Chapter 40
CHAPTER
“that’s not by the book,” 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.
“What’s with the razor wire?” Sampson said. “I mean, that’s a lot of expensive equipment in there, but it seems like he’s going overboard.”
Looking through my binoculars, I picked up movement inside the fence to our left. “And why are the two big guys near the gate carrying rifles?”
“Gotta be to protect all the humanitarian and philanthropic pursuits going on in there.”
“A Nobel Peace Prize is in the offing for Prince.”
“Without a doubt.”