Here Comes the Night (11 page)

Buck slumped on the cot and watched Jorge and Meatface pack
up the SUV in the loading area. They were meticulously adjusting the bags from
Gordon’s safe under other boxes, out of sight. Then they put the boxes carrying
their boss’s money, from Buck’s safe, on top.

Obviously, they didn’t want anyone to discover the three-way
secret bonus they would be splitting up from the president’s safe.

Buck had no idea what they had planned for him. At this
point, he figured they would probably kill him.

As the boys readied the vehicle, Twigs was checking out
loose ends in the garage, going through what was left in the garbage bag that
held Gordon’s safe contents. After quickly checking labels and addresses, she
tossed a dozen manila envelopes into the trash.

“Legal Schmegal,” she said in bored tones. Then she stopped,
opened a big brown envelope and whistled. “Well, lookie here what we got.”

Buck squinted out of his swollen eyes to see what she was
holding. She turned and leered at Buck. “Oooh, nice ass, Buckaroo. Come here,
boys. Have a look see.”

Twigs was passing around a series of eight-by-ten photos.
Meatface was ogling them like a farm boy at a strip show, and Jorge was pursing
his lips and humming approval.

“What is that?” Buck asked.

“What a rack,” Meatface said, crudely indicating bouncing
balls with his hands. “She must of had help with them.”

“These are the titties what made him kill his
jefe
,”
Jorge laughed, running his fingers over the picture.

Buck pulled himself off the cot and stepped toward them.
Meatface playfully fended him off with one hand, then showed him the picture.
“Can I have this one for my fridge?”

Twigs slapped Buck hard on the back of the head. “Sit down.”
Buck stood there, dizzy. “I said
sit down,
Mr. Dearmore.”

Filled with rage, Buck sat back down. He’d only gotten
glances of the photos, but he could see it was Angie and him in various stages
of lovemaking. The realization that somebody had taken pictures of him and
Angie was such a shock, he could barely string a thought together.

“Now, if you’re a good boy, I’ll show you the pictures,”
Twigs was saying. She sat down beside him like they were old buddies and showed
him a shot of Angie and him on Buck’s bed. It looked like it was a telephoto
lens shot through his bedroom window. Buck grappled against his nylon flex
ties. An angry cry came out of his mouth.

Twigs was more amused than annoyed. “Get a grip, Tiger. He
doesn’t want us to see them, boys.” She softened a little when she saw tears
well up in Buck’s eyes. “You didn’t know he had someone on you two?” Off his
look, she tilted her head. “Oh, honey, you should thank us for getting this
shit out of his safe.”

Buck knew that was probably true. Still, it felt like a
mortal blow. He was falling through the cracks, crumbling into dust, yet so
tired he couldn’t lift a finger to stop it.

He figured his head must have gone somewhere else for a few
minutes, because the next thing he heard was the three of them getting ready to
leave.

Sharp slits of sunlight shot under the garage door. Buck
realized he had no idea what time of morning it was.

“Time to go, football boy,” Meatface said.

Erika knew it was reckless to wait for Angie Wesner to come
back out of the bank, but she still waited, sitting on a recessed bench under
an enormous shade tree on the bank’s corner. Her eyes had been glued to the
entrance door for at least a half hour.

As time crawled on, her wet, clingy palms started to
tremble. In fact, lack of sleep was racking her entire body. Her head pounded
and her back ached. She hadn’t put anything on her stomach for fear of losing
it again.

Yet she couldn’t leave. Something seriously bad had
happened, and Erika wasn’t about to go until she found out what.

The encounter with Angie Wesner had thrown all the puzzle
pieces up in the air again. They not only didn’t fit, they contradicted one
another. The cameo necklace, the inscription, Mrs. Wesner’s meltdown.

She also knew that Tony was not even close to the banker’s
wife’s league. Unless she was someone who liked to slum it with bad boys.

When Angie Wesner came out of the bank onto the street,
Erika stood up so quickly she felt lightheaded.
Mrs. Wesner’s distraught
state seemed real.

Erika hurried toward her and asked, “What happened in the
bank?”

The banker’s wife looked up at her like she didn’t even
recognize her.

“What?” she said limply. Then she seemed to realize who
Erika was.

“You again?”

“I just wanted to ask—is your husband alright?”

“You know my husband?” Mrs. Wesner asked. Her face was ashen
colored, and her thin body bent forward like it was wilting.

