Pawnbroker: A Thriller (22 page)

Chapter 99

I
psyched myself up for the meanest performance of my life and ran back inside. I pulled my pistol before stepping into the workshop, walked up to Yancy, laid it right on his forehead and cocked it. The guy’s eyes were the size of planets. I held it there for a few seconds, then reached up with my other hand and yanked the tape off. Yancy shook.

“Oscar, listen to me very closely, okay?”

He nodded, or at least tried to among the trembling, which was probably registering on seismic meters across the South.

“You were perfectly willing to haul me in and probably turn me over to the same bastards who’ve been trying to kill me, weren’t you?”

“I was just trying to do my—”

“Don’t start the just-doing-your-job crap with me, Oscar, or I’ll splatter your brains all over this pole you’re tied to. You got that?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s try again: You wanted to turn me in, right?”

“Yes.”

“And I told you I was innocent, right?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t matter to you, did it?”

He started to answer, then stopped.

“Did it?” I repeated.

“No.”

“But you want me to have compassion on your stuffy nose, right?”

“Please.”

“Right. Tell you what, Oscar. I’m different than you. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and leave this tape off—”

“Oh, thank God, thank you, Gray. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Understand this: You’re going to stand here and not make a sound, until Doc shows up and says you can do differently. If people should happen to show up at this house and start knocking on doors or peeking in windows or whatever, you’re going to be quiet as a church mouse.”

He had gotten the shakes under control now and was nodding in emphatic agreement.

“I’m innocent of everything they’ve accused me of, but I promise you, if you don’t do exactly as I’ve told you, I’m going to be guilty of murdering you when I get back. I’m going to hunt you down like an animal and see that you die a slow, painful death. Do you believe me, Oscar?”

Much nodding.

“Good.” I withdrew the Kimber, eased the hammer down, and left.

*          *          *

Back en route, I explained it all to Penny.

“You’re a good man, Gray Bolton.”

“Yeah, what’s that song say? Only the good die young?”

“Stupid song,” she said.

Chapter 100

Yancy’s hat and a thin police windbreaker were in the back seat of the cruiser, so I put them on. Penny donned a sheriff’s department baseball cap. Maybe we’d look convincing enough from a distance to avoid suspicion. We were headed north, doing about ninety, when the radio barked, startling both of us.

“S-O-twelve, S-O-base.”

Quite naturally, we didn’t answer.

“S-O-twelve, S-O-base. Report your twenty, S-O-twelve.”

“I think Yancy’s been missed,” I said, and turned the radio volume down from its deafening level.

The dispatcher kept calling for S-O-twelve, and after about ten tries, said, “All units, all units, be on lookout for S-O-twelve, last known twenty was road eleven-twenty-five north, repeat, eleven-twenty-five north. Possible radio problem.”

Three or four of the other units acknowledged her request. I held the pedal down until we cleared Montello County, then backed it down to sixty and set the cruise. Five minutes later, I saw the first vehicle headed our way, meeting us, a black SUV. When we were a quarter-mile apart, our radar gun beeped and clocked him at 92 MPH. He didn’t seem concerned, since he never slowed down as it went by in a blur.

“Hey, did you—” Penny said.

“Yeah, I saw him.” It was Docker. I checked the mirror; he was still shagging in the other direction. He hadn’t seen us. But I was sick of this running.

“Call Jimmy,” I said. “See if we can safely use the redline phone again.”

“For what?”

“I’m going to propose a deal.”

“You think maybe we should discuss this first?”

“No, I’m tired of running. I’m going to set up a deal.”

“A deal? They can’t be trusted, Gray.”

“I know.”

Chapter 101

I
called Docker and told him I wanted to talk to Ballard. He must’ve covered the phone, because I could hear him saying something to someone but it was muffled.

“I think we’ve played enough games,” RoboVoice said. “I want my property back.”

“Why are we playing the voice disguise game again, Ballard?” I said.

A pause. Something was wrong.

I said, “Put Ballard on the line or this conversation is over.”

“You want to talk to Ballard, or you want to talk to the man in charge?”

This changed everything, but I could worry about that later. I was ready to move forward. “What’s it worth to you?” I said.

“I have the power to make your life go back to the way it was.”

“You can get the charges against me dropped, all of them?”

“Yes.”

“And me and my family are left alone, forever.”

“Keep your mouth shut and you’ll never hear from me or my people again.”

“What proof do I have that you’ll keep your word?”

“As a show of good faith, all the ancillary charges—fleeing the jurisdiction, assault, manslaughter—all these will be gone by noon tomorrow. Only the murder charge will remain. After we meet and you deliver the item, that one will be taken care of as well.”

“And how am I to be compensated for the vast inconvenience I’ve already suffered?”

Silence.

“Still there?” I said.

“I presume you’re now wanting money, Mr. Bolton?”

“You’re sharp.”

“Do you have a figure in mind?”

“Yes, a million.”

A sigh. “Very well, Mr. Bolton. Is there anything else? And before you answer, let me offer a bit of advice: Greed is a dangerous thing.”

“Nothing else.”

“When would you like to meet?”

“Tomorrow night, ten o’clock.”

“Where?”

“Give me your direct number and I’ll call you.”

He hesitated for a moment, then called out a number. Penny wrote it down. I hung up.

“If that wasn’t Ballard,” she said, “who was it?”

I thought it over. “This is obviously bigger than Ballard.”

“But who?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

“Speaking of a million bucks, where did that demand come from?”

