Very Bad Men (39 page)

“There's a billboard,” HomeLess Vet said. “Is that one of yours?”

There was a touch of gravel in the man's voice. Not so bad, really. But Lark didn't want to listen to it for the whole trip.

“Is it okay if we don't talk?” Lark said. “I need to catch up on some reading.”

HomeLess Vet nudged up the volume of the radio. “You're the boss.”

 

 

THEY STOPPED FOR GAS at a station outside of Jackson. Lark worked the pump himself. He was tired of lying in the backseat; his neck had begun to ache. He sent HomeLess Vet inside to pay, giving him a fifty-dollar bill. The same spark lit up the man's eyes when he took the money.

Lark considered driving off and leaving him there, but he'd begun to think he might be able to use him to get to Sutton Bell.

 

 

THEY MERGED ONTO the interstate again, HomeLess Vet behind the wheel. Lark sat in the front passenger seat now, with his suit jacket on. The day was too warm for it, but he switched on the air-conditioning to compensate.

He had moved Rhiner's pistol into the jacket's inside pocket.

The headache he'd been fearing since Kalamazoo began to curl itself around behind his eyes. He popped one of his Imitrex pills and washed it down with bottled water.

On the radio the baseball game ended. HomeLess Vet dialed around to a country station.

Lark had Lucy Navarro's notepad open on his lap. The pages were covered with notes on her conversations with Henry Kormoran and Terry Dawtrey. Lark was unimpressed with Kormoran's story about seeing Callie Spencer with Floyd Lambeau at the Great Lakes Bank. But Lucy's conversation with Dawtrey intrigued him.

Part of it seemed absurd—the idea that Lambeau was Callie's real father. Pure fantasy. But then, at the end, there was the suggestion that Dawtrey knew the name of the fifth robber.

Lark had thought a lot about the fifth robber. He was as guilty as the others. His name belonged on Lark's list. But you do the best you can. You can't fix everything.

Something Lark's father used to say.

Maybe I give you the driver.
Lucy Navarro had written the words in blue ink, but to Lark they looked red. They breathed on the page.

Well, he didn't know the name of the driver. Maybe Dawtrey knew, but Dawtrey was dead. Lark had Sutton Bell to deal with, and that would have to be enough.

That one came from Dr. Kenneally, though Lark's father would have agreed with the sentiment.

 

 

AROUND CHELSEA, fifteen miles shy of Ann Arbor, Lark figured out how he would kill Sutton Bell.

He would do it at Bell's house, with the rifle. He sketched a diagram of the neighborhood on a page of Lucy Navarro's notebook: Bell's street running west to east. The house a box at the end of a row of boxes. To the north, an open space. To the south, another row of houses on the other side of the street. To the east, a playground built for young children: swings and plastic slides. A street running north to south bordered the playground.

From the playground you'd have a line of sight to Bell's front yard. The playground was where Lark would need to be with his rifle.

There would be cops at the house. They would have to be distracted. Bell would have to be lured out into his yard.

Lark punched the off button on the radio and turned to HomeLess Vet.

“Do you think you could fake a seizure?”

 

 

HOMELESS VET CAME OUT of the Meijer gas station carrying an armload of newspapers. Lark watched him from behind the wheel of the Chevy. They had exited the interstate at Ann Arbor–Saline Road. Bell's house was less than three miles away.

HomeLess Vet dumped the papers on the backseat and slid in beside Lark.

“Okay, boss,” the man said. “You've got your papers. Now you can fill me in about your plan.”

Lark showed him the sketch of Bell's neighborhood.

“This is where we're going. Mallard Drive. I'll let you off here.” He tapped his finger on the western end of Bell's street. “You'll take the papers, and you'll walk along like you're delivering them. Toss them on the porches, not on the lawns.”

“Okay.”

“You don't have to hit every house. Just enough to make it look good. Be sure to save one for the last house. Here.” Lark tapped the box on the end. Bell's house.

“That's the target?” said HomeLess Vet. “That's where I do my act?”

“Right. You should go up to the porch. Drop the paper. Make some noise. Yell something.”

“What do you want me to yell?”

“Anything. It doesn't matter.”

“What about this—what if I yell ‘Attica!' like Al Pacino in that movie?”

“That's perfect,” Lark said. “Do that. The guy who lives there'll come out. Then you fall on the ground and have your seizure.”

“Where will you be?”

By the playground with a rifle,
Lark thought.

“Don't worry about me,” he said. “I'll show up when the time is right.”

“Screw that. Don't try to keep me in the dark. What's the con? Is it an insurance scam?”

An undercurrent of anger in HomeLess Vet's voice. Lark answered him calmly. “Yes, it's an insurance scam.”

“But what's the angle? Those insurance companies don't like to part with their money. They won't pay a claim if they can find a way to weasel out of it.”

“We won't need to file a claim,” Lark said, improvising. “The threat of a claim'll be enough.”

“How come?”

“Because the guy who lives in that house doesn't like to deal with insurance companies. He doesn't want the attention. He definitely doesn't want to go into court.”

“You know him?”

“I know about him,” said Lark in a sly voice. “I've done research. He'll pay.”

HomeLess Vet broke into a grin. “Research. Ha. I had a feeling about you. That line about billboard advertising. I never bought that.”

“No?”

“Hell no. How much do you think we'll get out of this guy?”

“I figure we ask for ten thousand.”

“No way.”

“I'm not saying we get that much. But that's what we ask for.”

“What's the split? Fifty-fifty?”

“I was thinking seventy-thirty,” Lark said, trying to seem affronted. “I did the research.”

“Fifty-fifty,” said HomeLess Vet. “I'm the one puttin' myself out there.”

A reluctant pause. “Fine. So you're in?”

