Текст книги "Finders Keepers"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Morris gaped.

McFarland smiled. ‘You’re okay, Morrie. For now, at least. So what do you say?’

For a moment Morris couldn’t think what he should say. Then it came to him. ‘Thank you, Mr McFarland.’

McFarland ruffled the hair of his charge, a man twenty years older than himself, and said, ‘Good boy. Seeya next week.’

Later, in his room, Morris replayed that indulgent, patronizing good boy over and over, looking at the few cheap furnishings and the few books he was allowed to bring with him out of purgatory, listening to the animal-house yells and gawps and thumps of his fellow housemates. He wondered if McFarland had any idea how much Morris hated him, and supposed McFarland did.

Good boy. I’ll be sixty soon, but I’m Ellis McFarland’s good boy.

He lay on his bed for awhile, then got up and paced, thinking of the rest of the advice Duck had given him: If you get the idea to do something that might get you marked up on Doubtful Behavior, wait until after your PO makes a surprise visit. Then you prob’ly be all right.

Morris came to a decision and yanked his jeans jacket on. He rode down to the lobby in the piss-smelling elevator, walked two blocks to the nearest bus stop, and waited for one with NORTHFIELD in the destination window. His heart was beating double-time again, and he couldn’t help imagining Mr McFarland somewhere near. McFarland thinking, Ah, now that I’ve lulled him, I’ll double back. See what that bad boy’s really up to. Unlikely, of course; McFarland was probably home by now, eating dinner with his wife and three kids as humongous as he was. Still, Morris couldn’t help imagining it.

And if he should double back and ask where I went? I’d tell him I wanted to look at my old house, that’s all. No taverns or titty bars in that neighborhood, just a couple of convenience stores, a few hundred houses built after the Korean War, and a bunch of streets named after trees. Nothing but over-the-hill suburbia in that part of Northfield. Plus one block-sized patch of overgrown land caught in an endless, Dickensian lawsuit.

He got off the bus on Garner Street, near the library where he had spent so many hours as a kid. The libe had been his safe haven, because big kids who might want to beat you up avoided it like Superman avoids kryptonite. He walked nine blocks to Sycamore, then actually did idle past his old house. It still looked pretty rundown, all the houses in this part of town did, but the lawn had been mowed and the paint looked fairly new. He looked at the garage where he had stowed the Biscayne thirty-six years ago, away from Mrs Muller’s prying eyes. He remembered lining the secondhand trunk with plastic so the notebooks wouldn’t get damp. A very good idea, considering how long they’d had to stay in there.

Lights were on inside Number 23; the people who lived here – their name was Saubers, according to computer research he’d done in the prison library – were home. He looked at the upstairs window on the right, the one overlooking the driveway, and wondered who was in his old room. A kid, most likely, and in degenerate times like these, one probably a lot more interested in playing games on his phone than reading books.

Morris moved on, turning the corner onto Elm Street, then walking up to Birch. When he got to the Birch Street Rec (closed for two years now due to budget cuts, a thing he also knew from his computer research), he glanced around, saw the sidewalks were deserted on both sides, and hurried up the Rec’s brick flank. Once behind it, he broke into a shambling jog, crossing the outside basketball courts – rundown but still used, by the look – and the weedy, overgrown baseball field.

The moon was out, almost full and bright enough to cast his shadow beside him. Ahead of him now was an untidy tangle of bushes and runty trees, their branches entwined and fighting for space. Where was the path? He thought he was in the right location, but he wasn’t seeing it. He began to course back and forth where the baseball field’s right field had been, like a dog trying to catch an elusive scent. His heart was up to full speed again, his mouth dry and coppery. Revisiting the old neighborhood was one thing, but being here, behind the abandoned Rec, was another. This was Doubtful Behavior for sure.

