Page 43 of Hero

Leo Sealy emerged from the space between the two buildings where he had entered it, and ran for the street. He had seen Justine Poole go into the passage, and he had been sure he could catch her in it, but he had underestimated her speed again, or maybe this time he had underestimated several things—her alertness, her stamina, and her ability to fit herself through a space designed to block a person. It had looked to him to be the kind of space where children got stuck and had to be rescued by firemen, but that had to be the way she had gotten out. He ran downhill, around the front of the building and up the street to Fountain, turned to the right to look, and saw her running far ahead of him.

She ran east on the sidewalk and then suddenly veered out to the curb. There was her voice, shouting. He couldn’t hear what she said, but it made a man in a car pull over sharply and stop. She ran, flung open the passenger door, and threw herself inside. He could see her fiddling with something in front of her—maybe moving something out of the way of her feet. As she slammed the door shut, Sealy saw something white fall from the car to the pavement. The driver pulled away from the curb andaccelerated. Whatever she was telling him put the spurs to him because the car kept gaining speed, going slightly nose-upward as it went.

Sealy stopped running. He had no hope of getting close enough to the car to fire. He also had no chance of running back to the parking lot two blocks from the hotel where he had parked and driving back here in time to see where the man who had picked up Justine was taking her. He could only be sure they were heading east, but that could already be changing right now. When he got to his car he would go in that direction, because every other direction had even less to recommend it.

First, he had to see whether he had been imagining what he thought he had seen when Justine Poole had gotten into the rescuer’s car. It had been a flash of white, like a piece of trash, falling from the car just before Justine closed the door. He kept going, moving slightly slower because he wasn’t chasing her now. He kept his eye on the approximate spot where he had seen the white object fall. He decided that the best move would be to get off the sidewalk and run beside the curb at the edge of the street, so he would be less likely to miss it and go past.

Soon after he had moved to the edge of the road, he heard something, a hum that was just above a whisper—a car coasting along behind him, its rubber tires hissing on the asphalt as it came up on him. He glanced over his shoulder while maintaining the cadence of his steps, as runners did. He saw a pair of headlights, and behind them the unmistakable shape of a police car. The light bar on its roof was dark, and the car was moving barely faster than he was.

He wished he hadn’t been running. That didn’t look good after oneA.M.He had taken off his reflective vest and the rest of his gear and discarded it as soon as he’d seen her cross Sixth Street—except his pistol, which was in his right pocket, the side away from the street. Now he wished he’d kept the vest. A lot of nighttime runners wore them, andlooking as though they wanted to be seen at least made people assume they weren’t doing anything illegal. The cop drove along beside him for about a hundred feet, looking at him closely, and then rolled down his window and called, “Run on the sidewalk, not the street.”

Sealy waved, stepped up onto the sidewalk and went into a slow trot, and the cop sped up slightly and drifted past. The police car approached the spot where the other car had stopped to pick up Justine Poole, and then the cop appeared to get a call. The car’s light bar came on, the lights spinning and emitting blue and red flashes as the car accelerated sharply. As it passed over the bits of trash in the street some of it blew and swirled in its wake, including the white rectangle, which spun and then blew close to the curb.

The cop car was far away now and the cop had other things on his mind, so Sealy ran out into the street again to reach the spot before some sudden breeze could pick up the paper and blow it anywhere. When he got there, he found the white rectangle lying in the gutter among the dust and leaves. He stomped his foot on it to hold it down, not daring to trust its permanence even for the time it would take him to bend over and pick it up. He squatted and tugged it out from under his foot. It was an envelope, the kind that companies sent inside their solicitations for subscriptions or donations. He turned away from the nearest street lamp and held it up so he could read it.Harper’s Magazine. There was a preprinted square in the right corner that said, “No postage necessary if mailed in the United States.” There was no space asking for a return address, but one of those address stickers had been stuck there anyway. He read it.Mr. Joseph Alston, 327 Corcoran Way, Los Angeles, CA 90046.

