“A civil-service apparatchik? I doubt it.”

“Don’t undersell Anders.” But he was watching her more alertly than he ever had before, as if for the first time he recognized her as something more than an attractive bit player.

Chapter 11

Glenn Anders slouched in an uncomfortable wooden chair while Perez flipped through the photo cards with the repetitive efficiency of a bank teller counting money. Perez had been through mug-shot canvasses before; just the same Anders was dubious—Perez flipped them over so quickly. After a while there was a danger of forgetting what one was looking for. One’s eyes began to go out of focus and one might flip right past the vital one.

A girl in an Afro natural hairdo and bone earrings came in. She put a paper bag on the table and smiled brightly and left.

Anders removed two capped Styrofoam cups from the bag.

“Yes. Black please, with two sugars, yes?”

The room was prim and sinister, the windows set high. The tile floor sloped to a center drain and the walls were slick with high-gloss green paint. This was police headquarters: a washable room designed for interrogations.

Anders stirred sugar into the coffee with the wooden tongue-depressor stick and pushed the cup across the table to Perez. “Take a break. Tell me again what he looked like.”

Perez—slight, birdy, poplin suit, fake silk tie—had a cocky way of narrowing his eyes and dropping his voice near a whisper, as confidential as a desk clerk pimping for a girl on the third floor. As it happened he was neither pimp nor pusher; Perez was a plainclothes police detective.

Perez said, “I wasn’t so close to see him clearly,” and ended the sentence with a nervous meaningless laugh that sounded like a telephone’s busy signal. The habit irritated Anders. Perez, proud of his English, said, “I was tired to sit waiting in the car, I was getting out for walk, then I hear the footsteps, yes? In the open he startled me and I went up in a doorway to look like I’m ringing the bell of the house. I am afraid he spotted me. I think so, yes?” And another honk of laughter, this one to cover his shame. It was another point against him that he still hadn’t understood Anders’ question.

Anders contained his irritation. None of it meant much anyhow. Likely the whole thing was a false lead. The Volkswagen had provoked the attention of the bureaucracy and Anders was obliged to follow up dutifully but he wasn’t sure it would take him anywhere.

Reasoning that Rodrigo Rodriguez might spend part of the ten million dollars’ ransom on armaments, Anders had activated the clumsy apparatus. Inquiries were made in seventeen ports. The report that flagged Anders’ attention came from Fajardo, the port town at the northeast tip of the island of Puerto Rico.

The dealer was a regular police informant who ran a small import business in molasses and wine and occasionally cocaine. He had reported a visit from a Cuban who went by the name of Cielo, was unfamiliar to the dealer and had visited him to inquire obliquely into the possibility of purchasing certain arms—mainly mortars and rocket launchers, not hip-pocket stuff. The dealer informed his visitor that he did not traffic in such items. When the visitor left the dealer made a note of the plate number of the Volkswagen and telephoned to his contact on the police.

It was tenuous but it had drawn Anders’ eye because of the locale and the nature of the request. Not just anyone had much interest in mortars and rockets; and Crobey’s clue had given him a reason to be interested in Puerto Rico.

Anders had flown into San Juan and exercised a few quiet pressures to set in motion a search for the Volkswagen. The dealer from Fajardo had gone through the same photo files that Perez had before him now; the dealer hadn’t singled out a face but he was an odd vague sort and a simple experiment had proved he had an almost nonexistent memory for faces. Under repeated questioning he’d proved uncertain about nearly everything. He couldn’t remember what clothes Cielo had worn; yes, Cielo might have been older, might have been heavier—it was hard to say. The dealer had gone home bewildered and Rosalia, her hand on Anders’ shoulder, had exhaled with a slumping sag of disappointment.

The name Cielo clearly was not so much an alias as a nom de guerre, a code name; You can call me Cielo, it meant nothing to the police or the agency; quite possibly it was a name adopted for one operation, as disposable as a paper wrapper.

But then the Volkswagen had been identified by its license number and the police had sent Perez to cover it. Now Perez had seen the man who drove the car and Perez had been trained to identify faces.

Anders said, “He didn’t have a belly or a beard.”

“No. No beard. Big in the shoulders and as tall as you, yes? But no heavier than you are. One-ninety, perhaps two hundred. No more.”

“The face? Tell me again now.”

“Comó se dice, square, yes? Latino but not too dark. Not Indio. Short hair, not crew-cut but short and neat, and not bald. A, how do you say, widow’s peak, yes?”

“Then he didn’t wear a hat.”

“No, no hat.” Perez scowled. “The face, yes. I have a good picture here.” He tapped his temple. “A square face, heavy bones, is hard but not stupid, you understand? Wide face, very wide.”

“And the clothes?”

“Khaki jeans, a light windbreaker jacket, faded gray. Work boots like a car mechanic. Your clothes would fit him.”

“When you first saw him he wasn’t coming out of a house, you’re sure of that?”

“He came out a driveway between two houses. From behind, the next street I think, yes?”

If it was Rodriguez, Anders thought, he’d have been smart enough to leave his car parked several blocks from his destination. It made for the dreary prospect of house-to-house inquiries.

Perez said, “If he is in these pictures I’ll find him. It’s a promise, yes?”

“All right. I’ll check back with you.” Anders left the second cup of coffee for him.

The federal building looked like something the Spaniards might have constructed to contain lunatics and violent offenders. The agency had borrowed a desk for him in an office attached to the Department of Agriculture; officially he was out-of-bounds on U.S. soil. At least the office had a scrambler phone. He found Rosalia there—she gripped his tie and pulled him down, licking his mouth lasciviously.

Anders poked both fists into his kidneys and reared far back. “You yank at me like that again, you’ll have me in traction for a week.”

Rosalia leaned leeringly forward, straining cloth with breasts. “Your place or mine?” She was in a springy droll mood.

“You’ve got fabulous boobs,” he told her. “But it’s the wrong time of day to be caressing each other’s erogenous zones. Did George Wilkins call in?”

“Not yet. If we got married could we still work together?”

“I doubt it. Against regulations.”

“Then we won’t get married until you retire.”

“Got it all worked out, I see.”

From the beginning she had amused him with her cub-reporter bounce and cuddly lovability; she’d inculcated in him a kind of playfulness he thought he’d lost. It was beginning to occur to him that perhaps she was the girl to whom he wanted to be faithful: Despite her overt sexuality she possessed the soft nesty instincts of a purring kitten.

“Oh dear. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.” She rummaged through papers. “Here it is. Mr. O’Hillary wants you to call him.”

“God.” He fixed his glance on the phone as if he expected it to serve a subpoena on him.

“Also there was a call from Harry Crobey.”

“How the hell did he know where to find me?”

“I gather he called the FBI and they transferred him to the Justice Department and they transferred him to—”