“To friends,” Mitch agreed, touching his still almost full glass to Quentin’s nearly empty one. Quentin raised one finger and called for another beer.
“So what are you up to these days?” Quentin asked as they waited for the bartender to deliver the order.
“For the last couple of months,” Mitch Johnson said quietly, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Looking for me?” Quentin asked, as though he couldn’t quite believe it.
Mitch nodded. “I probably wouldn’t have found you now if it hadn’t been for your mother.”
“Which one, my stepmother or my real mother?”
“Your biological mother,” Mitch answered.
“You mean you actually made it past the screen and talked to her?”
“What screen?”
“My brother, Brian. My half-brother. He doesn’t let me anywhere near Mom if he can help it. He claims I upset her. What he really means is she might end up slipping me some cash. Brian wants to keep all that for himself.”
“Your brother must not have been home,” Mitch replied, “because I talked to her directly. She’s the one who told me where you were living.”
“You still haven’t told me how come you were looking for me in the first place.”
“Andy told me once that you claimed to have found some pottery—some Indian pottery—out on the reservation. Is that true?”
Quentin had been chatting easily enough. Now, though, he pulled back. “What if it is?” he asked.
Mitch ignored the sudden shift in mood. “One of the things Andy did for me before he died,” Mitch continued, “was to give me the benefit of some of his contacts. I may have found a possible buyer for those pots of yours—if they’re legit, that is.”
The conversation ground to a momentary halt. “How much money?” Quentin asked finally, looking up.
Mitch shrugged. “That depends on quality and quantity of the merchandise, of course. But before my buyer will deal on any pots, he wants me to take a look at them. He wants me to see the pots as well as where you found them.”
Before Mitch could even finish the sentence, Quentin Walker was already shaking his head. “No way!” he said. “No way in hell! I can maybe bring them out for you to see them, but you can’t go there to look at them. It’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“You just can’t, that’s all.”
“But I can make it worth your while,” Mitch said.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet. He removed several bills and laid them on the bar. “Believe me, Quentin, there’s a lot more where this came from. It’s our chance to make some big bucks.”
Quentin looked at the money blankly for some time, as though lost in thought. “What’s this?” he asked at last.
“What does it look like?” Mitch Johnson smiled. “It’s a small down payment, Quentin. But remember, seeing the material on site is part of the deal. This is the first half. You get the same amount as soon as you show me the spot. After that, it’s a sixty-forty split of whatever my buyer pays.”
Mitch knew very well the kind of hand-to-mouth existence Quentin Walker had lived since being released from prison. He had expected the man to leap at the opportunity to make some fast money. Mitch found Quentin’s apparent reticence somewhat surprising. He waited impatiently while the younger man stared down at the bills without touching them.
“Drywalling money’s that good then?” Mitch asked in an effort to move things forward.
Tentatively, almost as if afraid they might bite, Quentin Walker reached out and moved the bills closer to him. He leaned down and examined them in the dim light of the bar. An unfamiliar picture stared back at him from the topmost one. Quentin may not have recognized Grover Cleveland’s likeness right off the bat, but the numbers in the corner of the bill were easily identifiable—a one and three zeros.
“There’s more where that came from.”
Not quite believing what he was seeing, Quentin thumbed through the other bills. “Five thousand dollars?” he mouthed silently.
Mitch nodded. Quentin glanced furtively around the bar. Most of the customers were engrossed in the San Diego Padres baseball game blaring from the television set at the far end of the bar. As the bartender pulled himself away from the game and started toward them with the next round, Quentin snatched the bills off the counter and stuffed them into his shirt pocket.
Watching him, Mitch suppressed a sigh of relief. The surge of power he felt was almost sexual in nature. It reminded him of that first time he had invited Lori Kiser to go on a date—a picnic in Sabino Canyon. She had said yes, even though they both knew at the time that she was saying yes to far more than just a picnic. There had been an implicit understanding in her saying yes that day, in the way she had blushed when she answered. Her yes was to the picnic, but it was also to something else. To going to bed with him, probably before the day was over. They had gone on the picnic. Mitch had taken a blanket along, just in case, and he had been absolutely right.
Sitting in the bar with Quentin Walker, Mitch sensed that this was the same thing. By taking the money, Quentin knew he was agreeing to break the law. Again. What he couldn’t possibly know was exactly which laws he would end up breaking.
“When do you want to go?” Quentin was asking.
Now it was Mitch’s turn to pull himself out of a reverie in order to answer. “How about tomorrow
