Sam killed the engine and turned off the headlights.
“Why don’t you wait here, Moon,” he said, handing Moon the keys. “You ever drive one of these?”
“I drive a Mercedes,” said Moon.
“Good. Get behind the wheel. If anything happens you don’t like, start the engine and hit the horn and be ready to go”
“You got it.”
Sam reached under the seat, pulled out the .45, and stuck it into his belt at the small of his back. Moon jumped out and took the driver’s seat. Sam and Johnny Gee walked to the door.
The girl at the entrance greeted each of them with a cheery, “Hi, my name is Christine. Is there anything I can get for you?”
Neither said anything until Johnny Gee broke the silence.
“Quite a place. Where’s Sheila?”
A door slid open along the left wall, and the woman they had seen on the surveillance tape stood in the doorway.
“Hi, Johnny,” she breathed, her voice soft, cigarette-husky. “Why don’t you and your friend come on in here.” She stepped aside to reveal a comfortable Victorian parlor, wallpapered in dark red. Two sofas faced each other in the middle of the room, surrounded by a half-dozen chairs that had gold lions’ paws for legs and eagles’ heads for arms. The sofas were covered in deep royal blue crushed velvet, and the chairs in real leopard fur. The windows were draped in dark blue velvet with silver tassels. There was a fireplace, and two Tiffany lamps showed their colors atop a mahogany secretary.
The woman wore a long black velvet skirt and a white blouse with full, billowing sleeves and lace cuffs and collar. Her black hair was swept back at the sides, and the gray streak shone in front. She was prettier than she had looked on the black and white videotape, with a prominent, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and thick eyebrows. Her skin was a lovely olive shade, her cheeks had an expertly applied pinkish glow, and her full lips sported a pale shade of pink lipstick. You could tell she was wearing makeup, but you couldn’t tell what she was concealing.
She looked hard at Johnny Gee.
“You’ve got a lot of gall coming in here like this.” Breathy tones had been replaced by nasal hissing. “What kind of game do you think you’re running, Johnny? You think you can just ring my buzzer, and I’m supposed to jump through hoops for you because we had a thing going? Huh?”
“Sheila … I … I—” Johnny Gee stammered.
“You’re hot, Johnny. You and the other asshole both. Every pistol-packing jimmy-dick schmuck for three states around is looking for you. The word’s out, Johnny. You’re so damn hot I should open a window to cool the place down. What did you do? Knock up the governor’s daughter … by accident?”
“Real funny, Sheila.” Johnny Gee straightened up and stopped stammering. “Nice to know you still got the instincts of a fuckin’ rattlesnake.”
Sheila chuckled and shook her head. She took a seat at one end of the Victorian sofa facing the fireplace.
“You’ll never learn, will you, Johnny. You’re always going to be small time, and you’re always going to find trouble if trouble doesn’t find you first. I pegged you a long, long time ago. I might have been young, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew a loser when I saw one.”
“We didn’t come here to rehash the past,” Sam said, looking intently at her. “Get over it—”
“It’s okay, Major,” Johnny Gee interrupted. “You got to understand: I got the two of us busted, back when we was together. It was my fault. But to her, the story’s always been the same. She always figured I ratted her out.”
The scowl on Sheila’s face did not relax. Her left hand rested next to a button on the end table.
“I didn’t tell them cops shit, Sheila. I don’t care what they told you. I’ve never ratted anybody out in my life. I sure as hell didn’t rat you out.”
“You’re a small-time fuck, Johnny. And I think I can say that with some accuracy, despite the fact that I never let you fuck me. I ought to turn you over to Harlan Greene right now.” Her hand was hovering over the buzzer.
“Wait a minute,” said Sam. “We’ve got somebody outside. If I don’t show my face in that door in two minutes, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
“What’s going on here, Johnny? You’re Batman, he’s Robin? You’ve got to be kidding me if …”
“Shut up. Johnny, go get Moon.”
Johnny Gee bolted out the door and returned a moment later with Moon.
