“You an expert suddenly?” Stella whispered back, then clamped her mouth shut as steps surged past the bathroom and they heard someone open the door to the bedroom across the hall. Stella shut her eyes and pictured the way she’d do it if it were her—go in fast, left nearside corner, since the bad guy was likely to be right-handed. Aim down—those scenes in the movie where they draw next to their faces were the worst kind of bullshit. A bad guy could grab your arm, and all you could do was shoot holes in the ceiling—aim down, and you’d be shooting holes in their ankles.
There was a sound at the bathroom door and the door swung and bumped against the wall and a man entered the little room.
Stella yanked the curtain back and stuck her hand out at lighting speed, getting a handful of shirt, and yanked as hard as she could as Chrissy ducked neatly out of the way.
There was a satisfying thunk of skull hitting tile. In the light from the hall, Stella saw that she’d bagged a short round sort of a thug—he’d stumbled on the edge of the tub when Stella grabbed him. That the move had actually worked was a cause for surprise as much as delight, and Stella savored the feeling for a half a second while she grabbed an arm and twisted it up behind the guy while Chrissy did something to him that elicited a girlish shriek of pain. An object clattered to the tub floor, and Stella jammed her gun in the soft spot behind the man’s ear and put her lips millimeters from his cheek.
“Make a sound and I’ll blow a hole in you that you’d be able to put a fist through.”
The man nodded very carefully. A familiar if unpleasant stench rose to her nostrils.
“Eww,” Chrissy whispered. “You done pissed yourself, ain’t you? You some sort a beginner or what?”
Their captive was evidently taking to heart Stella’s command to keep quiet because he merely shrugged—a very small and cautious shrug.
“Take your foot,” Stella said, “and move that gun you dropped as far as you can to the right.”
“And hope you don’t drip on it or I’m a knock you in the nuts again,” Chrissy snarled.
The man complied slowly, toeing the gun gently like he was a ballet-shoe-wearing member of the corps.
“You know what to do, I guess,” Stella told Chrissy.
Chrissy snatched up the gun and stepped out of the tub with the graceful agility of a cat. Her form as she slunk around the corner into the hall was flawless, leading with the guy’s gun—she’d been shooting a variety of firearms practically since she was a toddler. The Lardners were a well-armed clan, with diverse interests—they’d laid in everything from game-hunting pieces to varmint-scaring to siege-threatening to apocalypse-surviving weapons, and Chrissy and her brothers and sisters were as conversant in their use and care as, say, a family of professional musicians might be with metronomes and batons and tuners.
“Lay down on your stomach,” Stella suggested, “and leave your hands up on the edge of the tub. Facedown, now.”
She almost had time to feel sorry for the guy, since from the smell and visible ring in the tub, Liman hadn’t cleaned it yet in his natural life, but as she stepped gingerly out of the tub, the Bersa trained on him the entire time, she heard Chrissy barking commands in the living room.
“Drop that now!” she hollered. “Kick it out of the way and hit the floor or I’ll blow a crater where your dick used to be!”
There was a clatter, followed by a clumping on the floor and a volley of colorful curses.
“Oh, dear,” Stella said to the trembling form below her. “My friend does
not
care to be yelled at.”
Sure enough, the next sound from the living room was a sort of pronounced “oof” followed by a low moan.
“There any more of you?” Stella demanded. For extra emphasis, she leaned over far enough to tickle the back of her gentleman’s short haircut with the muzzle end of the barrel. He shook his head, face grinding into the cold porcelain.
“Just you two today? You sure?”
He nodded harder.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do—we’re gonna go join those guys. Make it like more of a party, see? What’s your name, by the way?”
It was Jake, though it took a couple of tries for him to get it out. When he stepped out of the tub he stumbled, and Stella sighed as she gave him a little shove in the right direction, tapping gently at the small of his back with the Bersa.
In the main room, Chrissy was sitting daintily on the edge of a faded, sagging sofa. The man lying on the floor with his hands extended out to the sides looked—at least from what Stella could make out, since his face was pressed to the floor, too—like he might be the larger, leaner brother of Jake.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Lawrence, is what he says, anyway.”
