Текст книги "Ice Blues "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

His look of intense disgust intensified. "What the hell are you talkin' about, you god damn chiseler? Jackie stole that money. He took it right out of my house last October from right under my nose. Know how I know it was him? Because he told me he took it, just like he was proud of it. That's where that money came from, and anything else you hear is a lotta bull.

Now I want that money back, mister, do you understand me?"

"That's hard to believe," I said. "You don't look like a man with several million dollars to his name. If it's yours, where did you get it?"

A blue vein slithered up the inside of his pink head and throbbed. I was afraid he would keel over dead, and I didn't want that to happen while I was there. Trembling, he said, "Who-in-the– hell – do you think you are?"

I waited and listened for other sounds in the house. I heard none. "What makes you think I've got the money?" I said.

"My daughter-in-law told me you were the one who was after it. And Joanie don't lie to me, oh no, she don't. She sent the money back to me on a plane, and Howie's boy told me you took it. Mack Fay said he went out to the airport to get it for me, and he saw you take it out there. Howie's boy wouldn't lie to me, and don't you lie to me either. Where's my money?"

"What if I have it and I refuse to turn it over to you, Mr. Lenihan? Will you have me arrested? Why haven't you called in the police?"

Another vein ran up his skull, like a line of blue air moving inside a pink beach ball. He leaned toward me, his fist clenching and unclenching, and said, "You aren't from around here, are you?"

"I live on Crow Street."

"Ward six!" He turned his head and spat, though nothing came out.

I said, "You haven't answered my question. Why don't you pick up the phone, call the police, and have me arrested for grand larceny?"

He stuck out his chin and smirked. "Don't have to."

"Why?" I glanced toward the hallway to see if Mack Fay and Terry Clert were bounding toward me wielding tire irons. They were not.

"You were a friend of Jack's," Lenihan said. "The word I hear is, you were a friend of my grandson's."

"He was a client of mine. I'm a private investigator and Jack hired me for a particular job. We were not friends while he was alive, but I feel that I know him well. I admire a lot of things I've heard about him, his ideals especially.

I didn't have the chance to be his friend, but I would like to have been."

The fist still opening and closing, he said, "Joanie your friend too?" Now a tense sly grin had formed across his face.

"I've met Jack's mother. Yes, I liked her too and wish that she wasn't so full of bitterness about so many things."

"She's a cheap slut!" His look was smug as he said it. "You want to know why I'm not gonna call the cops, and you're still gonna give me my money back, and you're not gonna ask me any more nosy questions, and then you're gonna keep your mouth shut? You know why? Huh?"

"No. You tell me, Mr. Lehihan."

"You ask Joanie. You go home and you call her up, and then you bring me my money. You'll do it. Oh yes, you will. You'll do as I say, all right." His eyes got big and he sat smirking and making fists. My impulse was to walk over and pull his plug, but his vital malevolence was fueled only from within, so that was not possible.

I said, "Who killed Jack? Who bludgeoned your grandson and placed his dying body in my car?"

The clenched fists opened and stayed open. He stared at me blankly for a moment, and then his face collapsed and trembled violently. A surge of rage went through him, and he bleated, "Perverts! Pansies and perverts!

Jack laid down with perverts and one of those filthy animals killed him.

Wipe em out! That's the only way our boys are gonna be safe! Castrate 'em!

Gas 'em! Lock 'em up and fry 'em!" His whole body shook.

I said, "Is that what you wanted to happen to Jack? Jack was gay. Is that what you wanted? For Jack to be wiped out?"

Suddenly deflating, Lenihan slumped in his seat and looked confused.

"No," he said after a moment. "No, not Jackie. Jackie was a good, strong boy. Jackie had spunk. Jackie had a head on his shoulders. Jackie could have amounted to something. Jack was-oh, my Jesus, how I miss that boy!" Tears flowed. With a sudden jerk, he wiped them away with his sleeve and said, "G'wan, get outta here. And gimme my goddamn money back!"

He covered his eyes with one hand and waved me away with the other.

"Jack had good plans for that money," I said. "I think he would have wanted me to carry them out."

In a split second, the woe and tenderness vanished and the harsh anger came back. Giving me the evil eye again, he said, "You talk to Joanie, mister. And then you bring me my money. Today. You hear what I'm telling you?"

I stood up. "Is city hall in on this with you? Do they know what you're doing?"

He grunted. "City hall knows what city hall knows, and I know what I know.

Now get outta here and get me my money."

