door
shuddered open. Mr. White’s skinny associate in the ill-fitting
beige suit walked out first, bouncing car keys in his right palm. He
wasn’t any handsomer from the front. His face had that sandblasted
look farmers tend to get—dark pitted skin, permanently squinting
eyes, features worn down to nothing but right angles. Mr. White
strolled a few steps behind, reading a folded newspaper in one hand
and smiling contentedly like there was nothing in there but good
words.
We started our cars. Making no effort to hang back, I
followed the Infiniti out of the garage, then onto Commerce and east
for a mile to the highway. I couldn’t see anything through the
silvered rear window of Guy White’s car, but once in a while my
friend the driver would glance back at me in his sideview mirror.
Tailing someone well is extremely hard. It’s rare
that you can strike the right balance between being far enough away
to look inconspicuous and being close enough not to lose the subject.
A full ninety percent of the time you’ll lose the person you’re
tailing because of traffic or stoplights, nothing you can do about
it.
Then you have to try, try again, sometimes for seven
or eight days.
That, of course, is assuming you don’t want to be
seen. Tailing someone badly is very easy.
When I got about fifteen feet behind the Infiniti in
the center lane of McAlister, the driver looked in his side mirror
and frowned. I smiled at him. He said something to his boss in the
backseat.
If they’d sped up they could’ve easily left me in
the dust, but they didn’t. I guess one guy in an orange Volkswagen
wasn’t their idea of terrifying. The Infiniti kept cruising at an
easy fifty mph, finally taking the Hildebrand Exit and turning left
onto the overpass. I followed it into Olmos Park.
Mansions started rising out of the woods and hills.
Bankers’ wives jogged by in warm-up suits that cost more than my
car. The natives seemed to smell my VW as it went by. It looked like
their noses weren’t pleased.
We passed my father’s old house. We passed the
police station. Then we turned off Olmos Drive onto Crescent and the
Infiniti pulled into the red brick driveway of a residence I knew
only by reputation: the White House.
It wasn’t just called that because of the man who
lived there. The facade was an exact replica—wraparound porches,
Grecian columns, even the U.S. flag. It was an egomaniac’s dream,
except the whole building was scaled down to about half the size of
the original. Still impressive, but after you looked at it for a
while, it somehow seemed pathetic. It was a Volvo trying to look like
a Mercedes, a Herradura bottle filled with Happy Amigo tequila.
I pulled over on the opposite side of the road, where
the cactus and wild mountain laurels sloped down toward an old creek
bed. The driver of the Infiniti got out and started walking toward
me. Mr. White got out next. He brushed some invisible speck off his
powder-blue suit, then folded his newspaper under his arm and began
walking leisurely toward his front door, not looking back.
The skinny guy came down the presidential lawn and
across the street. He put his right hand on the side of the car and
leaned in toward me. When his coat fell open I got a pretty good view
of the .38 Airweight in the shoulder holster.
"Trouble?" he asked. The number of vowels
and syllables he packed into that one word told me he was a West
Texas boy, probably hailed from Lubbock.
"No trouble." I gave him a winning smile.
Lubbock ran his tongue around his lips. He leaned in
closer and gave me a short laugh. “I’m not asking if you got
trouble, mister, I’m asking if you want it."
I feigned bewilderment, pointing to my own chest.
Lubbock’s face turned into one big sour pucker.
"Shit," he said, a three-syllable word.
"You a retard, mister? What the hell you want following us like
that?"
I tried another dashing smile. "How about a few
minutes of Mr. White’s time?"
“ That’s about as
shuddered open. Mr. White’s skinny associate in the ill-fitting
beige suit walked out first, bouncing car keys in his right palm. He
wasn’t any handsomer from the front. His face had that sandblasted
look farmers tend to get—dark pitted skin, permanently squinting
eyes, features worn down to nothing but right angles. Mr. White
strolled a few steps behind, reading a folded newspaper in one hand
and smiling contentedly like there was nothing in there but good
words.
We started our cars. Making no effort to hang back, I
followed the Infiniti out of the garage, then onto Commerce and east
for a mile to the highway. I couldn’t see anything through the
silvered rear window of Guy White’s car, but once in a while my
friend the driver would glance back at me in his sideview mirror.
Tailing someone well is extremely hard. It’s rare
that you can strike the right balance between being far enough away
to look inconspicuous and being close enough not to lose the subject.
A full ninety percent of the time you’ll lose the person you’re
tailing because of traffic or stoplights, nothing you can do about
it.
Then you have to try, try again, sometimes for seven
or eight days.
That, of course, is assuming you don’t want to be
seen. Tailing someone badly is very easy.
When I got about fifteen feet behind the Infiniti in
the center lane of McAlister, the driver looked in his side mirror
and frowned. I smiled at him. He said something to his boss in the
backseat.
If they’d sped up they could’ve easily left me in
the dust, but they didn’t. I guess one guy in an orange Volkswagen
wasn’t their idea of terrifying. The Infiniti kept cruising at an
easy fifty mph, finally taking the Hildebrand Exit and turning left
onto the overpass. I followed it into Olmos Park.
Mansions started rising out of the woods and hills.
Bankers’ wives jogged by in warm-up suits that cost more than my
car. The natives seemed to smell my VW as it went by. It looked like
their noses weren’t pleased.
We passed my father’s old house. We passed the
police station. Then we turned off Olmos Drive onto Crescent and the
Infiniti pulled into the red brick driveway of a residence I knew
only by reputation: the White House.
It wasn’t just called that because of the man who
lived there. The facade was an exact replica—wraparound porches,
Grecian columns, even the U.S. flag. It was an egomaniac’s dream,
except the whole building was scaled down to about half the size of
the original. Still impressive, but after you looked at it for a
while, it somehow seemed pathetic. It was a Volvo trying to look like
a Mercedes, a Herradura bottle filled with Happy Amigo tequila.
I pulled over on the opposite side of the road, where
the cactus and wild mountain laurels sloped down toward an old creek
bed. The driver of the Infiniti got out and started walking toward
me. Mr. White got out next. He brushed some invisible speck off his
powder-blue suit, then folded his newspaper under his arm and began
walking leisurely toward his front door, not looking back.
The skinny guy came down the presidential lawn and
across the street. He put his right hand on the side of the car and
leaned in toward me. When his coat fell open I got a pretty good view
of the .38 Airweight in the shoulder holster.
"Trouble?" he asked. The number of vowels
and syllables he packed into that one word told me he was a West
Texas boy, probably hailed from Lubbock.
"No trouble." I gave him a winning smile.
Lubbock ran his tongue around his lips. He leaned in
closer and gave me a short laugh. “I’m not asking if you got
trouble, mister, I’m asking if you want it."
I feigned bewilderment, pointing to my own chest.
Lubbock’s face turned into one big sour pucker.
"Shit," he said, a three-syllable word.
"You a retard, mister? What the hell you want following us like
that?"
I tried another dashing smile. "How about a few
minutes of Mr. White’s time?"
“ That’s about as
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