THIRTY-EIGHT

“You handled that well,” I said as we got into the car.

“Do what works. Drop a few bills? Play it cool? Sometimes good enough.”

“Safer and easier than throwing people to the ground and pointing guns at their head.”

A shrug as he started the engine. “Depends on the circumstances. At Little Joe’s? Didn’t see me offering the guy cash. Depends on the person, too. Sometimes, though…” He shrugged. “Might feel better to toss them around but…

“It won’t always get me the results I want, and I’ll have a lot harder time going back if I want more. With that kid, making nice and tossing him some cash was definitely the way to go. That’s someone I wouldn’t have wanted to rough up…even if it might teach him a lesson about taking money from strangers.”

I looked out the window. “I take it we’re going to that meeting?”

“Not much choice. You want to stay out-”

“No. If you go, I go. You’re right. We need to know what this is about and the only way to do that is to play along.” I glanced his way. “I’m assuming you don’t think we’re really going to meet a contact who can give us more information on Wilkes.”

Jack snorted. “Meeting a stranger? In a condo? Might as well ask me to meet him in the desert. And bring my own shovel.”

On the way to the condo subdivision, Jack explained what he thought we’d find there. He was sure the welcoming party would come bearing guns, baseball bats or tire irons. What he wasn’t certain of was who’d issued the invitation. He laid sixty-forty odds on it being Gallagher. The other possibility was Boris Nikolaev.

Apparently Jack wasn’t as confident as he’d seemed about how his message to the Nikolaevs would be received. Issue a simple, respectful message of professional courtesy, assuring them that he wasn’t interested in their business, so they shouldn’t be interested in his, and they should back off. But he’d heard Boris could be a hothead, quick to see insult where none was intended.

As for how the Nikolaevs could have dispatched someone here so fast-well, telephones work pretty quickly. If Gallagher knew the Nikolaevs were looking for Jack, it would take one phone call from his end, and one phone call bounced back to a Nikolaev associate in Vegas, and they could have someone at the casino before I’d even made it outside.

“Is it just me, or is this getting really annoying?” I said.

“Fucking annoying.”

“I think we should just call up all the nice mobsters in the country and tell them, ‘Look, we’re trying to catch a rampaging killer here. Do you think you could stop putting contracts on our heads? Just for a day or two? Please?’”

“It’ll stop. Tonight.”

I glanced over at him, but he was looking straight ahead, face hard. I nodded and leaned back in my seat.

After a moment he said. “Earlier. About Gallagher. Kind of jobs he wants. You should know.”

“I don’t plan to ever call on him for employment.”

“Still, you should know. Gallagher wants someone dead? You don’t ask why. Sometimes it’s card sharks. Sometimes it’s unpaid debt. Sometimes…” He shrugged. “Sometimes, you don’t wanna know. For a while, that was okay. Didn’t give a shit. Figured someone’s gonna take the contract. Might as well be me.”

He turned left, heading toward the highway. “Eventually? Decided it didn’t need to be me. Didn’t need the money. Didn’t need the grief. Things change. Ten, fifteen years ago? Didn’t matter. Now…?” He shrugged. “My jobs these days? Some you wouldn’t touch. I’m not like you and Quinn. Don’t come from the same place. Don’t see things the same way.”

So how did he see things? I longed to ask, but when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t think of any way to word it that wouldn’t sound like prying.

Jack slanted an expectant look my way. “You gonna ask? Or you don’t want to know?”

“Uh, sure, I’d love to know. I just didn’t want to-Well, it didn’t seem right to just come right out and ask, but I’m certainly interested if you want to tell me.”

A slight downturn of his lips. A frown? Didn’t he just offer-?

“Better not,” he said after a moment. “Not my place. Ask him. He wants you to know. Tried to tell you. Shouldn’t have interrupted.”

Huh? What was he talking-?

I replayed his first comments, about him not being like Quinn or me. That’s what he thought I’d want to know, more about Quinn, how he was like me. I’d assumed he just meant because we’d both been cops.

When I said I was interested, he thought I meant in Quinn’s story, the one he’d interrupted at the motel. Was there a way to clear up the confusion? To say “Oh, I thought you were talking about yourself”? Ask him about himself. But if that wasn’t what he’d been offering…

Before I could figure out a way to continue, Jack passed me the map and put me in charge of finding our destination.

We found the new condo complex-so new it wasn’t even finished. A security van was parked at the far end, the lone occupant’s head down, reading or dozing. Jack pulled in, headlights off, and slid the car into the equipment lot between a crane and a bulldozer.

Across the road a billboard exhorted home buyers to “Experience the adventure. Live life in the heart of the game.” As I cracked open my window, I was hard-pressed to feel the adventure…or the life. The stale stink of dust filled the air. Empty window frames stared out like dead eyes. Sheets of plastic covered the board studded walls, the eerie slap-slap of the plastic the only sound.

I closed my window.

“Not quite the scenario we expected,” I said. “Too open. Too…empty.”

He nodded, gaze scanning the complex.

“Do you have a plan?”

“Working on it.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“Always.”

I proposed we handle this as a two-man police raid, using a variation on standard procedures for infiltrating un-occupied buildings. Unlike an occupied area, here there was a good likelihood that our welcoming party wasn’t at 510 H.G. Wells Boulevard at all, but in an adjoining town-house, or even across the road, watching for us through a sniper’s sight.

The condos were row houses, with two basic styles-carport to the left and carport to the right. That meant we could investigate the one beside it, and expect to find the same floor plan reversed at 510.

Jack removed his gold; I put away the blond wig and jewelry-things that could catch the light. Then I scooped up dirt from the unfinished roadway, added bottled water, and we daubed it on our faces. I would have loved a Kevlar vest, but apparently the wire in my push-up bra was all the body armor I was getting. So I donned my gloves, took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Forgetting something?” he said.

I looked at him.

“Gun.” He reached under his jacket. “Here. Take my backup.”

“That’s okay-”

“Take it.”

As he thrust the gun at me, I opened my jacket and showed him the Glock. “See? I didn’t leave it back at the hotel.”

“Yeah. Just in the car.”

He got out. I followed.

Desolate. Some words evoke images; others, emotions. Desolate is a shivers-up-the-spine word, full of loneliness and emptiness. And, as we approached unit 510, the word sprang to mind and lodged there.

Empty houses stood stark against the darkness, looking not half finished, but half ruined. Tarps over the windows and roofs billowed like spirits chained to the houses, flapping and slapping in the wind as they struggled to fly free. Behind us lay the desert, sand blowing in to reclaim the subdivision.

I shivered. Jack glanced over at me.

“Cold?” he whispered.

“A little,” I lied.