Sting (5 page)

“How'd you know they were carrying?” Joe asked.

“I have a talent for that, too,” he said without false modesty. “I spot someone packing, I keep an eye on him. Or her. But those two didn't seem to be looking for trouble.”

“Ms. Bennett, was she packing?”

“No. Purse was too small and her clothes fit her too good.” He flashed a man-to-man smile, which Joe was hard-pressed not to return.

“Tell me about the other guy.”

He squinted one eye. “Better looking than his pal, for sure. In fact, they didn't strike me as two who'd be friends. They were as different from each other as daylight from dark.”

“How so?”

“Every way. The fat guy seemed more easygoing. Looked you in the eye when talking to you. He drank beer and went through a bowl of popcorn. The other one never touched it. He drank two shots of tequila. Oh, sorry about the glass.”

They'd learned from Morrow that the bartender had washed it as soon as his customer had emptied it, so there was little hope of lifting prints from it for identification. The beer bottles Mickey Bolden had drunk from had gone into a barrel with other trash, but they hadn't been needed to ID him.

“What else about the two?” Joe asked.

“The fat guy talked a lot more. The other one didn't say much at all. Avoided eye contact. Never caught him smiling. Looked like a man with a lot on his mind.”

“Taciturn,” Joe said.

“If that means ‘Do not mess with me,' then yeah. Wore the warning like a sign around his neck.”

Hick asked, “Did you notice any reaction from them when Ms. Bennett came in?”

“I really couldn't say because my attention was on her. I remember serving them another round after her arrival, though. The beer drinker seemed to be in no particular hurry to finish. But the other made quick work of his tequila, then went over to the jukebox.”

He told them that Mickey had made a phone call, and when he concluded it, he paid their tab with cash and joined his buddy at the jukebox. Soon after that, they left together.

“Neither said anything to Ms. Bennett?” Joe asked.

“No. And I'm certain of that, because by then the kid had moved in and was hassling her. I was on the verge of telling him to back off when she up and left.”

“How long behind the two men did she leave?”

“Minutes after. Five, maybe.”

Joe rubbed his eyes, which were gritty from lack of sleep and stinging from the lingering tobacco fog in the bar. “Okay, the taciturn one, can you give us a more detailed physical description?” He began by asking his height, wanting to know if the bartender's recollection corresponded with Royce Sherman's “on the tall side.”

“Six three at least. Lean, but ripped. More wide receiver than running back. Y'all Saints fans?”

Joe nodded, asking, “His approximate age?”

“Hmm, mid- to late thirties. A face that severe, it's hard to tell.”

“Hair?”

“Brownish. Longish. Not as long as mine.”

Joe noted the length of the man's braid and smiled. “That'd be hard for any man to beat.”

“His came to his collar in back.”

“Facial hair?”

He stroked his luxuriant beard. “No. I would've noticed.”

“Tattoos, scars, piercings? Anything like that?”

“No tattoos. None visible, anyway.” He extended his arms. “I would have noticed ink. He did have a scar, though. Here,” he said, touching the side of his chin.

Joe's heart skipped.

Hick stopped pecking on his iPad screen and raised his head.

Joe cleared his throat. “You sure?”

“About the scar? Yeah,” the bartender replied. “I noticed because it cut through his scruff. Oh, does that count as facial hair? He'd gone two, maybe three days without shaving.”

“Describe the scar.”

“Well, as I was facing him, it was…” He used Joe's chin as a means of remembering correctly. “On the left side. Sort of curved, like the letter
C
, only backward,” he said, drawing one in the air inches from Joe's face.

Without taking his eyes off the bartender, Joe asked Hick, “Got a picture handy?”

Joe's heart had resumed beating and now thudded with dread as Hick went through the necessary steps to open his photos file. He brought up a mug shot, zoomed it into a close-up, and turned the screen toward the bartender, who happily exclaimed, “That's the guy. No question.” Then, gauging their expressions, his white smile wavered. “Not good?”