Sealy folded the envelope and slipped it into his left pants pocket, then started to trot back toward the corner where he had first seen JustinePoole running for the car. After a hundred paces or so he changed his mind and slowed to a businesslike walk. Running was a risk. The cop who had passed him had probably not entirely acquitted him of being up to something. He had just been giving all of his attention to his radio call. That must have seemed serious, because he had sped off immediately.

Sealy had no further need to run. He sensed that the rules of the universe had suddenly reasserted themselves. The fact that she had flung open the car door and accidentally brushed the envelope off the dashboard or seat or pushed it out the door with her foot was amazing—but no more amazing than her eluding him for the past three days. Things seemed to be normal again. The race damned well was given to the swift and the battle to the strong.

30

Justine turned in her seat to look out the back window. The street behind them sloped downward, a long double string of street lamps that marked its course beneath the now clouding and half starless sky. Beyond that it diminished into an indistinct part of the smear of hazy illumination that in turn vanished into the blackness of the Pacific. She did not see the car she was looking for.

She knew that Joe had been waiting for her to say something, and she was aware that she was going to have to, but she had not yet decided what it would be, so she let the delay go on.

She had made the big decision already, and she was still surprised by it. She watched the darkened buildings slide past, and she thought that it was not unlikely that she would be dead before the city was light again.

Her killer was a pro. He had managed to get himself close to her at least three times. That was something she had been trained to avoid in her own profession, and she had successfully eluded dozens of stalkers and obsessives and aggressive paparazzi who had wanted thatmillion-dollar too-revealing shot of a client. Nothing she’d done this time had worked with this man. He had been able to take every turn she took, and sometimes it had seemed that he had read her thoughts and anticipated her moves.

Justine had tried a dozen logical, sane ways of surviving this threat. She had been denied the help of Spengler-Nash or any of her friends who still worked there. The police had never tried to protect her, and calling a high-end legal firm had alienated the police completely and had made her next hiding place possible to find. The cops had confiscated the weapon she’d carried at work, and the ten-day waiting period had made it impossible to take possession of the replacement she’d bought. Her well-meaning neighbors the Grosvenors had inadvertently endangered her by giving her photograph to a television station, and by opening the locked door of their shared building and giving her killer a chance to corner her. The sane ways had failed.

She glanced at Joe Alston. He was a stranger, but he was the only person she had turned to who had been of much use to her. She had chosen him as a convenient dupe, a man whose presence at the right time and her immediate impression of him had made him stand out. She had grabbed for him like a drowning swimmer raising her head above the surface by climbing up on the person beside her, even though her weight might push him under.

She looked again. She couldn’t help feeling affection for him. She supposed that the quality that had made her pick him out in the coffee shop was simply being approachable. It struck her as a shame at this moment, because he didn’t deserve this. If things had been different, she might really have been interested in him. Now those things—relationships with men—were over. Probably everything was over.

She said, “Thank you for picking me up, Joe. I really do appreciate it.”

“How could I not pick you up?” he said. “You said you were in danger.”

“I was,” she said. “But one of the things I find kind of odd about certain kinds of men—the kind you are—is that it doesn’t seem to occur to you that if I was in danger, you would be too. In this instance I’m glad, though. And I’m grateful.” She leaned close and kissed his cheek, and then retreated.

“You are, huh?” He gave a faint chuckle.

She realized she had made him suspicious again. “I’m not offering to sleep with you. I’m going to give you what you really want.”

“What’s that?”

“The truth. When you went out, I read what you’re working on, so you don’t need to pretend you don’t know who I am. You’re trying to write about me. You can, and if I’m around, I’ll give you an exclusive interview and tell you everything.”

“Why?”

“Because you helped me,” she said. “It comes down to the fact that some people will, and some won’t.”

“Good enough. When do we start?”

“Tomorrow, I guess. It’s too late tonight.” She hoped he didn’t pick up some hint of the guilt she felt for saying that. He didn’t know that she had intentionally changed everything.

He said, “Is there something I can do for you?”

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