Bad Guys (29 page)

“Bingo. So we take a few runs by your place, till we see the car, follow it, and you know the rest. But you want to know an even bigger coinky-dink?”

I said nothing.

“When we were looking for that car, around where this detective lives, we saw a car out back that looked awfully familiar to us. An old Buick. The night before, we were out conducting a bit of business, and this Buick starts tailing us, even started shooting at us. We got a pretty good idea it was this Jones fellow, although he had someone else in the car with him.”

I felt a bit weak in the knees. “What kind of business?” I asked, playing dumb.

“We’re also in the retail business. We sell suits. Nothing but the best. Like this,” he said, stepping out from behind the desk, raising his hands and turning around. “Pretty nice merchandise, wouldn’t you say? Armani.”

“The suits,” I said. “I saw them in the garage. So you guys not only deal cocaine, you steal high-end designer clothing.”

Bullock smiled. “We’re diversified. That’s the kind of economy we’re dealing with these days. Can’t put all your eggs in one basket.” He paused, said to Pockmark, “I wonder how things are going in the garage?”

I wondered, too. Maybe Trimble was out there. Maybe he’d subdued Blondie, was on his way to take out his buddy and the Barbie collector.

Bullock pressed the intercom unit on his desk. “Hey!” he shouted. “How’s it going out there? Hello?”

There was a bit of static and shouting as Bullock and Blondie tried to speak to each other at the same time. Bullock looked at me sadly, shook his head. “I’m trying to run this place more professionally, and look at the 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.”

“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
was
a good development.

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
The French Connection
. That’s where they hid the stuff in the movie.”

“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 drove it out of the compound.”

Bullock thought about that. “I don’t know. Maybe we should go talk to him, this Mr. Jones.” He smiled at me. “I understand he ran into a little difficulty, but that he’s still among the living. Maybe he’d be up to a few questions.”

“I’m telling you,” I said, “I’ve had the car the whole time.”

Bullock considered that. “Then that means the drugs were taken out of the car before it went up for auction. But we know the cops never found them, because they were never entered into evidence.”

“Which means someone else knew what was in the car, and got to it before we had a chance,” said Blondie.

Bullock’s head went up and down, very slowly. “I think we’re going to need a little more help with this,” he said, and then took in a deep breath and shouted so loud it made my ears ring, “Trimble!”

What?

There seemed no mistaking what Bullock had said. He hadn’t exactly whispered it.

And then the side door to the garage opened, and Detective Steve Trimble stepped in. He strolled over to where Bullock and I were standing.

“You called,” he said to Bullock.

I had a feeling my situation had gone from bad to much, much worse.

“IT’S GOT TO BE EDDIE MAYHEW,” Trimble said.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Bullock said. “Mayhew, that son of a bitch, and after all we’ve done for him.”

I thought back. The man I’d interviewed, for my feature on the government auction.

“Don’t we pay him enough, that he shouldn’t double-cross us?” Bullock asked.

“He knew you were interested in the car, right?” Trimble asked.

Bullock nodded. “So if he knew we were interested, he had to suspect why, and he got into that car before it went up on the block.”

“And sold the stuff himself.”

“I’m betting the Jamaicans,” Bullock said.

“What an absolute moron,” Trimble said. “First, crossing you; second, dealing with the Jamaicans. They’re crazy. They can’t be trusted.”

“Pay him a visit,” Bullock said. “He either coughs up the stuff, or the money he got for selling it to someone else.”

“Even if he sold it, he won’t have got for it what you would have,” the police detective said.

“Either way, bring him back here so that I might have a word with him,” Bullock said. “And you know what, why don’t you take your new friend along with you.” He nodded in my direction. “Only a minute ago he offered to do whatever he could to help us get our goods back. As long as the girl’s here, I don’t think he’s going to give you much trouble.”

Trimble shrugged. “Sure,” he said, and turned to me. “I love company.”

“You know where Eddie lives?” Bullock asked.

Trimble said he did, out in Delton, a town just beyond Oakwood.

“And call in,” Bullock told Trimble. “Every half hour. I don’t hear from you, then our friend here doesn’t have to worry about coming back here for his daughter.”

I swallowed hard. And I wanted some clarification. “You mean a half hour from now, which would be, like, 1:16 A.M., or every half hour on the 12 and the 6, which would be a lot easier to keep track of?”

Bullock stared at me, rolled his eyes. The kinds of decisions you had to make when you were in charge. “On the 12 and the 6. First call, 1:30 A.M.”

“Okay,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure. And can I say goodbye to Angie before we leave?”

Bullock shook his head. “Would you just fucking go?”

“Come on,” Trimble said to me. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get back.”

We walked down the cobblestone drive together, neither of us speaking, then hiked up Wyndham to where he’d left his unmarked cruiser. “Ever get to drive a police car?” he asked. I said no. “Here’s your big chance.” He unlocked the car, and once I was behind the wheel and he was in the passenger seat, he tossed me the keys.

“You know the way to Delton?”

I nodded, turned the engine on, and started taking us in the direction of the expressway. It was dark in the car, the only light coming from the gauges on the dash and the streetlights as we passed under them. I suspected the gun was going to slip out of the bottom of my pants any time now, but the odds were that Trimble wouldn’t notice. My foot, down by the accelerator, was shrouded in darkness, and the police communication system in the center of the dash further obscured the view.

“I guess you’re thinking you’d have been better off calling 911,” Trimble said, turning slightly in the seat so he could watch me without getting a crick in his neck. I figured he wanted me behind the wheel so I wouldn’t have my hands free to try anything.

“Yeah, in retrospect,” I said. “Although it proves Bullock’s no liar. He has someone on the inside.”

“Yeah, well, I doubt I’m the only one. Lenny Indigo was pretty resourceful that way, developing friends where he could best use them.”

“It didn’t keep him out of jail.”

“Yeah,” Trimble said. “Things finally caught up with him.” He paused. “It happens sometimes.”

“I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and guess that, back on that night when you and Lawrence Jones were partners, and that kid took a shot at him, and you hesitated?”

I glanced over at Trimble. His eyes had become slits.

“I’m guessing you didn’t just hesitate out of fear or anything. I’m guessing you recognized that kid. I remember Lawrence saying that he worked for Indigo’s organization, and when you saw him, in the light, you recognized him. Maybe even knew him. And you also knew that he and you reported to the same guy, which made you think that maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to shoot him.”