“Good.” They’d reached their cars by then. Uncharacteristically, Standard held out a hand. “See you tomorrow, my friend. Take care.”
They shook.
Bouncy accordion on the Mexican station as Driver fired up his car. Back to the current apartment. Never thought of any of them as home really, however long he stayed in them. He cranked up the sound.
Happy music.
Before he could pull out, two firetrucks came screaming down the street, followed by an ancient sky-blue Chevy station wagon with five or six brown faces peering out from within, coop of chickens lashed to the top.
Life.
Chapter Sixteen
Nothing in the Chevy to lead him anywhere. An empty container, essentially. Impersonal as a carry cup. He’d have been surprised if it were otherwise.
If he had some way to run the registration, nine to one it was bogus. And even if it wasn’t, all it was going to tell him was the car’d been stolen.
Okay.
But the hand had been dealt. He was holding.
When their hard boys didn’t come back-the fat man, the albino-those who sent them would be sending someone in after. Too many loose ends whipping about in the wind, only a matter of time before someone got whacked in the head.
That was the advantage he had.
Driver figured the best thing he could do was move the Chevy. Stow it where it would be hard but not too hard to find. Then hang close by and wait.
So for two days, arm aching like a son of a bitch the whole time, figurative knives slitting shoulder to wrist again and again, ghost axe poised and descending whenever he moved, Driver sat across from the mall where he’d parked the Chevy. He forced himself to use the bad arm, even for the chi-chi coffee he bought, $3.68 a cup, at an open stall just inside the mall’s east entrance. This was in Scottsdale, back towards Phoenix proper, a high- end suburb where each community had its own system of walls, where malls teeter-tottered on a Neiman-Marcus, Williams-Sonoma axis. Sort of place a vintage car like the Chevy wouldn’t seem too far out of place, actually, there among the Mercedes and Beemers. Driver had parked it on the lot’s outer edge in the sketchy shade of a couple of palo verdes to make it easier to spot.
Not that it much mattered at this point, but he kept running the script in his head.
Cook had set them all up, of course. Little doubt about that. Driver’d seen Strong go down-for good, to every appearance. Maybe Strong had been part of the set-up, maybe like the rest of them only a board piece, a shill, a beard. Blanche he wasn’t sure about. She could have been in from the first, but it didn’t feel that way. Could be she was only looking out for herself, keeping her options open, trying to find some way out of the corner she and Driver had been shoehorned into. Far as Driver knew, Cook was still a player. No way Cook had the weight or stones for those hard boys come to collect, though. So he had to be fronting.
Making the question: Who was likely to show?
Any minute a car could pull up with goombahs inside.
Or maybe, just maybe, the bosses would quietly suggest, the way it sometimes worked, that Cook clean up after himself.
Nine-forty a.m. on the third day, every breeze in the state gone severely south and blacktop already blistering, arm hanging from his shoulder like a hot anvil, Driver thought: Okay then, Plan B, as he watched Cook in a Crown Vic circle twice on the outer ring and pull into the lot just past the Chevy. Watched him get out, look around, amble toward the parked car with key in hand.
Cook opened the driver-side door, slid in. Soon he emerged, went around back and popped the trunk. Half his body disappeared beneath the lid.
“Shotgun’s not much good anymore,” Driver said.
Cook’s head banged against the trunk as he tried to straighten and turn at the same time.
“Sorry about that. Blanche isn’t much good either. But I thought a few props might put you in a nostalgic mood, help you remember what went down. Show and tell.”
Cook’s hand rose towards the hoop in his right ear. Driver intercepted it halfway and struck with one knuckle just above the wrist, at a nerve center that shut down sensation and scrambled incoming messages. He’d picked that up on breaks from a stunt man he’d worked with on a Jackie Chan movie. Then, just like a dance step, right foot forward, slide the left, pivot on the heels, he had Cook in a choke hold. Same stuntman taught him that.
“Hey, relax. Guy I learned this from told me the hold’s absolutely safe on a short-term basis,” he said. “After four minutes, the brain starts shutting down, but up till then-”
Loosening his hold, he let Cook drop to the ground. Man’s tongue was extended and he didn’t seem to be breathing. M.E. would call the skin tone blue, but it was really gray. Tiny stars of burst blood vessels about the face.
“Always a chance I didn’t get it quite right, of course. Been a while, after all.”
Shafts of pain shot along Driver’s arm as he fished out Cook’s wallet. Nothing much of use or note there.
Check the chariot, then.
In the Crown Vic he found a clutch of gas-station receipts jammed into the glove compartment, all of them from the downtown area, Seventh Street, McDowell, Central. Four or five pages of scrawled directions, mostly unreadable, to various spots in and around Phoenix. Half a torn ticket from something called Paco Paco, a matchbook from “a gentleman’s cabaret,” Philthy Phil’s. An Arizona roadmap. And a sheaf of coupons bound together with crossed rubber bands.
NINO’S PIZZA (RESTAURANT IN BACK)
719 E. Lynwood (480) 258-1433 WE DELIVER
Chapter Seventeen
He always had his first few drinks of the day away from the house. There were two choices, Rosie’s up on Main, a long haul without a car, or The Rusty Nail at the corner. He had a car but the driver’s license had gone south years ago and he didn’t like to take unwarranted chances. Rosie’s was a workingman’s bar, open at six a.m. You asked for bourbon or whisky here, the barkeep didn’t have to come back with what flavor, there was only one bottle of each. Man didn’t have to put up with troublesome things like windows, either, since the place was a cave. The Rusty Nail, basically a titty bar, opened at nine. From then till three or so, when the girls started straggling in and the clientele changed (he’d got caught unaware more than once), it was inhabited by mechanics from a truck garage down the street and butchers from the meat-packing house directly across, many of them wearing their blood-spotted aprons. So mostly, those days his legs weren’t too wobbly or his shakes too bad anyway, Rosie’s won out.
All the early morning drinkers were regulars, but no one spoke. Most days the door was propped open with a chair, and whenever someone came through it, heads would swivel that way and occasionally one or another nodded a silent greeting before returning to his drink. Benny would have a double waiting by the time he reached the bar. Missed you yesterday, he might say. Benny’d serve up the first couple of drinks in a highball glass-till his hands steadied. This morning he was later than usual. Bad night? Benny asked. Couldn’t sleep. My old man always blamed that on a bad conscience, Benny said. Well there you go, he figures it’s a bad conscience, I’m thinking it’s got a lot more to do with a bad chicken-fried steak.
Someone tapped his shoulder.
“Doc? You’re Doc, aren’t you?”
