Dick McCallum told them. I can tell them he’s lying. Won’t they
have to question him more thoroughly?”
“No, Becca, it’s too late. I’m really sorry about this.”
“What do you mean, it’s too late? I know I can get ahold of Detective
Morales.”
“We’ll have to go another route to find out why Dick McCallum
did “what he did, and who probably paid him a whole lot of
money to do it.”
She became very still. She shook her head. He said very gently,
“I’m sorry, Becca, but someone ran Dick McCallum down in front
of his apartment building in Albany. He’s dead.”
There -wasn’t a single thought in her mind just numbing horror.
“They think you could be involved. Everyone’s gone nuts. Actually,
they were nuts the moment the governor was shot. No one
could believe the distance on that shot. Now they’re very serious
about finding you and finding out what you know, if you’re in
volved in any way. I planted information for them to find and got
them off on a wrong track, so you’re safe for a while.”
He sat back in his chair and cradled his head against his arms. He
gave her a big fat smile. “They’re not going to find you anytime
soon, trust me on that.”
Chapter 1 1
He could only stare at him. “All right, you’re the greatest. Now,
tell me how you fooled them.”
“Thank you. Actually, I had nearly everything in place before
Dick McCallum was killed. To be very precise, I did it right after
the governor was shot. I had to shut the spigot off before they had
the chance to really turn it on.
“They immediately mounted quite a manhunt. FBI offices all
over the country are on the lookout for you. They were just beginning
to track you from New York, just like I did, but then–a
wonderful thing happened. They became convinced that you’d
climbed on a Greyhound bus and had gone all the way down to
North Carolina, probably disguised in a black wig, maybe even
brown contacts. All they had to work on was your driver’s license
and that was pretty scary. They searched your mom’s apartment, but
you’d cleaned it out really well. They’re still looking for a storage facility for more information about you, photos and stuff like that.
I assume you rented a storage locker. Where?”
“In the Bronx. Under an assumed name. To be honest, I didn’t
have time to go through my mother’s stuff. I just piled everything
into boxes and hauled the stuff to the Bronx. Now, Adam, where
would they come up with the idea that I’d be in North Carolina?”
He smiled sweetly at her. “Fiddling. I enjoy it and I’m good
at it.”
“By ‘fiddling’ you mean you scammed them?”
“Right. Sometimes con men use it to express that they got
something over on their marks. Ah, sometimes law enforcement
uses it, too.”
She shook her head at him. “I don’t want to know which you
are. You’re kidding about this, right? You yourself didn’t feed them
that information, did you?”
“No. I got one of their best snitches to feed it to them. That way
they wouldn’t have any doubts at all. I even planted some evidence
in your apartment in Albany to show that you knew all about
North Carolina, that you’d even vacationed on the Outer Banks,
your favorite town, Duck. Agents were swarming all over Duck
within four hours of the FBI getting the information.”
“I have been to Duck. I’ve stayed at the Sanderling Inn.”
“I know, that’s why I selected it.”
“But I don’t think I kept any souvenirs or books or anything like
that.”
“Oh yeah, sure you had souvenirs. There were a couple of
T-shirts, some shells with ‘Duck’ etched on them, a couple of Duck
pens, and a cute little candy dish showing ducks marching. Now the
Feebs will scour the Outer Banks all the way down to Ocracoke.
Did you hear about the Cape Hatteras lighthouse being moved?”
“Yes. Do you want more coffee?”
“Please. Oh, yes, Becca, give me the name of the storage locker
and the assumed name. I’ll get all your stuff out of there and to a