Now Burt had shocked him. Franklin wouldn’t have sent his mother-in-law, a coldhearted, double-crossing bitch Franklin hated down to his socks, to deal with a guy like him, and Burt had planned on sending his daughter to the warehouse in his stead?
Unfuckingbelievable. Nobody in their right mind was that careless.
“So you’re telling me, that if I just stay put here tonight, your daughter is going to walk through my door at five A.M. with eighty-two thousand dollars?”
“Yes.” Burt nodded. “Yes. She’ll be here. I promise.”
What a lying sack of crap. Franklin didn’t believe him.
“And you’d let her do that, Burt? Show up here on her own with that kind of money?”
“Sh-she won’t be alone. Her cousin is coming with her.”
“Her cousin?” Franklin couldn’t believe it. What a joke. Hell, if he gave Burt enough time, the old guy would probably have his whole damn family in on this. Maybe Franklin could sell them all wholesale as a single unit or something.
Burt was struggling, his breath coming hard, his body starting to shake.
Franklin gave Eliot a look, a hard look, and Eliot shrugged.
Internal damage, Franklin thought, and hell, wasn’t that just the way it went sometimes. But the night was definitely looking up. With Esme Alden having already made her run to Genesee, all Franklin needed was for Mitch and Leroy to get her and bring her to the warehouse. This whole deal could be tied up well before five A.M.
He pulled out his phone and was scrolling down for Mitch’s number, when Burt collapsed flat-out on Franklin ’s New Zealand wool rug.
“Get him out of here,” he said to Eliot, without looking up from his phone. “Take him down to the betting room and let his wife look at him for a while.” And that ought to be a happy reunion.
Franklin shook his head. People led such screwed-up lives.
“And Eliot?”
“Yes, Mr. Bleak?”
“Take the woman’s gag off. I bet she’s gonna have a few things to say to her husband.”
“Yes, Mr. Bleak.”
Burt was such a loser.
“Mitch,” he said when his second in command answered. “You still got that Cyclone in sight?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Good. Burt Alden is here, Mitch, and he told me the girl picked up the eighty-two thousand up there in Genesee. So go get it. Whatever it takes.”
“Yes, boss. What about the girl? You still want her, too?”
Franklin gave the question a moment’s thought. “If you get the money, I don’t need the girl.” He had enough Aldens cluttering up his warehouse. “But if she doesn’t have that money on her, bring her in chains, if you have to. I don’t give a damn.”
“And the guy with her? Duce’s boy?”
“Get rid of him, Mitch, no witnesses, understand?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Duce doesn’t ever need to know what happened to his boy, if you do it right. So do it right.”
“Yes, boss.”
Franklin ended the call and walked over to the window overlooking the betting room.
Eliot was just depositing a limp and unconscious Burt Alden on the floor in the betting room, and from what Franklin could see, it didn’t look like Beth was any too happy to see him.
Wives, Franklin thought. He hadn’t seen his in fourteen years. As soon as Burt came around, Franklin would bet the whole eighty-two thousand that the guy was going to wish he hadn’t seen his either-not in this place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Harold’s Gas-N-Go was on the west side of Denver, hell and gone in the suburbs, a block off the interstate. Johnny finished pumping gas into Solange’s tank and reracked the nozzle. Esme had gone inside the small convenience store to use the facilities.
He was surprised she’d lasted as long as she had. It was nearing midnight-and Johnny could feel his clock ticking. Five A.M. wasn’t nearly far enough away for what he had in mind.
Waiting for his receipt, he checked both ends of the street. It was pure rustbelt, lined with auto parts stores and metal buildings rented out to machine shops and car repair guys. Poorly lit, grim, like a place where trouble happened-like that damn tunnel at Nachman’s.
What in the hell had that all been about? he wondered. He’d never had any trouble coming back from a tour of duty before-hadn’t had any trouble this time, until that damn elevator door had opened.
The receipt rolled out of the gas pump, and he tore it off and tucked it in his shirt pocket, his fingers brushing against the envelope.
Oh, yeah-the realization hit him. Just like every other time over the last two weeks, he conveniently kept forgetting about the envelope. Except it wasn’t so damn convenient, not when it crept up on him in the dark and made him break out in a sweat.
He hadn’t read what was inside. The actual letter was none of his business. His job was to deliver it. That was all, just deliver it. Take it up to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and give it to a girl, Lori Heath, whose husband was never coming home. He’d made the promise. He could do the deed. He’d almost driven up there tonight, but had ended up at the Blue Iguana instead.
Because there was more than one girl in Cheyenne, and if he got close enough to do his duty by Lori Heath, he had to face the other one, a girl named Cassie McAllister, and there was no neat and tidy letter to hand to Cassie. No, he’d have to talk to her, face-to-face. He’d have to stand there in her double-wide trailer sitting in its patch of dust and tumbleweeds and tell her what had happened to that rodeo cowboy who’d come through Cheyenne a year ago, riding in Frontier Days, his last go-round before he’d shipped out- the one who’d fathered her baby, the one she hadn’t heard from in months, the one who said he’d be coming back.
John Paul Cooperman had come back, and he wasn’t anywhere near Cheyenne, and he didn’t plan on ever getting within a hundred miles of the place ever again, and Johnny was going to have to explain why to a twenty-two-year-old girl with a brand-new baby.
Hell. He wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself. Or maybe he was, and that’s what was keeping him out of Wyoming.
Fuck.
In a couple of days, Johnny promised himself. He’d make the run up to Cheyenne in Solange, and he’d take care of business.
Getting back in the Cyclone, he pulled the car up to the front of the store, then leaned over and knocked the jockey box open. He didn’t smoke very often, but he always had a pack of Faros in the car. He bought them off the bartender at Mama Guadalupe’s, an old guy named Rick. He had to dig deep to find them, and by the time he sat back up in the driver’s seat, another car had pulled up a couple of spaces over.
A few cars had come and gone since he and Esme had gotten there, gassing up or people running into Harold’s for something-but this car was different.
It looked like all the others, a regular late-model sedan, a Crown Victoria, a real tuna boat. It had a couple of guys in it, like any number of the previous vehicles.
But it was different.
It made the hackles rise on the back of his neck, and he never second-guessed that particular buzz of warning.
He pushed in the Cyclone’s lighter, then knocked a cigarette out of the pack of Faros. When he was lit, he settled back into the driver’s seat and waited for somebody in the Crown Vic to make a move.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The guy in the passenger seat, a short, stocky redhead with male pattern baldness, got out of the Vic and headed into the store. The other guy, gray-haired, older, taller, stayed in the car.
Johnny took a long drag off the cigarette, watching the redhead scan the aisles. When the guy started toward the bathrooms, Johnny made his move, getting out of Solange and heading inside.
“Hey, hey,” the clerk behind the counter said. “You can’t smoke in here. Take it back outside.”