They take breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, which is bright and airy and elegantly appointed. The U-shaped booth is large enough for six, and Dubose sits at the deepest point of it, his back to the wall, so that no one—not even the waitress—can see the screen of his laptop.
The computer on the table offends Carter Jergen, but he doesn’t complain. If he speaks up every time Dubose does something uncouth or vulgar, he will have laryngitis by noon.
As he enjoys a bowl of mixed berries in clotted cream with brown sugar, Jergen considers the mystery, not for the first time, of why his and Dubose’s partnership is so successful. They rarely experience a debacle like that of the previous night. Regardless of the intensity or duration of his deliberations on this issue, Jergen arrives always at the same conclusion, as he does now again: The very fact that he and Dubose have little in common is a considerable advantage. Just as opposites attract each other into marriage, so opposites when paired as agents, with a license to kill and worse, can each bring a unique perspective to any case.
The problem with this explanation is that from it one must infer that, separately, each of them is in some sense an incomplete or at least unfinished person. Carter Jergen believes himself to be complete, finished, as well rounded as a droplet of water floating in a zero-gravity environment. In fact, he knows that he is both complete and complex. Yet no other explanation occurs to him….
Using the rootkits that the NSA has secretly installed in the computer networks of the major banks with which Gavin and Jessica Washington have credit cards, Dubose checks to see if they have charged anything since the unfortunate episode the previous night. They’re probably too smart to make such an error, but sometimes bright and savvy people do dumb things.
While he works on the laptop, Radley Dubose eats bacon with his fingers. He smacks his lips as if the fullest enjoyment of the meat requires loud gustatory noises. Occasionally, he pauses between one slice of bacon and the next to suck on the thumb and forefinger with which he held the meat to ensure that no dab of grease will escape his consumption.
Jergen finds some consolation that Dubose uses a fork to eat his cheese omelet rather than resorting again to his fingers or putting his face right down in the food.
“They haven’t used a credit card,” Dubose says. “Let’s see if the plates on the Rover were scanned anywhere since last night.”
The manner in which Dubose eats is no more mortifying than the fact that, in addition to the bacon that comes with his omelet, he has requested four additional orders, twelve slices, which have been served in an obscene pile on a separate plate. When the waitress put down that mess of pork fat, she made some comment to the effect that he must be hungry, whereupon the inimitable West Virginian winked at her lasciviously and said, “Darlin’, I’m a man of voracious appetites.”
As if the Ritz-Carlton was the most natural place in the world to respond to an attractive woman with vulgarity. The Ritz-Carlton!
Working in the NSA’s archives of scanned plates, Dubose sets up time parameters and enters the license number of the Land Rover, but no police car or other government vehicle equipped with 360-degree plate-scanning capability has transmitted those tags in the past twelve hours.
Confounded, the big man leans back in the booth, his forehead corrugating as he contemplates his next step, and of course he must have another strip of bacon to grease the wheels of his mind.
As Jergen listens to the lip smacking, he considers commenting to the effect that, until this moment, he hasn’t realized Dubose indulges in cannibalism.
But there’s no point in getting snarky. Dubose is incapable of embarrassment. Besides, he’ll only come back with some retort about Boston Brahmins or prep school or Harvard or the Hasty Pudding Club that he imagines to be witty.
Dubose says, “We know from the car she had to abandon in Texas, Hawk has a sophisticated source for forged plates. They show up as a legitimate registration in state files.”
Having finished his berries, Carter Jergen blots his lips with the satisfyingly substantial cloth napkin. Before picking up his cup of tea, he says, “Perhaps she gave the Washingtons a set of plates, complete with registration papers in another name, so if they ever had to go on the run, they could swap them out for the real plates.”
“Great minds think alike,” Dubose says, “and so do yours and mine.”
“But if we don’t have those plate numbers or the phony name in which she registered the Land Rover, we’re still nowhere.”
The big man picks up two slices of bacon, folds the double thickness into his mouth in one wad, and works his brute jaws as though he is enjoying a chaw of tobacco.
After he swallows, he says, “Maybe I have an idea.”
17
Near Coso Junction, Jane pulled off U.S. Highway 395 and into a rest area with public lavatories. Hers was the only vehicle in the lot.
The naked blue sky at the start of their journey had taken on a more modest aspect as they’d come north. Now it was a monkish gray to every horizon, looming low, with some last spell of winter weather pending.
As if the flock she’d seen earlier had reckoned her route and come ahead to wait for her, nine ravens perched at regular intervals on a power line.
She cut the zip-ties off Booth Hendrickson and let him use the men’s room. She went with him and waited while he washed his hands, and she walked him back to the Explorer. She zip-tied him again, wrist to wrist and through the belt, as before.
Sufficiently confident of her control, she left him alone in the SUV. As she walked to the women’s facilities, the nine ravens sat solemn and portentous on the wire, gazing down at her, working their long, gray beaks in a mute chorus.
When she returned, Hendrickson sat exactly as she had left him, as docile as a good dog but not as engaged. He spoke only if spoken to and seemed to be slowly drifting away into an internal landscape from which he might at some point fail to return. She was convinced that his condition had far less to do with a malfunctioning control mechanism than with a psychological withdrawal or disintegration.
They continued through the northwest corner of the Mojave, passing out of it at Owens Lake. By the time they reached Lone Pine, where she stopped for fuel and food, they were at an elevation of 3,700 feet and headed toward a different world, with the Sierra Nevada to the west and the Inyo National Forest on both sides.
At a diner, she bought takeout—four cheeseburgers and two Diet Cokes. Hendrickson didn’t want any food, but she cut his zip-ties again and ordered him to eat, and so he did.
The day had grown colder. She kept the engine running while they ate, for heat and music. Arthur Rubinstein playing Beethoven: Sonata No. 21 in C Major, op. 53.
This time, she didn’t secure his hands. He was drained of all potential for independent action and seemed to be a shell of a man.
They returned to the highway with Beethoven’s Sonata No. 18 in E-flat Major, op. 31, no. 3, and as they continued north, she found herself wanting only Rubinstein, arguably the greatest pianist who ever lived. It was said that the composer Franz Liszt might have been greater, although he lived before recordings could be made.