“I guess that’s right. So what do you want me to do?”
“Tonight we’ll let the cops try to solve this for us. Corona is still hanging around the hospital to keep Guzman company. Give him a call tomorrow and we’ll get him to tell us what he thinks happened in the robbery.”
“Okay.”
“Good. See you tomorrow.”
Voinovich turned and went toward the door. As he passed out of the living room to the entry, he ducked his head to get through the doorway.
The only ones left now were Kapak and Spence. “Tomorrow you and I will make an arrangement with one of the armored car companies.”
“Maybe they’ll have some kind of deal to lease safes for Siren and Temptress that they open and close, so we’re not responsible.”
“I don’t think so,” said Kapak. “I don’t want a bunch of strangers to have the combination. There’s a pretty good safe in Siren. We can use that for now.”
“Whatever you want to do about money, it shouldn’t involve any of us carrying it around in cash. That’s primitive.”
“Cash is an opportunity, and it’s a problem. We just have to handle it right. Do you have the videotapes from the clubs?”
“They’re in the screening room. You want to see them now?”
“I’ll take a look at them before I go to sleep. The bar receipts at Temptress looked a little light tonight. I want to see if the camera picked anything up.” He walked to the small room off the same hall as the master bedroom, inserted the first tape labeled “Temptress,” and then sat down on a big leather chair before he pressed the remote control and started the video. He pressed Fast Forward so the people on the big high-definition screen went back and forth in quick, jerky movements. At one point he slowed the action to normal speed and watched carefully. “Spence!”
When Spence came in, he was rewinding the tape. “See something?”
“Watch this.” He started the tape again, and the camera showed the second assistant bartender, a man named Coulton. “He’s making a drink. Gives it to the customer, takes the money. Rings it up. The register drawer opens. He makes change, hands it over. All okay so far. Now see the waitress? While he’s still at the register, she comes in with the money from a round of drinks. He takes her money, gives her change, and she goes away. He never closed the register after the first sale, so hers didn’t get rung up. He’s still got it in his hand. He closes the register and his hand goes to his pocket. You only have to do that a couple of times a night, and you’ve got an extra hundred bucks.”
“Is that all he does?”
“No. Near closing time, he’s running tabs for some of the guys at the bar. When a couple of them get up and go, they leave a big bill to cover it. He picks up two or three at a time and rings up one. It’s enough for me.”
“You want me to have the manager do it?”
“No. We’ll do it ourselves, Voinovich and me.”
“Voinovich?”
“Yeah. When this guy goes, I don’t want him thinking about talking to the cops about anything he saw, heard, or imagined, or to say something to the people who are still there. I want him to take a look at Voinovich and be really glad that he gets to leave at all.”
“Want to look at more tapes?”
“No, I’m going to bed. Lock the doors and windows and turn on the alarm.”
Joe Carver closed the door he had opened and moved onto the path through the secluded garden. He would have to drive to a motel he’d found a couple of miles from here to think before he slept. Now that he knew what his enemies were doing, it was time to work out how to get rid of them.
13
CARRIE SAT in the lotus position on the bed and Jeff lay across from her with the pile of money dumped on the sheet between them. The rules at the start were that one of them would pick out a hundred-dollar bill and say “A hundred,” and the other would take a hundred-dollar bill and put it at his side. But now they had gone through most of the big bills, and they were down to saying “Twenty” or “Ten,” or even “Ten ones.”
Carrie yawned. “You know what?”
“What?”
“I’m really getting tired of this.” She looked at the pile of money beside her, stood, and began stuffing it into a dresser drawer.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ve got enough. You can have the rest.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
“Sure. I didn’t come out tonight to make money. I wanted to have fun. More money than this doesn’t make it more fun.”
“All right.” He stuffed the rest of the money back into the bag while she closed the dresser drawer and went into the bathroom. As soon as the door closed, he reached under the covers where he had been hiding bills since they had started, and stuffed those into the bag too.
She came out of the bathroom, crawled onto the bed, and kissed him. “It’s really late.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is. Almost morning.”
“This is the best date I ever had in my life. So much happened—we pulled a robbery and I shot some guys. We picked up some money, had sex about a million times.”
“Really primo sex too.”
“Yeah.” She kissed him again. “I had a great night. It’s time for you to go home. I put my cell phone number in your wallet, and I want you to call me. Don’t send me flowers or call on the regular telephone, and don’t just show up, ever.”
“I get it,” he said. He began dressing, then picked up the canvas bag. “Sure you don’t want more money?”
“That’s sweet, Jeff. But I’m sure you noticed I’m a chick. I hardly ever have to pay for things except clothes and gas. I sometimes do, but I don’t have to. And this is what you do for a living. You were just nice enough to let me come along.”
He tied his shoes and walked up the hall to the living room with Carrie following. When he reached the front door, he turned. “Good night, Carrie.”
“Don’t forget to call me.” She smiled.
“I won’t.” He went down the steps and along the driveway to the garage, where he had hidden the Trans Am. The door opened in front of him, and he looked back and saw her face at the window. He started the Trans Am, let it coast down the driveway, and turned it down the steep incline toward the flatland. He turned twice before he switched on his headlights, and coasted the rest of the way down the hill onto Vineland. He made it across Ventura Boulevard on a green light, then accelerated along Vineland toward Lila’s apartment.
It took only eighteen minutes before Jeff pulled up at the apartment building and glided into the extra carport at the back. He was tempted to put the canvas bag under the seat or in the trunk of the car, but he thought better of it. He had known a pair of addicts for a while when he was just out of high school, and one night he had watched them going from car to car late at night outside some big apartment buildings. Jeff didn’t think he could sleep if he lay there thinking about some junkies opening his car for the radio and finding all that cash.
He put his gun into the money bag, took it with him, and walked up the first-floor hall to Lila’s apartment. He found his key, unlocked the door, opened it slowly and carefully, slipped inside, and closed it again.
He saw Eldon lift his head from the sagging couch in the living room and stare at him. Eldon seldom showed surprise. Jeff knew Eldon had heard and smelled him long before he reached the door. He suspected that Eldon’s nose had told him all the essentials of his evening too, certainly the car, the gun, the paper money, the sex—especially that—and probably the fact that Jeff had felt about ten seconds of intense fear while Carrie was blasting away and bullets were bouncing all over the place. He felt a second of relief that Eldon couldn’t talk. Eldon put his head down again.