Very Bad Men (30 page)

He raked the fingers of his right hand through his hair. “That's what I wanted to tell you. I won't make it tomorrow. I don't think I'll be around for a while.”

Her smile vanished. “Are you okay? Did those men come back?”

“I'm fine. You shouldn't worry about me.”

Urgency in her voice. “What happened? Tell me.”

She had no idea, Lark thought. She hadn't heard a thing.

“It's nothing important,” he said. “They came back, but I got through it all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“I look all right, don't I?”

She studied his face. “The truth is, you look a little flushed.”

“Well, you should see the other two.”

She laughed at that, her smile blooming again.

“I'm fine,” he repeated. “I'll need to go away for a while, but I didn't want to leave without saying good-bye.” He glanced down at his shoes. “I don't even know your name,” he said.

When he looked up she had her hand held out to him.

“It's Mira.”

He took it. “I'm Anthony,” he said.

 

 

WARM NIGHT WITH A MILD WIND. Lark found his car near the Dumpsters where he'd left it—the engine still running, the driver's door unlocked. No one had stolen it. Most people are good at heart.

He drove south with Rhiner's pistol out of sight in the glove box and Delacorte's on the passenger seat beside him. Before he had gone half a mile he heard sirens. Rhiner must have pulled himself together and called 911.

Lark motored on, past the entrance ramp for I-94. He found a fast-food restaurant open late and ordered a Coke at the drive-through. “Lots of ice,” he said.

He kept moving, heading east, until he came to a movie theater with scores of cars in the parking lot. He poured out the Coke and with the engine idling leaned back and laid the cup of ice against his forehead.

His thoughts turned to what he had left behind. Clothes, books. His tin of Imitrex—the pills for his headaches. He could picture it on the floor of the bedroom by the mattress. He needed those pills, and he could never go back for them now.

But he had extras—a bottle from the pharmacy, the same place where he had stolen the Keflex. He remembered tossing the bottle into the backseat.

Setting the cup down, he clicked free of the seat belt. Twisted around. He found the bottle on the floor and washed a pill down with meltwater from the cup. After a while longer with the ice against his brow, the sharp corners in his head wore down a little. He realized he was hungry, thought about the sandwich he had bought earlier, and the beer.

 

 

ELIZABETH HAD LARK'S ADDRESS by 11:30—an apartment off State Street. She arranged for Carter Shan to meet her there.

On Eisenhower Boulevard she realized something was wrong. A patrol car roared past her in the left lane. She had no doubt where it was going. She didn't believe in coincidences.

 

 

TWENTY MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT. Lark drove north and west from the movie theater and parked on a quiet street. A gust of wind sent a scrap of newspaper skipping along the gutter. He got out and went to the trunk. Came back rolling a thin metal tube between his fingers—the scope from his hunting rifle.

Behind the wheel again, he laid the scope on the passenger seat. He crumpled the empty sandwich wrapper and tossed it in the back. A single bottle of beer rested inside the cardboard cup, cooling in the melting ice. He lifted it out and a drop of water fell on the grip of Walter Delacorte's pistol.

Twisting off the cap, he tipped the bottle up and drank. It wasn't cold, but the ice had taken the edge of warmth off it. He put the bottle down and picked up the scope. Adjusted the focus and the first thing that came into view was a street sign: ARLINGTON BLVD. The letters blue and still like the surface of a pond on a midsummer day.

He swung the scope up and to the right, worked the focus again, and found the roofline of the Spencer house. All the windows dark on the second floor. Most of the first floor was obscured by a looming shape. He turned the dial on the scope and the blurred lines became sharp: the eastern face of the guest cottage. Callie Spencer's Ford parked outside.

Lark felt a breeze through the open window beside him. He took another taste of beer. The pain behind his eyes had smoothed itself away. When he left his apartment and Mira, he had felt lost. Adrift. Now he felt grounded again.

Callie Spencer was inside the cottage. He was sure of it. He moved the crosshairs of the scope to a lighted window and saw a few inches of space between parted curtains. He kept the scope steady and willed her to make an appearance.

Five minutes later he caught a glimpse of her in profile. A wild strand of hair fell across her brow. She was carrying an empty glass. The glimpse was enough. He lowered the scope.

He needed a place to spend the night. Needed a plan. To stay here would be ideal. He didn't think he would have any trouble falling asleep, not with Callie Spencer so close by. But that would be reckless, sleeping in the car. He would have to think of something else.

A flash of movement on his left. Someone strolling on the sidewalk, a few dozen yards away, on the opposite side of the street from Callie Spencer's cottage. A woman. She reached a point directly across from the cottage and slowed, stepping toward the curb as if she might cross.

She was illuminated by the glow of a streetlamp. Lark had his engine off, no lights. He lifted the scope and turned the dial to bring the woman into focus. He knew her. Knew the blond highlights in her brown hair. She was the woman he had seen on the night he went after Sutton Bell—the woman from the Eightball Saloon.

He traded the scope for Delacorte's pistol on the seat beside him. He didn't know her purpose and he didn't intend to take any chances. If she crossed the street, he would get out of the car; if she approached the door of the cottage, he would put a bullet in her.

She stood at the curb, one foot hovering in the air over the street. Lark heard the whisper of leaves, the electric hum of the streetlamp. His thumb touched the safety of Delacorte's pistol.

Her foot drew back and she reached for something at her hip. A cell phone.

T
he phone on my desk rang a few minutes before midnight. I had the window open and the pages of a manuscript in front of me. It was the same one I'd been editing earlier—the story of the corrupt detective and the heiress.

I picked up the receiver and said,
“Gray Streets
.
”

“I'm wasting my time,” said Lucy Navarro.

“Where are you?”

“Where do you think? Listen, I'm getting nowhere. I need a new plan. Do you want to meet?”