Erika considered her answer. “Just from waiting on him a few
times.” Not exactly true. He rarely came into the restaurant, but a long
explanation was the last thing to go into now.

“You seem upset, Mrs. Wesner. I just thought—with all the
squad cars, something might have happened.”

Mrs. Wesner’s eyes took on a sudden childlike stare, and her
voice was almost a whisper. “They won’t tell me exactly what happened. Just
that my husband’s…he’s dead.” Then she walked away.

Stunned, Erika stood frozen for several moments. She wanted
to go after the woman, offer to help her, something. But instead of her feet
going forward, they fell beneath her.

She collapsed onto the concrete.

Tony drove by blurs of green and brown countryside. It had
been a long time since he felt the hum of a motorcycle between his legs and the
wind blowing past his face, whipping his hair back.

He recognized the frenetic thrum in his heart. Yet, and this
remained a mystery to him, it was a calm like no other when he was straddling a
speeding bike.

He wished he could get a hit of something worth a shit to
take his mind off Erika. Tony had been good enough for her when he was pounding
it to her in the early days. Now she was bent out of shape about everything.
He’d like to see how she would do with his old man. See what she’d have to say
after a beating from him every day.

A stop in the road ahead looked boarded up, but as he got
closer it was only the filling station part that was closed. The rusted sign in
front still read “
GAS $1.7_
” with the “
9
"
falling off the edge of it. It was like a hundred little places where travelers
used to fill up and get a soda before I-40 had made state roads like 152
irrelevant.

Adjoining it was a “
Dairy Freeze
,” a deserted
looking dump with an
OPEN
sign flickering in the window. Lights
blinked inside even though there wasn’t a car in sight.

Tony pulled over and cut the engine, then got off the bike
and stretched. His eyes were dried out riding without goggles, and his hair was
plastered back like he’d been in a wind tunnel.

As he walked in, a bell over the door let out a little
tinkle, announcing a customer.

After a moment, a raw-edged teenager smacking gum stuck her
head out of the back and came to wait on him. Her blonde hair had so much brown
root under it that it was almost half and half, and her make-up was all wrong,
but she had a tight little body under her white uniform.

“Just sit anywhere,” she said with a flirty grin.

Tony looked around at the empty place and smiled back at
her. “Okay, then.” He took a booth at the back and waited for her to come over.
When she did, he noticed her name tag that read “
TRISHA
.”

“So what’s good here, Trisha?” he asked.

“I just made the chili fresh,” she said, pencil poised to
write his order on a pad. “But I can fix you eggs if you want.”

“How about a couple of chili dogs, then, fries, and a big
old beer. That sound like a good breakfast?”

She twisted back and forth nervously. “You
know
we
don’t got no beer here.”

“Is that right? Well, shit, Trish. A big old Dr. Pepper
then, I guess.”

“Comin’ right at ya.” She went into the kitchen and dropped
some frozen potatoes into the deep fat fryer, and put a couple weiners on the
grill. After a moment, she was back to the table with his soda.

“You’re not from around here, are ya?”

“Hardly,” Tony said.

“From the city?”

“Yeah. You?”

Trisha looked shy. “Eakly.”

Tony laughed. “Eakly? Is that a town?”

“Yeah,” she said with mock indignation. Then after a second,
“Well, not much of one.”

Tony smiled and looked her body up and down, which made her
blush. A sexual rush moved through him. He calculated he could do her right
there on the table.

“How far is it to that ‘westerny’ camping place?” Tony
asked. “You know?”

“Camping place?”

“R.V.’s stay there.”

“Oh, Cimarron Park? Where all the old farts stay?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Trisha flipped her hair back. “‘Bout twenty-five miles. You
aren’t going to stay
there
, are you?”

Tony looked outside, a smile forming under his oily eyes.
“No, I wouldn’t be staying.”

A tubby, sweating man in a security uniform hurried to the
third floor of the bank. A fresh bandage was wrapped around his head.

“Detectives here?” he asked the officer stationed by the
door.

“Over there,” the officer said, motioning to Edgars and
Horse. They looked up at his approach.

“You the security guard?” Edgars asked.

“Yeah, that’s me. Johnny Bishop with bank security. I was
the one found them in the office last night.”

They introduced themselves and moved out into the hall. The
area still had people milling around, but everyone had heard that Edgars and
Horse were first team now, so they cleared out of their way.

“Now, Mr. Bishop, why don’t you take us through what
happened last night?” Horse said. “Where were you when you realized someone was
in the office?”

