problems I have.”
Finally, he and Blondie coordinated their button pushing, and Blondie’s voice came through clearly. But he sounded very concerned.
“I think we may have a problem, Mr. Bullock.”
Bullock frowned, glowered at the intercom. “I don’t want to hear that kind of shit! What do you mean, a problem?”
“There’s nothing in this car. Not a fucking thing.”
31
“NOTHING?” Bullock said.
“Everything I found, I tossed in a box, but it’s definitely not what you were hoping for,” Blondie said over the speaker.
“Bring it here,” he said, and took his finger off the intercom. He looked first at Pockmark, then at me. “What kind of shit you trying to pull here?” He was breathing pretty heavily now, which triggered a short coughing fit and prompted another sip of water.
“Believe me,” I said, “if there’s anyone here who wanted you to find what you wanted in that car, it’s me.”
This was not a good development. Bullock not finding what he’d hoped to, his face flushed red with anger. Not a good development at all.
Unless, of course, it
Maybe this would buy me and Angie some time. Maybe this would give Trimble time to do what he had to do. And speaking of Trimble, where the hell was he? Anytime he wanted to make an appearance and bring an end to these proceedings was okay by me.
Blondie strode through the door, holding a small cardboard box that had once held a dozen bottles of Ernest & Julio Gallo wine, set it on Bullock’s desk, and took a step back, like he didn’t want to be too close when his boss peered inside. The box definitely wasn’t large enough to hold a shipment of coke, although I really had no idea how big a box you’d need for a shipment of coke.
Bullock peered over the edge of the box, looked at Blondie. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“That’s it,” Blondie said, a hint of nervousness in his voice. I think he was worried he might be coming down with a case of “shot messenger syndrome.” It couldn’t be fun giving bad news to a guy like Bullock, who was still looking into the box, incredulous in his ill-fitting suit, still holding Barbie’s pregnant friend Midge in his left hand.
“The fuck is this? An owner’s manual, an apple juice, a box of Kleenex, is this some kind of joke? And whose cell phone is this?” He tossed Midge aside, picked up the phone, threw it back into the box.
Blondie nodded in my direction. “It’s his. I took it off him earlier, put it in the box with the other stuff.”
“You looked in the doors?”
“I looked in the doors, just where Mr. Indigo said the stuff would be. There’s nothing in the doors.”
“I gotta see this for myself.” He left the box on his desk, headed for the door. He told Pockmark to stay with Angie, and ordered me to come with him to the garage.
The tape around my ankle felt as though it was coming loose.
We entered the brilliantly lit garage, where my Virtue took center stage, hood, trunk, and all four doors open. As I came around the car, I saw what a mess it was in. The panels on the insides of all four doors had been removed, exposing the skeletal sheet-metal work and side-impact beams.
“See for yourself,” Blondie said, which was the wrong thing to say, judging by the look Bullock gave him. Bullock looked inside all four doors, ran his hand inside where you couldn’t see, but carefully, so as not to cut himself on the edge of the exposed metal.
“When I couldn’t find it in the doors,” Blondie said, “I took the mats and everything out of the trunk, and there was nothing there. I pulled out the backseat, see if there was anything under there, which there wasn’t, so I put it back. I looked under the front seats, reached up into the springs. I’m tellin’ ya, there’s nothing in this goddamn car.”
Bullock began to pace, five steps one way, spinning around, five steps back. “This is not good,” he said. “This is not good.”
Blondie said, “Maybe you should call Mr. Indigo. We got that guard, he can get a message to him, ask whether the stuff might be someplace else and-”
“We are not calling Mr. Indigo!” Bullock bellowed. “That is the last fucking thing we are going to do, you understand?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’m not calling him, you’re not calling him, no one is fucking calling him!”
“Okay, gotcha.”
“The last thing I need is him thinking I’ve fucked this up somehow! He’s trusting me to run things, and if I can’t do it, he can just as easily call someone in from the West Coast to do it instead, you understand?”
“I said yeah. Chill out, man.”
“Chill out? Is that what you said? You want me to chill out?” Bullock was in Blondie’s face now, as best he could, being about six inches shorter. “Getting this car back, recovering this shipment, this is a very important test not just for me, but for the three of us. That’s why we’re going to figure this out, find the coke, and Mr. Indigo will know nothing more than that we did our fucking jobs. Is that clear?”
“Yeah, boss.”
I spoke up. “What about in the rocker panels? Like in
“Shut up,” Bullock said.
He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a slender item, black in color, about six, seven inches long, pressed a button on it I couldn’t see, and suddenly this item was twice as long, and half of it was very shiny. And then he began, slowly, to walk toward me.
“I think,” he said, waving the switchblade very slowly, “that you’re holding out on me.”
I took a step back toward the garage door. “No,” I said. “I’m not. If I knew where those drugs were, I’d go get them for you now. I have no idea why they aren’t in that car.”
Bullock kept approaching, the knife kept waving. I thought, although I couldn’t be sure, that I could see small traces of blood near the blade’s base. I had a pretty good idea whose blood that might be.
I pressed myself up against the garage door, Bullock only inches from me now. He brought the knife close to my neck.
I thought I felt the gun sag just a bit against my ankle.
“That’s a very kind offer,” he said. “Makes me think you might already have an idea where those drugs might be.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t. I swear on every one of your Barbies, I don’t know.”
His eyes danced. Was my comment meant to convey sincerity, or was I mocking him, he wondered. And I wondered, Why is it, despite my best efforts, I keep saying and doing things that make me seem like an asshole?
Blondie said, “It doesn’t make much sense for him to have taken the drugs, boss. I mean, we were following the car for quite a while tonight, and would he be dumb enough to let his daughter drive it around if he knew there was drugs in it, or if he’d known there used to be drugs in it?”
Blondie was my new best friend.
“So what are you saying?” Bullock said.
“I’m saying that the drugs must never have been in the car. At least not since he bought it, or got it off that other guy who bought it at the auction.”
“You think that private detective knew, and he got the drugs out of the car?” Bullock asked.
“That’s crazy,” I offered. “Once we left the auction, I took the car. It’s been with me from the moment we
