Exit Strategy (42 page)

And here I’d been lying in bed beside him, my shirt riding up around my stomach, more than half naked, and he hadn’t so much as snuck a second look…if he’d even noticed at all. That stung.

As I pulled back and tugged the covers over my legs, he looked over sharply, as if startled.

“You tired?” he said.

“No, and it wouldn’t matter if I was. Once I start having the nightmares, they don’t end until I stop sleeping.”

He nodded. I adjusted the sheet some more, but he still didn’t get up. His hand moved to the space between us, bracing himself, and his bicep flexed. The skin there was rough, unnatural, and when I looked closer, I could make out the ghost of a surgically erased tattoo, a symbol of some kind, invisible from more than a few inches away.

My gaze slid off his arm to another patch of disfigured skin over his breast. A star-shaped pattern of quarter-inch circular burns. I’d seen marks like that before, and knew immediately what they were. Cigarette burns—the lit end held against the skin, applying enough pressure to scorch but not to put out the flame. A crude torture tactic. These marks were old, the burns faded to skin color.

Jack followed my gaze before I could look away.

“War wounds.” His mouth opened again, as if considering saying more. It shut, then reopened, but he only said, “Old.”

“So I see.”

Again, that hesitation, lips parted, debating the urge to say more. Again, he stopped himself. Again, he restarted.

“Hungry?”

“What?”

“You hungry? We could get breakfast. Catch an earlier flight.”

Figures. Here I am, waiting for a great personal revelation, and he’s just trying to figure out whether it’s too early to suggest breakfast.

“Well, I’m up,” I said. “But you’re the one whose sleep was disturbed, so if you’d rather catch another couple of hours—”

“Didn’t disturb me.”

“Okay, then. We might as well get going. As for breakfast—” I checked the bedside clock. Four-ten. “Our chances of finding a place serving food at this time are pretty slim.”

“It’s Vegas.”

“Right. Breakfast it is then.”

I shifted up in bed, but he still made no move to stand until I tapped his leg. As he turned, I saw a pair of fresh scratches clawed across his back.

I touched them with my fingertips. “Did I do that?”

“Hardly mortal.”

“Geez, I’m—”

“Don’t say it.”

We put on our disguises, but didn’t play them up to full effect. It was four-thirty in the morning, and neither of us was in the mood to take on the guise of a character who made our skin crawl.

By four-forty-five, we were seated in the corner of a diner, as far as we could get from the other patrons, most of whom were nursing coffees in silence, recovering from a long night of drink or disappointment.

As I rearranged the containers on the table, Jack thumbed through the menu. Under the harsh florescent lights, he no longer looked sexy. Just tired. Very tired, the creases over his nose turned into furrows, shadows under his eyes, skin pale against the beard shadow, the black threaded with gray.

“At least now we know who we’re looking for,” I said quietly.

A slow nod.

“But it doesn’t really help, does it?” I laid down my menu, and traced my finger over the cartoon pig on the front. “All we have is a name, and it’s not even a name; it’s an alias.”

“Evelyn knows his name.”

“His real name?”

“Yeah. Evelyn knows everyone’s name.” A pause. “Well, most everyone.”

“But not yours.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

The obvious segue here was to talk about Evelyn and her relationship with Wilkes. Back when we’d been compiling the list, Wilkes had been the first name to Jack’s lips. But Evelyn had dismissed him in a heartbeat.

His wasn’t the only name she’d dismissed, and we hadn’t discounted any of them. Given Evelyn’s reaction to Baron, her fast and strong opinions on our suspects hadn’t seemed out of character. And yet…

I thought back to when we’d gone after Little Joe’s first hitman—Bert—and how she’d tried to stop me. Had it been more than a test? Had she worried that the hitman might be someone she knew? Someone she hadn’t wanted me going after?

Could Evelyn be
involved
? Could that be why she’d been so adamant about joining the search, to keep an eye on our progress? I didn’t know her well enough to form an opinion. Someone at this table did, and I knew I had to ask, but wasn’t sure how I could. Whatever his quarrel with Evelyn over me, there was a deep history between them, an almost parental relationship. What if Jack couldn’t bring himself to consider the possibility—

“For two hundred million?” he said. “Or a decent cut? Yeah. She’d do it.”

