“A screwy hunch. It’s probably nothing, but I’ve got a gut feeling I can’t shake loose.”
“And what am I looking for?”
“I’m not certain. See if his jacket has gotten sketchy in any way over the last five years. If there’ve been any off-duty collars in places where he shouldn’t be. If there’s been any kind of internal investigation into him. If he’s had a psych evaluation.”
I could tell that she held the phone a little tighter to her lips, got herself away from the noise of the newsroom. Now there was something like concern in her voice. “You suspect him of something. What is it?”
“First let me know if anything pans out, then I’ll fill you in if I can.”
“You ask a lot,” she said.
“Everyone does.”
“Give me a couple of hours.”
I disconnected. I had to keep moving. I was close to the address that had been on Butch’s suspended driver’s license. I had to keep an eye on the punk and his crew and see if Dale needed something more than a butterfly knife to protect herself. I had to see who his connections were.
It was a nice house, obviously his parents’ place. His Chevy wasn’t around. I rang the bell, and when his mother answered I told her that I was a high school buddy of Joe’s and wanted to catch up on old times. I figured she wouldn’t call him “Butch.”
Despite the gray streak and a few extra years, I was young enough to look like we’d run together. I turned on my most winning smile. She looked at me like she knew I was lying but that everyone who hung around her son lied to her. Her face went hard and drained of all interest and concern. She told me he hadn’t been livin='jAg at home for some time and shut the door in my face.
Next stop was the Fifth Amendment. Butch wasn’t around. Nobody knew where he might be. Danny was holding court with his crew in their usual spot. A lot of fat cats with lit cigars were rolling their sleeves up. It looked like a big poker game was on the agenda for later tonight. Maybe someone had Butch out picking up some fresh baked goods. I split.
From the road I phoned the house, hoping to talk to my sister. My father answered and put Dale on.
“Where’s Butch?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I wanted to ask him something.”
“What?”
“What to get you for your birthday.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m not pregnant. You don’t have to beat him up. And he didn’t defile me either. I wasn’t a virgin when I met him, you know.”
Some things men weren’t meant to imagine, and a sister’s first time was one of them. “Shut up! Christ! Tell me where he is.”
“No,” she said. “And thank you for the knife.” Then I heard her turn on her blow dryer and she hung up.
I staked out my own house and parked down the street, mostly hidden by a curtain of brush. Dale fixing her hair meant she’d be heading out soon.
Butch picked her up around seven o’clock and I tagged along. There wasn’t much need. I figured they’d be heading over to the lake. Butch parked pretty much in the same spot as before. They reenacted everything that they’d done the other night, except that Butch seemed to be drinking a lot more. Maybe the pressure of the heist was getting to him.
I didn’t spot anyone. I kept the lights off and the music low and I tried not to let myself drift too much, but I couldn’t help it. I kept thinking that I could’ve saved Cara Clarke somehow. I didn’t know how, but I had botched the job. Maybe I never should have visited her. Maybe I had led the killer to her door. Maybe I had brought the underneath along with me and she’d gotten swept up in it too.
I stared at the headlights of the kids’ cars and watched them dancing and drinking in the firelight until it felt like my eyes were full of splinters. Maybe this was the beginning of Alzheimer’s.
It was a school night and my sister left early enough to make my mother only moderately unhappy. Butch wove around on the road a little and kept crossing the center line. They parked in front of our house and argued for a few minutes, maybe about his drinking, and then made out for a while. Then Butch split.
He was knocking back beers as he drove home. I followed. I wanted to drop a dime on him for drunk driving with my sister in the car, the prick. He pulled into a low-class apartment complex in Wyandanch known for its drug market. I watched him weave up the sidewalk. I sat out in front and waited for ten minutes, then I went to have a look.
I couldn’t even say I crept his place. The lock was broken and his front door was halfway open. The stink of rotting food made me gag.
Butch was passed out on the couch. He had a three-inch doobie still burning in an ashtray. His pad was a catastrophe. Empty beer cans and old bags of Chinese takeout, ribs, burgers, wer
There wasn’t much to the douche. He had a.22 with a warped front sight tucked down between the couch cushions where he slept. He had a new wallet. It had someone else’s ID and about a hundred bucks in it. The idiot had juked somebody but hadn’t tossed the driver’s license. Maybe he thought he could pass himself off as Carlos Ortiz Arroyo.
Right out in the open, scrawled on a grease-soaked pizza box, were the name and number of Stan Herbert. He was a fairly small-time fence who took the dirty items nobody else wanted. If you boosted a church, then you brought the silver chalice to Stan. Butch and his string were relying on the wrong guy to move their jewelry. Either Butch was running the heist into the ground or they were all a bunch of amateurs or morons. Danny would want a fat hunk off the top and there wasn’t going to be much cheese left for the rest of them. Even if they got away with it, they weren’t going to want to give out such a big cut. That would put them on the wrong end with the Thompson crew. They were as good as caught or dead. The cops would sniff out Dale. Whether she was involved or not, it would go bad for her just because of the Rand name.
Butch was a dim bulb. I wasn’t going to be able to scare him into laying off the heist. I wasn’t going to be able to talk any sense into him.
Five men in all. I wondered if he’d picked up his fifth yet or if he was still looking. A family-owned jewelry store. Small shop, a lot of employees. Four minutes inside. I tried narrowing down which shop it might be, but there was no way. I looked over at Butch on the couch and tried to see what my sister saw in him. She could do much better. If she went for bad boys she could still go for smarter. Maybe she just dug the Chevy.
As I was heading home, my phone rang again. The noise of it startled me. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to carrying a cell and I couldn’t wait to get rid of it as soon as I could. When that might be I had no idea. Maybe as soon as Collie was dead. Since I was still doing a lot of creeping, I thought maybe I should set the fucker on vibrate.
“Hello?”
“We’ve got a little trouble, Terry,” Wes said. “And don’t bother asking me how I got this number, it’s my goddamn phone. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist juking me.”
“Taking a burner isn’t juking you, Wes. What’s the trouble? Something with my sister?”
“No,” he said. “Your uncles are here at the Fifth.”
“Ah, shit. The poker game.”
“Right. They just walked in a few minutes ago. You’re the one who put it in Mr. Thompson’s head that when Mal and Grey are together they’re cheating. He said you mentioned cross chatter and keeping the marks distracted.”
“What a fucking idiot I am.”
“If you get here fast, maybe we can calm the situation before anything starts.”
“Danny throwing his weight around?”
“No. It’s all nice and mellow so far. But you know Mr. Thompson holds a grudge.”
“How much have they won so far?”
“Nothing. Nobody’s much ahead yet.”
That?hon9;s how it would start. My uncles were just loosening up a little. They’d run the hands evenly for a
