He sipped his water.

“Tell you another story. Couple years ago, in California, guy goes to one of those government auctions, picks himself up a nice little car, real cheap, he’s driving it for like six months, and he goes down to Mexico for the day, and he’s crossing the border, coming home, they pull him over in some random search, and these drug dogs start sniffing, get a whiff of something. The fucking bumpers are loaded with coke, so they arrest the poor son of a bitch.” He laughed, which set off another short coughing fit. He took another sip. “He tells ’em, ‘Hey, those aren’t my drugs in the car, I bought it from the government, they left the drugs in the car.’ And the customs guys, they’re laughing their balls off, you know? Like they hadn’t heard that one before. So the guy, he goes to jail, he’s suing the government now, fuck of a lot of good that’s going to do him.”

“So you figured you’d buy the car at the auction, get the drugs, everything would be fine.”

Bullock nodded. “The thing is, it’s the greatest car for smuggling dope, you know? Little hybrid, environmentally responsible, you drive it, they think it’s fucking Ralph Nader coming through customs. We sailed that car through, half a dozen times. When we weren’t using it for that, Mrs. Indigo liked to drive it around.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, what with all that trouble with that cocksucking photographer, I bailed out. But we have a friend working at the auction place, and we checked with him later, found out who bought the car.”

Lawrence Jones.

“So we track down where the guy lives, and he’s some kind of private detective. And we didn’t find the car at his place, but guess what we did come across?”

Bullock reached into his pocket and pulled out a rumpled check. “We look through his things, and we find a check, written to him, for the very same amount that he paid for the car. That’s quite a coinky-dink, isn’t it? And guess whose name was on that check?”

He tossed the check onto his desk, but I didn’t have to look at it. “And my address was on it, too,” I said.

“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.”

31

“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-”