'When did you first think your daughter had run away, Mr. Spain?' the officer asked, writing. He had one of those flat, redneck voices that show boredom easily. Spain told him. He wondered when it was she had run away. She had run away from him a long, long time ago, he suspected.
'And you didn't report it until ...' Another question in a list of by-the-numbers rhetoricals that would be asked from a clipboard full of numbers. Everything came down to numbers. That's what he called the shots he'd taken for Ciprioni and the family, his OTHER family. Numbers. Funny how they liked to call things by other names, these Sicilians and Italianos he worked for. You didn't plan a robbery, you 'made a move.' You didn't hit some guy or whack him out, you 'did a number.' You 'clipped' him. They didn't want their hands dirtied by it. Didn't want to connect themselves to the 'numbers.' Somebody else could watch those people bleed. Someone else could get that last breath blown into their face as the number became a cipher.
'Mr. Spain, who did you speak with at the Bank Card Center?'
'Just some woman. I didn't write her name down.' This cop was calling him mister, a cold, bored tone in his redneck voice. Just a little suspicious, automatically, as they all are. The last one had called him Frank and been fake-hearty-hail-fellow with a phony, automatic rictus of a smile that would wink on and off as he spoke. Fucking cops.
'Had your daughter ever threatened to run away from home before?'
'No,' he said quietly, his heavy-lidded eyes drooping. Christ almighty, he thought, get it done and get the hell out of here.
The questions continued. He was going over every fucking credit card. Plastic Man. Hey, cop, why don't you get a job with Visa? He sat there yess-ing and noing with the surface of his mind, stifling a yawn, and let himself think about what had put him here. Ciprioni had used him. These people who assured him he was like a son to them, they took his life and twisted it out of shape so that he could have nothing. He could not keep his own wife. Worse, he couldn't even keep his child. His own goddamn kid. They had done this to him with their fucking NUMBERS. He thought of all the chances he'd taken for them, all the bullshit he'd had to swallow — and here was the bottom line. Here is what he had to show for his years of dedication. A black hole of nothing.
The cop finally left and Spain got up and went to the door with him. He told Spain, '[something] find her soon,' and Spain nodded and they shook hands, Spain looking down as they touched, and the car pulled away. The cop had middle-aged hands like his own, but they were worn from manual labor and the backs of the hands had freckles that looked like liver spots. Spain looked at his large, hairy hands, at the pattern of pores and wrinkles and scars on the backs of the hands. They were large, powerful hands but they didn't look as if they ever tilled soil or barked knuckles trying to work with a wrench in tight places or sweated pipe together or used a welder or ran a metal lathe.
He thought of the things he'd done with those hands. It made his eyes sting, as if from smoke.
He had not smoked since the 70s. One pack he'd puffed on. It was on a job. He'd taken this weird contract the details of which were no longer fresh, but he'd found himself in a situation where he had to make some sort of crude, homemade time bomb. It was something he had to throw together quickly, jury-rigged from available materials at hand. He was nothing if not field-expedient. The fuse had been a cigarette from a pack of Winstons he'd found. He'd pocketed the pack automatically and later, driving through the night, he'd allowed himself the indulgence of smoking the rest of the pack. He had not found a single moment of pleasure from inhaling the hot, throat-parching smoke. He'd faced some kind of a mini-demon and prevailed. One always assumed time would bring a remission, even for the four-pack-a-day gang. Not a minor victory.
He tried to imagine a cigarette in his fingers and couldn't, so he picked up a fountain pen like a cigarette and just as he did a pang of terrible fear stabbed at him. Something was wrong. It was that kind of awful and consuming paranoia that cannot be denied or ignored. He could feel his heart thumping and perspiration trickling down his sides and back and covering his forehead like a fever.
It was not read as a foreshadowing omen, but as a presence. Something was there. Pinpricks dotted his back. It was a strong aura, not foreboding so much as it was just . . . there. He clenched his teeth. Something or someone in back of him ... A presence. Somebody there in the empty house with him.
