“That’s the most important of all. A guy only puts it into play if it’s a super-special occasion or if he’s fucked up big time.”
“Why’s that?”
“The double balloon gets you out of anything. Can’t even be questioned. Like those letters of transit Peter Lorre stole in Casablanca.”
“She’s heading for checkout.”
The woman got in line at register three. Serge and Coleman pulled into register four. Serge held up a Redbook with Jennifer Aniston on the cover. Drive Him Totally Wild with Ordinary Household Products, Page 132. He peeked over the top. The woman was looking at Serge; he peeked back down.
The cashier rang up chicken and flowers. Serge thought the eighty-year-old woman bagging his groceries looked familiar. She was going slow.
“Doris?”
“Serge?”
“What are you doing here? I thought you’d retired.”
“I had,” said Doris. “But then I got wiped out in the stock market. That accounting scandal with Global-Con…”
“Son of a—!”
The old woman was tired. She stopped and grabbed the end of the counter, then started bagging again.
Serge went over and gently held her arm. “Why don’t you take a break. I’ll bag these myself.”
“No, I have to keep going!”
Coleman was reading a tabloid. “Hey, Serge, look at this article. ‘Leading psychic reveals: Hitler kicked out of hell, starts rival inferno’…”
Serge began helping Doris bag. “You must have some money left.”
“Not enough to live on.” She sniffed the flowers and put them in a sack. “The worst part is that bastard Donald Greely has started building a mansion just up the road, rubbing our noses in it.”
The woman at register three zipped her purse and began pushing a cart of bagged groceries toward the door.
“Doris, I want to get back with you on that.”
Serge and Coleman hurried out of the store and reached the parking lot just as the woman finished loading bags in her Pathfinder. They ran to the Riviera. Serge grabbed his binoculars.
“Look,” said Coleman. “She’s getting back out of her car. I think she’s seen us.”
“You’re right. She’s coming over here,” said Serge. “This could ruin everything. It’s too premature for us to formally meet before I’ve had a chance to study her at the gym and through open windows of her house. On the other hand, you never know. She could be the one!”
The woman was almost to their car. Serge grabbed the flowers and got out, hiding the bouquet behind his back.
She stopped a few feet in front of him. “Have you been following me?”
Serge broke into his broadest, most charismatic smile. “Yes!”
“I thought so.” The woman reached in her purse.
Serge whipped the flowers from behind his back and proudly held them out. “This is for you.”
The woman pointed a keychain cannister at Serge. “And this is for you.” Squirt.
The flowers hit the pavement. Serge stomped on them as he reeled. “Ahhhhhhh! My eyes! I’m blind!”
She kicked him between the legs. “Pervert!”
Coleman jumped out of the car. “Serge! Where are you?” He ran around the Buick and found his partner bunched on the ground. Coleman bent down and helped his buddy up into a sitting position. “What happened?”
“She’s not the one.”
11
A LOUD CRASH.
The petite woman in the back of the No Name jumped.
The man sitting on the other side of the table reached for her hand. “Just somebody dropping something.”
Anna hyperventilated.
“You need a beer.” The man got up and went to the bar. He returned with two drafts. Anna grabbed hers in shaking hands and guzzled till it was gone.
The man grabbed her hand again. “Jesus, easy…”
“I can’t take this. I need Valium.”
“I can get you some.”
“Where was I?”
“Take a rest.”
“No. I haven’t told anyone yet. I have to get it all out….”
ANNA CREPT TOWARD the duplex.
“Don’t go back in there!” yelled Val.
Anna didn’t listen.
“I’ll keep the engine running and your door open. You just run right out….”
Anna reached the porch. She cautiously unlocked the door and pushed it open with a creak. Stillness. She eased through the dark living room, no sign of Billy. The bedroom door was closed. That was good. The stuff she needed was in the bathroom. She went down the hall.
Anna got closer and heard water running. The door was ajar, a ribbon of light. She pushed it open.
Val leaped out of the car when she heard the shrieks. Anna stood paralyzed in the bathroom doorway. Red arterial spray over everything. On top of the sink was a box. On top of the box was Billy’s head. The autopsy would later find the work had been done with a hacksaw, begun, at least, while the victim was still alive. A slim wire ran into Billy’s mouth, attached to a miniature recording device — the kind police make informants wear — which was now broadcasting from somewhere near the top of Billy’s throat. The box was on top of the sink so the head could look at itself in the mirror. Billy’s surprised eyes, frozen open in a look of eternal terror, gazed at the reflection, where someone had written in blood, “How smart are you now?”
Anna came flying out the front door and fell to her knees with dry heaves. Val ran and met her in the middle of the yard. She struggled to understand Anna’s hysterics. The message eventually got across.
“We have to call the police!”
“You’re right.” They ran to the car and Anna reached in her purse for a cell phone. It rang in her hands. They both jumped.
Anna apprehensively put the phone to her head. “Hello?”
It was her sister-in-law, Janet. Screaming.
“Calm down, I can’t understand—”
“They killed everyone!”
“Who?”
“They shot Rick….”
Her brother. A punch in the chest.
“…I found him on the kitchen floor. And they shot Randy. And Pedro and his wife!…” Then more shrieking.
Janet’s collapse somehow spurred Anna to get it together. It was the Rick in her. “I’m coming over….”
“I’m not at home. It’s not safe,” said Janet. “You and Billy need to hide.”
“Billy’s dead.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Just found him,” said Anna. “We’re at the house.”
“Get away from there!”
Anna looked across the front seat at her friend. “We’re not safe here.”
Val started shaking and fumbling with the gear shift.
Anna opened her door.
“What are you doing?”
“Something’s started that I can’t tell you about. You need to get out of here. But don’t call the police.”
“What about you?”
Anna looked toward the driveway. “I’ve got the Trans Am.”
Her friend sped away and nearly took out the stop sign at the corner. Anna kept her sister-in-law on the phone as she ran up the driveway, juggling her purse, digging for keys.
“Where are you?”
Janet looked around the pay phone outside a truck stop on I-95. “Flying J.”
“Don’t move. I’m coming over.” Anna revved up the Trans Am and screeched backward into the street.
Janet was still sobbing. “Rick told me there was nothing to worry about. Just said not to speak to anyone without a lawyer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The indictments today. Didn’t you hear? It was on the news.”
“Indictments?”
“We all got one. This was only pot for Chrissake! Rick promised nobody gets rough over that. Just coke.”
The picture snapped into focus.
Anna vividly remembered the day it all began. It was windy down at the municipal marina. The women wore scarves. They loaded picnic lunches while the guys argued over their new knots. Rick and Billy had just bought the sailboat. The wives were against it at first, but the idea grew on them as they thought of all the time the couples would be spending together. They imagined raising kids.