Only Eddie Palomera of Springfield, Missouri, didn’t seem so lucky to Hendricks. Because Eddie Palomera’s stupid mug was smiling back at him from his computer screen, and he looked an awful lot like a stoolie IT guy named Eric Purkhiser.
Hendricks guessed WITSEC figured if they stashed a guy in a town called Springfield, even if somebody let it slip, the bad guys’d have to search every Springfield in the country before they found the right one.
Then again, maybe Purkhiser was lucky. After all, between what he stole from the Atlanta Outfit and what he won playing the slots, he had enough money to cover Hendricks’s fee sixty times over.
Which meant he might live long enough to spend the rest.
14
Hendricks had spent some time in bombed-out villages. Weathered snowstorms in drafty mountain caves. Holed up for days in squat concrete bunkers full of frightened, unwashed soldiers. But he didn’t think he’d ever been anywhere more depressing than Westlake Plaza on a Monday afternoon.
The old mall was ten minutes outside of Springfield, Missouri, an ugly splotch of asphalt and yellow brick amid the farmland west of Lake Springfield. When they built it in the early eighties, they must have figured folks from town would be eager to make the scenic drive. But most weren’t, and eventually, Westlake Plaza was supplanted by more modern facilities closer to the city center. Now it was a tired, old collection of tired, old stores whose staff and customers came and went more out of reluctant habit than any real desire.
Hendricks eyed the elderly mall-walkers, suburban housewives, and Hot Topic goths with an anthropologist’s detachment. Most weren’t shopping so much as passing time. He wondered why they’d chosen to hang out here instead of the much larger, sleeker Battlefield Mall a few miles north. Maybe they found some comfort in the faded glory of a time gone by. Maybe they simply preferred the quiet. Hendricks could relate to that, at least-but in their place, he would have chosen the lakeside park instead.
Hendricks wasn’t here to shop or to kill time. He was here to find his new client.
He’d tried Purkhiser’s home address first, of course- a drab split-level in a neighborhood full of them-but the driveway was empty, the garage piled high with junk. He considered breaking in and waiting, but the schedule for this hit was tight-he couldn’t afford to waste time sitting around, waiting for his potential client to show up.
That’s what he told himself, at least.
The truth was, seeing Evie pregnant with Stuart’s child had rattled Hendricks, and calling off the Long Beach job had left him antsy. What he needed was distraction, not time alone with his thoughts.
What he needed was to work.
The Gadget Shack wasn’t busy. No Gadget Shack Hendricks had ever been in was. There were two guys behind the counter, dressed identically in store-branded polo shirts and khakis. One was a rumpled teenager, pudgy and long-haired, with a thin wisp of peach fuzz on his upper lip. The other was older, neater, and fussier-a manager, by the look of him. Neither of them was Purkhiser. Hendricks wasn’t surprised. If he’d just won six million bucks, he wouldn’t be caught dead peddling RC cars and Y-adapters, either.
But home address and job were all Hendricks had on the man, so he figured he’d come here anyway and shake the tree.
“Can I help you?” the manager asked. Chad, according to his name tag.
Hendricks flashed him a smile. “Maybe-is Eddie around?”
Chad’s eyes narrowed. “Palomera? What do you want with him?”
“He helped me out big-time a few weeks back. I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d swing by and tell him thanks.”
“If he helped you out, you’d be the first. Guy was the worst employee I’ve ever had,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at the teenager standing next to him. “And that’s saying something.”
“Was?”
“He up and quit a couple days ago. Didn’t even think to tell me. I found out when I called to ask him why he didn’t show up for his shift.”
“So you don’t know where I could find him, then?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said brusquely, and drifted off toward the only other customer, a woman eyeing a display of smartphones. Apparently, a friend of Eddie’s was no friend of his.
“What a douche,” the kid behind the counter muttered. His name tag read Brody and had a faded sticker of the Punisher logo affixed to one corner.
Hendricks sized him up-a little shaggy, a little nerdy, with a woven-hemp necklace and sly, heavy-lidded eyes. When Hendricks bounced that off the image of Purkhiser that Lester’s file had painted, he decided Brody and Purkhiser were probably friendly, if not friends. “You ain’t kidding. Any chance you know where Eddie is?”
“Seems like you wanna find him pretty bad-how come?”
Hendricks made a show of looking left and right, then dropped his voice. “He told me how to splice into my neighbor’s cable. Made it sound so easy, I figured it was too good to be true. So he bet me twenty bucks that it’d work. It did, and now I’m trying to make good.”
Brody laughed. “That sounds like Eddie, all right-but he doesn’t need your twenty. He hit it big last week at the casino. That’s why he quit. Said fuck this job-he didn’t need it anymore.”
“Still,” Hendricks said, “a deal’s a deal. I’ll throw in a twenty for you, too, if you can point me in the right direction.”
The Starlite Arcade was adjacent to the food court. The place wasn’t vintage or retro or hipster-ironic, just old-a relic from another time. Black lights shone down from a water-stained drop ceiling. At the center of the room was an air hockey table, glowing beneath the lights. On the far wall was a bank of Skee-Ball lanes. Beside them, a claw machine was piled high with stuffed animals. Everywhere else, arcade games blipped and emitted random bursts of stilted dialogue all by themselves.
An unshaven man with an Atari T-shirt stretched across his beer gut and a quarter dispenser on his belt was nodding off atop a stool inside the entrance, his back propped against the wall, one arm resting on a Jimmy Fund gumball machine. It wasn’t hard to see why he was bored. The arcade only had one customer.
Eric Purkhiser was in his early thirties-wiry and slouch-shouldered in a bowling shirt and skinny jeans. His rockabilly pompadour and wallet chain glinted in the black light. His face was lit by the glow of the Galaga cabinet he was hunched over.
Purkhiser was a rarity among Hendricks’s would-be clients. He’d testified against the Mob, which meant he knew damn well there were people out there who wanted him dead. Hendricks figured that’d make him a little jumpy. But Purkhiser didn’t even glance at him when he sidled up to watch him play.
Purkhiser’s eyes flitted across the screen as he piloted his spaceship left and right, shooting teeming swarms of pixelated insects. The speed at which they came at him was astonishing, and Purkhiser’s score was climbing steadily toward one million-he must have been playing awhile.
“That’s a hell of a score,” Hendricks said.
“Shhh,” Purkhiser hissed. He slammed the joystick hard left and smacked the fire button repeatedly, to no avail. His ship exploded. Purkhiser cursed.
The game prompted him to enter his initials. It appeared he’d taken second place. First place read KNH. Once Purkhiser put in his initials, second through eighth read ELP. “Thanks, asshole-you just cost me my high score! It’s the last one in the whole joint I don’t hold.”
Hendricks glanced at the machine beside him-some Technicolor monstrosity called Mr. Do! Sure enough, the top score was held by ELP. “I’m sure you’ll get it next time,” he said mildly.