Unsummoned, Mrs. Clert promptly appeared. "It looks like you've ruffled Dad's feathers, Mr. Strachey. Is that right, Dad, did the gentleman get your feathers mussed?"

"Don't you start in on me," he snapped, as she led me to the front door.

"Maybe we'll see you again sometime," Mrs. Clert said with her blank smile.

"I think Dad would like that."

"That's the impression I have," I said, zipping up my coat in the doorway.

"In fact, he mentioned specifically that he'd like me to visit again soon."

"Oh, did he? Well, that would be nice. Oh, it's so cold and damp out there.

Don't catch your death now."

She shut the door and I stood looking at the abandoned Immaculate Conception School across the street. The chain-link fence around it had been ripped from its steel posts in three places and most of the windowpanes had been smashed. One of the fading graffiti on the red brick wall of the building read simply IMAGINE. I gazed at the word for a minute or so, and I began to imagine. As I did so, I knew that I had to speak with Joan Lenihan fast.

As I headed south on Pearl, the two Dodges trailed along a block behind me. When it became clear that I was not being followed by anyone else, I pulled over, got out, and signaled for the cop cars to pull alongside.

Bowman, being chauffeured in the front car, rolled down his window.

"Jumpin' Jesus, Strachey, was that Pug Lenihan s house you went into back there?"

"Yeah."

"Well, what kind of half-assed stunt is this anyway? Criminy, man. If word got back I was up here poking into Pug Lenihan's business without him asking, I'd be hung by the gimmeys in Capitol Park at high noon. Now goddamn it, when and where is this attack on you supposed to happen? If you want my cooperation on this, you're just gonna have to fill me in before you get a single 'nother iota of my valuable time."

I said, "Forget it."

"What?"

"Let's skip it for now. I have to check on a couple of things and then I'll get back to you."

"Don't bother," he said, thrusting his gray squid up at me. "The next time we meet, I'll be bothering you– plenty." He rolled up the window and they left me standing in the slush.

I drove back toward the Hilton. I was not being followed and I could not understand why. Mrs. Clert certainly would have notified Terry Clert presumably her son, or husband, or great-nephew twice removed-as well as Mack Fay of my appointment at Pug Lenihan's. It would have been their first certain knowledge of my whereabouts since Timmy and I had abandoned our house the previous week. Why would they let the opportunity to get at me slide by? Had they been tipped by someone in Bowman's crew that the cops would be surveilling me? That possibility made me unhappy.

Or did Fay and Clert know that Pug would insist that I return to his house with the money later in the day, and that after I spoke with Joan Lenihan I was sure to do as I was told? Although Pug had seemed genuinely unaware of Fays recent efforts to retrieve the money for him– if those efforts had been on Pug's behalf at all. Fay and Clert, it now appeared, had been running their own scam to make off with the two and a half million diddling Pug while he thought they were helping him.

But if that was the case, how could they hope to snatch the money from me if not at Pug's house? If they had been tipped that I would arrive with the cops in tow on my first visit, how could they be sure that I wouldn't also have Bowman with me on any subsequent visit? Mrs. Clert had seemed relaxed, confident, secure-not the demeanor of a woman whose family's elaborate act of larceny was in serious jeopardy.

In room 1407 I bolted the door, dragged the five bags out of the closet, unlocked each one, and opened them. The two and a half million was intact. I locked the bags and stacked them back in the closet.

I dialed Joan Lenihan's number in Los Angeles. After twenty rings there was no answer. I called my New York Telephone contact, who told me that three calls, each lasting approximately four minutes, had been made from Pug Lenihan's number to Joan Lenihan's phone in LA during the previous thirty-six hours. The most recent call had been at 6:15 the evening before. I hung up and tried LA again. No answer.

It was just after noon in Albany, nine in LA. I figured both Joan and Gail were working seven to four, or they'd worked the night before and had unplugged the telephone and gone to bed. I'd try again in the late afternoon, and if that didn't work, ask Kyle Toot to track Joan down and ask her to call me. I figured I now knew what the key was to trigger Joan Lenihan's cooperation, and the thought of it made me sick.

Before heading out for lunch, I checked my answering service, which had what was described as "an extremely urgent" message from Timmy. The message was: I am in the company of Messrs. Fay and Clert involuntarily.

Bring the you-know-what to our house at midnight tonight, but do not come accompanied by you-know-who. This is no joke. I repeat, this is no joke.

Sorry about this.

Now I had done it. They had done it. And I had done it. "Did he say where he was calling from?"