“Do you know what time it is, Lucy?”

“I'll buy you a drink,” she said. “The bars are still open, aren't they?”

I tapped my pencil on the edge of the desk. “The ones that are open aren't the kind where you'd want to sit and think and make plans.”

“Meet me at my hotel, then,” she said. “I've got a minibar in my room, and an expense account from the
National Current
.”

I had a vision of her sitting on a hotel bed. Her legs bare. A drink in her hand. Attribute it to my active imagination. “I don't think that's a good idea,” I said.

“I'm serious. They'll cover it.”

“That's not the problem.”

“Then what—” She took a second to catch on. “You're afraid to come up to my room.”

“I'm not afraid,” I said.

“You are. That's sweet. And puritanical. What about meeting in the hotel lobby?”

I leafed through the pages of the manuscript. Six more and I'd be done.

“I think I'll pass,” I said. “There's something I want to finish here.”

“Puritanical,” she said again. “All right, Loogan. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

We said our good-byes and I went back to the detective and the heiress. The pair of them had worked out a scam to swindle her father out of half a million dollars. I got through two more pages, jotting the edits in the white spaces between the lines of type. They were laughing and counting the loot. I'd read the thing before and I knew that in the next paragraph she would haul out a cute little chrome-plated twenty-two and shoot him in the gut.

I tossed my pencil onto the desk. The pair of them could wait until the morning. I was more curious about the story of Callie Spencer and Lucy Navarro.

I closed the window and locked the office. The stairs at the end of the hall took me down to the service entrance, to the alley behind the building. I got in my car and aimed it toward Lucy's hotel.

 

 

LARK WATCHED THE WOMAN close her phone and walk back the way she'd come. The fading sound of her footsteps reached him through the open car window.

He returned Delacorte's pistol to the passenger seat, re-engaging the safety with his thumb. The window of the cottage had gone dark.

The beer was colder now. He killed the bottle in three swallows. The woman reached her car. Lark heard the engine start, saw the headlights flare. The car pulled away from the curb, rolled toward him, and turned right onto Arlington Boulevard.

He cranked his key in the ignition and powered up the window. Drove past the cottage in the dark and put his lights on only after he made the turn.

 

 

FOLLOWING HER WAS EASY. A yellow Beetle has a distinctive look.

She traveled west and south, coming eventually to State Street. Familiar territory for Lark, not far from his apartment.

By the time she turned into the parking lot of the Winston Hotel, there were three cars between them. He lost sight of her for a moment, and when he spotted the Beetle again it was parked on the western edge of the lot, away from the hotel itself.

There were picnic tables there on a patch of lawn, and a line of tall evergreens intended to drown out the sound of semi trucks passing on the interstate nearby.

Lark pulled into a space closer to the hotel. From there he could watch her and make up his mind. Because he wasn't sure what he wanted to do about her. She had been loitering around Callie Spencer's house. He still wondered if a bullet might not be the best solution.

A blue minivan drove along the row in front of him—slow as if it were searching for a spot. It obscured his view of the woman, but when it passed he saw that she had gotten out of the Beetle. She had plastic water bottles and fast-food wrappers in her hands. She carried them to a trash barrel near the picnic tables and dropped them in.

She made another trip: more bottles and cardboard cups. A woman who had spent a lot of time in her car. One of the bottles got away from her and rolled along the ground.

Lark took out his notebook and his father's Waterman pen. He didn't know her name, so he found a blank page and wrote,
The woman from the Eightball Saloon.
The letters looked orange to him. A pale orange, not as bad as red, not as benign as green. They rippled and swayed, as if he were viewing them through air rising from hot asphalt.

He didn't know what that meant.

He looked up from the notebook and saw the blue minivan again. He saw it pull up next to the yellow Beetle.

Interesting.

When he glanced down at the page once more, the letters were still orange. No guidance there. Lark closed the notebook and left it on the seat. He picked up Walter Delacorte's pistol.

When he opened the door, the rumble of a diesel engine was loud in his ears. One of the semis had pulled off the interstate and into the hotel lot. He turned his head automatically to look at it. Big block letters along the length of the trailer: COLEMAN TRUCKING.

The semi's brakes squealed as it came to a stop around ten yards away from him—obstructing his view of both the yellow Beetle and the blue minivan.

Lark stepped out into the night and slipped Delacorte's pistol into his pocket. He headed toward the semi at a jog. The driver of the truck had his window cracked, a cell phone to his ear. Lark called to him, waving to tell him to move along. The driver glared at him and went back to his call.

Lark jogged between a pair of parked cars and then cut left in a long arc that took him around the front of the semi. He felt the idle of the engine in the soles of his feet. The yellow Beetle came into view. No one inside, no one nearby.

The blue minivan was gone.

The bulk of the semi obscured Lark's view of the rest of the lot. He dashed around to the back of the trailer and saw the glow of brake lights in the distance: the blue minivan slowing at the exit of the lot and turning onto State Street.

 

 

I USED TO BE AFRAID of parking lots, especially at night.

If someone comes knocking on your door and he seems a little off, if he's ill-groomed and shabbily dressed, you can refuse to let him in. If he hangs around, you can call the police. If you see the same guy in a parking lot, you're out of luck. There's nothing to be done.

People are always on the move in parking lots. That guy walking toward you, the squirrelly one, is probably just heading for his car. He probably doesn't mean you any harm. But you won't know until he's right next to you. Until he's got his gun in your ribs and he's demanding your wallet.

I could go on, but here's an experiment that should tell you everything you need to know. Turn to the police blotter in your local paper and count the number of incidents where someone was shot, stabbed, robbed, or beaten. Eliminate the ones that happened in somebody's house or on their front lawn. Of the ones that are left, how many happened in a parking lot?