little fucker, but he held himself back. He was a professional, after all.
“Sorry to bother you, but this’ll only take a minute.” Victor set the Geiger counter down and fished some papers from his shirt pocket—a grocery list of things to pick up on the way home and an e-mail joke about a guy stuffing his scrotum in a ball washer at a golf course. He studied them for a moment and then glanced back up at the kid. “The records show you’re a new account. Is that right?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s right.” The kid acted like he had to think about it. Practically giving himself away. He was looking really nervous now. Victor smiled.
“Well, we got all these damned environmental regs we gotta follow. And one of them is we have to take an exhaust measurement on all the new trucks that come in on the new accounts. You know, with the air quality problems and all. If you wouldn’t mind starting her up, all I need is about a minute around by the tail pipe.”
“Sure thing. Hate to get you in trouble with the tree huggers.” The kid smiled this time. Trying to be Mr. Laid Back. Trying a little too hard, Victor thought.
“Shit son, you got no idea.” Victor spat on the ground and nodded, laying it on heavy. “I tell you what, if it ain’t one thing it’s another around here. Shit, you’d think we were selling stuffed spotted owls or something. Anyway, just fire it up and I’ll be out of your hair in just a minute.”
The kid hopped into the cab and Victor went around back, taking a wide birth and slipping the headphones on. He fiddled with the knobs and switches on the box until he could hear the bits of static clicking away, slow and steady. As he got close to the truck he heard the individual clicks crescendo into a solid wall of buzzing noise. It was almost too much to listen to. The whole truck was contaminated. He lingered for a minute to make it look good and then walked around to the driver’s side of the cab.
“Thanks, son, that’ll do just fine. I just need a phone number where the state inspector can call you to confirm we did the inspection. I doubt they will. They pull random records now and then and require us to have contact info. You know how it is, always breathing down our got-damned necks.”
“Sure.” The kid nodded again. Smiling. Relaxed as he told Victor his phone number. Then the kid threw it into gear and started pulling away.
He crossed the parking lot slow and steady, like he didn’t have any reason to try to get away, like there was nothing at all to be worried about. Like he hadn’t just given his phone number to the guy who was trying to catch him.
Victor watched him cross the lot, pause at the intersection, and then make a slow turn and disappear down the street. Victor started formulating plans for how to catch them red-handed. He could feel himself slipping back into the old mindset. Special Agent Victor Jones. Playing it cool. Staying one step ahead. Putting things in place for the big take down.
A voice inside his head kept whispering the mantra that he’d stolen from a book by Eric Berne when he was a young psychology student at Rutgers. It was the same confident voice he used to hear in the old days, whenever he knew he’d finally found someone’s weakness and was going to exploit it, to crush the life out of the bad guys and prove he could get it done. The voice repeated, over and over: Now I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.
XVIII
Walking was bullshit.
Hank had to get out and get a look at the houses in the file Janie gave him and he had to have a car to get it done. He went over to the mini-market again and came back with coffee and a doughnut and sat at the little table in his room, skimming the want ads for cars. There were only six for sale. He first choice was a newer Toyota, figuring it would be the most likely to run well. But he called and got no answer. The 1988 Honda Accord had already sold last month and the woman on the phone asked him why they’d run the ad a second time. Hank told her he didn’t know.
Two of the ads were for