by Max Austin
“He’s an odd duck, my cousin. Don’t worry about it, though. I’ll set him straight in a minute.”
“You’re on your way home now?”
“That’s right.”
“Want me to tell him to wait for you?”
“No, that’s okay. I’m almost there.”
Chapter 58
Bud Knox felt sick, the pancakes a clotted knot in his stomach. He poured a cup of coffee from the cold beaker in his kitchen and put it in the microwave to heat up. More coffee was the last thing his stomach needed, but he wasn’t thinking clearly. Too busy feeling ill over what happened to Johnny Muller.
A broken neck? What a crappy way to go. He wondered whether Johnny knew it was coming, whether he’d had time to make his peace. Had they hurt him a lot first, trying to make him talk? And how much had they learned?
Bud took a sip of the steaming coffee and cursed when it burned his tongue. A stupid mistake, easy to make when preoccupied, but it felt like it was the most recent in a string of errors that began when Mick first agreed to talk to Johnny Muller. This job had felt wrong from the start. Too close to home, too easy the way it fell into their laps. If he could do it over, he’d give it a pass.
Too late now. Better to focus on the millions of dollars sitting in the storage unit. The cash would make it easier to forget the deaths of Johnny and the bank guard and his girlfriend. Mick was doing what was necessary to protect that loot, and Bud knew he would benefit, assuming they didn’t both get killed.
He blew on his coffee and braved another sip. Told himself to calm down. No one was more capable than Mick Wyman.
Mick could manage fine without him watching his back. He had his own worries here at home. With millions at stake, any resourceful asshole might turn up his identity. He had to stick close to his family and keep them safe.
Bud thought of the pistol locked in his office. He ought to keep it handy, just in case. But he worried about the girls—
He checked the clock above the kitchen sink. School let out early on parent-conference days. It was nearly time to pick them up already.
He finished his coffee and put the cup in the sink. Took a deep breath. Cleared his mind. He didn’t want the girls to sense that he was in trouble. He’d managed, all these years, to keep his criminal life from touching them. He couldn’t let that change now.
Chapter 59
Vincent Caro punched buttons on the rental car’s radio, trying to find music he could tolerate. Jazz, maybe old-school rhythm-and-blues. But he kept coming up with the same things: classic rock, country-western, bouncy Mexican music. If he was forced to sit still, waiting for Mick Wyman to come home, he could at least have something smooth to calm the nerves.
He was so busy screwing around with the radio he didn’t hear the man approach the rear of the rented Chevy Malibu. Just caught a glimpse of movement in the rearview mirror as he strode up to the driver’s door. Caro’s hand went inside his suit, going for the Beretta, but he was a breath too slow. A man with a big black mustache stuck an old-fashioned Army .45 against his head.
Caro slowly pulled his empty hand out of his coat. He cut his eyes to the side, trying to get a better look at the man with the gun. Had to be Mick Wyman. Big guy, dressed like a workman, leaning on the door so his face was only six inches away from Caro’s. If he pulled the trigger, the gunshot would deafen him. But it would do much worse to Caro.
“Turn off the radio.”
Caro flicked the radio off.
“Now keep both hands on top of the steering wheel.”
“What’s the big idea?” Caro said as he obeyed. “Why the gun?”
“I hear you’re looking for me.”
“Buddy, I don’t even know who you are.”
Wyman nudged his head with the gun. It hurt, but Caro didn’t wince, wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
“See those apartments across the street? I live in number six.”
“So?”
“So the manager tells me that you let yourself in a little while ago, had a look around.”
Caro said nothing. He could feel perspiration popping out on his forehead.
“I told the manager it was okay,” Wyman said. “Told him that I’d given you a key, that you were my cousin.”
Caro looked over at him, moving only his eyes. “I don’t see a family resemblance.”
“Me, neither. Too bad for you.”
Wyman cocked the hammer back on the big pistol. It sounded very loud that close to Caro’s ear.