He was about to give up when he saw a potato chip bag fluttering from a bush. He swept the bush aside and bingo, there was the path, although it was just a ghost of its former self. Morris supposed that made sense. Some kids probably still used it, but the number would have dropped after the Rec closed. That was a good thing. Although, he reminded himself, for most of the years he’d been in Waynesville, the Rec would have been open. Plenty of foot traffic passing near his buried trunk.

He made his way up the path, moving slowly, stopping completely each time the moon dove behind a cloud and moving on again when it came back out. After five minutes, he heard the soft chuckle of the stream. So that was still there, too.

Morris stepped out on the bank. The stream was open to the sky, and with the moon now directly overhead, the water shone like black silk. He had no problem picking out the tree on the other bank, the one he had buried the trunk under. The tree had both grown and tilted toward the stream. He could see a couple of gnarled roots poking out below it and then diving back into the earth, but otherwise it all looked the same.

Morris crossed the stream in the old way, going from stone to stone and hardly getting his shoes wet. He looked around once – he knew he was alone, if there had been anyone else in the area he would have heard them, but the old Prison Peek was second nature – and then knelt beneath the tree. He could hear his breath rasping harshly in his throat as he tore at weeds with one hand and held onto a root for balance with the other.

He cleared a small circular patch and then began digging, tossing aside pebbles and small stones. He was in almost halfway to the elbow when his fingertips touched something hard and smooth. He rested his burning forehead against a gnarled elbow of protruding root and closed his eyes.

Still here.

His trunk was still here.

Thank you, God.

It was enough, at least for the time being. The best he could manage, and ah God, such a relief. He scooped the dirt back into the hole and scattered it with last fall’s dead leaves from the bank of the stream. Soon the weeds would be back – weeds grew fast, especially in warm weather – and that would complete the job.

Once upon a freer time, he would have continued up the path to Sycamore Street, because the bus stop was closer when you went that way, but not now, because the backyard where the path came out belonged to the Saubers family. If any of them saw him there and called 911, he’d likely be back in Waynesville tomorrow, probably with another five years tacked onto his original sentence, just for good luck.

He doubled back to Birch Street instead, confirmed the sidewalks were still empty, and walked to the bus stop on Garner Street. His legs were tired and the hand he’d been digging with was scraped and sore, but he felt a hundred pounds lighter. Still there! He had been sure it would be, but confirmation was so sweet.

Back at Bugshit Manor, he washed the dirt from his hands, undressed, and lay down. The place was noisier than ever, but not as noisy as D Wing at Waynesville, especially on nights like tonight, with the moon big in the sky. Morris drifted toward sleep almost at once.

Now that the trunk was confirmed, he had to be careful: that was his final thought.

More careful than ever.

4

For almost a month he has been careful; has turned up for his day job on the dot every morning and gotten in early at Bugshit Manor every night. The only person from Waynesville he’s seen is Chuck Roberson, who got out on DNA with Morris’s help, and Chuck doesn’t rate as a known associate, because Chuck was innocent all along. At least of the crime he was sent up for.

Morris’s boss at the MAC is a fat, self-important asshole, barely computer literate but probably making sixty grand a year. Sixty at least. And Morris? Eleven bucks an hour. He’s on food stamps and living in a ninth-floor room not much bigger than the cell where he spent the so-called ‘best years of his life.’ Morris isn’t positive his office carrel is bugged, but he wouldn’t be surprised. It seems to him that everything in America is bugged these days.

It’s a crappy life, and whose fault is that? He told the Parole Board time after time, and with no hesitation, that it was his; he had learned how to play the blame game from his sessions with Curd the Turd. Copping to bad choices was a necessity. If you didn’t give them the old mea culpa you’d never get out, no matter what some cancer-ridden bitch hoping to curry favor with Jesus might put in a letter. Morris didn’t need Duck to tell him that. He might have been born at night, as the saying went, but it wasn’t last night.

But had it really been his fault?

Or the fault of that asshole right over yonder?

