“I don’t believe it.”
“Then fuck you. Do you want to hear this or not?…I can’t stand up in this hall forever. I’ll tell you this, he convinced the hell out of me. That night I wrote out the stuff he told me on that paper you read, but nothing ever came of it…until last month. Then I get a call from Seattle and it’s Pruitt. It’s all hitting the fan over this book he’s after. There’s a woman named Rigby in the Taos jail and Pruitt thinks she’s got it.”
“Why didn’t he go down himself?”
“Later on he did: he had some Seattle angles to work out first. He thought the girl’s parents might know about it, might even know where she’d hidden it; maybe she’d even mailed it to ‘em. So he sent me to Taos to nose around, see what was what. I’d barely got there when she came up for bail. Pruitt came in the next day.”
“And did what?”
“Made her wish she’d never been born. That was just the beginning of what he had up his sleeve for her. The book’s been like a monkey on his back, I could see it driving him closer to the edge every day. I started thinking he might even kill her for it. But she wouldn’t give it up.”
“Probably because she didn’t have it.”
“But she went back to get it, didn’t she?”
“She went back for something. Weren’t you boys on her tail?”
“You’re not gonna believe this, Janeway. She slipped us.”
I just stared at him.
“She’s cute, all right, a little too cute for her own damn good. The next thing we knew she’d skipped the state. Pruitt went nuclear.”
“This must be when you got the bright idea of dragging me into it.”
“Our time was running out. She could be picked up by the cops anywhere and we’d be up the creek. Pruitt thought she’d head for Seattle: he put out some people he knew to watch her haunts. And it didn’t take long to spot her: she turned up in North Bend a few days later. I didn’t know what to do. I sure didn’t want to let it go. Pruitt had promised me a piece of it, if I helped him reel it in. I’m talking about more money than you’ll believe, so don’t even ask.”
“I thought money didn’t matter to you, Clydell. What about the radio job? What about
“All bullshit. I owe more federal income tax than I’ve got coming in. I do a weekend gig on radio, not enough to pay my water bill. The magazine piece’ll be lining birdcages before the ink’s even dry. Business sucks; I’m almost broke. What more do you need to know? And besides all that, I really was afraid of what he’d do to that kid.”
He took a long, painful breath. “So if you’re looking for a good guy in this, it’s probably me. That same night I told Pruitt about you. I thought I could tempt you with the bail money, it was easy to get the papers from the bondsman; hell, he doesn’t care who brings her in. But the bail was just bait. I knew you’d never bust Rigby for that bail money, not once you had that book in your mind.”
He touched his face. “I really thought you might get the book from her. You might have, too, if the cops hadn’t busted her and messed everything up. I sold you to Pruitt as a bookhunter. He didn’t like it but I talked hard and late that night he decided to try it.”
“And that’s what finally got your face kicked in. Pruitt didn’t like the way it turned out.”
“I had to try something. She knows us both on sight, and Pruitt’s her worst nightmare. She’s right to be scared of him: he’s over the edge now. He’s your problem, you and that poor kid in there. Me, I’m out of it, I’ve had enough. I’m goin‘ back to Denver.”
He pushed his way past. Stopped at his door; looked back at me. “I’ll give you two free pieces of advice. Pruitt didn’t get to be called the invisible man for nothing. He can fade into a crowd and you can’t see him even when you know he’s there. He’s great with makeup—wigs, beards, glasses—he can make himself over while you’re scratching your ass wonder-ing where he went. And he’s always got people around him, scumbags who owe him favors. One of’em’s a fat man, but there may be others. Don’t trust anybody. Don’t let ‘em get close and sucker punch you.”
He opened his door. “You didn’t hear any of this from me, okay? I’ll figure out my own ways of paying Pruitt back, and I don’t want him sticking a knife in my ass before I’ve got it worked out. So here’s your second hot tip. Pruitt fucked up your car. If you’re counting on that to get you to the airport, think again.”
He looked at his watch. “You cut it pretty short, old buddy. You got one hour to get her there. Stay clear of old ladies and fat men, Janeway. If you ever get back to Denver, call me, we’ll have lunch. Maybe I’ll have a job for you.”
16
My brain kicked up in the cop mode. From then on I was running on overdrive.
My goals had narrowed to one. Nothing else mattered—not money or pain, not even the books I had foolishly taken from Otto Murdock.
We were going on the run. That meant travel light, travel fast: leave the books, leave the clothes, call the Rigbys from New Mexico, hope Crystal could come pick up my stuff. Not a perfect answer, but when you’ve got a woman to guard, eight grand worth of books in a cardboard box, and a man on your tail who might be seriously unhinged, perfection is a little too much to ask for.
We were going to Taos, over Pruitt’s dead body if that’s how he had to have it.
