Tailed (11 page)

I watched Nicholas absorb this information with more genuine surprise than I'd seen from him in a long time. Then again, I'd seen a lot of changes in my brother over the last year. I mean, Nicholas married? His hard edges had softened, but not so much that anybody but his brother—or perhaps his fiancée—would notice. He still had the short hair with the flip at the front, the tweed suits even in summer, the eyes that could freeze glaciers, the intensity that could make lava from rock. He was always passionate about his “work,” whatever it happened to be, but never about people on any kind of personal level. It's hard to explain, but I guess you could sum it up by saying that he was always very much in the here and now. Concepts like love, which in its best form embodies a sense of interpersonal destiny, and thus the anticipation of many years of intimacy, seemed beyond him. It was my guess that he'd always harbored deeper emotions but had them well subjugated.

“I assume that means he's Dad's brother, and thus Kit Carson's son and not Gabby's brother. There's the connection to the White Geckos right there. Fowler…” Nicholas let the name hang. He seemed to be running calculations in his head.

My ruminations on family history quickly turned to trepidation. By seeking out Draco, weren't we just baiting the killer? Putting me in closer proximity to the murderer? Two birds with one gecko. “Wouldn't it be better just to lay low for a while?”

Nicholas gave me a longer look. “A while?”

“I dunno.”

“OK, so you lay low. Now what? Say the murders stop at four. And assume that the FBI suddenly sees the light and drops you as a suspect. Are you really going to feel safe back in New York, knowing the killer is still out there?”

I squirmed.

“Consider another scenario,” he continued. “That the FBI and Air Force have different motives for solving this crime. The FBI is probably just trying to solve a serial killing. But, gee, last I heard the Air Force isn't in the business of solving crimes. So they're looking for something else. How much you want to bet it has something to do with, say, the military? Something that's in their interest, something that could be secret that they want kept secret. They may want to pin these murders on you—we don't know. Maybe they're even committing the murders.”

“You're spinning quite a conspiracy theory here, Nicholas.”

“If the Air Force grabs you for somehow compromising national security, who knows, you could be reclassified as some sort of foreign combatant and spend the rest of your days in a human kennel in Cuba. A few years ago that may have sounded like a conspiracy theory, but today it is entirely plausible. Since you're in hiding, Draco is the only one of the grandsons out in plain view—he's live on TV. You don't have to be Barnaby friggin' Jones to figure out that the killer is going to go right at him as soon as possible to stay ahead of the cops. If we get to Draco and keep him from getting killed, what does that make you?”

“Um…” My head was spinning again.

“The guy who
didn't
kill Draco. The guy who
saved
Draco. The guy who
isn't
the killer. That gets you out of this predicament right away instead of in who knows how long. Look, I want my best man at my wedding next week.”

Perfect example of my earlier assessment of Nicholas. He said the “best man” line again, like he was trying to figure a way of delivering it like he meant it, but without any genuine hint of fraternal affection. It kept coming out like he was declaring his taxes would be in by the fourteenth.

“I get it, I get it. Whether the FBI or the Air Force are working together, or on the correct track, if we don't save Draco and find out who is at the bottom of this…Damn, Nicholas, why does this keep happening to me?”

He looked confused, so I illuminated.

“Maybe you're used to all this trouble, but I'm not. Well, I don't want to be.”

Nicholas laughed. “Better get used to it,
muchacho
. Pretty obvious that the white gecko curse is just one of many the Carson family enjoys. So, what's Gabby look like naked?”

“Oh thanks, Nicholas.” I put a hand over my face. “You had to put that image in my mind.”

“Just watching after your virtue.” An impish grin screwed his face. “Thought I'd try to replace the image of this morning's wake-up call.”

I gritted my teeth and glanced into the backseat. Vargas was sawing wood with the wrestling magazine covering his face. “OK, let's have it.”

“What?”

“C'mon…”

“I'm just razzing you, Garth. She once crawled into my bed. A frisky girl.”

I heard the centaur's lute in the distance.

“Was she good?”

“You know what they say: practice makes perfect.”

chapter 14

I
don't know what I expected. Statues of Marlin Perkins? A skyscraper with
OMAHA STEAKS
emblazoned across the top? Billboards for Boys Town? But about ten hours and three Conoco filling stations after leaving Michigan's Lower Peninsula, we descended Council Bluffs, Iowa, and beheld Mutual of Omaha's namesake below.

