The Blade Itself (14 page)

They held the stare for a moment, then Danny put his hands up for peace. ‘Yeah, all right.’

Evan leaned back, poured the rest of the beer down his throat. Lukewarm, it tasted like mop water.

‘Listen, though,’ Danny said. ‘I’m right about the money. We ask for too much, he’s going to call the cops.’

‘So how much?’

‘Two-fifty would be the safe play.’

‘Half a mill,’ Evan said.

Danny nodded reluctantly. ‘Also, we need somebody else. To watch him.’

‘Why not just tape him up and leave him be? Come in once a day to give him some water, let him take a leak.’

‘Jesus, Evan. He’s a little kid.’

‘So? It’s only a couple of days.’

Danny glared at him, a look that started the old smoldering, that made Evan want to reach across the table and smack the lips right off his face. ‘I said nobody gets hurt. Leaving a twelve-year-old kid duct-taped in the dark counts, all right?’

‘So you watch him.’

‘I can’t. I have to act like everything’s normal. And you can’t either, because the biggest risk is going to be when we take him. It’s best that after that, he not be around either of
us. Make it harder to describe anything useful to the cops once we let him go.’

‘So who?’

‘I don’t know. Patrick, maybe.’ Danny shook his head. ‘I hate to bring him into this.’

Evan held his gaze level, gave nothing up. Danny wasn’t the only one with a game face. He’d find out about Patrick sooner or later, but no point queering things now.

The man had a point, though. He didn’t need to spend three days babysitting a brat. But they’d want someone they could control. Not anyone who might try to play them.
Boom
. There it was. ‘I got it.’

‘Who?’

‘Girl of mine. I’ve known her awhile.’

‘She’ll be okay with this?’

Evan nodded. ‘She’s getting desperate. She’ll do what she’s told.’

‘All right. I think I know a place.’

‘Yeah? Quiet?’

Danny nodded. ‘Let’s check it this weekend. Sunday morning.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Because now I’m going home.’ Danny stood and put on his jacket, soft black leather that looked new. ‘Good night.’

Evan nodded to him, watched him walk out the door. Danny paused and looked both ways, like he was taking snapshots of the street, and then strode across the parking lot toward Belmont.

‘Welcome back,’ Evan said, his voice low.

‘This is Patrick. Give me one good reason to care that you called.’

Danny cursed. He’d tried three times already with no luck. If he knew Patrick, the man was right now curled up in a bed with too many pillows, plotting his escape from the girl sleeping next to him.

He leaned forward to hang up the phone and overreached, scraping his bruised knuckles against the wall. The sudden sensation made him wince, and then smile. Popping Evan had felt good.

Not half so good as what he’d like to do to the guy, though.

Thursday night, when Karen had come in crying, Danny had been ready to beat Evan to death with a fucking baseball bat, damn the consequences. For her sake he’d kept his cool. Said soothing things. Put her to bed and crawled in beside her, stroking her hair until she fell asleep.

Then he’d turned to face the red glow of the alarm clock and imagined shooting his childhood friend in the face.

No, not imagined – planned. Figured out how to do it. Funny, all that time spent trying to find a loophole and he’d never really considered the most direct option, the one Evan would have come to first. But he considered it that night.

That night, a dark alley and a pistol with a grip-taped handle seemed like the answer.

But by morning he’d known better. The last time he’d held a gun he’d been thirteen, wilding with a rust-spotted piece Joey Biggs had snuck from under the sweaters in his
dad’s closet. They’d strutted the alleys popping at crows and beer cans and the occasional factory window. Kids’ stuff a thousand miles from pointing at a human being and pulling the trigger. From watching Evan’s head explode.

And in truth, it didn’t matter. Because once he got past the anger and actually thought about things, killing Evan wasn’t an out anyway. The moment the cops found his body,
Detective
Sean Nolan would look up from his desk and wonder who might want to be rid of Evan McGann. About five seconds later squad cars would be rolling up to their condo, and the rest would just be foreplay to the fucking Danny would take. No, killing Evan wasn’t an out.

Nor could he go to the cops, confess everything, and take his chances. At this point, all they had on Evan was maybe a parole violation. A weapons charge if Danny got lucky. Whereas Evan could place Danny at the pawnshop, where a man had been shot and crippled, a woman beaten half to death. His new life would disappear like smoke.

