She smiled ever so slightly and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“You were worried about me?”
“Alabama, I’m serious.”
She pecked a kiss on his lips.
“You’re so cute when you’re all protective,” she said. “Do you want to know what I found out?”
Wilde took a long drag and blew smoke to the side.
“Just don’t tell me you slept with him.”
She ran a finger down his chest.
“Maybe you didn’t get a good look at him,” she said. “He actually is Robert Mitchum, only better.”
She drank the last of what was in her cup and went to get another. Over her shoulder she said, “He’s not the killer.”
“How do you know?”
“I can’t tell you. You’ll get mad.”
41
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
Tom Bristol passed by Waverly three or four times and didn’t once emit a glimmer of a reaction to indicate that he recognized her from the little fiasco at the houseboat last night. Every time Waverly saw him she pictured his hand slapping down on an ass.
She needed to find the owner of that ass and warn her.
Bristol was dirty.
Waverly could feel it.
At 9:30 Su-Moon called with some unexpected news. “I’m down the street from the marina. I’m going back to the houseboat.”
“Are you nuts?”
“He’s at the office right now, right?”
Yes.
He was.
“Write this number down,” Su-Moon said. Waverly picked up a pencil and wrote numbers on the top sheet of a scratch pad. “That’s Bristol’s home phone number. If he leaves the office, call that number and let it ring twice. That will be my cue he’s loose.”
“What are you trying to find?”
“Whatever it was we missed last night.”
Waverly exhaled.
“Don’t do it.”
“Talk to you later.”
“I’m serious. I have a bad feeling.”
“You always have a bad feeling.”
An hour passed then another. Bristol didn’t wander from the office haunts and Su-Moon would have been long done by now. Still, when Sean Waterfield swung by and asked Waverly if she wanted to go to lunch, she dialed Bristol’s number and let the phone ring twice before leaving, just to be safe.
They ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf with takeout plates of shrimp and rice, which they ate on the edge of a dock.
Their legs dangled over the water.
The boats were out to sea.
Mooring posts were wrapped in tires.
Seagulls filled the air.
The street buzzed with vendors.
The sky was clear but the temperature wasn’t more than seventy.
“That Hong Kong deal was weird from the get-go,” Waterfield said. “We were big in Europe but hadn’t done anything in Asia yet. This would be our first. Tom Bristol went there to personally meet with the owners and go over the specs. He came back as excited as I’ve ever seen him. He worked up all the drawings and bid documents himself, working until who-knows-when every night after the rest of us left. The bid got submitted and then he crossed his fingers and waited. In the end, another firm got the project.”
“Which firm?”
“I can’t remember,” Waterfield said. “It doesn’t really matter. It wasn’t ours.”
Suddenly a figure appeared in Waverly’s peripheral vision and sat down next to her.
It was the last person in the world she expected.
Tom Bristol.
He looked at Waterfield and said, “Sean, are you putting the moves on our new temp?”
Waterfield nodded.
“Got to,” he said. “Look at her.”
42
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
With no good way to abduct the little-nobody-waitress target at the moment, River headed back home to the rail spur to find January scrubbed up and looking pretty damn nice. She handed him a sealed envelope and said, “This was taped on the outside of the door.”
“Did you see who put it there?”
“No, why?”
“Just curious.”
Inside was a short, sweet message: “You missed the deadline. Contract is rescinded.”
River tore it in half, then another half and another, and threw it on the ground.
“What’s wrong?”
River heard the words coming out of January’s mouth but his brain was on too much fire to process them.
“What’s wrong?” she repeated.
“Later,” he said.
His body was already in motion, trotting for the car.
January was suddenly running at his side.
“Let me come with you.”
“No.”
“River-”
He swung her to a stop and held her at arms length. “Stay here.”
“But-”
“I’ll explain when I get back,” he said. “Right now it’s best if no one sees your face.”
“Why?”
He kissed her.
“Just trust me,” he said. “Stay here ’till I get back.”
Then he was in the car and gone.
He pointed the front end downtown, paying just enough attention to traffic to not bend someone’s fender.
Worst-case scenarios pounded through his brain.
He’d never had a contract rescinded before.
This was bad.
Bad.
Bad.
Bad.
Bad.
Bad.
It might even be the end.
Not just the end of his tenure but the end of his life. If they weren’t going to use him anymore, why would they let him keep breathing? What was the upside?
There wasn’t one.
He’d be a lot less risky six feet under in a wooden box. Let the spiders crawl over his face.
How would they take him out?
A cowardly bullet from the distance?
A knife in the back?
A rope around the neck?
More importantly, when would it come?
Tonight?
Yeah.
It would be tonight.
He could feel it moving in like an ugly black sky.
One thing was clear, crystal clear, crystal clear beyond belief, namely he’d been a fool for working all these years without knowing who he was working for. He should have never let the money lure him in. That would never happen again, guaranteed.
He parked a block down the street and headed to Alexa Blank’s restaurant at a brisk pace.
Through the window he saw her.
She was in a white dress and a black apron carrying two plates of food to a table.
He opened the door, stepped inside and took a seat in the corner booth.
She smiled at him and said, “Be right there.”
“No rush.”
43
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
When Wilde pressed Alabama to tell him how she knew Mitchum wasn’t the dropper, she eventually relented even though he’d get mad. “I told him I had a secret place where you could see all the lights of Denver. When he asked where it was, I said, It’s up on a roof over on Market Street. You want to go there with me?”
Wilde frowned.
“That was stupid.”
“Yeah, well, if he’d said yes, I wasn’t really going to go,” she said. “I was going to pretend to sprain my ankle or something. The important thing is that he wasn’t interested. He was more interested in a nice soft bed.”