“Okay. Okay. This was a long time ago, and I was a stupid greedy little punk who didn’t know right from wrong.”
I decided not to remind him he’d been trying to sell the guts of a nuke to terrorists earlier this evening.
“Go on, Bucky.”
“I... I knew Bettie, knew she’d made copies of the files and took ’em home with her. And I knew she was your girl, and it was obvious that she was going to turn ’em over to you.”
If I smothered him with a pillow, no one would hear. If I covered his face with a pillow and used it to muffle t... .45, no one would hear that either.
“Don’t... don’t look at me like that, Shooter.”
“They’re still after her, aren’t they, Bucky?”
“I wouldn’t know, honest, man, I wouldn’t know! I had no idea they was going to snatch that snatch of yours!”
My hand clenched the pillowcase cloth again.
“Shooter, you got to believe me, I wanted no part of that shit. Why do you think I paid to fake my damn death? I wanted out, I got out, disappeared upstate and I been straight ever since. Computer repair, to this day. You think it’s easy keeping up on this computer crap, competing with these kids who had computers in their damn playpens?”
“I feel for you, Bucky. But like the man says, I just can’t reach you.”
“Shooter... Shooter....”
“If you went straight, what were you doing back in the big city, on that street, in that old building?”
“I saw in the papers Orbach was out of stir and then right away he bought the farm. So I kind of started thinking about the safe and what was in it, and how I must be the last one to know about it. And how, you know, valuable them contents was.”
“Why would a straight successful businessman start thinking bad things like that, Bucky?”
“I told you it’s been tough, competing. Plus I lost everything in my divorce, and... but it was just me thinking. I didn’t do anything about it. Not at first.”
“Oh?”
A short nod. “Then when those Saudi guys contacted me about buying the old building, I checked on the atomic stash and, damn, if it wasn’t still there! Orbach dead, and so many of the old mob guys gone. Why not make a buck?”
“So the Saudis didn’t approach you about the contents of that safe?”
“No — they’re developers. They’re going to build friggin’ condos or something. But I figured they might be connected to, you know, certain kinds of people. You know — crazy ragheads with money to burn.”
My stomach tightened, muscles twitching, but I didn’t let it show in my face.
“And so you told them about what you had for sale.”
“Yeah! Of course. Wouldn’t you?”
I let that pass. “And they were interested?”
“Not for themselves, but they got in touch with people who were. I guess that box of plutonium or whatever the hell it is, it’s something people have been looking for, for years.”
“Yeah. Only the safe was empty.”
His shook his head, eyes wild again. “Shooter, I checked that baby. I opened that safe and there it was, wrapped up in blankets just like when the heisters stuck it in there. Twenty years ago!”
“So you were double-crossed.”
“Not by the Saudis. You were there, Shooter. You saw how that went down. Somebody else got to that stash between the last time I checked it and when I opened up the safe for my buyers.”
“Who?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t advertise this thing. Only a handful of higher-ups in the mob knew about the atomic heist, and of course everybody but Orbach got killed when they kidnapped your Bettie.”
I leaned close. “They’re still looking for her, Bucky. Why?”
“Not for what was in that safe, Shooter! No way. But they could still be afraid of those files. Those floppy discs.”
“Why, after all this time?”
“Some guys Orbach implicated are still alive. That was one hell of an insurance policy, Shooter — names, dates, places. Man, even now, there’d be hell to pay with the coppers and the feds.”
I heard something behind me.
Davy Ross was peeking in.
He said to Bucky, “A public defender’s on the way, Mr. Mohler.”
“Thanks, Sergeant.” Bucky looked at me with eyes that were afraid to blink. “Are we cool, Shooter? Did I give you what you need?”
“I need one other thing.”
“What, Shooter?”
I leaned in and whispered; this was nothing Davy needed to hear.
“When this is over, assuming you don’t wind up in a federal pen somewhere, and you see me coming? I need you to go the other way as fast as your new kneecap will allow.”
He swallowed. “I’ve had better best friends.”
“No you haven’t. I saved your life six times today.”
He squinted at me. “Six?”
“Once in that cellar, and five times in this room when I talked myself out of killing you.”
Chapter Eleven
We were sitting at the kitchen table in number 820 on Kenneth Avenue in Sunset Lodge — my one-and-a-half story digs, where Bettie had moved in at Joe Pender’s suggestion and with Darris Kinder’s approval. Tacos was sleeping on a braided rug nearby, next to his dog dishes. The greyhound had made the next-door transition just fine, if his snoring was any indicator.
It was mid-evening and I had made the coffee and served up Bettie and Kinder their cups while I also served up the events of the day before, and the story that Bucky Mohler had told me. I didn’t dole it out — Bettie seemed able to take it all in as fast as it came. She sat with her hands cradling the coffee cup and the hazel eyes stared into nothing and everything.
“After I talked to Bucky,” I said, seated next to Bettie and across from Kinder, “I spent three long hours with the feds.”
“Which flavor?” Kinder asked.
“All 57 varieties — the top guy was Homeland Security, but FBI was part of it, another was NSA, and a character who just had to be CIA.”
Kinder shrugged. “This does have its foreign implications. What was their take on all this?”
“Their ‘take,’ ” I said with half a smile, “was that I had done more than enough, and they would take it from here.”
The captain/manager frowned. “Take what from where?”
“Every aspect of the affair relating to the ‘missing materiel’ — that’s they what called it. They didn’t confirm or deny the nuclear aspect.”
“Where does that leave us?”
But what Kinder meant was: where does that leave Bettie?
“It leaves us,” I said, “with a big old shoe to drop. A big very old shoe.”
Bettie had said nothing through my report. She hadn’t nodded or done anything to indicate these new facts jogged her memory further. Somehow I felt they had — somehow I felt that behind her pretty placid face the wheels were turning. Maybe even spinning.
“You mean the organized crime aspects,” Kinder said. “Garrison Properties and Romero Suede and ice cream trucks. You know, one of those trucks, specially rigged, looking innocent as hell, could have hauled that atomic cube down here.”
“If they did,” I said, “the feds consider that their business.” I sipped my own coffee and shrugged. “I gave them everything, Darris — Garrison and Suede and ice cream on a stick. They’re probably mounting an operation right now.”
“If so, I haven’t heard about it.”
“We’re just the small fry who handed them everything on a platter. But the contents of that old safe don’t concern me anymore.”
“What does?”
“That shoe. That old shoe.”
“That hasn’t dropped yet.”