Nobody Runs Forever

“I am,” Elaine said, and both women stood as Elaine said, “This is Detective Reversa. Detective, this is my husband, Jack.”

Detective Reversa—who would have guessed?—put her bag back on her shoulder, as though she planned to leave, but then she smiled and stepped forward with her hand out, saying, “How do you do, sir?”

“I don’t quite know,” he said, receiving her firm handshake. “I wonder what’s happening here.”

“I’m the officer assigned to the Jake Beckham shooting,” Detective Reversa told him.

“Oh, Jake! That’s right, he was shot, I barely registered that. We have a lot going on at the office right now.” Smiling, finding this whole thing amusing for some reason, he said, “You don’t think Elaine did that, surely. Rather late for a lovers’ quarrel.”

“Jack,” Elaine said, in such a pained way that he looked more closely at her, and saw she was truly feeling miserable. He almost felt sorry for her. But then she said, “They’re looking for my gun.”

That made no sense. “Your gun? It’s in the drawer in the kitchen.”

“No, don’t you remember?” she said. “You told me I should move it because a burglar would find it right away.”

“And you moved it?” he asked, astonished that she would take his advice on any subject at all. “Where to?”

“Well, I don’t remember,” she said. “That’s why the police are here, looking.”

“It isn’t a question of suspicion,” Detective Reversa assured him. “It’s just a loose end to be tied off, a gun owned by a friend of Mr. Beckham.”

In other words, it damn well was a question of suspicion. Jack said, “So I take it, there are policemen all over the house.”

“Not for much longer,” the detective said. “Shall we sit? I understand your bank is about to make a major move.”

So we’re going to chat, Jack thought, as all three sat. Looking at that pinched, nervous, unhappy expression on his wife’s face, he was surprised to realize she hadn’t lost the gun at all. She’d hidden it, or thrown it away.

For God’s sake, why? Had she shot Jake Beckham? What for?

If our merry band of cops don’t find that roscoe, Jack thought, and I’m pretty damn sure they’re not going to, I am going to have to keep a very close eye on Missy Elaine until I’ve gotten her well out of this house.

5

It was all taking too long. Roy Keenan was not some soft salaryman somewhere, get paid every Friday whether he produces jackshit or not. A bounty hunter lived on bounties, and bounties were what you got when, and only when, you found and hog-tied and brought in your skip. The days and weeks you spent looking for your skip didn’t earn a dime and if you never did find your quarry and lasso him home, you were just working for air all those days, brother, and let’s hope it smelled sweet.

It didn’t smell sweet, not to Roy Keenan. This Michael Maurice Harbin was turning out to be as hard to find as a deep-cover mole spy in the Cold War, which was ridiculous, because he wasn’t any spy; he was a heister and a hijacker and a gunman. A lone wolf, like Roy Keenan himself. No connections, no goddam underground railway to keep you moving and out of sight. So why couldn’t Roy Keenan, who could find the devil at a prayer meeting, come up with the son of a bitch?

The worst of it was, this time Keenan would be working for less than nothing if he came up empty-handed after all this. He had given a state cop in Cincinnati one hundred dollars for the information he had on Harbin and that famous meeting of seven men, which was the last time Harbin had been seen on this Earth. So he had more invested than just his own time here.

Sandra, Keenan’s right hand, who would remain in a second car as backup tonight, a radio beside her that matched the one in Keenan’s pocket, had come to the conclusion that Harbin was dead, and maybe she was right. Fine. Keenan didn’t need the guy singing and dancing. A body was as collectible as a man, and easier to deal with. As he’d told that one wide boy, the one who wasn’t really named Willis, if Harbin’s dead, okay, just show me where to dig.

If he could figure out what those seven guys went to that meeting for, it might help. The few he knew anything at all about had records, and were all like Harbin: loner career criminals. But was it a heist they’d been planning? If so, they sure changed their minds. The seven had separated right after that meeting, about as far apart as if a hand grenade had been set off in their midst, and Keenan still hadn’t found two of them.

Well, enough was enough. This time, he had a guy named Nelson McWhitney. He had him working as a bartender in a town called Bay Shore on Long Island, and living in rooms behind the bar. McWhitney had a nice, long record of arrests, and two falls. Apparently, he’d traveled to that meeting with Harbin, so why wouldn’t he have traveled away from it with the same guy?

The nice thing about dealing with somebody who’s already done two terms inside is that he’s likely to be snakebit, to be wary and nervous and ready to give up most anything to avoid going back. So this time, Keenan decided, with this one he would press. He had too much invested in this fellow Harbin, time and money, and it was far too late to just let it go.

It sometimes helped if you seemed to already know all the answers to all the questions. It was bluffing, so it could be dangerous; it could backfire, but Keenan was desperate. He was ready to try anything.

And what he was going to try was the name Nick Dalesia. He had that name, and he had Alfred Stratton, and he had the guy who was or was not named Willis. He didn’t know enough about Willis to use him as a source, and Stratton, as the organizer of that damn meeting, was just too obvious. The name Nick Dalesia should sound inside enough.

The bar in Bay Shore, deep and narrow, dark wood, lit mostly by beer-sign neon, was probably lively enough on weekends, but at nine thirty-five on a Thursday night it was as dead as Sandra believed Harbin to be. Three loners sat at the bar, some distance from one another, nobody talking, and what must be McWhitney read a TV Guide as he leaned against the backbar. Red-bearded and red-faced, McWhitney looked like a bartender: a bulky, hard man with a soft middle.

Keenan took a position along the bar as separate from the other customers as possible, and McWhitney put his magazine open, facedown on the backbar before he came over to slide in front of Keenan a coaster advertising a