Dirty Money

“Of course not,” Claire said, and smiled. “I’m Claire. You’re Sandra?”

“G’night, Nels,” called one of the customers, rising from his seat, waving a hand over his shoulder as he left.

“See you, Norm.”

Parker said to Sandra, “You’re waiting for a phone call.”

Sandra made a disgusted headshake and gestured at McWhitney. “This fellow and Harbin,” she said. “Where’s he stash him? In Ohio. I’m not going to Ohio, eyeball the fellow, that means, what I’ve got to do, I call my guy in DC, I pass along my tip, and I’m not even sure Nelson here isn’t pulling my chain. What if Harbin isn’t there? I don’t keep a reputation with dud tips.”

McWhitney said, “I don’t give you dud tips. What’s in it for me? He’s right exactly where I told you.”

“Have a good one, Nels.”

“You too, Jack.” McWhitney waved, then said to Parker, “About halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton, Interstate 75, they’re putting in a new restaurant, rest area. There’s a spot they’re gonna blacktop for the parking lot very soon now but not yet, not till the structure’s a little further along. A month ago, it was just messed-up fill in there, bulldozed a little, a lot of wide tire tracks. A few more weeks, they gotta lay that blacktop before winter freezes the ground, but not yet.”

“I hate it when somebody’s plausible,” Sandra said. “Everything fits together like Legos. Life doesn’t do that.”

“Every once in a while,” McWhitney told her, “the plausible guy has the goods.”

Parker said, “So McWhitney gave you the tip, and you gave it to somebody you know in DC—”

“In the US marshals’ office.”

“And they’re sending somebody to check it out. If the body’s there, you get your reward money. They’re calling you here?”

“Not on the bar’s phone,” she said. “On my cell.”

“All right.”

“Pretty soon, they’ll call,” Sandra said. She did all her talking with her right hand in her coat pocket. “If they say Harbin’s there, fine. If they say Mr. Harbin’s still among the missing, I’m gonna feel very embarrassed.”

“He’s there,” McWhitney said.

“But I’ll get over my embarrassment,” she told them, “because I’ll still have a little something to give them, make up for the inconvenience. Originally, I just had Nelson here.” She smiled around at them all. “But now,” she said, “I got a twofer.”

4

McWhitney said, “I’d better lock up.”

He had to walk down to the end of the bar and open the flap there to come out, then walk back past the others on this side. Sandra stepped back against the line of booths so he wouldn’t pass behind her, then said to Parker, “Funny you should happen by.”

“Is it?”

“You find yourself in the neighborhood, just the same day Dalesia slips his bonds.”

Returning to the others, staying now on this side of the bar, McWhitney said, “Sandra, don’t excite yourself. We aren’t helping Nick. He isn’t gonna let us know where he is.”

Skeptical, Sandra said, “Why? Because you’d turn him in?”

“That’s the last thing we’d do,” McWhitney said, “and he knows it. Unless it was turn him in like you’re turning in Harbin.”

She shook her head. “You were a team.”

“Not any more.”

Parker said, “If they take him again, all he has for bargaining chips is the money and us.”

“Well, it’s me more than you,” McWhitney said. “He knows this place here.”

“I think,” Claire said carefully, “he knows our phone number.”

Sandra looked at her with a little smile. “You mean, he knows your phone number. He’s used your phone number. Roy Keenan and me, we looked at that number. Nick Dalesia never did have a wide range of telephone pals. Ms. Willis stood out.”

Claire shrugged. “I never actually met the man,” she said. “I have no real link with him at all. I was looking for somebody to blacktop my driveway. I forget who said they’d have Mr. Dalesia call me. I talked to him twice, but I thought he sounded unreliable.”

“That’s nice,” Sandra said. “As long as Nick isn’t there to say it didn’t happen that way.”

“That’s what we’re saying,” McWhitney told her. He had taken the stool next to Parker, with Claire beyond, the three facing Sandra with her right hand in her pocket and her back braced against the booth’s tall coatrack.

“All right,” Sandra said. “But while we’re waiting here, it might be we could do some other business together. I mean, if this Harbin thing turns out to be on the up-and-up.”

McWhitney said, “What kind of business?”

“You people took a lot of money up there in New England,” Sandra said, “but then you had to leave it. That’s only three days ago, too soon for you to dare to go back.” To Parker, she said, “But Dalesia might go for it, that’s why you came here to see McWhitney. How to keep the money safe from your friend without exposing yourselves to the law.”

Parker said, “I think Nick’s pretty busy right about now.”

“I think your Nick needs money bad right about now,” Sandra said.

McWhitney said, “You aren’t, I hope, gonna say we should tell you where it is, so you can go get it and bring it back to us.”

Sandra’s free left hand made a shrugging gesture. “Why not? One woman could get in there and out, and then you’ve got something instead of nothing.”

“If you come back,” McWhitney said.

Parker said, “We’ll take our chances. If you don’t get in and out, if they grab you with the money, they’re gonna ask you who told you where it was. What reason would you have not to tell them?”

Sandra thought about that, then nodded. “I see how it could look,” she said. “All right, it was just an offer.”

McWhitney said, “I can’t give you people meals in this place. How much longer you think we’re gonna wait?”

“Until they call me,” she said.

Parker said, “Call them.”

Sandra didn’t like that. “What for? They’ll do what they’re doing, and then they’ll call me.”

“You call them,” Parker said. “You tell them, speed it up, your tipster’s getting anxious, he’s afraid there’s a double-cross coming along.”

“It won’t do any good to push—” she said, and a small, flat, almost toneless brief ring sounded. “At last,” she