New Yorkers seemed to like spying on one another.
“THE LENS IS easy,” said the clerk. He gestured at a glass case alongside the counter, its shelves crammed with glinting electronics. “You need wireless?”
“I don’t think so.” Joe remembered the combat radio he’d humped through Vietnam, twenty-three pounds of steel and plastic knobs. The equipment here would fit inside a pencil. “I can wear the recorder on my belt or something, connect it under my shirt.”
“Sure. Pin-wire mike too — put it separate, different buttonhole or something, makes it harder to catch.”
“You sure it can record everything someone says to me? Video too?”
“So long as you’re facing them. The exact orientation doesn’t matter much. A lens like this” — he held up a tiny crystal bead, two thin leads trailing away — “has a seventy-degree field of view. Looks a bit like a fishbowl on playback, but you’ll see everything.”
“Good.” Joe pulled out his wallet.
As the clerk settled the components into a plastic bag, he said, “I ought to tell you, the courts don’t accept this sort of thing.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you’re planning to catch someone, go undercover? It’s not admissible. I’m just saying.”
“Oh, that’s not what this is about.” Joe took the bag. “We’re way beyond a court of law.”
ON FRIDAY HE started late, checking out of the Rest-a-Way at noon and eating a full lunch at a diner off 280. By three o’clock he was in Connecticut, the truck parked in Old Ridgefork’s municipal lot. The town was small and charming, with pottery shops and coffee boutiques on the renovated main street. Joe walked a few blocks north, to the edge of the town center, and sat on a park bench near a stoplight where Bluff Street crossed Main.
Late sunlight slanted across trees and Victorians. Children’s shouts drifted from a playground a block away. Traffic was light but steady, a stream of cars headed mostly east. Old Ridgefork sat on one of the commuter arteries into Fairfield County, as Joe had determined from careful study of a state map.
Valiant had driven this way all three times Joe had tailed him home.
He sat for ninety-five minutes, and then he saw the Gallardo coming through town, a few blocks away.
Joe stood and began to walk along the sidewalk to the street corner, his back to Valiant. He could hear the car — the sort of whiny rumble that came from overpriced, overpowered Italian engines — and paced himself accordingly. When the Lamborghini was still a block behind him, Joe hit the pedestrian-crosswalk button, and the light turned red just in time to halt Valiant at the intersection.
Two feet away.
Joe turned, leaned over, and put his hand through the open passenger window to unclick the lock latch. In one smooth motion, he opened the door, slid in, and slammed it shut behind him.
“Hey, Prince,” he said. “Light’s green, you can go.”
Valiant recovered, snarled, and twisted in his seat, reaching across in a lunge that was half punch, half grab. Joe pulled out his .45 and pointed it at Valiant’s face.
“Settle down or I’ll shoot you,” Joe said.
Valiant froze.
“My service weapon.” Joe held the Model 1911 comfortably, with his elbow against the door, keeping as far from Valiant as possible. “I wasn’t supposed to take it, but no one was paying attention on those MAC flights forty years ago. New ammunition, of course.”
“You’re over the line.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.” Joe considered the handgun. “I suppose I really could go to prison for this.”
“You will!”
“Maybe.” Joe looked back at Valiant. “See, that’s the difference between you and me — I own up to my responsibilities.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I told you — the light’s green. Start driving.”
Valiant glared another moment, then put the car into gear and started up the road.
“Turn up here,” said Joe. “Yes, there, on Valley Road. No need to bother anyone behind us.”
They followed the winding road up a hill, soon leaving the scattering of houses that marked the edge of Old Ridgefork proper. Fall foliage had just started to turn, and the trees glowed in the setting sun. As they ascended, Joe could see a lake sparkling in the distance. “Slow down,” he said. “Around this bend . . . yup, there it is. Pull in.”
They stopped at a roadside historic marker — a faded metal sign standing on a wide verge so cars could pull over. The road was deserted. Valiant killed the engine at Joe’s direction, and in the quiet they could hear birds and crickets.