contract out on Weiss?'
Adalian only shrugged, as much as to say, You said it, not me.
Bishop fell silent again another second or two. This also was news. And it probably had a much different effect on him than Adalian intended. It bothered him. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit or even to feel. An electric sense of urgency fanned out from his belly, up through his chest. He was worried about Weiss, about Weiss getting whacked-just the sort of ordinary human emotion he never expected from himself, that always caught him off guard. Only his natural instinct for cool allowed him to speak in his usual ironic drawl. 'Hell, what's that about? Is this because he put you away? You gonna whack him because of the seven months he put you away for?'
'What?' said Adalian. 'Oh no, hell no. I'm not like that. I'm not a spiteful person. Weiss did his job, that's all. Me, I move on, I look to tomorrow. This isn't about me.'
'So what's it about? What, did you hear this?'
'Sure. A man in my position. You know, I pick things up; I hear things, yeah.'
'So it's a rumor,' said Bishop. He was inclined to disbelieve it. Aside from the hookers, Weiss was clean. You never get hit if you're really clean, or almost never.
Adalian still didn't really understand how this was working on Bishop. He thought if he could prove what he was saying, Bishop would see there was no future with Weiss and take the job with him. 'You know the Frenchman?' he said.
'The Belgian guy, sure.'
'I referred a guy to him.'
'So?'
'A guy I know. A guy who did some work for me.'
'A specialist,' said Bishop. 'A whack guy…'
'He was stocking up for a job.'
'Did he say it was Weiss?'
Adalian slowly shook his head. 'We didn't talk particulars.' He relaxed back into his chair again, a little knowing smile on his lips like a cat sitting by an empty goldfish bowl. He waited for Bishop to figure it out.
And Bishop did figure it out, some of it anyway. He figured out which specialist they were talking about. He knew how much Weiss wanted the guy, and he knew how much the specialist wanted Weiss. He knew about the missing whore too, some of it. He knew the whore was between them. He knew if they were going to come down to it, it was going to be over the whore.
Bishop went on looking ironic, looking cool. But he felt that urgency spreading through him, growing deeper. He felt something else as well. He was irritated. He was pissed off-pissed off at Weiss. If the specialist was gunning for him, then Weiss must've made a move to find the whore. That's what the specialist was waiting for; that's the only thing that would bring him out into the open. What the hell was Weiss thinking? Did he think he could take this mutt down, finish it off between them-and maybe get a couple of flutter-eyed thanks from the whore in the bargain? That would be stupid. Stupid? It would be fucking nuts. Weiss was a street cop, a door-to-door desk-and-paper man. Tough and all that, fine up against some liquor-store shooter. But not this guy. He was no match for this guy. Man-to-man against the specialist, he would get himself killed and the whore probably with him.
Adalian was still stuck on the other thing, the thing about the job. 'So what do you think?' he said, breaking into Bishop's thoughts. 'You're my guy now, right? I pay you back for my piss-head kid; you work for me and get the life you were made for. Yes? No? What do you say?'
Bishop stood up. The second he saw it-saw the way Bishop stood-Adalian understood his mistake. He threw his hands up and let them fall until they slapped the chair arms. He made a big show of gaping at Bishop with an open mouth. 'Oh, come on,' he said. 'Don't tell me.'
Bishop made a little gesture of regret, a lifting of the hand, a shrug. He would've liked to take the job. He really would've. 'You can consider us clear for your kid,' he said. 'You paid me back with the tip on Weiss, the stuff about the Frenchman.'
'Aw, come on, Bishop,' Adalian said. 'Whatta you think you're doing? You think you're gonna stop this. You're not gonna stop this. Believe me. I know this guy. This guy did work for me. He'll kill you, Bishop, even you, so help me. What do you think? You think you're gonna, like, redeem yourself? Make good with Weiss over the girl? Save his life, get back in his good graces. Believe me. This guy will plain kill you. You and Weiss both.'
'I'll see you, Adalian,' Bishop said.
'I'll see you. I'll identify your body, how's that? And don't expect any help from me with the Frenchman either. You're on your own there.'
Bishop only lifted his chin by way of farewell. He walked to the door.
'And take that shower,' Adalian said behind him. 'I'm serious. You fucking stink. You dumb fuck.'
Bishop waved without looking back. He stepped out into the main bay of the warehouse. The limo was still there, waiting for him. The brown-skinned gunman was leaning against the hood, smoking a cigarette. The other gunman, the arm breaker, Morris, he was nowhere to be seen-and then suddenly he was. Suddenly he stepped out of a shadow along the wall at Bishop's shoulder. He was hunched and angry-eyed, his bruised face flushed. He had his Glock drawn. He had it pressed close to his side, the bore leveled at Bishop.
'This isn't over between you and me,' he snarled. 'We'll settle up and it's gonna cost you in blood.'
Bishop took his gun away and smacked him in the nose with it. He left him writhing and screaming on the ware- house floor and walked over to the brown-skinned gunman. He handed the brown-skinned gunman Morris's gun.
'Drive me back to my place,' he said. 'I got stuff to do.'
14.
Weiss hit Hannock that same day and started tailing a man named Andy Bremer. He hated following people. It was boring and sleazy. You sat in a car and drank coffee till you needed to piss so badly you thought it would kill you. Then, without fail, just as you decided to go find a bathroom somewhere, your subject started moving and you had to hold it in and go after him. Finally, your bladder on fire, you ended up watching the poor bastard try to steal something he shouldn't steal or buy something he shouldn't buy or fuck someone he shouldn't fuck-in other words, you watched him trying to find some pathetic version of happiness even as you knew all the while that he would never be happy ever again precisely because you were watching him and were going to tell the person who hired you, who was probably the person your subject least wanted told. Fucking was the worst. Standing outside some hotel window, needing to piss, snapping pictures of some guy's hairy ass bouncing up and down between some girl's open knees. Weiss had a romantic streak. He knew full well this moment might seem like hearts and flowers inside the guy's head, inside the girl's head too. But outside the hotel window, it was just a bouncing ass and open knees. Some photographs. A screaming spouse. Alimony. Misery all around.
With Andy Bremer, he wasn't even sure he was trailing the right guy. It was just one of his Weissian hunches that had brought him here. And while his hunches were almost always right, he almost never trusted them. They were too vague, too unscientific. He wished he could write out the facts on a whiteboard or something and look them over and tap the pen against his chin and reach his conclusions through logic and deduction. But he never could. He just knew what he knew, so he never felt certain of it.
In Paradise, for instance, he started with the fact that Julie Wyant had called him from a pay phone. There were other calls made from that pay phone as well, but somehow he just had a hunch they weren't hers. He figured she wasn't using a cell phone because it would be too easy to locate. He figured she wouldn't use the same pay phone twice for a similar reason-Weiss might trace the call she'd made to him and find out who she'd called next. So using an old contact at the phone company from his police days, he collected some calls from other pay phones in the area, calls that had been made within an hour or so of the call to him. There weren't that many pay phones around anymore, but he still managed to come up with more than thirty calls. The call to Andy Bremer in Hannock caught him somehow. He wasn't sure why. It was made about the right time and Bremer lived in the direction Julie was traveling and-well, it just caught him. It was one of those Weiss-type things.
So he set off for Hannock, to the northeast. It was a little oasis of oak and evergreens and clapboard ranches