Across the street and about four doors down from the bench where Morris is sitting with the remains of his unwanted bagel, an obese baldy comes sailing out of Andrew Halliday Rare Editions, where he has just flipped the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED. It’s the third time Morris has observed this lunchtime ritual, because Tuesdays are his afternoon days at the MAC. He’ll go in at one and busy himself until four, working to bring the ancient filing system up-to-date. (Morris is sure the people who run the place know a lot about art and music and drama, but they know fuckall about Mac Office Manager.) At four, he’ll take the crosstown bus back to his crappy ninth-floor room.

In the meantime, he’s here.

Watching his old pal.

Assuming this is like the other two midday Tuesdays – Morris has no reason to think it won’t be, his old pal always was a creature of habit – Andy Halliday will walk (well, waddle) down Lacemaker Lane to a café called Jamais Toujours. Stupid fucking name, means absolutely nothing, but sounds pretentious. Oh, but that was Andy all over, wasn’t it?

Morris’s old pal, the one with whom he had discussed Camus and Ginsberg and John Rothstein during many coffee breaks and pickup lunches, has put on at least a hundred pounds, the hornrims have been replaced by pricey designer spectacles, his shoes look like they cost more than all the money Morris made in his thirty-five years of prison toil, but Morris feels quite sure his old pal hasn’t changed inside. As the twig is bent the bough is shaped, that was another old saying, and once a pretentious asshole, always a pretentious asshole.

The owner of Andrew Halliday Rare Editions is walking away from Morris rather than toward him, but Morris wouldn’t have been concerned if Andy had crossed the street and approached. After all, what would he see? An elderly gent with narrow shoulders and bags under his eyes and thinning gray hair, wearing an el cheapo sport jacket and even cheaper gray pants, both purchased at Chapter Eleven. His old pal would accompany his growing stomach past him without a first look, let alone a second.

I told the Parole Board what they wanted to hear, Morris thinks. I had to do that, but the loss of all those years is really your fault, you conceited homo cocksucker. If it had been Rothstein and my partners I’d been arrested for, that would be different. But it wasn’t. I was never even questioned about Mssrs Rothstein, Dow, and Rogers. I lost those years because of a forced and unpleasant act of sexual congress I can’t even remember. And why did that happen? Well, it’s sort of like the house that Jack built. I was in the alley instead of the tavern when the Hooper bitch came by. I got booted out of the tavern because I kicked the jukebox. I kicked the jukebox for the same reason I was in the tavern in the first place: because I was pissed at you.

Why don’t you try me on those notebooks around the turn of the twenty-first century, if you still have them?

Morris watches Andy waddle away from him and clenches his fists and thinks, You were like a girl that day. The hot little virgin you get in the backseat of your car and she’s all yes, honey, oh yes, oh yes, I love you so much. Until you get her skirt up to her waist, that is. Then she clamps her knees together almost hard enough to break your wrist and it’s all no, oh no, unhand me, what kind of girl do you think I am?

You could have been a little more diplomatic, at least, Morris thinks. A little diplomacy could have saved all those wasted years. But you couldn’t spare me any, could you? Not so much as an attaboy, that must have taken guts. All I got was don’t try to lay this off on me.

His old pal walks his expensive shoes into Jamais Toujours, where he will no doubt have his expanding ass kissed by the maitre d’. Morris looks at his bagel and thinks he should finish it – or at least use his teeth to scrape the cream cheese into his mouth – but his stomach is too knotted up to accept it. He will go to the MAC instead, and spend the afternoon trying to impose some order on their tits-up, bass-ackwards digital filing system. He knows he shouldn’t come back here to Lacemaker Lane – no longer even a street but a kind of pricey, open-air mall from which vehicles are banned – and knows he’ll probably be on the same bench next Tuesday. And the Tuesday after that. Unless he’s got the notebooks. That would break the spell. No need to bother with his old pal then.

