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“It might be wise to pick a new place, though,” I said. “And not because I’m tired of doughnuts.”
“Where would you suggest?” he said.
“Well,” I started—and then stopped as a relatively relevant thought hit me. “Brian, I am carless. Can you come get me?”
“Where are you?”
I told him, and he promised to arrive within a half hour. I spent the next twenty minutes showering, and then looking at my multiple punctures in the mirror. None of them actually seemed life-threatening. In fact, they seemed to be healing up nicely already. I remembered what the paramedic had said, that I looked like a fireman, and I tried out a calendar pose in the mirror. It was not terribly convincing; aside from the fact that I’d never actually seen a fireman calendar, I still had an unhealthy jail pallor to my skin, and it must be admitted that there was a slight roll of nonessential material beginning to form around my waist. I frowned at it, and then realized what I was doing. Oh, Vanity, thy name is Dexter.
I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and dressed in a clean set of brand-new Walmart clothes, and made it down to a place outside the hotel’s front door with five minutes left in Brian’s half-hour interval. I stood beside a large cement urn with a dead-looking tree in it. It also had quite a few cigarette butts squished down into the potting soil. I tried to look casual, but I was anything but as I looked around the parking area and out onto the street. There was no sign of anything living anywhere, aside from two birds on the power line.
I walked nonchalantly down to each end of the building, as if I was just a bored man waiting for a ride, and glanced to the sides. Still nothing. A handful of empty cars. We were past the hotel’s checkout time, and still a few hours before check-in, and the whole place was as lifeless as it could be, which was all to the good.
I stood beside the urn for another two minutes before Brian arrived. Today he was driving his green Jeep, and he stopped it right beside me and I climbed in. “Good morning, brother,” I told him.
“Hardly morning, and not quite good,” he said. “But thank you for the thought.” He drove slowly out onto the street, turned left, and as soon as he got up to speed he made an abrupt U-turn.
“Nicely done,” I said. “All clear?”
“So it would seem,” he said, peering into each of the three mirrors. He turned down a side street, then another, and finally, after several quick detours, out onto U.S. 1. “Well, then,” he said, relaxing visibly. “What shall we eat?”
“Something nice, not too expensive,” I said, and even as I spoke a franchise restaurant hove into view, one that specialized in pie. “There!” I said.
“Pie! How wonderful!” Brian said. “I do like pie.”
He pulled into the parking lot and drove slowly around the whole thing one time, and I did not think it was an excess of caution. He found a parking spot right in front, where the car would be visible from inside, and we went in and found a booth where we could watch it. I ordered a large breakfast, in spite of the small roll at the waist I had seen in the mirror. Time to improve later; today we live. At least, that was the plan.
Brian ordered something called French Silk Pie, and a cup of coffee, and as we waited for the food to arrive, he lifted one eyebrow at me and said, “Have you given any thought to how they found you?”
“Not a great deal,” I admitted. “But my best guess is, they traced the rental car, just like the hotel room. From my credit card.”
Brian looked doubtful. “Maybe,” he said. “But I used a different credit card at the hotel, with a fake name, totally different. So that would mean they already knew your name well in advance. And they didn’t learn it from me.”
“You’re sure?” I said.
“Positive.”
I thought about it, and from Brian’s expression, he was doing the same. A small and vague thought stirred, deep down on the floor of my brain, but as I reached for it a cheerful clamor from my cell phone interrupted me. I picked it up and looked at the screen. I didn’t recognize the number immediately, but it seemed familiar, and just before I pushed the button to decline the call I knew it—Kraunauer. “My lawyer,” I said to Brian.
He waved his permission. “By all means,” he said.
“Mr. Morgan,” Kraunauer said. “The FBI would like to ask you a few more questions.”
“Oh,” I said. Not a truly brilliant response, but he had reminded me that I had not checked in with the feds as I’d said I would. “Um, in your opinion,” I asked, “will these be hostile questions?”
“Not at all,” Kraunauer said. “Apparently just a few loose ends, some bureaucratic stuff. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour. And,” he added in a casually reassuring tone, “I will be there to hold your hand.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” I said.
“All part of the service,” he said. “Can you meet me there in, oh, say, forty-five minutes?”
“Yes, I can,” I told him. “And, Mr. Kraunauer?”
“Mm?”
“That was a wonderful performance on the news,” I said, fighting to keep the naked admiration out of my voice.
Kraunauer chuckled. “I played that kid reporter like a violin,” he said. “It was really much too easy.” There was some background noise, papers rustling and a few whispered words. “Ah—I’m sorry, I have to get going. See you in forty-five minutes,” he said, and hung up.
