Exit Strategy

“Huh.” The crinkle of paper. “That hundred bucks? Look something like this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You take that then. Matching pair. Now describe the guy.”

“Uh…I didn’t really get a good look at the guy. He was a guy. I know that. Or…well, I’m pretty sure…”

That’s all the kid could recall-that it had looked like a man. Size? Not noticeably big or small. Age? Maybe forty…or younger…could have been older, too. Distinguishing features? He thought the guy might have been wearing glasses. Short of hypnosis, that’s all we were going to get out of him. Listening in, I could tell he was worried about losing that hundred, and scrambling to come up with enough to keep it.

“I’m sorry, sir. I just wasn’t-I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Busy looking at Benjamin Franklin’s face instead?”

A sheepish laugh. “Yeah. You, uh, want your money back, I guess…”

“Keep it. Guy comes around? Asks how it went? You delivered the message. Seemed like I was going. Never asked any questions.”

“Yes, sir.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

“You handled that well,” I said as we got into the car.

“Do what works. Drop a few bills? Play it cool? Sometimes good enough.”

“Safer and easier than throwing people to the ground and pointing guns at their head.”

A shrug as he started the engine. “Depends on the circumstances. At Little Joe’s? Didn’t see me offering the guy cash. Depends on the person, too. Sometimes, though…” He shrugged. “Might feel better to toss them around but…

“It won’t always get me the results I want, and I’ll have a lot harder time going back if I want more. With that kid, making nice and tossing him some cash was definitely the way to go. That’s someone I wouldn’t have wanted to rough up…even if it might teach him a lesson about taking money from strangers.”

I looked out the window. “I take it we’re going to that meeting?”

“Not much choice. You want to stay out-”

“No. If you go, I go. You’re right. We need to know what this is about and the only way to do that is to play along.” I glanced his way. “I’m assuming you don’t think we’re really going to meet a contact who can give us more information on Wilkes.”

Jack snorted. “Meeting a stranger? In a condo? Might as well ask me to meet him in the desert. And bring my own shovel.”

***

On the way to the condo subdivision, Jack explained what he thought we’d find there. He was sure the welcoming party would come bearing guns, baseball bats or tire irons. What he wasn’t certain of was who’d issued the invitation. He laid sixty-forty odds on it being Gallagher. The other possibility was Boris Nikolaev.

Apparently Jack wasn’t as confident as he’d seemed about how his message to the Nikolaevs would be received. Issue a simple, respectful message of professional courtesy, assuring them that he wasn’t interested in their business, so they shouldn’t be interested in his, and they should back off. But he’d heard Boris could be a hothead, quick to see insult where none was intended.

As for how the Nikolaevs could have dispatched someone here so fast-well, telephones work pretty quickly. If Gallagher knew the Nikolaevs were looking for Jack, it would take one phone call from his end, and one phone call bounced back to a Nikolaev associate in Vegas, and they could have someone at the casino before I’d even made it outside.

“Is it just me, or is this getting really annoying?” I said.

“Fucking annoying.”

“I think we should just call up all the nice mobsters in the country and tell them, ‘Look, we’re trying to catch a rampaging killer here. Do you think you could stop putting contracts on our heads? Just for a day or two? Please?’”

“It’ll stop. Tonight.”

I glanced over at him, but he was looking straight ahead, face hard. I nodded and leaned back in my seat.

After a moment he said. “Earlier. About Gallagher. Kind of jobs he wants. You should know.”

“I don’t plan to ever call on him for employment.”

“Still, you should know. Gallagher wants someone dead? You don’t ask why. Sometimes it’s card sharks. Sometimes it’s unpaid debt. Sometimes…” He shrugged. “Sometimes, you don’t wanna know. For a while, that was okay. Didn’t give a shit. Figured someone’s gonna take the contract. Might as well be me.”

He turned left, heading toward the highway. “Eventually? Decided it didn’t need to be me. Didn’t need the money. Didn’t need the grief. Things change. Ten, fifteen years ago? Didn’t matter. Now…?” He shrugged. “My jobs these days? Some you wouldn’t touch. I’m not like you and Quinn. Don’t come from the same place. Don’t see things the same way.”

So how did he see things? I longed to ask, but when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t think of any way to word it that wouldn’t sound like prying.

Jack slanted an expectant look my way. “You gonna ask? Or you don’t want to know?”

“Uh, sure, I’d love to know. I just didn’t want to-Well, it didn’t seem right to just come right out and ask, but I’m certainly interested if you want to tell me.”

A slight downturn of his lips. A frown? Didn’t he just offer-?

“Better not,” he said after a moment. “Not my place. Ask him. He wants you to know. Tried to tell you. Shouldn’t have interrupted.”

Huh? What was he talking-?

I replayed his first comments, about him not being like Quinn or me. That’s what he thought I’d want to know, more about Quinn, how he was like me. I’d assumed he just meant because we’d both been cops.

When I said I was interested, he thought I meant in Quinn’s story, the one he’d interrupted at the motel. Was there a way to clear up the confusion? To say “Oh, I thought you were talking about yourself”? Ask him about himself. But if that wasn’t what he’d been offering…

Before I could figure out a way to continue, Jack passed me the map and put me in charge of finding our destination.

We found the new condo complex-so new it wasn’t even finished. A security van was parked at the far end, the lone occupant’s head down, reading or dozing. Jack pulled in, headlights off, and slid the car into the equipment lot between a crane and a bulldozer.

Across the road a billboard exhorted home buyers to “Experience the adventure. Live life in the heart of the game.” As I cracked open my window, I was hard-pressed to feel the adventure…or the life. The stale stink of dust filled the air. Empty window frames stared out like dead eyes. Sheets of plastic covered the board studded walls, the eerie slap-slap of the plastic the only sound.

I closed my window.

“Not quite the scenario we expected,” I said. “Too open. Too…empty.”

He nodded, gaze scanning the complex.

“Do you have a plan?”

“Working on it.”