He gets up and tosses the bagel into a nearby trash barrel. He looks down toward Jamais Toujours and whispers, ‘You suck, old pal. You really suck. And for two cents—’

But no.

No.

Only the notebooks matter, and if Chuck Roberson will help him out, he’s going after them tomorrow night. And Chuck will help him. He owes Morris a large favor, and Morris means to call it in. He knows he should wait longer, until Ellis McFarland is absolutely sure Morris is one of the good ones and turns his attention elsewhere, but the pull of the trunk and what’s inside it is just too strong. He’d love to get some payback from the fat son of a bitch now feeding his face with fancy food, but revenge isn’t as important as that fourth Jimmy Gold novel. There might even be a fifth! Morris knows that isn’t likely, but it’s possible. There was a lot of writing in those books, a mighty lot. He walks toward the bus stop, sparing one baleful glance back at Jamais Toujours and thinking, You’ll never know how lucky you were.

Old pal.

5

Around the time Morris Bellamy is chucking his bagel and heading for the bus stop, Hodges is finishing his salad and thinking he could eat two more just like it. He puts the Styrofoam box and plastic spork back in the carryout bag and tosses it in the passenger footwell, reminding himself to dispose of his litter later. He likes his new car, a Prius that has yet to turn ten thousand miles, and does his best to keep it clean and neat. The car was Holly’s pick. ‘You’ll burn less gas and be kind to the environment,’ she told him. The woman who once hardly dared to step out of her house now runs many aspects of his life. She might let up on him a little if she had a boyfriend, but Hodges knows that’s not likely. He’s as close to a boyfriend as she’s apt to get.

It’s a good thing I love you, Holly, he thinks, or I’d have to kill you.

He hears the buzz of an approaching plane, checks his watch, and sees it’s eleven thirty-four. It appears that Oliver Madden is going to be johnny-on-the-spot, and that’s lovely. Hodges is an on-time man himself. He grabs his sportcoat from the backseat and gets out. It doesn’t hang just right because there’s heavy stuff in the front pockets.

A triangular overhang juts out above the entrance doors, and it’s at least ten degrees cooler in its shade. Hodges takes his new glasses from the jacket’s inner pocket and scans the sky to the west. The plane, now on its final approach, swells from a speck to a blotch to an identifiable shape that matches the pictures Holly has printed out: a 2008 Beechcraft KingAir 350, red with black piping. Only twelve hundred hours on the clock, and exactly eight hundred and five landings. The one he’s about to observe will be number eight-oh-six. Rated selling price, four million and change.

A man in a coverall comes out through the main door. He looks at Hodges’s car, then at Hodges. ‘You can’t park there,’ he says.

‘You don’t look all that busy today,’ Hodges says mildly.

‘Rules are rules, mister.’

‘I’ll be gone very shortly.’

‘Shortly is not the same as now. The front is for pickups and deliveries. You need to use the parking lot.’

The KingAir floats over the end of the runway, now only feet from Mother Earth. Hodges jerks a thumb at it. ‘Do you see that plane, sir? The man flying it is an extremely dirty dog. A number of people have been looking for him for a number of years, and now here he is.’

The guy in the coverall considers this as the extremely dirty dog lands the plane with nothing more than a small blue-gray puff of rubber. They watch as it disappears behind the Zane Aviation building. Then the man – probably a mechanic – turns back to Hodges. ‘Are you a cop?’

‘No,’ Hodges says, ‘but I’m in that neighborhood. Also, I know presidents.’ He holds out his loosely curled hand, palm down. A fifty-dollar bill peeps from between the knuckles.

The mechanic reaches for it, then reconsiders. ‘Is there going to be trouble?’

‘No,’ Hodges says.

The man in the coverall takes the fifty. ‘I’m supposed to bring that Navigator around for him. Right where you’re parked. That’s the only reason I gave you grief about it.’

Now that Hodges thinks of it, that’s not a bad idea. ‘Why don’t you go on and do that? Pull it up behind my car, nice and tight. Then you might have business somewhere else for fifteen minutes or so.’

