“Pickup game on Laramie,” he said.
“Where on Laramie?”
“Don’t recall the address,” he said.
Two different agendas here, he was thinking. Man here wants to know all about this hundred-dollar bill, I want to make sure he don’t find out I stole it.
“This all you won in the crap game?”
“Just the hundred, that’s all.”
“Went out to spend it, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Listen, he thought, why the fuck are you asking all these questions?
But knew better than to say.
Two different agendas here.
“I talked to a girl named Jasmine before I came up here,” Horne said.
“Oh?”
“Got your name from her.”
“So?”
“Ran a computer check.”
Will said nothing.
“Seems you ran into a little trouble here in this city, is that right, Wilbur?”
“It’s Will, by the way.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know that, Will.”
“That’s okay,” Will said.
He was thinking it still didn’t take the curse off the oldest cop trick in the world, calling a suspected perp by his first name, which reduced him to the status of a menial. What this was here wasWill andMr. David Horne.
“Burglarized a gas station seven years ago, did time for the deed up at Castleview. That the only burglary you ever committed, Will?”
“The one and only,” Will lied.
“That’s commendable,” Horne said. “But nonetheless, on the basis of this hundred-dollar bill here, I was able to obtain a search warrant.”
“A what?”
“I believe you heard me,” Horne said, and handed Will a court order with a judge’s signature and all on the bottom of it, authorizing a search of this very apartment for monies paid as ransom …
“Ransom?” Will said.
“Ransom in a kidnapping, is what it says.Ransom money, Will.”
“That’s not my bill,” Will said at once. “I told you. I won it in a crap game.”
“Well, that’s good, Will, because the serial numbers on this bill match the serial numbers on one of the bills paid as ransom in a kidnapping case we’re investigating. Do you understand the implications of that?”
“I’m not a kidnapper,” Will said.
“That’s good, too, Will, because I have a search warrant to look for anyother bills that may have been part of the ransom payment,” Horne said, and took off the blue parka to reveal a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. The suit jacket was taut over bulging pectorals and broad shoulders. The man was a fitness freak. He took off the hat with the ear flaps, revealing a head of very black, very thick hair.
“Is it the President?” Will asked.
“Is what the President?”
“Who got kidnapped?”
“I have to warn you not to say anything that might prove incriminating,” Horne said.
Oh, Jesus, it’s the President, Will thought. Because if itwasn’t the President, then what was the Secret Service doing in this? It was theFBIwho investigated kidnappings, wasn’t it? All the Secret Service did was protect the President of the United States. And his family. So it had to be somebody in the White House who’d got kidnapped.
Horne was moving over to the closet now, where the bills sat in a shoe box on the shelf over the hanging sable coat and mink stole, both of which Will had also stolen. I can run right this minute, he thought, go visit my cousin Earl living in Fort Worth with a girl used to be Miss Texas in the Miss America contest, came within a curly blond crotch hair of winning it. Spend a few weeks down there till this whole kidnapping thing blew over, which he hadn’t done anyway,damn it! All he’d done was burglarize a fucking apartment!
“Well, well, what have we here?” Horne said.
He was looking in at the sable coat and the mink stole.
“Your search warrant says you’re supposed to look for money,” Will said.
“These are in plain view,” Horne said.
“In plain view” was an expression the police used when they appropriated something without benefit of a search warrant.
“They’re my girlfriend’s,” Will said.
“What’s her name?”
“Jasmine. Who you talked to.”
“She told us you only just met,” Horne said.
“Well, that’s true.”
“And she left her furs here?”
“She trusts me.”
Horne gave him a look. But he didn’t pursue the matter of the furs any further, perhaps because his mind was on the President’s kidnapping, who it had to be, or else someone in his family, otherwise why the Secret Service? I ought to run for it right this minute, Will thought. Horne was reaching for a shoe box on the shelf. Run for it or not? Will thought. Horne took down the box. Which? Horne took the lid off the box and looked into it. He reached in for a white envelope with a rubber band around it. He took the rubber band off the envelope. He opened the envelope.
“Well, well,” he said again.
“That’s not plain view,” Will said.
“Now it is,” Horne said, and fanned the bills. “Where’d you getthese little mothers?”
“Same crap game,” Will said.
Horne began counting.
“This is a lot of money here,” he said.
“Yeah, it was a big crap game.”
“Looks like five, six thousand dollars here.”
“More like eight,” Will said.
“You won eight thousand dollars in a crap game?”
“I got lucky.”
“Who was in this game?”
“Bunch of guys I never saw in my life.”
“So let me get this straight, Will,” Horne said. “You’re asking me to believe that one or more of the men in this crap game of yourscould have been the kidnappers to whom these bills were paid as ransom, is that it?”
“I guess that’s it,” Will said.
He knew he was already in the toilet. He knew Horne would yank out a gun and a pair of handcuffs in the next minute. He’d be spending Christmas Day in jail for a goddamn kidnapping he didn’t do.
“Listen,” he said, “you really do have the wrong person here.”
“Maybe so,” Horne said, and gave him a long, hard look.
Will’s hands were shaking. He put them in his pockets so Horne wouldn’t see. He hated himself for being so goddamn scared here, but he couldn’t help it. A kidnapping was serious stuff.
“Tell you what,” Horne said.
Will waited.
“What I think I should do is confiscate this money here,” Horne said. “Give you a receipt for it, check the serial numbers downtown, get back to you later today.”