a moment.
Whit tucked the gun into the back of his pants.
The door opened. Paul Bellini stepped out from the driver’s side. Left the door open. Kept his hands down by his side. He wore a heavy leather jacket, thick-armed.
‘Put your hands on your head,’ Whit called.
Paul didn’t raise his hands. ‘This is an exchange. Not a surrender.’
Whit stepped out from the dark. ‘Where’s Gooch?’
‘He’s in the trunk.’
‘Open the trunk and bring him out.’
‘Slow down. Where’s Eve?’
‘In my van.’
‘Get her out here.’ Paul took a step forward.
They stood ten feet away from each other, the dim light flat against the asphalt, Paul more in the light, Whit on the edge of the dark.
‘This is how it works,’ Whit said. ‘I give you the keys to the van. Eve is inside. You give me the keys to the Porsche. I drive off, you drive off.’
‘I’m not trading a Porsche for your shit-ass van,’ Paul said.
‘You’re a real long-term-vision guy, aren’t you? I’ll get Gooch out, dump the car, and call you to tell you where your car’s at, okay?’ The weight of the gun pressed against the back of his pants. Sure that Paul had a gun under that leather coat, wondering am I fast enough to fire before be can? Figuring the math of death, dizzy but not exactly afraid.
Paul surprised him with a little laugh. Too calm for this. ‘Sure you will.’
‘I don’t want your car, you dumbass.’
‘Fine. Bring me the keys, then, buddy.’ Paul gestured at Whit with his fingertips. Whit took one step forward, walking into the light.
‘By the way,’ Whit said. ‘The same files I got from Tasha after she copied Eve’s hard drive, they’re attached to an e-mail message outlining your activities. Addressed to the DA’s office and to the police. It’s scheduled to go out in an hour with all those files attached. If I’m not there to delete that message, it mails. So you kill me, you’re still screwed. Do you understand me?’
‘Perfectly,’ Paul said. ‘You’re a clever bastard. You want a job?’
‘We’ve got different work styles.’
‘How do I know you won’t send the files anyway?’
‘Trust me.’
‘Trust you.’
‘I’m trusting that Gooch isn’t dead in that trunk,’ Whit said.
‘I’m trusting the same about Eve.’
Across the street, in the darkened church lot, a gentle little pop sounded. Like a door clicking shut. Then another. Paul started to glance over his shoulder, then didn’t.
‘What was that?’ Whit said.
‘The sound of me trusting you. Here are the keys,’ Paul said. He tossed them carefully to Whit, who caught them one-handed. ‘Go.’
Whit tossed the van keys to Paul. ‘Now we each turn around and walk away.’ Deciding he could open the trunk with the remote, be sure Gooch was okay, then drive off fast. He wouldn’t have to shoot Paul, he could outrun him in the Porsche. Whit stepped into the cool pool of the light.
He heard clinking, saw a glint in Paul’s hand. An end of a chain was there, thick-linked, Paul pulling it free from his jacket’s sleeve and running forward, Whit reaching for his gun. The heavy end of the chain was already swinging toward his face and Whit fell back onto pavement, his gun under him. The chain whirled, arcing above Whit, the light showing Paul’s face twisted in triumph. Whit raised his arms to shield himself.
Paul Bellini’s head blossomed in red. The crack of the rifle shot echoed against the brick walls and Paul fell, the strings of life cut.
Then silence except for the chain falling across Whit, clanking against the concrete.
Whit scrabbled to his feet. He couldn’t risk leaving Gooch in that Porsche trunk. He had to know. He ran to the sports car. He still had Paul’s keys in his hand.
A shot roared again, the bullet whistling behind his head. He hunkered low on the concrete, crab-crawled into the Porsche.
A bullet slammed against the car’s side. He was aware he was driving off in a murdered man’s car, leaving a van behind that was registered in Gooch’s name. The night had taken a horrible left turn.
He started the car, blasted out of the lot, the Porsche’s wheel cool and clean and responsive under his hand. God, please let Gooch be inside.
He didn’t hear the sound of another shot.
Whit tore down the service road, back around the building, barreling out onto Buffalo. He turned at the service road that ran parallel to Highway 59, shot down to Shepherd, finally pulling into a closed Catholic school, clicking open the trunk door.
Gooch lay inside, his face a collage of purple, sluggish, tied up. But breathing.
He had Gooch, but the situation had gotten a thousand times worse.
Tasha watched the Porsche rocket away. Gary lay dead at her feet, the scorch hole in his temple from the cell-phone gun black like a burn. Max was next to him, a similar little gap in the back of his neck still smoking. She left the rifle on the asphalt, straightened the latex gloves she’d hidden in her purse earlier, got in the Mustang Max had driven them over in, and started up the engine.
She could see Paul’s body on the pavement, face down, as she drove past. Too bad, really. Born in the wrong family. Born in a decent family, he might’ve made his looks, his ambition work for him. She’d miss the sex; he’d been good at that, but that punching and crying crap worked her nerves. Thank God that was over.
No need to go check Whit’s van. She knew Eve Michaels wasn’t in there anyway. Whit Mosley was a liar.
Tasha Strong drove off into the night, humming a little, smiling at her dream unfolding.
36
You’re screwing up, Claudia told herself. She waited in her car outside the gated compound at Greg Buckman’s address at 3478 Alabama. It was shortly after eleven on Saturday night, and she heard the soft strains of a party: laughter, a thumping bass beat, the clink of bottles. Because you go down this route, you’re putting your career at stake.
The file in her lap told her all she could learn in short order about Greg Buckman. His credit history (excellent), his income (over two hundred thousand a year or so ago, but less than thirty thousand reported to the IRS last year), his family (two parents who lived in Little Rock, one sister). All delivered courtesy of Barbara Zachary, Harry Chyme’s assistant, who didn’t need to be asked twice when Claudia said, ‘I got a lead on a guy who may have info about Harry’s death but needs pressuring to make him talk. Can you dig on him?’ and Barbara, dialing and typing like an avenging angel, working the keyboards, Internet databases, and phones with a singular purpose, faxed pages to Claudia’s motel with rapidfire response.
She scanned through the credit pages again. No charges to his Visa or his AmEx for anything other than restaurants, bars, and a surprising wave of charges to bookstores, both brick and on-line. He must be a voracious reader. Most criminals weren’t, but then maybe he wasn’t what Whit thought he was.
The grabber, of course, was his drop in income. He’d made a fortune at Energis. But that money, and the chance to earn a high salary in the corporate world, had evaporated in the wave of shareholder lawsuits. He claimed, on his last tax return, to run a consulting company, but she wondered how eager companies were to hire an exec tarred with the filth of the Energis brush. The company, nationally, had been reduced to a joke, a catchphrase for greed and malfeasance. No matter that thousands of honest workers had toiled there with good intentions.