‘Always stuff to do in Hangar A,’ the man in the coverall agrees. ‘Hey, you’re not carrying a gun, are you?’

‘No.’

‘What about the guy in the KingAir?’

‘He won’t have one, either.’ This is almost certainly true, but in the unlikely event Madden does have one, it will probably be in his carryall. Even if it’s on his person, he won’t have a chance to pull it, let alone use it. Hodges hopes he never gets too old for excitement, but he has absolutely no interest in OK Corral shit.

Now he can hear the steady, swelling beat of the KingAir’s props as it taxies toward the building. ‘Better bring that Navigator around. Then …’

‘Hangar A, right. Good luck.’

Hodges nods his thanks. ‘You have a good day, sir.’

6

Hodges stands to the left of the doors, right hand in his sportcoat pocket, enjoying both the shade and the balmy summer air. His heart is beating a little faster than normal, but that’s okay. That’s just as it should be. Oliver Madden is the kind of thief who robs with a computer rather than a gun (Holly has discovered the socially engaged motherfucker has eight different Facebook pages, each under a different name), but it doesn’t do to take things for granted. That’s a good way to get hurt. He listens as Madden shuts the KingAir down and imagines him walking into the terminal of this small, almost-off-the-radar FBO. No, not just walking, striding. With a bounce in his step. Going to the desk, where he will arrange for his expensive turboprop to be hangared. And fueled? Probably not today. He’s got plans in the city. This week he’s buying casino licenses. Or so he thinks.

The Navigator pulls up, chrome twinkling in the sun, smoked gangsta glass reflecting the front of the building … and Hodges himself. Whoops! He sidles farther to the left. The man in the coverall gets out, tips Hodges a wave, and heads for Hangar A.

Hodges waits, wondering what Barbara might want, what a pretty girl with lots of friends might consider important enough to make her reach out to a man old enough to be her grandpa. Whatever she needs, he’ll do his best to supply it. Why wouldn’t he? He loves her almost as much as he loves Jerome and Holly. The four of them were in the wars together.

That’s for later, he tells himself. Right now Madden’s the priority. Keep your eyes on the prize.

The doors open and Oliver Madden walks out. He’s whistling, and yes, he’s got that Mr Successful bounce in his step. He’s at least four inches taller than Hodges’s not inconsiderable six-two. Broad shoulders in a summerweight suit, the shirt open at the collar, the tie hanging loose. Handsome, chiseled features that fall somewhere between George Clooney and Michael Douglas. He’s got a briefcase in his right hand and an overnight bag slung over his left shoulder. His haircut’s the kind you get in one of those places where you have to book a week ahead.

Hodges steps forward. He can’t decide between morning and afternoon, so just wishes Madden a good day.

Madden turns, smiling. ‘The same back to you, sir. Do I know you?’

‘Not at all, Mr Madden,’ Hodges says, returning the smile. ‘I’m here for the plane.’

The smile withers a bit at the corners. A frown-line appears between Madden’s manicured brows. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The plane,’ Hodges says. ‘Three-fifty Beech KingAir? Seating for ten? Tail number November-one-one-four-Delta-Kilo? Actually belongs to Dwight Cramm, of El Paso, Texas?’

The smile stays on, but boy, it’s struggling. ‘You’ve mistaken me, friend. My name’s Mallon, not Madden. James Mallon. As for the plane, mine’s a King, all right, but the tail is N426LL, and it belongs to no one but little old me. You probably want Signature Air, next door.’

Hodges nods as if Madden might be right. Then he takes out his phone, reaching crossdraw so he can keep his right hand in his pocket. ‘Why don’t I just put through a call to Mr Cramm? Clear this up. I believe you were at his ranch just last week? Gave him a bank check for two hundred thousand dollars? Drawn on First of Reno?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Smile all gone.

