«Can I see those, John?»

He handed Ryan the binoculars and Ryan scoured Calumet's lot. John turned on the radio and settled on a Spanish dance station, which Vanessa turned off. «This is no time for the Cheeka-Chocka.»

Ryan said, «I can see her car.»

«Bullshit,» said John.

«No. I do. It's a maroon BMW. I remember it was in the news footage when Susan went home to her mother's.»

John said, «Paralegals for prairie defense contractors don't drive BMWs.»

Ryan continued staring at the car through the binoculars. «John, you forget the settlement Marilyn made and then lost with the airline after the Seneca crash. She's clinging to her last remaining item of wealth like a lifeboat.»

«It was a claret-colored BMW,» said Vanessa, adding, «So what's the deal, John? I mean, we find Marilyn and then what? We trail her all day and all night? To what end?»

«She'll lead us to Susan.»

«How do you know that? My professional finding instincts are baffled.»

«We don't know where Susan went that year — nobody does. But Marilyn vanished, too, and now suddenly we find she's Fawn von Soap-Opera working here in Cheyenne at a defense plant. I mean,two people in a family vanish? That's no coincidence. Defense contracting? Spying? Espionage? Who knows. But there's a link. A strong one.»

«Oh my, » said Ryan. «I don't quite believe this myself, but La Marilyn has left the building. She's walking toward her car. Jeez, what a mess she is.»

«Let me see,» said Vanessa. «Work isn't over until five. Why's she leaving early? Shit — Ryan's right. It is her — with a $6.99 hairdo and a pantsuit ordered from the back of a 1972 copy of USSR This Week. I thought she was supposed to be stylish or something.» She kissed Ryan. «Agent 11, you are good. »

John started the engine to follow Marilyn, who was pulling out of Checkpoint Charlie. They turned onto the main strip, just then plumping up with the beginnings of rushhour traffic. They skulked three cars behind her for many miles, past a thousand KFCs, past four hundred Gaps, two hundred Subways and through dozens of intersections overloaded with a surfeit of quality-of-life refugees from the country's other larger cities, with nary a cowboy hat or a crapped-out Ranchero wagon to be seen in any direction. They drove out of Cheyenne's main bulk, and into its fringes, where the franchises weren't so new and the older fast-food outlets were now into their second incarnations as bulk pet-food marts, storage facilities and shooting ranges. Marilyn pulled the car into the lot of the Lariat Motel. She got out of the car and ran into room number 14.

«Well, kids,» said John, «guess where we're spending the night.»

Chapter Thirty-one

Erie was having a bad winter that year and Randy's heating was on the blink. Randy, wearing several layers of sweaters, was channel surfing around dinnertime, chili vapors drifting in from the kitchen, when he found CNN announcing that Marilyn had settled her airline lawsuit for ka-ching -point-four million dollars. He whistled, slapped his thighs and yodeled,«Soozan-oozan-oo-AY-oo.» She came in from the laundry room, where she had been changing Eugene Junior's diaper, and watched the coverage stone-faced: Marilyn, her arm around her lawyer's shoulder, was emerging like a catwalk model from a Manhattan courthouse.

«She's got gum in her mouth, the old crone,» Susan said. «You can tell because of the slight lump behind her left ear. She doesn't think people can tell, but I can. She thinks gum chewing develops your smile muscles.»

Marilyn spoke into a copse of network mikes. She said that justice had prevailed, but dammit, she'd happily forfeit every penny of her settlement for the chance to speak to Susan again for even one minute.

«Oh, Randy, this is so Oscar clip.»

Randy's eyes darted between the screen and Susan's face. The trial had cast a spell on the house in the three months since Susan had arrived. She pretended not to care, but she did. Even on the days she claimed not to have read the paper, she was invariably up-to-the-minute on the trial's progress, and never lost a chance to assassinate her mother's character. More importantly to Randy, Susan had let it be known over the past months that once Marilyn finalized her suit, she, Randy and the baby would move out to California and put into action «Operation Brady,» which Randy hoped would be the next phase of his life.

«Look, Randy, she's still wearing those cheesy Ungaro knockoff outfits, and she's even got those fake Fendi sunglasses she bought at the Laramie swap meet.» She smiled at Randy. «Well, there, pardner, looks like we're a packin' up and headin' west.»

Their plan was not complex. Randy, Eugene Junior, and the dogs were to drive to Los Angeles. Once there, Randy would rent a Brady Bunch house in which he and Dreama would raise the baby in a deftly twisted version of nuclear familyhood. Susan would have to live close by until what could only be an enormous amount of fuss died down. Susan wanted to minimize any public glare Eugene Junior might have to endure. But most of all, Susan wanted to keep Marilyn away from the child. «That greedy old battle-ax's claws are never going to touch Eugene.Ooohh, that's going to torture her — more than anything — no access to Eugene. Finally I'll have a bit of youth I can take away from her. »

Randy said, «Sooner or later the kid's going to need a Social Security number, Susan. I mean, technically, in the eyes of the U.S. government, Junior doesn't even exist.»

«Randy, Eugene Junior is going to be a Stone Age baby. There's going to be no paper trail on him at all — not until things quiet down. It's going to be a tabloid shark frenzy. We can do paperwork then.»

They worked quickly. On the day of her reemergence into the world, she drove down to Pittsburgh with Randy and Eugene Junior, and waved them off in an unparalleled spasm of blubbering. A chapter of her life was over as neatly as if followed by a blank page in a book. Then, wearing an anonymous, untraceable Gap outfit — unpleated khakis with a navy polo-neck shirt — she sauntered into a suburban Pittsburgh police station. She'd styled her hair in the manner she was famous for in Meet the Blooms, the lanky girl's ponytail, and despite the years, she looked deceptively young, and not too different from the way she once looked on the cover of TV Guide. She walked up to the front window and could tell right away that the female duty officer had recognized her — instant familiarity was a sensation Susan remembered from the heightened portion of her career. The officer at the counter, name-taggedBRYAR , was speechless as her brain reconciled what she was seeing with what she thought she knew.

«Hello, Officer Bryar,» Susan said thoughtfully, as though she were about to offer a sample of low-fat cheese ropes at the end of a Safeway aisle. «My name is Susan Colgate. I — »she paused for effect — «I'm kind of confused here, and maybe you can help me out.»

Officer Bryar nodded.

«We're in — I mean, right now we're in, let me get this straight, Pennsyl vania. Right?»

«Pittsburgh.»

«And today's date — I read it on the USA Today in the box outside. It's — what — September 1997?»

Officer Bryar confirmed this.

Susan looked around her and saw a generic police station like one on the studio lot: flag; presidential portrait; bulletproof windows and video cams. She made a point of looking directly and forlornly into all of the cameras, knowing that the police department might well earn enough to finance a new fleet of patrol cars from selling the footage she was generating for them. She turned back to Officer Bryar: «Well, then. Last thing I remember I was heading to JFK Airport in New York to catch a plane to the Coast and now it's — Forget it.»