presentation on that easel? Chris’s brain is evening out. Now if he can only stop himself from stumbling. Refrain from those criminal impulses he’s got. I guess that’s a different area of the, the cortex.”
“You’re drunk.”
“So?”
“I’m going to bed.”
Amanda left the dining room. Flynn listened to her footsteps ascend the stairs.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” he shouted.
There was no reply. He closed his eyes and drank.
In his apartment, Chris sat in the dark and drank another beer. He had been thinking on something the little man with the thick mustache had said. As the pieces began to connect in his head, murder came to his heart.
TWENTY-FOUR
Chris Flynn sat at a window deuce with Mindy Kramer in Thai Feast. Their view was of several painters’ vans and pickups jumbled in a parking lot dominated by a green Dumpster. But neither of them was looking out the window. Before Mindy was her noodle special, a glass of water, iced coffee, and a full cup of chicken-lemon grass soup that had gone cold. Mindy was staring down at the table, her oversize sunglasses and BlackBerry neatly aligned beside the plates. Her hands were in her lap and her fingers were tightly entwined.
Chris had ordered nothing and was drinking water. Mindy had agreed to meet him after hearing the malice in his voice during an early-morning phone call. She knew what this was going to be about. She wanted the conversation to take place in public.
“How did you know?” said Mindy. Her hair was heavily gelled and her makeup was as thick as a cardboard mask.
“One of them called me Chris Carpet. It’s the same stupid name you bragged about giving me when you entered it into your phone.”
“I meant you no disrespect. It was just a mnemonic device I used.”
“ And I got an anonymous call on my cell last Saturday night. The caller addressed me as Chris Carpet. So it all goes back to you.”
Toi, the house waitress, came to the table and refilled Chris’s water glass. She looked at the untouched food and drink in front of Mindy.
“You are not hungry today, Miss Kramer? Something wrong with the noodles? You don’t like?”
“Everything’s fine,” said Mindy, making a short, impatient chopping motion with one hand.
Toi smiled wanly and drifted to another table.
“Why’d you give up my name?”
“I was frightened,” said Mindy. “I thought they’d murder me if I didn’t give them a name. Can you understand that? I assumed that you and your partner-”
“His name was Ben.”
“I assumed that the two of you found the money and took it. I certainly knew nothing about its existence until the day those animals came into my life.”
“You were wrong,” said Chris. “We didn’t take anything.”
Mindy used her thumb to rub at the corner of one eye and smudged mascara onto the side of her face. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Tell me what they looked like.”
Mindy ran a hand up and down the goose bumps on her bare arm. “A large man with one of those mustaches that curve down around the mouth. It looked like he had false teeth to me. He had a small tattoo on his hand. A four-leaf clover.”
“And the other,” said Chris, his eyes losing their light.
“Much smaller. Bushy mustache. An awful, ugly face.”
“Their names?”
“The big one called himself Ralph Cotter. He made the appointment and I wrote the name into my daybook. I don’t remember what the little one went by. Cotter wasn’t his real name. He told me as much.”
“Any weapons?” said Chris, and Mindy looked at him quizzically. “You said you thought they were going to kill you. What would they have used?”
“The little man had a knife.”
“What kind of a knife?” said Chris.
“He kept it in a sheath tied to his calf. It had a wood handle and teeth on the blade.”
Chris mumbled something that she could not hear.
“What?”
“They killed my friend.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mindy.
“He didn’t take their money. He never hurt anyone. He couldn’t.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Chris said nothing and drank water from his glass.
“I have a daughter,” said Mindy Kramer. “Lisa’s about your age. She’s been… I don’t mind telling you, she’s been a disappointment to me. It’s not uncommon for a parent of my generation to feel that way, you know. We were so ambitious and hard-charging, and our children seem so, I don’t know, unconcerned with what they are going to achieve in life.” Mindy sipped her iced coffee and placed the glass gently on the table. “Lisa had two little girls. She’s no longer married to the father, and I don’t feel as if she’s equipped to handle the responsibility of motherhood. So I’m practically raising Michelle and Lauren myself.”
“I’ve gotta get going,” said Chris.
Mindy reached across the table, put her hand on top of Chris’s, and squeezed it. “They threatened my granddaughters. The big man said the little one would… he said the little man would cut their heads off. Do you understand what I went through that day?”
Chris gently pulled his hand free from hers. “Don’t speak of this conversation to anyone. Ever. Not even if you get a sudden case of conscience. Especially not if you read something about these men in the paper or see it on the TV news. Don’t ever speak on this again.”
“I won’t, Chris.”
“And it’s Chris Flynn.”
He got up out of his seat and walked from the restaurant. She watched him cross the parking lot to the white work van with the magnetic sign that read “Flynn’s Floors.” Realizing now that he was the owner’s son. She wondered if he was going to kill the men who had visited her and murdered his friend. She was not a violent person, but she found herself hoping that he would do just that.
“You finished?” said Toi, reaching for the main dish of uneaten food. “You want me to box it up for you?”
“No,” said Mindy, wiping a tear that had threatened to break from her eye. “Just get me the check.”
Toi went back to the waitress station, smiling to herself, thinking of the tall blond man who had humbled the bitch and made her cry.
Sonny Wade and Wayne Minors had moved out of the hotel in the badlands of the eastward strip of New York Avenue. In addition to the foreign tourists, who seemed shell-shocked to find themselves in such a place, the hotel was heavy with low-level criminals of various stripes, people drinking themselves to death, and one-night-stand women, both professional and amateur. Hence, a police car was often in the parking lot, either surveilling the premises or responding to a call. Sonny was aware that their old vehicle stood out, especially in Washington, where everyone, even those without the means, seemed to be driving late-model cars. Plus, their plates were certainly on the hot sheet now. It was not a good idea to stick around.
Sonny and Wayne were uncomfortable in cities, and in this one they felt particularly out of place. It wasn’t just that they were among many blacks and Spanish. The white people made them feel different, too. Sonny and Wayne had been institutionalized for most of their lives, and they did not know how to dress, converse, or wear facial hair like straights. In an urban environment, they were socially inept.
