Finally, Pence doused the penlight, tossed the newspaper onto the dash, and announced, “Fuck it! They win. First they sink the Arizona, now my ancient ass.”
Mark grinned, shook his head, but kept going over the newspaper story.
“What the fuck are you up to?” Pence asked. “Readin’ the clippings of all your triumphs on the force? Oh. I forgot. You haven’t had any.”
Sticking his newspaper above the visor, Mark clicked out his penlight, and said, “Not doing anything.”
“Don’t shit a shitter,” Pence said. “I saw that story when it first came out. About that gay girl, who got murdered in Strongsville. Her and her whole fam-damly.”
“Actually she wasn’t gay,” Mark said. “And the whole family wasn’t killed.”
“No? Could’ve fooled me, all those dead bodies.”
“Her brother is gay, and she was just showing some solidarity. And he’s still alive, overseas, in the military.”
“Like you care.”
Mark glanced at the older cop sharply. “What?”
“You don’t care about that family any more than I do. Don’t know them from Adam. Or Eve or my hairy left ball. This is about you still moonin’ over that chick from high school days, right? The one you never even dated?”
Mark said nothing. He tried to keep the irritation from crawling up his neck in a red rash. He knew Pence liked to pull his chain, and he also knew there was no real malice behind it.
“Marky Mark, ain’t you never gonna let that go? Why don’t you do what I do, when I wake up at night, thinkin’ about Betty Lou Miller who wouldn’t look at me sideways in high school?”
“What do you do?”
“I get out of bed real quiet, so as not to wake the wife, and pad down the hall into the john and beat my meat, hummin’ the old school song.”
“Must you be so crude?”
“No, it’s a lifestyle choice. You do know we’re a couple of Cleveland detectives, and not Mormon missionaries goin’ door-to-door, right?”
Tightly, Mark said, “She deserves justice.”
“The Jordan girl? Sure she does. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to get any.”
“She might. She may.”
Pence sighed, like Atlas switching shoulders. “You know, kid, every cop’s got that one case that nags him, way after he’s put in his papers. So I get where you’re comin’ from.”
“Do you?”
“Yup. But you had your white whale before you ever got to be a cop. You don’t learn to let that shit go, my son, it will eat your ass alive.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Pence looked sad suddenly. “No you won’t.”
Then they both saw headlights coming down the alley toward them. A van.
Why should a van, a simple ordinary vehicle, make his sphincter tighten and his mouth go immediately dry? When he had first teamed with Pence, the older cop had told him that the job was ninety-five percent boredom and five percent sheer freaking terror.
Tonight Mark was getting the full one hundred percent...
Working to keep his breathing regular, Mark waited. Next to him, Pence was doing the same thing. They slouched in their seats down far enough that no one in the van might spot them. At least not from a distance. Maybe a half a block away, the van’s headlights switched off as it pulled in.
Without really thinking about it, Mark let his hand rest on the butt of his pistol on his hip.
The van stopped on the other side of the pawnshop’s back door, beyond Slowhand’s parked Lincoln. That gave Mark and Pence a slight advantage. They had Slowhand’s car between the van and their own.
“You remember to click the dome light off?” Pence whispered.
“Yeah,” Mark whispered back. “I’m not an idiot.”
“We’ll discuss that later.”
The van’s front doors opened and two African-American males climbed out. In the dark it was hard to see much, and the dim bulb over the pawnshop door was little help. The guy on the passenger side was a head taller than the driver, and they wore jeans and cutoff sweatshirts; but from this distance, Mark could determine little else.
The African-Americans walked to the back of the van and opened its rear doors. While the pair was back there, blocked by the vehicle, Mark and Pence slipped out of the Crown Vic, neither shutting his door tight. Using Slowhand’s car for cover, they crept closer.
Mark stayed on the driver’s side, hanging back by the Lincoln’s bumper, just in case the two guys came around the van’s passenger side.
On the other side of the Lincoln, Pence — despite his bulk — was all but invisible in the alley’s inky shadows. Grunts came from the back of the van, where the doors closed, and then the two men shuffled around the driver’s side, lugging something awkwardly between them.
As the pair got closer to the light above the door, Mark could see that they carried a massive flat-screen TV, fifty-inch screen anyway. The shorter man, the driver, led the way, going backward, his taller associate bringing up the rear.
Mark already had his gun out and at his side, barrel pointed straight down, ready to come up fast.
When the pair got to the door, the driver used his foot to give it a couple of solid kicks.
Then they waited.
Mark and Pence, staying low, edged alongside the Lincoln.
After a moment, the taller guy hissed, “Where the fuck he at? He slow keepin’ time, too?”
Still cradling his end of the TV, the driver managed a tiny shrug. “Fuck do I know? Maybe he’s takin’ a dump. Do I look like that John Edward dude?”
Then he kicked the door three more times, rattling it, making his partner almost lose his grip. More general profane bitching followed for maybe thirty seconds, then the door swung open and bald squat Slowhand himself filled the frame.
“You’re late,” he said to them in a low, gruff growl, small dark eyes darting up and down the alley, like bugs looking for a place to land.
“We late?” the driver said. “We been knockin’ for half an hour, man! You slow in the hand or the head?”
“Just get that fucking thing in here,” Slowhand said, stepping out into the alley to clear the doorway.
Pence popped up next to him. “Raise ’em, Robert!”
Mark stood and, in a voice much calmer than he felt, said, “Hold it right there, fellas.”
The driver did so, but his taller pal dropped his end of the TV and took off down the alley like a sprinter after the starting gun.
Unable to juggle the big TV from one end, its weight and awkwardness conspiring against him, the driver watched with wide helpless eyes as the expensive electronics item tumbled from his grasp and smashed onto the concrete alley, bits of the screen shattering and scattering everywhere, like ice breaking up.
“Fuck it!” the driver said, and put his hands up.
“You goin’ after him?” Pence asked, nodding toward the tall guy, who was already nearing the alley’s mouth.
“No,” Mark said, then eased toward the driver. He wasn’t going to leave Pence with two suspects to deal with. He told the driver, “Grab some wall.”
The driver assumed the position, hands flat on brick, feet spread. He’d been frisked before.
Patting the driver down, Mark asked, “Care to tell me the name of your homey? Cooperation is a beautiful thing.”
“Snitches get stitches,” the driver said, not even bothering to look over his shoulder.
“If that’s the way you want it,” Mark said, and read him his rights.
As he cuffed the man, Mark looked over and saw that Pence already had Slowhand cuffed, as well. The cop may have been old and fat, but he could still handle himself — with an equally old and fat perp, anyway.