The view was decidedly uninviting. The clouds ahead were doom itself, the Missouri River in the foreground a black moat of ill fate. Unlike an Eastern thunderstorm, the clouds roiled green around the edges like angry waves approaching a shore. The center of the storm glowered over the city, engulfing the metropolis in the depths of darkness. Perfect setting for evil troll armies or Vlad the Impaler's domain. No help for my sense of trepidation.

Behind us the sky was painfully bright, but ahead in Omaha the streetlights were on. I've never seen a tornado, or been in one, but one look at those clouds and I guessed those firsts were close at hand. Hail started pounding the roof and car hood. No, not the size of golf balls, but bigger than any I'd ever seen, and they were bouncing all around us on the roadway as if a tractor trailer of mothballs had flipped over somewhere up ahead.

I cleared my throat. “Vargas, should we pull over or something? Hail means a tornado, doesn't it?”

Vargas leaned forward between me and Nicholas.

“Yes. This is a bad sign. But not to worry. Wilco knows when a tornado is about to strike. Here, have a cheese curd.”

“The dog?” Nicholas glanced in the rearview mirror. Even Nicholas looked a little concerned.

Vargas was holding an open package of what looked like malformed white cocktail franks. I gingerly took one and examined it closely as Vargas continued.

“Yes. Two years ago, a storm was approaching, and we heard Wilco howling. Not like a normal howl. Like a yodel. We look outside and we say, ‘Shut up, you stupid mutt!' But he was not so stupid. We see a funnel cloud tearing up the neighbor's crops. I collected the dog and we sat in the root cellar until the howling stopped.”

“What exactly is a root cellar?” I asked. “Is it called that because there are roots coming out of the walls, or is it because you keep root vegetables down there? Or is that where cheese curds come from?”

“Garth, please, must you ask ridiculous questions when you're nervous?” Nicholas sighed. “So, Vargas, the tornado missed Shelly's Streusel?”

“Yes. The dog, he stops howling. We come up, the tornado is gone. We keep canned fruit in the cellar.”

“Wilco yodeled just that once? None of Granny's pickled hog jowls down there in the cellar?” I took a small bite of the white cheese. “It's just mozzarella.”

“Sometimes once is enough. No, it is a cheese curd.”

I was convinced this cheese curd thing was some Midwest inside joke, and like down east humor or mutterings from Lake Wobegon, the irony was too obtuse and slight for my sensibilities. But the mozzarella was tasty.

The windshield wipers were batting away what looked like a downpour of Ping-Pong balls. Captain Kangaroo's worst nightmare or Mr. Moose's wet dream, take your pick. I swiveled around to look at the mutt, who, as was his custom, was gazing nowhere in particular and seemed as content as ever in his quiet canine reverie about whether to eat my pinky first or go for all five at once. I hoped Vargas wasn't feeding him any cheese curds. Remember that line in the sand.

Nicholas and I exchanged glances. The cars and trucks all around us charged on toward darkened Omaha, so we did, too. The hail stopped abruptly, and I watched as we passed under the green edge of the storm. I could picture a twister corkscrewing down from the sky like a petulant Hydra, and flicking cars off the road.

“It is bad when the hail stops.” Vargas grunted with apprehension.

I expected yodeling any second.

But we made it to the Missouri River, and the bridge, where waves of water suddenly crashed down out of the sky. To our right through the blur of rain, I could just make out a large modern arena with the glowing word
QWEST
emblazoned across at the top.

“It is good when the rain begins.” Vargas grunted with satisfaction. “I don't think twisters happen in heavy rains. Much.”

Well, Vargas was right, because it rained hard all the way to where we veered off the highway and pulled into a Best Holiday hotel.

Wilco never did sound his tornado warning howl. Thankfully.

         

I'd done a fair bit of traveling for the Wilberforce/ Peete gig and had become familiar with the conventions of most hotel chains. Fortunately, my employer—well, my former employer—was pretty good at placing me at the better chains. No Motel 11's for Appraiser Par Excellence Carson. Still, there's a certain tiresome routine to the hotel/motel shtick no matter where you go. To their credit, many of the chains have put brains to the grindstone in an effort to dispel the disorienting experience of sleeping somewhere different each night. They want their loyal business travelers to feel at home, and thus they've added little hints of terra familius. Like having the paper at your doorstep every morning. Or having toiletries handy, and an iron and ironing board, and a clock radio. Yet nothing makes me feel less at home than the search for the ice machine. I'm a big fan of ice and like great chilly heaps of it around for any and all beverages, even beer on a really hot day. Nowadays, many hotel rooms have fridges—why can't they just put ice trays in there? Cracking a few ice trays would go a long way toward making me feel at home.

