High Crimes

Robert Lentini had selected, as a rendezvous point, a hilltop restaurant some sixty miles northwest of D.C., in the Catoctin mountain range in Maryland. The first sign for MOUNTAIN CHALET was posted on Route 70 by the turnoff, in fake old-style Germanic lettering. She could see the restaurant from the highway, lit up, perched atop a hill like an Alpine ski resort. The approach was a long, narrow uphill road with barely enough room for two cars traveling in both directions. It wound up the hillside at such a steep grade that she could feel the rented car’s engine strain, the automatic transmission shift into lower and lower gear.

She parked in the small lot. There were only three other cars here, and it seemed to be the only parking area. She could see why he’d chosen this particular location. It wasn’t for her convenience, certainly, or for the garish ersatz Alpine decor, or, she guessed, for the food. It was instead the vantage point. From here you could see the countryside in all directions for miles.

Still sitting in the car, she checked the concealed Uher tape recorder Ray had taped to the small of her back. A wire came around to the front, taped to the side of her brassiere. With a quick motion she switched it on: the tiny on-off switch nestled beside her left breast. To anyone who might be watching, she’d simply appear to be scratching herself. She shuffled through the papers in her leather portfolio and, in another unseen gesture, switched on the miniature backup tape recorder concealed there, disguised as a pack of Marlboro cigarettes (not her brand, but she wasn’t going to quibble). There was, of course, the risk that he’d check to see whether she was wearing a wire, but she was willing to take that risk.

She did not expect Lentini to make himself available to testify in court.

She got out of the car, holding the portfolio, and made her way to the main entrance. The decor inside set her teeth on edge: cobblestone-paved floor, low wood-beamed ceiling (the beams looked fake even at a distance), artificially weathered wooden table, kitschy imitation stained-glass windows, a large artificial fireplace with roaring gas flames licking phony logs even in the summer heat. She found a table by a window overlooking a valley, and waited.

Nine o’clock came and went, and still she waited. She ordered a Coke.

At twenty past nine she wondered whether he would show up at all. She made a circuit of the almost empty restaurant and found only couples. No one who might possibly be Lentini. She asked the maître d’, who said that no one had mentioned meeting anybody. She called home; Jackie said no one had left a message for her.

At nine-forty-five she decided to leave. It was extremely unlikely she’d gotten the place wrong, unless there was more than one imitation-Swiss mountainside chalet in this remote Maryland town, which seemed improbable. More likely was that he had changed his mind, or for some reason had been scared off.

She left a few dollars for her Coke and went out to the parking lot. Two other cars there now. No sign of anyone who might remotely resemble Lentini.

Annoyed, she got in the car, started it up, and pulled out of the lot, half expecting him to arrive in his car as she was leaving. But no. She’d been stood up.

She maneuvered the car down the narrow mountain road. It was dark, and she was concerned that a car approaching from the opposite direction might whip around a bend and smash into her. So she flashed her brights as she approached the first hairpin turn, and braked to slow down as well.

And the brake pedal sank to the floor.

“Jesus,” she exclaimed, trying the brakes again and finding only a dead pedal. The bend in the road loomed closer. She turned the steering wheel abruptly to avoid going off the road and into the ravine.

The car accelerated from the natural gravitational pull, faster and faster, and she swung the wheel over to the left, then the right, as the road shimmied ahead of her and rushed toward her. She tried the brakes one last time, and nothing. Not working.

Spinning the wheel first to one side, then to another, the car speeding faster and faster down the incline, she yanked the emergency-brake lever upward. It pulled up easily, too easily, and the lever jiggled up and down uselessly.

“Oh, God,” she keened. Her eyes were frozen on the road ahead. The car careened, trees flying by in a blur, faster and faster and faster, and the thought suddenly leaped into her mind that any second another car might approach, and her stomach seized up.

“No!” she shouted. “No! God, no!”