Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

He continued, “Wasn’t what you wanted. It wasn’t what I wanted, bet your bottom dollar. But what happened was a reasonable possibility. She’s got good people watching her. Now we know. We’ll just rerig and keep going. We can’t get emotional about it. Next time we’ll get her. I’ve brought in somebody knows Harlem pretty good. We’ve already found out where she goes to school, we’re working on where she lives. Trust me, we’ve got everything covered.”

“I’ll check for messages later,” the man said. And hung up abruptly. They’d spoken for no more than three minutes, Thompson Boyd’s limit.

By the book…

Thompson hung up – there was no need to wipe prints; he was wearing leather gloves. He continued down the street. The block was a pleasant strip of bungalows on the east side of the street and apartments on the west, an old neighborhood. There were a few children nearby, just getting home from school. Inside the houses here Thompson could see the flicker of soap operas and afternoon talk shows, as the women ironed and cooked. Whatever life was like in the rest of the city, a lot of this neighborhood had never dug out of the 1950s. It reminded him of the trailer park and the bungalow of his childhood. A nice life, a comforting life.

His life before prison, before he grew numb as a missing arm or a snakebit leg.

A block ahead of him Thompson saw a young blonde girl dressed in a school uniform approach a beige bungalow. His heart sped up a bit – just a beat or two – watching her climb the few concrete stairs, take a key from her book bag, open the door and walk inside.

He continued on to this same house, which was as neat as the others, perhaps slightly more so, and featured a hitching-post jockey, with black features painted politically correct tan, and a series of small ceramic deer grazing on the tiny, yellowing lawn. He walked past the bungalow slowly, looking into the windows, and then continued up the block. A gust of wind blew the shopping bag in an arc and the cans clanked dully against each other. Hey, careful there, he told himself. And steadied the bag.

At the end of the block he turned and looked back. A man jogging, a woman trying to parallel park, a boy dribbling a basketball on a leaf-covered driveway. No one paid him any attention.

Thompson Boyd started back toward the house.

Inside her Queens bungalow Jeanne Starke told her daughter, “No book bags in the hall, Brit. Put ’em in the den.”

“Mom,” the ten-year-old girl sighed, managing to get at least two syllables out of the word. She tossed her yellow hair, hung her uniform jacket on the hook and picked up the heavy knapsack, groaning in exasperation.

“Homework?” her pretty, mid-thirties mother asked. She had a mass of curly brunette hair, today tied back with a rosy red scrunchy.

“Don’t have any,” Britney said.

“None?”

“Nope.”

“Last time you said no homework, you had homework,” her mother said pointedly.

“It wasn’t really homework. It was a report. Just cutting something out of a magazine.”

“You had work for school to do at home. Homework.”

“Well, I don’t have any today.”

Jeanne could tell there was more. She lifted an eyebrow.

“It’s just we have to bring in something Italian. For show-and-tell. You know, for Columbus Day. Did you know he was Italian? I thought he was Spanish or something.”

The mother of two did happen to know this fact. She was a high school graduate and the holder of an associate degree in nursing. She could have worked, if she’d wanted to, but her boyfriend made good money as a salesman and was happy to let her to take care of the house, go shopping with her girlfriends and raise the children.

Part of which was making sure they did their homework, whatever form it took, including show-and-tell.

“That’s all? Loving, loving, tell the truth?”

“Mommmmm.”

“The truth?”

“Yeah.”

“‘Yes.’ Not ‘yeah.’ What’re you going to take?”

“I don’t know. Something from Barrini’s deli maybe. Did you know that Columbus, like, was wrong? He thought he’d found Asia, not America. And he came here three times and still never got it right.”

“Really?”

“Yeah… yes .” Britney vanished.

Jeanne returned to the kitchen, thinking this fact she hadn’t known. Columbus really thought he’d found Japan or China? She dredged the chicken in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs, and started to lose herself in a fantasy about the family traveling in Asia – the images courtesy of cable TV. The girls would love that. Maybe…It was then that she happened to glance outside and, through the opaque curtain, saw the form of a man slow as he approached the house.

This made her uneasy. Her boyfriend, whose company made computer components for government contractors, had stirred up some paranoia inside her. Always be on the lookout for strangers, he’d say. You notice anybody slowing down as they drive past the house, anybody who seems unusually interested in the children…tell me about it right away. Once, not long ago, they’d been in the park up the street with the girls, who were playing on the swings, when a car slowed up and the driver, wearing sunglasses, glanced at the children. Her boyfriend had gotten all freaked and made them go back to the house.

He’d explained: “Spies.”

“What?”

“No, not like CIA spies. Industrial spies – from our competitors. My company made over six billion dollars last year and I’m responsible for a good chunk of that. People would love to find out what I know about the market.”

“Companies really do that?” Jeanne had asked.

“You never really know about people,” had been his response.

And Jeanne Starke, who had a rod imbedded in her arm where it’d been shattered by a whisky bottle a few years ago, had thought: You never did, true. She now wiped her hands on her apron, walked to the curtain and looked out.

The man was gone.

Okay, stop spooking yourself. It’s -

But wait…She saw motion on the front steps. And believed she saw a corner of a bag – a shopping bag – sitting on the porch. The man was here!

What was going on?

Should she call her boyfriend?

Should she call the police?

But they were at least ten minutes away.

“There’s somebody outside, Mommy,” Britney called.

Jeanne stepped forward fast. “Brit, you stay in your room. I’ll see.”

But the girl was opening the front door.

“No!” Jeanne called.

And heard: “Thanks, honey,” Thompson Boyd said in a friendly drawl as he stepped inside the house, toting the shopping bag she’d seen.

“You gave me a fright,” Jeanne said. She hugged him and he kissed her.

“Couldn’t find my keys.”

“You’re home early.”

He grimaced. “Problems with the negotiations this morning. They were postponed till tomorrow. Thought I’d come home and do some work here.”

Jeanne’s other daughter, Lucy, eight, ran into the hallway. “Tommy! Can we watch Judge Judy? ”

“Not today.”

“Aw, please. What’s in the bag?”

“That’s the work I have to do. And I need your help.” He set the bag down on the floor in the hallway, looked at the girls solemnly and said, “You ready?”

“I’m ready!” Lucy said.

Brit, the older girl, said nothing but that was because it wouldn’t be cool to agree with her sister; she was definitely ready to help too.

“After we postponed my meeting I went out and bought these. I’ve been reading up on it all morning.” Thompson reached into the shopping bag and pulled out cans of paint, sponges, rollers and brushes. Then he held up a book bristling with yellow Post-it tabs, Home Decor Made Easy. Volume 3: Decorating Your Child’s Room .