“I just wanted to see how he’d react.”

“And what’s your reaction to his reaction?”

“He intends to kill us.”

I handed her the phone. “We need to check on Doc and Angie.”

“Oh my gosh, I’d forgotten all about them,” she said. “They should’ve been to Jimmy’s long ago, and I know he would’ve mentioned it if a crazy pair of seniors showed up to check on him.”

I hadn’t forgotten at all; we just hadn’t had time to deal with it. I was worried sick about them. They were feisty, but they were also vulnerable and I was feeling guiltier all the time for involving them. “I know. See if you can reach them.”

She dialed. Over and over, she dialed. The call wouldn’t go through. Not good. “What now?” she said.

“Call Jimmy and ask him to call us if they show. In the meantime, we need to figure out where we’re going ourselves. Any ideas?”

She chewed her lip for a bit and dialed another number. “Penny Lane for Lucas, please.” After a few seconds’ wait, a brief conversation ensued, and she ended the call and turned to me. “You know where Pickwick is?”

“Sure.”

“Head that way. We’ll use Lucas’s cabin.”

“You sure we can trust him, Penny?”

“Yes. He’s a prick but he also knows I have too much on him.”

“He might decide it’s too risky to have you holding that knowledge over his head.”

“What’s he going to do, kill me?”

She laughed. I didn’t. A couple of weeks ago, maybe. Now, no way. Any notions I’d had about the basic goodness of man were long gone.

*          *          *

When I think “cabin,” I think small, rustic, basic. Lucas Benton obviously thought differently. Tucked away in the woods at the end of an offshoot of Pickwick Lake, the place was visible only from the water, and it was incredible. At least ten thousand square feet, and there was nothing rustic or basic about it. It was a luxurious spread fit for royalty, which Lucas probably considered himself to be.

“Now this is my kind of hideout,” I said as I walked around inside and gawked.

“Nice, huh?”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah, he throws a big shindig up here every year. Spends some ludicrous amount of money, has a guest list that’d blow your mind.”

“And you’re invited?”

“Not as a guest. I’ve been in charge of security the past two years. Last year, three governors were here, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana. Several U.S. senators, too many congressmen to count.”

“Unreal.”

“Real sickening is what it is.”

“How so?”

“You see things like this, you find out the Good Old Boy culture is still alive and well. Follow me.”

She headed up a spiral staircase that wound its way up through the middle of the house, past three floors, and ended at a huge redwood deck on top of the house. The vista was breathtaking, the blue water of the lake spread out in front, lush hardwoods nestled up against the other three sides.

She tried to reach Doc and Angie again. No luck.

“Tell me more about the good old boys.”

“You know who Senator Metcalf is?”

“Why, of course I do, my dear,” I said in my grandest Southern accent.

She smiled. “Not bad. When you think of him, what do you think of?”

“Family values, that’s what I’m about, honey. F-A-M-I-L-Y is one thing Thurston Metcalf will never abandon!” I finished the famous sound byte by sticking out my chin in a pompous pose.

“Right. I’m all for the message, even believed the guy, voted for him twice,” she said. “Then he and his wife show up here. She dives into the sauce and within two hours she’s so wasted that they carry her upstairs and put her to bed. Ten minutes later, the good senator comes back down. He walks right by me, and Gray, he has cocaine still in his moustache.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, that’s nothing. He backs me into a corner and tells me how he’d like to work personally with me on improving race relations, and then the old bastard runs his hand down my pants, forcibly holds me against the wall and tries to feel me up. I finally push him off, and he calls me a nigger bitch and storms off. Within an hour he’s walking around with a woman on each arm.”

“Good grief. What’d you do about it?”

“Nothing. I like my job, I wasn’t hurt, so I forgot it and moved on. That’s reality.”

“Shouldn’t be.”

“Maybe not, but it is.”

“And he just did all this in front of the other guests?”

She laughed. “Believe me, the good senator fit right in with the rest of the guests. What happens among this circle, stays in this circle. Democrat. Republican. Black. White. Doesn’t matter. Like I already told you, it’s the haves and the have-nots, and you can bank that, Mr. Bolton.”

I was about to answer when the redline phone rang.

Chapter 102

A
way from the light pollution, the sky was a gorgeous indigo canvas pricked with a million points of light. The view was to the east, and a full moon was just beginning its climb into the sky.

If Abby recovered, what of our marriage? I tried to imagine sitting in some counselor’s office, describing our problems. Well, Doc, she liked to go to motels and be gang-banged, and I have a problem with that. How does it make me feel, you say? Hmmm. Can I get back to you on that?

If she didn’t, where would she stay, in some nursing home where I’d go visit her once a week? Brush her hair, shave her legs. Maybe there’d be a roommate who wasn’t comatose but should be, some three-hundred-year-old woman who pissed the bed and rubbed shit on the walls and thought I was the ghost of her dearly departed husband, Abner. Maybe I’d take Julie and Mandy with me, and for the first few years they’d want to know when Mommy was waking up, and then they’d want to know why Mommy’s room smelled so bad, and what was that brown stuff on the walls. Maybe not.

I heard footsteps and turned around to see Penny walking up behind me. She was in a white bathrobe, wet hair. She stood beside me and I put my arm around her. Yes, she was beautiful and sexy and there was some dangerous chemistry there, but at that moment, I just needed a friend. Maybe she did, too, because we stood there at least an hour, me holding her tight against me in the cool night breeze.