We got off at an exit near the west edge of town, and I followed him to the town recycling center, which used to be called the dump.
The car stopped at the incinerator, and I stopped behind him and got out.
Burt Yardley was standing near a big conveyor belt, watching a truck being unloaded onto the moving belt.
I stood and watched, too, as Ann Campbell's basement bedroom headed into the flames.
Yardley was flipping through a stack of Polaroid photos and barely gave me a glance, but he said, "Hey, look at this, son. You see that fat ass? That's me. Now look at that teeny weenie. Who you suppose that is?" He threw a handful of the photos onto the conveyor, then picked up a stack of videotapes at his feet and also threw them onto the belt. "I thought we had an appointment. You gonna make me do all this here work myself? Grab some of that shit, son."
So I helped him throw furniture, sexual paraphernalia, linens, and such onto the belt. He said, "I'm as good as my word, boy. Didn't trust me, did you?"
"Sure I do. You're a cop."
"Right. What a fucked-up week. Hey, you know what? I cried all through that funeral."
"I didn't notice."
"Cryin' on the inside. Lots of fellas there cryin' on the inside. Hey, did you get rid of that computer stuff?"
"I burned the disk myself."
"Yeah? None of that shit floatin' around, is there?"
"No. Everyone is clean again."
"Until next time." He laughed and pitched a black leather mask onto the conveyor. "God bless us, we're all gonna sleep better now. Includin' her."
I didn't reply.
He said, "Hey, sorry to hear about Bill."
"Me, too."
"Maybe them two are talkin' it out now, up there at the pearly gates." He looked into the incinerator. "Or someplace."
"Is that it, Chief?"
He looked around. "Pretty much." He took a photo out of his pocket and looked at it, then handed it to me. "Souvenir."
It was a full frontal nude of Ann Campbell standing, or actually jumping, on the bed in the basement room, her hair billowing, her legs parted, her arms outstretched, and a big smile on her face.
Yardley said, "She was a lot of woman. But I never understood a goddamned thing about her head. You figure her out?"
"No. But I think she told us more about ourselves than we wanted to know." I threw the photo onto the conveyor belt and headed back toward my Blazer.
Yardley called out, "You take care, now."
"You, too, Chief. Regards to your kinfolk."
I opened the car door and Yardley called out again, "Almost forgot. Your lady friend-she told me you'd be headin' north on the interstate."
I looked at him over the roof of my car.
He said, "She asked me to tell you good-bye. Said she'd see you down the road."
"Thanks." I got into the Blazer and drove out of the dump. I turned right and retraced my route to the interstate, along the road lined with warehouses and light industry, a perfectly squalid area to match my mood.
Down the road, a red Mustang fell in behind me. We got onto the interstate together, and she stayed with me past the exit that would have taken her west to Fort Benning.
I pulled off onto the shoulder and she did the same. We got out of our vehicles and stood near them, about ten feet apart. She was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and running shoes, and it occurred to me that we weren't in the same generation. I said to her, "You missed your exit."
"Better than missing my chance."
"You lied to me."
"Well... yes. But what would you have said if I told you I was still living with him, but that I was seriously thinking about ending it?"
"I'd have told you to call me when you got your act together."
"See? You're too passive."
"I don't take other people's wives."
A big semi rolled by, and I couldn't hear what she said. "What?"
"You did the same thing in Brussels!"
"Never heard of the place."
"Capital of Belgium."
"What about Panama?"
"I told Kiefer to tell you that to get you to do do something." something."
"You lied again."
"Right. Why do I bother?"
A state trooper pulled over and got out of his car. He touched his hat to Cynthia and asked, "Everything okay, ma'am?"
"No. This man is an idiot."
He looked at me. "What's your problem, fella?"
"She's following me."
He looked back at Cynthia.
Cynthia said to him, "What do you think of a man who spends three days with a woman and doesn't even say good-bye?"
"Well... that's mighty low..."
"I never touched her. We only shared a bathroom."
"Oh... well..."
"He invited me to his house in Virginia for the weekend and never bothered to give me his phone number or address."
The state trooper looked at me. "That true?"
I said to him, "I just found out she's still married."
The trooper nodded. "Don't need that kind of trouble."
Cynthia asked him, "Don't you think a man should fight for what he wants?"
"Sure do."
I said, "So does her husband. He tried to kill me."
