behind him--'
'He was kicked off the police,' Donnell said. 'I've told you that, and he don't like it one bit.'
'You think he doesn't like it or you know it?'
'I know it. I talked to the dude.'
'Well, if all he wants is money. . . .' She gave a little shrug with the beat.
'He's working for himself, nobody else.'
'He told you that?'
This woman could be irritating.
'It was he didn't tell me. He had, I might suspect him. Look, the dude bumped me up to twenty-five thousand to get your bomb out of the swimming pool. He's in it for bread, nothing else, and he'll keep coming back. I know, I've seen the kind.' Donnell hunched over the table on his arms. 'Listen to me. The dude will come back and he'll come back. He'll leave the police if he hasn't done it already. The man smells a score. But that's only the one problem. I see another one. I see too many people.'
'You mean Skip,' Robin said.
'Exactly. Your friend Skippy. What do we need him for? See, he's the kind of problem you can tell goodbye and it's gone. Like you say to him you not interested in the deal no more, you give up on it, he leaves.'
'I don't think it would be quite that easy,' Robin said.
'Sit on it till he goes away. That's easy. What I'm saying to you, I don't see cutting it three ways when we don't need to. I'm looking now at the economics of it. This kind of deal come along, you do it one time, understand? You pick a number, the most of what you can get, and that's all.'
'If that's what you're worried about,' Robin said, 'there's no problem. You get half of a two-way split.'
'I'm thinking more than half, and your number depends on my number.'
'Okay, what's your number?'
'One million. I like the sound of it, I like the idea of it. One million, a one and six oughts.'
'Take off and spend it, huh?'
'Stay right where I am. It's none of your business what I do with it.'
Donnell watched Robin get out another cigarette saying, 'Okay, if you're satisfied with a mil let's go for two and Skip and I split the other one.'
Donnell shook his head. 'I get more than you.'
'Why?'
'It's my idea.'
'Gee, I thought it was mine,' Robin said.
Giving him that shitty tone again.
'I mean since I'm the one who called in the first place.'
'Yeah, and how'd you expect the man to pay you? Cash? He suppose to leave it some place you tell him?'
He watched her shrug, being cool.
'That's one way.'
'You dumb as shit,' Donnell said. 'Can you see the man go in the bank for the money? Drunk as usual, everybody looking at him? Everybody knowing his business? What did I say to you on the phone? I said, 'That gonna be cash or you take a check?' And you got mad, commence to threaten me, saying, 'Oh, you want to play, huh?' Giving me all this shit on the phone. You remember? Was only this morning.'
Still being cool. Look at her blow the smoke, sip the wine, getting her head straight, what she wanted to say. Smiling at him now, just a speck of smile showing.
'What I get from that,' Robin said, 'you were serious. We could actually get paid by check?'
'There's a way.'
'He could stop payment.'
'I said there's a way to do it.'
'This is wild,' Robin said. 'Far out.'
She turned her head to gaze off at the piano, listening but not moving, Donnell watching her, remembering the woman in the bathroom a long, long time ago. Pants on the floor, her sweater pushed up, seeing the back of her head in the mirror, all that long hair, seeing a nice dreamy smile in her eyes when he looked at her. . . . Her eyes came back to him from the piano.
'Skip killed a guy one time.'
'You mean little Markie?'
'Before. He did it for money. What I'm saying is, you can count on him.'
'I admire that kind,' Donnell said, 'but it don't mean we need him.'
'I was thinking he could get rid of our problem, the guy with his hand out.'
Donnell hesitated. The idea stopped him, hit him cold. He didn't want to think about it, but said, 'He'd do that?'
'If I asked him to.'
'That's all?'
'If you say he's in.'
Donnell shrugged, not saying yes or no, maybe not minding the guy being in if you could count on him and take his word. There were things to work out in this deal. It wasn't entirely set in his mind. Though it seemed to be in Robin's, the way she was smiling for real now, letting it come. . . .
Robin saying, 'The extortion corporation, we accept checks. Hey, but we write Woody's driver's license I.D. on the back, right? In case he tries to stiff us.'
Chapter 22
Chris played scenes, lying in bed in that early morning half-light.
He heard himself tell Jerry Baker, 'I go in the guy's swimming pool, remove an explosive device and he gives me twenty-five grand.' Jerry says, 'You take the device with you?' He tells Jerry, 'I left it there but told him not to touch it, and I know he won't.' Jerry says, 'You should've taken it with you.' Jerry's right; he should've. Jerry says, 'But you did take the check.' 'Of course I took the check, for Christ sake.' Jerry, thinking of all that money, thinking fast, says, 'Well, there's a gray area there.' He hears himself say to Jerry, 'What's gray about it? It's withholding evidence, isn't it?' Jerry, with his many years of experience on the police, says, 'That's a matter of interpretation. There's withholding evidence and there's holding evidence. It may be needed in the investigation, it may not be.' He hears himself say to Jerry, 'You don't see it as a rip?' Jerry says, 'Where's the rip? The guy agreed to the price and you did the job, performed a service.' Chris says, 'But in receiving the check for removing evidence, isn't it evidence too?' Jerry says, 'Not necessarily. The explosive device, yeah, is evidence. But now the check, that's definitely a gray area.'
Chris pictured doing the scene with Wendell. 'Hey, Wendell? I'd like to ask you something?' The dude lieutenant looks up from his desk. 'Yeah? What?' And that was as far as the scene got. Chris asked himself why he hadn't thought of these questions yesterday, last night. He wondered if it was to avoid even thinking about it. Finally he asked himself what he believed was a key question: When does holding evidence become withholding evidence?
The answer came unexpectedly, flooding him with a sense of relief: Monday. He had the weekend to think about it, study that gray area.
Chris got up on an elbow to flip his pillow over to the cool side and paused in the half-light as he heard Greta say, 'Oh, my Lord.' She was lying with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
'What's wrong?'
'I don't think my car was stolen.'
Greta said it must have been her concussion of the brain that made her forget where she parked it. The thing was, twice before when she'd gone to the Playhouse Theater she'd parked in the same aisle on the ground floor of the building, almost in the same exact space both times. But then last Tuesday, or whenever it was, the place was