If he did the job, he protected Karen. Hell, he protected Tommy and Richard, too, by controlling the situation, making sure no one got hurt. And at the end of it, he could go back to a regular life.

It was a lousy option, but it was the smart play.

A door opened down the hall, and he heard the hardwood squeak as Karen walked toward the kitchen. He’d been hoping to leave while she was in the shower. He scooped up his keys, turned as she walked in.

‘You going?’

‘Work.’ The lie stung him. There had been too many lately, but what choice was there?

‘It’s Sunday. You’re working too hard, baby.’ She smiled at him, one hand going up to adjust a bra strap. Seven years they’d been together, but every time she did that, he lost his concentration. And odds-on she knew it.

He turned around, fumbled in the cabinet, wanting a moment to get his story straight. ‘Yeah, you know. The winter and all.’ He grabbed a glass from the second shelf, held it under the faucet.

‘Danny,’ her voice serious, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘Huh?’ He flashed a forced smile over his shoulder. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Something’s bugging you. Something big.’

He’d read somewhere about mental patients that were basically catatonic because they’d suffered damage to the fragile connections between the brain’s hemispheres. The result was that the two halves of their brain were essentially at war.

Lately he knew how that felt.

He wanted badly to tell her the truth, all of it, from Evan’s reappearance in his – in their – lives right up until this morning. But the calculating half of him warned to keep his damn mouth shut and talk her down. The woman who’d sworn she would bolt if he so much as shoplifted – she was going to accept him going back to work? Even if he was doing it for her, for them? Best to play it smart. ‘What do you mean, baby? Nothing’s bugging me.’

She gave him a quizzical look. ‘If you tell me what’s wrong, maybe I can help.’

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ He took a sip of water, set the glass down.

‘Danny.’ She did that bra strap thing again, and it drew his eyes to her body, clothed in one of his sweaters and a pair of black leggings.

‘I…’ He paused. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Something changed in her eyes, and the warmth vanished entirely. ‘Okay.’ She turned to open a drawer and started rummaging through it, her back to him.

‘Karen.’

She ignored him.

‘Karen, Christ, it’s nothing. Just… just busy at work. The winter, all these things to handle before the snow, you know.’ It sounded lame. He was normally a good liar – just not to her. Never to her.

She nodded, her back still turned. ‘Sure.’ She gave up digging through the drawer and slammed it shut. ‘See you when you get back.’ She put on a very thin smile and left, the sound of her shoes all business.

He turned to the sink and poured out his water. ‘Shit.’

The girl with Evan looked familiar. Blond, pretty, though kind of a stripper vibe. Too much makeup, and the clothes – a ruffled skirt like a cheerleader and two T-shirts – a little out of date. He’d seen her somewhere.

‘This is Danny Carter.’ Evan nodded toward him, hands in his pockets. ‘Danny-boy, Debbie.’

‘Debbie?’ he asked, looking up, wondering what thirty-year-old woman would choose that over Deborah or Deb.

‘Like Debbie Harry,’ she said, sounding friendly, though Danny couldn’t help but be aware that she knew his last name and he didn’t know hers. He gestured at the other side of the table. Debbie threw her purse in before sliding herself, flashing a little smile and a lot of cleavage. Evan dropped his keys on the table, his jacket on the booth seat. ‘I’m gonna take a shit. Order me some eggs, they come by.’

Danny sighed and shook his head. Across the table, Debbie took one of the menus from the stand on the table, flipped it open, and started turning pages without paying much attention. He kept his eye on her, sizing her up. Unimpressed. Pretty face, but starting to get that worn look, like she’d spent a lot of time drinking cheap beer in smoky bars. Her blonde hair had darker roots. He’d definitely seen her somewhere.

‘So.’ She looked up, the menu framing her face. ‘Evan tells me you’re a thief.’

Danny leaned back, the Naugahyde seat cool through his shirt. ‘I’m in construction.’

‘Yeah? He said you were his partner.’

‘Long time ago.’

‘This must feel like déjà vu, huh?’ She smiled at him, no hint of the game face he was used to in this kind of discussion. ‘So is this like a one-time thing, like the movies?’

‘Yes, it’s a one-time thing. No, it’s nothing like the movies.’

