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“Just his license number.” He reported it. It was a California plate.
“Another phony.”
“Maybe not. The clerk said the chain’s cracking down on nonguests who take advantage of the free parking. Security makes regular rounds, jotting down plate numbers so the personnel can check them against the registration. Any that don’t match are towed.”
“Well, it’s something. I’ve got contacts in the California Highway Patrol. I’ll have them run it.”
“Should I wait here?”
Another silence, more brief this time. “No. Chances are they’re headed to California. Stick with the plan. Tracking’s out, but the farther we get you down the road the better. If it’s a wild goose chase—well, that’s it.”
Cooke was anything but relieved. He’d half-hoped the thing was at an end, even if it meant surrendering the money and the car. “I’m sorry, Mr. Plevin.”
“No reason. If I didn’t suspect she and her gigolo would hook up so soon, how could you? I’ll let you know what I find out.” The line went dead.
He sat still five minutes more. He wasn’t sure whether he was waiting for his nerves to settle enough to trust his driving or to give Anne and her lover ample time to escape pursuit. Part of him was ready to go into the tank, blow the deal once and for all, and go back home to his unsteady life. Better the devil you know.
He caught his eyes in the rearview mirror.Stop kidding yourself, Dennis. You won’t do that. Not everything she said was a lie. She got your number: honest to a fault.He touched the starter button. The patented Dynamic Force engine leapt to life with a rumble he felt in the soles of his feet.
“Welcome to Kansas!”
He sent Lola packing with a flick of the finger. She was too perky for his mood.
After a minute he thought about turning her back on. The silence inside the car was oppressive. Its airtight construction sealed out all but the most neglected muffler or heavy truck towing tons of coiled steel. He missed the steady beep of the tracking device; he hadn’t realized how much he’d come to depend on its reassuring presence. He powered down the window on the passenger’s side, but the sucking noise the wind made lacerated his eardrums. He slid it back up.
Cooke was on his third state. He’d managed to blow his assignment in just two.
Cruise Control locked him in at seventy—seventy on I-70—sparing him the effort of maintaining pressure on the accelerator and allowing him to concentrate on his thoughts.
In retrospect, the Reno story seemed so implausible he wondered if he was just an airheaded paint slinger, unfit for the rugged realities of the world. Or maybe he was just an over-age teenager, letting his hormones make his decisions. A divorced man in his middle years should have experience enough not to put his faith into a husky voice, a bare knee, a spill of glistening black hair, brushed-silver eyes with specks of gold in them. She was an image intended only for canvas, same as a bowl of fruit or a piece of pottery. He’d painted nudes using live models and thought only of making sufficient progress before he lost the light.
The phone made its burring noise.
“Son of a bitch!”
He almost swerved into another lane. The driver of a Greyhound bus that was passing him leaned on his air horn. He’d never heard Plevin raise his voice before; it was as if he’d been reading Cooke’s own mind. At that moment they had reached the same conclusion regarding the artist’s character. Had his employer discovered that he’d been holding out on him?
“I’m sorry, sir. I—”
“Not you. I just got off the phone with Sacramento. That license plate number belongs to a 2018 Impala registered to Philip Mapes.”
“I never—”
“There’s no reason you should have. I’ve been flying solo since before you heard ofme. The bastard was my business partner.”
CHAPTER 14
AS PLEVIN TOLD it, he and Philip Mapes had launched their business from their dorm room at the University of Illinois before they were twenty-one. Two years later, with Aspectus on the Fortune 500 list, Plevin called for a secret audit of the books and discovered that his partner had embezzled almost three quarters of a million dollars from the firm.
“I offered Phil a sweetheart deal,” he said. “Return the money, surrender your partnership, and I won’t press charges.”
“Did he agree?” Cooke had pulled into a rest stop in order to concentrate. The sun was bright and the pavement was dry; no trace remained of last night’s rainstorm.
“Depends on your definition ofagree. Did Sonny Listonagreeto hand over the heavyweight championship to Ali? But Mapes had no reason to squawk. I even promised to keep our stockholders in the dark. That way if he wanted to climb back into the ring somewhere else there wouldn’t be a cloud of suspicion hanging over his head. Generous? Fuckin’ A. But I wanted it all dead and gone.
“I got every penny back. That almost never happens. These crooks usually splash it around: ritzy condos, sports cars, women, the track. Guess the asshole thought if he didn’t touch it, just let it sit in a safe deposit box for a while, the heat would die down eventually and he could grab it and go. So I was able to cover the shortfall without a whisper of scandal, and saved the couple of million it would’ve taken to buy him out to boot. Win-win.”
“What became of him?”
