Carl showed me to the front door.

I said to him, “See you at six.”

“Seven.”

Not too bright. But loyal. And dangerous.

CHAPTER FORTY

Up ahead, the steel gate wasn’t opening as I approached the gatehouse, and I started honking.

The gate began to slide open, and as I reached the gatehouse, the two storm troopers gave me mean stares as they stood there with their thumbs hooked into their gun belts. If that was the best they could do, I wouldn’t bother to flip them the bird, but I did accelerate, veer close to them, then cut the wheel, and squeezed the Hyundai through the half-opened gate.

In my side-view mirror, I saw them kicking the gravel and stomping the ground. I think they were pissed off.

Maybe I didn’t have to be such a prick. But you need to establish who the alpha male is right up front. People like knowing their place in the pecking order.

Also, I had no doubt that one or both of these guys had grabbed Harry on the property. And if not them, then some guys wearing the same uniform. Right, Bain?

There was still no surveillance team visible, and I wondered what the hell Schaeffer was up to.

I drove out to Route 56 and headed north.

I replayed my conversation with Bain Madox, which made for some interesting side thoughts. Bottom line on that, Bain and John knew that Bain and John were playing head chess with each other.

Anyway, Madox asked me to dinner, and, of course, Ms. Mayfield was invited. And Madox deduced from my unchanged clothes that Ms. Mayfield and I had come here on short notice. So he went out of his way to make sure Ms. Mayfield would feel comfortable at the club in whatever she was wearing. That was very thoughtful of him-not to mention observant. Bain Madox would make a good detective.

I knew Kate was worried about me, and you can get away with a three-minute cell-phone call before it’s traced, so I turned on my phone and dialed the Pond House number. Kate answered, “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Thank God. I was starting to worry-”

“I’m fine. I can only talk for a minute. I need to run some errands, and I’ll be back in about an hour.”

“Okay. How did it go?”

“Good. I’ll fill you in when I get back. Did you get some of those things accomplished?”

“Yes, I-”

“Did you speak to Schaeffer?”

“I couldn’t reach him.”

“Okay… hey, did you get a pizza?”

“No. You can pick up something.”

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Famished.”

“Good. I swung an invitation for us for dinner at the Custer Hill Club.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you about it when I see you.” I informed her, “Dress is casual.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. It’s casual. Seven for cocktails.”

“I mean-”

“I have to hang up, see you later.”

“John-”

“Bye. Love you.” I hung up and shut off my phone. Did I say we were going to dinner at the Custer Hill Club? Am I crazy?

Anyway, I was approaching Rudy’s gas station, and there was Rudy, talking to another self-service customer. I pulled in and called out, “Rudy!”

He saw me, ambled over, and said, “You back?”

“From where?”

“From…? I don’t know. Where’d you go?”

“I tried to smooth things over for you with Mr. Madox.”

“Yeah…? I told you, I talked to him. He’s okay.”

“No, he was still pissed at you. Well, I got good news and bad news. What do you want first?”

“Uh… the good news.”

“The good news is that he’s not pissed at you anymore. The bad news is that he’s opening a GOCO gas station across the street.”

“Huh? He’s what? Oh, jeez. He can’t do that.”

“He can and he is.”

Rudy looked across the street at the empty field, and I’m sure he could picture it: eight gleaming new pumps, clean restrooms, and maps of the park.

I said to him, “Competition is good. It’s American.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Hey, I need a favor. Rudy?”

“Huh…?”

“I gotta go pick up a deer carcass. You got something bigger I could swap for this Korean lawn mower?”

“Huh?”

“Just for tonight. And I’ll throw in a hundred bucks for your trouble.”

“Huh?”

“And I’ll fill your tank.”

“You need gas?”

I drove the Hyundai around the back of his station, out of view, and within five minutes I did a deal with Rudy, who was still acting like he’d been kicked in the head by a mule. In fact, he didn’t notice that the Hyundai keys were not in the ignition as I said they were.

My parting words to him were, “Don’t call Madox about this. That’ll make it worse. I’ll talk to him.”

“He can’t do that. I’ll go to court.”

Anyway, Rudy’s bigger vehicle turned out to be a beat-up Dodge van whose interior looked like it had suffered a fuel explosion during a food fight. But it ran like a champ.

I continued on, and in Colton, I passed up the turn for Canton and took the long route, via Potsdam.

When you’re running from the posse, you need to change horses often, shoot your last horse, and never ride the same trail twice.

I reached Canton and found Scheinthal’s Sporting Goods, where I bought a box of.40-caliber rounds for Kate and a box of 9mm for myself. Everyone in law enforcement should be using the same caliber handgun, like in the military, but that’s another story. I also got us four spare Glock magazines. The proprietor, Ms. Leslie Scheinthal, needed ID for the ammo purchase, and I showed her my driver’s license, not my Fed creds.

I needed to change my socks, which had recently become forensic evidence, so I bought a pair of wool socks that would be good for collecting more rug fibers and hairs in Mr. Madox’s dining room and library.

Of course, all this investigative technique stuff would become moot if Madox slipped a Mickey Finn in our drinks, or shot us with a tranquilizer dart, and we woke up dead, like Harry. Also, there was the possibility of good, old-fashioned gunplay.

On that subject, I had the thought that a situation could arise where Kate and I might be relieved of our weapons. I had no intention of letting that happen without a fight, but the fact was, we were walking into an armed camp, and it’s hard to argue with ten guys who have assault rifles pointed at you. I was sure that Harry had encountered a similar situation.

So I looked around the sporting-goods store for something that wouldn’t set off a metal detector and might pass a frisk, and at the same time would be more useful in a tight situation than, say, a pair of wool socks.

Ms. Scheinthal, who was a pretty young lady-though I didn’t notice-asked me, “Can I help you with anything?”

“Well… this is kind of a long story…” I mean, I really didn’t want to get into the whole thing about my dinner host and his private army holding me up at gunpoint and taking my pistols, then me needing a hidden weapon to kill them, and so forth. So I said, “I’m… I need some survival gear.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, Leslie. What do you have?”

She walked me to an aisle and said, “Well, here’s some stuff. But all camping gear is really survival gear.”

“Not the way my ex-wife camped, with a house trailer and a cleaning lady.”

Leslie smiled.

I looked over the stuff and tried to figure out what the hell I could smuggle into the lodge that wouldn’t set off a metal detector. Stun grenades have almost no metal, so I asked her, “Do you have stun grenades?”

She laughed. “No. Why would I carry stun grenades?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to fish. You know, like dynamite fishing.”

She informed me, “That’s illegal.”

“No kidding? I do it all the time in Central Park.”

“Come on, John.”

She seemed to want to help, but I wasn’t being very helpful myself. She said, “So, you’re camping out. Right?”

“Right.”

“So, do you have winter gear?”

“What’s that?”

She laughed. “It gets cold out there at night, John. This isn’t New York City.”