The next morning, around nine, I heard somebody say, “Hey! You! Wake up!”
I got myself in a sitting position, blinked a few times, and there she was, sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed — another jumpsuit, but a lemon-color one today — with all her makeup done. She was probably around forty, and the years were showing some, but she knew not to hit the cosmetics too hard and looked just great.
“Question,” she said.
“Okay.”
“What kind of civilized human doesn’t keep any coffee in his house?”
“There’s tea. Diet Coke. If caffeine’s the point.”
She shook her head. No longer in a ponytail, the blondeness got itself nicely tousled. “Coffee is the point. Did you have a nice time last night?”
“You mean, dumping that body or getting my ashes hauled?”
“The latter.”
“Yeah. I had a nice time.”
“Then get up and buy a girl some breakfast.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Did you move in or something?”
She gestured toward her attire. “Suitcase was in the Camaro. I don’t care how cute a guy is, I don’t stay over without toothpaste and a change of clothes.”
“You are civilized.”
After yet another shower, and getting myself into a sweatshirt and jeans, I drove her in the Impala over to Marv’s. Today the funky diner-in-an-old-house was busier, but still all locals. Kind of people I didn’t know to talk to, just exchange nods with.
We found the same table in the corner I’d taken yesterday, nicely private. Hazel, the skinny waitress with a lot of miles on her, managed to drive herself over and take our order. I had the kitchen sink omelet again and Lu ordered the French toast with bacon, crisp. Hazel, who seemed tickled I was getting a little, had already delivered a fountain version of a Diet Coke to me, and Lu asked for coffee, black.
We didn’t talk much while we ate, but when the dishes had been cleared, and the place had emptied out pretty much, I had a refill on the Diet Coke and Lu was having a third cup of coffee, and I finally asked the big question.
“What the fuck,” I asked, quiet but firm, “is going on?”
She shrugged, sipped coffee, then jumped right in. “For the last few years, Bruce has been talking about it.”
“About what? And don’t you call him ‘Brace’?”
She shook her head. “No, and he didn’t call me ‘Ivy,’ either. We were a team a long time. You get to know a person.”
“Got along?”
“Far as it went. He was kind of an asshole.”
“In what way?”
Single shoulder shrug. “Oh, he’d talk about his little family and how much he loved his wife, how crazy he was about her, but then he’d tomcat around on the job. A kid away from home.”
“You didn’t like that.”
“No. First of all, what the hell kind of immoral shit is that? Second of all, I like working with somebody whose mind stays on the job.”
I sipped Diet Coke. “Ever cause you any trouble?”
“Couple times,” she admitted. “Twice jobs almost blew up in our faces. Because his eye wasn’t on the ball. On balling, not the ball.”
“I hate that, too. That’s what got my partner killed.”
She nodded, smirked humorlessly. “Anyway, for a couple of years Bruce had been talking about this rumor that somebody was out there, messing up jobs. Knocking off entire teams, and taking clients down, too.”
“Not sure I follow.”
Her smile patronized me. “Jack. Please. If that’s where we’re headed, I’ll just kiss you on the cheek for old time’s sake and hit the road. You know exactly what I mean.”
“I do?”
“Sure you do. You’re the one who’s been doing it.”
What could I say to that?
She continued: “You got hold of the Broker’s roster, didn’t you? How did you put it to use? Follow somebody to a job, figure out who hired it, get paid to make the threat go away? Kind of genius really.”
I said nothing.
“I never said anything to Bruce or our middleman for that matter,” she went on, “but I figured you were the guy, this ghost who was fucking things up for everybody. Not out of, what...”
“Morality?”
She laughed lightly. “Not out of that. You, what — squeezed dough out of the mark? Using the list to wipe out the hit teams, I see how you might have managed that. But figuring out who hired the hits? And taking those bastards out, too? What are you, Magnum P.I.?”
I had some Diet Coke. Then said: “I would guess, if there were anything to this, it would be a matter of working backward. Looking at who had a bullseye on him, and figuring out who was likely to have hung it on.”
She shook her head, blondeness bouncing, her half-smile an admiring one. “You know how I figured out it was you, right, Jack? That was what you were doing in Des Moines! That was how my cute little partner ended up dead in a bathtub. That was why the plug got pulled on that contract. You’ve been doing this that long?”
Couldn’t hold back a little grin. “That was my first time out.”
“But why leave me alive?”
“I don’t know. The nice tits?”
She’d been sipping coffee and her laugh turned into a snort. She put a napkin to her face, her nose, and when she could talk again, she said, “You might have died yesterday, y’know, if it hadn’t been for the way this job went down.”
“Oh?”
Hazel came over and filled Lu’s coffee and disappeared back behind the counter.
Lu sipped and said, “Our broker, Simmons and mine? We call him the Envoy. Corny as shit I know. Anyway, the Envoy said this job might look routine, but it was dangerous as hell, really, and he was doubling our rate.”
“What did you make of that?”
“Well, nothing, till I started my surveillance and saw who our mark was.” The wide mouth made a wide smile. “You haven’t changed much, Jack. You’re still a nice-lookin’ boy. Clean-cut. Take-you-home-to-meet-mom-and-dad kinda guy.”
“Stop. I’ll blush.”
“The Envoy brought us both in, Simmons and me, and talked to us. That was unusual in itself, because usually he just met with Simmons, who filled me in after. Not this time. The Envoy warned us both that this time we would be dealing with a very dangerous subject, although, at first glance, the mark... you... might not seem like all that much. Don’t be fooled, he said. But what he said next was the real eye-opener.”
“Yeah?”
“He said, ‘The client on this job is yours truly.’ The Envoy himself was the fucking client!”
“Why?”
She flipped a hand. “I can only guess. Possibly you’ve cost him and others in the game a lot of money over the last ten years. So a revenge motive could be part of it.”
“Too emotional.”
She nodded, smirked. “My feeling exactly. I think it’s strictly business. You’re a liability out there causing trouble. I mean, you haven’t stopped, have you, Jack? You’re still working the Broker’s list, aren’t you?”
I just shrugged.
“Well, I have a list, too,” she said lightly.
“Do you now?”
“With just one name. One address.”
“Not much of a list.”
“Sure it is. It has the Envoy on it.”
Eight
Lu and I sat within the kitchenette at the counter with my Rand McNally road atlas open before us, like a menu we were studying.
“Wilmette,” she said. “Easy trip. What, an hour fifteen?”
“Hour fifteen,” I agreed, adding, “That’s one rich suburb. Your Envoy is doing all right for himself.”