Chapter 40

The next morning I got a good breakfast, figuring I might well need to fuel up for the whole day. Then I went back to my room and used the heel of the sturdy water tumbler the motel had thoughtfully provided to drive one of the nails partway into the heel of my shoe. I walked around the room clumpily to finish the job; when I was done it was firmly set. I was as ready as I'd ever be.

There was still a stop I needed to make first. Following Susan's directions I braved the rush-hour traffic—which even this far out of D.C. was fierce—to the Beltway that circumscribes the city and headed north toward a suburb called Bethesda. I took the exit she dictated and shortly found myself near a small park, where after some difficulty I found parking in a supermarket lot.

A couple of blocks on foot took me into the park and over to one of the trees that lined the walkway. Mystified, I obeyed her orders and stood with my back to the tree and took three paces directly away from the trunk.

"OK, right here," she said. I glanced around, there was nothing to be seen. "No, dig, babe. Use your hands, it's only about six or eight inches down."

I burst out laughing. All this song and dance and I was on a kid's treasure hunt? I had a pretty serious day ahead of me, and maybe it was appropriate that it began with farce.

"Well, don't just giggle like a fool, Larry, dig it up," she said impatiently.

Still laughing, I knelt down and followed her instructions. "And this is your idea of security, sugar?" I chortled. "Remind me never to give you my life's savings to protect. I mean, all it would take would be a curious squirrel—"

"Hey, fuck you and the horse you rode in on," she snapped, sounding genuinely offended. "Just fucking dig, asshole."

I got my laughter under control quickly. This was sure no time to piss her off. As I continued digging—which wasn't as easy as it sounded, the ground was pretty thoroughly packed—I thought it wise to back off. "I'm sorry, honey," I told her contritely.

"It's OK, darling," she said after a minute. "Look, I was a little rushed. I did it that last night; I'd just finished setting Bobby up with the cops and the reporters and I was on my way to meet him. I was living right over there"—I looked up and saw a high-rise luxury apartment building—"and it didn't seem smart to leave it there, but I didn't want to take it with me, either. So I improvised."

I dug with a bit more enthusiasm. For spur-of-the-moment under pressure, it actually wasn't a bad spot.

It took me about twenty minutes to unearth the thing, but nobody was out and about this early in the day and the cops were too busy with traffic to notice me. Susan commented that the ground hadn't been nearly so hard when she'd buried it. "We'd just had a big rainstorm, and it was pretty muddy," she said. "I mostly just shoved it around with my shoe, and covered it up."

"Now what?" I asked when I had it.

"Back to the car," she directed. "But stop off at that market and use the restroom, babe, your hands are filthy."

They were, too. So was the key I'd dug up, still in place after half a year. I washed them both off carefully, making sure to get the traces of dirt out from underneath my nails. Then she directed me to a strip mall a few blocks away, which contained one of those mail drops-cum-commercial shipping stores. I went in, followed her directions to a box numbered 178, the key opened it and, wrapped in a manila envelope and bubble wrap, there was the flash drive she'd promised, large as life and twice as natural.