Seventeen minutes until two. If this was his man, the man was early. He crossed the street, slanting the umbrella against the rain, and hurried down the sidewalk toward the telephone booth. He walked past it.
Fleck slumped down in the seat, too low to see or be seen. He waited. Then he pushed himself up. He used the electric control to adjust the side mirror, found the man just as he turned the corner behind the car. Probably someone with nothing to do with this business, Fleck thought. He relaxed a little. He glanced at his watch again. Waited.
What Mama had always taught Delmar and him had saved him there in the Joliet State Penitentiary, that was certain enough. It had been hard to do it. Things are always hard when you’re a little man, and you’re young. He thought they’d kill him if he tried it. But it had saved him. He couldn’t have lived through those years if he’d let them spit on him. He’d have died. Or worse than that, been like the little pet animals they turned their baby dolls into. Three of them had been after him. Cassidy, Neal, and Dalkin, those were their names. Cassidy had been the biggest, and the one Fleck had been the most afraid of, and the one he’d decided he had to kill first. But looking back on it, knowing what he knew now, Dalkin was really the dangerous one. Because Dalkin was smart. Cassidy had made the move on him first, and when he got away from that, the three of him had got him into a corner in the laundry. He’d never forget that. Never tried to, in fact, because that had been the black, grim, hard-rock bottom of his life and he needed to think of it whenever things were tough, like today. They’d held him down and raped him, Cassidy first. And when they were all finished with him, he had just laid there a moment, not even feeling the pain. He remembered vividly exactly what he had thought. He’d thought: Do I want to stay alive now? And he absolutely didn’t want to. But he remembered what Mama had taught him. And he thought, I’ll get even first. I’ll get that done before I die. And he’d got up and told them all three they were dead men. Three or four other cons had been in the laundry by then. He hadn’t noticed them. He wouldn’t have noticed anyone then, but they got the word out in the yard. Cassidy had beaten him after that, and Dalkin had beaten him, too. But getting even had kept him alive.
It was raining harder now. Fleck turned on the ignition and started the windshield wipers. As he did, the man with the umbrella turned the corner again. He’d circled the block and was walking again down the opposite sidewalk toward the telephone booth. Fleck turned off the wipers and glanced at his watch. Five minutes until two. The Client was punctual. He watched him enter the booth, close the umbrella and the door. Cassidy had been punctual, too. Fleck had gotten the note to him. Printed on toilet paper. “I’ll have something just for you five minutes into the work break. Behind the laundry.”
He gambled that Cassidy would think only of sex. He gambled that a macho two-hundred-and-forty-pounder who could bench press almost four hundred pounds wouldn’t be nervous about a hundred-and-twenty-pounder, the kid the yard called Little Red Shrimp. Sure enough, Cassidy wasn’t nervous. He came around the corner, grinning. He had walked out of the sunlight into the shadow, squinting, reaching out for Fleck when he saw Fleck smiling at him, walking into the shank.
Fleck dialed all but the final digit of the 266 number, glanced at his watch. Almost a minute early. Fleck could still remember the sensation. Holding the narrow blade flat, just as he’d practiced it, feeling it slide between the ribs, flicking the handle back and forth and back again as it penetrated to make certain it cut the artery and the heart. He hadn’t really expected it to work. He expected Cassidy to kill him, or the thing to end with him on trial for premeditated murder and getting nothing better than life and probably the gas chamber. But there was no choice. And Eddy had told him it would be like Cassidy was being struck by lightning if he did it right.
“Do it right, he shouldn’t make a sound,” Eddy had said. “It’s the shock that does it.”
Now it was time. Fleck punched the final digit, heard the beginning of the ring, then The Client’s voice.
Fleck brought him up to date, told him about checking on Highhawk, about the woman lawyer showing up there with the cowboy, about Santero driving up and going in and the woman and the cowboy coming out a minute later. He told him about the cowboy walking right up and tapping on his window. “I circled the block and followed them back to the Eastern Market Metro station, and then I dropped it. There’s just one of me. Now I want to know who that cowboy is. He’s tall. Slender. Dark. Looks like an Indian to me. Narrow face. Leather jacket, boots, cowboy hat, all that. Who the hell is he? Something about him smells like cop to me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the woman thought I was following her. I told him he was crazy. Told him to screw off.”
“Amateurs!” The Client’s voice was full of scorn. It took a moment for Fleck to realize he meant Fleck.
Fleck pressed it. “You know anything at all about the cowboy? Know who he is?”
“God knows,” The Client said. “This is the product of you letting Santero slip away from you. We don’t know where he went or who he talked to and we don’t know what he did. I warned you about that.”
“And I told you about it,” Fleck said. “Told you there’s just one of me and seven of them, not counting the womenfolk. I can’t watch them all all the time.”
“Seven?” The Client said. “Was that a slip? You told us you had subtracted one. The old man. You’re expecting us to pay you for that.”
“Six is the correct number,” Fleck said. “Old Man Santillanes is definitely off the list. Did you send the ten thousand?”
“We wait for the full month. Now I wonder if we should also ask to see a little more proof.”
“I sent you the goddamn billfold. And the false teeth.” Fleck sighed. “You’re just stalling,” he said. “I can see that now. I want that money by tomorrow night.”
There was a period of silence from the other end. Fleck noticed the rain had stopped. With his free hand he rolled down the window beside him. Then he picked up the camera and checked the settings.
“The deal is no publicity, no identification for one full month. Then you get the money. After a month. Now I want you to think about Santero. I think he needs to go. The same deal. But remember it can’t happen in the District. We can’t risk that. It should be a long way outside the Beltway. A long way from here. And no chance of identification. No chance at all of identification.”
“I have got to have the ten thousand now,” Fleck said. Never lose your temper, Mama had said. Never show them a thing. About all we got going for us, Mama had always told Delmar and him, is they never expect us to do anything at all but crawl there on the ground on our bellies and wait to get stepped on again.
“No,” The Client said.
“Tell you what. If you’ll have three thousand of it delivered to me tomorrow, then I can wait for the rest of it.“
“You can wait anyway,” The Client said. And hung up.
