never stayed anywhere long. He threw the mail on a phone table just inside the door. He moved into the center of the living room, facing the tall windows on the far wall. He stood there, tired, looking at the view without really seeing it. The windows showed the flat roofs of the Telegraph shops and the blue sky beyond them and the billboard with the sports car on it. Experience freedom.
Good idea. Only his life was crap. What now? he thought. What the hell was he going to do now?
Here was something, though: patting his shoulder, he found his Marlboros in the slash pocket of his jacket. The bastard deputies hadn't stolen them. It was his lucky day, after all.
He shot a cigarette between his lips. Torched it with a plastic lighter. He drew smoke and felt the nicotine rush all through him, sweet, like a flower opening. It was the best thing that had happened to him since that piece of ass he had been nailing when the cops came for him, the real estate agent or whatever she was.
He took another hit off the cigarette. He closed his eyes. This was good. Fuck everything. This was really good.
The two gunmen ruined the moment. That was the kind of guys they were. He heard them creeping in on either side of him, one coming out of the bedroom, one from the kitchen. He didn't bother to jump back or put up his dukes or anything. Without looking, he knew they had guns. In fact, for another second or two, he didn't even bother to open his eyes.
Then he did. Sure enough, they had him covered with a couple of very serious-looking Glock 31s. Not just guns. Big guns. Catch a slug from one of those, they have to pick up your body with a vacuum cleaner.
Bishop took another drag on his cigarette. He looked from one gunman to the other. The guy who'd come out of the bedroom-he was the good one, the dangerous one. Young, still twenty-something. Tall and lean. Sleek and muscular most likely under his crisp slacks, his red windbreaker, his white cable sweater. Mixed race, with light brown skin, a long, smooth handsome face with a thin layer of hair over his jaw and up top. He had calm, cold, smiling eyes-a little like Bishop's eyes, in fact. He kept his stance relaxed, kept an easy grip on his gun, kept his left arm casually slung across his belly, casually steadying his right wrist to keep his aim nice and true.
The other guy, the one who'd come out of the kitchen-a stocky, nervous white guy with thinning red hair-he was amateur night, a back-alley arm breaker. A gym rat, judging by the ripples in the muscle shirt under his brown leather jacket. He had a lot of twitches, quick glances this way and that, as if people had been sneaking up on him his whole life.
'Fuck with us and we'll feed you your knees,' he said tensely.
Bishop snorted. He glanced over at the brown-skinned gunman from the bedroom. 'Feed me my knees?' he said. 'What kind of threat is that? What kind of cheap operation is this anyway?'
The brown-skinned gunman shrugged wearily. 'What can I tell you?' He had a smooth, mellow voice, no accent, just northern Cal. 'Listen, this isn't really a gun play, Bishop, awright? Our guy just wants you to come with us, no problem. It's not a killing thing. Really.'
'Come on, come on, let's go,' said the arm breaker. 'You wanna do this on your feet or on your face?'
'Is this guy, like, an intern or something?' Bishop asked the brown-skinned gunman.
The brown-skinned gunman laughed.
That made the arm breaker angry. Twitching, looking this way and that, he moved in on Bishop. 'Oh yeah. Give me an excuse. Make me happy. Give me a reason to put you down.'
Bishop took his gun away and smacked him in the nose with it.
'Ow!' said the arm breaker. 'Jesus! Fuck!' He grabbed his face with his hand. Blood flowed out of his nose, ran between his fingers.
The brown-skinned gunman sighed. 'Morris, you are such a fucking knucklehead.'
'Oh. Oh shit,' said Morris, cupping his hands under his nose to catch the blood.
Bishop gave Morris's Glock to the brown-skinned gunman. 'Thanks,' the brown-skinned gunman said. He slipped it into the pocket of his windbreaker, still shaking his head. 'You ready?' he asked Bishop.
'Whatever,' said Bishop. 'If we're going, let's go.'
13.
The windows in the limo's backseat were blacked out: the side windows and the rear window and the glass partition that sealed off the front. They were all blacked out so Bishop couldn't see where they were going. That's why they'd come for him at gunpoint probably. Bishop wouldn't have gotten into a blind spot like that if he hadn't been at the point of a gun.
Morris, the knucklehead, was driving, out of sight. He'd been casting a lot of dark looks at Bishop ever since Bishop had busted his nose, so Bishop was glad to be rid of him. The brown-skinned gunman rode in the back. The kid knew what he was doing. He sat against the opposite door, as far from Bishop as possible. He held the gun close to his waist, pointed at Bishop but out of Bishop's reach. Bishop knew if he tried to take it, he'd be blown into the middle of next Thursday.
The brown-skinned gunman didn't say anything. He didn't even seem to be watching Bishop, although Bishop knew he was. After a while it sort of got to Bishop, sitting back there with no one talking, nothing to look at.
Just to break the silence, he said, 'So is this about Adalian?'
The brown-skinned gunman didn't answer.
But it was. It was about Adalian. About half an hour after they started out, Bishop felt the limo slow, heard the growl of a motor, an electric door being rolled back. The car bumped forward and the door rumbled closed behind it. The car stopped and the brown-skinned gunman said, 'Let's go.'
Bishop stepped out into a windowless warehouse. Shelves stacked with brown boxes lined the wall. There was a man with a clipboard talking to a man sitting on a forklift. Other than that, the place was empty.
Morris got out of the driver's seat. He was still giving Bishop dark looks. His nose was swollen and red. His lips were puffy. The dark looks just made his face ridiculous, like the face of an angry child. He drew his Glock again. The brown-skinned gunman had given it back to him after Bishop took it away.
The three men walked across the concrete floor, their footsteps echoing. Bishop and the brown-skinned gunman walked side by side. Morris walked behind them with both his gun barrel and his dark looks trained on Bishop's spine. They reached a white door. The brown-skinned gunman knocked. Someone inside said, 'Yeah?' The brown-skinned gunman opened the door and stood back to let Bishop enter.
He came into a small office. It was crowded with metal shelves. The shelves were stacked with books and papers. There was only one man in the room and it was Adalian. He was standing behind a scarred wooden desk, holding a piece of paper up in front of his reading glasses. He was a big, heavyset man who might have been athletic once but had gotten out of shape. He had a large head with black-and-silver hair. He had a hawklike face that was not quite handsome. His gray eyes had a certain flatness to them, like a one-way mirror on the mirrored side. He was about fifty-five years old.
He was wearing slacks and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, a blue tie loosened at the neck. His jacket was draped over the back of a cheap office swivel chair. Ketchum had said he was the devil, but he didn't look like the devil to Bishop. He looked like a businessman, any self-made businessman. You could tell just by his expression that he had that self-made businessman attitude, that bristling certainty about himself: Hey, if I'm not right all the time, how come I've made so much money? That's the sort of guy he looked like to Bishop, not the devil at all.
Adalian glanced up from the page he was reading. He looked at Bishop over the top of his glasses-and got a load of Morris's throbbing red beezer out of the corner of his eye. 'What the hell happened to you?' he asked the arm breaker.
Morris could only answer with a lame gesture.
'I broke his nose,' said Bishop helpfully. 'He was getting on my nerves.'
'Oh yeah? What was he, talking tough?'
'Yeah-and badly.'
'I know. He does that.'
'Threatened to feed me my knees.'
'Feed you your knees?' said Adalian. He peered over his glasses at Morris now. 'Does that even mean anything? What does that even mean?'