"Gotta watch that."
"I'm not afraid of him," Cynthia said. "I'm going to Benning to tell him it's over." not afraid of him," Cynthia said. "I'm going to Benning to tell him it's over."
The trooper said to her, "You he careful, now."
"Make him give me his phone number."
"Well... I don't..." He turned to me. "Why don't you just give her your phone number and we can all get out of the sun, here."
"Oh, all right. Do you have a pencil?"
He took a pad and pencil out of his pocket, and I told him my phone number and address. He ripped off the page and handed it to Cynthia. "There you are, ma'am. Now, let's everybody get in their cars and go off to where they got to be. Okay?"
I walked back to my Blazer, and Cynthia went to her Mustang. She called out to me, "Saturday."
I waved, got into my Blazer, and headed north. I watched her in my rearview mirror making an illegal U-turn across the center divide, then heading for the exit that would take her to Fort Benning.
Passive? Paul Brenner, the tiger of Falls Church, passive? I crossed into the outside lane, cut the wheel hard left, and drove across the center divide through a line of bushes, then spun the Blazer around into the southbound lanes. "We'll see who's passive." Paul Brenner, the tiger of Falls Church, passive? I crossed into the outside lane, cut the wheel hard left, and drove across the center divide through a line of bushes, then spun the Blazer around into the southbound lanes. "We'll see who's passive."
I caught up with her on the highway to Fort Benning and stayed with her all the way.
More Nelson DeMille! Nelson DeMille!Please see the next pagefor a bonus excerpt from bonus excerpt from The Lion's Game The Lion's Gamecoming soon in hardcover from Warner Books from Warner Books[image]
We are happy to include here a chapter of Nelson DeMille's next novel, THE LION'S GAME, which will be published soon by Warner Books. The main character in THE LION'S GAME is John Corey, NYPD, who first appeared in Nelson DeMille's bestseller, PLUM ISLAND.
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You'd think that anyone who'd been capped three times and almost became an organ donor would try to avoid dangerous situations in the future. But, no, I must have this unconscious wish to take myself out of the gene pool or something.
Anyway, I'm John Corey, formerly of the NYPD, now working as a Special Contract Agent for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force. I was sitting in the back of a yellow cab on my way from Twenty-Six Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The trip meter was spinning like an out-of-control one-armed bandit, and I wondered if I had enough bucks to pay the Pakistani suicide driver behind the wheel.
I still couldn't get used to the fact that the Feds would actually reimburse me for things like a fifty-buck cab ride. Even in my former exalted position as an NYPD homicide detective, the department questioned twenty-five-cent phone calls.
It was a nice spring day, a Saturday, moderate traffic on the Belt Parkway, late afternoon, and seagulls from a nearby landfill-formerly known as a garbage dump-were crapping on the taxi's windshield. I love spring.
I wasn't headed off on vacation or anything like that-I was reporting for work with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force. This is sort of a weird organization that not too many people know about, which is just as well. The ATTF is divided into sections which focus on specific bunches of troublemakers and bomb chuckers, like the Irish Republican Army, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Black Radicals, and other groups that will go unnamed. I'm in the Mideastern section, which is the biggest group and maybe the most important, though to be honest, I don't know much about Mideastern terrorists. But I was supposed to be learning on the job.
So, to practice my skills, I started up a conversation with the Pakistani guy, whose name was Fasid, and who for all I know is a terrorist, though he looked and talked like an okay guy. I asked him, "What was that place you came from?"
"Islamabad. The capital."
"Really? How long have you been here?"
"Ten years."
"You like it here?"
"Sure. Who doesn't?"
"Well, my ex-brother-in-law, Gary, for one. He's always bad-mouthing America. Wants to move to New Zealand."
"I have an uncle in New Zealand."
"No kidding? Anybody left in Islamabad?"
He laughed, then asked me, "You meeting somebody at the airport?"
"Why do you ask?"
"No luggage."
"Hey, you're good."
"So, you're meeting somebody? I could hang around and take you back to the city."
Fasid's English was pretty good-slang, idioms, and all that. I replied, "I'm meeting somebody, but we have a ride back."
"You sure? I could hang around."
Actually, I was meeting an alleged terrorist who'd surrendered himself to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, but I didn't think that was information I needed to share with the taxi driver. I said, "You a Yankee fan?"