I blinked. “Wha—?”

“Evelyn. The big question. Could she be part of this.”

“Was I talking out loud?”

A tiny smile and shake of his head. “We were talking about Evelyn. Her and Wilkes. You went quiet. Looked worried.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t take ESP.”

“And you think the answer is yes? That she could be involved?”

He sipped his coffee. “Gut reaction? No. But that’s not good enough. Question’s there. Needs an answer. From the head. Not the gut. Could she?” He stared out the window at the passing cars. “Not impossible.”

“You think, if someone offered her a cut of two hundred million—”

I stopped and realized what I was saying. How many people would help a killer if it meant a share of that kind of money?

I continued, “But she has to be smart enough to know the government would never pay that much—”

“She is. But is this it? The final play? Maybe there’s more. Some…way of getting it. Even a partial payment…” He paused, still watching traffic. “Bigger question? Would she work with Wilkes? Can’t see it.”

“So you think we should—?”

“Dismiss it? Can’t. Like I said. It’s a question. Needs an answer. How?” He tapped the menu. “Eat first.”

The server approached, refilled our coffees and started to leave again. We had to call her back to place an order. She seemed a bit put out, as if this shift demanded little more of her than carrying around a pot of fresh coffee and that was how she liked it.

After she left, I said, “Back to Evelyn knowing Wilkes’s real name. How much good will that do us?”

“Depends.”

“On how much he still uses it for anything.”

“Yeah.”

I sipped my coffee. “Maybe you don’t know Wilkes as well as Evelyn does, but you must have some opinion on this exit strategy of his. Was his original plan to just cover Kozlov’s death? Kill off the only witness? Maybe because Kozlov
had
tried to activate his blackmail retirement plan. Or is this where Wilkes was headed all along?
His
retirement plan. Try to earn himself a huge pension and get rid of Kozlov as a bonus?”

“Doesn’t need a pension. Put in all these years? At this level? Unless you got bad habits, you got money. I do. Evelyn does. Fucking all you have. But you have it.”

“And Wilkes didn’t have any ‘bad habits’ when you knew him? Drinking, gambling, drugs?”

“You get bad habits? You don’t last. Get desperate. Get caught. Small shit? Drink too much Friday nights? Play the ponies Saturday afternoons? Yeah, sure. Doesn’t dent his paycheck.”

“So he’s developed a jones for the killing, is that what you figure?”

Jack sipped his coffee, then nodded. “Yeah. Fits him. Fits the situation, too. Retiring, all that.”

“One last bang before you go?”

He leaned back in his seat, fingers tapping against the side of his mug. “More like figuring out you got no place to go. All this work. For what? To retire? To what? Go fly-fishing? Buy a condo in Florida? Take a cruise? Guys like Wilkes. Like me. Like Evelyn. This is it. You get this far because this is all you got. Some guys have more. Kids. Girlfriends. Wives. Bunch of wives, more like. But they’re pulling jobs for five grand. Kill-the-cheating-bitch shit. Real money comes with real risk. You don’t do that with kids, wives, whatever.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he kept going, leaning forward now. “That’s why I tell you, you got it right. Something else besides this. The lodge. Your life there. Ever comes a time? You have to choose?”

“I know what I’d pick, Jack. There wouldn’t be much sense in keeping this job and losing the lodge when the main reason I have this job is for the lodge.”

“Keep it that way.”

Our orders arrived. I sliced into my egg and cut a clean stroke through the solid yolk…a yolk that was supposed to be over-easy. I carved a line around the yellow and took a bite of white.

“Seems like you’ve given this some thought,” I said after a moment, my gaze still on my plate. “Retiring, I mean.”

When he didn’t answer, I glanced up, hoping the question hadn’t offended him, but he was in the midst of chewing. He finished, then said, “Did. Past tense. Couple years ago. Thought I was ready. Realized I wasn’t.”

