at each of them and turned on his heel to enter the kitchen. The big industrial dishwasher was humming as it sterilized the racks of glasses. The kitchen floor man had emptied the garbage cans, steamed them, and replaced the plastic liners, and was just completing his last floor-mopping of the night.
Kapak said, “Everything looks good, guys. But take a close look before you go, because the inspectors would love to find something wrong.” He always said that.
Kapak moved on. He had planned to catch a few of his employees sitting down somewhere instead of working, but he had seen nothing of the kind. He had only one more stop. He walked across the bar area between the rows of small, heavy steel tables with their chairs upside down on them and into the manager’s office.
Dave Skelley was standing at his big, empty desk finishing the evening’s count with Sherri Wynn. Skelley had opened the top of his white shirt and tossed his black uniform jacket on the couch, but Sherri’s waitress uniform was cooler—a satin vest, black briefs and tights, and high-heeled shoes. Skelley looked up. “Hi, boss.”
“Hi, Dave. Sherri. What sort of business did we do?”
“Nineteen thousand six hundred forty-two dollars. No fights, no breakage to speak of, no wear and tear on anybody tonight.”
Sherri smiled in a way that could only be called professional. “And how are you tonight, Mr. Kapak?”
He suspected she was hoping to get something—a small raise, a bonus, a present that would take the pressure off her to come up with the car payments for a while. She would always remind him that she was there and smile a little when she talked.
Kapak said, “Who’s going to make the deposit tonight?”
“Harris and I and the Russian,” said Skelley.
“Is he around? I didn’t see him.”
“He called a few minutes ago. By now he’s waiting in the lot.”
“Three guys. Good,” said Kapak. “And this goes to the Wells Fargo branch in Simi Valley. I’ll make out the deposit slip.” He set his briefcase on the desk, took out a deposit slip, read the total again from Skelley’s tally sheet, added twelve thousand dollars to it, and then took the twelve thousand dollars of Rogoso’s drug profits from his briefcase and added the stacks of bills to the ones on Skelley’s desk. He took his briefcase and stood up to watch Skelley putting the money into the canvas deposit bag.
Kapak walked out with Skelley and watched him get into the Russian’s big Toyota Sequoia with Harris the bouncer, then watched the car go out to the street. He considered getting into his own car and driving off, but instead turned around and went back to Skelley’s office. Sherri was still there in her waitress costume, sitting on the desk and swinging her feet. When she saw him she slid off, looking a bit embarrassed.
“Still here, eh?” he said.
“Yeah. I didn’t know if you needed anything else, so I thought I’d stay and see.”
“You’ve been doing a good job, Sherri,” he said. “The reason I came back is that I’ve been meaning to give you a little bonus.” He reached into the bulging pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a stack of bills marked “One thousand.” He had been planning to include it in the bank deposit, but for some reason he had changed his mind. He handed her the money.
“Wow, thank you,” she said. She looked at the money, then at him. She cocked her head. “What do I have to do for this?”
“Nothing. At least nothing you haven’t already been doing. It’s been nice to have somebody around who smiles.” He stepped backward, toward the door.
“I can do that,” she said. She took a quick step toward him and placed a kiss on his cheek before he opened the door and went out to his car.
He sat in the car, started the engine, drove out to the edge of the parking lot where there was a little dip to the street, and stopped. He stared into the darkest spaces he could see—the shadowy alley between a warehouse and the little factory where they customized car parts, the narrow strip of weedy land where the disused railway tracks disappeared at the back of a strip of stores. Joe Carver could be out there right now, watching for his chance.
9
JEFF TURNED THE BLACK Trans Am off Ventura Boulevard into the huge lot that ran from the Vons grocery store, past the CVS pharmacy, the Gap store, and past a dozen other stores and restaurants all the way to the chain-link fence that separated it from the two-story strip mall. Even though it was late at night, there were plenty of lights. The pharmacy and the grocery store were open twenty-four hours, so there were a few other cars on that end of the lot, and Jeff pulled to a stop among them.
He got out of the car and so did Carrie. She started walking toward the lighted glass wall of the pharmacy. “Not that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction. “The bank is back that way.”
“I want to go through the drugstore,” Carrie said. “I need a couple of things.”
“Not now.”
She stopped walking. “I won’t be able to stop on the way back, will I?”
“Well, no, but—”
“One of the things is condoms.” She stared into his eyes, watching his resolve weaken. “Maybe you’ve had enough pussy for one day. It’s okay with me.” She took a step in the direction of the bank.
He reached out and held her arm. “Maybe we could go without protection one time.”
She frowned. “Just because we’ve done it a couple of times tonight doesn’t mean I want your baby, much less anything you caught last week and don’t know about yet.”
“There’s nothing like that. I’m monog—” He tried to gulp the last two words back in, but she raised an eyebrow.
“Sure you are. Do you even know what ‘monogamous’ means?”
He was desperate to save himself. “Sure. I just meant I don’t sleep around. I saw you and you’re just so beautiful that I couldn’t resist. It was like you’re the girl I was always supposed to meet but didn’t until now.”
She smiled and patted his cheek. “You’re right. I always needed a really hot, stupid guy, but never knew it until tonight.”
“Go ahead,” he said. “You can go in and get what you need.”
She stepped off toward the pharmacy and said, “I’m not buying condoms. If you want them, you get them.”
“I thought you said—”
“I changed my mind. Now it’s up to you.”
Jeff followed her in the door, but she pretended to be shopping alone. He went to the aisle near the pharmacy counter at the back of the store and picked up two boxes of condoms. He couldn’t go home to Lila with an opened box.
He walked up to the cash register at the front of the store. He had to wait in line behind a man paying for a prescription, then watched Carrie pay for nail polish, an emery board, and hand lotion. She walked off, still pretending she didn’t know him. When he went outside, he found her waiting at the car. The man with the prescription drove away, and the lot was deserted. Jeff unlocked the trunk and they placed their purchases inside, then walked together down to the end of the parking lot, onto the strip mall where there was a pedestrian-size opening in the fence, and then to the rear of the parking structure behind the Bank of America.
They sat down to wait on the low concrete wall that enclosed the parking structure. Jeff glanced at his watch. It was 2:40. If Siren and Temptress closed at 2:00 and cleared people out on time, then it would take until around 2:45 or 3:00 to count all the money and get it ready to transport to the bank.
“It should take another fifteen, twenty minutes.”
Carrie opened her purse, took out a cigarette, and lit it.
“If you see anybody, hide behind this wall and don’t leave the butt here either. I saw a show on TV where they got somebody’s DNA from the filter.”
“There’s an ashtray right there with, like, fifty or sixty butts in it. Are they going to test all of them?”
“You think Bank of America doesn’t have the money?”
After an interval that indicated she was ignoring him, she put out the cigarette, then wrapped the butt in a
