came in, because there was supposed to be a hundred forty thousand dollars in this car, and a hundred forty thousand dollars could save Ray Becker’s ass. A hundred forty thousand dollars and his patrol car and he could be away and safe forever before they even noticed he was gone.
He’d already been thinking about it when the radio started squawking, thinking how the investigation was getting closer, how the detectives knewthere must have been a local cop involved in that hijacking two months back, they just didn’t know which one. But Ray Becker’s reputation wasn’t very good anyway, so they were focusing on him, and sooner or later they’d nail him, which was why he needed to get awayfrom here, with a lot of money for a cushion. A hundred forty thousand dollars, say.
He almost broke his neck racing down that steep tumbled hillside through the freshly broken branches and crushed shrubs and scarred boulders to the crumpled wreck of the Cadillac, and when he got there the hundred forty thousand was gone. One perp left, crushed inside the car, bleeding and sweating but conscious. Capable of speech.
“We don’t have much time,” Becker told the son of a bitch, with his hand closing on the man’s throat. “Where’s the money?”
“Don’t know.”
Lying, he had to be lying, he had to know where his partners were headed. Becker leaned on him, he did things to make the pain increase, and Howell moaned, and tears leaked from his eyes, but his story stayed the same. He didn’t know where his partners were going, he didn’t know where the money was.
“You got to give me something,” Becker told him, and all the rage he felt against the bastards that had double-crossed him and put him in this spot and cheated him out of his share of that other money, all of that rage made him bear down on this one, who finally broke and said, “Some thing else.”
“What? Another robbery? More money?”
“Yes.”
“Quick.”
“All knee. New. York. Cath
“
“What?”
“Cath man. Wan ted me.”
“For a heist. What heist? Quick!”
Howell’s mouth opened again, but this time a great sack of blood came out, and burst down the front of the man, dark red and reeking, the heat of it making Becker recoil.
He hadn’t known the man was that close to death. He hadn’t intended to kill him, and certainly not before he got all his answers, which made him feel stupid and inadequate and a failure then, and still did now. But then, as the man in the Cadillac’s last breath came out full of blood, here came the Federals, leaping and sliding down the hill in their dark blue vinyl coats with the big yellow letters on the back, grabbing for holds one-handed, their machine pistols aimed upward at the sky.
Becker stepped back from the Cadillac. He called up to them, “Take your time. They’re gone. And so is this one.”
But Howell had come through after all, hadn’t he? Becker had seen no choice but to follow through on Howell’s lead, because he didn’t have anything else, and it had all worked out. Hilliard Cathman. Then the one called Parker. Then the rest of them. Then the big white boat on the water, full of money, which hadto be what they were here for.
It would be dark when they got back with the cash, so no need to hide the pickup. He left it between two of the cabins that weren’t in use, then walked into the one they’d occupied. There was no locking these places, and they hadn’t bothered to try, so Becker just opened the door and walked in.
Plenty of time. He walked through the place, saw they’d left nothing personal at all, saw they’d taken all the guns but left a few of the maps. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and there was beer in there, but he wouldn’t be drinking anything until after. He’d need to be at his best tonight.
Gatorade, a big bottle of it, pale green. That was probably the big one. Kill him first. Kill the girl last.
Becker carried the Gatorade and a glass into the living room, turned on the television set, sat down. He looked at the picture when it came up, and abruptly laughed. The damn thing was black and white.
2
The reason Susan Cahill was so good at handling VIPs was that she understood the question of sex. With female VIPs you were discreetly hot tamales together under the skin, each acknowledging and admiring the allure of the other, becoming confidants and co-conspirators in the ongoing war of women to carve out a place for themselves in a male-dominated world, armed with nothing more than nerve and sex appeal. It worked; with the baggiest old crone, it still worked.
As for the male VIPs, they were even simpler. You turned on a little sex, a few smiles, a sidelong look or two, some body stretching. Enough to keep their minds focused, but not enough that anybody would lose their dignity. It was a nice tightrope to walk, and by now Susan could do it blindfolded.
She’d started, twelve years ago, as a flight attendant, where the most important skill you could learn, or be born with, was the non-aggressive manipulation of other human beings. She’d been very good at the job, keeping everybody happy at thirty-one thousand feet, and she’d also been very good-looking, and soon she was assigned to one of the choice transatlantic routes, Chicago-Milan. Her love affairs were with pilots or with amusing Italian businessmen. She made decent money, she had a nice high-rise apartment in the Loop overlooking Lake Michigan, she was having a good time, and then she made the one mistake. She’d seen others do it, and knew they were wrong, and knew it was stupid, and yet she did it herself. She fell in love with a passenger.
A banker, named Culver, based in Chicago. She fell in love with him, and took vacations with him, and said yes when he asked her to marry him, and quit the airline to spend more time with him, and then he said they’d be getting together forever just as soon as his divorce came through, which was the first she’d heard there already was a Mrs. Culver. Of course there would never be a divorce, and of course he would be prepared to keep her set up in a much better apartment in the same building, and of course there was a hiring freeze at the airline when she
