look. “Too bad you didn’t move a little faster.”
“Excuse me?” I was still trying to catch my breath and I could feel my heart racing. I could have had a heart attack, and she was telling me I was too slow?
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“Not a good look. His ball cap was pulled down in front. But I might recognize him if I saw him again.”
She pursed her lips, staring in the direction of the departed Honda. “I didn’t get close enough to see. Mr. Moore, I told you this might be a matter of life and death.”
It was a matter of $15,000. I had to tell myself it was all about the money. “I assume you’re worried about your husband? With Ralph Walters being killed, Mr. Conroy is possibly a target?”
“Sandler?” She laughed, a harsh, nasty, sarcastic type of laugh. “Please, Mr. Moore. I could give a rat’s ass about my husband.” Pretty harsh words from such a petite young woman.
“Then who do you think might be the next victim?”
She looked down the street again, biting her bottom lip. “Me, Mr. Moore. I believe I’m next in line to be killed.”
CHAPTER TEN
I parked my dirty tan 2000 Chevy Cavalier in the parking lot outside Sarah’s condo building. When I’d left Carol Conroy at the Red Derby I’d made sure she saw me get into the little car, so if she did drive by Sarah’s condo, checking on her husband, she’d notice my crappy little piece of junk. I thought about going up and telling Sarah that I was fulfilling my obligation, but I wasn’t sure what I’d find. Maybe Sandler Conroy himself. The deal was to park the car overnight, and that’s what I did.
James had followed me to the complex. I got in the truck and he sat there, staring at the building.
“Opera.”
“What?”
“Name of the building. High-end condo for Sarah the hooker. She must have made some serious jack hooking.”
“James, every time I see her I think about that. But she got me the job. That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah. And she’s also put you in a position.”
“There’s that, too.”
“Seems to me, amigo, that you should get hazard pay.”
I didn’t say anything for a while. Hazard pay. I was getting it. James didn’t know I was getting it.
Finally, James pulled out of the lot. “We’re not getting any younger, Skip. If we’re going to make a mark, it’s about time we do that.”
“James-”
“And we’re never going to make our mark working for someone else.”
“James.” It was his obsession. Make a million by the time we were thirty. Or before.
He reached down beside the driver’s seat into a small bucket on the floor and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Putting one in his mouth, he lit it with a match, bending the match with one hand and one finger, striking it with his thumb. “Tell me I’m wrong, Skip.”
“About the hazard pay.”
“Hazard pay?”
“You mentioned hazard pay.”
James took a long drag on his cigarette, letting the smoke drift from his mouth out the window into the warm Miami evening. “I don’t mean to be the materialistic weasel of this group, but do you think we’ll get hazard pay out of this?” He turned to me and smiled.
It took me a moment. “Armageddon?”
“Ah, the man knows his movies.”
“Good quote.”
“Good movie.” He slouched back in his seat and stepped on the gas. The truck moved a little faster. Not much.
“James, she offered me hazard pay.”
“Oh?” He looked at me with a frown on his face.
“Yeah. I’m being paid for the job.”
“Gigolo.”
“Ten grand.”
He was silent for a moment. “A well-paid gigolo. Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“And I get the feeling there may be more to this.”
“Hey, ten grand, James. That’s damned good hazard pay.”
“You weren’t going to tell me.”
I could tell his feelings were hurt. “Listen. I’m getting paid. And there is more to this.”
He was holding the cigarette with one hand, steering and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel with his other. “So spill.”
“I may have bitten off more than I can chew.”
“We’re reversing roles here?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I tend to be the one who goes out on a limb. Our relationship-” he took another mouth full of smoke, “it depends on me being the adventurous one. You are the voice of reason, amigo.”
“Usually.”
“So we’re reversing roles.”
I shrugged my shoulders. A Cadillac Escalade entered the highway, and James slowed down to let it ease into traffic. Before he died, James’s father dreamed of driving a Cadillac, and James always showed a lot of respect for any of their vehicles. He swore he’d own a Cadillac or two or three before he was thirty.
“What sparked this moment of adventure?”
I had the answer ready for him. “Greed.”
My partner was quiet for a minute, maybe two. He never took his eyes off the road as we hit highway 95 and cruised along, past the concrete and stucco buildings, the myriad entrances and exits, the cement walls that rose on the side of the highway, sheltering the residential communities from the noise of traffic.
Finally I had to speak. “I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry. I mean, we’re not married, man. And even married couples don’t share everything.”
He didn’t say a word.
“All right. Here’s the rest of the story.”
James glanced at me, his eyes wide and bright. My buddy from fourth grade. My best friend. Ready for another quest. I needed him. Right now. “I had a meeting with Carol Conroy this afternoon.”
“What?”
“Sandler Conroy’s wife.”
“Oh, man, you didn’t tell her about-”
“Never came up.”
“Then pray tell, what was this meeting about?”
“She wants to hire me.”
“Skip, you’re already hired. You’ve got two jobs at Synco Systems. Setting up the security system and pretending to be Sarah’s boyfriend. I mean, what the hell else is there?”
“I accepted a third position.”
“Pard! What are you doing?”
And I told him. I told him how Carol Conroy thought that Walters’s death may not have been suicide. I told him about Tony Quatman and his secretary. I told him that she didn’t feel close to her father, and she didn’t seem
