Firestarter(11)

An airport cop strolled up. "You can't park here, sir," he said. "If you'll just pull up to-""Sure I can," the driver said. He showed the cop his ID. The airport cop looked at it, looked at the driver, looked back at the picture on the ID.

"Oh," he said. "I'm sorry, sir. Is it something we should know about?"

"Nothing that affects airport security," the driver said, "but maybe you can help. Have you seen either of these two people tonight?" He handed the airport cop a picture of Andy, and then a fuzzy picture of Charlie. Her hair had been longer then. In the snap, it was braided into pigtails. Her mother had been alive then. "The girl's a year or so older now," the driver said. "Her hair's a bit shorter. About to her shoulders."

The cop examined the pictures carefully, shuffling them back and forth. "You know, I believe I did see this little girl," he said. "Towhead, isn't she? Picture makes it a little hard to tell."

"Towhead, right."

"The man her father?"

"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies."

The airport cop felt a wave of dislike for the bland-faced young man behind the wheel of the nondescript green car. He had had peripheral doings with the FBI, the CIA, and the outfit they called the Shop before. Their agents were all the same, blankly arrogant and patronizing. They regarded anyone in a bluesuit as a kiddy cop. But when they'd had the hijacking here five years ago, it had been the kiddy cops who got the guy, loaded down with grenades, off the plane, and he had been in custody of the "real" cops when he committed suicide by opening up his carotid artery with his own fingernails. Nice going, guys.

"Look... sir. I asked if the man was her father to try and find out if there's a family resemblance. Those pictures make it a little hard to tell."

"They look a bit alike. Different hair colors."

That much 1 can see for myself, you ass**le, the airport cop thought. "I saw them both,"

the cop told the driver of the green car. "He's a big guy, bigger than he looks in that picture. He looked sick or something." "Did he?" The driver seemed pleased. "We've had a big night here, all told. Some fool also managed to light his own shoes on fire." The driver sat bolt upright behind the wheel. "Say what?"

The airport cop nodded, happy to have got through the driver's bored facade. He would not have been so happy if the driver had told him he had just earned himself a debriefing in the Shop's Manhattan offices. And Eddie Delgardo probably would have beaten the crap out of him, because instead of touring the singles bars (and the massage parlors, and the Times Square  p**n o shops) during the Big Apple segment of his leave, he was going to spend most of it in a drug-induced state of total recall, describing over and over again what had happened before and just after his shoes got hot.

9

The other two men from the green sedan were talking to airport personnel. One of them discovered the skycap who had noticed Andy and Charlie getting out of the cab and going into the terminal.

"Sure I saw them. I thought it was a pure-d shame, a man as drunk as that having a little girl out that late." "Maybe they took a plane," one of the men suggested. "Maybe so," the skycap agreed. "I wonder what that child's mother can be thinking of. I wonder if she knows what's going on." "I doubt if she does," the man in the dark-blue Botany 500 suit said. He spoke with great sincerity. "You didn't see them leave?"

"No, sir. Far as I know, they're still round here somewhere... unless their flight's been called, of course."

10

The two men made a quick sweep through the main terminal and then through the boarding gates, holding their IDs up in their cupped hands for the security cops to see. They met near the United Airlines ticket desk.

"Dry," the first said. "Think they took a plane?" the second asked. He was the fellow in the nice blue Botany 500. "I don't think that bastard had more than fifty bucks to his name... maybe a whole lot less than that."

"We better check it."

"Yeah. But quick."

United Airlines. Allegheny. American. Braniff. The commuter airlines. No broad-shouldered man who looked sick had bought tickets. The baggage handler at Albany Airlines thought he had seen a little girl in red pants and a green shirt, though. Pretty blond hair, shoulder-length.

The two of them met again near the TV chairs where Andy and Charlie had been sitting not long ago. "What do you think?" the first asked. The agent in the Botany 500 looked excited. "I think we ought to blanket the area," he said. "I think they're on foot." They headed back to the green car, almost trotting.

11

Andy and Charlie walked on through the dark along the soft shoulder of the airport feeder road. An occasional car swept by them. It was almost one o'clock. A mile behind them, in the terminal, the two men had rejoined their third partner at the green car. Andy and Charlie were now walking parallel to the Northway, which was to their right and below them, lit by the depthless glare of sodium lights. It might be possible to scramble down the embankment and try to thumb a ride in the breakdown lane, but if a cop came along, that would end whatever poor chance they still had to get away. Andy was wondering how far they would have to walk before they came to a ramp. Each time his foot came down, it generated a thud that resounded sickly in his head.