he was going through now. The warm moments with Kelly, that great dinner, seemed to have happened to him in another life.
Glancing at his watch, Jeffrey noticed it was a little after eight. The last Pan Am shuttle was at nine-thirty. He could make it if he left soon.
He remembered how awful he’d felt on the plane that afternoon. Could he really go through with it? Jeffrey went back into the bathroom and again examined his inflamed ears and scratched nose. What else was a man like
Devlin capable of if they were locked in the same room day in, day out?
Jeffrey turned and went back to the briefcase. He closed the lid and locked it up. He was going to Brazil.
When Devlin left the Rhodes’s house, he fully intended to follow his original plan of Italian food, followed by beers at the harbor. But when he got about three blocks away, intuition made him pull over to the side of the road. In his mind’s eye, he replayed the conversation he’d had with the good doctor. From the moment Jeffrey had blamed the bank for not coming through with the money, Devlin knew he’d been lying. Now he started wondering why.
“Doctors!” Devlin said. “They always think they’re smarter than everybody else.”
Doing a U-turn, Devlin drove back the way he’d come and cruised by the
Rhodes’s house, trying to decide how to proceed. About a block beyond it, he made a second U-turn and passed the house again. This time he slowed down. He found a parking place and pulled in.
The way he saw it, he had two choices. Either he could go back inside the
Rhodes’s house and ask the doc why he was lying, or he could sit tight and wait awhile. He knew he’d put the, fear of God into the man. That had been his intention. Often people who felt guilty about something reacted to confrontation by hastily committing some telltale act. Devlin decided to wait Rhodes out. If nothing happened in an hour or so, then he’d go get some food and come back for a visit afterward.
Turning off the motor, Devlin scrunched down as best he could behind the steering wheel. He thought about Jeffrey Rhodes, wondering what the guy had been convicted of Mosconi hadn’t told him that. To Devlin, Rhodes didn’t seem like the criminal type, even the white-collar variety.
A few mosquitoes disturbed Devlin’s reverie. After rolling up the windows, the temperature inside the car climbed. Devlin began to rethink his plans.
Just as he was about to start the car,
he saw movement at the far edge of the garage. “Now what have we here?” he said, hunching low in his seat.
At first Devlin couldn’t tell who it was, the Mr. or the Mrs. Then Jeffrey stepped around the edge of the garage, making a beeline for his car. He was carrying his briefcase, and he ran kind of hunched over, as if he didn’t want to be seen by anyone inside the house.
“This is getting interesting,” Devlin whispered. If Devlin could prove
Jeffrey was trying to jump bail and caught him, and dragged him to jail, some big money would be coming his way.
Without closing the car door for fear that Carol might hear it, Jeffrey released the emergency brake and let the auto slip silently down the driveway and out into the street. Only then did he start the motor and drive off. He craned his neck for a view of the house for as long as he could, but
Carol never appeared. A block away he slammed the door properly and put on his seat belt. It had been easier to get away than he’d thought.
By the time Jeffrey got to the congested Lynn Way with its used-car lots and gaudy neon signs, he began to calm down. He was still somewhat shaky from Devlin’s visit, but it was a relief to know that he would soon be putting the man and the threat of prison far behind him.
As he got closer to Logan International Airport, he began to feel the same misgivings he had had that morning. But all he had to do was touch his tender ears to rekindle his resolve. This time he was committed to following through, no matter his qualms, no matter how high his anxiety.