The Bliss Factor (6 page)

“People die jousting,” Rae reminded him, needlessly as that would not have been an unwelcome fate for three men who sought to harm them.

“We are perfectly safe.”

“The other drivers, the innocent drivers, aren’t.”

He took that in, recognized his oversight, and put it away, not in the least insulted at being corrected by a woman, especially as she had failed to consider all angles of her own actions. “The blackguards are following us to our destination.”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding grim, “I get that.”

“It cannot be allowed.”

Rae didn’t respond, but Conn could see her thinking, working the problem over in her mind. For a minute, a split second really, he warred within himself, wanting to take charge of the situation and thwart their enemies himself. Then she looked at him, smiling coldly, and he let the ugliness slide back under its shroud and the world become a simple, sunny place again.

“I fail to understand your intention,” he said to her, “but I rejoice that it will be inflicted on someone else.”

Rae pushed some buttons on a small device on the panel to one side of the steering wheel, her smile turning yet more devilish as a tiny picture popped into colorful life.

Conn stared at the little picture, again feeling that sense of vague familiarity without definitive recognition. He reached for the buttons, but Rae slapped his hand away.

“It’s GPS—Global Positioning System.” She shook her head, apparently deciding it was too much to try to explain. “It provides a map to anyplace you want.”

“How is a map going to help us?” Conn asked, letting the rest of it go.

“It’s not the map,” Rae said, a glint in her eye that would have gotten her hanged as a witch had she lived in Conn’s time, “it’s the destination.”

When she was in college at the University of Michigan, Rae had interned one summer for the United Auto Workers union. Part of her job had been to travel around to the different Locals and audit their books. She’d managed not to find any irregularities. She might not have been born and raised in Michigan, but everyone had heard of Jimmy Hoffa, and she had no desire to solve the mystery of where he was buried by joining him there.

Probably not the kind of education intended by the internship program, but knowledge was knowledge, and sometimes it came in handy when you least expected it.

She stayed on Dixie Highway, heading into the city of Pontiac, Michigan, following the Hummer’s GPS directions to Woodward Avenue and then Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. UAW Local 594, proud representatives of large truck and SUV makers, sat along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Rae guided the Hummer into the entrance of the local union hall, the Honda following right along. Until, she assumed, the driver got a good look at the building, with its large lettering and distinctive logo. The Honda made a wide circle around the parking lot. Rae floored it, the Hummer’s tires squealing as it lumbered toward the single driveway, just barely beating out the smaller, more agile car. Rae angled the Hummer across the exit, completely blocking in the Honda.

Even on a Sunday there were men in the union hall. They came spilling out the door, alerted by the shriek of rubber on pavement and the roar of engines. And then they spied the Honda. The driver backed away, circling the parking lot again, looking for a way out.

A couple of guys disappeared into the union hall, the rest scattered into the parking lot, coming back with tire irons, baseball bats, and a whole lot of anger directed at anyone misguided enough to drive a foreign vehicle onto union property during the current automotive meltdown.

“Are those men angry?” Conn wanted to know.

“Yes, but it’s too complicated to explain.”

Like the GPS, the ins and outs of the world market, bankruptcy, and the domestic workforce’s disgust with foreign-built vehicles were a lot for someone from twenty-first century Detroit to comprehend, so Rae chose to forego explanations.

The Honda rolled to a stop, the three guys inside radiating fear. Even the car seemed to brace itself for what it knew was coming.

A tire iron smashed into the Honda’s windshield, and the driver’s panicked face disappeared behind a maze of shattered safety glass as the rest of the blue-collar assault team got into the act.

“Gives the term
beater
a whole new meaning,” she said instead, earning another of those chuckles that seemed to be reflexive for Connor Larkin, amusement without complete understanding.

They looked on for a moment or two, as the Honda took a fair beating, although its passengers were still intact, shouting and swearing from inside the increasingly damaged vehicle. They weren’t foolish enough to get out of the car.