“Okay. Well, Lawrence, I want you to kind of snake-crawl over there, and then you can sit with your back up against the wall. Keep your hands to the sides. And Jake, you go sit next to him, but leave a little room. Like in kindergarten, you know? Pretend you’re lining up for recess.”
She sat next to Chrissy on the couch and watched the two men carry out their instructions.
“This couch smells,” Chrissy said conversationally.
“Jake smells worse.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that. Might be a close contest. Hey, they’re not much to look at, are they?”
Stella thought that assessment was a bit harsh; their two captives were merely scared witless, which gave them unattractive slack-mouthed expressions. “They probably fix up nice enough,” she said kindly.
“So what-all are you up to, coming out here in the middle of the night?” Chrissy demanded.
No answer. Jake cast a nervous glance at his partner, then stared miserably at the incriminating stain on the crotch of his pants.
“Looking for something, maybe?” Stella suggested. “Come out here to, what—you couldn’t have been planning to
rob
the place, could you? Maybe y’all are beer stein collectors?”
“There’s some vintage vinyl in the back bedroom,” Chrissy said. “That might be worth something on eBay.”
“Is that it? Y’all lookin’ to start a collection?”
“Don’t think it would be worth a whole lot,” Chrissy said dubiously. “I didn’t recognize hardly any of it. There was some Queen. Couple a ABBA.”
“Hmm,” Stella said.
“Flash drive,” Lawrence muttered, giving her a murderous look. “We’re looking for a flash drive. That’s all.”
Stella’s eyes widened. What a coincidence. “That so. What, uh, was on this drive?”
“I don’t know. The client didn’t say. She just said find it and bring it back.”
She.
Huh. Someone else was looking for the drive with the images of Stella and Ferg. Or a different drive entirely. If Priss was keeping backup scenarios queued up that featured Stella, it made sense she’d have dirt on other people, too—just like Stella had escape hatches stashed all over the county.
This other person wanted the drive bad enough to send these two armed clowns after it. Stella wasn’t quite that desperate yet. Did that mean that this other gal’s dirt was worse than her own?
“Who’s your client?”
“Ain’t sayin’,” Lawrence said quickly.
“The hell you ain’t,” Chrissy said, and lifted the gun she’d taken off him and fired a neat shot that hit the wall an inch away from Lawrence’s right ear before Stella had time to open her mouth. Lawrence jerked like a puppet who’d received a good hard yank on his strings, and Jake looked like he was about to throw up. “You might like to know that you ain’t the first jackass to draw on me. Difference is, last time I moved a little too slow. Not gonna make that mistake again.”
“Ah, maybe don’t kill ’em quite yet,” Stella said hastily. Chrissy’s rage was a beautiful thing to behold, but like a wild horse or a summer lightning storm, it seemed like it might be difficult to contain. “Why don’t we try asking once more, real nice?”
Chrissy nodded reluctantly. “Okay,” she sighed as she lined up another shot. Stella guessed this time she was aiming for the vicinity around Lawrence’s other ear. She could see why that would make a person nervous, and decided not to share that Chrissy was a crack shot and would no sooner hit him than shoot her own foot. “I guess we can try your way first. Who. The. Fuck. Hired. You.”
“Marilu Carstairs,” Jake said quickly. Lawrence shot him a dirty look, but Jake focused intently on his lap. “She’s a judge up in Johnson County.”
Johnson County was where the fancy-schmancy Kansas City folks tended to live. Stella had once tracked a textile executive who liked to drive all the way to Casey to beat up his mistress back to his seven-thousand-square-foot house in Johnson County.
“A
judge
?” she demanded, wondering what kind of dirt Priss had managed to collect on such a lofty member of the legal system. Her own experience with the judiciary was limited to Judge Torrance Ligett, who had ordered her released after Ollie’s death when dozens of friends and neighbors lined up outside the courthouse to lobby in her behalf, sharing the universally held opinion that she was married to nothing short of a dangerous lunatic.
Judge Ligett was nice. Stella sent him a Christmas card every year. But she guessed not every judge was such a sterling sort of person.
“What did she want the drive for, anyway?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a job—we don’t ask her business.”
“She crooked? Take bribes?” Chrissy asked.