‘Well, you know what? He knows you. As James Mallon rather than Oliver Madden, but when I faxed him a photo six-pack, he had no trouble circling you.’

Madden’s face is entirely expressionless now, and Hodges sees he’s not handsome at all. Or ugly, for that matter. He’s nobody, extra tall or not, and that’s how he’s gotten by as long as he has, pulling one scam after another, taking in even a wily old coyote like Dwight Cramm. He’s nobody, and that makes Hodges think of Brady Hartsfield, who almost blew up an auditorium filled with kids not so long ago. A chill goes up his back.

‘Are you police?’ Madden asks. He looks Hodges up and down. ‘I don’t think so, you’re too old. But if you are, let me see your ID.’

Hodges repeats what he told the guy in the coverall: ‘Not exactly police, but in the neighborhood.’

‘Then good luck to you, Mr In The Neighborhood. I’ve got appointments, and I’m running a bit late.’

He starts toward the Navigator, not running but moving fast.

‘You were actually tight on time,’ Hodges says amiably, falling in step. Keeping up with him would have been hard after his retirement from the police. Back then he was living on Slim Jims and taco chips, and would have been wheezing after the first dozen steps. Now he does three miles a day, either walking or on the treadmill.

‘Leave me alone,’ Madden says, ‘or I’ll call the real police.’

‘Just a few words,’ Hodges says, thinking, Damn, I sound like a Jehovah’s Witness. Madden is rounding the Navigator’s rear end. His overnight bag swings back and forth like a pendulum.

‘No words,’ Madden says. ‘You’re a nut.’

‘You know what they say,’ Hodges replies as Madden reaches for the driver’s-side door. ‘Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.’

Madden opens the door. This is really working out well, Hodges thinks as he pulls his Happy Slapper from his coat pocket. The Slapper is a knotted sock. Below the knot, the sock’s foot is loaded with ball bearings. Hodges swings it, connecting with Oliver Madden’s left temple. It’s a Goldilocks blow, not too hard, not too soft, just right.

Madden staggers and drops his briefcase. His knees bend but don’t quite buckle. Hodges seizes him above the elbow in the strong come-along grip he perfected as a member of this city’s MPD and helps Madden into the driver’s seat of the Navigator. The man’s eyes have the floaty look of a fighter who’s been tagged hard and can only hope for the round to end before his opponent follows up and puts him down for good.

‘Upsa-daisy,’ Hodges says, and when Madden’s ass is on the leather upholstery of the bucket seat, he bends and lifts in the trailing left leg. He takes his handcuffs from the left pocket of his sportcoat and has Madden tethered to the steering wheel in a trice. The Navigator’s keys, on a big yellow Hertz fob, are in one of the cupholders. Hodges takes them, slams the driver’s door, grabs the fallen briefcase, and walks briskly around to the passenger side. Before getting in, he tosses the keys onto the grass verge near the sign reading LOADING AND UNLOADING ONLY. A good idea, because Madden has recovered enough to be punching the SUV’s start button over and over again. Each time he does it, the dashboard flashes KEY NOT DETECTED.

Hodges slams the passenger door and regards Madden cheerfully. ‘Here we are, Oliver. Snug as two bugs in a rug.’

‘You can’t do this,’ Madden says. He sounds pretty good for a man who should still have cartoon birdies flying in circles around his head. ‘You assaulted me. I can press charges. Where’s my briefcase?’

Hodges holds it up. ‘Safe and sound. I picked it up for you.’

Madden reaches with his uncuffed hand. ‘Give it to me.’

Hodges puts it in the footwell and steps on it. ‘For the time being, it’s in protective custody.’

‘What do you want, asshole?’ The growl is in stark contrast to the expensive suit and haircut.

‘Come on, Oliver, I didn’t hit you that hard. The plane. Cramm’s plane.’

‘He sold it to me. I have a bill of sale.’

‘As James Mallon.’

