Boots Marnin’s cell phone rang as he sat beating on the steering wheel of his Econovan parked on the frontage road near the San Francisco Airport.
“I lost the fucker.”
“What fucker?”
“The rocker. Gage’s database guy. He’s got a bodyguard who’s the best countersurveillance driver I’ve ever seen.”
“You still don’t know where Gage hid him?”
Boots looked up at a Virgin Airlines flight rising into the sky, then down at the airport. “I know lots of places he isn’t.”
“Don’t let me down on this one. We need to know where everybody is just in case, and we already have over two hundred grand invested in you.”
“I’ve got Gage nailed down and I’ve got Palmer’s wife nailed down and I’m sure the Muslim kid is staying with the rocker.”
“How’d you get onto the rocker’s tail this time?”
“A birthday party for Gage’s pal Jack Burch at the St. Francis Yacht Club.”
“Why didn’t you stick a GPS under his car?”
“You think I’m an idiot? His security guy never left… son of a…”
“What ‘son of a…’?”
“Nothing. I’ll call you later.”
Boots disconnected, tossed his phone into the console, then reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a flashlight. He jumped down from the van and flattened himself on the ground in one motion. He worked the beam on the underside as he scooted farther and farther under. He finally caught sight of a black two-inch-by-two-inch tracking device duct-taped to the undercarriage.
“Son of a bitch.”
He reached into his jeans pocket for his pocket knife, then stopped.
Wait a second. A rope can pull in two directions.
He slid out from the under the van, climbed back in, and headed toward the San Francisco Mariner Hotel.
R osa M. was slipping on her bra at nine-thirty the next morning when Boots reached over to pick up his ringing cell phone from the nightstand. Rosa’s cleaning cart was parked near the door. Now that he got what he wanted, as far as he was concerned she was human wallpaper.
Boots recognized the caller’s number.
“I was just heading out,” Boots said.
“Don’t bother,” the familiar voice said. “Our guys down at Evergreen Security found the rocker.”
Boots sat up. “How?”
“There were a bunch of Internet and commercial database searches about Mann Trust early this morning. Our people traced them to a DSL line going into a loft on the Oakland waterfront. We backtracked and found that the same computer had been researching Pegasus over the last few days.”
Boots’s eyes settled on his alligator-skin Tony Lamas on the floor of the open closet, once more feeling like a dinosaur.
“Do you have a place lined up just in case?” the caller asked.
“Yeah, it’s perfect.”