Sean waited ten seconds, a tremble of panic thumping his guts, and decided standing there waiting for Bobby to charge the door wasn’t bright. He went back to the patio and kicked in the glass door. Loud shattering noise. Two houses down a dog barked, sharp and hard, twice; then quiet. Sean counted to twenty. Nothing. No concerned neighbors popping a head over the fence.
Sean flicked open the door handle, slid the door open.
The room was a sunken den and the kitchen was to his right. A hallway went off at a left angle. He wailed, his gun leveled at the opening, and waited some more. He could hear the sound of horses riding hard and stopping, of John Wayne mouthing a good-natured threat, of a polite man answering with an oozy official tone.
Sean inched down the hallway, the gun out like he’d learned in his days in the army. A feeble spill of light — from a television — came from a room at the end of the hall. He moved toward it, calming his breathing, listening for the sound of Bobby moving, and finally Sean charged fast into the room, going through the door, covering the room with his gun.
Bobby was there. Both hands cuffed to a bed, gagged with a cloth jammed in his mouth and duct tape masking his mouth, ribboning into his hair. One of his eyes was bruised. He was shiftless, dressed only in the khakis from last night with a wet circle of stain on the front, and he smelled like he needed a shower. A pile of pillows kept his head propped up. A little television with a VCR stood on a scruffy bureau, the John Wayne movie playing.
Sean stared for a moment, then shook his head.
Bobby groaned, made pleading noises behind the gag. Sean muted the TV, left the tape running, John Wayne swaggering across a saloon.
“Are you going to scream if I take this off?” Sean asked. “I mean, Vegas is just full of possibilities, isn’t it. Bobby? So you said.”
Bobby shook his head.
Sean pulled the tape and gag from Bobby’s head, not worrying about the threads of hair that ripped free with the industrial tape, and Bobby said, “Oh, thank God, man. Thank God, Sean. I knew you’d find me. Get me the hell out of here.”
Sean sat down on the edge of the little bed. “Tell me what’s happened.” Calm. Curious to hear what the story was, because this tied-up-and-bound gig was not what he expected.
“That bitch, man, she’s crazy. Drugged me and tied my ass up. Christ, she’s nuts. Untie me, man.”
“Just a minute,” Sean said. “You’re not in with her?”
“In with her?” Bobby stared. He jerked at the handcuffs. “Do I look like it?”
“I went to your office looking for your sorry ass,” Sean said. “And all of Vic’s money is missing. The whole hundred grand.”
Bobby’s lips — chapped and blistered from the tape — turned into a frown. “Holy shit. She must’ve taken it.”
“She was in your hotel room when I called this morning.”
“Shit, man, she slipped something into my drink and knocked my ass out. I woke up here. She must’ve snuck me out of the hotel somehow. She’s got inside help. She probably took all my keys, took the money. Unhook me, Sean. Jesus, let’s get the hell out of here.” An edge in his voice; Sean thought he was about to cry.
“God, you’re dumb. You are so unrelentingly dumb. Did she bring the money here?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know — just untie me, please, before she gets back here!”
“No hurry.” Sean checked his watch. “Because she’s heading off to meet me at a bar. She’s negotiating on your behalf, buddy, for me to tell Vic that you’re dead and for you to keep all his money.”
Bobby struggled against the shackles, pulling his head up from the pillows. “That’s a goddamned lie. I’m not trying to steal Vic’s money! She’s set you up. Listen, untie me; we’ll wait for her to come back and then we’ll make her tell us who she’s working for.”
“You never saw her before?”
“No, man, I swear it. Swear it!”
“But she knows your business. She knows about you working for Vic. She knows my name. She knows there was a safe in the office and she got the combo. You must’ve seen her before.”
“No, I swear.”
“Then you must’ve blabbed to somebody, and that’s who she’s working with.”
“No, never, never,” Bobby said, but his voice dropped a notch, spurred by a little jiggle of memory, a thought of a mistake made and now wished away.
“Right, Bobby. Never would you make a mistake. You wear my ass out just listening to you.”
“Listen, Sean, she’s the bad guy, not me. We can get the money back. Together.”
Sean said nothing for a moment, thinking it out, feeling very tired and then wired, all at once. He stood up. Went and searched the house carefully and efficiently. There was scant furniture in the house; he decided it was a rental.
“Sean?” Bobby called quietly. “Sean?”
“Just a minute. Hush,” Sean said. No sign of the money anywhere. It wasn’t here. He went back to the bedroom, Bobby watching him with eyes glassy with sick fear.
“Sean, you’re my friend; Vic’s my friend; you know I had nothing to do with this girl’s scheme.”
“You know, I believe you, Bobby,” Sean said. “Had to chase the wrong girl, didn’t you?” He nearly laughed. He had made his decision
“Yeah, I guess,” Bobby said.
“Did you get her?” Sean asked, wondering what he’d say.
“No,” Bobby said after a moment.
“Then I guess I win the bet.”
“Well, that was a bad bet to make,” Bobby said.
“That’s real true.” Sean stood up, turned up John Wayne. Real loud.
Sean had thought the “Misty Moore” was maybe a bar named after the owner, some chick named Misty, but instead it was Moor without the e on the end, and when he went inside he noticed a silver thistle above the bar and the waitresses wore tams on their heads and snug little kilts across their asses and the wallpaper was plaid. He spotted Red sitting in a very private back corner booth, drinking her white wine. The bar was not terribly crowded, a dozen conventioneers watching a basketball game on the big screen, a few locals. He slid into the booth, sitting next to her, not across from her.
“You take the low road,” he said, “and I’ll take the high road.”
“Cute. Scotland was one of the few cultures not raided by Vegas,” Red said. She was very calm. “Then Braveheart came out and they opened up this place. If you get drunk, they’ll paint your face blue.”
A waitress approached them and asked Sean what he would drink. “Scotch,” he said. “Obviously.”
“You’re a few minutes late,” Red said when the waitress walked off. “Fortunately I’m patient and forgiving.”
“More reason to admire you,” he said. “Let’s get to it.”
“I’ve got your ten thousand,” she said. “You still agreeing to lie to Vic, let Bobby walk?”
“Actually, the deal has changed, Red.” He kept his voice low and the waitress returned with his Scotch, set it down in front of him, walked off back to the bar.
Red was very still. “Changed?”
“You have the hundred grand. You also have a dead man in your house. You know, your house at 118 Falcon Street. Where you had the John Wayne movie marathon playing.” He saw the shift in her face, saw she believed him now. “So, baby, I can call the police, from that phone right over there in the corner, and I figure they can be at your house faster than you or anybody else can be dragging Bobby’s body out to your car. You’ll have a lot of questions to answer.”
“So will you,” she said, staying calm.
“No, I won’t. Because I sure don’t know you, and you can’t prove that I know you. Or that I knew Bobby.”
“You would have been seen with him at the hotel.”
“Maybe. Maybe those folks don’t talk after Vic calls his friends at the casino. But Bobby-boy’s dead in your house.”
“I haven’t shot a gun anytime recently. They have chemical tests...”
“I wouldn’t waste a good bullet on Bobby. Smothered with a pillow, sweetheart,” Sean said. “How hard they got to look for a new suspect?”