“How long do you plan to sit here and watch?” Larkin finally asked her.

“Until I’m sure they can’t follow us.”

“I hope never to anger you to this great a degree.”

“It’s not anger, it’s self-preservation.”

“IT’S ME,” HARRY MOSCONI SAID GRUFFLY WHEN
the party he’d dialed came on the line.

“Well? I don’t have all day. Give me a progress report.”

“There’s no progress to report. We tried to snatch Larkin again, but he fought us off. With a red-hot poker and a sword.” Harry studied the scorched and puckered skin on the back of his hand. He chose not to look at his car.

“He still thinks he’s Lancelot?”

“Yeah.”

There was a heavy sigh from the other end of the conversation, the kind of sigh that told Harry he’d fucked up again. Like he needed a two-bit criminal in a five-hundred-dollar suit to tell him that.

“What was we supposed to do, let him turn us in to whatever agency he works for?” he said, hating the whiny note of defense in his voice.

“You should have called me before you did
anything
.”

He should have had his head examined a year ago, before he’d gotten involved in this stupidity. Not that he’d known what he was getting into at first.

It had started out as a courier job, picking up boxes at various Renaissance faires around the Midwest and bringing them back to Detroit. Why one of the established shipping companies wasn’t used Harry hadn’t understood, but he hadn’t asked any questions, either. Getting laid off from the auto plant where you’d worked for twenty years, and facing the loss of everything you’d worked for, did that to a guy. Jobs had been few and far between, especially for a man with a lot of debt and not a lot of education. Just making his mortgage payment each month had felt like a major accomplishment.

The new job had involved a lot of driving and nights away from his family, but it had paid well, and the work was easy. He and Joe Salerno had shared the driving in the beginning, spending a lot of time together and getting to be friends. Six months ago Joe had brought in his cousin, Kemper Salerno. Kemp was dumb as a box of rocks, and he wasn’t up to anything much physical—unless it involved consumption—but he could follow instructions, he didn’t ask questions, and he liked to drive, which allowed them to keep up with the ever-increasing workload.

Harry was the one who’d fucked up a good thing. He hadn’t done it on purpose, but that didn’t make it any less fucked up. Accidentally getting a glimpse of the printing press, putting that together with the size and shape of the packages, and coming up with counterfeit bills had been bad enough. Confronting the guy behind the crime had been downright stupid. True, he’d wanted to be sure he wasn’t getting screwed over, not to mention duped into passing bogus bills because he’d been paid in them.

His peace of mind had come at a high cost, though. He was getting paid in real bills, but he knew about the crime, and he hadn’t gone to the police. That made him part of it, and it was too late to back out, even when the boss started asking him to do other things. Like hurt people.

“Hello, are you there?”

“We tried to call you,” Harry said, checking back into the conversation. “You was busy, and we couldn’t wait.”

“And look how things turned out. If you’d finished him off—”

“You told us not to hurt anybody, just keep an eye on them. We was gonna question him, find out how much he knew and who sent him.”

“So you knocked him out and then left him for the first Renaissance kooks who wandered by. Which just happened to be the Blisses.”

“Yeah, well, you ain’t seen this guy,” Harry grumbled. “He’s practically seven feet tall and he ain’t no feather-weight. Me and Joe went to find something to haul him in, and when we got back he was gone. Didn’t take long for us to figure out where he was. We shoulda just gone to that stupid trailer and—”

“
No
! We need the Blisses. This thing goes south, they’re on the hook, just like the rest of their goofball friends. If you’d told me who you thought Larkin really was, I would have shut down the operation.”

Harry breathed a sigh of relief, and then the
would have
part of that comment sank in. “Why don’t you shut it down now?”

“As long as Larkin’s in fantasyland there’s no reason to. Besides, if he’d had any concrete evidence he’d have called in whatever agency he works for by now. One more big score, that’s all it will take, and then we won’t need him anymore. We won’t need any of them.”

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t be an imbecile—that means
stupid
.”

