Montaro Caine A Novel - By Sidney Poitier Page 0,97

father’s name in the newspapers in association with the mining disaster and the Fitzer takeover rumors had taught her anything, it was that Montaro Caine might not always be as right as his daughter had once thought him to be. Her father had said that she would never see Nick Corcell again, and he seemed sure of himself, but as for Priscilla, she was not so sure that Nick would disappear from their lives quite so easily.

As for Nick himself, he was cruising toward Boston along the Massachusetts Turnpike with what he felt to be a new lease on life. Frankie Naples had left Stockbridge a half hour earlier with the hundred thousand dollars in the trunk of his car. Nick wasn’t wearing his confining, fancy suit anymore, and the sunshine had never felt so good against his back. As far as Nick was concerned, the rich Connecticut bitch and her big-time parents were history. Bruce Springsteen was singing “Working on a Dream” on the radio, and Nick didn’t even feel moved to shut it off.

In fact, Nick turned the volume of the stereo louder and began singing along up until the moment when he became aware of a black sedan riding close behind him, flashing highway lights at him. Assuming the driver wanted to pass, Nick pulled right, but the car remained behind him. Looking into his rearview mirror, Nick could see that two men were inside the sedan, wearing sunglasses; the man in the passenger seat was waving, gesturing for him to pull off the turnpike.

The men could have been undercover cops from the Stockbridge P.D., friends of Frankie Naples, or members of the Boston outfit—Nick had no idea. The only thing Nick knew for sure was that whoever was in that car was someone he didn’t want to talk to. He briefly considered flooring his VW, but he knew that the Beetle could never compete with the eight-cylinder American sedan behind him. Good looks and a polite manner had gotten him through every scrape he’d ever been in; he’d have to hope that would prove true again. Resigned, he signaled a turn into the right lane, then got off at the Newton exit.

Nick parked the car in the first parking space he saw—in front of an upscale coffee shop called Taste—and the sedan pulled in behind him. He got out of his car at the same time as the men in their dark suits and sunglasses.

“How can I help you, officers?” Nick said with a smile as he approached them. They looked like Federal agents or narcs, Nick thought, but when they flashed their business cards at him, he understood that they were neither.

“We’re not cops, Nick,” said the bulkier of the two men. “My name is Alan Rothman and this is Carlos Wallace. I think you might be able to help us.”

34

DESPITE THE BEST EFFORTS OF MONTARO CAINE AND HIS ASSOCIATES, meetings with government officials to discuss the significance of the coins and the prophecies of Matthew Perch and Luther John Doe yielded no useful results. Alfonse Alfaro, the bald, bespectacled New York senator with his familiarly chubby face and thinning gray hair, quickly agreed to a meeting. But when Caine and Howard Mozelle revealed that they weren’t interested in discussing either the senator’s reelection campaign or his committee’s ability to influence mining safety legislation, he quickly adjourned the meeting and directed one of his secretaries to facilitate an appointment for the men with NASA’s chief of staff. The NASA rep informed Caine and Mozelle that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss whether he would or wouldn’t act upon the information they had given him, after which the men met with the deputy director of Homeland Security, who said that his agency’s funding had been slashed, and the men really needed to be talking to the FBI.

Anna Hilburn’s efforts to determine the whereabouts of Whitney and Franklyn Walker were proving to be no more successful. Whitney’s uncle Frederick and cousins said that Whitney and Franklyn were on vacation, but none of them knew where. Whitney’s uncle had sent a letter to the couple, but had received no response. Lawrence Aikens learned that Cordiss Krinkle was spreading the word that the couple was safely ensconced in some European country, but neither Aikens nor Curly Bennett was able to learn in which country that might be. And, after Aikens met with Montaro, both men agreed that whatever information Cordiss was spreading was probably false anyway. Near the end