"All he said was to take down his message carefully and to get it to you as soon as possible. But you didn't leave a number. We didn't know where to reach you."

Timmy knew though. And he hadn't told them about our room at the Hilton.

They didn't have to have the information, because they had him, which they knew was as good as having me and the money. Still, he hadn't told them.

TWENTY

I sped over to Troy through the slush and parked in front of Flo Trenky's place. The green pickup truck was nowhere in sight, so I trotted around the corner and down the alley to see if Fay had parked out back. He hadn't. Workmen were removing the debris of the collapsed back porch and using a power shovel to load the splintered lumber into a dump truck. I went back out front and pressed the door buzzer.

"Yeah? What can I do you for?"

"Mr. Mack Fay, please?"

"Mackie ain't in right now. Who should I tell him dropped by?"

"I'm Phil Downey, Mr. Fay's parole officer. When do you expect him back?"

She had a pretty cracked face under a load of rouge and purple eye shadow. Her orange wig had bangs combed up like eyelashes, and her actual eyelashes were thick with some type of black muck. Broad-hipped and ample-bosomed, she stood facing me in chartreuse pedal pushers and a low-cut yellow sweater. On the side of her neck was what appeared to be a twelve-hour-old red-and-purple hickey.

She looked at me suspiciously and said, "You got some ID?"

"Are you Mrs. Fay?"

"No, I'm Flo Trenky, Mack's fiancee. Mack didn't say nothin' about no parole officer stopping in."

"This is a routine check. Could you show me his room, please?"

Her look hardened. "You got a search warrant? I need to see papers. If you got an ID and you got papers, you can come in. If you don't, you better talk to Mackie first. But Mackie ain't here."

"Look, I like Mack and I don't want to make any trouble for him. Tell me where I can locate him, I'll go there and fill out my report and that will be that. If I have to call in that Mack can't be located and might have left the state, it'll be his neck, not mine. I've just got a job to do."

She hesitated and seemed to loosen up, then got a puzzled look. "Where's your briefcase?"

"At the office. This is my lunch hour."

"Listen, wiseass, I never saw a parole officer without he had a briefcase glued on his arm. You're no parole officer, buster. What if I told you where Mackie went is none of your beeswax? What if I told you to scram? What if I told you you'd be in hot water if you didn't move your butt offa my premises?"

I sighed. "Flo, I have a confession to make."

"Come again?"

"Could we just step inside? You're going to catch a chill standing out here without a coat on and-well, this is going to shock you, but-my relationship with Mackie is kind of personal, and I think now is as good a time as any for you to hear about it." I took out my wallet and presented her with my membership card in the National Gay Task Force.

"What? What's that there?"

"Mackie has stolen my man, Flo. I want him back. Maybe between the two of us we can make Mackie see the light and then he'll come back to you and give me my man back. Down at Sing Sing Mackie stole my honey away from me."

She blinked hard and a chunk of something black fell off one eyelash, ricocheted off her left cheek, and plummeted into her cleavage. "You shittin' me? Mackie ain't that way. You're shittin' me."

"I think we should have a tete-a-tete, Flo-get to know each other. And see if we can figure out a way to get Mackie back on the straight and narrow.

Maybe it's just a phase he's going through, but you never can tell."

This did not fit with what she knew and she didn't want to believe it. But here was a woman who had been lied to by men before and her fund of mistrust was ready for tapping. I was not proud of myself for being the four hundredth man to mislead and abuse Flo Trenky. But I had to do what I had to do. In a shaky voice she said, "I'll kill that Mackie," and led me into the house.

The living room, overlooking the street, had a worn couch and a couple of electric-blue easy chairs with doilies on the arms and a coffee table with two Schlitz empties and a glass ashtry full of butts. A big Sears TV set with a vase full of paper geraniums atop it occupied one corner, but the focus of the room was a large cardboard fireplace with bricks painted on it and a cellophane fire that turned over a spit on a red light bulb.

Leaning in a stand next to the electric fire were a brush, a shovel, and a cast-iron poker. The brush and shovel looked as if they had stood undisturbed for a long time-like Timmy's and mine, Flo's fire produced no ashes-but the poker appeared to have been recently cleaned and polished.

"My friend's name is Jack," I said. "Perhaps you've met him. It's possible Mackie even brought him here. ltd be just like him, that wild and crazy guy."