“You better listen to his skinny ass, lady, ’cause he be tellin’ you the god’s truth,” said Moon, glaring at Sheila. “We done a long stretch in the joint together, and I seen him do some dumb shit, and he had one hell of a lot a chances, but Johnny here, he never done ratted nobody out.”
Sheila studied Johnny Gee’s face. Then she stood up and tugged on a satin rope hanging on the wall next to the fireplace.
“Let me get you something to drink,” she said. A girl in a minidress maid’s outfit appeared. “Get them whatever they want,” she said off-handedly.
Johnny Gee asked for a beer. Moon backed quietly against the door and folded his arms. Sam shook his head no. The girl disappeared through a door that closed soundlessly behind her.
“What have you done, anyway, Johnny? I’ve seen some shitstorms around this capital, but I’ve never seen it fly like this. There’s a high-priced contract out on you. Your friend, too. It was a stupid move, coming here. How did you know this place wasn’t being watched? How did you know some of Harlan’s boys wouldn’t be here tonight?”
“We weren’t sure it was Harlan Greene that’s lookin’ for us,” said Johnny Gee.
“Oh, Jesus. I don’t believe it,” said Sheila, shaking her head. “Harlan Greene’s turning the whole fucking state inside out hunting you down, and you don’t know it’s him you’ve pissed off. That’s rich, Johnny.” She chuckled to herself and ran her hands through her hair. “So what did you do? You still haven’t told me.”
“We’ve seen the tapes, Sheila,” Sam said.
Sheila glanced at him, then looked inquiringly at Johnny Gee.
“Is that the truth?”
“You bet, baby.”
“How did you—”
Sam cut her off.
“That’s none of your business.”
“I just wanted to know where—”
He cut her off again.
“Look. The point is, we’ve seen them. We want to know who they belong to. Let’s put it this way. We want to know what’s going on.”
Sheila looked from Sam to Johnny Gee, her astonishment showing in her gaping mouth.
“You’ve seen the tapes! I can’t believe it! Those goddamned tapes! No wonder Harlan wants your asses. You could do more damage than you could with—”
“With a .45,” said Johnny Gee.
“Oh, hell, a lot more damage than that.”
“I told you,” said Sam. “We want to know what’s going on. You’re on the tapes. A good number of scenes were shot right here in this house, through the ceiling. What’s going on?”
“How am I supposed to know? They’re hot. You’re hot. That’s all I know.”
“Bullshit, Sheila,” said Johnny Gee. “You don’t do nothin’ without coverin’ your ass six ways from Sunday. Who came in here and set up them cameras? Who’s behind them tapes? We got to know, Sheila. Don’t you understand?”
“I told you. I don’t know. All I know is, Harlan wants them bad enough to—”
“To kill for them,” said Johnny Gee. “They killed one guy already. They tied him to a tree and beat him half to death, then they shot him through the head. He had nothin’ to do with them tapes. He knew nothin’. He done nothin’. He didn’t deserve to die. If anybody deserved to die, it was me, goddamnit. Not Spicer.”
“Harlan Greene is behind the tapes?” asked Sam.
“I don’t know who’s behind the tapes. The only people I dealt with were the technicians who installed the camera in the room upstairs. I didn’t know who they were working for.
I didn’t ask. In this business, you don’t ask too many questions.”
“It’s a safe guess that Harlan Greene has an interest in the tapes if he wants them bad enough to kill for them, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s a safe guess he’s got an interest in everything in this state that isn’t nailed down,” said Sheila. “Highway contracts, public works projects, dams, zoning ordinances, everything right down to and including ten percent of the contract to provide toilet paper and hand towels to public rest rooms in high schools and out there on the interstate. He’s a very busy man. He’s a very wealthy man. He’s a very dangerous man.”
“We know that much,” Sam acknowledged.
“And he’s a man who’s after our particular asses?” asked Johnny Gee.
“That’s what I hear!” said Sheila.