Johnny showed them his usual walkthrough routine, stopping
fifteen feet from the door to Gordon Wesner’s office.

“I heard voices from the office about here, and proceeded
with caution. See, sometimes Mr. Wesner works here all night long. So I didn’t
want to scare him, but it was weird because it sounded like more than one
person.”

“Could you hear what was being said?”

“No, just low talking. Now, the thing is, Mr. Wesner’s
office doors is the only ones in the building that can’t be opened with my
master key.” Johnny pulled out an enormous ring of building keys and showed the
Master to the detectives.

“You couldn’t open his door to check on him?” Horse asked,
surprised.

“No. He didn’t want anyone in his office, period, unless he
was there. He was funny that way.” Then Johnny looked proud of himself. “But I
knew there was voices coming from his office that needed to be checked out and
I knew I could open Mr. Dearmore’s office. My master
would
unlock that.
Then I could get into the conference room to see if the boss’s door to it was
open. Anyway, that’s what I was figuring.”

Edgars was not sure if he was following Johnny. “So you let
yourself into Mr. Dearmore’s office.”

“Exactly,” Johnny said with some pride as he walked them
through it. “I used my master to open Buck’s office door, all ready to slip
through the conference room and sneak toward the boss’s office. I mean, I’ve
been in shooting situations before, and I wanted to proceed with all due
caution, like they say.”

“Good idea,” Edgars encouraged him.

“But then, right away, Buck’s office, it’s a big old mess.
Somebody’s rifled through his safe, messed with his Sooner memorbi—memorabilit…”

“Memorabilia?” Edgars suggested.

“That’s it,” Johnny said, nodding his head. “I guess I’m
still not quite thinking right yet.” He touched his bandaged head as if to
excuse himself.

“You’re doing fine,” Edgars said. By then they were inside
Dearmore’s office, and, with people cleared out, it was the first unobstructed
view the detectives had seen of it. Horse walked closer to the safe door and
examined it. “Doesn’t look tampered with.”

Johnny nodded. “But I couldn’t be sure. That’s when I called
it in.”

Edgars walked to the open door leading from Buck’s office to
the conference room. “Was this open when you got here?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, “so I tiptoed across the conference
room to Mr. Wesner’s door. Of course with this high dollar carpet you don’t
have to worry too much about being heard.”

“Was it open, too?” Horse asked.

“It was pushed almost shut, but not completely closed. You
know? I could see a crack. And the voices had stopped. That’s when I drew my
weapon, had it at the ready.”

“Go on,” Edgar said.

“So I’m calling out, ‘Anybody there?’ and no answer. So I
open the door slowly, I mean, I’m really being cautious here, even though I
honestly expected to end up seeing Mr. Wesner there at his desk working, like
he does all the time.”

“In the middle of the night?” Horse asked.

“Oh, sure, I’ve known him to still be here when I come in
for the day shift, like I said.”

“So you opened the door…” Edgars said, getting him back on
track.

“I tried to. But just as I pushed it open, somebody tried to
close it on me. Then I got hit. Hard. I sort of staggered and got hit again.
Then it was lights out. I never even saw them.”

The detectives went over it several more times but Johnny
couldn’t remember anything, except that he sensed there was more than one
person in the office. “It all just happened too fast,” he finally said.

“We’re trying to locate Mr. Dearmore,” Horse said. “When was
the last time you saw him?”

“Mr. Dearmore?” Johnny thought a moment. “Yesterday
afternoon. He walked out with me and Blanche at the end of the day. I saw him
get in his car. Blanche was hurrying to the hospital for her sister. She was
going into labor. Had a big old girl—over 10 pounds, I hear. Can you imagine?”

“Which way did he drive?” Edgars asked.

“I didn’t see that. I was walking Blanche to her car and
telling her to call me when her sister had the baby.”

“And you’re sure you checked Wesner’s office before you left
yesterday afternoon?” Horse asked.

“Absolutely,” Johnny said firmly. “It was 4:30 on the dot.
All secure. He said he would be working late and he’d let himself out.”

“You’ve been a big help,” Edgars said, handing him his card.
“If you think of anything else, call me anytime, 24/7.”

“At the hospital, I saw on t.v. what they’re saying about
Mr. Dearmore. That’s just not right. He may be a little full of himself
sometimes, but he would never leave a little gal hurt like that.”

“I hope you’re right, Johnny,” Horse said. “He was one of my
heroes, too.”