“Don’t know.”
“That’s prob’ly it. How much was she gonna pay you for it?”
The men glanced at each other. Neither said anything.
Stella had an idea.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “I figure you got some cash on you. Bet she gave you some up front, and I bet you got it with you. Now, you’ll probably tell me otherwise, and then it’s just gonna get real uncomfortable for you. It’ll be a shame if you’re telling the truth, see, because by the time you strip down naked and go out and empty out every inch of your car onto the driveway, you’re gonna be real cold. I figure y’all thought you could drive right up to the house like that ’cause you can’t really make out anything from the road, right? Up here behind all those elms? But see, that’s also gonna make it real convenient for me and my pal here to get cozy while you clean out the trunk and the glove box and dig around under them seats and all that, while we’re turning your pockets inside out and goin’ through your wallets—”
“I ain’t goin’ through
his
pants,” Chrissy said darkly, pointing to the damp-crotched Jake.
“You can damn well—,” Lawrence started, his face going a purplish red, before Jake cut him off with a sputtering exclamation.
“She gave us fifteen hundred up front!” he blurted. “Each. Then there was gonna be fifteen hundred more when we gave it to the judge. She said that Porter lady always carried it around with her, is how we knew to come down here.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Lawrence barked. “For fuck’s sake.”
“I just.” Jake swallowed, looking wounded.
“No, no, you’re doing real good, sweetie,” Stella said, giving him an encouraging smile. There was always a weak link, and they’d found theirs. “Tell you what—tell me the rest, we’ll let you keep half your cash.”
“We’re takin’
all
a yours,” Chrissy added, glaring at Lawrence.
Jake nodded enthusiastically, while Lawrence rolled his eyes and muttered “idiot” under his breath.
Stella didn’t blame him. He was clearly the more experienced criminal between the two, and as such, he would be very much aware that the odds were that she and Chrissy wouldn’t let either of them keep any cash. But that’s where he would be wrong. Because the two of them had
principles.
They had
standards.
Their business was committed to helping those in need, and—
—and, really, maybe she didn’t have any business taking
any
of their cash at all, come to think of it. It kind of muddied the waters. Confused things. A conflict of interest, if you will.
On the other hand, she was broke. Dead broke. And with all those pressing household needs.
“Reach into your pockets, nice and slow, and take out your wallets,” she said decisively. “We’re aiming right at you, and your pockets are kinda close to your peckers, so you might not want to do anything to make us suspicious. Right?”
More vigorous nodding from Jake. An aggrieved sigh from Lawrence.
The wallets were removed and tossed over. Luckily, neither had been doused with urine. Chrissy counted out the money, and gave half of Jake’s back, after only a little hesitation. Jake grinned wide, like he’d just received a new bike for his birthday, and answered the rest of their questions.
“Judge Carstairs found us ’cause we’ve done a little work for this one con she sent up a while back. Name of Titan Small. Nice guy, bad checks, gambling, like that—he hired us a few times—”
“He hired
me,
” Lawrence said. “Because I’m a professional. Least I was until the day I took
you
on.”
“Don’t mind him,” Jake said, warming to his account. “He’s like this sometimes. Anyway, Titan had us doing some collections for him—you know, tracking folks down to get them to pay up—and the judge thought we could help her find Priss. Which was easy, we just drove over to her place last night. Only, come to find out, it wasn’t her we were watching, it was her cat-sitter.”
“You were
so sure
it was her,” Lawrence muttered. “Swear on a stack of Bibles, you said. Bet your life on it, you said.”
Jake frowned. “It was through
miniblinds.
And that chick did have the same basic shape, you got to admit.”
“What I get,” Lawrence said, addressing the opposite wall, “trusting an idiot.”
“The cat girl told us everything,” Jake said, ignoring his partner. “Didn’t take much to convince her.”
He had some of his swagger back. Stella was familiar with this effect—let a man talk, and the fish he pulled out of the lake got bigger and the woman he took home from the bar got prettier—but she let Jake ramble, figuring it was the most direct path to the answers she needed. Besides, they’d nearly wrung the man dry, which was something of a disappointment—evidently he truly
didn’t
know much.