“So what’s on the tapes that could damage him so severely that he’s willing to kill to get them back? It wouldn’t be his interest in a large public works project, would it?” asked Sam.
“You catch on fast,” said Sheila.
“Tell me something. Who gets paid off so this place can operate out in the open like this?”
“One of Harlan’s boys. Ten percent. He’s got one of his squinty-eyed little geeks here every week checking my fucking books, excuse the pun. How else you figure an operation like this stays open in the state capital of Illinois? Good will? You’ve got to have protection in this business, and you’ve got to have it in a lot of other businesses. Protection like that costs money. It costs ten percent.”
“And that ten percent buys a wink and nod from the city police, the county sheriff, the state patrol … ten percent buys the local D.A.’s office?”
“You got it.”
“What about the state attorney general? Does he turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, too?”
“Hell, I’ve got a half-dozen clients from the attorney general’s office, and the county prosecutor himself was here, let me see … two nights ago. I don’t pay much attention to them. They pay attention to me.”
“Jesus.”
“Other than Harlan Greene and the governor, the rest of them are small potatoes.”
“You know Harlan Greene?”
“I know him.”
“You know who he owns?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean, who’s loyal to him. Which sheriffs. Which D.A.’s. Which local police chiefs.”
“Yeah. I know most of them.”
“We want a clean one.”
“What?”
“We want you to tell us the name of a clean cop, a clean D.A., a clean sheriff. We want somebody who doesn’t owe Harlan Greene. Preferably, we’d like someone who doesn’t even know Harlan Greene. But we’ll settle for a law enforcement official who’s not bought and paid for.”
“You don’t want much, do you?”
“I’m only asking for what I’ve believed my tax dollars have been paying for all the years I’ve spent serving my country, not even living in the state of Illinois. An honest public official. That’s all I ask.”
“I don’t know. It’s going to take me a while to think about this one,” she said.
“That’s all we’re askin’, Sheila,” said Johnny Gee. “Just think about it. We just need to talk to somebody we can trust.”
“Will you do it?” asked Sam.
“Yeah. I’ll do it.”
“We’ll be in touch,” said Sam. He stood up and walked out the door.
A few minutes later Johnny Gee squeezed through the door of the Porsche into the jump seat and lit up a Picayune.
“What went on back there?” asked Sam.
“Nothin’,” said Johnny Gee. “We was just talkin’ over old times.”
THE MORNING SUN was peeking over the horizon when they arrived at Lake Egypt, a long Y-shaped body of water tucked into the hills on the edge of the Shawnee National Forest. The cottage sat in a glade of pines on a point of land at the fork in the Y, so the lake stretched into the distance on either side. A length of dock had been pulled out for the winter and sat forlornly on the shore, a few feet away from the water.
Sam and Johnny Gee were not sure what was going to be happening for the next few days, or indeed if anything would happen. They were going to wait a day, then they would call Sheila. If she had something or someone for them, they would act. If not, they would wait some more.
Moon, for his part, had business to attend to, some of which may or may not have concerned the twin sisters, Rowanda and Rolene. Sam and Johnny Gee had dropped him off at the pool hall with the understanding that he was available if they needed him. If Sam had been at first unsure of the bona fides of Johnny Gee, he had felt immediately at ease with Moon. You could have taken Moon, put sergeant stripes on him, and air-dropped him into any army unit extant and he would have found himself not just a place, but a career. He might have been slicker than oil on glass, but he was straight oil on flat glass, of that much Sam was certain.
The cottage by the lake had belonged to Sam’s grandparents, and he had spent summers there as a kid, before his interests turned to dirt track race cars. Now it belonged to his mother, and she’d rarely visited the place since his father died. It was a simple wood-frame structure with a screened porch on the front and large windows on the sides overlooking the lake in two directions. Sam parked the Porsche under the tree and unlocked the front door with a key that was hidden under a rock next to the porch. He disappeared inside for a moment, then the porch light came on.
