“It’s a not a bullet in the head. It’s a guy who got run down in the parking lot of a place that serves drinks till dawn. Getting tire tracks on you from a drunk under those conditions isn’t suspicious at all, particularly in a county where the sheriff and his deputies are just possibly on the takey-poo.”
He thought about that. He was trying to go pale under the tan, and it was damn near working.
“Dickie, how subtle do I have to be about this?”
He blinked at me. The fucker could blink, after all. “Subtle?”
“Yeah. If I shoot this prick, will we have the law to answer to? If we have a dead body on our hands, one with a bullet or two in him, can you have him removed?”
He twitched a frown. “If a deputy shows up, we could handle it. Could be expensive. I mean, it would be right out in the open. You saying, if he was behind the wheel of his car, and you shot him, and we had a car with a bullet hole in the windshield and-”
“A driver with a bullet in his head, could you deal with it?”
He flinched. “Is there another way?”
“Might be. Might be.”
We both just sat there a while.
“You’re asking a lot,” he said.
“I know.”
“You come in with this wild story. It’s credible, in its way, and yet it’s fantastic.”
“I know.”
“Is there someone I could call?”
“You mean do I have references?”
“I guess that was a stupid question.”
“Well…funny thing is, I did a job like this for the guy who used to own this place. I was never here before-I met him at a much smaller operation, in Des Moines. Frank Tree. Did you buy this place from him?”
“No. I heard of him-he’s the guy who opened the Paddlewheel, turned it from a warehouse into a goldmine. It came to me through my Chicago friends. Gave me and my wife a chance to buy in. They’re silent partners.”
“Yeah. Silent until they get noisy.” I stood. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Just out to your parking lot.”
He looked alarmed. “Why, is he out there?”
“No! Hell, no. He’ll be anywhere but there.”
Truth was, I didn’t know the details of Monahan’s approach. I couldn’t imagine he would use the Buick he’d bought in Des Moines for the job. How would he get back? Call a fucking cab?
Actually, he probably could ditch the car at the scene and walk to somewhere and call a cab and then take the train or a bus home or anyway a bus to an airport where…
Fuck it. Those details weren’t important. Stopping him was. And convincing Cornell to let me stop him. I was almost there with Dickie boy. Just needed to close the sale.
In the elevator, I said, “What’s the story about that farmhouse across the way?”
“That? Farmer sold out to one of those big corporate farms, maybe ten years ago, everything but the house itself and a small plot of land. He and his wife lived in that goddamn hovel, and then after his wife died, the farmer stayed on himself. He finally did the world the courtesy of dying, and about four months ago, I bought the property. We’ll build a hotel over there, as soon as all the right wheels have been greased. We’d need to buy some of that expensive farm land around there to…why in the world are you asking?”
“That’s where the back-up guy has been staking you out, probably for a couple weeks.”
“The hell!”
“The hell,” I said with a nod.
Soon I’d led him out into his own parking lot and over to my Sunbird. I got around behind and used the key to open the trunk and let him have a look at the fetus-curled blond kid. The blood on him was black and crusty now and he was very white; it made him look even blonder, too clean-cut for the Poison t-shirt. Lots of blood turned to crunchy-looking black had pooled and dried on the trunk floor.
“What is it you guys call it,” I said. “The boot?”
“Fuck me. Who’s this?”
“The back-up guy. I took him out on spec.”
“Christ.” He looked at me with a ghastly, meltingwax expression; his face had managed to go white despite the tan, finally. “What the hell’s this going to cost me?”
“It’s like drugs-first one’s free. Ask your little girlfriend about it.” I shut the lid. “Well?”
“Twenty K it is.”
We went back inside to talk some more.
Chapter Five
A line of trees defined the far end of the Paddlewheel parking lot, the moonlight a memory now, the sky doing its darkest-before-the dawn routine. Around four-thirty a.m., I nosed the Sunbird into a slot next to the river in the last row of spaces, flush against those trees. The lot was still about half-full, the deputy parked four spaces down, where he’d backed in to better fulfill his security duties.
A trick of surveillance is to sit in the back seat and-since the deputy was asleep-he didn’t notice me get out and make the shift to the rear.
The lot had four light poles, two on either side, and was rather under-illuminated, which helped me blend into the darkness of the back seat. I got comfortable. I’d made a run back to the motel and was now in black-black t-shirt, black jeans, black socks, black running shoes, even my fucking underwear was black. All it would have taken for full commando was some black smeared under my eyes, but I didn’t go overboard. Also, I couldn’t risk black gloves, because that would stand out in this summer weather, whereas the black attire could otherwise be just a fashion choice.
By four-forty-five, the lot had cleared out. Most of those heading for their cars were flat out staggering, and I was glad I wasn’t going to be out on the road with them where it was dangerous. Not that Deputy Fife paid the obvious drunks any heed. At least he’d woken up when a slamming car door had delivered him a wake-up call.
By five-fifteen, the deputy was gone and the lot had cleared out but for a dozen cars toward my end-employee cars-and waitresses and satin-vested security guys and other workers came staggering out, too, presumably not drunk, just night-shift beat. As these cars were pulling out, Monahan in his green Buick Regal glided in, and backed into the deputy’s now vacant space.
He didn’t glance my way-the employee cars were all down at this end, even Cornell’s (a navy-blue Corvette), so Monahan surely assumed the Sunbird was one of those. I was slouched in back, and I doubted he’d made me. He probably wouldn’t recognize the Sunbird, either-if he’d paid that much attention to me, he would either have bailed by now or dealt with me over at the Wheelhouse.
No, I wasn’t on the prick’s radar. I’d bet my life on it. Not a figure of a speech.
Pretty soon, if Richard Cornell was staying true to his pattern, he would be exiting the Paddlewheel and loping all the way across the lot to his Corvette, making long shadows as dawn presented itself. Monahan would hit the gas, work up some speed, and pretend to be heading for the exit down by the building, but would swerve and smack Cornell like a bug on a windshield. If this didn’t clearly kill Cornell, Monahan would back up and make sure a wheel crushed the mark’s head.
Then Monahan would be gone, headed somewhere to dump the vehicle.
But Cornell wouldn’t be coming out of that building, not any time soon, at least. And I knew that if I didn’t make my move soon-before it got suspicious that the Paddlewheel’s impresario wasn’t sticking to his pattern-then the Vehicular Homicide specialist would hightail.
This wasn’t a science. I could only predict so much. But Monahan wouldn’t be here if he’d checked in with his blond back-up man, or I should say tried to check in with him. As far as Monahan likely knew, the blond kid was somewhere over near that farmhouse, watching his partner’s back. My sense was that I was on top of this thing.
So I went into my act.
I played at waking up in the back seat, yawning and blinking and rubbing my face, like a drunk who’d crawled back there to sober up and had just come around, now that rosy-fingered dawn had slapped him awake.
I got out of the Sunbird’s back seat with all the subtlety of a street mime, making sure the nine millimeter Browning nudging my spine didn’t show. I came around as if to get in front, behind the wheel, then paused and looked right at Monahan, seated behind his own wheel, and squinted, and grinned, as if noticing an old, dear friend.