“Your friends should be out in another ten minutes or so,” Longo said.
Gerry thanked him again, then found an empty seat on a bench, and watched Longo be buzzed back into the station house. Then he spent a few minutes unwinding. He’d been in plenty of tight spots in his life, but today took the cake. He needed to call his father and tell him he was okay, and also to thank him. Mr. Black and White had pulled through again.
He took out his cell phone and powered it up. Several bars of music came out of the phone, indicating it was ready to be used. The large African American sitting beside him emitted a menacing growl. Gerry glanced at him.
“What’s up?”
“Make a cell call in here, and I’ll make you eat that thing,” the man said loudly.
The reception area got still, with even the babies quieting down. Gerry looked around the room, and noticed that he was the only person with a cell phone. Leave it to him to find the one place in the country where people were gathered, and weren’t talking on cell phones. He snapped his phone shut, then rose and went to the front doors. Pushing them open, he glanced back at the man who’d threatened him.
“Save my seat?”
No one in the reception area laughed. Tough crowd, Gerry thought.
He stood on the edge of the parking lot and made the call. His father’s cell phone was turned off, and he left a rambling message on voice mail, thanking his father more times than was necessary, which he guessed was his way of compensating for not thanking him enough for saving his neck when he’d been a kid. Someday it would all balance out, although Gerry knew that day was a long ways off.
He heard the front doors open and someone come out. There was a breeze in the air, and he smelled perfume, then felt a hand touch his sleeve.
“Excuse me, are you a cop?”
He turned to find a woman who resembled Heather Locklear standing beside him. She wore jeans that fit like baloney skins and a sweater molded to her ample bosom.
“No, are you?”
She let out a little-girl giggle. “I was just wondering if you’d walk me to my car.”
Gerry obliged her, and they walked across the visitor parking lot. He was able to pick out her car before they reached it, a bloodred Mustang convertible. She opened it by pressing a button on her key chain, then thanked him with a smile.
He walked back to find Vinny, Nunzie, and Frank waiting by the front doors.
“Where you been?” Nunzie wanted to know.
“Being a good Boy Scout. Ready to go?”
The three men nodded. The apprehension of being inside a police station was slow to leave their faces, and Vinny took out a pack of cigarettes and offered it around. They all accepted, and shared a silence while allowing themselves to relax.
“How we ever going to pay your father back for this?” Vinny asked.
Gerry stared at the cigarette he’d just lit up. Yolanda was bugging him to quit, and he guessed now was as good a time as any. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his shoe, then said, “You’re not.”
“Your father isn’t going to demand something in return?”
Gerry shook his head. He took a deep breath, sucking in the secondhand smoke all around him. Vinny had survived as a hoodlum because he’d learned that favors must always be paid back. Except it was different with his old man. You couldn’t pay him back because there wasn’t anything his old man wanted.
“I’d still like to do something for him,” Vinny said. “You know, show my respect.”
“Maybe you could send him a turkey at Thanksgiving,” Nunzie suggested.
“Or a ham,” Frank said, speaking for the first time. “They’ve got these places that precook them, and deliver.”
“You think he’d like a ham?” Vinny asked.
Gerry realized they were being serious, and tried to imagine what his father would do with a baked ham sent to him by a bunch of hoodlums. He’d either take it to a local homeless shelter, or to the neighbors, but he wouldn’t eat it himself.
“Sure,” Gerry said.
“Bah-zoom,” Nunzie said under his breath. “What do we have here?”
The four men’s attention shifted to the attractive member of the opposite sex coming across the visitor parking lot toward them. It was the young woman Gerry had escorted to her car, only now she had a pissed-off look on her face, and her car keys dangling from her fingertips.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, but my car’s engine is as dead as a doornail,” she said. “Is there any way you could give me a ride home? I don’t live that far.”
Gerry looked at his friends, and not seeing any objections, said, “Sure, but I’ve got to warn you, it’s not that big a car.”
“I’ll squeeze in,” she said.
Her name was Cindy Dupree, and she sat sandwiched between Vinny and Gerry in the front seat, and told them how she’d come to Las Vegas expecting to get a job as a blackjack dealer in a casino — “I heard you could live pretty decently on tips” — but had ended up working the graveyard shift as a bartender — “The tips suck” — and was hoping to scrounge up enough money to move to Los Angeles and enroll in a beautician’s school. She called Las Vegas a whorehouse sitting on a hot plate, and hoped never to return for as long as she lived.
While she talked, Cindy directed Vinny to a nameless subdivision on the northern outskirts of town. There were no streetlights, and Gerry squinted to see the street names, trying to remember them so they could get back to town. They passed a billboard for a smiling attorney named Ed Bernstein, then turned down a dead-end street named Cortez, and Cindy said, “This is it,” and pointed at a single-story ranch house in the middle of the block. Vinny pulled up to the curb, and threw the rental in park.
“Well, I guess this is where we part ways, gents,” Cindy said. “Thanks for helping a girl out of a tight spot. I really appreciate it.”
Gerry slid out of the car and offered his hand to her. She took it, gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek when she was out of the car, then brushed past him on her way up the front path. She had her key ring out, and he saw her press a button that made her garage door automatically open. His father was always telling him that where there was smoke, there was usually fire, and he found himself questioning why she’d come to the police station by herself. She hadn’t felt safe walking across the parking lot, yet had been willing to let four strange guys give her a ride home. It didn’t make sense, and he jumped into the car while looking back at Cindy’s garage. The door had come up, and as she went inside, two men hiding in the garage swept out past her.
“Cute broad,” Vinny said.
“Get out of here!”
“What’s wrong—”
“I said go!”
A Pontiac Firebird was parked in front of them, twenty yards down the street. Its headlights came on, bathing their rental in light. The car’s engine roared, and it came forward as if to hit them, then suddenly stopped. Two men wearing jeans and sweatshirts jumped out. Together with the two men from Cindy’s garage, they surrounded the rental. In their hands were automatic pistols with silencers, and Gerry heard the quiet pop, pop, pop as they shot out their tires, the rental slowly sinking several inches. He glanced at the house, and saw Cindy standing in the garage. She’d turned the light on, and was watching the action. Their eyes briefly met, and she shrugged and killed the light.