“Just stand here and be quiet.” Mac Ford’s voice had lost its slur. Had adrenaline driven the other chemicals in his body into seclusion?
I sat at Alvy’s desk as the two of them stood stock-still, the gun pointed directly at me. If I jumped him now, he might not shoot. Then again, if I’m wrong, it’s not going to do me any good to get shot even if it does bring help. I’d never been shot before; I once interviewed a cop who said it doesn’t usually hurt much at first. Just a stinging, burning sensation. It’s later, after the shock’s over, that you think the pain’s going to kill you.
Great.
The footsteps grew louder in volume, up the stairs now, left at the head of the stairs, then down the hall toward us. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and I was beginning to develop a touch of tinnitus.
The steps stopped in front of the door. Mac Ford lowered his right hand and tucked the pistol out of sight behind his leg. Alvy’s hands were knotted into fists and held stiffly at her side. The doorknob turned. I sucked in a deep breath and locked it in. I was trying to come up with a script, but all I could think of was
The door moved. Alvy backed off a step.
Faye Morgan stepped in.
Oh, hell, I thought, so it ain’t the cavalry.
“What are you doing here?” Mac asked, bringing the gun up.
Alvy shook her head from side to side, disgusted. “Faye, you scared the pee out of us.”
“I told you not to come,” Mac said. “I’ll take care of this.”
Faye had on a pair of pleated khaki pants and a military-style shirt with epaulets. A large knitted bag hung from her right shoulder. Her permed red hair was full, bright. She was gorgeous, and what a hell of a thing for me to notice given the circumstances. I stared down at the floor, deflated.
“Mac, I had to,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
His jaw tightened. “I’ve got to take care of these two!”
My head snapped up.
Alvy noticed it, too, and I saw a look on her face that was like a curtain dropping. Suddenly, what I had figured all along dawned on her.
“Maybe I’m naive,” I said to Alvy, “but you aren’t stupid enough to think he’d actually give you a million dollars, are you?”
The curtain-dropping look turned into terror.
“Okay,” I said offhandedly, “so you are that stupid.”
She turned to Ford. “Mac?” she said, pleading. “We had a deal, an arrangement. Right?”
Mac Ford rolled his eyes. “Get over there and stand against that wall, you little twit.”
She drew herself up straight. “What about my copy of the letter?”
“I’m tired of fooling with you, Alvy. Screw your copy of the letter. It won’t do you a bit of good after-”
Mac didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“Oh, no,” she squealed.
“What’s going on here?” Faye demanded. Alvy slowly backed up, her eyes open their widest, her hands crossed in front of her open mouth. Textbook terror, shock, disbelief, all interwoven on her face.
“Well,” I said brightly, “let’s review the day’s events. First, I blackmailed Alvy into helping me get evidence that Mac Ford is a murderer. Alvy then sold me out in order to successfully complete her plan to blackmail Mac into giving her half of the two-million-dollar insurance settlement. Then Mac betrays her and is going to kill us both.
“Now tell me, Faye,” I said, turning to her. “Just who did
Mac Ford took a step toward me and pointed the pistol, as best I could tell, right at my forehead.
“For a guy that’s about to take a record-breaking dirt nap, you sure are awful goddamn funny.”
“I’m sorry, Mac. It’s that bad-attitude thing again. I’m so tired and stressed-out that my mouth is writing checks my ass can’t cash. But I think you’re making a big mistake here, buddy.”
“Fuck you.”
“Look, let’s start with the fact that I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill Rebecca Gibson. At least, that’s what I’d say if I was your defense lawyer. You know, ‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.…’ The bitch betrayed you, was going to cost you a fortune after you’d risked everything to put her name up in lights. So you went over to talk to her, to try to reason with her, to beg her to come back into the fold. She went to work on you just like she did everybody else. She got abusive, maybe even took a swing at you. You got in a fight, and in the heat and passion of the moment, she winds up dead. Worst-case scenario, you cop to involuntary manslaughter. You get five-to-ten, but let’s face reality here. With prison overcrowding and the fact that despite your scruffy appearance, you’re basically a middle-class professional with a lot of good contacts, you’ll do maybe eighteen months in a minimum- security facility before you’re paroled.”
“And lose everything,” he said. “The agency, the career, the two million dollars.”
“Big deal,” I said. “What are you, thirty-eight, forty? Another ten years, nobody’ll remember this and you’ll be back on top. On the other hand …”
All three of them stared at me. “Yeah?” Mac said.
“On the other hand, you drive us out to Rutherford County and bury us in some farmer’s field, it’s premeditated murder. That’s capital, pal. They’ve got Ol’ Sparky working out at Riverbend again. How’d you like to spend the next decade on death row, then get plugged in for your last ride?”
“That’s if I get caught,” he said.
I waved my hand. “C’mon, you’ll get caught. Plus, you’ve got somebody here who knows you did it.” I pointed at Faye. “You guys are tight as a duck’s ass now, but who can say what’s going to happen a few years down the road? She’ll always know you committed three murders, and you’ll always know she knows.”
Faye and Mac looked at each other. Behind me, Alvy slumped down against the wall and slid all the way to the floor. I wondered if she’d passed out and hurt herself, then realized I didn’t give a damn.
“Don’t listen to him, babe,” Mac said. “He’s full of shit.”
“Mac,” Faye said slowly, “I think he’s right.”
“No!” Mac screamed, the rage coming to the surface now. “I won’t give it up!”
“And to complicate matters even further, Mac, I left written instructions with friends telling them everything I intended to do today and telling them what to do if anything happened to me.…”
That wasn’t quite the truth, but it would do for now. I just hoped he bought it. I stood up slowly from behind the desk, my hands palm outward in front of me.
“You ask me, dude,” I said, “it’s all over.”
He moved the gun a little closer to me. “Nobody asked you.”
“Mac, honey,” Faye said, “he’s right. It’s not worth it.”
“It is worth it!”
“If they take you away forever, it’s not! I’ll wait for you. It’s a chance for you to relax for a while, get out of this rat race. You’re killing yourself. Look at you.”
“Shut up, Faye!” he screamed. His face was red now, his jaw shaking as he spoke.
I kept trying to come up with something clever to say to him, but the well had finally run dry. I’d said all I could, and unless I got the chance to jump him like in the movies, then it really was over. And although I’d never tried it, I had a feeling that movie shit wasn’t going to work.
Behind me, Alvy groaned. I looked down at her. She was huddled in a ball, her head buried between her knees.
“Let’s go,” Mac ordered, waving the pistol. “Everybody out!”
“To the car, right?” I asked.
“That’s right, smart guy. To the car.”
I crossed my arms and shook my head. “No,” I said, with a voice inside my head wondering where the hell
He looked at me like I’d just spoken Farsi. “What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“Tell me, Mac. What part of
