"The type for what?"
"Meanness, carelessness, flakiness. A real asshole."
"What else do you know about Duane?"
"That man is a criminal if there ever was one. Hustles his ass, and has a monumental coke habit, or so I hear. He's been in jail for assault, that I know for sure. Duane always seems to have money. He's got some sugar daddy in town, I'm told. He hangs around the pool table at the Watering Hole. He's mean, dumb, and ugly, but not nearly as ugly as he is mean and dumb, ha-ha. Hunky though, in his vulgar way. If that's the type you go for."
I let the tape play in my head again. I heard the voice, and the background noise. Friday night at the Watering Hole. The mean-looking cowboy whose pool shot McWhirter ruined. The one who smelled like the stockyards. Or a kennel.
I said, "You're a sweetheart, Newell. That's my man, I'm all but sure of it. Listen, is it possible that Duane Andrus would have been one of the people your friends called tonight? You didn't call him, did you?"
"Duane is really not my cup of tea, honey. I go for the strong silent type. Deep. Like Richard Gere. And no, I don't think anyone else would have called him either.
Duane is not exactly what you'd call approachable. Unless you've got a hundred-dollar bill in your hand."
"Newell, thank you. You've done something important tonight. If there's any justice, you'll get a shot at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall for this."
"Why, thank you, darlin'. I'll pack the place for sure if it's two-for-one on a Wednesday night."
I rang off and asked the patrolman guarding the farmhouse how I could get in touch with Bowman.
"The lieutenant said he was going up in the chopper. I hadn't better bother him now."
"Bother him," I said. "On this one, he'll have your ass if you don't."
I told the cop where I'd be and what I'd be doing and to relay the message to Bowman as rapidly as the department's bureaucracy could manage it.
I wanted a gun with me but couldn't take the time to drive all the way back to my office to pick up my Smith amp; Wesson. I dialed Lyle Barner's number. After ten rings I was about to hang up 97 when he answered.
"Yeah? Who's this?"
"Don Strachey, Lyle. I need help. Now."
"Don- Oh. What's the problem, Don?" He sounded nicely relaxed and distracted. Too relaxed. I regretted doing this to him.
"I want you to meet me in fifteen minutes-ten, if you can-outside the Star Market at Western and Karner Road. Come armed."
"Hey, man, hey. I've got- There's someone with me.
"Get rid of him. I know who the kidnappers are and where they are. I'll need help. Bowman will turn up eventually. But I need a strong man who has experience with unruly types and can handle a gun, and I need him now."
"Oh, right, Don. Ten minutes. Star Market, Karner and Western."
The cop was in his car trying to raise someone on the radio when I pulled out of Dot's driveway and went pounding up Moon Road.
The lights were out at the Deem and Wilson households. I supposed they were all asleep, dreaming of untold wealth. The wealth that they would be within hours of collecting, were it not for my rushing out to Karner Road to take it away from them. end user
23
Lyle’s Trans Am roared into the Star
Market lot five minutes after I did. I was standing beside my car when he pulled up beside me.
"Listen, Don, let me explain something. It wasn't my idea-"
The passenger door on the other side of Lyle's car opened. A man stepped out and looked at me across the car roof. His face rang a bell.
"Hi, sport," I said. "Long time no see."
He gazed at me coolly.
"He insisted on coming," Lyle burbled on. "I mean, jeez, if I'd thought he was going to- I mean — "
My impulse was to flatten them both. Drag Lyle from the seat of his pretentious hotdogger's shitwagon and knock him the hundred yards over to Dunkin' Donuts and shove him into the artificial-vanilla-flavored cream machine. Then come back and kick the other one's ass down Western Avenue the six miles back to the apartment.
Instead, I strolled into Star Market, bought a gallon jug of spring water, brought it out, uncapped it, took a swig, then poured the rest of it over my head. Ga-lug, ga-lug, ga-lug. The stuff wasn't particularly cooling, but it was wet and cooler than my body temperature, and it had its effect.
Lyle stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Timmy looked away, trying with everything he had not to laugh. Not that his newly hardened heart wasn't thudding inside his tank-topped chest.
Wiping my dripping face on my shirtfront, I said, "We'll go in my car. I'll explain on the way. Get in. Now."
They obeyed.
I drove past the kennels, a long, low white clapboard building with a pink and black CLOSED sign stuck in the window of the main door. I parked a quarter mile down Karner Road, and the three of us hiked back toward the kennels. Twenty yards south of the building we entered the scrub pine woods and moved closer.
The front section of the building was in darkness, but from the woods we could see a light burning in a rear wing that had small slitlike windows running high up along its length.
With only one gun among us, we stayed together. We crept up to the side of an old dark green Pontiac parked in the rear yard, and then on to the wing, where we flattened ourselves against the wall.
Lyle and Timmy bent down and formed a two-sectioned platform with their backs, which I climbed up on and peered through the window. I saw no people, just a security guard's uniform hanging from a hook-that of the "cop" Mel Glempt had seen grabbing Peter-and a long row of metal cages lined against the wall opposite me.
The window I looked through was covered with rabbit wire but the glass was broken and half fallen away. The foulest stench I had smelled since south Asia hit me like an airborne sewage pit.
I climbed down.
Timmy whispered, "Catshit."
"Yeah. Catshit. And, even worse for Peter, cat fur."
Standing there, I had a picture burned into my mind of the filth-ridden cages I had just seen. I knew then how Peter Greco had died.
I doubled over and began to heave silently, but Timmy whispered, "Later! Later!" and I kept it down. It was a subject Timmy was such an expert on.
We moved to the rear corner of the wing and saw that thirty yards away a second one-story wing extended back from the main front building, and it too was lighted on the inside. We slowly crept toward it, and as we approached, the sound of voices came from one of the high windows. Lyle drew his revolver.
Again, I was raised up to peer inside, and I saw them. McWhirter, inside a stiff-wire dog cage, was bound with rope at his wrists and ankles, a gag in his mouth. Two men were just below me. I could see the bare right arm of one and heard the voice of the other, whose body was not within my visual range.
"Tell him they jewed us out of a hundred bucks," said the man with the arm. "Fuckin' dyke skimmed off a hundred. We oughtta go back there and bust her lip."
"Shut up, Glen. That don't matter!" said the voice of Duane Andrus. "Listen, baby, I want that fifty back within a week, or you are finished. You got that? I mean finished."
A long silence. Andrus apparently was speaking not to his brother but to someone on the telephone.
"Listen, I told you that was an accident, and I'm not gonna keep listening to you yap about that.
The Greco guy was blindfolded and never would have recognized us, but this asshole's different