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Outside, I stretch for a few minutes. A male bluebird boasts from his treetop
and swallows twitter and swoop in the pale light. I start in an easy lope down
the curving drive and look back up through the thick old maples at the
gleaming yellow house flanked by blue spruce. The white trim around the
lancet-arched windows and the new slate mansard roof is crisp and clean.
Out on the blacktop road, a colorful troop of cyclists passes me, drafting one
another up the long country hill. To my right, a tractor rumbles across a
field, spraying manure. The smell turns my stomach, but at the top of the next
rise, the wind from the south brings me a face full of fresh lake air and I
can see for twenty miles to the south end. Out on the water a handful of
triangular sails glides back and forth in the dawn.
I love to run without stopping. Sweating. Free. Gliding like the boats. Soon
the sun turns the sky from red to pink, then white before it rises in a
blinding ball. I am numb. The sound of my breathing and the steady stream of
sweat seem far away. When I reach Mandana, a small hamlet halfway down the
lake, I turn back. Bert has seen to it that the staff has breakfast waiting
for me at the small linen-dressed table on the back porch. Even though he is
cleanly shaven and neatly dressed, there are bags under Bert s bloodshot eyes.
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Bad night? I say.
He glares at me and says, You expect me to sleep good here?
What about soaring with the spirit of the night? I say. Isn t that what
your grandmother used to say?
The night sky in this place is too thick with crows, he says. I ll sleep
tomorrow night. If it comes.
I take a sip of coffee and say, Our guests haven t even arrived and you re
ready for it to end.
Bert sits down across from me and puts a napkin in his lap before taking a
piece of grilled salmon off the serving plate and eating it with his fingers
like a bear.
I just hope that you don t go so far down this river of darkness that you
can t get back, he says, looking steadily at me without blinking his big dark
eyes. Because you know where that river goes.
I think with the money I have, I say, taking a bite of toast, that I can
buy a boat with a motor.
Even a boat with a motor can t go up a falls, he says.
I thought you hated the man, I say.
I do hate him, he says. I d like him dead, but I wouldn t invite him to
stay at my house before I killed him. Besides, I don t think you should mess
with the spirits, man. Make them angry.
I look at my watch and say, Speaking of angry spirits, Mr. Lawrence should be
here by now.
You better hope the real spirits don t get mad, Bert says.
They re okay with it. I checked, I say.
I smell the smoke from a cigarette. A moment later, a man in dark slacks and
leather jacket with long red hair rounds the corner of the house. He waves
without speaking and tosses what s left of his butt down on the grass,
grinding it with his toe. Chuck Lawrence was recommended to me by Vance. He s
a former government employee. Very smart. Very connected. Very effective.
Chuck and I go upstairs to the guestroom where the Villays will be staying.
Chuck holds out his palm. In his hand is something not much bigger than a pin.
He points to a spot high up on the wall.
I inserted one just like this right here, he says. It s a projection
filament. I took off the baseboard and put the transmission unit in the wall.
There s another one over here that s a camera so you can see what s going on.
There s a speaker here and a microphone there.
I ll do the same thing in their house tonight, he says. I just wanted you
to see that you really can t detect it. They ll have no idea. Come on, I ll
show you how it works.
He draws the shades in the room and turns out the lights, shutting the door
behind us. We go into my master suite, and Chuck sits down at the desk. He
opens the laptop that s hooked into the ISDN line and boots it up.
I can call it up from my computer too. Everything is transmitted digitally,
he says. Like a cell phone. The guy who put the artistic part of it together
is a special effects genius out in Hollywood. You said spend whatever it
takes. What till you see how good this looks.
He shows me what the images will look and sound like, then gives me two small
vials.
Green is for him, he says, closing up his computer. Red for her. One drop
on each of their toothbrushes. Just one, and remember, green for go, he ll be
the one up all night. She gets red. Stop. She ll be out of it.
And you ve got their maid in Hewlett Harbor all set? I ask.
Took some doing, he said. I had to go all the way to a quarter million, but
we ll be watching her and she knows it, so we should be fine. Now, they re
definitely out of there tonight, right?
Yes, I say. And if something happens, I ll call you right away.
I ll be in and out in a couple of hours, he says, so, as long as they re on
that airplane this afternoon, we should be fine.
I like it, Chuck, I say. I like it all.
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He shakes his head and says, This one s different, I tell you that. Could
have had the guy terminated a lot quicker and a lot easier.
Too easy, I say.
48
I FIND BERT on the back porch leafing through Travel & Leisure. Find anything
interesting? I ask. Not that you care, he says, but there s a dude ranch
out in Montana that I d like to visit someday.
We have to get to the airport.
You don t want me to get them by myself? he asks, getting up.
No, I say. I want to give them a proper greeting.
Bert purses his lips and slowly shakes his head, looking away from me and down
toward the water.
We take the black Suburban to the private airport in Syracuse. The day is warm
enough for Bert to put on the AC. The G-V is landing as we pull into the
terminal, long and gleaming white with its super-size engines and its upturned
wingtips. It streaks past, then taxis quickly around, meeting us out on the
tarmac. The pilot hurries out and hands down my guests while one of the ground
crew pulls the suitcases out of the plane s cargo hold and places them in the
back of my truck.
Rangle s wife, Katie Vanderhorn, is first off in a cloud of perfume. I take
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