“Once or twice.”
Quinn dropped the transmission into reverse, and looked out the rear window as he began to back up. Their new ride was only halfway out of its space when two men came around the corner of the building. Young guys, in slacks and dress shirts. They came to a dead stop at the sight of the car pulling out of the space.
“Shit,” Quinn said.
“What?”
Quinn didn’t have time to answer. He hit the accelerator, whipping the car the rest of the way out of the space, just missing the passenger van parked in the next spot. There was a moment’s pause as Quinn shoved the car into drive, and the two men continued to stare at them. Then they all began to move at once, the car and the two men.
The men were able to pull level with the rear fender as Quinn reached the exit, but that was as close as they got. Quinn swung to the right and sped off down an apartment-lined street. In his rearview mirror, he could see the men give up running.
Quinn zigzagged through the streets, moving south, then west, then south until they reached Venice Boulevard. He headed west, keeping pace with other cars and blending in. Soon they would be in Culver City, an independent city with its own police force. A stolen car from Los Angeles would not be high on the priority list of the Culver City PD.
He glanced over at his passenger. Primus had sweat beading on his brow and balding dome. His right hand was rubbing the spot on his left arm Quinn had been holding on to, a grimace of pain on his face.
“You all right?” Quinn asked.
“Fine,” the man said.
“Good. We agree on that,” Quinn said, knowing Primus would have been dead without him.
He slipped his hand into the interior pocket of his jacket and retrieved a square piece of plastic, half the length of a business card, and a quarter-inch thick.
“What’s that?” the man asked.
Quinn glanced over again, but said nothing.
The answer to the question was, “A digital recorder,” but if Primus was too stupid to figure it out on his own, Quinn wasn’t going to enlighten him.
There were a couple of buttons along the top. Quinn pushed one of them, then wedged the square into the partially opened, unused ashtray, mic facing out.
“Time to talk,” Quinn said.
“I told you the meet is off.” The man looked out the window. “In fact, you can just drop me off here.”
Quinn whipped the car to the right, ignoring the honks from the car he cut in front of, then brought them to a sudden stop at the curb. He reached over and turned off the digital recorder, then pulled his gun out of his shoulder holster and rested it in his lap below window level. One pull of the trigger and Primus would be looking for a new way to digest his food.
The sudden stop must have surprised Primus, for he hadn’t moved an inch.
“You want out? Fine,” Quinn said. “But the step you take onto the curb will be your last.”
“W-What?”
“Who are you?”
The man’s gaze flicked from Quinn’s eyes to the gun and back. “You shoot me and you’ll lose everything that I know.” The words came out slow, as if the man were trying them out as he spoke.
“True,” Quinn said, the gun unmoving. “But at the moment it would be pretty damn satisfying.”
Quinn continued to stare at the man, daring him to give a reason to pull the trigger. After only a few seconds, the man turned away.
“So, are you leaving or are you staying?” Quinn asked.
The man mumbled something.
“What?”
“Staying.”
Quinn stared at him for a few seconds longer, then pulled the car back out into traffic, aiming the gun away from his passenger only after they were in the flow with the other cars.
He reached over and turned the recorder back on.
“Let’s start with a simple one,” Quinn said. “Who are you?”
“No,” the man said. “That’s not part of the deal. It has nothing to do with what I know.”
“It’ll tell us how serious to take it.”
Quinn could feel the man tense beside him. “That gunman back at the museum should have told you that.”
“You could have set it up,” Quinn said. “To convince us.”
“You think I’d—” He stopped himself.
