"No. Horace?"
"Yes, my brother?" came the reply.
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"Yesterday."
"The night guy?"
"He don't remember."
"You're sure?"
"Sure."
"You weren't watching the ball game and didn't see him?"
"Maybe. I ain't making any promises about where he be."
"The night guy sleep at night?"
"That's what I do, I sleep at night."
In a quieter voice: "So our guy is generally in and out." Louder: "Give us a couple of minutes here, Horace."
"Right."
"I mean walk away, Horace. Just get your ass fifty steps back."
"Right on that."
The basketball shoes walked away.
"Fucking jig."
"Looks like he has AIDS. Half the fucking spooks got AIDS, you know."
The money, Rick thought, don't let them find the money.
"Thing I don't understand is why white guys aren't getting it."
"You mean straight white guys?"
"Right."
That voice, thought Rick, I might know that voice. Hard to tell lying on the cement floor. Detective Peck. If he doesn't look at the engine, he won't find the money.
"I heard you can't really get it from fucking a woman. Guys just aren't getting it from having sex with women."
"Whores or regular women?"
"I mean your totally regular girl-she has a regular job, apartment, and so on. Doesn't shoot drugs. Look at the numbers and you see that the guys she's sleeping with are not getting it."
Rick heard the sound of the hood opening. The money was hidden in a large plastic Baggie that he'd twisted a wire around and slipped through the wide mouth of the antifreeze reservoir. To get at it you had to put your fingers into the bluish antifreeze and find the wire. "The doctors don't want anyone to know."
"'Course not."
"You'd have guys fucking around all over the place, if they knew they weren't going to get AIDS."
Had they found his money? He risked a peek around the tire of the Lexus, but the angle wasn't right.
"You ever go gooming on the missus?"
The hood went down. "That's classified information."
"You're a weasel."
"Nah. I see this girl every couple of weeks. Nice, you know, very respectable. Has some kinda job at Macy's, in the personnel department. Apartment's way over by First Avenue. Last time I see her, we get in bed and fuck, you know, then she likes to make me lunch afterward, see, and I eat that and then she brings out this blueberry pie stuff, sort of sweet custard, and it's really good. Better than anything my wife ever made me. Not even close. My wife gives me the same fucking macaroni she gives the kids. Dog food. So I'm eating that custard blueberry pie and really enjoying it, it's better than anything I ever got in a restaurant, and then while I'm still eating it, she slides down and undoes my pants. Starts sucking on me."
"No."
"Yeah, I'm not bullshitting you. I don't even think I can get hard again, we just had sex maybe an hour ago. I'm a fucking old man, right? But here she is, she's gotten turned on by the fact I'm eating her pie. She's doing it to me and I stop eating the pie, just to concentrate, you know, and she says, No, keep eating the pie, don't stop. So I do. It is fucking great pie. I got the pie in my mouth and sitting there looking down watching my wet dick go in and out. Fucking sexiest thing I ever saw. I've seen everything, too, but this is something new. It had to do with the pie."
"I get it."
The basketball shoes were coming back.
"I know it sounds-"
"No, I get it, I-Yo, Horace! Hey, fuckhead! Hey, Horace."
"What?" came a voice.
"This is a po-lice investigation. You don't come back until I tell you."
The basketball shoes walked away.
"Stuff like that happens, it ruins you," said the other man.
"What do you mean?"
"I can hardly screw my wife anymore. I have to go into a trance."
A male exhalation. "Hey, my wife actually fell asleep on me."
"No. C'mon."
"Swear. I knew she was tired, but she got up and put in the thing and said, Okay, honey, and then I get on her-I mean, it's not like I didn't work the whole day, either-and I'm doing it and then I see she's asleep."
"Sort of killed it for you."
"I pulled out, she didn't even know."
The truck door slammed.
"How much you paying Horace these days?"
"He gets thirty a week, twenty extra anytime his stuff is decent."
"He knew this guy was no good?"
"The guy wanted to hide the truck-that's interesting enough. Horace'll try to sell anything he's got."
"Bocca coming in and out once a day, maybe."
"He doesn't know what he's doing," Peck said disgustedly. The other truck door slammed. "He's fucking around, he's getting close to finding that girl. He's making contact with Verducci's people, making them mad. That's all I care about. He'll get mixed up in it. He'll call me again, say he doesn't know where she is. But he's going to find her. It's just a matter of time."
"You think they know where she is?"
"Don't know exactly what they know. I'm not on the exact inside here. My job is to keep an eye on this guy."
"They want to get them together first."
"They want something, yeah."
He lay motionless on the oily floor for ten minutes after they left. He'd have to call Paul now. He hadn't wanted to do it, but now there was no choice; Paul would figure it out. He rose and moved through the shadows to his truck, the doors of which Peck had left unlocked. Nothing seemed to be missing, including the money in the antifreeze reservoir, and the truck started right up. What did Peck want from him? Get out of the city, Rick. He summoned the elevator, opened the gate, and backed in the truck. Horace had sold him out for thirty bucks when Rick was paying him seventy-five a week. Unwise, my brother. He felt his breathing quicken, his hands getting nervous, just like in grade school before something bad happened.
A minute later, he had the truck idling in front of the cement-block booth. Seeing him through the booth window, Horace turned off the television.
"Good afternoon, my brother. I didn't see you come in."
Rick put the truck in park and got out with the baseball bat.
"Wait, I said, 'Good afternoon, my brother.'"
Red, the world was red. "Hey, fuck you, my brother."
It was no use pretending anything. "They know where I live, man, they-"
Rick swung the bat and shattered the booth window. With the next swing he destroyed the door. Horace leapt under the desk, holding the phone. The phone wire came right out of the cement block, and Rick swung the bat down on that, snapping it loose, yanking the phone set off the wall.
"Yo, man!" cried Horace, his breath raspy. "Don't fucking do it."
Rick hit the door again. It broke in two. He took a step inside the booth. Almost no room to swing. The cash register was full, but if he touched it, the police would care what happened. Up to now, it was a personal incident, of no official interest.
"Don't hit the television."
He hit the television, shutting his eyes as the bat met the screen. Wrecked. But he was not satisfied, not nearly. With one swing he could break Horace's knee, then drag him out from under the desk.
"You fucking sold me out!"
"I had no choice!"
"Get up."
"You going kill me," Horace croaked.
"Get up!"
"I said you going kill me."
Think, he told himself. Don't do the stupid thing. You already did one stupid thing. He saw the key box on the wall and pushed it open. Row upon row of keys, each on a hook, corresponding with spaces in the garage. The lowest three rows of ten were marked basemint and included many sets with Lexus and Mercedes emblems.
"Where's my key?"
Horace was gulping breath. "Bottom left."