“Who the hell are you?”
Caro took a deep breath through his nose. Normally, he didn’t like to spread his name around, but in this case it didn’t seem to matter much. One or the other of them would be dead soon.
“My name is Vincent Caro.”
“You’re not from around here, are you, Vincent? That accent sounds like Chicago to me.”
“Good ear. I’ve got lots of friends in Chicago.”
“Is that right?”
“Important friends. Influential friends.”
“Is that supposed to impress me?”
Caro gave the tiniest of shrugs. “Just want you to know. If anything happens to me, my friends will swarm down here to find the person who did it.”
Wyman seemed unmoved.
“What were you doing in my apartment?”
“I didn’t say I had gone in there.”
“Cut the shit. The manager saw you. What were you looking for?”
“Does it matter? Clearly, somebody had been there before me. The place was wrecked.”
“And you don’t know who did that.”
“Of course not. If it had been my people, I would’ve had no reason to come here today.”
Wyman ran his tongue along his mustache, thinking it over.
“Maybe you were looking for me. Wanting to put a bullet in me.”
His hand snaked inside Caro’s jacket and he roughly jerked the Beretta out of its holster. He wedged the gun in his own waistband. The big Colt never wavered from Caro’s head.
“I’ve got no problem with you,” Caro said. “I’m looking for some stolen money.”
“And if I say I don’t know anything about this money?”
“I’d believe you. You seem like a smart guy. If you’d walked away from a job with millions of dollars, you wouldn’t still be in this cowtown, right? You’d be long gone.”
“If I were smart.”
“Right. Only a dumbass would sit on that much money and expect no consequences. You’re no dumbass, right?”
“Who do you work for?”
“My employer is none of your business,” Caro said.
Wyman shoved against his head with the big pistol. “This makes it my business.”
“No,” Caro said, his voice remarkably calm in his own ears. “I tell you about my boss, maybe you’ll go stick a pistol against his head. I can’t afford that kind of mistake.”
“You can’t afford to fuck around with me, either. I might decorate the interior of this rental car with your brains.”
“You won’t.” Caro was feeling more confident now. “If you were going to shoot me, you would’ve done it by now. But you don’t want to make that kinda noise. Your manager’s watching out the window. He doesn’t know me, but he knows you. If you shoot me, he’ll tell the cops, and you’ll have worse problems than you’ve got now.”
Wyman grunted.
“Let’s say we both walk away,” Caro offered. “Quietly. You go tend to your business, and I’ll go back to Chicago.”
“I let you go, and you’ll be right behind me,” Wyman said.
“No, I won’t. I gotta say, I’ve lost interest in this situation. I thought I might find you and tear off a piece of that loot for myself. But it’s not worth this kinda trouble.”
Caro had gambled, not knowing whether the manager was really watching from across the street, but it paid off. The gun moved away from his head. He took a deep breath and blew it out, relieved, t
hough he could still feel a throb where the barrel had pressed against his skull.
“All right,” Wyman said. “Get out of here. But if I ever see you again? Bang, you’re dead. No conversation next time. No second chances. Clear?”
“Perfectly.”
Wyman’s boots crunched on the gravelly soil. Caro watched in his mirrors as he walked toward a dark blue Charger parked on the street, maybe sixty feet away.
“Fucker,” Caro muttered.
He cranked the engine to life. Wyman didn’t even turn at the noise.
Caro threw the rental car into reverse and stood on the accelerator. He swiveled in the seat, looking back over his shoulder, taking aim. Weeds and rocks thudded in the wheel wells as the car rocketed backward.
Wyman turned and saw the car bearing down on him. He brought up the Colt and blasted away. The car’s rear window frosted and bits of glass blew all over the backseat. Caro kept his foot on the gas.