‘That’s my name. I had it changed legally four years ago.’

‘Oliver, you and legal aren’t even kissing cousins. But that’s beside the point. Your check bounced higher than Iowa corn in August.’

‘That’s impossible.’ He yanks his cuffed wrist. ‘Get this off me!’

‘We can discuss the cuff after we discuss the check. Man, that was slick. First of Reno is a real bank, and when Cramm called to verify your check, the Caller ID said First of Reno was what he was calling. He got the usual automated answering service, welcome to First of Reno where the customer is king, blah-de-blah, and when he pushed the right number, he got somebody claiming to be an accounts manager. I’m thinking that was your brother-in-law, Peter Jamieson, who was arrested early this morning in Fields, Virginia.’

Madden blinks and recoils, as if Hodges has suddenly thrust a hand at his face. Jamieson really is Madden’s brother-in-law, but he hasn’t been arrested. At least not to Hodges’s knowledge.

‘Calling himself Fred Dawlings, Jamieson assured Mr Cramm that you had over twelve million dollars in First of Reno in several different accounts. I’m sure he was convincing, but the Caller ID thing was the clincher. It’s a fiddle accomplished with a highly illegal computer program. My assistant is good with computers, and she figured that part out. The use of that alone could get you sixteen to twenty months in a Club Fed. But there’s so much more. Five years ago, you and Jamieson hacked your way into the General Accounting Office and managed to steal almost four million dollars.’

‘You’re insane.’

‘For most people, four million split two ways would be enough. But you’re not one to rest on your laurels. You’re just a big old thrill-seeker, aren’t you, Oliver?’

‘I’m not talking to you. You assaulted me and you’re going to jail for it.’

‘Give me your wallet.’

Madden stares at him, wide-eyed, genuinely shocked. As if he himself hasn’t lifted the wallets and bank accounts of God knows how many people. Don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot, do you? Hodges thinks. Isn’t that just tough titty.

He holds out his hand. ‘Give it.’

‘Fuck you.’

Hodges shows Madden his Happy Slapper. The loaded toe hangs down, a sinister teardrop. ‘Give it, asshole, or I’ll darken your world and take it. The choice is yours.’

Madden looks into Hodges’s eyes to see if he means it. Then he reaches into his suitcoat’s inner pocket – slowly, reluctantly – and brings out a bulging wallet.

‘Wow,’ Hodges says. ‘Is that ostrich?’

‘As a matter of fact, it is.’

Hodges understands that Madden wants him to reach for it. He thinks of telling Madden to lay it on the console between the seats, then doesn’t. Madden, it seems, is a slow learner in need of a refresher course on who’s in charge here. So he reaches for the wallet, and Madden grabs his hand in a powerful, knuckle-grinding grip, and Hodges whacks the back of Madden’s hand with the Slapper. The knuckle-grinding stops at once.

‘Ow! Ow! Shit!’

Madden’s got his hand to his mouth. Above it, his incredulous eyes are welling tears of pain.

‘One must not grasp what one cannot hold,’ Hodges says. He picks up the wallet, wondering briefly if the ostrich is an endangered species. Not that this moke would give a shit, one way or the other.

He turns to the moke in question.

‘That was your second courtesy-tap, and two is all I ever give. This is not a police-and-suspect situation. You make another move on me and I’ll beat you like a rented mule, chained to the wheel or not. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’ The word comes through lips still tightened with pain.

‘You’re wanted by the FBI for the GAO thing. Do you know that?’

A long pause while Madden eyes the Slapper. Then he says yes again.

‘You’re wanted in California for stealing a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, and in Arizona for stealing half a million dollars’ worth of construction equipment which you then resold in Mexico. Do you also know those things?’

‘Are you wearing a wire?’

‘No.’

Madden decides to take Hodges’s word for it. ‘Okay, yes. Although I got pennies on the dollar for those front-end loaders and bulldozers. It was a damn swindle.’