She flinched. I thought about spitting it all out, telling her who I really was and why I had come into her home, and why I was now so desperate to locate Mack Fay. But she might have panicked and thrown me out-I had no way of judging how much she knew or didn't know-and I had to do what would work.

"Last week," she said in a tremulous voice. "That must've been the fella Mackie brought over last week. Him and Terry."

"Terry Clert?"

"They was buddies in the correction facilities. Mackie and Terry came in with this fella and said they need my place for some private business. Why, Holy Mother-is Terry a fruit too?"

"Yes, but he and Mack are just pals. 'Sisters,' people used to say and I suppose some still do. But it's my Jack who's the one Mackie's got the crush on. You say they might have been together here last week. Was the man you saw slim, about five-ten, going bald, wearing glasses, dressed in jeans and a dark-blue pea coat?"

"That's him. Oh my God."

"What night was that?"

She bit her lip and said, "Tuesday night. I had to miss part of Riptide, but June filled me in. They came in and said could they use my place to talk business, it was private, and I says sure, why not, so I went over to June's, my sister's, and watched my programs over at her place. Mackie said it was business, but-are you tryin' to tell me Mackie and that guy Jack was in here– doin it?"

"Yeah, the rotten creeps, they probably were. I was home Tuesday night, so they knew they couldn't use our place. Usually I work nights, but last Tuesday I was at home, so they must have come over here for their lousy cheating. So, you were gone for how long?"

"I went out about nine o'clock and got back about a quarter to twelve. June and I had a couple of drinks and chewed the fat for a while. When I got home Mackie had gone out and didn't get back till God knows what hour.

Why, that two-timing so-and-so! He must have been ashamed to look me in the face! Why, that-Mackie never even told me he was AC-DC. He must've picked it up in the facilities, that's all I can figure. Why, that-right under my roof he does it! Wait'll I get my hands on that lying son of a bee!"

"I hope none of your other tenants saw what was going on and are laughing at you behind your back. Was anyone else in the house that night?"

She fumbled with a pack of L amp;Ms and managed to insert one into the side of her mouth. "Unh-unh. There was a salesman here for a while on Sunday, Jim O'Connor, but he left when the back porch fell off. My back porch broke down on account of all the snow, but that was Sunday. Last Tuesday the only other person in the house was Mr. Frye in 2-B, and he never goes out of his room, just to the mental health on Monday morning and then pick up a box of sandwiches and root beer for the week over at the store, so he wouldn't've seen any funny business that was going on.

"Why, that Mackie! I should've known. In the morning the place looked like they had a party in here and cleaned it up. I just should've known. Men! You gotta keep an eye on em every minute. Though let me tell you, mister, this is a new one. This is a real big surprise. I'd've never believed it if you hadn't told me. Not Mackie." She lit the cigarette with a butane lighter and shook her head in nauseated disbelief.

"What made you think they had had a party?" I said. "I'm surprised, because Jack is a Jehovah's Witness and doesn't drink or smoke."

"Oh, it wasn't much," she said abstractedly. She was having trouble keeping her thoughts focused on this minor matter. "Back in the bedroom they must've spilt something on the rug and then tried to wipe it up, but it left a stain I can't get out. Wine or something. Busted the bottle too, I guess, cause there's still glass slivers. I got one stuck in my big toe yesterday. I mentioned it to Mackie, but he just said never mind the rug, he was gonna get me out of this dump anyway, take me to Atlantic City and put me in a condo. But that's just bull. Mackie can't even leave Troy till his parole is up in '87. Hell, he don't even have a job except driving some old coot around.

"Say, lookit-" She dragged on the cigarette and her expression had turned quizzical. "Tell me somethin' then. If you think Mackie's playin' around with your boyfriend, why don't you just give your boyfriend a piece of your mind? Tell him to shape up or ship out. What do you want to go both-erin'

Mackie for? Jeez, you might get him in trouble with the parole office for perversions. Listen, fella, I can handle Mackie. If he's gonna keep gettin' between my legs he's gonna have to quit foolin' around with degenerates who might give out that new disease that came up from Hades. What's it called?"

"AIDS."

"That's the one. I heard it can make you awful sick."

"That's why I want to find Mack today, Flo. I think Jack is with him right now, and I want to find them and talk some sense into Jack before it's too late. Do you think they might be at Terry Clert's house? Terry lives over on Third Street in the North End of Albany, I've heard."

"Yeah, they might be. Mackie went out early this morning and said he was picking up Terry and they had some work to do. But maybe that was just a line. Do you think?"

