Bad Guys (33 page)

Bullock snorted, smiled. Trimble stepped around me and Angie so he could face Bullock head-on.

“Where’s Eddie?” Bullock asked. “You said on the phone that you didn’t have him with you. I specifically told you to bring him back here. I’m running this show now, so when I say jump, you’re supposed to jump. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, boss,” said Pockmark. “You’re the man.”

Bullock looked at his underling with the bad complexion and said, “Why don’t you go outside, do a walk of the place, make sure there’s no one around.”

Pockmark, almost cheerful, said, “Yeah, sure, I could do that.”

“Eddie was unable to join us,” Trimble said. “He figured he’d get treated better taking a leap down ten stories, rather than come here and face you.”

Bullock was stone-faced. “What are you telling me?”

“He jumped. He’s dead.”

Bullock leaned forward. “Jesus Christ on a saltine, are you shitting me?”

“No.”

“But you got the stuff, right? Before he jumped? You got the stuff?”

“There is no stuff. He sold it.”

Bullock was starting to hyperventilate, which sent him into a coughing fit. He drank a few sips from the nearly empty water bottle.

“Then you got the money. Tell me you got the fucking money.”

Trimble said, “Not exactly. He sold the shipment for a handful of magic beans to the Jamaicans. A hundred and fifty thou.”

“A hundred fifty?” Bullock was stone-faced no more. He was stunned. “He sold that for a hundred fifty? That would have kept half the junkies in this city happy for a year. A hundred fifty?”

“Yeah.”

Bullock made a fist and slammed it so hard onto the table that we all jumped, even Blondie. A pink display box featuring Malibu Barbie slipped off the shelf and hit the floor.

“Fuck!” Bullock screamed. And that set off yet another coughing fit. When he was done, he finished off the water bottle and tossed it into the garbage. Another guy who didn’t know how to recycle.

Somewhat calmed now, he said to Trimble, “So, you came back with the hundred fifty?”

Trimble paused. “No. I came back with around seven thousand, maybe not even that. I haven’t had a chance to count it yet.” He dug the envelope out of his pocket and tossed it onto Bullock’s desk.

Bullock stared at Trimble, apparently unable to believe what he was hearing. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“He put it in envelopes and mailed it to Rio. Some in the regular mail, some by courier.”

“He put the cash in the mail,” Bullock said. Even Blondie looked surprised.

Trimble nodded. “I guess he had a lot of faith in the postal system. Sent it to a bunch of five-star hotels in Rio, planned to go down there and pick it up. At least it could have been worse.”

Bullock cocked his head. “How do you think it could be worse?”

“Could have been you who paid nearly nine grand for that car at auction. At least it was Walker’s money that did that.” He glanced over at me, like maybe he thought he was scoring me a brownie point.

It didn’t appear as though Bullock saw this as any sort of silver lining. He didn’t look at me or Angie, but settled himself into his chair behind the desk, then glanced down and saw the Barbie box on the floor. He eyed it curiously, as if seeing it for the first time.

“I’m guessing Mr. Indigo’s not going to be very pleased about this,” Trimble said.

“Not pleased,” Bullock repeated. “Not pleased, you say? That’s very astute of you. Not pleased. Mr. Indigo will be disappointed, perhaps even miffed. But you know what he’ll be mostly?”

Trimble’s eyebrows went up a notch.

“He’ll be fucking apoplectic, that’s what he’ll be! And he’ll have someone else running this organization before daylight, that’s what he’ll do.”

Bullock shook his head with rage, and then his eyes landed on the Barbie box that had dropped to the floor. “Steve,” he said to Detective Trimble, his voice dripping with politeness, “would you please put that Barbie back up where it belongs?”

“Excuse me?” Trimble said.

“My Barbie box. Would you please put it back up on the shelf? I guess it fell when I lost my temper a moment ago.”

“You want me to put your Barbie back on the shelf.”

“That’s correct. I want to see if you’re good for anything this evening.”

I held on to Angie. This had a very bad feel to it.

“I think you’re closer,” Trimble told him. “Why don’t you do it.”

Blondie was looking very ill at ease, and wanted to try to defuse the situation. “I’ll get it,” he said.

“No!” Bullock shouted, and Blondie jumped back. “Did I ask you?”