We took two rooms: Nicholas and me in one, Vargas and Wilco in the other. I had the ice bucket in hand, about to begin my quest.

“No time for that.” Nicholas extended a glass containing a couple fingers of brown fluid. He had his own glass in the other hand, and a bottle of Macallan sat atop the TV. A reporter on the tube was talking excitedly about a twister that struck just outside the city, and a crawler along the bottom boasted many more throughout the county.

“The ice machine is just down the hall somewhere,” I said.

“Take a snort and let's get to the arena. The
Lucha Libre Mucho Grande Spectaculare
begins in two hours.”

I plunked down the ice bucket and took the glass hesitantly. Well, if there ever were a time to start drinking scotch, this would be that time. Bolting the scotch, I felt my throat seize.

“Damn, Garth.” Nicholas gave my back a few hard swats as I coughed. “This is expensive scotch. You're supposed to sip it.”

“Nicholas,” I rasped. “I want to call Angie.”

“Out of the question. The heat will be all over us within the hour if you do.”

“I could call Otto. On his cell.”

“Otto has a cell?”

“I could call Otto's cell phone. Angie's cell phone is being fixed and she was going to borrow his for the trip. I'll use my calling card.”

“Getting it fixed? Nobody gets a cell phone…OK, make it quick.” He jerked his arm and eyed his Timex. “Very quick. And for God's sake, don't give her any particulars. Not where we are, not where we're going…”

         

“Alo. This Garv Carson Critters. Tell to me, please, if help.”

“Otto?”

“Luba?”

“Otto, it's Garth, not your estranged wife. Didn't Angie borrow your phone?”

“Oo my Got! My friend!
Dyepdeyavoga
…I very glad eetz not Luba. I go to nude beach for Fire Island, and vife Luba, she know, and like bear with a one eye and no shovel.”

“Otto, no time for that. Did Angie get to the airport all right?”
One eye and no shovel?

“Yes, but of course, Yangie here.”

“What? Put her on the phone.”

“Vy you call to me if you want Angie is to call?”

“Otto, I don't have time—”

“Vy not you talk of your friend Otto, eh? When to home you come, my friend? We drink vodka, I make cheeken—”

“Otto, KGB.”

“Oo my Got! KGB!” That had more or less become the code word for “bad men are after me.”

“Garth?”

Beethoven wrote symphonies of great passion. Strauss: waltzes of swirling splendor. Raspighi: tone poems of scintillating beauty. None held a candle to the sound of sweet Angie's voice over the phone at that moment.

“Angie—are you OK?”

“I'm fine, sweetie. Listen, there's something I need to tell you. We're not in Chicago. We had to give two FBI agents, Bricazzi and Stucco, the slip.”

“The slip?”

“Yes. I guess I can't tell you about it if you think someone might be listening…”

I tensed. “So if you're not in Chicago at the show, where are you? Are you OK, Angie? Something's wrong…” I could hear all sorts of muffled, cavernous sounds in the background.

“I'm fine. You're the one who's in danger. I need to tell you…Are you visiting Aunt Jilly the way you said you would?”

“Yes, I'm at her house now. But are you sure you're OK?”

“Yes, yes…oh, Garth. For the love of Pete, why is this happening again?”

“I wish I knew. But why didn't you go to Chicago? You'll miss the big reception and everything.”

“Some things are more important. Please be safe. I've been told Aunt Jilly's is very dangerous, so be careful.”

“Babe, I'm not in any danger…”

“You liar,” she chided, only partly in jest. “I know that voice.”

Can't hide anything from Angie. Doesn't keep me from trying now and then.

“Nicholas is here…” I looked over at my brother, who was waving his hands furiously. Oops.

“That makes me feel better. I think. But what's he doing there?”

“Again, I don't want to say anything except to tell you not to worry and that I'll hopefully be home soon, with this whole mess cleared up. Don't tell anybody that Nicholas is here—I mean, unless you have to.”

There was silence on the other end, and then quietly: “Garth, you be careful. If you let anything happen to you…”

“Yeah, I know.” I smiled. “I know, if I get hurt you'll kill me.”

She laughed briefly, her voice quavering. “Hope to see you soon.”

“I love you, too, babe.”

Nicholas was drawing a finger across his throat, signaling me to hang up.

“Love you to pieces.” Angie hung up.

I leaned on the phone a few moments, my back to Nicholas. His hand gripped my shoulder.

“Buck up, Garth. We'll get to the bottom of this and be back in New York in no time.”

I wished I could believe that.