“Is he always like he is in the meetings? You know? So vibrant?”

“Sometimes.”

“Does he ever talk about his own boss?”

There was a pause now. A long one. An unnaturally long one, as if she were trying to think about how best to answer. “Why are you asking me all of this?”

“I’m a curious guy.”

“Well, there are better things to be curious about.”

“Like what?”

“Like me,” she said.

And that pretty much killed my line of questioning.

Chapter 19

SETTING UP A PLACE TO MEET was the tricky part, since the Gambler didn’t want to be seen with Jim Doe in public, and he figured the feeling was mutual. That meant that the police trailer and restaurant were out. So more often than not, they met in the Gambler’s motel room. Doe had complained about the arrangements, finding them too gay, but as he’d been unable to come up with an acceptable alternative, the arrangements had stuck.

Now he sat in the Gambler’s room, drinking a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, with a little Rebel Yell splashed in for good measure. It helped him to keep his head clear.

The Gambler gazed at him, looking in that high-and-mighty way that made Doe want to stick his fist through the Gambler’s face. Doe saw how this was shaping up. The dust had cleared, all of Doe’s hard work was getting lost in the haze of greed, and now that asshole was trying to figure out who was looking to rip him off and how.

“You’re still walking funny,” the Gambler said. “You should see a doctor about that.”

“I just pulled something moving the bodies.”

“You were walking funny before we got to the bodies. If you’re having leg pain or something, you shouldn’t ignore it. Have a doctor check it out.”

Doe didn’t need this bullshit. “It ain’t nothing. Jesus. I got enough problems without you trying to be my mother.”

“Okay, fine. I’m just saying to see a doctor, is all.” He paused for a minute to recover his momentum. “I talked to the kid.”

“Yeah?” Doe asked. “What he have to say?”

“Fuck-all. They were going to buy, but balked at the last minute. What I don’t get is, why would they invite him in, let him sit there for three hours, pretend they had kids?”

“Karen has kids,” Doe said. “Had them, anyways. From her first husband. Little smart-ass fucker named Fred George, if you can believe that. Two first names. Worked for the bank and seemed to think that was some sort of big deal, something everyone ought to just marvel at, like being a pro football player or something. He took off and grabbed the kids when Karen first started doing meth.”

“Why would she pretend she wanted to buy encyclopedias? She didn’t know about the arrangement with me, did she?”

Doe didn’t know the answer, but he knew that the Gambler thought he knew the answer, thought he was being clever, getting the best of the conversation. “I don’t fucking know, Gamb. I don’t think she did. And as for why, I can’t guess what went on in her head. I don’t know what she was doing there with Bastard. Maybe he was looking to rip us off, you know. Maybe he had a plan to stash the money there, maybe he was doing a deal with that money and it went bad. Could be a lot of things.”

“Kid said something else.”

“Yeah?” He took a sip of the coffee. It could have used more Yell.

“Said he saw you hanging around outside.”

“He don’t know me. How’s he gonna say he saw me?”

The Gambler clucked his lips impatiently. “He gave a description that matched you.”

“Handsome guy?”

The Gambler stared. “What?”

“That’s a description that would point you right to me. Handsome guy?”

“Fucking hell, Doe. Is this all a big joke to you? We got dead bodies piled up to our dicks, we’ve got missing money, and I’ve got B.B. on my case.”

“B.B. is always on your case.”

“Yeah, well, he isn’t always on my case so much that he’s even as we speak in a car on his way here to find out where the fuck his money is.”

Doe felt himself blanching. “Jesus, he isn’t bringing that freaky cunt, is he?”

“He brings Desiree everywhere, and since he’s coming here, I guess he’s bringing her. Makes sense, don’t you think?”

“That girl is weird. And that scar is nasty. But you ever think she’s also kind of, you know, sexy? Like you wouldn’t want to fuck her, but if she came up to you and was, like, Come on, let’s go, you’d probably end up fucking her. You know what I mean?”

“You’re going to get fucked, and not by Desiree, if you don’t start working with me.”

Doe stood up. “Wait a second there, Gamb. I don’t much like the way you’re talking. Are you blaming me for something?”

The Gambler kept his expression blank. “I’m just trying to find out why Bastard was acting so weird, letting one of my bookmen pitch him for three hours. And I’m trying to figure out why you were skulking outside the house the whole time.”

“I saw the kid on the street, gave him some lip. That’s all. I don’t fucking know why Bastard would invite him in. Maybe it was all a big joke to him.”

“You want to hear my theory?”

Doe didn’t especially want to hear his theory, but he figured he’d have to listen to it if he protested or not, so there was no point in griping. He sat back down.

“My theory,” the Gambler said, “is that Bastard invited the kid in because he was scared that something was going to happen to him, and he thought he needed a witness. Since you were slinking around outside, it’s going to look to some people like he was afraid of you. And since you and he seemed to be fucking the same crankhead, and he ends up dead with our money missing, it’s going to look to some people like you killed him and you took his money.”

Doe slapped his coffee cup down, spilling it on the particleboard table. “You want to tell me which people exactly are going to see it that way?”

“B.B.,” the Gambler said. “And if you don’t find that money, you are going to be in some deep shit, my friend.”

That took some of the anger out of Doe. It was true enough. The Gambler was a smug old fucker, but he knew how to call it. If B.B. was coming to check on the money, it meant he didn’t believe that Doe could handle the situation. If the money didn’t show up, the arrangement could be in trouble.

Still, it didn’t seem inevitable that B.B. would blame Doe. All this business about how people were going to see things was crap. The Gambler was going to make sure that B.B. saw it a certain way to cover his own ass.

The fact was, Doe could come up with the money himself if he had to. It would mean a trip over to the Caymans, and it would hurt, but he could do it. He had to admit the money had been lost on his watch. Still, he’d only consider that option when all others were exhausted.

“So what do you think happened to it?” he asked.

“I don’t fucking know,” the Gambler said. “It beats the shit out of me, but you’d better find out.”

“Yeah,” Doe said. He finished his coffee and set down the cup, leaving it in a film of spillage on top of the table. With all the weight the Gambler was putting on him, Doe was starting to think that maybe the Gambler had the money himself. Maybe he’d killed Bastard and Karen and taken the cash. Doe had never seen the Gambler kill anyone, but he’d seen him beat the shit out of some crankheads trying to rip them off. It might well be that he’d gone over to see Bastard on some ordinary business, things had gotten out of control, and the next thing you know, Bastard and Karen are dead. Now he was either trying to cover his tracks or find some way to take advantage of the situation.

It was possible that the Gambler was setting him up not just in case- but setting him up, period. And that meant Doe was going to have to do some clever thinking to get out of this.