The Undertaker

“They're important, you know, very important.”

“By the way, you almost lost another witness today.” There was silence at the other end. “Two hours ago I was standing in a park in lower Manhattan…”

“Manhattan! I thought you said you were in Tennessee?”

“I lied. I do a lot of that. It helps me stay alive. Anyway, I was swapping stories with your baldheaded friend, Charles Billingham, when someone tried to take him out with a sniper rifle.” I let that sink in for a second. “Don't worry, he's still very much alive, but he's going to have quite a bruise. The shooter was probably one of Rico Patillo's soldiers.”

“Rico Patillo!” Hardin almost came through the phone.

“Yeah. That was his people who tried to kill us in Boston yesterday. Charley thinks Tinkerton is working for him, so it all fits. You watch your back, Senator, you could be on their list too.”

“Me? I'm a United States Senator, have you lost your mind…”

“Nope, I'm just beginning to find it. I'll see you at Midnight, in your office in the Russell Building.”

“It's right next to the Capitol, you can't miss it.”

“Great, and Sandy says she'll have that fetching blue dress on.”

“What? Just bring those files, damn it!”

“Ciao, Senator.” I hung up and stared at the phone for a minute.

“Tim? The blue dress?” Sandy laughed. “You're getting as bad as me, you know.”

“It must be catching.”

“Like I told you, Hardin's cute, but if he stands around too long in the hot sun, he's gonna leave a grease stain big enough to cook McDonalds French fries.”

We ran back out to the cab. Goutam had been looking at maps and immediately drove away, heading for the tunnel and New Jersey. I reflected back to the phone call with Hardin and remembered what Billingham had told me. There were way too many people way too eager to get their hands on Louie Panozzo's files.

There was a roll-down shade between the front seat and the back. I winked at Goutam in the rear view mirror. “See you in Philly, Goutam,” I said as I pulled it down.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Washington, DC: the shining city on the hill…

I rolled up the shade as the cab pulled over to the 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia at 8:50, giving Goutam a leisurely ten minutes to spare. It was another of those big, neoclassical edifices from the 1930s that Sandy and I were becoming so expert at negotiating.

“Thanks, Goutam” I said as I handed him four of the crisp new one-hundred dollar bills I had taken off “Tony Grigs”, the hit man in Boston. Goutam smiled, and I handed him another one. “That's a little extra so that your memory won't be too clear about the people you had in the back seat and what they were doing on the way down here from New York. You see, her husband can get very jealous.” I winked at him.

“Oh, yes, sir!” he grinned. “And I can see he has ample reason to be.”

“Where's an INS agent when you really need one,” Sandy muttered as she got out of the cab. “Like, he knew what we were doing back there.”

“Like, you care if he did?”

“But this time, we didn't even do anything!” she complained as she jiggled and twisted her skirt and top, trying to get everything back into place. “But how did my clothes get all turned around like this, Talbott?” she asked innocently enough.

As the cab drove away, she took my arm and we strolled into the terminal. The evening commuter crowd had largely dissipated by then, but there were express trains to both New York and DC every forty-five minutes to an hour, so the station was never empty. One of the trains to DC was leaving in ten minutes and would arrive at Union Station in Washington at 11:00. We bought two seats in the upper deck of the observation car. At night and in the rain, we assumed it would be empty and give us some privacy.

The ticker agent found that mildly amusing. “Just so you know, we turn the lights out about two minutes after the train clears the station,” he warned without looking up at us.

“And...? Sandy asked, puzzled.

“And you'll want to be in your seats by then, lady,” he looked up, straight-faced. “The late run back to DC is popular for all those tired, Washington staffers returning home from a hard day “bureaucrating” in the Philly field office. So if I were you, I'd find an empty seat, I wouldn't go gawking or stumbling around up there in the dark.”

We looked at each other, puzzled by his comments. By the time we got on board and climbed the stairs to the upper deck, there were already a dozen couples huddled together on both sides of the aisle, especially toward the back of the car. From the looks and the blankets, it was obvious they were waiting for the lights to go out too.

“Why did I bother to straighten my skirt?” Sandy whispered as we took two seats in the second row. She snuggled up against me and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “But what a great place to hide.”