Stone Quarry

can ask you nicely where he is. If he is there, you can be my insurance. I don't think he'll shoot me if he has to shoot through you.'

'I still want to deal.'

'With what?'

I took a breath. 'I have the paintings.'

Grice smiled a big, slow, crooked smile. 'No,' he said.

'Yes.'

'And I thought you were a straight-arrow type.'

I shrugged. 'They're worth a lot of money.'

'So you stole them.'

'I just moved them. Nobody else seemed to have any idea they were there. I didn't know how they got there but I knew what they were.'

Lydia was watching me closely, her eyes narrowed.

'So where are they?'

'That's the deal.'

Grice flipped open his gold cigarette case. Arnold snapped his lighter. Grice sucked at the end of the cigarette, said around it, 'Okay. You tell us where they are, we'll let you go.'

I laughed. 'Bullshit. I'm dead, Frank. You think I don't know that? The deal is this: you let Lydia go. Then I tell you where the paintings are.'

'If you're dead,' he said, streaming smoke at me, 'how come she's not?'

'Because she's not as dangerous as I am. What the hell does she know? She heard you confess to one murder and to being an accessory to another, but you've got Jimmy framed for both. By the time she gets to tell anyone her story, Jimmy and I'll be dead and you and the boys here'—I spat the word 'boys'; I couldn't help it—'will have an airtight alibi, probably provided by Sanderson in return for whatever it is you've got on him.'

Grice smoked, a contemplative look on his uneven face. I wasn't sure he'd bought it, so I went on. 'In fact, if she's smart—and she is—she won't say anything to anybody. Why bother? Isn't that right, sweetheart?' I looked at Lydia, my face blank, everything I'd ever wanted to say to her in my eyes.

Lydia's obsidian eyes widened slightly. She said, 'That's right. I like to stay out of trouble.'

'Okay,' Grice decided. 'We go find Jimmy. Then we go get the paintings. Then she goes home.'

Even through the protective layer of Canadian Club the throbbing in my head was making it hard to think and my legs were getting rubbery again. I had to end this. If I passed out here Grice would just pile us all in the car and forget about making any deals.

'She comes with us,' I said. 'She gets out where I say, so I can see. Then I tell you. Nothing else, Grice. Nothing else.'

Grice finished his cigarette. He nodded slowly. 'Sure. Why not?'

Thank God, I thought, as the six of us crossed the swampy lawn to the blue Ford. Thank God. Now just keep it together, Smith, one more play and you can sit out the rest of the game.

Because I knew what Grice was thinking: let her go. Find out where the paintings are. And then deal with her later.

He could do that. I knew he could. Lydia wouldn't be able to prove what she'd heard today, and she wouldn't be safe from him, ever.

But I had one more play. And if Grice was stupid enough, and Lydia was smart enough, we just might pull it off.

Chapter 20

The rhythm of the car was soporific with my eyes closed, sickening with them open, but I needed, desperately, to stay awake. One chance; one place.

An argument started in the front seat and I concentrated on it.

'It ain't on the goddamn map, Frank,' Ted was complaining. 'I never been there.'

Papers rustled loudly, Grice unfolding a highway map, not nearly detailed enough to show them the way to the quarry from the green house near Franklinton.

'Here,' Grice said, with his finger on a place on the map. 'This is where the truck road starts. Get us here. I can find it from there.'

Ted peered over. The car drifted; he yanked at the wheel, swung us back from the shoulder. 'Okay, Frank,' he said. 'Sure.'

Arnold had brought the bottle. I asked for a drink. Arnold looked to Grice, in the front seat next to Otis. Grice shrugged, Arnold held the bottle for me, and against its better judgment my blood started to move again.

I wondered if Ted had been promoted to Wally Gould's old job, and how Otis felt about that. We drove north, hit the paved road a mile away at a featureless intersection. Lydia threw me a look, muttered, 'Hess station, huh?'

Grice turned around. 'What?'

'Private joke,' I answered.

We kept moving. I kept trying to stay awake. Not much longer, I promised myself, feeling a trickle of blood slide down along my jawline from the throbbing place near my eye. For Lydia. For Jimmy. And not much longer.

I almost missed it. There was only one good way to the quarry from where we'd been; that was the basket all