He walked very quietly, carefully, moving through the big rooms. He was suddenly aware of all the mirrors and glass, and he used this and was methodical as he let his hunter's eyes scan across all the glittering expanse of back bar, chandelier, breakfront, bookcase, mirror, picture tube, window, cabinet, picture-frame glass, anything that reflected, as he moved through the large rooms soundlessly, looking for a hint of shadow or movement as his mind quickly sorted out the random possibilities. Who would be a most likely candidate to want him hurt? The relative of a victim? A cop, coming in the back while the two of them talked up in the front of the house? Somebody high up in the family who would now view him as a threat in some way? Buddy Blackburn? He choked back a laugh as he realized what he was doing, looking up at the tired image in the reflection of the empty dining room.
He knew how the mind works under stress. He was very tired. He would take a couple of aspirin, drink a cup of coffee — caffeine perversely made him sleepy — and take the phone off the hook. And he knew he would sleep. And in that sleep. Yes. Dreams would come.
That was the nice thing about being back home, Eichord thought. You didn't have to produce any results. Just sit here in the grungy squad room smelling used smoke and listening to Lee and Tuny, the two-man uncomedy team who had been his friends since before the dawn of recorded time. These long-time partners who were so close they could piss in the same beer can.
He realized he'd been staring at the same page in the homicide report for about ten minutes. Reading it over and over again and still not seeing the words. Nothing registering. Out to lunch.
'I'm out to lunch,' he told the room.
'What else is new?' his friend James Lee muttered.
'Hey, Jimmie,' he said, tilting his head in the direction of fat Dana, 'your girlfriend's startin' to look pretty good to me, man.'
'Yeah? Well, she's allllllll mine.'
'That's right, I'm already spoken for, so eatcher heart out, ya fuckin' wino.'
Eichord was an alcoholic, and his friends handled it — as they did all things — with taste and diplomacy, and by calling Eichord a fucking wino. If you couldn't take a joke you didn't hang around.
So good to be back home, Eichord thought with a sigh. Back here where I belong with the rest of the rocket scientists.
Back in his safe and smelly cubbyhole in the bowels of Buckhead Station, Eichord felt far removed from a world where a mob assassin shoots his/her victims' eyes out. Had each unrelated decedent seen something they should not? Is this what the killer was saying with those two awful pulls of the trigger, You've seen too much? One thing was clear: when you take aim and shoot someone's eyes out, you are not just committing murder. You are making one helluva statement.
She was unconscious and she stayed out for a long time, awakening to a sense of being drugged but with a pain of such throbbing intensity the dope couldn't cancel it out. Imagine an impacted wisdom tooth, broken off in the extrication process by an inept oral surgeon, and raw nerve ends screaming for whatever solace waits beyond codeine, Demerol, Dilaudid. What high is next? The righteous heroin stone? Free-basing? A leaded baseball bat? You don't care. You just want the lights out.
The next time she came to, she could identify some of the sounds. Roger Nunnaly's voice, an older woman. The voices took shapes in the discrete colors within the variegated darkness and she saw through a camera lens layered thick with Vaseline. Then she went away again to sleep.
Greg had found her and debated whether to take her to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital but he knew the police would become involved.
What a bother this girl had become. Such a hassle. One of Nunnaly's street friends knew a woman nurse who didn't ask questions, and the problem was temporarily solved. Private care. Of sorts.
Tiff was young and strong and healthy. She was a fast healer. But without proper medical treatment the bones did not set properly. She would have problems. The spine is also a funny thing. A blow to the back had impaired the motor nerves controlling lateral movement of the right foot. She would not walk as well as she had. The facial scars would recede to some extent. All in all, not so bad. Better a crippled dog than a dead lioness.
The RN the boys had hired cost money. The dope she was hitting Tiff with also wasn't free. And there was the problem of the impending score. Greg and Roger did what they had to do. There was a couple who needed a
