“Get him out of here,” he said to Eliot, without looking up from his phone. “Take him down to the betting room and let his wife look at him for a while.” And that ought to be a happy reunion.
Franklin shook his head. People led such screwed-up lives.
“And Eliot?”
“Yes, Mr. Bleak?”
“Take the woman’s gag off. I bet she’s gonna have a few things to say to her husband.”
“Yes, Mr. Bleak.”
Burt was such a loser.
“Mitch,” he said when his second in command answered. “You still got that Cyclone in sight?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Good. Burt Alden is here, Mitch, and he told me the girl picked up the eighty-two thousand up there in Genesee. So go get it. Whatever it takes.”
“Yes, boss. What about the girl? You still want her, too?”
Franklin gave the question a moment’s thought. “If you get the money, I don’t need the girl.” He had enough Aldens cluttering up his warehouse. “But if she doesn’t have that money on her, bring her in chains, if you have to. I don’t give a damn.”
“And the guy with her? Duce’s boy?”
“Get rid of him, Mitch, no witnesses, understand?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Duce doesn’t ever need to know what happened to his boy, if you do it right. So do it right.”
“Yes, boss.”
Franklin ended the call and walked over to the window overlooking the betting room.
Eliot was just depositing a limp and unconscious Burt Alden on the floor in the betting room, and from what Franklin could see, it didn’t look like Beth was any too happy to see him.
Wives, Franklin thought. He hadn’t seen his in fourteen years. As soon as Burt came around, Franklin would bet the whole eighty-two thousand that the guy was going to wish he hadn’t seen his either-not in this place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Harold’s Gas-N-Go was on the west side of Denver, hell and gone in the suburbs, a block off the interstate. Johnny finished pumping gas into Solange’s tank and reracked the nozzle. Esme had gone inside the small convenience store to use the facilities.
He was surprised she’d lasted as long as she had. It was nearing midnight-and Johnny could feel his clock ticking. Five A.M. wasn’t nearly far enough away for what he had in mind.
Waiting for his receipt, he checked both ends of the street. It was pure rustbelt, lined with auto parts stores and metal buildings rented out to machine shops and car repair guys. Poorly lit, grim, like a place where trouble happened-like that damn tunnel at Nachman’s.
What in the hell had that all been about? he wondered. He’d never had any trouble coming back from a tour of duty before-hadn’t had any trouble this time, until that damn elevator door had opened.
The receipt rolled out of the gas pump, and he tore it off and tucked it in his shirt pocket, his fingers brushing against the envelope.
Oh, yeah-the realization hit him. Just like every other time over the last two weeks, he conveniently kept forgetting about the envelope. Except it wasn’t so damn convenient, not when it crept up on him in the dark and made him break out in a sweat.
He hadn’t read what was inside. The actual letter was none of his business. His job was to deliver it. That was all, just deliver it. Take it up to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and give it to a girl, Lori Heath, whose husband was never coming home. He’d made the promise. He could do the deed. He’d almost driven up there tonight, but had ended up at the Blue Iguana instead.
Because there was more than one girl in Cheyenne, and if he got close enough to do his duty by Lori Heath, he had to face the other one, a girl named Cassie McAllister, and there was no neat and tidy letter to hand to Cassie. No, he’d have to talk to her, face-to-face. He’d have to stand there in her double-wide trailer sitting in its patch of dust and tumbleweeds and tell her what had happened to that rodeo cowboy who’d come through Cheyenne a year ago, riding in Frontier Days, his last go-round before he’d shipped out- the one who’d fathered her baby, the one she hadn’t heard from in months, the one who said he’d be coming back.
John Paul Cooperman had come back, and he wasn’t anywhere near Cheyenne, and he didn’t plan on ever getting within a hundred miles of the place ever again, and Johnny was going to have to explain why to a twenty-two-year-old girl with a brand-new baby.
Hell. He wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself. Or maybe he was, and that’s what was keeping him out of Wyoming.
Fuck.
In a couple of days, Johnny promised himself. He’d make the run up to Cheyenne in Solange, and he’d take care of business.
Getting back in the Cyclone, he pulled the car up to the front of the store, then leaned over and knocked the jockey box open. He didn’t smoke very often, but he always had a pack of Faros in the car. He bought them off the bartender at Mama Guadalupe’s, an old guy named Rick. He had to dig deep to find them, and by the time he sat back up in the driver’s seat, another car had pulled up a couple of spaces over.
A few cars had come and gone since he and Esme had gotten there, gassing up or people running into Harold’s for something-but this car was different.
It looked like all the others, a regular late-model sedan, a Crown Victoria, a real tuna boat. It had a couple of guys in it, like any number of the previous vehicles.
But it was different.
It made the hackles rise on the back of his neck, and he never second-guessed that particular buzz of warning.
He pushed in the Cyclone’s lighter, then knocked a cigarette out of the pack of Faros. When he was lit, he settled back into the driver’s seat and waited for somebody in the Crown Vic to make a move.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The guy in the passenger seat, a short, stocky redhead with male pattern baldness, got out of the Vic and headed into the store. The other guy, gray-haired, older, taller, stayed in the car.
Johnny took a long drag off the cigarette, watching the redhead scan the aisles. When the guy started toward the bathrooms, Johnny made his move, getting out of Solange and heading inside.
“Hey, hey,” the clerk behind the counter said. “You can’t smoke in here. Take it back outside.”
Dream on, cholo.
Johnny gave him a punk-ass stare and flashed the Locos sign with the fingers of his right hand.
As he passed the counter, he reached out and snagged a couple of candy bars and a lighter.
“You should leave, man,” he said, keeping his voice low. Combined with the hand sign, it was a clear threat, and if it got the clerk calling the cops, so much the better. Johnny knew Loretta wouldn’t want to see him dragged in for smoking in a convenience store and stealing candy bars and a Zippo. When the lieutenant swung her weight around for SDF, she liked to do it for something worthwhile, but if that’s all this turned out to be, fine. He’d take the dressing-down.
It was a short-lived hope.
Behind him, he heard the main door open again.
Perfect.
He glanced back, and sure enough, the gray-haired guy had followed him in. This was starting to look like exactly what Johnny had thought it might be-an ambush.
The clerk had disappeared.
Good. Considering how close Harold’s was to the interstate, the poor guy probably got robbed once a week. He wasn’t going to take a chance on three guys casing his store.
Down at the end of the aisle, into a hallway, Johnny could see the red-haired guy cozied up to the bathroom door, wiggling the handle.
And it pissed him off, royally.
That sonuvabitch-rattling the door of the women’s rest room, when there was a woman inside, Johnny’s woman.
“Eh! Cabrón!” he called out. “Back the fuck off that door.”