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outside, I was able to pull ahead another car length so she wouldn t be able
to see my face.
Let s go, let s go, let s go, I thought, trying to will the car ahead of me
to get moving.
And then, all of a sudden, he was at my window. Angie s boyfriend, banging on
the glass.
 Hey! he shouted.  Hey, you!
I wanted to pull ahead, but the car ahead of me was still in the way, and
there was no place to go.
 I want to talk to you! he shouted.
I was going to have to fess up, come clean. Admit to my daughter what I d
been up to. I hit the button, brought the window down.
 Why the fuck you following us around? he demanded.
 Listen, I said, trying to be calm.  You don t understand. I m actually 
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And then his fist was coming through the open window, so fast it was a blur,
and then it was connecting with the side of my head.
ITRIED TO AVOID HIS FIST,but it came through the window so quickly, I didn t
have time to react. And when you re sitting in a car, seatbelted in, you don t
have a whole lot of room to bob and weave. So Angie s boyfriend was able to
strike the side of my cheek, just below the temple, bouncing my head sideways
a foot or so, and it was like a rocket had exploded in front of my eyes.
He was still yelling at me, I m not sure what, exactly. I heard  pervert in
there somewhere, and  fucking asshole, I believe, and somewhere off in the
distance, a more familiar voice, screaming,  Cam! What are you doing? Stop
it!
I figured the odds were that Angie had no inkling who her boyfriend Cam was
punching out, and I now preferred to keep it that way, which precluded jumping
out of the car and attempting to beat the shit out of Cam, who was probably
twenty or more years younger than I and in a hell of a lot better shape, and
would probably have beat the shit out of me, anyway.
So I hit the gas and swerved right, narrowly missing the bumper of the car in
front of me, squeezed between it and a fence, and hung a hard right out of the
parking lot, nearly cutting off a Corvette, whose driver had to slam on the
brakes to avoid rear-ending me. The resulting squeal was no doubt heard a
couple of blocks away.
I floored it. I wanted to put as much distance between me and that McDonald s
as quickly as I could. So intent was I on making a fast getaway that I had yet
to notice how much the side of my face was smarting.
My heart was doing a fair bit of pounding, too. Once I d put a few blocks
between myself and that McDonald s, I pulled into the parking lot of a
7-Eleven, swinging the car around so that I was facing the street, and turned
off the ignition. I switched on the interior light and adjusted the mirror so
I could get a look at the side of my face. It was already turning blue and
puffing out.
I went inside and bought a small bag of ice, got back into the car and
pressed the bag of cubes against the left side of my face. I wasn t sure which
hurt more, the punch, the ice, or my pride, but it was all I could do not to
scream as I held the bag against the bruise.
I hoped Cam wasn t the one Angie was thinking of spending her life with. This
was not the best way to kick off a relationship with a future son-in-law.
Maybe, if I could keep the side of my face from swelling up too severely,
Angie wouldn t even notice it the next time she saw me, which now probably
wouldn t be until the next morning. I could go home, turn off the lights, and
get into bed, an ice bag on my pillow. By morning, the swelling would be gone,
although there was a good chance I might have a terminal case of freezer burn.
But if the bruise was still there, Angie would put it all together the moment
she saw me. And there d be so much explaining to do. Maybe it was better to
come clean now, to wait up for her, to admit that I was an asshole, but that
sometimes fathers worried about their daughters so much that they simply
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couldn t avoid being assholes. We re hardwired that way and
 Fuck. I was suddenly taken by the image of a black Chevy rumbling past the
7-Eleven, heading in the direction of the McDonald s.
I hadn t caught a good look at the driver, but the car was pretty
unmistakable. Black, rusting out around the wheel wells, sitting low in the
back.
I turned the key, reached down to the shift to put the car into reverse and
back out of the spot. But I couldn t will my foot to move from the brake to
the accelerator. Part of me was not prepared to continue the chase.
The fact was, I d not been doing a very good job of this. My surveillance
skills were rotten. I d been busted three times. Twice by Angie the first time
at the mall, the second time when she phoned me while I was tailing her. And
then, again, at the McDonald s. By Angie s friend Cam.
I was not cut out for this kind of work.
It occurred to me that Angie would probably be fine as long as she had Cam
with her. The guy was a better bodyguard than I. Maybe it would actually be a
good thing if Trevor found Angie. Then he d have to deal with Cam, whose
powers of intimidation might exceed mine.
I pulled the ice away from my face, looked in the mirror. We re talking
horror show.
Idecided to swing by the paper on the way home.
I had to find out more about Stan Wannaker. There was this growing sense of
connectedness between the events of the last forty-eight hours. Stan was dead.
Stan had had a run-in with Bullock at the auction, which Lawrence and I had
also attended. Lawrence was in the hospital, victim of a savage attack. There
seemed to be these threads connecting one event to another, but I couldn t
quite make them out, couldn t see how they joined.
The moment I stepped into the newsroom, I could feel the grief. There was
none of the usual banter, people calling to one another across the desks
asking if they wanted a coffee or to go across the street for an after-shift
drink. Even though there were probably forty or more people in the room, it
was hushed, only the sounds of computer keys being tapped to break the
silence. There were small huddles of people, two over in this corner, three
over here, talking in hushed tones.
Some people were crying.
I stopped at my desk, signed in on my computer to see whether I had any
important messages, which I did not, then clicked over to the news basket
where all the cityside stories were submitted and edited.
I was able to find the story the paper was running on Stan, in the next day s
edition, on the front page above the fold, under the byline of Dick Colby:
Stan Wannaker, theMetropolitan  s award-winning photographer who faced danger
in nearly every world hot spot, was found murdered in the newspaper s parking [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]