"Yes, I do. I think that was just a line."

"Men! You can't believe a word they say."

"No. No, I guess you can't."

I parked in front of the Clert house on Third Street at ten till two. The green pickup truck was nowhere in sight, nor was any other vehicle I had ever seen before. I watched the house for fifteen minutes and saw no sign of life. I knew Mrs. Clert would still be at Pug Lenihan's, though Corrine had mentioned a Kevin Clert who stayed with Pug overnight, and he could have been asleep inside the ramshackle frame carton I was looking at.

Slogging through the melting snow, I moved to the rear of the house and popped the lock on the back door with a credit card. I walked in with my revolver drawn. I'd never shot a human being and didn't want to now. But I knew I would do it if it meant saving Timmy or myself, both of whose lives I valued more highly than Mack Fay's or Terry Clert's. I knew now the kind of people I was dealing with, and if they were badly hurt and suffered exquisitely during whatever was coming next, I could learn to live with it.

The house was silent except for a dripping faucet and a humming refrigerator in the kitchen where I stood. If Timmy was in the house the leaky faucet would be driving him crazy, so I gave the handle a hard shove.

The drip-drop-drip continued. The washer was shot but I didn't take the time to replace it.

Finding no person, awake or asleep, in the downstairs rooms, I climbed the stairs and checked the bedrooms. There were three, each recently having been slept in, all unoccupied at the moment. One room, neat, feminine and freshly Airwicked, was obviously Mrs. Clert's. The other two, malodorous and chaotic, with pants flung over chairs and soiled twisted sheets on the beds, apparently belonged to the two male Clerts. I poked through the debris but found nothing incriminating or helpful.

Back downstairs I went to the telephone on the kitchen counter hoping to find an address scrawled on a notepad, as in Boston Blackie or Martin

Kane, Private eye, but there wasn't any.

I did not know where to look next for Timmy. A jar of instant coffee was next to the teakettle on the gas range, so I fixed myself a cup and sat at the kitchen table drinking it in the trapezoid of dusty sunlight that shone in the back window. I did not at all want to do what I decided to do next, but it seemed that both survival and neatness required it.

Back at the Hilton, I made nine telephone calls to acquaintances in New York City before I was able to complete the arrangements I had in mind. I skimmed off fifty thousand dollars from the two and a half million in the closet, stuffed it in my coat pockets, went down and picked up the car, and headed south.

I was in Manhattan by six, out by six forty-five, back in Albany just before ten. That gave me two hours before I was to meet Timmy and his captors at our house on Crow Street. From the hotel room I placed several more phone calls, the first of which was to my friend the narc.

TWENTY-ONE

The temperature had dropped back to three degrees and was headed, the radio said, down to eight below. For once, that was good. I picked up two friends at their house on Chestnut Street and drove them over to Rensselaer and back. Then I drove them over to Rensselaer and back a second time.

"On the phone you said you needed our help, but all we're doing is riding back and forth across the river. What is it we're supposed to do?"

"Pant."

"No, really."

"I want rapid breathing. Pant for me."

Casting nervous glances at each other, they panted until I dropped them back at their house.

"Thanks for your moisture."

"Don, are you okay?"

"My feet are cold, but my faculties are intact."

"Why don't you try turning the heater on?"

"Ah, but then I wouldn't have your frozen breath preserved on my window glass."

"You aren't going to go somewhere and lick it off, are you? I would consider that low-risk sex, but I suppose the ultra-cautious might insist it constituted an exchange of body fluids."

I shoved them out into the cold night and drove over to Crow Street, peering through the peepholes I had scratched in the film of ice. No lights were on in the house and Mack Fay's truck was nowhere on the street. With one window rolled down I backed into a space half a block from the house.

I turned off the ignition, shut the window, and waited invisibly. It was 11:26.

Two cars rolled by in the next twenty-four minutes, their headlights brightening the icy opalescence in front of me, but neither car stopped nor even slowed. At ten till twelve a third vehicle moved slowly up the street with a fourth close on its tail. Through the peepholes I made out Fay's green pickup, which backed into the last available space on the block, forcing the car behind it-the beige Buick I'd seen in front of my office the week before-to park alongside a fire hydrant.

One man emerged from the truck and three from the car. Of the three, the one in the middle-Timmy's height and build, and wearing Timmy's coat wore something that covered his face and head, possibly a pillowcase. The two others were leading him by the arms. The party of four met in front of the house and moved up the front steps. The door was unlocked and they entered, shutting the door behind them. After a moment, lights went on behind the living room draperies.

