”The problem was,” Faran said, “Baron wouldn’t join in with anybody. He wouldn’t be part of the structure, you know?”
Lozini knew. Baron, like himself, had been a man with a local fiefdom of his own; but whereas Lozini had connections and obligations within the loose national federation, Baron had stayed independent. Lozini said, “What did they do to him?”
“They tried to deal with him,” Faran said. “According to Yancy, they talked with him for six years, but Baron just wouldn’t come around.”
“Six years!”
“Well, he never went to the mainland. And he had about thirty armed guards out at the island, with only one place you could land a boat, so they could never get their hands on him. He just thumbed his nose at everybody.”
“For six years,” Lozini said. He couldn’t get over it.
“And all that time,” Faran said, “he’s costing everybody money. All those good high rollers, rich people from Galveston and Corpus Christi, from as far away as New Orleans, some of them with their own yachts, people with money that used to throw it around in organization places, and they’re all going out to the island instead.”
Lozini nodded. “All right,” he said. “Where does Parker come in?”
“He was their outside specialist. One of the higher-ups brought him in. They made him a deal to knock over the casino. So he brought in some friends of his, and looked the place over, and did it. They walked in, gutted the place, burned it down, took the cash, killed Baron, and left.”
Lozini hunched his shoulders inside his suit jacket. He didn’t like that story. “How many friends? How big a bunch did Parker have with him?”
“Three guys,” Faran said.
Lozini had no more questions. Frowning, looking out at the traffic without really seeing it, he tried to remember what Parker looked like, from their one brief face-to-face meeting two years ago. All he seemed to have retained was a memory of very cold eyes in a hard face. Would he even recognize the man now?
“There they are,” Faran said suddenly. “One of them, anyway.”
Startled, Lozini focused on the car next to them, and saw a bronze Impala with only a driver, no passengers. The driver was dark-haired, in his thirties, handsome in a way Lozini thought of as untrustworthy. He was waving to Faran to follow him.
Lozini said, “That’s not Parker.”
“No,” Faran said, “that’s the other one. The one that sweet-talked Angie.” He sounded a little sour on the subject.
The Impala surged ahead, and Faran fell in behind it. Lozini, looking around, saw that they were out beyond the city line now, out where the occasional diner or gas station was followed by stretches of empty lot or woods. Western Avenue lost its name at the city line and became State Highway 79: four lanes, no sidewalks, no central divider.
The arrangement Lozini and Parker had worked out for the meeting was that each of them would be accompanied by one other man; Lozini had suggested Faran, whom Parker knew from last night, and Parker had agreed. Lozini and Faran would drive out Western Avenue until Parker decided it was safe to contact him. Then Parker would lead the way to the meeting place, and if Lozini felt it was safe, he and Faran would stop.
There was an intersection up ahead, a country road unmarked except by three suburban developers’ billboards. The Impala took the right, and Faran smoothly followed.
The Impala stayed on the country road only a few hundred yards, then turned again onto a smaller blacktop road, barely two lanes wide, meandering off past woods and occasional strips of cleared farmland. Faran said, “I know this road.” He waved an arm to the right. “There’s a crick over there I used to swim in when I was a kid.”
The Impala’s brake lights went on. Lozini put his hands on his legs, just above the knee, and held on tight. The Impala stopped, and Faran eased the Oldsmobile to a stop just behind it. There was cleared field on both sides of the road here, good flat visibility for a long way around in crisp afternoon sunlight. A safe place for a meeting—but where was Parker?
The Impala’s door opened, and the second man came back, grinning slightly in an amiable way. He opened the right front door and slid in next to Faran. “Hello, again,” he said to Faran.
Faran gave him a cold look and a cold nod.
The guy turned to look at Lozini. “Parker’s in the other car,” he said. “Back seat. You talk to him there, I’ll talk to Mr. Faran here.”
“I thought you were alone in there,” Lozini said.
The guy grinned again, still in a friendly way. “That was the idea,” he said. “Parker kept down out of sight until we found out whether you had any other plans or not.”
“No other plans,” Lozini said. He pushed open the door and got out of the Olds, feeling immediately the heat of the afternoon; the sunlight wasn’t so crisp when you were away from air-conditioning.
As he closed the door again, Lozini heard the guy saying to Faran, “My name’s Green, Alan Green.”
Lozini walked slowly forward to the Impala. Now he could see the silhouette of somebody sitting in the back seat. The Impala’s engine was running and the windows shut, for the air-conditioning. The low stutter and growl of the two cars’ engines was the only sound. No other traffic on the road at all, not a house in sight. Just cleared fields that hadn’t been farmed for a while and were now knee-deep in weeds. No wind blowing, no movement anywhere; the view was like a painting, or a jigsaw puzzle. Lozini paused next to the Impala, his hand on the door handle while he looked around. Nobody and nothing. In the front seat of the Olds, Faran and Green were in cheerful conversation. That was fast; Green’s old-buddy style had to connect with Faran, of course, but Lozini was surprised at how quickly they’d become pals.
Lozini opened the door, and cold lifeless air came out of the car. His body was still adjusting to the outer heat,
