Page 53 of Return of the Spider
“Follow or go downtown?” I asked when I saw a Yellow Cab slow to a stop in front of Rodolpho’s house.
“Follow.”
Prince’s cousin picked up his cane, limped down to the taxi, and got in. Sampson trailed it loosely across the District line. We knew where he was going, and John took a shortcut, so we were in the parking lot of the strip mall in Suitland–Silver Hill where La Coccinelle Café and Bakery was located before Rodolpho arrived.
The past two days, he’d gone in and out quickly. This morning, however, he stayed in the small café for nearly forty minutes.
“He spot us and ditch us?” I asked finally.
John’s eyes were closed. “I hope not, but one of us better go inside and check.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. I was reaching for the door handle when Rodolpho exited. He laughed and pivoted on the sidewalk to say something to a woman behind him.
I got my binoculars on them and was shocked to see the woman following the gangster was undercover officer Nancy Donovan. She was laughing too.
Rodolpho held out his arms and she cocked her head as if considering before sliding over to him and surrendering to his kiss.
CHAPTER
40
“that’s not by thebook,” Sampson said.
“Bad news, you think?” I said when Valentine Rodolpho and Nancy Donovan broke their embrace.
They held each other’s hands a moment. She smiled and slipped away into a playful skip down the sidewalk, then looked back at him and laughed again.
“Could be real bad news,” John groaned as Donovan disappeared around a corner. “I hope to God Pittman doesn’t know she’s crossed that kind of line.”
“We telling him?”
Sampson thought about that. “I don’t know yet.”
“Who’s this?” I said as a black Lincoln Town Car rolled to a stop by Rodolpho. He seemed buoyed by his kiss with Donovan and climbed in easily.
“Rodolpho’s rising up in the world,” Sampson said. “A hired car instead of a Yellow Cab? Let’s see if he goes home.”
He did not go home.
Rodolpho’s car took him straight east on Maryland Route 214. Thirty minutes later, the Lincoln turned north on a road just west of Davidsonville.
It was rural country, and the road was little traveled. We were nervous about being spotted and stayed well back for several miles. We lost them as the road passed through woods.
“Turn around,” I said when we emerged into farm fields and could see up the road. “They must have taken one of those gravel drives back there.”
John got the van turned around. We were no more than a quarter of a mile into the trees when we saw the Lincoln exit a drive on the left that had a large black mailbox out front. The car headed toward the highway.
“Drive in?” I said.
“Walk in,” Sampson said, driving past the dirt lane that vanished into the forest. “See what old Rodolpho’s got going on.”
“‘P and E Imports and Exports,’” I said, reading the words on the mailbox. “Could be Prince’s place.”
“Could be,” he said, pulling over on the shoulder a quarter of a mile past the drive.
We got out, crossed the road, and started through the trees. Three hundred yards in, we spotted an opening in the woods several acres in size steeply downhill from us.
We reached a forested outcropping that overlooked a patch of scrub grass surrounding a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Behind the fence, we could make out construction equipment, stacks of construction supplies, and a large steel-gray building.
