ALBANY, NEW YORK — JULY 1980
Eddie met him at the Albany station.
He was behind the newsstand rack with a manila folder held low on his chest. C. S. on the front of it, in purple marker. A cap from some dirt-track series, and the cap had spent time in the stands. He had the folder low and most of himself behind the rack.
Carl came through the waiting room and walked past him.
Eddie caught up. “Spackler.” A whisper. Then louder, with a tap on the shoulder. “Spackler.”
Carl did not jump. He stopped and turned. Eddie had a finger on his lips. He tipped his head toward the doors.
They walked out. Eddie looked at everybody in the room on the way.
The van was at the curb. Eddie stopped at the front of it and put a hand on the hood.
“Carl. The Eagle.” He turned the hand over toward Carl. “Eagle. Carl.”
Mismatched white-letter tires on chrome wagon wheels, windows in the back like a pair of fish eyes, and when Eddie opened the door a smell came out that Carl could not place.
They got in. Eddie started in on it — the plan had moved — and stopped himself. Finger to his lips again. He reached over and turned the radio on. WGNA. He turned it up, and leaned in.
“County first,” he said, under the radio. “Then ATF. Now it’s sounding like J. Edgar’s boys.” The charges that were coming, and the kind of people who got attached to charges like that. He took the manila folder off the dash and opened it and handed it across. Newspaper clippings, loose. He’d gone through the papers, he said, the free ones first. An Albany daily had a short item, low on the page, and a photograph. Carl’s. Carl could not stay at Eddie’s place in Albany, or anywhere else with a return address. Carl needed to go to Canada.
Carl was still looking at the picture when Eddie closed the folder on it and flipped it back onto the dash.
“Mr. Sketch? Purple Grape?”
“Yeah. My favorite.” Eddie pulled out. “Yours too? Or what’s yours? You look like an orange man.”
“Just depends.”
“Come on. You’ve got one that makes your mouth water.”
Carl went through them. Eddie had something to say about every one of them. Cherry was for kids.
“You can put them together,” Carl said.
“Together.”
“Banana down first. Cinnamon over it. Not a lot. Give it a second.”
“And?”
“Banana bread.”
Eddie looked over at him and back at the road.
“Blueberry under cinnamon is a muffin,” Carl said.
Eddie drove.
He pulled in at the bus station and shut the van off and sat there looking out the windshield. Carl looked out the windshield too. Neither of them said anything. After a while Carl nudged him and tipped his head at the station doors.
Eddie nodded. They got out of the Eagle and went in.
Eddie had already bought the ticket — the cheapest one, with the most stops. Inconspicuous, he said. Nobody watches the milk run. He had not handed it over in the van.
He stopped just inside the doors to the buses, looked up at the board, and stepped in close to Carl. The ticket went from his hand to Carl’s, down low, between them.
“Where does this go?” Carl said.
“North,” Eddie said. Then, “Be safe.”
Carl nodded and got on the bus.
In Chicago, half an hour later, the telephone rang. Mori picked it up and listened. It did not take long. He said thank you and hung up.
He went to the board and moved a piece.