“I was just trying to help.”

Pockmark strolled back into the room, quipped, “All quiet,” and, spotting the Malibu Barbie on the floor, quickly scooped it up and put it back on the shelf before Bullock could scream at him not to.

“Fuck,” said Bullock, and Pockmark looked at him, baffled, wondering why his action hadn’t rated a thank-you.

“What do you want from me?” Trimble said. “I help you out, I tip you off to things, I run your fucking errands. And you’ve done right by me, I’ll grant you that. And I’ve even stood by and done nothing when I find out you put my old partner in the hospital.”

“Who told you that?” Bullock demanded. “I’ve been over this with you.”

Trimble didn’t think that was worthy of a response. He continued, “Who was it talked Eddie into helping you out? It wasn’t me. I didn’t pick him, and I wouldn’t have, either. That was your decision. I’ve known him long enough to know he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So he double-crossed you. That’s too bad, but I don’t see how that’s my fault.”

I felt the weight of the gun in my jacket pocket. I didn’t know where this was going, this set of hostilities between Trimble and Bullock. And I didn’t know whether it was going to afford me any sort of advantage.

“I’ll tell you what,” Trimble said. “Let Walker here, and his daughter, take a walk.” Bullock eyed the cop suspiciously, wondering what kind of game he was up to. Trimble continued. “They don’t have anything to do with this. He made the mistake of buying the wrong car, his daughter made the mistake of driving it. They’ve never done you any harm, they didn’t rip you off.”

Bullock stared at Trimble as though he’d never seen him before. “Have you lost your fucking mind? You’re suggesting we let them walk out of here. After they know what we’ve been up to, about that smartass photographer, about Eddie, where I live and conduct my business. You think, we let them walk out of here, they’ll just forget any of that stuff ever happened? You think that maybe all we have to do is ask them real nice?”

Even I was thinking Trimble had lost his mind. If I were Bullock, I’d kill us, too. Angie clutched me more tightly.

“I’m just saying,” Trimble said, “that maybe it’s time to lay low for a bit. You start piling up corpses, it has a way of attracting attention.”

Bullock suddenly looked contemplative, as though he might actually be considering what Trimble had to say. “You make some interesting points, Steve. I’d like to think on them a moment, perhaps discuss a couple of things with Mr. Walker here. Would you mind waiting out in the garage while I did that?”

Trimble eyed Bullock warily. None of this felt right.

“Sure,” Trimble said, then turned and walked out of the room, but not before looking over at me. He did something funny with the corner of his mouth that seemed to say “Hey, I gave it a shot. Good luck.”

Once Trimble was out of the room, Bullock walked over to Blondie and said, in a loud enough whisper that I could hear it, “Do him.”

Blondie turned, but I was taking a step in his direction, and shouting, “Trim—”

Pockmark was behind me, grabbing me at the top of my jacket and tossing me onto the couch. Angie screamed as I tumbled onto the cushions. Pockmark had his gun out and pointed at me as Blondie went out the door and pulled it shut behind him.

“You’re not going to kill him,” I said.

Bullock said, “He’s been a pain in the ass for a while. You start seeing the signs, that he’s starting to get some crisis of conscience or something. There’s nothing worse than a cop with a conscience.”

“He wasn’t bullshitting you,” I said. “You let us walk out of here, we’ll forget everything.”

“Sure,” Bullock said. “Sure. That’s exactly what I’d do, if I was you.”

Outside, there was a popping noise. One lone shot in the night, followed by silence. Not enough to make anyone go to their phone and put in a call to the cops. You hear one shot, you listen for another, to confirm your suspicions that something’s amiss. When you don’t hear it, you go back to sleep. Just like car alarms.

Angie heard it, and she looked at me. There wasn’t much hope in her eyes.

“I mean it,” I said. “We walk out of here, you never hear from us again.” Desperate for any way to sweeten the offer, I said, “You can even keep the car.”

I guess that struck Bullock as pretty funny, because he started to laugh.

“I’m serious. You can probably sell it for what I paid for it. I’ll sign it over to you.”

“Oh, that’s too much,” Bullock said, and laughed again.

As I’d seen so often before, the laughter sent him into a coughing fit. There was one loud, hoarse cough, and when he inhaled to catch his breath, it set off another. He began to make some awful hacking noises in his throat, like maybe he was going to cough up a hairball or something.