Joe turned away and reached for his cell phone, saying to Hick over his shoulder, “I gotta alert the office.”

Hick was left to answer the bartender's question. “No. Not good. Especially for Jordie Bennett.”

W
ell?” Shaw demanded.

“What is that?”

Holding the scrap of food wrapper by both ends directly in front of Jordie Bennett's face, he stretched it taut so she could better see what had been scrawled on it. “A phone number. Local area code.”

“That was in my pocket?” She looked from the strip of paper into his eyes. “I don't know anything about it.”

He unsnapped the breast pocket of his shirt and stuffed the paper inside. “Right. And the jerk in the bar was also a total stranger.”

“He was.”

“You didn't cry foul when this stranger started rubbing your ass.”

“I didn't want to make a scene.”

“You made a scene when you walked into that place.”

“I told him to take his hand off me or else. I didn't know he was slipping something into my pocket.”

“Convenient, that he had the number already written down. Like he knew you'd be there and planned on sneaking it to you.”

“I'm telling you, I don't know anything about it.”

“Next you'll be telling me that you're a regular customer, that you go there every night for your glass of white wine.” When she didn't immediately respond, he tilted his head. “Well? Had you ever darkened the door of that place before tonight? Had you ever even driven past it?”

She said nothing.

“Thought so.” He closed his hand around her elbow and nudged her forward. “But you went there tonight and let that jackass fondle you.”

“Exactly. He was a jackass. Why would I want his phone number?”

He drew up short and faced her. “I never said it was
his
.”

Her breath caught. They stared at each other for a ponderous few moments, then she blinked several times and said, “Who else's would it be?”

He leaned in and whispered, “You tell me, Jordie.”

She held his gaze but wasn't quailed by it. In fact, her eyes narrowed. “How did you and your partner know I would be in that bar tonight?”

Shaw eased himself back. “We didn't. Truth is, it shocked the hell out of us when you came in. I had my heart set on a triple-X pay-per-view in the motel followed by a good night's sleep. Then there you were. Scrub plan A. We need a plan B.

“So I mosey over to assess the situation. In the meantime, Mickey makes a phone call, and comes back with, ‘Get her done.' ‘Here? Now?' I ask. ‘Here, now,' he says. I had no choice except to go along. To a point.”

He let all that sink in. “But don't mistakenly think that by putting a bullet through his fat brain that I was saving your skin. I was saving mine. Because as Mickey and I were closing in on you, it occurred to me that when he left that parking lot, there were going to be two bodies on the ground, and that one of them was going to be mine.”

He shuffled forward a few inches, crowding in on her again. “So, Jordie, you see why it's important for me to know what you were doing in that place tonight, at that particular time, because to me it looks like a setup.”

Her lips parted, but whatever she'd intended to say remained unspoken. Finally she said, “I wasn't part of any setup involving you. I don't even know your name.”

“Shaw Kinnard. Pleased to meet you. Why were you in that bar?”

“Impulse.”

“Bullshit.”

“I stopped in to have a drink.”

“At a place where you wouldn't ordinarily be caught dead. No pun intended. Who sent you there?”

“No one.”

“Someone.”

She took a deep breath and shook back her hair. “Okay, I'll play along. What were you being set up for?”

“To take the fall for killing you. Mickey even told me to grab your purse, make it look like a robbery gone south so the hit couldn't be linked to anybody else.”

“That would have required some elaborate staging. He couldn't have—”

“He could. He has. He was a pro, well known to cops but never prosecuted. One of his means of consistently getting off clean was to blame the dead dude.”

She absorbed that, then said, “I don't know anything about him, or his reputation, or a setup. You're just being paranoid.”

“You're goddamn right I am.” He stated that in a low, tight voice that left the words vibrating between them. “Now. For the last time. Who sent you there tonight?”

