He let her dwell on that a moment.
“What you’ve got to think about, Val, is where you’d be if this hadn’t come along for you.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“I mean, that you’ve got to think about what the hell you’d do if this dried up on you.”
“Why have I got to think about that?”
“Because you keep asking yourself questions about what they’re doing with the information you give them,” he said, his hands flat on the pier on either side of him as he looked down into the water, “and you could find yourself out of this deal quicker’n shit.”
This was sobering for her, not only because of the prospect to which he alluded, which she had to admit, was indeed grim, but also because it was a none too thinly disguised threat If she had learned anything over the two years she had been doing this, it was that someone had done a hell of a job in planning the structure of the “organization.” She always paid her people in cash, and she was always paid in cash, even though the money was big. One of the first things Don taught her was how to deposit the stuff in banks without drawing attention, spread it out She didn’t know the real identity of anybody in the whole operation except the people below her whom she had recruited herself. But she had gathered from little snippets here and there in her conversations with Don over the two years that there were maybe half a dozen people like her that Don dealt with, and that maybe there were half a dozen people like Don that the guy above him dealt with. She couldn’t even imagine how far it went.
“The thing is,” Don said, interrupting her thoughts, “nobody’s indispensable. They’ll just get somebody else. We just do our business, make our deliveries, take the money, then we get to keep on taking the money. If we cause any trouble, hell, they just don’t need trouble, everything dries up. No more Don C. That number you call? It disappears, and I won’t exist anymore.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her looking at him again. “All they gotta do is say it, and it happens.”
“Hey, Don, I was just wondering,” she said defensively. “Hey, I don’t care about anything but doing what I do. I don’t care at all… about anything but just doing that Just doing my job, that’s all I want to do.”
“Good,” he said. “It’s the best money you’ve ever made, and if this dries up you’ll never make this good again, not even selling dope.” He swung his legs bigger, sort of indicating a change of pace or subject matter. Not too far out in the bay some kind of craft, a big cabin cruiser, with red and green lights, plowed by and you could hear the frothy sound of the salt water spraying up from the bow and splashing back into itself. “How you like that new ‘Vette?”
“How did you know I got a new car?”
“I saw you drive up in it, honey,” he said, grinning.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, somehow not entirely convinced. “It’s great.” She tried to brighten up, really wanted him to know she wasn’t thinking about the other anymore. “It smells so damn new. I’d like to get a new car every time that smell wears off.”
“Hell, you can buy that smell in a little spray can at the car wash,” he said.
“Yeah, well I’ve tried that It’s nothing like the real thing.”
“How’s it handle?”
“You never driven a Corvette?”
“Nope.” He was looking at her, grinning.
“Well, you’ve been missing something, Donny. It’s better’n sex.” Pause. “Well, as good as, anyway.” Pause. “Nearly.”
He laughed and ran his hand through his hair, and the muscles in his bare arm rippled when he did it, and she laughed too. She wished he would lean over and just pull down her top, just pull it down and put his mouth on her, and then she would lie back and he could have her right there on the damn dock. She didn’t think there was a sexier man alive than Don C.
That’s what she was thinking when he said:
“Okay, we’d better get out of here.”
It took her a second to come down out of that imaginary thing that she would let him do.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said.
“You’re supposed to have something for me in a couple of days, anyway, right?”
“That’s right,” she said, putting down one hand to steady herself as she got up. He got up too, and jammed his hands into the pockets of his tight jeans while she fished in her purse for the keys to the Corvette. She always left first. “I’ll call you.”
“Don’t worry about anything,” he reassured her. “I don’t think they’ll be back to see you. I’d even lay a little bet on it.”
“You’d better keep your money,” she said, finding the keys. She was pretty sobered by his abrupt interruption of her fantasy. “See you later.”
She turned and started walking back along the long pier. There were a few people as she got nearer the land, a guy crabbing, a couple sitting on the pier looking out to the bay. When she got to the light where the pier connected to the land, she turned around to look back. He was still there, and though he was a little more obscured by the night she could tell he wasn’t looking at her anymore. As a matter of fact, she thought she could see him pissing off the end of the pier.
Chapter 34
By the time Paula and Neuman had called in-their call was closely followed by Arnette’s-Graver had read several times through the intelligence reports on Victor Last as well as the crime analysis reports that detailed occurrences of MO’s fitting the description of Last’s known operations. The exercise was educational. He put a few things in his briefcase, grabbed his coat, reset the security system, turned out the lights, and pulled the door closed behind him.
Riding down in the moaning elevator, he thought of how Besom’s death suddenly had galvanized the investigation. None of them, Neuman or Paula or himself, could imagine anything but the worst now. It still felt like he was living a bad dream when he thought of Burtell’s role. Even when he spoke to Ginette on the telephone earlier, he felt as if the expression on his face was unnatural. He simply found the whole distorted situation too bizarre to know how to behave. The hardest part now was trying to decide whether Dean was in danger, or whether he was the danger. The thought of it ate at Graver like an ulcer.
His consternation was one of the main reasons he was keeping a detailed journal of the developments and of his reasons for his decisions and actions. He hoped that keeping a precise record somehow would help clarify the events. He felt like an alchemist performing rituals he didn’t wholly understand in the hope that magic would happen and with the magic would come knowledge and the fine gold of the truth.
This journal remained in the computer in a password file while he kept a printed copy at home. His initial thought had been to keep the copy with him at all times, an impulse that was the emotional equivalent of the fetal position. Later a saner view prevailed, and he decided to keep the second copy at home. If the investigation became increasingly unstable, he would put a third copy in the safety deposit box at his bank. This was a flat-out effort to cover his ass, and even at that he had no idea how something like this would hold up in an inquiry, if it ultimately came to that.
Outside, the night was warm and moist, and the smell of sticky weeds and bayou mud was laced with the pungent odor of the oil-stained asphalt that, even at this late hour, was still radiating an uncomfortable fever. Pausing, he looked toward the city across the bayou, at the high urban sierras of scattered light He recalled Arnette’s observation that trying to anticipate the “bad guys of this world” was like gazing at the stars, by the time you saw the light it was all over. You had to use your imagination, she said, to get the jump on the physics of iniquity.
In her own inimitable way, of course, Arnette had been giving him good advice. Under the circumstances, he was dealing with this entirely too cautiously. In the normal course of events he was used to looking way out in front of the curve, having plenty of time to gather information methodically, to think it through. But this wasn’t the normal course of things, and it clearly was looking like a Darwinian lesson: adapt to change or perish. He had better start thinking imaginatively, or this was going to be over before he even knew what it was that had happened.