But they didn’t follow it.”

  “Because it was going home.”

  “Oh, my God,” Mark said. “You’re right! They see where he turns off, they mark the place, they keep going, we sail right on by.”

  “Because,” Os said, with his infuriating doggedness, “we were following the wrong car.”

  Mark, choosing to ignore the implied criticism, said, “Could we find that spot again?”

  “Where they hit their brakes?”

  “Of course. Could we backtrack, find it?”

  “God knows,” Os said.

  “I’m not doing anything else today,” Mark said, “so let’s try it.”

  •

  “By God, there it is.”

  They’d driven, and driven, trying to stay on their back-trail even though all roads look different when traveled in the opposite direction, and trying to look at every house and drive and side road they passed, until Os declared they’d overshot somehow, they had to go back. So they did, discovering that they had in fact gotten briefly onto the wrong road, but then found the right road again, and there, on the left, in the blacktop area in front of what looked like a pretty large apartment house, very large for this backcountry neck of the woods, there was the Subaru. The same one, definitely, in front of a faux-Tudor building with a large sign on the weedy patch of lawn between parking lot and road: CARING ARMS ASSISTED LIVING.

  Mark said, “A nursing home? What the hell is he doing in a nursing home?”

  “Let’s see if it’s the same car,” Os said, and turned in at the parking area. But as he did so, out of the building came the guy himself, bouncing along like a windup doll, a big gray canvas ditty bag thrown over his shoulder. So Os kept driving in a circle, back out to the road, as Mark twisted around to watch the guy’s progress. Throw the ditty bag into the back of the Subaru, get behind the wheel.

  “Os,” he said, “this time we follow him.”

  “A much better plan.” Os looked in the rearview mirror, “Here he comes, and here’s a gas station.”

  So Os pulled in at the gas station, rolled very slowly past the people refueling there, and regained the road after the Subaru had already gone by. “Now,” he said, “we follow the right car, at last.”

  “Not too close,” Mark said. “This little white Porsche is a bit noticeable.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Os said, which might have been yet another implied criticism.

  If it was, Mark ignored it, saying, “I don’t get it. Maybe three times a week, he goes and spends about an hour at Monroe Hall’s place. Then from there he goes to a nursing home? What for?”

  “They’re customers,” Os suggested. “It’s some kind of in-home service. He’s a… what? Religious adviser? Psychotherapist? Hairdresser?”

  “Physical therapist?” Mark said. “You saw the bag he carried, you saw how he’s built, like every personal trainer you’ve ever seen in your life. Too muscular, and too short.”

  “My mother,” Os said darkly, “probably knows him.”

  Mark said, “I doubt he makes house calls in Boca Raton, but I know what you mean. And you know what I mean.”

  Os said, as the unmindful Subaru scampered ahead of them across the rolling landscapes of Pennsylvania, “You mean, we join him today on his rounds.”

  “Sooner or later,” Mark said, “this guy’s day of kneebends and shoulder thumps must come to an end. Then he goes home. And we’ll be there.”

  “Leave it to the union,” Os said, “to give up after one little try.”

  20

  “WE COULD
N’T JUST FOLLOW him around all day,” Buddy insisted. He was the driver, and the other two were disagreeing with his executive decisions.

  Ace, for instance: “We could have waited. How long’s he gonna be? An hour?”

  “And then on to somebody else,” Buddy said. “It’s the middle of the day, he could be seeing clients until six o’clock for all we know. Besides which, it’s lunchtime.”

  They were, in fact, seated at a window table in this diner in the middle of Somewhere, Pennsylvania, elbows on the Formica, waiting for various fried foods, and watching the occasional vehicle drive by out front. It was a timeless America they’d found, and the waitresses had a speed to match.

  Mac, frowning deeply, said, “Buddy, in a way I understand what you’re talking about. Hanging around behind that guy could get boring after a while—”

  “And he could notice,” Buddy pointed out, “that same car behind him all the time.”

  “That’s also true,” Mac agreed. “But, Buddy, we had a bird in hand.”

  “We’ve figured out who the guy is, or at least what he is,” Buddy said. “One of those rich-people personal trainers, your own gym coach. Hall can’t get off the property, can’t get much exercise, so this guy comes around to keep him in shape.”

  Grudgingly, Ace said, “Okay. And the nursing home, that fits in.”

  “Sure,” Buddy said.

  Mac said, “But so what? Buddy, what do you want us to do? Go through every Yellow Pages in central Pennsylvania, which has gotta be about a hundred—”

  “More,” Ace said.

  “More,” Mac agreed. “Check out every personal trainer in every phone book?”

  “We’ve got the guy’s license number,” Buddy reminded them. “And the make of the car. And we know what his business is. Mark, we’ve got over twenty-seven hundred members in ACWFFA. At least one of those people’s got a cousin on a police force. We don’t have to say what we want it for, a union brother will respect the need for privacy, but we do have a big spread-out powerful force out there, in the rank and file, and I think we should use it, and in no time at all, we’ll have this guy’s name and address and everything in the world that the law knows about him.”