Wyman leaped out of the way at the last second, and Caro spun the wheel, trying to catch him with a fender, the car skidding in the loose dirt. Wyman fired again. The right rear window blew out. Caro felt the thud as the bullet buried itself in the front seat’s upholstery.
Barely braking, he slammed the car into drive. The transmission caught with a shriek and the car leaped forward. Wyman sidestepped it again as Caro spun the wheel. Another shot, but it sang off metal.
The car bounced over a concrete curb into the street. Caro wrestled it to the left. The tires caught with a chirp, and he zoomed away.
He checked his mirrors as he reached the end of the block, but he couldn’t see Wyman anywhere. Just a cloud of dust hanging over the vacant lot.
Chapter 60
Mick Wyman coughed against the pale dust as the Chevy disappeared around a corner. He considered chasing the car and finishing the out-of-town smartass who’d nearly run him down, but it was too dangerous now. He could already hear sirens in the distance.
He peered through the dust at his apartment complex across the street. Two of the doors were open, heads cautiously peeking out, checking on the shots. One belonged to the silver-haired manager, Bob.
Damn. The apartment was rented under his real name, which meant cops all over the city soon would be hunting for him because he fired those shots.
Mick trotted over to the Charger and got behind the wheel. The sirens were drawing closer. He cranked the engine and sped away. He turned at the next corner and again two blocks later, putting some obstacles between himself and the cops. He’d have a few minutes while the manager filled them in, then his name and the make of his car would blare over every police radio.
He wheeled onto Lomas Boulevard and weaved between clumps of traffic on the six-lane thoroughfare, which was lined with thrift stores and fast-food joints. By the time he hit a red light, he was certain no one was on his tail. He tried to relax. He needed to stay calm and work his way through the next few steps—get rid of the Charger, procure new wheels, split up the money, get the hell out of Albuquerque.
He took a phone out of the center console and hit the numbers programmed to speed-dial Bud. He needed to warn his partner about Caro. He needed to set up a rendezvous to split the money. That would be the only time he and Bud should meet face-to-face, and it would be damned brief. If they were smart, they’d go their separate ways and never communicate. Mick felt a twinge of emotion. He was fond of Bud and his family. He’d hate to never see them again, but it would be the safest way to go.
Bud’s phone rang in his ear four times, then voice mail picked up. Mick grimaced. Too much information to impart over voice mail. Information that shouldn’t be heard by anyone but Bud.
He hung up.
Chapter 61
The old jeweler smoked a pipe. The aroma took Pam Willis straight back to her childhood. Her father had been a pipe smoker, too, an itinerant English professor always wreathed in smoke and surrounded by books. Much of Pam’s early ambition had stemmed from wanting to avoid the boring life of a professor’s wife, passing out cookies at undergraduate tea parties. She’d rather take a bullet.
She and Hector met the jeweler within minutes of responding to the police call about a purple Cadillac. APD spotted the lowrider in a service alley behind a row of stores on San Mateo Boulevard. The jewelry shop was on the south end of the row, separated by a narrow parking lot from a store that sold car stereos.
Hector was on the phone, arranging for a tow truck to take the Cadillac in for fingerprinting. Pam suspected the car had been wiped down before it was abandoned.
The jeweler came out the back door of his shop, lighting his pipe as soon as he was outdoors. He was a stoop-shouldered man with a bald head fringed in white fuzz. Glasses sat on his beak of a nose, and a jeweler’s loupe was attached to one corner of the glasses’ frame.
“What’s happening back here?” he asked Pam between puffs.
“FBI,” she said. “We’ve been looking for this car. Any idea how long it’s been back here?”
“Wasn’t there when I locked up last night,” he said. “But I came in the front this morning, so I don’t know if it was there then. It belongs to somebody important?”
“A guard at a bank that was robbed this week.”
“I read about that robbery in the newspaper. A big one, no?”
“Yes, sir.” She took a step away from him, toward Hector. Didn’t want to get bogged down in a discussion of local crime with the old man.