She nodded, looked back down at the menu. Flipped another page, then her face lit up like a little kid’s. ‘That’s what I’m talking about. Chocolate chip pancakes with strawberries.’

He shook his head, took another sip of coffee.
This
was the woman Evan thought they should bring in on a federal job? Danny would have to call Patrick again. Much as he disliked involving him in this, they needed someone capable. Not some bimbo Evan happened to be fucking.

He realized Debbie was looking at him from across the table, and made an effort to smile.

‘Lemme see your hand.’ Her gum popped.

‘What?’

‘I’ll read your palm.’

He shrugged, set the mug down and leaned forward. Her touch was cool. She held his hand lightly, turned it over, her fingers under his wrist. When she leaned in over the table he caught drugstore perfume, something candy-sweet.

‘Hmmmm.’ She peered closer. ‘Interesting.’

He ignored the bait, kept silent.

‘I see a couple of things.’ She traced a line across his palm.

‘Yeah?’ He stifled a yawn.

She nodded. ‘I see you think I’m a moron.’

He was surprised, the yawn turning to a smile. ‘That’s in my palm?’

‘That’s in your eyes.’ She said it matter-of-factly, still looking at his hand. ‘In your palm I can see that you’re in management.’

‘How?’

‘You said you’re in construction. While back, I dated an ironworker. His hands were like baseball mitts. Yours are soft.’

He laughed. ‘What else?’

‘You’re not wearing a wedding ring. But you didn’t check me out.’ She brushed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. ‘Most guys do. So I bet you have a serious girlfriend, somebody you really love.’

He thought of Karen adjusting her bra strap that morning, how even in the middle of fighting with her, lying to her, it had sent a little shiver through him. ‘Right again. What else does my palm tell you?’

‘It tells me I should read a book on palm reading.’ She released his hand, smiled up at him. They held the gaze for a long moment, and then he started laughing, a sincere laugh that started low in his gut. It felt good.

‘What?’ Evan stood at the edge of the table.

Debbie looked at Danny innocently and popped her gum. He laughed again.

‘I think we’ll get along fine.’

It was one of those days, the sky throbbing blue, fall light golden across the hood of the Explorer. This October had been shaping up colder than usual, today in the forties, but the sun was so bright it didn’t feel bad, especially with Dylan on the radio, singing about helping her out of a jam but using a little too much force.

He turned right onto Randolph, the skyline swinging into his rearview mirror, the Sears Tower and the Hancock sharp-edged against the horizon. Behind him he could see Evan’s Mustang, Debbie with her feet up on the dash. He wondered about her. She didn’t seem like a hustler. Maybe a groupie, one of those smart women who like dangerous men. Regardless, he was glad to have her, if only to keep Evan away from Tommy. They might be partners again, but he wasn’t about to lower his guard. Just do the job smart, get paid, go their separate ways.

The money. He hadn’t even thought about it. Hell, he’d only decided to do the job to get clear of Evan. What was he going to do with Richard’s money?

He thought of the lawn crew, of Richard smug in his designer house. Of Dad sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette smoldering untouched in the ashtray.

Call the money a bonus. A karmic payout for everybody who’d ever screwed his old man. Stash it in a safe deposit box and always have an umbrella against gathering storms.

He forced his thoughts back to the road, watching loft complexes give way to industrial space. The El rattled a couple of blocks away. New residential construction crept ever outward, but it was still quiet here, few cars and nobody on the sidewalk.

When he turned on Pike Street, the loft complex sat snug ahead of him, five stories of structural steel swathed in dirty gray plastic. A chain-link fence circled the whole site. Danny parked in front of the gate and stepped out, digging in his jacket for a ring of keys on a clip chain. He popped the padlock and swung the gate open, gestured the Mustang through, then returned to the Explorer and drove into the rutted dirt of the yard.

Evan leaned on the car door and glanced around. He nodded. ‘Not bad. They let you walk around with the keys?’

‘It’s my job. Come on.’ He turned toward the trailer, O’DONNELL CONSTRUCTION neatly lettered on one side. It felt weird to walk the yard without his hard hat. Behind him, he heard the sound of a car door opening, Debbie getting out. He turned back, caught Evan’s eye, and shook his head.