Chapter 38

The first big test of the Liberator would be the airport, I'd decided. If it didn't clear through security there, I figured, chances were it wouldn't pass muster where I needed it to either. For the airport, though, I decided not to try either the nail or the bullet, the two pieces with metal in them. Security would be laxer where I was going.

I disassembled the whole thing and stashed its components in varying places. The stock, the largest piece, went into a side pouch of the briefcase I was carrying with me. The barrel went into my shaving kit in the briefcase. The other bits and pieces I put in various places, including the pins in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing. Even a manual search wouldn't reveal anything except seemingly unrelated bits that didn't obviously go together.

I also made sure that I wasn't carrying anything metal at all, as I had the week before when I'd zipped through the detector at my office that had stymied the Mexicans. And, as then, I sailed right through. Mentally I shook my head at the folly of the whole thing. There are knives with ceramic blades, explosives powerful enough to be contained in a stick of deodorant, poisons sufficiently lethal for a planeload that can be inserted in a capsule, the Liberator itself, a whole raft of deadly weapons that will pass comfortably through the gauntlet that's today's airport security. It was simply a latter-day version of the old tried-and-true standard of "hype and hope"—they publicly trumpeted how secure you are flying and privately said their little prayers that nothing happened.

As nothing had happened to me on my way through. Minus the nail and the bullet, both of which were carefully sequestered in my checked bag, I'd passed the first, and toughest, test. By comparison, the one that really counted ought to be a piece of cake.

Mindful that one-way tickets raised red flags to today's security-conscious airlines, I'd booked round-trip notwithstanding that I doubted seriously I'd be using the return portion. If my ploy failed to elicit the damning evidence on which I was counting, coming back home would be far too dangerous. If it succeeded I'd probably be too tied up with McDonough and the other Feds to make the trip anyway—perhaps even in witness protection myself, although that seemed unlikely. I hated to spend the money on the unneeded ticket, but after two weeks plus of hotel stays it seemed inconsequential, especially as against drawing unwanted attention to myself.

In due course the flight was called and I boarded. I'd treated myself to a seat in the front of the plane; the flight would be over five hours, and with the coming confrontation with Susan's Senator I was nervous enough already without cramping myself into the too-small seats of coach. More money outflow from what was an ever-diminishing reserve, but I didn't consider it wasted if it helped me feel easier about what was to come.

Five hours is a bloody long time, and I had precious little with which to occupy it. I'd picked up a paperback book at the airport kiosk but found it didn't hold my attention; it was a fairly routine thriller, but my mind kept returning to the real-live one in which I was so deeply immersed and I couldn't concentrate on it. With nothing else to do except look at cloud formations out the plane window I started up a conversation with Susan.

"How the hell did you wind up in, well, I mean doing what you used to do?" I asked.

"Whoring?" she said. "How'd a nice girl like me wind up in a place like that? You want the honest answer or the one I used to give johns who asked that?"

Her sardonic tone was a little offensive. "Honey, this is me asking," I reminded her. "Not some guy you don't know. OK?"

"I'm sorry, sweetie," she said contritely. "It's just that, well, it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about it to you."

"Susan, it's part of who you are," I said. "And I love you, who you are. Nothing's going to change that. But you've always been so reticent to talk about yourself, and I'd really like to know the things that shaped the person I love. What was it, child abuse? Poverty? Something bad?"

She sighed. "I wish I could tell you it was any of those things, but it wasn't. It was just, you know, something I got started doing, and it paid well, and ... well, I kept on doing it."

"Oh?" I prompted. I really did want to get to know her better. Not the person she was now, after three weeks of having her live inside my head I already knew that person better than Romeo knew Juliet and loved her at least as much. But where had she come from, what made that person?

"Shit, Larry," she said. "Hell, it probably started when I grew boobs and pussy hair. I was one of the early bloomers, you know, I had a figure back when a lot of girls still didn't know what a figure was. And the boys, you know, noticed, and they used to pay me a lot of attention because of it. The older boys, too, in fact them especially."

"I remember that kind of thing," I told her.

"Sure you do. It's a guy thing," she teased. "Anyhow, I pretty quick found that their interest didn't last very long if they didn't have, well, at least some kind of access to the goodies. Just looking wasn't going to keep them around. So I'd let them feel me up, and it went on from there. I lost my virginity when I was fifteen to some boy who was a couple years older, he was ... I don't remember, he was either a junior or a senior in high school."