She flinched for an instant. “What were you doing there?”
He sat back. “Just happened by.”
“You’re full of crap and you know it.”
“Maybe. The point is, I saw you drive up to the trailer in that car, the same one in the newspaper photo. I saw you pull a wad of cash out of your kid’s baby seat at the train station. I saw you make a number of phone calls.”
“So what? I’m not allowed to make phone calls?”
“The trailer had two dead bodies and a shitload of drugs in it, LuAnn. That was your trailer.”
LuAnn’s eyes narrowed. Was Rainbow a policeman sent to get her to confess? She fidgeted in her seat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never seen no bodies. You musta seen somebody else get out of that car. And who says I can’t keep my money wherever the hell I want to keep it.” She dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out the newspaper article. “Here, why don’t you take this back and go try scaring somebody else.”
Romanello picked up the piece of paper, glanced at it, and put it in his pocket. When his hand returned to view, LuAnn could barely keep from trembling as she saw the torn piece of bloody shirt.
“Recognize this, LuAnn?”
She struggled to maintain her composure. “Looks like a shirt with some stains on it. So what?”
He smiled at her. “You know, I didn’t expect you to remain this calm about it. You’re a dumb chick from Hooterville. I pictured you dropping to your knees pleading for mercy.”
“Sorry I ain’t what you imagined. And if you call me a dumb anything again, I’ll knock you flat on your ass.”
His face suddenly became hard and he slid down the zipper of his jacket until the butt of his 9-mm was revealed. “The last thing you want to do, LuAnn, is make me upset,” he said quietly. “When I get upset, I can be very unpleasant. In fact I can be downright violent.”
LuAnn barely glanced at the weapon. “What do you want from me?”
He zipped the jacket back up. “Like I said, you’re my pot of gold.”
“I ain’t got any money,” she said quickly.
He almost laughed. “Why are you in New York, LuAnn? I bet you’ve never been out of that godforsaken county before. Why of all places did you take off for the Big Apple?” He cocked his head at her, waiting for an answer.
LuAnn rubbed her hands nervously across the uneven surface of the table. She didn’t look at him when she finally spoke. “Okay, maybe I knew what happened in that trailer. But I didn’t do nothing wrong. I had to get out, though, because I knew it might look real bad for me. New York seemed as good as anyplace.” She looked up to test his reaction to her explanation. The mirth was still there.
“What are you going to do with all the money, LuAnn?”
She nearly crossed her eyes. “What are you talking about? What money? In the baby seat?”
“I would hope you weren’t going to try and stuff one hundred million dollars in a baby seat.” He eyed her chest. “Or, despite its obvious capacity, your bra.” She just stared at him, her mouth open a notch. “Let’s see,” he continued, “what’s the going price for blackmail these days? Ten percent? Twenty percent? Fifty percent? I mean, even at half, you’re still talking millions in your bank account. That’ll keep you and the kid in jeans and sneakers for life, right?” He took a sip of his coffee and sat back, idly fingering the edges of his napkin while he watched her.
LuAnn clamped a fist around the fork in front of her. For a moment she thought about attacking him, but that impulse subsided.
“You’re crazy, mister, you really are.”
“The press conference is tomorrow, LuAnn.”
“What press conference?”
“You know, that’s where you’re going to hold that big old check and smile and wave to the disappointed masses.”
“I’ve gotta go.”
His right hand shot across and gripped her arm. “I don’t think you can spend that money from a prison cell.”
“I said I gotta go.” She jerked her hand free and stood up.
“Don’t be a fool, LuAnn. I saw you buy the lottery ticket. I was at the lottery drawing. I saw the big smile on your face, the way you ran down the street whooping and hollering. And I was inside the lottery building when you went to get your winning ticket validated. So don’t try to bullshit with me. You walk out of here and the first thing I’m going to do is place a call to that Podunk county and that Podunk sheriff and tell them everything I saw. And then I’m going to send them this piece of shirt. You can’t believe the high-tech stuff they’ve got in the lab these days. They’ll start piecing it together. And when I tell them you just won the lottery and maybe they should grab you before you disappear, then you can just kiss your new life good-bye. Although I guess you can afford to put your kid up somewhere nice while you rot in jail.”
“I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“No, what you did was stupid, LuAnn. You ran. And when you run, the cops always figure you’re guilty. It’s how cops think. They’ll believe you were in it up to your pretty little ass. Right now, they haven’t gotten around to you. But they will. It’s up to you to decide whether they start focusing on you ten minutes from now, or ten days from now. If it’s ten minutes, you’re dead. If it’s ten days, I figure your plan is to disappear forever. Because that’s what I intend to do. You only pay me once, that I’ll guarantee. I couldn’t spend all that money even if I tried and neither could you. We all win that way. The other way, you lose, slam-dunk. So what’s it gonna be?”
She stood frozen for a moment halfway out of her chair. Slowly, inch by inch, she sat back down.
“Very smart of you, LuAnn.”
“I can’t pay you half.”
His face darkened. “Don’t be greedy, lady.”
“It’s got nothing to do with that. I can pay you, I just don’t know how much, but it’ll be a lot. Enough for you to do whatever the hell you want to.”
“I don’t understand—” he began.
LuAnn interrupted, borrowing phraseology from Jackson. “You don’t have to understand nothing. But if I do this I want you to answer one question for me and I want the truth or you can just go and call the cops, I don’t care.”
He eyed her cautiously. “What’s the question?”
LuAnn leaned across the table, her voice low but intense. “What were you doing in that trailer? You just didn’t happen on by, I know that sure as I’m sitting here.”
“Look, what does it matter why I was there?” He threw his arm up in a casual motion.
LuAnn reached out as quickly as a striking rattler and grabbed his wrist. He winced as she squeezed it with a strength he had not anticipated. Big and strong as he was, it would’ve taken all his might to break that grip. “I said I wanted an answer, and it better be the right one.”
“I earn my living” — he smiled and corrected himself — “I used to earn my living by taking care of little problems for people.”
LuAnn continued to grip the wrist. “What problems? Did this have to do with the drugs Duane was dealing?”
Romanello was already shaking his head. “I didn’t know anything about the drugs. Duane was already dead. Maybe he was holding out on his supplier or maybe skimming off the top and the other guy cut him up. Who knows? Who cares?”
“What happened to the other guy?”
“You were the one who hit him, weren’t you? Like I said in the note, dead as a doornail.” LuAnn didn’t answer. He paused and took a breath. “You can let go of my wrist any time now.”