Her gaze dropped to his shirt pocket where he'd stashed the slip of paper with the telephone number on it, then she turned her head away from him. “Nobody. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You're lying through your teeth. But I'm not going to waste any more time trying to get the truth out of you here.” He took her elbow again and propelled her toward the car.

She seemed relieved to be off the hook, at least for the present, and went more or less docilely. But when they reached the car and he pulled her hands together, she resisted.

“Please don't. It hurts.”

“That's your fault. Stop pulling against it.” He turned her back to him, but, before clipping on the cuff, he said, “But just to show you that I can be a nice guy…” He padded her wrists by wrapping them with another bandana before fastening the restraint.

She didn't thank him or acknowledge the gesture. Instead she jerked herself away from his touch as he handed her into the backseat. She sat staring straight ahead while he removed her sandals and tied her ankles with the original bandana.

That done, he opened the trunk and worked a bottle of drinking water out of a pack. He returned to the open door of the backseat, uncapped the water bottle, and extended it toward her mouth. “It's not cold, but it's wet.”

“I'm fine.”

“You'll dehydrate.”

“The sooner I die, the sooner you can collect your money.”

“That's just it. Dying of thirst takes too long.”

He nudged her lips with the rim of the bottle and when she still refused to drink, he said, “It's a painful way to check out, but suit yourself.” He tilted the bottle to his mouth and drained it, then used the back of his hand to wipe a dribble off his chin. He caught her looking at his scar. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“I fell off my bike when I was a kid.”

The drop-dead look she gave him said she knew he was lying. The scar was too recent to have been caused by a childhood mishap.

“Does your head hurt?” he asked.

“No.”

He slid two fingers through her hair at the side of her head and explored her scalp. When he located a small bump, she winced. “Why lie about it? I have some Advil.”

“No thank you.”

“Look, I told you that torture wasn't part of this gig. So take the damn—”

“No. Thank. You.”

“Fine.”

He moved to the trunk, tossed the empty water bottle into it, closed it, then returned to her. “Lie down.”

“I'll sit.”

“You'll be more comfortable lying down than sitting up with your hands behind you.”

She turned her head aside, clearly spurning his suggestion.

“I'm not giving you a choice this time, Jordie. Either lie down, or I'll tie your feet to the door handle and make it impossible for you to sit up.”

“Go to hell.”

“Been already.”

He was about to force the issue of her lying down when he hesitated. Instead, he placed the tip of his index finger in the center of her forehead and traced her stubborn profile down the length of her nose, past her mouth, and over her chin before letting his hand fall away. “Have to say, I admire your sass. You could be bawling and begging.”

“I'll never beg you for my life.”

“Bet you do.”

“You'll be disappointed.”

He let a few seconds elapse, then said, “Maybe you won't. Bawling and begging are more your brother's style. He caves quick, doesn't he?”

Her head snapped around and she shot him a glare.

He huffed a laugh. “Well, that sure as hell struck a nerve.” Grinning with satisfaction, he motioned for her to lie down. “Don't make me tie you down.”

The look she gave him would have blistered paint, but she lay down on her side. He shut the door, got into the driver's seat, put the car in reverse, and backed out of the pockmarked side road and onto the highway.

Nothing more was said, but he could feel her anger smoldering. Eventually it cooled, and when he glanced between the seats a half hour later, he saw that she'd gone to sleep. Either that, or she had gotten better at playing possum.

Letting her go behind the tree to relieve herself hadn't been a chivalrous nod to her modesty. It had been a test, and she had passed.

He knew perfectly well that the redneck with the skull on his shirt had been nothing more to her than a nuisance. If he'd been a player of any significance, she would have memorized the phone number he slipped her and then disposed of the evidence, probably before she left the bar, but if not then, then surely while she was out of sight behind the tree. If she'd known about the scrap of paper in her seat pocket, it wouldn't have still been there when she rejoined him.