“I know what it means. And I don’t appreciate being talked to like I am one.”

“Or what? You’re as deep into this as I am. If Larkin gets his memory back and calls in reinforcements it will only be a matter of time before we all go to jail.”

“Why can’t we just snatch him, like I wanted, and find out who he works for? Maybe he’s just a nosy SOB, not a fed or DEA. Could be you’re just paranoid—that means
jumping at shadows
.”

“Don’t be smart. It doesn’t work for you.” The voice turned colder, but with an undercurrent of weary fatalism. “You’ll do what’s necessary. We all will. And after we make an example of Larkin we won’t have to worry about the others staying in line.”

What’s necessary.
Translation: He wanted Larkin dead. He just didn’t want to say it in so many words. That way if anything went wrong he could put it on them.

Like hell, Harry thought. He hadn’t gone to college, but that didn’t mean he was stupid. “He don’t even remember what’s going on.”

“He will.”

“I didn’t sign up for this. I just wanted to save my house from being foreclosed, make sure my kids have a roof over their heads.”

“Just do it or we all get new living arrangements. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wake up one day and find out my new roommate thinks orange is my color.”

Harry heaved a sigh. “Good point. But this is it.”

“Yes, I agree. Just one more big push and then we shut it down.”

“Whatever,” Harry said, accepting the fact that he was well and truly stuck. Forward wasn’t the direction he wanted to go, but there was no turning back now. “I need an advance.”

“Another advance, you mean.”

“If you want me to deal with Larkin I’m gonna need my car fixed. It ain’t in the best shape right now.”

There was another heavy sigh, this one long-suffering. “Very well.”

Harry disconnected before the urge to smash something got too big to resist. The only thing handy was his cell and they cost.

Joe stood a couple feet away, chewing on a thumbnail and looking anxious, like always. Kemp was in the Honda, parked a little way off, looking like it belonged in a salvage yard, thanks to the fine members of UAW Local 594. And Connor Larkin. The Honda idled rough enough to make the whole car shimmy, the motor coughing every now and then, a little curl of smoke seeping out from under the hood each time. Things couldn’t get much worse, Harry thought, and then the sideview mirror fell off. He turned to Joe, who jerked back a couple of steps.

“I look that pissed off, huh?” Harry asked him.

“Scary is more like it,” Joe said, but he relaxed back to his perpetual case of low-grade anxiety. He gestured at the phone fisted in Harry’s hand. “You didn’t tell him Larkin left the nutfest.”

“He don’t want to know where Larkin is,” Harry said, putting that particular humiliation away. For the moment. “He just wants us to take care of him.”
Kill him
, Harry qualified in his own mind, because saying it out loud would put Joe into a full-blown panic attack, and he didn’t have the time—or the paper bag—for that.

Besides, if the guy calling the shots wanted to keep his instructions vague in order to protect himself, well, that left Harry free to interpret those instructions any way he saw fit, right? “He doesn’t want any of the details, and it’s not like he’s keeping us in the loop,” Harry said to Joe. “And what he don’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Yeah.” Joe exhaled heavily, running a hand back through his graying mullet. “But—”

“That Hummer had dealer plates. We won’t have no trouble finding them.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I’m making it up as I go along.”

 

 

RAE CONSULTED THE GPS AGAIN, LETTING IT NAVIGATE her out of Pontiac, heading toward Grosse Pointe. She drove silently, embarrassed. Sure, she’d needed to keep the guys in the Honda from following them home, but she shouldn’t have enjoyed their comeuppance quite so much. Conn chuckling every now and then didn’t help matters.

“Men always get off on violence,” she grumbled.

“Get off?”

“Uh . . .” She stalled, the true meaning of that phrase popping into her head, not to mention a mental picture that made her cheeks burn. “It means you find pleasure in it.” Orgasmic pleasure, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Violence is often necessary,” he said with a shrug, “and sometimes entertaining. That was both.”

Rae smiled, reluctantly. “It was kind of funny.”