“Maybe,” he offered, “we could look at the video.”
Pam turned back to him. “Video?”
He pointed his pipe at the corner of the building. There, where the wall met the building’s flat roof, was a tiny video camera.
“It’s to cover my back door,” he said. “But it shows this whole alley.”
“That would be very helpful.”
“Come on in,” he said. “When you’re ready.”
“Now would be good. Hector!”
Her partner turned, the phone still to his ear. She pointed at the camera.
“Video from overnight.”
Hector grinned. He followed as she trailed the old man back into the building.
“I didn’t introduce myself properly,” she said. “I’m Pam Willis, special agent with the FBI. This is my partner, Hector Aragon.”
“Samuel Dustin,” the jeweler said. “Good to meet you.”
He called to a clerk in the front of the store and said he’d be busy in the back for a while. He unlocked a blank wooden door and opened it wide. Inside was a closet with shelves holding video recorders and two flickering screens.
“I’ve owned this shop thirty-five years,” he said. “Started out downtown, but we moved out here twenty years ago.”
He punched buttons on one of the machines, still clenching his pipe between his teeth.
“Every time there’s an upgrade to security, I buy it,” he said. “Can’t be too careful when you’ve got a safe full of diamonds.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want to see the video from all night? I can fast-forward through it.”
“That would be great.”
They crowded into the closet, watching one of the screens, where the alley was shown in full color. White lines danced across the screen as he fast-forwarded through the video. When the Cadillac turned into the far end of the alley, Pam said, “There!”
Dustin poked a button and the video slowed to real time. The Cadillac crept down the alley and stopped beside a Dumpster, right where the local police found it this morning.
Pam couldn’t make out the driver’s face but she saw a white rag flash on the dashboard.
“Just like we thought,” she said. “It’s getting wiped down.”
“Someone stole this ugly car?” the old man asked.
“We’re not sure yet,” Hector said.
The driver’s door popped open, and the agents leaned closer to the screen. Pam expected to see Diego Ramirez emerge from the car, but it was someone else. A y
oung Anglo guy, blond, wearing jeans and a black polo shirt. He walked directly toward the camera and disappeared from sight at the bottom of the screen.
“Not our man,” Hector muttered.
“Yeah, but who is it?”
The old jeweler, squinting at the screen, said, “I know him.”
Both agents turned to look at him.
“I mean, I don’t know his name. But I’ve seen him before. He works next door at the stereo place.”
Chapter 62
Milton Abeyta was on the phone with his boss when Vincent Caro barged into his office. Caro looked the slightest bit disheveled—his slick hair mussed on one side of his head, his shirt wrinkled—and that was alarming enough for Milton to say, “I’ll have to call you back,” and hang up. He’d get yelled at later, but better to give Caro his full attention.
“What’s happened?”
Caro sat in the guest chair across from Milton and crossed his legs. He slipped a hand inside the jacket of his olive-green suit.
Milton stiffened, but Caro’s hand came out with a key ring bearing a green Enterprise Rent-A-Car logo.
“I ran into a little trouble.” He tossed the keys onto Milton’s desk. “There’s a light blue Malibu parked at the back of the hotel lot. It’s got a couple of broken windows and a bullet hole in it.”
“A bullet hole?”
Caro shrugged. “I found one of the bank robbers. He didn’t like being found.”
“Ah.”
“I tried to run over him with the car, but he pulled out this hand cannon and started blasting.”
“You’re okay?” Milton asked, though he could see that Caro didn’t have a scratch on him.
“Of course. So is the bank robber, unfortunately. Plus, I’ve lost him again, for the moment.”
“You found him before. You can do it again.”
Caro frowned, as if Milton were wasting his time with encouragement.
“Have one of your people get rid of that car,” he said.
“Rid of it?”
Caro closed his eyes for a moment, making a show of summoning patience. “Have him take it out in the desert somewhere and torch it. Okay?”
