that money could last Lennon until he was forty years old. Katie, too.
If Katie was still in the picture.
Lennon turned the corner, spied the lot. There was an attendant in the booth, but he was too engrossed in something perched in his lap. Not many cars were parked here on a Saturday morning, despite this being a long- term lot. This vaguely worried Lennon. He’d imagined more cars, burying the Prelude in a sea of pricier, sleeker cars with a higher street value.
He walked down the second row, where they’d left it. Nothing yet. It was probably down farther.
The row ended. Nothing.
Had to be the third row.
Halfway down the third row, the attendant took an interest in Lennon.
Lennon pressed two fingers to his neck, feeling for the carotid artery.
Steady now.
Steady.
On.
Then again, Patrick was probably no longer alive, so what did it matter?
Unless that was him calling. And he was hiding out somewhere.
There was only one way to find out. Katie pulled her rented car over to the side of Grant Avenue and dialed Henry. On her public cell, not the emergency one. Her stomach did flip-flops, but she kept it together by breathing oxygen. Oxygen dispelled the nausea, if she tried hard enough.
“Hello?”
“Did you call me about twenty minutes ago?”
“No. But wait—don’t go. Let me get rid of this other line.”
Click.
Shit. Katie didn’t know what she was hoping to hear. That Henry had called, or that he hadn’t. If he really hadn’t, Patrick was somewhere. But then why didn’t he leave a message?
Because the stubborn bastard never left a message. It was against his religion.
Katie felt her stomach roil again, and she concentrated on breathing.
The line clicked back.
“Katie, where are you?”
She ignored the question. “Someone called me twenty minutes ago. On the other line. Only two people have that number. You and Patrick.”
“So then he’s fine. Tell me where you are, and I’ll send a car for you.”
“No. Help me think. Where would Patrick be?”
“I’m no good thinking over the phone,” he said. “You know that.”
“What good are you at all?”
Damnit, Patrick. Call again. Let me know what’s going on. Tell me I just didn’t pistol-whip a Russian gangster for no good reason.
“Look, girlie. I’ve had enough abuse for one morning. You know where I am. You want me to help you figure this out, stop by. And let me just add that since you’ve gotten knocked up, you’ve been nothing but moody.”
“Fuck you,” Katie said.
The line was silent.
“I’ll see you in twenty minutes,” she added.
“Can I help you?” he said, but his tone was just the opposite.
Lennon shook his head. But the attendant persisted.
“What kind of car you looking for?”
Lennon ignored him and scanned the last row of cars, near the edge of the lot. He knew they hadn’t parked the Prelude here, but maybe some parking attendant moved the cars around somehow. They did that sometimes, especially to clear a street for a work crew; they just loaded the cars on flatbeds and moved them where they wanted. Although that seemed highly unlikely, Lennon searched anyway.
The attendant seemed to give up, and walked back to his booth. He kept giving Lennon strange looks.
Fuck him. Where the hell was the car?
Only two possibilities.
One—and this was another highly unlikely event—somebody decided to boost the Honda Prelude, and got a nice surprise when they looked in the trunk. In this case, Holden would have been correct to be nervous, and the fates were working against them all.
That was bullshit.
The more likely possibility was that one of his partners, Bling or Holden, had double-crossed him. Of course, that brought up two additional possibilities: one, the betrayer was either working with the Russians, in which case he knew the battering van was coming, and braced himself for impact, then led them to the Prelude. Two, the betrayer survived the Russian ambush just as Lennon had, but beat him to the Prelude and sped away, assuming the others were dead. Lennon hadn’t rushed back to the Prelude, thinking it was better to heal first and let the heat die down.
But now he saw that hesitation was just one of a long series of mistakes he’d made in the past twenty-four hours. If Lennon had gone right for the Prelude, that Saugherty prick wouldn’t have caught him napping on Kelly Drive, and he would have only two deaths on his tab, instead of at least … how many was it? Two, three (Saugherty), four (his big friend), five, six, seven strangers with guns? For a decidedly nonviolent heister, Lennon had racked up an uncomfortably large body count.
Sort it out later. Solve the problem now.
“Dude.”
It was the parking attendant again.
“Phone. It’s for you.”
He held out a cell phone.
“How do I find somebody?”
“It would help if you could be a little more specific, Ray.”
“I need to find a bank robber.”
“A specific one, or any old bank robber?”
“Specific one.”
