“Won’t take you there, but it’s a map.”
“Not someone you’ve worked with before, then.”
“And a lot of blinds. I always look in the water, deep as I can. Same as you, I’m sure. Near as I can make out, this one came by way of a lawyer in or around New Orleans.”
“No idea who’s behind it?”
“Someone with a shitload of money.” Raymond held out his hand for the folder. “Give me a minute. I’ll run copies.”
“There’s a couple old running buddies down that way I could send round.”
“Tattoos may not work here, Felix.”
“Doyle’s will. Semper Fi. And the leg’s prosthetic. Heartbreaker of a limp when he wants. The one that’ll be with him…Never says much, but he asks a question, you’re just naturally inclined to answer.”
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll get them on it, get back to you when.”
“Care, my friend.”
“I’ll take it.”
Billie had her head on the seat, eyes closed, when he climbed back in the car. They’d tried multiple places. Now they were out behind a long-closed bowling alley on its way to becoming a flea market and swap mart. Workers were grinding down pink stucco with belt sanders.
“Your friend always that hard to find?”
“Until he knows who’s looking.”
“Ever think about trying a phone?”
“He’s more a face-to-face guy.”
“In-your-face from the look.”
“It’s happened.”
She had a rubber band in her teeth as she pulled her hair back. Talked around it, then slipped the hair through. “Any butts you need to kick for the next hour or so?”
“It can wait. You had something in mind?”
“I was going to see my father, thought maybe you’d come along.”
Willow Villa was in a stretch of commercial property that sprang up unannounced. One minute they were cruising past ranch houses and shrubs and double driveways, then signs were all around them. Bernard Capes, Chiropractor. Action Limbs and Prosthetics. Spine Mechanics. Physical Therapy Associates. As though some weird medical mall had claimed squatter’s rights and was taking form before your eyes.
Two cars in the visitor’s parking lot around back, one of them a 1968 Pontiac GTO that could have just come off the showroom floor. Driver and Billie watched as seven elderly ladies came out of the building, spent at least three minutes getting into the car, and drove slowly down the drive, hitting the street with a dip and loud clang.
Inside, they stopped to sign in. The air was cold and stale and smelled vaguely of raw alcohol. Two women sat at desks beyond the counter. One had an account or records book of some kind. The other was peering at a computer screen, and looked up. Her hair was three different colors, none of them natural, none of them, for that matter, found in nature.
“Hey, Billie.”
“Maxine. You’re back.”
“As of yesterday.”
“Your son’s better, then?”
“For now… Mr. Bill’s not in his room, honey.”
“Oh?”
“Out for a walk with Wendell, can you believe it? Getting to be a regular thing.”
“Which way?”
She pointed to the back of the building.
“Max always thought the boy just had asthma,” Billie said as they went back through the doors. “Two weeks ago he had a crisis, two o’clock in the morning the way it usually happens, and they wound up in ER at Good Sam. Came to find out it’s a heart defect, something that should have been caught years ago. There they are.”
Driver and Billie walked toward two men sitting at a plastic patio table. A scruffy Chinese elm struggled to give shade.
“Hi, Daddy, I thought you were out walking.”
The older man looked for a moment at Driver before answering.
Cop’s look, Driver thought.
“Wendell got tired.”
“Of course he did.”
“Wendell, you know my daughter. And she’s brought a friend. This,” he said, looking again at Driver, then at Wendell, “is my friend.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir. Miss Billie.” Wendell stood. Scars and a Special Forces tattoo intertwined with cords of muscle on his arms. “I’d best be getting back. You okay out here, Mr. Bill?”
Billie’s father nodded. Driver and Billie sat at the table. Off ten or twelve yards, where a path led to a stand of trees, a cat repeatedly scampered and leapt, twisting about in midair, as it stalked a huge Viceroy butterfly.
“Good to see you out here, Dad. This is Eight-long story, don’t ask. We work together.”
Both he and Driver were watching the cat. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
Billie waited. “I’m afraid my father doesn’t have much to say these days.”
He turned back, looked at Driver.
“So you work with my girl. Not another damn lawyer, are you, like the last one?”
“No, sir. No, I’m not.”
“Not a lawyer? Or not like the last one?”
“Both.”
“And you got a number for a name, like in that Merle Haggard song.”
“Courtesy of your daughter, yes, sir.”
“Always did see things the way she wanted to. And that’s one of her good points.”
“We’re the descendents of the ones who ran-and of the ones who fought. You just gotta figure out when to what.” Felix looked up the alleyway. “Help soon be on the way in their pretty squads. Don’t think you’ll be wanting to take time to check out.”
They went over the wall together, into the lot of a quickie car service long closed down. Someone, kids most likely, had piled up a bunch of used tires back here and set them afire. Been a while, but the smell had moved in to stay.
“That does bring back memories,” Felix said, looking at the mound. “Your ride?”
“Over by Food City.”
They walked that way.
Half an hour ago Driver had returned to his room to find that things were not as he left them. Did their best to keep it from showing, but they’d been in the drawers where clothes had been refolded, his razor and toothbrush were out of place by an inch, and there was a faint odor, like an aftertaste, of sweet cologne. The smell’s what tipped him.
He went downstairs to the front desk. A stocky twentyish woman was on duty, her arms so thickly tattooed that she seemed to be wearing comic books for sleeves. She looked up. “Room got messed with, huh?”
He nodded.
“Dark blue sedan parked ’round back. Police, or claim to be.”
“See a badge?”
“You mean like the one I could buy off the street for the price of a cup of highlife coffee?”
When Driver pointed to the doorway leading back to storage and services, she nodded.
“No one back there?”
“Rarely.”
Minutes later Driver exited the rear door onto the parking lot pushing a steel cart piled with everything heavy he could find. Nested metal trashcans, five cinder blocks, a footlocker, an unopened box of foot-long rebar. He made as though to go left, toward the dumpsters. Both heads in the blue sedan swivelled to look, then turned back. When they did, Driver broke to a run, slamming the cart into the sedan so hard that he all but fell from the rebound. The passenger door buckled. The man on his side couldn’t get out. The other one came at him over the top of the car.
Driver pulled the cart back, caught the man between it and the car as he clambered down. The other one was out of the car now too, but that had to wait. Driver pulled the cart back, slammed it again into the man. Then again. And again. Till he heard a voice.
“Think we’re done here, friend.”
When Driver pulled the cart back, his man fell. Blood snailed from his mouth. His legs twitched.
Felix stood over the other one. “Heard the commotion back this way, occurred to me you might not be far off.”
Just before they’d gone over the wall, an elderly security guard had stepped around from the front of the building carrying a walkie-talkie. Seeing the wreck and the two on the ground, he’d stopped, raised both hands over his head, and quick-stepped back the way he came.