Bullock went to grab for the water bottle, then remembered that he’d finished it and tossed the empty into the trash. He glanced around, then peered into the cardboard box still sitting on his desk, the one Blondie had brought in from the garage, containing everything he’d found in my car.

I remembered that my cell phone was in there, but something else had caught Bullock’s eye.

He reached in and came out with a full bottle of Snapple apple juice. And I wondered, just for a moment, where that had come from. I hadn’t bought any bottle of apple juice.

And then I realized it was the bottle I’d picked out of my own recycling basket, the one I’d taken with me when I went out for my first surveillance job to track Angie’s stalker, Trevor.

What a trivial problem he seemed now.

And I remembered how, once I’d filled that bottle myself, I’d tucked it into the pouch behind the passenger seat to keep it from rolling around.

And I remembered that it was, of course, not apple juice.

Bullock uncapped the bottle and moved it toward his mouth.

I thought back to that discussion Lawrence had had with me, about the robbery he’d interrupted, the guy with the ragweed allergy. How Lawrence had said you had to wait for your moment when you were in a tense situation, and that when it had arrived, you’d know it.

I had a feeling, that if there was ever going to be a moment, this was going to be it.

I SLIPPED MY HAND into my jacket pocket, wrapped it around the cold metal of the gun’s grip, got my body ready to launch off the couch in a hurry.

Bullock didn’t just sip from the bottle. He took a long swig, which meant my day-old urine was already hitting the back of his throat before he had a chance to realize that it was not, in fact, apple juice. Already I was thinking that being over on the couch, away from the desk and off to one side, was a good place to be, because I was expecting, any second, something of an eruption from Bullock.

I was not disappointed.

It all took less than a second or two, but if you could have slowed down time, broken it down into milliseconds, you’d have seen his eyes bug out first. Then the cheeks puffed out, the body lunged forward, and then he spewed. The contents of his mouth sprayed out across his desk and onto the carpeting beyond. There was a lot of noise that went along with this. It was as if you went into a recording studio to combine screams of anguish, retching, and intense vulgarity. Somewhere, in the midst of perhaps the most disgusting sound I’d ever heard, Bullock managed to let loose with a loud, gargly “Shit!”

I felt no compunction to point out to Bullock that while he had that wrong, he was closer than he knew.

Pockmark thought, and had every reason to believe, that his boss must be dying. He rushed across the room at the first signs of Bullock’s distress, then dodged as Bullock spewed across his desk, hitting the box and phone and intercom and the envelopes of cash Trimble had taken off Eddie Mayhew.

“What?” Pockmark said. “Is the juice bad?”

He’d totally forgotten about me, and his gun hung down at his side as he went to save his boss, who was now spitting repeatedly, and not particularly fussy about where any of it landed.

Angie’s mouth was hanging open in shock. And I was on my feet, taking the gun out of my pocket and, gripping it with both hands, pointing it at Pockmark, then Bullock, then back at Pockmark, not having to waver too much, because the two of them were now pretty much shoulder to shoulder.

“Ewww,” said Pockmark.

“Fuck!” Bullock said, spitting onto the top of his desk. “What the fuck is this?” He glanced at the bottle, put it up to his nose, and turned his head away, disgusted.

I didn’t have a lot of time to think about what I was going to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind, and that was “Freeze!” I was close to saying “Freeze, motherfuckers!” but it struck me as even more of a cliché, and besides, my daughter was standing right there.

Bullock and Pockmark looked at me, stupidly at first, a kind of “Huh?” expression on both their faces. Bullock wiped the back of his left sleeve across his mouth. When Pockmark saw the gun in my hand, he went to raise his and I shouted at him, “Freeze, motherfucker!”

I couldn’t help myself. I could always apologize to Angie later. And the thing was, it worked this time.

Pockmark froze.

Angie, who two seconds earlier had been reeling from Bullock’s explosive performance, now looked at me with further astonishment, wondering, perhaps, what I had done with her real father.

“I want you to put that gun on the floor,” I said, pointing my gun now directly at Pockmark.

“I thought you dumbfucks searched him,” Bullock said.

“We did! He had nothing on him!”