He sliced into his ham steak. “It’s like any job. Whole time you’re looking at the exit door. When will I have enough? Money, I had. Still young enough to enjoy it.”

“That’s important.”

“Yeah. But enjoy it how? Piss off to some tropical island? Lay on the beach all day? Work on my tan?”

I grinned. “Hey, you could always pull a Brando. Retreat from the world, buy an island and set up your own little tropical kingdom. Build up a harem, laze around getting laid and getting fat.”

He gave me a look that said he’d as soon stick lit match-sticks under his fingernails.

“Seriously, though, there must have been something you wanted to do, something you always planned to do when you retired.”

“Travel.”

“Now that’d be cool.”

“You like traveling?”

“I’m really more of a homebody, but it would be nice to see the world once. Visit all the places you’ve read about.”

He laid down his fork. “Seeing Paris in the spring. Strolling the Great Wall. Standing under the pyramids in the moonlight. Sounds great. Reality? Standing by a mountain of broken rock. Shoes full of sand. Sweating my ass off. Worrying about my pocket getting picked. Surrounded by strangers…” He shrugged. “Waste of fucking time. Might as well buy a book. Look at pictures.”

“I wouldn’t care. Sand, heat, pickpockets…it’d all be atmosphere. I’d just like to say I saw the pyramids.”

His gaze met mine, studying me, his fingers tapping the side of his mug, probably trying to decide whether he should ask if I wanted a coffee refill.

“Maybe…” he began. “Sometime? You wanna go? I’d go with you. See the pyramids—”

A crash across the diner cut him off.

FORTY-ONE

I twisted to see a red-faced man in a cowboy hat, a toppled canister of sugar at his feet, standing beside two uniformed officers on coffee break.

“Now, just calm down, sir,” the one officer said, keeping his voice low.

“I’ll calm down when I get some fucking answers! And the answer I want is why the fuck I can’t pay this!”

He thrust out a piece of green paper. From here, I could barely see it, but I knew what it was. A one-dollar bill.

“Shit,” I breathed, closing my eyes.

“It’s one fucking dollar,” the man continued. “I can find this much by digging through my sofa cushions. Do you think there’s a person in this room who wouldn’t pay this insurance policy?”

“I wouldn’t,” said the first officer’s partner as she swiveled her chair to face the man. “And do you know why? Because, if I did, what would stop a thousand other freaks from doing the same thing? If you pay once, you have to keep paying.”

I could feel myself nodding, but a glance around showed I was the only one.

“What you have to do, sir,” the second officer continued, “is put that dollar back in your pocket, go home to your family, look after them, and trust that we will look after you, and the FBI will catch this guy.”

“Catch him?” a woman yelled from across the diner. “The FBI has their heads so far up their asses they’re investigating drooling lunatics. They can’t even stop him when he hands them a schedule and directions.”

“Yeah,” a man’s voice boomed. “Tell that poor old fart in Chicago how safe he is. Can’t even take a crap without getting killed. And what about that Indian yesterday? Did the killer tell the Feds where he was going to be then, too?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the first officer said. “The FBI is conducting an independent investigation and we—”

“And you’re sitting on your asses eating doughnuts!”

A rumble went through the smattering of diners. As my hands clenched my mug, Jack’s knee brushed my leg. He jerked his chin toward the door, a twenty already on the table. When I hesitated, he caught my eye and shook his head, and with great reluctance, I stood. Around me, people continued to shout questions and abuse at the two officers. A few were already on their feet. Jack’s fingers wrapped around my upper arm. He leaned into my ear.

“You can’t help. Not now.”

I resisted for a moment, then yanked my gaze away and let him lead me from the diner.

So we knew there had been another killing since Chicago, and that the public knew about the opera house, too. All yesterday I’d avoided papers and radios and TVs, struggling to concentrate on the task at hand. Even now I did my best to resist. I walked past the newsstand at the airport terminal, tuned out other passengers’ conversations, even looked away from a big-screen TV tuned to CNN when the ticker flashed “Helter Skelter killer.” Like Jack said—and said often—knowing didn’t help, didn’t get me any closer to catching him.