But he'd reasoned that if he made an issue of it, hammered her with questions about that guy and his phone number, he would eventually break her and learn why she'd gone to that bar tonight. Because he knew damn well that it wasn't happenstance.

As the sun was coming up, he pulled off the two-lane highway onto another side road that was almost as rough as the first. Leaving the car to idle, he got out and opened the trunk.

He took what he needed from it and by the time he opened the backseat door, she was struggling to sit up. He reached in to help her, but she recoiled, saying “I can manage.”

“Maybe, but it's my time you're wasting.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder and levered her upright. She looked at him resentfully but then noticed the bandana he was shaking out of its folded square. “How many of those do you have?”

“They come twelve to a pack.”

“What's this one for?”

He placed his foot on the door frame and used his raised knee as a platform on which to fold the bandana into a triangle, then to fold the center point forward several times until he'd formed a strip about three inches wide. “Blindfold.”

“What?”

“Blind—”

“You're going to blindfold me? Why?”

He gave her a stupid-question look.

“So I can't see when you shoot me?” Her voice went thin with panic. Just a trace, but discernible.

“Turn your head,” he said.

“No.”

“You're not gonna face a firing squad, Jordie. I just don't want you to see where we're going.”

“I have no idea where we
are
much less where we're going. Not even the direction—”

“Turn your head.”

“I can't see anything when I'm lying down. That's why you insisted on it, right? So I couldn't see road signs? The only thing I can see through the window is the sky.”

“Which was fine when it was dark. But now it's getting light.”

“I won't be able to see anything.”

“Not if you're blindfolded. Now turn your head so I can tie this on.”

“You'll have to force me.”

“Is that what you want?”

She didn't move.

“Goddammit,” he said under his breath. “It's been a long night. I'm tired of this crap.”

“I'm tired of
you
,” she said, her voice cracking. “Why don't you just get it over with. Panella wouldn't know when—” She broke off when she realized she had blurted out the name.

It hovered there, a sound wave momentarily trapped between them. Moving slowly, Shaw bent down to bring them eye to eye. “Ooops.” He said it softly but with enough emphasis for her to feel his puff of breath against her face. “Earlier you asked who'd hired Mickey and me to kill you. Why'd you play dumb when you knew it was Billy Panella?”

When she didn't answer, he pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped her head back so she had to look at him directly. “Do you know where he is, Jordie?”

“How would I know?”

“Fucking good question.”

“No one knows. He vanished. No one's seen or heard from him—”

“Mickey did.”

That momentarily stymied her. Then she said, “Well, I certainly haven't. I'd be the last person he would contact.”

“You're completely in the dark about where he is?”

“Completely.”

“Then why was he willing to pay two hundred grand to put you on ice?”

“You can ask him that when you renegotiate your deal. But if he thinks I know anything about
anything
, he's wasting his money to have me killed.”

“What about your brother Josh? Does he know Panella's whereabouts?”

Her blue eyes were turbulent with anger, frustration, possibly fear, a catalog of strong emotions, but she didn't verbalize any of them, perhaps fearing that she would make another slip.

He goaded her with a cold grin. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Not at all. I can articulate
Go to hell
.”

They stared at each other for several moments, then he said, “Interesting.” She didn't ask him what was interesting, but he continued as though she had. “Yesterday morning as Mickey and I were leaving the city, he pointed out a billboard on the freeway.”

Her face remained impassive.

“The thing couldn't be missed. ‘Extravaganza' was spelled out in glittering capital letters, a sparkly firework exploding behind the letter
E
. And across the bottom of the sign was your name.”

He gave her time to comment. She didn't.

“Now, your brother being an outlaw and all—”

“Josh hasn't confessed to or been convicted of a crime.”

“—you'd think that you, his big sister, would want to keep a low profile. Maybe move someplace where you weren't so well known, even change your name to avoid any connection to him.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “But you didn't do that, Jordie. You put your name up on a billboard for all the world to see.”