Mickey, rising up now, was also staring.
Rader didn’t move. ‘Who is she?’
‘I don’t got her name.’
‘Kerri Conklin,’ Mickey said, gasping a little. ‘She called us from the piano bar earlier.’
‘Someone fingered me,’ Rader said, ‘or was it all her work?’
Butch stood there, his eyes now on the gun. He swallowed once.
‘Kerri Conklin,’ Mickey said. ‘Someone coulda.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean?’ Mickey said.
Rader said, ‘Why did you even know about me? The bar?’
‘The Flyaway,’ Mickey said, nodding. ‘Someone in there. I guess there’s eyes, you know?’
No one moved or spoke for a few seconds. Then Rader stepped back, still pointing the gun.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘each of you take an end.’
‘Are you fucking shitting me?’ Butch said. ‘After that?’
Rader pulled back the hammer again, the gun trained on his face.
‘Okay,’ Butch said, ‘okay, I hear you. What a night this is turning out to be.’
It took ten minutes for them to get him to the top of the slope. They rested again, gasping.
‘Can I have a cigarette?’ Mickey said.
‘No.’
‘Let me sit down.’
‘Keep moving.’
Another ten minutes, a lot of panting and muttering, and they were bundling him inside the trunk. Mickey, mouth open, was slumped back against the side of the Mercedes.
‘Let me have a smoke,’ he said. ‘Let me just have a drink. For God’s sake, I’m dying here.’
Rader said, ‘Get into the car. Back seat. Butch, you’re driving.’
Butch was no longer panting. Rader handed him the keys and all three stepped into the Merc.
‘Where are we going?’ Butch said.
Rader said, ‘Drive. I’ll tell you where.’
They left behind the trees, then the houses. Back on the thoroughfare Rader said, ‘You’re going to drop me off in a few minutes.’
Butch looked at him in the rearview.
Rader said, ‘You’re pulling in when I tell you. Then I get out, and it’s all yours.’
‘What about...?’ Butch looked at him again. ‘You actually expect us to—’
‘You got it,’ Rader said, flashing a glance to the sidewalk. ‘Another couple of blocks, we stop.’
‘You fuckin’ heartless bastard.’
Rader said nothing. A moment later he tapped Butch’s seat. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Pull in.’
Butch drew over at the curb. ‘What do we do with him?’ he said.
‘That’s your problem. The same one you’d have had if I’d been in the trunk.’
Mickey looked round at Rader. ‘We can find you,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
Rader leaned in, said, ‘Get out of Torrent City after you’re done tonight. Get out and don’t even think about coming back. Your luck took you as far as this curb. Don’t push it, or I’ll find you.’
He opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk and turned away from the Merc past some restaurants. Traffic was passing; he didn’t know if the car was gone or not, and didn’t look back. After a block he cut into an alleyway below two-story buildings. Down there it was dark, but soon Rader saw the Marquis hotel glowing crimson and gold against the sky. It was late, well after one. He thought about returning to the motel, throwing all his stuff into a bag, and leaving Torrent City tonight. But first there was that cut on his side to look at. And then there was something that the girl, Kerri, had told him in the bar when he asked about her right to be there. Not so much what she said, he realized, but the look in her eyes when she said it.
Rader was thinking about that, even while he planned to leave town within the hour. Then he got to the end of the alleyway and felt his phone vibrating. Voicemail, recorded two hours before.
Turning onto the sidewalk he heard Jill’s voice. “I got a couple of things you might like to know about Mr. Marquis,” she said. “Should we talk on the phone, or there’s that place... Halfway home, right? Home might not be the most appropriate word for you, John, but I’m rambling...”
Rader walked on, cutting down past the Flyaway Lounge to the motel. He called Jill, reaching her cellphone.
‘The case is dead.’
‘You certain?’
‘It’s dead.’ Rader walked through a darkened stretch, lights up ahead now.
‘I already got some stuff on him. We could’ve met...’
He entered the parking lot. ‘No need.’
‘Okay, just as well, I suppose.’
‘See you at your place tomorrow afternoon,’ Rader said.
Jill said, ‘I’ll have a drink waiting.’
There were lights running along the length of the motel, between rooms. Several of them were broken; another flickered. He walked in the dark past the windows to the stairs and trotted up, passing another busted light, to the second floor, heading round towards his door down near the end. Rader slowed as he passed the second-to-last, one hand inside his jacket on the gun that Butch had aimed at him in the car. It wasn’t by any greater sense of caution than he always used arriving at a door on a job. And even then, he asked himself the same question: Is it safe? Part of the job, part of the life.
With his other hand Rader placed the key into the lock. The lock was old, and the key revolved until he let go the pistol and gripped the handle, twisting the key in an upwards motion. Click. Rader listened, then he jerked the key from the lock. Into the room now. Reaching again for the gun. That’s when the lights came on and the heavy object struck his head, twice.
It felt like a wrench, but it was the fist of the large guy in the suit. Another guy, smaller, was standing watching from the end of the bed. Rader’s hands went up as his knees buckled and the breath came out of him. He heard the smaller guy give a shrill laugh. Then he saw the fist coming at him a third time. He crumpled and the lights went back out and he heard that shrill laugh again before he heard nothing else.
8
When Rader opened his eyes he was half-lying against the inside of a large van. There were some kegs at his feet, and the guy with the fist like a wrench was watching him. The van wasn’t moving, and down there in front the light flooding through the windshield was fluorescent, and the walls were gray concrete. Rader, moving a hand over his eyes a moment, looked between his fingers at the man with the fist like a wrench. The guy sitting there on a keg, back against the side of the van, arm resting on his knee. He kept scowling, like something was somebody’s fault, and now he was having to tolerate that shit just to get his job done.
Rader glanced to his left, seeing the other guy. He was the shorter one he’d noticed back in the motel room as he went down. Small features, neat hair and a pissy look gnawing at his lips. This guy, who might’ve been thirty, was graying at the sides and temples, his hair with the kind of sheen that made Rader think of shampoos in Upper Fifth Avenue salons. He’d known a lot of amateurs; most guys in that profession are amateurs, and when they run into someone with experience, they’re out of business in a hurry. But that thought could keep.