“You have to much, down here?”
“It happens,” he said. “But I can’t say I favor this one at all. Fact is, the son of a bitch sights low. Much as I try to correct, I hit a full foot higher than I aim.”
“Aim low, then.”
“Thanks for the big-city tip.” Hendricks winked, looked over my shoulder, and smiled with satisfaction as he followed Billy’s labored trek from the door to the Maxima. I heard the engine start behind my back.
“I better get going,” I said.
“Where to?”
“See if Tommy Crane’s around. He was drinking with April at Polanski’s a week ago. Maybe he can tell me where she went.”
Hendricks said, “You don’t want to be messing with that guy, if you can help it.”
“Russel said the same.”
“Well, he knows. Crane nearly beat the life outta Russel one night at Rock Point, for nothing at all. I was doing a routine drive-by and ran right up on it. By that time Russel was on the ground spittin’ blood and froth, and Crane was still kickin’ in his ribs.”
“I’ll watch myself.”
“I’m not kidding,” Hendricks said.
“I’m not either,” I said. “This is just a job to me. And I don’t want to die.”
Billy and I crossed the bridge over the channel and turned left onto 257, then followed the highway for two or three miles. At a steepled church Billy turned right and drd rOSSEDove back southeast toward the Wicomico. The road was narrow, though smoothly paved. Billy slowed at a gravel road on the left that broke into a thick forest of oak. He was turning in when I told him to cut the engine. Billy parked on the gravel road.
“What is it?” he said.
“Crane live back in there?”
“That’s right.”
“How do you know? You been here before?”
“Long time ago, when me and April were first coming down here. She introduced me; I didn’t know there was anything between them.” Billy looked me over. “What’s wrong with you, man?”
“I don’t want any surprises, that’s all. I want everything up front before I talk to this guy.” I cracked my window and stared straight ahead. “Joey DiGeordano told me that April took the money on Monday last. You say she took off on Wednesday. What happened in between?”
Billy glanced at his lap and brushed air off his leg. “We celebrated.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
“Tell me everything you did between the time she glommed the cash and the time she left you.”
Billy sighed with annoyance. “All right. The night she came home with it, we stayed in. We paced a lot, didn’t sleep much. The next day I worked and April stayed home. That night-Tuesday night-we went out. We were getting a little nervous then-about having all that cash, about when DiGeordano’s boys were going to get around to come looking for it. And we planned to leave town the next day, cool our heels, whatever. Fact is, we didn’t have a plan.” Billy paused as he cracked his own window. Some sweat had appeared on his forehead. “Anyway, like I say, we went out. To a movie.”
“What’d you see?”
“I don’t know, some bogus action flick at the Laurel Ten. You know, the new one, with the guy’s got a ponytail.”
“What about after that?”
“We went out for a few.”
“Where?”
Billy thought it over and waved a hand in my direction. “I can’t remember the name, a chain joint. One of those phony Irish names, they have drinks comin’ out of machines. Right in front of Laurel Mall. O’Tooligan’s, MacManley’s, some shit like that.”
“April get drunk?”
“She always gets drunk.”
“She get drunk enough to give you any idea she was going to split?”
“She was drunk enough. But no, she didn’t say a word.”
“And she left the next deft'3'ay.”
“That’s right. I went to work, and when I came home she was gone.”
“No note, right? I mean, that computerized Dear John you told me about, that was all bullshit, right, Billy?”
Billy narrowed his eyes. “I apologized already, last night. You’ve busted my balls enough, don’t you think? I’ve got nothing else to tell you.”
“All right,” I said, pointing down the road. “Let’s go see Crane.”
FIFTEEN
Tommy Crane’s cottage was in a half-acre clearing about a quarter-mile through the woods. Fifty yards from the house was a cinder-block structure larger than the cottage. We parked the Maxima beside a red F-150 truck on a plot of hard sand under a single oak that stood next to the cottage.
I pointed to the cinder-block structure. “What’s that?”
“Pig compound. He houses and feeds them in there. Slaughters ’em in there as well, from what I can remember.”
I thought things over. “Crane probably won’t let me in his house, if he’s got something to hide. At the very least, maybe I can get in to use his bathroom. If he does let me in, I’m going to need as much time as I can in there alone, to look around. Do your best and keep him occupied, even if it’s only for a few minutes. You’ll know when to do it. But for now, just stay in the car, okay? I don’t need any distractions up front.”
“It’s all you now, man. Go on.”
I climbed out of the car and pushed Maybelle’s head back in-she was trying to slide out with me-before closing the door. A fat sound, the movement of animals, came from the direction of the compound. The air felt colder as I passed beneath the naked branches of the oak. The branches cast shadows like black arthritic arms on the hard earth.
I stepped up onto a wooden porch whose planks were painted gray. There was a screen door and after that a solid one. I pulled open the screen door and knocked on the other.
The door unlocked quickly, and Tommy Crane stood before me. He was wearing a blue chamois shirt over a thermal undershirt, and loose-fitting jeans. Over the shirt was a black down vest that bulged on the left side of his chest. On the side of his hip a knife was secured in a thin brown-leather sheath. The knife’s handle was wrapped tightly with black electricians’s tape. The long blade of the knife took up the balance of the sheath. The sheath ran halfway down Crane’s thigh.
“Yes?” Crane said. The voice was controlled and uncomfortably gentle-for a man his height and weight, it didn’t fit. His tan hands were long and densely veined, and his rawboned wrists filled and stretched the cuffs of the chamois shirt. The wrists had the thickness and mass of redwood.
“My name’s Nlong and dick Stefanos.”
“That supposed to mean something to me?” Crane squinted and scratched his black beard. A wire-thin scar veed deeply into the right side of the beard.
“I work for Billy Goodrich,” I said, turning my head briefly in the direction of the Maxima. Crane looked toward the car and saw Billy in the driver’s seat, then looked back at me. There was lack of interest and mild annoyance in his thin black eyes. I shifted my feet to simulate discomfort as I handed him my card. “Mind if I come in?”
He gave the card a contemptuous glance. “For what?”