At three minutes till twelve I retrieved a bundle from under the car seat and, moving quietly, attentively, walked down the block. I opened the door of Fay's truck and inserted the bundle under the driver's seat. I thought, this is not perfect justice, but in an imperfect world, it will serve, it will serve.

At midnight precisely I walked up the front steps of my home and stomped the snow off my feet. I glanced up and down the street and, satisfied that no one had observed my recent odd actions, entered the house.

The four of them were seated around the picture of the fire. Two stood up as I entered. "I'm glad you got my message," Timmy said, remaining seated. "It's been an unusually long day." His smile was sincere but lacking in joie de vivre.

"Did they mistreat you?"

"Not to any lasting effect. I'll have to have these pants cleaned and pressed."

"We didn't want to mess him up too bad," Fay said. "Not with him being worth two and a half million. You got an expensive little girlfriend here, Strachey. Hey, you didn't know that before, did you?"

Fay had a two-day stubble of beard, nicotine-stained teeth, and dead black eyes. He grunted smugly and glanced at the other two to see if they were having a good time too. The younger Clert, Kevin, I figured, was a chunky gimlet-eyed youth who closely resembled a kid I knew in the eighth grade who sat in the back row sticking a pencil in his ear. The older Clert, Terry, was taller, rangier, better-looking and twitchier, and he kept his finger on the trigger of a sawed-off shotgun aimed at Timmy's midsection.

"You two must be the Clert brothers," I said, "Bert and Ernie. And I guess you're Mack Fay. It was hard to recognize your voice without a six-pound pile of shit stuffed in your mouth."

They all made stunned, ugly faces at me, and Timmy winced.

"What's in your coat pocket?" Fay snarled. "Kevin, shake him down."

I lifted my arms as Kevin removed my Smith amp; Wesson and examined it as if it were a moon rock. He carried it away dumbstruck.

"See," I said, "I didn't have an erection, I was just glad to see you guys."

More stunned, ugly faces. Timmy gave me a pleading look.

"Where is it?" Fay snapped.

"Not far from here."

"For your girlfriend's sake, hopefully it's in your car."

"The money is in a hotel room downtown."

"This asshole told you to bring it with you, you dumb fuck! I was right there when he said it on the phone. Now you get your ass downtown and bring it back here! You got fifteen minutes, you hear me?"

I checked my watch. Timmy was looking increasingly distraught, but this wasn't going to last much longer. I said, "I can have it back here in ten minutes. But first I want an explanation in return for the money. Why did you have to kill Jack Lenihan?"

A dumb coy look. "Who says I did?"

"You found out about the existence of the money in Pug Lenihan's house from Mrs. Clert-or was it from your father? – and you were planning to make off with it, but Jack stole it first. You grabbed him when he came back from LA, but he didn't have the money with him. You took him over to Flo Trenky's place Tuesday night to try to force him to get it for you. But why did you have to kill him? I want to know that."

Fay shrugged and grinned stupidly. "He told us you had it," he said mildly.

"The dumb fuck wasn't gonna tell us anything, but he changed his mind when we told him some things we knew about his mom-some interesting shit I picked up over on Pearl Street. Then he spit it out real fast, oh yes, he sure did. He told us you had the money. And then he started thinking and putting two and two together and getting very pissed off and mad at the world and going kind of nuts on us and-shit, we had to protect ourselves, didn't we? I mean, shit, that guy was fuckin' apeshit. I suppose you could say it was too bad what happened had to happen, but I think you have to admit, Jackie was kind of a weirdo anyways. He could have been a real pain in the ass if he was around. So, what can I tell you, good buddy?" He shrugged again and looked at me with his lifeless eyes while the other two stood around looking bored. Kevin was picking his nose and sticking the produce behind his ear.

I said, "How did you know I wouldn't arrive here with the cops? Why were you so sure of that?"

The dead eyes watched me. '"Cause then the cops would know you had the money and you wouldn't get to keep it. You'd lose it too."

"Maybe I'd rather see it go back to Pug than turn it over to you."

"Hey, did you hear that one, Terry? Shit, Pug can't take that money back from the cops, and you know it. Old Pug can't say it's his cause old Pug can't explain where it came from, right? The state would keep it. You aren't such a dip-shit you didn't figure that one out the same as we did. And if you were gonna bring in the cops, you'd've done it right away. But you didn't, did you, Strachey? Shit, mister, I had your number from the day one."