“Had to throw the master switch on the fuse box,” he said. “Come on in. I’ll turn on the heat. The place will be warm in a few minutes.”
Johnny Gee walked through the front door. There was one big front room that had a cathedral ceiling and exposed beams. The kitchen opened into the front room on the left, and a doorway next to the kitchen led to the back of the cottage. A large stone fireplace filled one corner. The big room was furnished simply, with wicker chairs and a twig-style sofa with flowered cushions. The bare wood floor was a little worn in spots, and it was coated with a layer of dust. Two pastel rugs were rolled up and stored out of the way along a side wall. Light came from three iron standing lamps that had shades made out of old geological survey maps. The place was homey in the best sense of the word.
Sam pointed out the guest room, suggested Johnny Gee get some sleep, stretched out on his grandparents’ old four-poster, and fell right out.
Night had fallen by the time he woke up and fixed a meal of canned soup and Cokes, the only provisions that had been left the last time anyone visited the cottage.
When they were finished, he straightened up the kitchen and changed clothes. He was wearing a sweatshirt with a big RANGER tab on the chest as he strode to the front door.
“I think we’d better hop in the car and drive over to Hodgkins’ general store and get some food. We might be here a while.”
“That sounds like a good idea, man.”
The drive to the store took twenty minutes over gravel roads and two-lane blacktops. When they got there, Sam said hello to Mr. Hodgkins, whom he’d known since he was six years old. They bought a case of beer and three sacks of groceries and made the drive back just as quickly. After they had unloaded the groceries, Sam sat down on an old wicker armchair next to the phone.
“I think I’d better call Betsy,” he announced.
“Who is Betsy?”
“My old girlfriend from college. I’ve been avoiding this call for months, but at this point, I don’t think I have any choice.”
“What in hell does your college girlfriend have to do with anything?” Johnny Gee was stretched out on the twig sofa, hands laced behind his neck, smoking a Picayune. A can of beer was balanced on his flat stomach, and his feet were crossed, his two-tone shoes on the sofa’s wooden arm.
“She works for the governor. Runs his outreach office in the south, twenty counties in the state. She might be able to explain why the governor has been coming down here so oft
en recently.” Sam dug into his wallet and pulled out a slip of paper.
“You got the phone number right there, huh?”
“My mother gave it to me months ago. She’s been leaning on me to give Betsy a call and ask her out.”
“But you already got the chick down at Fort Campbell. What is she? She’s an officer, like you?”
“Yeah, she’s a major, divorced, just like me.”
“That happen all the time in the army? Divorces, I mean.”
“Let’s put it this way. The military life isn’t for everyone, I guess. You know, moving once every two or three years … it’s pretty disruptive. The housing isn’t the best in the world, and the pay’s not all that great. You’ve got to love it to stay in.”
“And you love it, huh, Major?”
“I love it, Johnny.”
“Then why’d you come back up here, man? You coulda blown me off, told me to pack my ass out to Arizona or somethin’. When I come down to your base the other day, I figured I had a shot, but not much of one. I mean, all this shit is, is trouble.”
“I’ve got to tell you, I gave it some thought.”
“Then what made you take the chance?”
“As an officer in the army, your biggest nightmare is that you’ll get somebody killed because of your own ignorance, or because of a mistake you made, or because of some circumstance you failed to plan for. You live with it every day. Everybody knows being in the army isn’t selling insurance or pumping gas, everybody knows the nature of the business could get you killed. All these young men in your command, the only choice they’ve got is to look up to you and trust that you won’t fuck up. I’ve never been in combat, but men are killed all the time in training accidents. I’ve been in the army over ten years, and I have yet to lose a single soldier in a training accident, car wreck, or any other way. But I lost Spicer. I pulled him into this thing, and because I did, he was killed. You can’t imagine how that makes me feel.”
“Hey, man, I don’t feel none too wonderful about Spicer myself. It was me got you and him into this thing in the first place.”
Rules of the Road Page 19
