Authors: Max Austin
“You’re sure that’s Wyman?” Dwight asked again as the two men came out of the door of the diner.
“Hell, yeah,” Rex said. “Exactly the way Harris described him.”
“I dunno—”
“Who else could it be, Dwight? The man goes into that apartment, sees we left the boy dead, and what does he do? He slips out quietly and leaves. That ain’t the move of a solid citizen.”
“No, but—”
“That’s him,” Rex insisted. “Look at that cocky sumbitch. Don’t he look like he’s sitting on millions of dollars?”
Dwight shrugged. The guy looked tough, sure, but he didn’t look rich. He was dressed like a carpenter, in weathered denim and work boots. The other man wore a windbreaker and slacks, as if he were headed to a golf course.
“So who’s the other guy?” Dwight asked.
“Probably his partner, the one the kid called Bud,” Rex said. “Remember what the FBI agents said? One robber was tall and one was short. Look at those two. Don’t they fit
that description?”
“The short guy don’t look like no crook.”
“Exactly what he wants you to think,” Rex said.
The men parted company outside the diner. Wyman headed for the Charger, which he’d parked nose-out near the street. The other man veered toward a compact white SUV.
“What do we do now?” Dwight said. “We can’t follow ’em both.”
“We stick with the little guy,” Rex said. “We know who Wyman is, even if we don’t know exactly where he’s living at the moment. But we don’t know anything about Bud.”
Rex cranked up the pickup’s engine. It sounded loud to Dwight, but neither of the men outside the diner turned to look. Wyman got in his car and quickly departed, turning left onto the street outside the diner, never looking their way.
The SUV went in the other direction, and Rex let it get a block away before he pulled out behind it.
“You sure about this?” Dwight said. “For all we know, we’re following Wyman’s insurance agent.”
“I’m sure,” Rex said. “I can feel it. That’s Bud.”
“And if it is?”
“Wyman’s tough as hell, from all accounts. That makes this guy the weak link. If we need to find Wyman later, we can always make Bud tell us where he is.”
Dwight rolled his broad shoulders, feeling the tension there. He wasn’t sure Rex was right about this, wasn’t sure at all. But it was too late to chase after Wyman now. The Charger had disappeared from sight.
Pam Willis and Hector Aragon sat in their unmarked car outside the shabby West Side house rented by Diego Ramirez and Dolores Delgado. They’d banged on the door repeatedly but got no answer. Hector had gone around back but found no sign of the residents, just a weedy yard rutted by the tires of a car that was nowhere to be seen.
“You think Ramirez is our inside man?” Pam asked as they stared at the empty house.
“Nothing in his record points toward that,” Hector said, “but it sure looks funny, him disappearing like this.”
“It would explain how the robbers knew exactly when to hit the bank,” she said.
“Everyone at the bank said Ramirez seemed surprised by the robbery.”
“Could be he’s a good actor.”
“Or maybe they didn’t let him know which day they were coming, so he really was surprised.”
“He didn’t put up any kind of struggle,” she said.
“The robbers had a gun in his neck before anyone realized what was happening. He couldn’t exactly shoot it out with them.”
Hector didn’t know why he was being so argumentative. It would be terrific if they could connect the bank guard to the robbery. It would give them the first real break in the case. He suspected he was defending the guard because the guy was Hispanic like himself. It ticked him off that the robbers wore makeup, trying to make themselves look Hispanic, playing to the tellers’ personal biases. But if Diego Ramirez was involved …
“Say he was the inside man,” Pam said. “They get away with millions. He doesn’t go back to work after the robbery, not even once. And now he’s vanished. Sounds like he got his share of the loot and split.”
Hector nodded. Ramirez hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy who’d stick around this dump if he got his hands on a fortune. He and Dolores would show up in Vegas or Reno, living the high life.
“What do you want to do? Put out a bulletin on his car?”
“Shouldn’t be too hard to find. MVD records shows he drives a thirty-year-old
Cadillac. Not many of those on the road.”
“This is New Mexico. We like big old lowriders here.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but this one’s purple.”
Mick was stopped at a red light when he heard a buzzing in the console between the bucket seats. He opened the lid and saw one of the three cell phones inside blinking with an incoming call. His personal phone, not one of the throwaways.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Mr. Wyman, it’s Bob Fisher, the manager of your apartment building?”
“Bob. What’s up?”
“I was just wondering, have you got somebody staying at your place?”
Mick felt a tingle on the back of his neck.
“Did I get a visitor?”
“Yeah, nice-looking young man in a suit?”
The light turned green. Mick went through the intersection and immediately pulled over into the parking lot of a Burger King.
“When was this?”
“Just a little while ago. I went down and knocked to make sure it was okay, but he didn’t answer the door. Maybe he was in the bathroom. Anyway, I went back to my place. A minute later he came out and got into his car and drove away.”
“Did he get in with a key?”
“I guess so.” The old man laughed. “Wasn’t like he kicked in the door.”
A thought flashed through Mick’s mind: Too bad old Bob hadn’t been so vigilant when someone was breaking the bedroom window. Or maybe it was just as well. Otherwise, old Bob probably would be dead Bob now.
“Must be my cousin,” Mick said. “I gave him a key because he was going to spend the night at my place. But I wasn’t expecting him until tomorrow.”
“Well, that explains it. He must’ve decided to wait for you to get home.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s parked across the street, in that vacant lot? Waiting for you, I suppose.”
“I thought you said he left.”
“He did, but the same car came back a few minutes later. Don’t know why he parked way over there. I don’t mind if guests park in our lot.”
“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.”
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.
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, though 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?”