Reckoning (12 page)

He went out the same way he came in, not bothering to replace the screen frame this time. Having expertly climbed down the
damaged column, he made his way quickly along the side of the house, heading for the bit of lawn, the flower bed and the iron
fence. As he passed, he glanced in the window where he had seen the old lady dozing in the armchair. He was startled to see
her standing inside the window looking out at him. In her right hand was a long-barrel .45 revolver.

The first bullet melted a circular hole through the window glass and tore past Dartley’s right ear with the sound of a crazed
hornet.

The second—or maybe it was the third—bullet shattered the glass and lightly touched Dartley’s shirt collar.

She emptied the gun after him as he ran through the flower beds, stooped and weaving, like he had run through elephant grass
in the ’nam. To hell with the fence this time! All he could hope for was to get his ass out the gate.

Dartley collected his car at the Battery and made some wide circles around the house to see if there was any police activity.
When nothing seemed to be upsetting the tranquillity of the historic area, he drove by. The gardener was standing looking
at the broken window. There was no sign of the old girl—she was probably cleaning her collection of bolt-action carbines in
anticipation of some more action.

He pulled the car against the sidewalk, about two hundred yards away from the house, switched off the engine and adjusted
the rearview mirror so he could watch the garden gate. He settled in for a long wait. Dartley was used to fourteen- and sixteen-hour
waits, which cramped the body so much that sudden strenuous action might result in stitches or muscle spasms that almost immobilized
him. It was then he had the uncomfortable realization he was in his late thirties, not early twenties. Cold weather was the
worst, when he lost the
sense of touch in his feet and got shivers that wouldn’t stop. When he turned the engine back on to heat the interior, the
exhaust smoke, clearly visible in the frigid air, advertised his presence. Here, watching was going to be comfortable, even
if it took all day and all night.

Less than twenty minutes had passed when he saw Peter Ligeti approaching him on the sidewalk against which his car was parked.
Dartley had memorized the photos and description. It was definitely Ligeti, right down to the big frightened eyes. Dartley
had fucked up on getting into the house, but that did not mean he had to approach Ligeti with an apology.

He sat still and Ligeti did not notice him. That was usually the case with people walking past stationary cars. The car windows
were below comfortable eye level, and unless some movement attracted the pedestrian’s attention, he passed without looking
in. Dartley waited until Ligeti was opposite him, then suddenly turned the key in the ignition and gunned the motor. Ligeti
jumped a foot in the air and took off at a fast clip down the sidewalk toward the house, glancing back over his shoulder now
and then.

Dartley pulled out, made a slow U-turn and followed him, going the wrong way on the one-way street. He stared at Ligeti as
the car passed him, doing fifteen miles per hour. Ligeti hid behind a tree trunk and peered out after the car had passed.
Then he made a break for the house. Dartley spun the car in a tight, fast U-turn and came back to meet him.

Ligeti stopped, hesitated, ran one way a few steps,
then the other. He looked like a farmyard chicken tormented by a dog. Next he did something that cheered up Dartley a little.
He whipped out a military-issue Colt .45 automatic. The historic district might be precious and over-refined, but so far it
was proving to be high-caliber country.

Dartley braked the car to a gentle halt next to the panicked man. He asked out the wide window, “Did you forget the safety
catch?”

Ligeti had. He blinked and feverishly fiddled with the weapon.

“Put the gun away, Peter. If I’d come here to kill you, you’d be a dead bag of bones already. Get in the car. We have to talk.”

In spite of his fright, Ligeti was reasonable and intelligent. He did not bluster or defend his ego with tiresome lies. He
just slipped the gun back in his shoulder holster, this time remembering the safety catch, and got in the car.

Dartley was brief. He said he worked for Global and that Ligeti was next on the hit list.

“You heard about Leonard Hill on Cape Cod?” Dartley asked.

“Yes.”

