Once again Quentin gave Mitch a searching, sidelong look. “You mean you’re in the same boat?”
Mitch nodded. “Pretty much,” he said. “If it’s any consolation, there’s a whole lot of that going around.”
“As in misery loves company?”
“More or less.”
Quentin gave a bleak laugh and lifted his almost empty glass. “Here’s to friends, then,” he said.
“To friends,” Mitch agreed, touching his still almost full glass to Quentin’s nearly empty one. Quentin raised one finger and called for another beer.
“So what are you up to these days?” Quentin asked as they waited for the bartender to deliver the order.
“For the last couple of months,” Mitch Johnson said quietly, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Looking for me?” Quentin asked, as though he couldn’t quite believe it.
Mitch nodded. “I probably wouldn’t have found you now if it hadn’t been for your mother.”
“Which one, my stepmother or my real mother?”
“Your biological mother,” Mitch answered.
“You mean you actually made it past the screen and talked to her?”
“What screen?”
“My brother, Brian. My half-brother. He doesn’t let me anywhere near Mom if he can help it. He claims I upset her. What he really means is she might end up slipping me some cash. Brian wants to keep all that for himself.”
“Your brother must not have been home,” Mitch replied, “because I talked to her directly. She’s the one who told me where you were living.”
“You still haven’t told me how come you were looking for me in the first place.”
“Andy told me once that you claimed to have found some pottery—some Indian pottery—out on the reservation. Is that true?”
Quentin had been chatting easily enough. Now, though, he pulled back. “What if it is?” he asked.
Mitch ignored the sudden shift in mood. “One of the things Andy did for me before he died,” Mitch continued, “was to give me the benefit of some of his contacts. I may have found a possible buyer for those pots of yours—if they’re legit, that is.”
The conversation ground to a momentary halt. “How much money?” Quentin asked finally, looking up.
Mitch shrugged. “That depends on quality and quantity of the merchandise, of course. But before my buyer will deal on any pots, he wants me to take a look at them. He wants me to see the pots as well as where you found them.”
Before Mitch could even finish the sentence, Quentin Walker was already shaking his head. “No way!” he said. “No way in hell! I can maybe bring them out for you to see them, but you can’t go there to look at them. It’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“You just can’t, that’s all.”
“But I can make it worth your while,” Mitch said.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet. He removed several bills and laid them on the bar. “Believe me, Quentin, there’s a lot more where this came from. It’s our chance to make some big bucks.”
Quentin looked at the money blankly for some time, as though lost in thought. “What’s this?” he asked at last.
“What does it look like?” Mitch Johnson smiled. “It’s a small down payment, Quentin. But remember, seeing the material on site is part of the deal. This is the first half. You get the same amount as soon as you show me the spot. After that, it’s a sixty-forty split of whatever my buyer pays.”
Mitch knew very well the kind of hand-to-mouth existence Quentin Walker had lived since being released from prison. He had expected the man to leap at the opportunity to make some fast money. Mitch found Quentin’s apparent reticence somewhat surprising. He waited impatiently while the younger man stared down at the bills without touching them.
“Drywalling money’s that good then?” Mitch asked in an effort to move things forward.
Tentatively, almost as if afraid they might bite, Quentin Walker reached out and moved the bills closer to him. He leaned down and examined them in the dim light of the bar. An unfamiliar picture stared back at him from the topmost one. Quentin may not have recognized Grover Cleveland’s likeness right off the bat, but the numbers in the corner of the bill were easily identifiable—a one and three zeros.
“There’s more where that came from.”
Not quite believing what he was seeing, Quentin thumbed through the other bills. “Five thousand dollars?” he mouthed silently.
Mitch nodded. Quentin glanced furtively around the bar. Most of the customers were engrossed in the San Diego Padres baseball game blaring from the television set at the far end of the bar. As the bartender pulled himself away from the game and started toward them with the next round, Quentin snatched the bills off the counter and stuffed them into his shirt pocket.
Watching him, Mitch suppressed a sigh of relief. The surge of power he felt was almost sexual in nature. It reminded him of that first time he had invited Lori Kiser to go on a date—a picnic in Sabino Canyon. She had said yes, even though they both knew at the time that she was saying yes to far more than just a picnic. There had been an implicit understanding in her saying yes that day, in the way she had blushed when she answered. Her yes was to the picnic, but it was also to something else. To going to bed with him, probably before the day was over. They had gone on the picnic. Mitch had taken a blanket along, just in case, and he had been absolutely right.
Sitting in the bar with Quentin Walker, Mitch sensed that this was the same thing. By taking the money, Quentin knew he was agreeing to break the law. Again. What he couldn’t possibly know was exactly which laws he would end up breaking.
“When do you want to go?” Quentin was asking.
Now it was Mitch’s turn to pull himself out of a reverie in order to answer. “How about tomorrow evening?”
He forced himself to ask the question casually, even though he knew from his scheduling discussion with Megan in New York that this was the one time when he could be reasonably sure that Brandon and Diana Walker were going to a banquet together. That meant they would both be away from the house for a predictable period of time.
Already more than a little drunk, Quentin tried to think his way through all the various ramifications. There were risks involved in selling the pottery, but that much money—ten thousand tax-free dollars—almost made the risks worthwhile. At least, it made them seem far less significant.
“I suppose that would work,” Quentin said. “In fact, it’ll probably be better if we go there in the dark. Fewer people will see us if we go then. This place is a secret, you know. I want to keep it that way. Not only that, it won’t be nearly as hot.”
“All right,” Mitch agreed. “What time?”
“Five?”
“I already have another afternoon appointment. Five may be pushing it. Let’s make it six. Where should we meet?”
“Here,” Quentin said. “I don’t have wheels at the moment.”
“No problem,” Mitch assured him. “Meet me out front. You can ride with me.” He stood up and staggered slightly, waiting for his permanently damaged knee to steady under his weight.
Quentin noticed and seemed to relax. “At least I’m not the only one who’s had one too many.”
“I guess not,” Mitch said agreeably. “See you tomorrow.”
He limped outside and climbed into his waiting Subaru. He sat there for a few moments, eyeing the bar’s vivid neon lights and thinking. Originally the plan had simply been to do the girl in her parents’ house and to leave a drunken Quentin there to take the blame. In that basic plan, the pots had been intended as nothing more than bait, something off the wall enough to dupe Quentin into going along with the program.
In the months since Mitch had been out of prison, however, he had been doing some research. He had learned that these pots—if they actually existed—were probably worth a fortune in their own right. And if he could have Quentin Walker and his pots as well, why not go for broke?