But not. When he walked into the kitchen, a woman in police uniform was in there, wearing white rubber gloves and searching the kitchen drawers. She looked around when he entered, nodded and said, “Good afternoon, sir.”
Nothing to do with the bank. Everything to do with Elaine. But why are they searching the kitchen? Jack said, “Is my wife here?” half-expecting she was in a jail cell somewhere.
But the woman cop said, “Oh, yes, sir, she’s in the front room with Detective Reversa.”
“Detective Reversa.”
“Yes, sir. Excuse me, I’m almost done here.”
It was now twenty to five in the afternoon. Usually, when Jack got home from the office each day at around this time, he would make himself a small scotch and soda to begin the daily unwinding process, but he somehow couldn’t see himself mixing a drink under the eyes of a uniformed woman cop searching for . . .
For what? What on Earth could this woman policeman be looking for in Jack Langen’s kitchen? What has Elaine done now?
Feeling stupidly awkward in his own home, Jack said, “Well, um, nice to meet you,” and left the kitchen. As he walked through the house, bracing himself for whatever mess Elaine had made this time, he reminded himself that this difficult period of his life was very nearly over.
When he’d met Elaine shortly after college, with her family and her money—and her own bank!—the difficulties of having to deal with her seemed a small price to pay. Besides, old Harvey was still alive then, and could keep some sort of control over her.
Once the bank merger was complete, then he could make his move. Now, Elaine could still throw a monkey wrench into the process, but once the merger was a done deal, a very quiet little divorce would shortly ensue, and then Jack Langen would be a free and a happy man.
To have leveraged that chance meeting with Elaine into marriage and money and a career at the bank was wonderful enough for an impoverished nobody like Jack Langen, but now, to have leveraged her bank into a senior position of his own at a larger and more successful bank, run by a bunch of fellows with whom Jack could get along very well indeed, and in which Elaine herself was shuffled out of any position of power or importance, that was a coup of which Jack felt very justly proud. So all he had to do now was wait it out, wait it out, wait it out. No matter what Elaine had done this time, just wait it out. The end was in sight.
He couldn’t think what this trouble might be. Not another affair; that business with Jake Beckham had been, Jack was sure, the most humiliating experience of Elaine’s life. He knew that what she really wanted, and would always want, would be to get herself out of this corner of Massachusetts forever, go someplace entirely different, where no one would know what an ass she’d made of herself back home.
Well, after the divorce, she’d still be reasonably well off, so let her go where she wanted. Alaska, or some island.
Jack didn’t realize he was smiling when he entered the front parlor, but then the smile faded, replaced by confusion when he saw Elaine sitting in there with a very good-looking young woman, a tall, svelte blonde of the sort Jack himself fancied from time to time, though never at home, never anywhere around here. He wouldn’t make a public fool of himself, the way Elaine had, no matter what the woman looked like.
Though this one did look good. “I’m sorry,” he said to both of them. “They said you were in here with a policeman.”
“I am,” Elaine said, and both women stood as Elaine said, “This is Detective Reversa. Detective, this is my husband, Jack.”
Detective Reversa—who would have guessed?—put her bag back on her shoulder, as though she planned to leave, but then she smiled and stepped forward with her hand out, saying, “How do you do, sir?”
“I don’t quite know,” he said, receiving her firm handshake. “I wonder what’s happening here.”
“I’m the officer assigned to the Jake Beckham shooting,” Detective Reversa told him.
“Oh, Jake! That’s right, he was shot, I barely registered that. We have a lot going on at the office right now.” Smiling, finding this whole thing amusing for some reason, he said, “You don’t think Elaine did that, surely. Rather late for a lovers’ quarrel.”
“Jack,” Elaine said, in such a pained way that he looked more closely at her, and saw she was truly feeling miserable. He almost felt sorry for her. But then she said, “They’re looking for my gun.”
That made no sense. “Your gun? It’s in the drawer in the kitchen.”
“No, don’t you remember?” she said. “You told me I should move it because a burglar would find it right away.”
“And you moved it?” he asked, astonished that she would take his advice on any subject at all. “Where to?”
“Well, I don’t remember,” she said. “That’s why the police are here, looking.”
“It isn’t a question of suspicion,” Detective Reversa assured him. “It’s just a loose end to be tied off, a gun owned by a friend of Mr. Beckham.”
In other words, it damn well was a question of suspicion. Jack said, “So I take it, there are policemen all over the house.”
“Not for much longer,” the detective said. “Shall we sit? I understand your bank is about to make a major move.”
So we’re going to chat, Jack thought, as all three sat. Looking at that pinched, nervous, unhappy expression on his wife’s face, he was surprised to realize she hadn’t lost the gun at all. She’d hidden it, or thrown it away.
For God’s sake, why? Had she shot Jake Beckham? What for?
If our merry band of cops don’t find that roscoe, Jack thought, and I’m pretty damn sure they’re not going to, I am going to have to keep a very close eye on Missy Elaine until I’ve gotten her well out of this house.
5
It was all taking too long. Roy Keenan was not some soft salaryman somewhere, get paid every Friday whether he produces jackshit or not. A bounty hunter lived on bounties, and bounties were what you got when, and only when, you found and hog-tied and brought in your skip. The days and weeks you spent looking for your skip didn’t earn a dime and if you never did find your quarry and lasso him home, you were just working for air all those days, brother, and let’s hope it smelled sweet.
It didn’t smell sweet, not to Roy Keenan. This Michael Maurice Harbin was turning out to be as hard to find as a deep-cover mole spy in the Cold War, which was ridiculous, because he wasn’t any spy; he was a heister and a hijacker and a gunman. A lone wolf, like Roy Keenan himself. No connections, no goddam underground railway to keep you moving and out of sight. So why couldn’t Roy Keenan, who could find the devil at a prayer meeting, come up with the son of a bitch?
The worst of it was, this time Keenan would be working for less than nothing if he came up empty-handed after all this. He had given a state cop in Cincinnati one hundred dollars for the information he had on Harbin and that famous meeting of seven men, which was the last time Harbin had been seen on this Earth. So he had more invested than just his own time here.
Sandra, Keenan’s right hand, who would remain in a second car as backup tonight, a radio beside her that matched the one in Keenan’s pocket, had come to the conclusion that Harbin was dead, and maybe she was right. Fine. Keenan didn’t need the guy singing and dancing. A body was as collectible as a man, and easier to deal with. As he’d told that one wide boy, the one who wasn’t really named Willis, if Harbin’s dead, okay, just show me where to dig.
If he could figure out what those seven guys went to that meeting for, it might help. The few he knew anything at all about had records, and were all like Harbin: loner career criminals. But was it a heist they’d been planning? If so, they sure changed their minds. The seven had separated right after that meeting, about as far apart as if a hand grenade had been set off in their midst, and Keenan still hadn’t found two of them.