“And Gary Sonderberg in Vegas?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t on the job with them,” Dartley explained. “My first case was Nicholas Avedesian. You knew him?”

“Sure.” Ligeti hesitated. “How did it work out with Nick?”

“You didn’t hear? We were on the Brent field in the North Sea.”

“I’ve been to Dunlin and Ekofisk,” Ligeti said.

“He played hide-and-seek with me, like I was his babysitter or something. One day he got real cute and he got nailed.”

Ligeti waited a long time before he said, “I’m next?”

“Yes.”

Dartley told him what he knew about Dockrell and described him in detail.

“No, I’ve seen no one who looks like that around here. I hardly go out, except for a walk. I never go to restaurants or other
public places. I spend most of the time in my apartment upstairs, reading and listening to music. I’ve some money put aside
and I planned to hide out here until this thing had blown over, even if it took another year or two. No one at Global knows
I’m here. Now you’re going to say that if you can find me, so can this Dockrell fellow. I suppose you’re right. What do I
do?”

Dartley decided to take a chance. “Stay put. I want to use you to lure him here.”

Ligeti made a strangling sound.

“The safest thing for you to do is assume a false name and move elsewhere,” Dartley added. “He could probably never find you.”

“But you want me to stay?” Ligeti said in a half-smothered voice.

“If you have the nerve.”

Another pause. “I don’t but I’ll give it a try.”

Dartley grinned. “You’re okay, Peter. Stick with me and you won’t regret it.” He hoped he sounded reassuring. Frankly, he
was willing to trade Ligeti’s life for Dockrell’s, but he could hardly be expected to tell Ligeti that. Why the hell should
Ligeti think Dartley was a nice guy?

“Who else knows where you are, Peter? So far as you know.”

“Only the landlady downstairs. She—”

“We’ve met briefly,” Dartley said shortly. “There’s got to be someone else. You hail from Pennsylvania. Who knows back there?”

“No one. No one anywhere knows a thing. The landlady wouldn’t know either if I hadn’t been depressed one time and told her
everything.”

“You trust her?” Dartley wanted to know.

“Absolutely. She’s one of a kind.”

Dartley laughed. “She’s that all right.” He told Ligeti about trying to get into the house and fleeing in a hail of bullets.

“My burglar alarm is tied into her phone,” Ligeti said. “I’ve infrared sensing devices too.”

“She’s a lousy shot,” Dartley declared.

“She’s eighty-one years old.”

“She needs to work out at a practice range.”

“I’ll tell her you said that.”

* * *

Dartley gave Ligeti half an hour to calm things down at the house, then he left the car and went to the garden gate. The gardener
had left the damaged window and was now surveying a path trampled through the flower beds.

“Looks like a deer has been through here, wouldn’t you say, sir?” he said in a gentle-mannered voice to Dartley.

“Ah, yes, I agree. Or maybe a bear.”

“Could have been a bear,” the gardener allowed, “ ’cepting the tracks look more like a deer.”

Dartley saw the clear line of his footprints in the soft soil.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” the gardener went on, “but I couldn’t rightly tell what it was, because it was all hunkered up
and going so fast.” He gave Dartley a sly look and bent to revive a crushed stem.

Dartley was let into the house by a black maid, who took him into a large room dominated by a monstrous chandelier and announced
him as Mr. Henry Staines. The feisty old lady’s name was Evangeline Talbot, and she waited patiently while Peter Ligeti informed
Dartley that the Talbots were an old Charleston family—sea captains, cotton brokers, Confederate officers, residents of Europe,
World War I and II U.S. Army and Navy officers, stockbrokers, merchant bankers—Ligeti had obviously passed many an hour hearing
about the Talbot glories and now he spoke of them almost as if he himself half-belonged to them.
Dartley supposed that, in a way, he had been adopted by them.

“You have a gardener, a maid. Who else?”

“A cook,” she told him.

“What do they think of Peter?”

