Budd looked up at Potter, who whispered, "Dispensation."
"Dispensation."
"So I don't think so, Charlie the butt-fucked lawyer. I think I need a helicopter or I'm going to turn my good friend Bonner here loose on a girl or two. You know Bonner? He stays hard twenty-four hours a day. Re-fucking-markable. Never seen anybody like him. You should've seen him in prison. Kid comes in for GTA and, bang, there's Bonner next to him 'fore the fingerprints're dry, saying, 'Bend over, pretty boy. Spread 'em.' "
Potter clamped his hand down on Budd's arm, seeing the anguish in his face. He tapped the yellow sheet once more.
"Where's Art?" Handy said suddenly. "I like him better'n you."
"He's out rustling up your helicopter, like I said."
"Fuck if he isn't listening to this right now on the squawk box. How close is he? He could probably stick his dick in your mouth without either of you moving. Hey, you a faggot, Charlie? Sound like one to me."
Budd adjusted his grip on the phone. "Agent Potter's trying to get you what you've been asking for."
They died because they didn't give me what I wanted. Potter nodded approval.
"I want that chopper or Bonner gets a girl."
"You don't need to do that, Lou. Come on. We're all working together here, aren't we?"
"Oh, I wasn't on your team last time I looked, Charlie." Budd wiped sweat from his forehead. Potter, feeling very much like an orchestra conductor, gestured at Budd and pointed to a portion of the yellow sheet.
"My team?" Budd responded. "Hey now, that's wrong, Lou. I am on your team. And I want to offer you a deal. You and Wilcox."
Potter held his finger to his lips, indicating for Budd to pause. The captain swallowed. Angie handed him a cup of water. He drank it down, gave her a rueful smile. Handy was silent.
Budd started to speak; Potter shook his head. Finally Handy said, "Me and Shep?"
"That's right."
Cautiously: "What kinda deal?"
Budd looked down at the sheet. "We'll go for life only. No death penalty."
"For us two?"
Potter heard the uncertainty in Handy's voice. Beautiful, he thought. For the first time all night he's not sure what's going on. He gave Budd a thumbs-up.
"Just you and Wilcox," he said firmly.
"What about Bonner?"
Potter held up his wavering hands, indicating uncertainty.
"Well, I'm just talking about you two."
"Why aren't you talking about Bonner?"
Potter frowned angrily. Budd nodded and in a testy voice said, "Because I don't want to talk about Bonner. I'm offering you and Wilcox a deal."
"You're an asshole, Charlie."
"An asshole?"
"You're not telling me everything."
Potter touched his lips.
Silence.
Perfect, thought Potter. He's doing great. Finally he nodded to Budd.
"I am telling you everything." Budd gave up on the yellow sheet and stared out the window at the slaughterhouse. "And I'm telling it to you for your benefit as much as anybody's. You oughta surrender, sir. Even if you get out of here in that helicopter you'll be the most wanted man in North America. Your life's gonna be pure hell and if you get caught you'll get death. You know that. No statute of limitations for murder."
"What'm I supposed to say to Bonner?"
Potter made an angry fist.
"I don't much care what you say to him," Budd said gruffly. "He's not included in -"
"Why not?"
Hesitate, Potter wrote.
Handy broke the interminable silence. "What aren't you fucking telling me?"
"Do you want a deal or not? You and Wilcox. It'll save you from lethal injection."
"I want a fucking helicopter and that's what I'm going to get. Tell Art that. Fuck you all."
"No, wait -"
Click.
Budd closed his eyes and rested the phone on the table. His hands shook fiercely.
"Excellent, Charlie." Potter clapped him on the back.
"Good job," Angie said, winking at him.
Budd looked up, perplexed. "Excellent? He's all pissed off. He hung up on me."
"No, he's just where we want him." LeBow typed up the incident in the log and noted the time. On the "Deceptions" side of the board he wrote, Federal plea bargain by "U.S. Attorney Budd" – Handy and Wilcox. Life sentences in lieu of death.
Budd stood up. "You think?"
"You planted the seeds. We'll have to see if they take." Potter caught Angie's eye and they exchanged a solemn glance. The negotiator made a point of looking away before Budd noticed.
8:16 P.M.
"Five minutes and counting."
Dan Tremain had called the governor and together they had decided that the HRU rescue would go ahead as planned. Over the scrambled frequency he radioed this to his men.
Outrider One, Chuck Pfenninger, was in position near the command van, and Outrider Two, Joey Wilson, hidden behind the school bus, was prepared to lob the stun grenades through the front window. Alpha and Bravo teams were ready to make the dynamic entry through the northwest and southeast doors as planned.
Tremain was very confident. Although the HTs might be anticipating an attack through the one well-marked fire exit, they'd never expect the assault through the hidden southeast door.
In five minutes it would all be over.
Lou Handy stared down at the phone and felt it for the first time that day: doubt.
Son of a bitch.
"Where is he?" he snarled, looking through the slaughterhouse.
"Bonner? In with the girls," Wilcox answered. "Or eating. I don't know. What's up?"
"Something's funny going on." Handy paced back and forth. "I think maybe he cut a deal." He told Wilcox what the U.S. attorney had said.
"They're offering us a deal?"
"Some deal. Life in Leavenworth."
"Beats that little needle. The worst part is you piss. You know that? There's nothing you can do to stop it. I tell you, I'm going out, I don't want to piss my pants in front of everybody."
"Hey, homes." Handy dropped his head, gazed coolly at his partner. "We're getting out. Don't you forget it."
"Right, sure."
"I think that prick's been with 'em all along."
"Why?" Wilcox asked.
"Why the fuck you think? Money. Cut down his hard time."
Wilcox cast his eyes into the dim back of the slaughterhouse. "Sonny's an asshole but he wouldn't do that."
"He did a while back."
"What?"
"Give up somebody. A guy he did a job with."
"You knew that?" Wilcox asked, surprised.
"Sure, I knew that," Handy said angrily. "We needed him."
But how had Bonner gotten to the feds? Almost every minute of the big man's time was accounted for from the moment of the breakout.
Though not all of it, Handy now recalled. Bonner was the one who'd gone to pick up the car. After they'd gotten out of the prison Bonner had been gone for a half-hour while he picked up the wheels. Handy remembered thinking that it was taking him a long time and thinking, If he skips on us he's going to die real fucking slow.
Gone a half-hour to get a car eight blocks away. Plenty of time to call the feds.
"But he's a short-timer," Wilcox pointed out. Bonner's interstate transport sentence was four years.
"The kind," Handy countered, "they'd be most likely to cut a deal with. Feds never chop off sentences more'n a couple years.
Besides, Bonner had an incentive: sex offenders were the prisoners who most often woke up with glass shards shoved down their throat, or a tin-can-lid knife in their gut – or who didn't wake up at all.
Uncertainly Wilcox looked into the dim slaughterhouse. "Whatta you think?"
"I think we oughta talk to him."
They walked through the main room, over the rotting ramps the livestock had once ambled along, past the long tables where the animals had been cut apart, the rusting guillotines. The two men stood in the doorway of the killing room. Bonner wasn't there. They heard him standing not far away, pissing a solid stream into a well or sump pump.