I cant see the sign from here. Whatever it is, maybe it goes somewhere.
Dont count on it.
Here we go, he said a few minutes later. Belle Mead Lane. Number seventy-one, wasnt it?
Seventy-one.
So itll be on the left. Okay, thats it.
He slowed for a moment across from a red-brick ranch with white trim, set back on a spacious and well-landscaped lot.
Nice, Dot said. Be a showplace when the trees get some size to them. I call it a positive sign, Keller. Hes got to be more than an errand boy to afford a place like this.
Unless he married money.
There you go. What heiress could resist a small-time crook with hair growing out of his ears?
Well, he said.
Well, indeed. Now what?
Now we find a motel.
And wait until tomorrow?
At the earliest, he said. This may take a while. He doesnt live here all by himself. But we want to get him when hes alone, and when he cant see it coming.
Its like when you work, isnt it? You go out and have a look around and plan your approach.
I dont know any better way to do it.
No, it makes sense. I guess I expected it to be more straightforward, the way it was yesterday in Des Moines. Go there, get what we came for, and leave.
We were just picking up a phone, he pointed out. Our task here is a little more complicated.
Just finding the damn house was more complicated than anything we did in Des Moines. Will you be able to find it again tomorrow?
It wasnt hard to find, not once hed been there and knew when to disregard the map. When he turned onto Belle Mead Lane the next morning, he half-expected to see Marlin Taggert out in front of his house, watering his lawn. But that was Gregory Dowling whod been watering his lawn, and who might be watering it still, never knowing what a close brush with death hed had. No one was watering Marlin Taggerts lawn.
And no one ever has to, Dot said, because were in Oregon, where God waters everybodys lawn. How come the suns out, Keller? Isnt it supposed to rain here all the time? Or is that just a rumor they started to keep Californians from moving in?
He parked two doors down on the other side of the street. That gave him a good view of Taggerts house, but put them where he wouldnt spot them unless he decided to take a good look around.
Still, they couldnt park here long enough to sink roots. Taggert might not be expecting trouble, but his was a line of work where trouble was never entirely out of the question. Even if there was no one with a reason to wish him ill, he almost had to be a person of interest to law enforcement officers of all descriptions, local and state and federal. He and his boss might have gotten away clean in Des Moines, but Taggert couldnt have lived this long without getting tied into something somewhere. Keller, whod met the man, was willing to bet hed done time, though he couldnt have said where or for what.
So hed be cautious out of habit, whether or not he had anything specific to be cautious about. Which made surveillance complicated. You couldnt park on the block for too long, or come back too often.
That afternoon they returned to the airport, where Dot went to a different rental car counter and rented a car for herself, paying extra for an SUV so that it would be recognizably different from the sedan Keller had rented. With two cars, Keller figured they were that much less likely to be spotted. But even with a whole fleet, they had to be circumspect in their surveillance, or Taggert would simply conclude that he was being watched by a government agency with a whole motor pool at its disposal.
A couple of times a day they took one of the two vehicles and found their way back to Belle Mead Lane. Theyd do a couple of drive-bys, park at curbside for five or ten minutes, circle the block a time or two, and then return to the motel. They were staying nearby at the Comfort Inn, and there was a shopping mall with a multiplex theater just half a mile from the motel, and plenty of places to eat. But most of the time they sat in their separate rooms and read the paper or watched television.
If we had a gun, Dot said, we could speed things up a little. Just walk up to the front door and ring the bell. He answers, we shoot him and go home.
And if someone else answers?
Hi, is your daddy home? Bang . But even if you drove from New Orleans to Des Moines with the gun in the car, we still couldnt have brought it to Portland. Not without driving across the whole damn country. You think it would be impossible to buy a gun here?
Probably not.
But you dont want to.
No. Anyway, how can we shoot him dead and then expect him to talk?
Saturday morning they had breakfast across the street from the motel. Over coffee they went over what theyd learned in several days of intermittent surveillance:
A couple of sightings had confirmed that Marlin Taggert, if that was the name of the man residing at 71 Belle Mead Lane, was definitely the man whod been Kellers contact in Des Moines. The same fleshy face, the same big nose, the same loose mouth, and the same characteristic walk, not quite shambling but not far from it. And, of course, the same Dumbo ears, though they were too far away to see if his barber had done anything to make them more presentable.