was a good question, and someday he thought he might confront Paul with it.
Thorne had serious doubts that he could take Martin in a fair fight. Not that there would be a fair fight, because it was against Martin’s nature. But Thorne would certainly lose if things were within spitting distance of equal. At forty-seven Martin Fletcher would still be in fighting trim. Thorne wasn’t, however he might look to the untrained eye. Fighting trim was a way of life-mental, physical, and emotional. Traveling with celebrities, watching party guests, playing volleyball, and working out with weights wasn’t even a good start on it. He worked out at a gym three times a week, and he could run a few miles without passing out, but Martin was a different story. Martin was the sort that had to be taken by surprise, from ambush.
34
Eve Fletcher awoke to discover her small dog lying like a paperweight on the foot of her bed. She sat up and probed at his body with her toe under the sheet. “Puzzle? Mr. Puzzle?”
A block away, inside the DEA van, Larry Burrows sat with a cup of coffee watching the screen.
“Goddammit, Mr. Puzzle!”
“Hey, come see this!” Larry yelled. Sierra rolled from the bunk, rubbing her swollen eyes, her hair pressed against the side of her head. She looked at her watch. “What the heck, Burrows? It isn’t time for my shift.”
“Look, old Eve’s got herself that fur-covered doorstop she’s been praying for.”
“Owww, her’s gonna be in a foul mood today,” Sierra said.
On the screen Eve had got out of bed and stood hunched over, punching at the stiff dog’s flank with a pencil.
Sierra poured a cup of coffee and sat down in a swivel chair. “You taping this?”
“I’m going to send it to America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
Eve lifted the dog’s leg with the eraser end and peered at his belly.
“What’s she doing now?”
“Maybe she’s gonna give him the fuck-of-life maneuver.”
“Please, I haven’t had my coffee yet. Mouth to mouth,” she said, laughing.
Then, as Sierra and Larry watched, Eve rushed down the hall and into the kitchen. Larry switched the views so that they had the back of her leaving the bedroom, a long shot of her approaching the kitchen down the narrow hallway, and the top of her head and shoulders as she rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. When she straightened up, one of her sagging breasts came free of her gown.
“God, that turns me on,” Larry said.
“Grief,” Sierra said. “Have some respect for the bereaved. She just lost her sole companion and best friend. He was like her own child.”
“Does she look like Jerry Clower in drag, or is it just me?”
“Who’s Jerry Clower?”
“Country comedian… a hayseed Tip O’Neill clone,” he said.
The camera shots changed as Larry turned the selector switch to maintain continuity. B: hallway south, C: kitchen. When Eve came back, she stopped and put her hands into sandwich bags for mittens. Then she used one to lift the dog by its tail and the other to open the dark, already partially filled, garbage bag. She dropped him in, removed the sandwich bags from her hands, and tossed them in. Then Eve pulled the drawstring tight and tied it into a knot. The roof-mounted cameras followed her back to the kitchen and out the back door, where she opened the lid to the refuse can, threw the bag in, slammed the lid down, and then went straight back into the house without so much as a peek over her shoulder.
“Nice service,” Larry said. “But she wasted a bag that coulda held a lot more. Coulda used one of those little candy-sized bags.”
“Forget what I said about respect. I hope she catches her tit in a drawer,” Sierra said.
“I guess different folks deal with grief in different ways,” Larry added. “Something tells me she’ll get over this loss, somehow.” He removed his wire-framed glasses and wiped the lenses inside a pinched fold of Polo shirttail.
He changed to an image of Eve’s legs protruding from the closet in what had been Martin’s room. The room was as Martin had left it when he’d joined the service. Twin beds with baseball players depicted on the spreads. A round braided rug and a chest of drawers with Martin’s artifacts still displayed on the top, as though he could return at any minute to assume his previous life.
“What the hell’s she doing now, looking for the dog’s insurance policy?”
Sierra sipped at the cup of coffee. “Look,” she said. “What’s that she’s throwing out?”
Rectangular objects were hitting the floor behind Eve’s feet.
“Money!”
“Jesus, it’s bills! Old bitch’s got herself a stash of cash.”
“If those are C notes… there’s over a hundred thousand showing. She coulda bought the little carpet crapper a cigar box or something.”
Eve finished and then started stuffing the cash into a large wicker purse that had been under the closest bed. Then she pulled three wig boxes from the closet and took the wigs out and lined them up.
“She’s going somewhere as a woman,” Larry said.
Sierra tapped his shoulder and he ducked. “Ouch!” he said, laughing.
“She’s taking the money to Martin,” Joe McLean said over their shoulders. “Let’s get ready. She’s leaving for Florida. Fifty bucks says next flight.”
He lifted the telephone and dialed Paul.
Larry and Sierra looked at each other and wondered how long Joe had been standing there behind them.
35
Paul had left Sherry’s apartment, gone home for a shower, and had taken Joe’s call while he was drying off. He dressed hurriedly and drove straight to the office, pausing only then to call Rainey and Sherry on the cell phone to tell them to hurry over to the office without any explanation. Then he had armed the phone’s signal scrambler to make sure the call was secure before he called Thorne in New Orleans.
“When you leaving for Miami?” Thorne asked.
“As soon as Eve leaves her house,” he said. “I’m headed to the office first to make sure everything’s in motion,” he said.
“I wish I was going in with you and the boys,” Thorne said.
“I’m depending on you to take care of things in New Orleans. No one else I can trust, Thorne.”
“Okay, Paul,” he said, not masking the disappointment. “See you after the shoe drops. Don’t lower your guard for a second. Good-bye.”
The telephone went dead.
It was quiet in the conference room. Paul made a pot of coffee, but he didn’t need it-Joe’s call had him wired. The dream was still haunting him. Maybe “haunting” wasn’t the right word. Stalking him.
Paul spent the next hour trying to decide what Martin would do between the time he met his mother and the time when he returned to complete his revenge against the family.
Rainey came in and interrupted Paul’s thoughts.
“Tried to call you last night,” he said. “I was afraid you’d left without me. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“No, Rainey. I had some thinking to do. What about the Buchanan kid?”
“He doesn’t remember anything,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders and sat in a chair, which he turned to the window. “It’s October the first. That means it’s going to come down real soon.”
Paul nodded his agreement. “Sooner than that,” he said, smiling. “Today.”
