Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

The car smelled like dogs, that nauseating dog-food smell they exuded from every pore. Earl had used the car instead of the truck again. She decided not to say anything, because it would spoil the next hour.

Earl was brilliant in his own way. Raising and training attack dogs was a great sideline for a detective agency that didn’t do much business. In a city the size of Los Angeles you could pick up any breed you wanted from the pound for the price of the shots, which was up to sixty bucks now. Some of them had papers. You trained the dog to sit, heel, shit outdoors, and maul people, and you could sell it for fifteen thousand.

But Linda was ready to work now, and that was Earl’s fault too. He had trained her practically from childhood to his rhythms. He was only really alive when he was hunting. Between times he only played at it and got more and more irritable.

Seaver was precisely on time, as she had known he would be. He was one of those guys who seemed to see himself as though he were still in the military. For the ones like him, that wasn’t some kind of interruption in his existence but his initiation into manhood. She saw him pull the rental car between the diagonal lines, but he didn’t behave like the others. He was out and walking as soon as the keys were out of the ignition. He still carried himself straight, only now there was a little gray at the sides of his short hair. The aviator sunglasses he used to wear had been replaced with plain black frames, but the gray summer suit with the bright white shirt still had that animal-in-clothes look because it was cut too snugly and the collar was too tight, the way the army had taught him to dress.

He got into the back seat and Earl drove off. “Hello, Cal,” said Linda. “You’re looking good.”

“You too,” said Seaver. She knew that he had thought of a compliment, but he had pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth because he had known better than to say it in front of Earl.

“Let’s go to Ivy at the Shore,” said Seaver. “We can talk business while we’re on the freeway, and then eat in peace.”

“When’s your plane out?” asked Earl.

“Four o’clock,” said Seaver. “If I’m back in my car by three, I’ll make it. If not, I’ll take another flight.”

As Earl accelerated down the ramp onto the San Diego Freeway Seaver stared at the bottom of the first overpass. Some time soon it was going to be a bad idea to transact this kind of business on a freeway. Already the California Department of Transportation had tried placing cameras on the overpasses so when there was a traffic jam they could see what had caused it. And lately thieves had put machines on the bridges to capture cellular phone numbers and codes they could program into clones. He opened his coat, took out a thick manila envelope, and handed it over the seat to Linda. “In there is all the information I have about a target I want found and taken out.”

Earl glanced at the unopened envelope. “What is all that?”

“Photographs, a surveillance videotape, two audiotapes—one on the phone, one live—his employment history. I thought I could save you some time.”

Earl smiled. “He must be important.”

Seaver felt a distaste for the tactics of bluff and barter. “The price is going to be three hundred thousand for him. We’ll cover legitimate expenses.”

“Hear that, Earl?” said Linda. “No illegitimate expenses this time.”

“I mean,” said Seaver, “that I’m not the client. I just picked you for the job. If it’s too outrageous, the client is capable of getting rid of me and hiring somebody else to deal with you.”

“I hear you,” said Earl. “Why is this guy worth that much? Does he have something I have to bring back, or what?”

“No,” said Seaver. “He’s got information in his head. He can’t hand it off or sell it, because nobody else can testify to what he saw. He’ll have to be alive to do it.”

Linda smiled at Seaver and he thought about what a strange creature she was. She had what used to be called cupid’s bow lips, big, liquid green eyes. The smile would have been merely beautiful if it had been prompted by something else, but death seemed to excite her, and when her pulse went up the eyes got more green and there was a delicate flush in the pure white complexion. Her face was hypnotic, and the need to keep looking at it was like an itch. “Smell something, Earl? A Green Beret, right? No, I know. C.I.A. Forced retirement.” She turned the eyes away, toward Earl, and the blond hair hid them like a curtain.

When she took the light of that face away from him, the frustration made Seaver involuntarily suck in a breath through his teeth. He quickly dispelled any hint that he had been thinking about anything but business by blowing the breath out through his lips in a contemptuous huff.

“The price is high because the client doesn’t ever want to think about him again. I hire you, and you handle it. The end,” said Seaver. “I don’t think he’ll put up any resistance. But I have no idea where he is. When he disappeared, he had professional help, so he’s probably got reasonably good cover in place.”

“How long ago?” asked Earl.

“Day before yesterday, about midnight, he drove out of Las Vegas. We don’t know anything about the car.”

“So the trail’s cold. What about the professional help?”

“We don’t have much on that, either. It was a woman, mid-twenties to thirty, tall, dark hair, probably brown eyes, but there are two versions. Very fit.”

Linda laughed aloud, her voice somewhere between a taunt and a seduction. “ ‘Very fit.’ ” She imitated a man’s voice the way a child would have: “Have I ever told you you’re very fit? I want to look deep into your probably-brown eyes.”

“She beat the shit out of one of my security men,” said Seaver. “But even he said she was pretty. He didn’t volunteer it, because it wasn’t what he remembered most about her, but he didn’t deny it.”

“She sounds interesting,” said Earl.

“Oh, now I’m getting jealous,” said Linda. The lips came together like a kiss in a studied pout that Seaver knew should have been repellent but made him wish that Earl were dead. She brightened again. “Got her on tape, or any fingerprints? She might be the way to find him.”

“Sorry.”

“She would have been the one to leave the car for him,” said Linda. Her voice was wheedling now. “She was there before he left Las Vegas, and she must have stayed somewhere.”

“I know,” said Seaver. “I’ve had my men watching surveillance tapes for twenty-four hours, and she hasn’t turned up. The first time anybody saw her was the night she took off.”

Earl Bliss swung onto the Santa Monica Freeway and watched his rearview mirror. Nobody in a car behind them seemed to change his mind and follow. The others said nothing while he pretended to be considering the offer. After a decent interval he said, “We’ll get started on it after lunch.”

* * *

It was after dark. Linda could hear him out in the kennel, giving the dogs their dinner. She had already heard him call Lenny on the phone and tell him they were leaving and to pack up and move in at seven in the morning. Linda walked through the house to make sure everything was as it should be. Windows had to be closed, valuables hidden away, checks written for the bills. She took the Heckler & Koch .45 out of the cabinet by the kitchen sink and the Para-Ordnance P-14s from the bedrooms, the den, and the garage and locked them in the gun cabinet behind her closet. Lenny would just stumble onto one of them and blow a hole in something. If he had some kind of trouble while they were gone, he would be more likely to survive it with the gun he always brought with him. Anyway, with a couple of the dogs running the perimeter he’d be safe enough. Nobody cared enough about Lenny to kill him.