boat and onto the platform and chasing Leonard and me along the lake shore, and when I’d look back at him, he’d be wearing that minnow bucket over his head.
44
Next morning, Jim Bob joined us in our room for breakfast. Tonto was still out on the town. He hadn’t come in last night. We ate out on the deck. It was fun spending someone else’s money.
The lights were no longer on and the rain had gone, but the day was gray and the air was misty. Everything that had looked bright and amazing the night before now looked grim and sad, sort of sordid, like a used condom tossed in the gutter. Tim and Katie finished up eating and went back to the bedroom. They looked as glum as a couple of coffin carriers.
“Dumb kids,” Jim Bob said.
“Love is dumb,” I said, “and sometimes that’s what I like about it.”
Leonard tossed a thumb at me. “He’s so cute.”
“So Tonto’s out on the town?”
Jim Bob grinned, said, “Funny guy, that Tonto.”
“Yeah, ha, ha,” I said.
“He kills people and then goes gambling,” Jim Bob said. “Of course, I haven’t lost my appetite.”
“None of us have,” I said, and then I told everyone about the money.
“That’s a lot more money than your man said was missing,” Jim Bob said.
“Yep,” I said, “and I smell a rat about the size of a possum covered in slime.”
Jim Bob poured himself some coffee and looked out at the misty morning. “You know, I got a kind of idea about what’s going on here.”
“There’s a little something coming to me too,” Leonard said. “A guy tells us there’s three hundred thousand dollars and there’s more than that, you got to wonder if it’s that big of a miscount on his part—about what’s missing, I mean—or he’s just a goddamn liar.”
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “I think the thing is your man, Hirem, he made a special side deal with two FBI agents that doesn’t involve the agency. You two go out and do the dirty work, bring the money back, not having counted it, and they slice them off a nice piece, turn in the three hundred thousand Hirem said was missing, and they get as good a deal as they can find for him in the system, witness protection, and they promise to protect the kid, and you two get out from under your charges. If you two decide to keep the money, then you’re fugitives and you got this charge hanging over your head they could manipulate out of being self-defense and into being murder. You could go up for a long time.”
“They could pull that trick anyway,” Leonard said.
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said, “but the way they see it is it’d be better for everyone all around if they got their money and Hirem got his deal and you two went back to being you two, which is kind of a full-time job.”
Leonard and I touched fists. “Yeah, baby,” Leonard said.
About an hour later there was a knock at the door, and being paranoid, I carried my pistol with me and looked out the peephole. It was Tonto.
When I let him in he looked as fresh as he had the day before, and he was carrying a newspaper under his arm. He followed me out to the deck and sat in a chair and put the paper on the table, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He said, “You know that woman you rented the boat from?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You won’t have to pay for that boat sinking. She’s dead.”
He reached over and flipped the paper open, scanned it briefly, put his finger on an article. I picked it up and read it. It said the woman had been found dead in her store, shot through the forehead. One of her fingers had been amputated.
I read this aloud, and when I finished, Leonard said, “Damn. I think somehow this is our fault.”
“I think someone wanted to know where we went,” I said, “and she didn’t want to tell, and whoever wanted to know cut off a finger to show they were serious, and then when they got the information, they shot her as a cleanup procedure.”
“What I don’t understand,” Leonard said, “is why didn’t she just tell them? She didn’t owe us a thing.”
“Her own ethics, I suppose,” I said. “You can’t just let anyone come into a novelty shop and push you around. Next thing you know, you’ll be giving the plastic dog crap away because bullies want you to.”
“Damn,” Leonard said.
“I guess our friends in the brown Ford were watching us when we rented the boat,” I said.
“Hell,” Tonto said, “I’m glad those guys are dead. They were kind of spooky. I thought I was kind of spooky, but those guys—”
“You are spooky,” I said.
“But sweet around the eyes,” Leonard said.
“Thing is, boys, there might be another player,” Jim Bob said. “Reason we didn’t see a brown Ford all the time was because it wasn’t just a brown Ford following us.”
“You mean we were being double-teamed,” Leonard said. “That’s why they could keep up with us, why they could watch us and we didn’t see them. They decided to let us know about the Ford, put all our thinking there, but there was someone else watching.”
“Why didn’t they join with the Ford at the cabin?” I asked.