“That he’s a nice man. They understand about his helping to meet household expenses by renting the upstairs part of the house.
They think he’s here on a rest cure. For his nerves.”

Dartley went carefully through what he wanted them to know. He went through each man’s death so far and downgraded himself
to the role of a staff security officer for Global Hydrocarbons. Even if Ligeti didn’t work for the firm anymore, he explained,
Global felt a responsibility for him.

“I’m going to be frank with you,” Dartley said. “There’s going to be personal danger involved for both of you. The safest
thing would be for Peter to run while there is time—to change his name. What I want him to do is to act as bait for his would-be
assassin in order to give me one crack at this man. That’s all. Mrs. Talbot, how do you feel about being put in personal danger?”

“I’m ready to die with my boots on.”

Dartley smiled. “Glad to hear it.”

She continued, “I’ve been bored for the past fifty years. It’s about time some action’s come round this way. But I don’t want
my three servants put in danger. They’ve been here all their lives, they put their trust in me and I don’t want them involved
in this unless they know what’s going on.”

“Would you trust them to hold their tongues?” Dartley asked.

“No. Why should they? It’s not often you get a chance to hear about a professional assassin stalking someone in Charleston.
We’ll be the talk of the town in a matter of hours. People will say I’m senile and. that you two are con men. My cousins will
come to give me serious advice. I’ve dozens of family here. Lots of us get a little eccentric in our later years. Everyone
will be very kind to me.”

Dartley considered for a while. “The only way to protect your staff is to set the action someplace else. He will come here.
We must lead him someplace else. Outside the city altogether would be best. Do you have a well-known tourist attraction—or
something like that—not far from the city?”

“Magnolia Gardens,” she answered, “the oldest gardens in America.”

“Can we go there?”

“Tomorrow—” she began.

“Right now,” Dartley insisted.

She sat upright and looked at him. “May I expect an active role in all this?”

“You’ll be right in the thick of it,” Dartley promised her.

She looked pleased. Then she frowned. “Peter tells me you have a poor opinion of my marksmanship.”

“That’s right, Mrs. Talbot. You missed me almost point-blank with those first three shots.”

“Young man, what makes you so sure that wasn’t deliberate on my part?”

Dartley couldn’t figure if she was kidding him or not. He had a singed shirt collar from one of those bullets, and another
had just about tickled his ear. If that was deliberate on her part, she had a very sharp edge on her sense of humor, as well
as a steady hand.

Douglas Dockrell went about things carefully. According to the account he was given, Peter Ligeti had resigned from Global
Hydrocarbons in a panic and gone underground. Dockrell knew from his own personal experience how truly difficult it is for
an adult to disappear. This fool Ligeti hadn’t even changed his name, which was just step one in any common-sensical approach.
He expected to find Paul Savage here—this being the name by which he had heard of Richard Dartley. Savage was working for
Global or someone else—maybe the still surviving oil geologists had clubbed together to hire him. No, they wouldn’t have the
money; Savage was top man and got top dollar. Savage could charge several times what Dockrell himself could demand for the
same job. That’s what it meant to be top gun.

This was why Dockrell was going about things carefully. He wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Ligeti and
Savage. He had a small problem to solve. If he moved in fast and eliminated Savage, in all probability Ligeti would get a
chance to run—and he would not be found so easily again. On the other hand,
if Dockrell went for Ligeti first, he might leave himself vulnerable to Savage. The ideal solution would be to get the two
of them together and use that one stone on two birds.

First things first. Dockrell had surveillance to do. He had to ascertain that Ligeti was still at the house, whether or not
Paul Savage was there, and what other factors might be involved. If Savage was already in place, he would be watching for
cars slowly passing the house, for a pedestrian in various disguises taking lingering looks in through the railing, for the
same man appearing over and over in different guided tours that passed the house. Dockrell would give him none of that. He
had to surprise Savage, who would be expecting him.