David Morrell - Assumed Identity

Because they didn’t need to keep him in sight. All they had to do was study an audiovisual monitor and follow the homing signals they received from a battery-powered location transmitter concealed within the plastic bottom of the small picnic cooler that contained the money.

Friday-night traffic was dense. Amid gleaming headlights, Buchanan reached the glass-and-steel Tower Hotel two minutes ahead of schedule. Telling the parking attendant that he would probably need the car right away, he darted inside the plush lobby and found his jeans, nylon jacket, and picnic cooler being sternly assessed by a group of men and women wearing tuxedos and glittering evening gowns. Sure, Buchanan thought. There’s a reception going on. Bailey found out and took advantage of it. He wants me and especially anyone following me to be conspicuous.

Used to being in conspicuous, Buchanan felt self-conscious as he waited in the lobby. He looked for Bailey among the guests, not expecting to find him, wondering how Bailey would contact him this time. The clock behind the check-in counter showed twenty after nine, exactly when Buchanan was supposed to. .

“Mr. Grant?” a uniformed bellhop asked.

Buchanan had noticed the short middle-aged man moving from guest to guest in the lobby, speaking softly to each. “That’s right.”

“A friend of yours left this envelope for you.”

Finding a deserted corner, Buchanan ripped it open.

At quarter to ten, be at the entrance to Shirttail Charlie’s restaurant on. .

Three stops later, at eleven o’clock, Buchanan arrived at the Riverside Hotel on Las Olas, a street that seemed the local equivalent of Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive. From information in the terra-cotta-floored lobby, he learned that the hotel had been built in 1936, a date that was very old by Fort Lauderdale standards. A few decades before, this area had been wilderness. The wicker furniture and coral fireplaces exuded a sense of history, no matter how recent.

Buchanan had a chance to learn these facts and notice these details because Bailey didn’t contact him on schedule. By twenty after eleven, Bailey still hadn’t been in touch. The lobby was deserted.

“Mr. Grant?”

Buchanan looked up from where he sat on a rattan chair near glass patio doors, a location he’d chosen because it allowed him to be observed from outside. A woman behind the small reception counter was speaking to him, her eyebrows raised.

“Yes.”

“I have a phone call for you.”

Buchanan carried the picnic cooler to the counter and took the phone from the receptionist.

“Go out the rear door, cross the street, and walk through the gate, then past the swimming pool.” Bailey’s curt instructions were followed by the sudden hum of the dial tone.

Buchanan handed the telephone back to the receptionist, thanked her, and used the rear exit. Outside, he saw the gate across the street and a walkway through a small murky park beside the swimming pool, although the swimming pool itself was deserted, its lights off.

Moving closer, enveloped by the shadows of palm trees, he expected Bailey’s voice to drift from the darkness, to give him instructions to leave the money on a barely visible poolside table and continue to stroll as if he hadn’t been contacted.

The only lights were ahead, from occasional arc lamps along the canal, as well as from a cabin cruiser and a houseboat moored there. He heard an engine rumbling. Then he heard a man call, “Mr. Grant? Is that you over there, Mr. Grant?”

Buchanan continued forward, away from the swimming pool, toward the canal. He immediately realized that the rumbling engine belonged to a water taxi that was temporarily docked, bow-first, between the cabin cruiser and the houseboat. The water taxi was yellow, twenty feet long, with poles along the gunwales supporting a yellow-and-green-striped canvas roof. In daylight, the roof would shade passengers from the glare and heat of the sun. But at night, it shut out the little illumination that the arc lamps along the canal provided and prevented Buchanan from seeing who was in there.

Certainly there were passengers. At least fifteen. Their shadowy outlines were evident. But Buchanan had no way to identify them. The canvas roof muffled what they said to one another, although their slurred rhythms made him suspect they were on a Friday-night round of parties and bars.

“That’s right. My name is Grant,” Buchanan said to the driver, who sat at controls in front of the passengers.

“Well, your friend’s already aboard. I wondered if you were going to show up. I was just about to leave.”

Buchanan strained to see through the darkness beneath the water taxi’s roof, then stepped onto the gangplank that extended from the canal to the bow. With his right hand, he gripped a rope railing for balance while he held the picnic cooler in his left and climbed down a few steps into the taxi. Passengers in their early twenties, dressed casually but expensively for an evening out, sat on benches along each side.

The stern remained shrouded by darkness.

“How much do I owe you?” Buchanan asked the driver.

“Your friend already paid for you.”

“How generous.”

“Back here, Vic,” a crusty voice called from the gloomy stern.

As the driver retracted the gangplank, Buchanan made his way past a group of young men on his left and stopped at the stern, his eyes now sufficiently adjusted to the darkness to see Bailey slouched on a bench.

Bailey waved a beefy hand. “How ya doin’, buddy?”

Buchanan sat and placed the picnic cooler between them.

“You didn’t need to bring your lunch,” Bailey said.

Buchanan just stared at him as the driver backed the water taxi from between the cabin cruiser and the houseboat, then increased speed along the canal. Slick, Buchanan thought. I’m separated from my backup team. They couldn’t have gotten to the water taxi in time, and certainly they couldn’t have hurried on board without making Bailey suspicious.

Now that Buchanan’s eyes had become even more accustomed to the darkness, the glow from condominiums, restaurants, and boats along the canal seemed to increase in brightness. But Buchanan was interested in the spectacle only because the illumination allowed him to see the cellular telephone that Bailey folded and placed in a pouch attached to his belt.

“Handy things,” Bailey said. “You can call anybody from anywhere.”

“Like from a car to a pizza parlor. Or from a water taxi to a hotel lobby.”

“You got it,” Bailey said. “Makes it easy to keep in touch while I’m on the go or hangin’ around to see if extra company’s comin’.” Bailey lowered his voice and gestured toward the cooler. “No joke. That better not be your lunch, and it better all be here.”

The other passengers on the boat were talking loudly, obscuring what Bailey and Buchanan said.

“There’s no more where that came from,” Buchanan murmured.

Bailey raised his bulky shoulders. “Hey, I’m not greedy. All I need is a little help with my expenses, a little reward for my trouble.”

“I went through a lot of effort to get what’s in this cooler,” Buchanan said. “I won’t go through it again.”

“I don’t expect you to.”

“That definitely eases my mind.”

The water taxi arrived at a restaurant/tavern, where a sign on the dock read, PAUL’S-ON-THE-RIVER. The stylish building was long and low, its rear section almost completely glass, separated by segments of white stucco. Inside, a band played. Beyond the large windows, customers danced. Others strolled outside, carrying drinks, or sat at tables amid flowering bushes near palm trees.

The taxi’s driver set down the gangplank. Four passengers got up unsteadily to go ashore.