“It was a gun,” Nicolet said.
They followed the Firebird west on 31st toward Windsor Avenue, Nicolet with the attache case on his lap. He snapped it open, brought out a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter auto and returned the case to the back seat. He said, “I bet yours’s in the trunk, with all that shit you haul around.”
“It’s in there,” Tyler said, looking at the glove box.
Nicolet opened it, drew a Beretta nine from a black holster, and handed it to Tyler. “I don’t see your flak jacket in there.”
Tyler said, “Fuck you,” wedging the pistol between his thighs.
They drove north on Windsor, over 36th Street west to Australian Avenue and north again, still in a low- income residential area, light traffic in this direction, trailing a red Firebird on a nice spring morning. No problem.
“You mentioned jackboys before,” Nicolet said and then paused and seemed to start over. “Where was Beaumont Livingston found? In a stolen car, a new Olds. The gun in the trunk with him, a five-shot .38 wiped clean. That is, clean on the outside. They found latents on the three bullets still in the cylinder and on the casings of the two that killed him. They check the registration number, the piece belongs to a guy ran a crack house who right now is facing federal prosecution and no doubt some hard time. This guy will tell you anything you want to know, so you have to be selective in what you ask. He says the gun was stolen last month along with all his cash, his dope, a few other guns. . . . Jackboys, he says, came in shooting and cleaned him out. One of them he identifies, a kid named Bug Eye he used to know in Delray. The latents on the gun that did Beaumont, they find out, belong to a convicted felon named Aurelius Miller. And what’s Aurelius’s street name, as if he needed one? Bug Eye.”
“The crack-house guy,” Tyler said, “I don’t see he gave you all that much. I mean it’s not like he stuck his neck out and finked on anybody.”
“The point I was making there, he’s anxious to please,” Nicolet said, “and we’re not through yet, are we? Okay, ten days ago Bug Eye was shot dead by a West Palm police officer. It was in the paper. . . .”
“I saw it,” Tyler said. “There was some question about the guy being shot both in the chest and the back?”
Nicolet, his gaze on the red car a half block ahead of them, said, “That’s the one. There was a shootout.”
“He got hit in the chest and spun around,” Tyler said, “while the officer was still firing.”
“We know that can happen,” Nicolet said, the red car now getting bigger. “He’s slowing down.”
They had reached an industrial area of warehouses and loading docks, a few small businesses, in Riviera Beach now.
“He’s pulling off,” Tyler said.
Nicolet looked around, saw no cars behind them.
“Keep going.”
Now he stared straight ahead as they drove past the Firebird parked off the road in an open area, a trucking company freight yard.
“What’s around here?”
“Nothing,” Tyler said. “I think he made us.” Nicolet was looking back now. “Place they make patio furniture, a bump and paint shop . . . That could be it.”
“A rental storage place,” Tyler said, “down the side street.”
“What’re we coming to?”
“Blue Heron.”
“Turn around and go back. You see him?”
Tyler looked at the mirror. “He’s still there.”
“He’s gonna sell the Firebird for parts,” Nicolet said. “Drives in the chop shop and you never see it again. You understand why I thought of Bug Eye?”
Tyler nodded. “I’ll go through the light and come back.”
Nicolet turned to look over his shoulder at the Firebird, way back there now. “Here’s a kid in a stolen car who looks like he could be a jackboy, right? He goes to see a gun dealer named Ordell Robbie to sell him a piece. The same Ordell Robbie who bailed out a guy who was popped by somebody using a piece that was ripped off a crack dealer by a known jackboy named Bug Eye, now deceased.”
“So you want to talk to this guy,” Tyler said, anxious now, making an abrupt U-turn and starting back.
“See what he has to say,” Nicolet said, holding the chunky Sig Sauer auto in his lap. “Citizen cooperation can sure make our work a lot easier, can’t it?”
“I’ll come around behind him,” Tyler said. “You think he has a gun, huh?”
Nicolet raised his pistol enough to rack the slide.
“Bet your life on it.”
What Cujo showed Bread in his driveway was the big stainless .44 Mag Bread had him get for one of his customers. How it worked was once Bread found out who owned such a weapon and where the man lived, Cujo or one of the others would break in the house and get it, take the weapon and whatever he saw he liked or could sell. In the driveway Bread wanted to know was it the right gun, asking him how long was the barrel. Cujo told him looong, man, they go in the house he could show him. Unh-unh, Bread never let people in this house, having, Cujo believed, a woman in there he didn’t want nobody to see. Or it was where he kept the million dollars he must have made by now on guns. Bread said the Mag his customer wanted had a seven and a half-inch full lug barrel on it, whatever the fuck that meant. Was this the one? Cujo asked was he suppose to bring a ruler with him breaking in a house to measure the weapon with? Bread said, “No, man, you don’t need a ruler.” He said, “You know how long your bone is, don’t you? You take it out, lay the piece alongside your bone, and figure the difference.” He’d crack you up saying things like that with his serious look he put on. Man could be on TV, funny, but had his rules. Wouldn’t put the gun in his trunk, right there, or take it in the house. Said it had to go out to where the guns were kept. No bullshit about that. Then lightened up saying be ready in a few days for the Turkey Shoot. Meaning when they’d go jump the Nazi had all the guns at his place. There was a name he gave for everything they did. Rum Punch was the deal he had going in the Bahamas, Open House was what he called the places he lined up for them to break in. When they jumped the Nazi it would be like a combination Open House, Bread said, and a Turkey Shoot. Jump him early in the morning. . . .
When he stopped here to make sure nobody was on him, Cujo had taken the big hunk of .44 Mag out of his pants and laid it on the floor under him. He’d watched this one car come up behind him when there was no other traffic, the car easing along. It became a white Chev Caprice going past. Two white guys in the white car. Cujo waited some more to make sure, watching cars in the mirror come up on him and through the smoked windshield as they went past, on up to Blue Heron. When he saw the white Chev coming back from there, going past the other way and then U-turning to come back toward him, it became an unmarked police car and not a couple of guys looking for a street they might have missed. See, coming off the road now to ease up behind him. He watched both front doors open in his mirror and thought of taking off soon as they were out of the car.
Except that high-speed shit could kill you. He’d tried it one time and got pulled from the wreck, a big cut in his head.
Be better to look the motherfuckers in the eye. Call the play.
“He’s getting out,” Tyler said.
Nicolet thought the kid was going to come back to their car with some kind of bullshit story. The kid knew who they were. But what he did was stand by the Firebird showing how cool he was, right arm on the open door, his left arm on the roof of the car. Waiting for them. About thirty feet away.
“Keep your door in front of you,” Nicolet said, “till I cover him.”
“You sure he has a gun?”
“I’m positive.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Then don’t fucking shoot him.”
He watched Tyler slide out of the car to stand behind the door and lay his Beretta on the sill of the open window. Nicolet got out and started toward the right side of the Firebird, moving a few steps away from the cars to get a cross-fire angle, his pistol held against his leg.
The kid looked over the low roof at them.