“Not so fast. I need something up front. In case it doesn't go like you planned.”

While he was alone in the car, Lark had separated some bills from Delacorte's money clip. He passed two of them to HomeLess Vet.

“That's the hundred I owe you for driving me here,” Lark said, “and another hundred as an advance.”

“I'd be happier with five hundred.”

“I bet you would. A hundred's fair.”

“Split the difference. Three hundred.”

Lark closed the notepad and tossed it on the dash. He drew out two more hundreds from the pocket of his jacket and handed them to HomeLess Vet.

“Are you ready to do this?”

 

 

DRIVING SOUTH, they passed a farmhouse with a barn painted the color of rust. A trio of crows perched on the peak of the roof. Anthony Lark powered down the Chevy's windows without thinking. The wind tossed his tie over his shoulder.

He closed his eyes, only for a second. When he opened them he focused on the bright yellow lines running into the distance. If he didn't turn his head, he could imagine Susanna Marten beside him in the car. He remembered a day in college when he had driven her out to the countryside. She needed to photograph a barn—it was for one of her art projects.

They found one with weeds growing up around it and the roof fallen in. She traipsed around it with her camera, shooting it from every angle. Afterward they took a walk along a stream, looked for turtles sunning themselves by the water. He drove her home that day with the windows rolled down and his arm around her, her head on his shoulder.

Lark thought the memory should make him sad. He didn't feel sad. He was coming to the end of the Great Lakes Bank robbers. Bell would be the last. There might be a fifth out there somewhere, but he wasn't Lark's problem, because you have to accept your limits.

His headache had gone. The Imitrex must have done its work. He would finish Bell, and there wouldn't be any more headaches. Because the headaches were a symptom.

Now he was dealing with the underlying problem. He wouldn't have to lie in bed tonight with ice against his forehead. He hadn't needed ice for the past few days. He must be doing something right.

He came to the sign for Mallard Drive. The letters were the color of the weeds around that barn years ago. He turned onto Bell's street and slowed, and there was Bell's house less than three blocks away. A patrol car sitting in front. That meant Bell would be home.

Lark pulled over to the curb and held his foot on the brake.

“That's the house?” HomeLess Vet said beside him. “The one on the end?”

“That's it.”

“There's a cop car in front of it.”

“I know. But that doesn't change things.”

“It sure as hell does.”

“Take the newspapers and do it just like we said. When you get down there, make some noise. It's no good if he doesn't come out.”

“I'm not going down there if there's cops. Are you crazy?”

Lark winced at the word. “I'm not crazy.”

“What kind of neighborhood is this, anyway?” said HomeLess Vet. “It doesn't look like anyone here would have ten thousand dollars to burn.”

Lark eased off the brake and rolled closer. “You agreed to do this,” he said.

“Not with cops. No fuckin' way.”

“All right, then. Get out of the car.”

HomeLess Vet laughed at him. “You're not leaving me here. Take me back to the interstate. I can hitch a ride from there.”

Lark bore down on the brake and drew the pistol from the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Get out of the car,” he said again.

“Jesus Christ! Put that away.”

“Out,” Lark said, slipping off the safety. Less than two blocks away now. He didn't dare go any closer. A door of the patrol car opened and a cop stepped out.

“Jesus!” HomeLess Vet said, climbing out onto the curb. He stood there with one hand on the door of the Chevy. “You're a fuckin' psycho. You know that?”

Lark held the pistol steady. “The man in that house is a nurse,” he said evenly. “He'll be able to help you.”

HomeLess Vet slammed the door and backed away, looking confused.

“He's a nurse,” Lark repeated. Then he lined up the sights with HomeLess Vet's shoulder and fired through the open window.

L
ark dropped the pistol onto the seat beside him and slammed the Chevy into reverse. At the end of the block he jerked the wheel to the left, pointing the car south. HomeLess Vet had gone down on one knee, but he was struggling to his feet again, clutching his shoulder.

There were two cops in front of Bell's house now, one talking into a radio handset, the other starting to jog toward HomeLess Vet.

Lark sped away south on a street called Cottonwood, out of sight of the cops. He came to an intersection with Aspen and turned east. He was already rehearsing things in his mind: popping the trunk, taking out the rifle, setting the crosshairs on Sutton Bell.

He raised the windows and looked for a sign for Heather Drive. Found it and turned north. Heather Drive bordered the playground.

The last house on the left before the playground was a two-story place with white vinyl siding. He parked the car in front of it. Got the rifle from the trunk.

Farther down the street, a shirtless man rode a lawn mower in a circle around a magnolia tree. A woman poured seeds into a bird feeder.

At the playground a young mother in a summer dress pushed a boy on a swing.

Anthony Lark, in his suit and tie, with the rifle held at his side, walked unhurriedly past the swings toward an empty wooden bench.

He could see Sutton Bell's house. The patrol car in front. HomeLess Vet half sitting on the hood of the car, with one of the cops looking at his shoulder. A dark oval of blood on the camouflage jacket.

HomeLess Vet shaking his salt-and-pepper head from side to side, yelling something Lark couldn't hear—not from this distance, not over the sound of the lawn mower.

The second cop hurrying toward Bell's house. The front door opening. Sutton Bell himself coming down the steps, holding something white—Lark thought first of gauze, of bandages, but it looked like plain white towels.

The second cop trying to stop Bell, trying to hustle him back inside.

Bell brushing past the cop.

Lark sat sideways on the bench, resting his arm on the back of it, aiming the rifle. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young mother pull her boy off the swing and hustle him away.

Looking through the scope, Lark saw one of the cops toss the camouflage jacket onto the ground. He saw the gray T-shirt HomeLess Vet had on underneath, the crimson stain at the shoulder.

Sutton Bell with his white towels. He pressed one of them against the wound.