I had taken a shower and my t-shirt and jockey shorts were fresh. Against the kitchen wall behind me, next to a wastebasket, was a garbage bag in which all the clothes I’d worn this evening were stuffed. They had to be disposed of. One must assume that forensics had come to Missouri.
I will be straight with you and admit I considered keeping the entire ten grand. Hadn’t I been the one on hazardous duty? Going from the boonies to the St. Louis suburbs, behind the wheel of the Dodge Charger, I’d decided to keep seven and give Boyd three. By the time I got back to the Central West End, I’d decided to give him twenty-five hundred and say it was half. That Delmont had been paid five grand and it was an even split.
Then when I came in the kitchen way and Boyd greeted me in his underwear, all contused and puffy-eyed and worried, I said, “We’ve got ten grand to split.”
What his grin did to that battered face must have hurt. Anyway, it hurt to look at.
I tossed him the bulging envelope and said, “Here, you split it. I’m a walking crime scene. I need to get out of these clothes and into the shower.”
When I returned in my skivvies, with the smoke smell scrubbed off at least, I sat across from Boyd, who had his stack of green neatly before him, with mine waiting at my chair, like he was waiting to say grace. Reading an expression on that grotesque mug was tough, but I could tell he was troubled.
“Where’s Delmont?” he asked.
“In the trunk of his Dodge Charger.”
“...Is he alive?”
“What do you think?”
“Aw. Kind of a shame. He was a sweet kid.”
“Want me to get you a mirror? Maybe if I smash you in the face with it, you’ll call me sweet.”
“Guess you had to do it.”
“Not really, but it was prudent. And we each have five grand we wouldn’t have, which is a good thing, since this job is almost certainly off.”
His face made something that might have been a frown. “Why do you say that?”
I gave him an account of my evening in southwest Missouri under the Hunter’s Moon. Several times he tried to open his puffy eyes wide and damn near succeeded.
“These were separate contracts,” Boyd said, when I’d finished. He was thinking aloud. Each word carefully parceled out. “Delmont was hired by the Nazi. Our contract comes courtesy of parties unknown. Just a crazy coincidence.”
“Yeah, I don’t like it either.”
I got up and opened the refrigerator door. I reached for a Coke, remembered the caffeine, and grabbed one of his Budweisers instead. Nasty fucking beer, but maybe the alcohol content would help me sleep. Exhausted as I was, I was still kind of keyed up.
Sitting back down, I said, “The only way this could be one contract is if somebody really fucked up.”
Boyd nodded. “Like maybe Delmont was on hand waiting for the go-ahead, should we screw up or bail.”
“Right. Only Delmont didn’t seem to have any sense of that.”
“None,” Boyd agreed. He was drinking Bud, too. He sipped like that was worth doing, and said, “What if it’s not such a big coincidence?”
“You did get hit hard.”
“No, hear me out. We have a deadline, right? We got till the end of the month.”
I nodded. “Specifically, before the big McGovern rally here in St. Louis where the Reverend is featured speaker. Yeah.”
“With specific instructions from the Broker not to hit Lloyd there, right? And if we haven’t made it happen by then, we’re to pack up our tents and go home.”
Now I saw what he was getting at. “The Broker is too shrewd,” I said, “too smart to want Lloyd taken out at a big event, with lots of security. It’d be a stupid play. Even a suicidal one.”
The slits in the macaroon eyes widened. “But a homegrown hater like Commander Starkweather wouldn’t see it that way.”
“No he wouldn’t,” I said. “He’d want to make a statement, and what better way than take down a prominent black leader in public. And that rally — biggest of Lloyd’s campaign for McGovern — would be the natural place to do that.”
Boyd pounded the table with a fist, kind of lightly but enough to make the money stacks shimmy. “And that’s what Delmont came to town to do. A low-end hitman hired through racist redneck channels.”
“But the Broker insists the Lloyd hit isn’t ‘overtly’ political, or racial,” I said, “preferring a less showy removal. Okay. That makes these two contracts, with their contradictory goals, feel a little less coincidental — though I think we might still be missing a piece. Not that it matters.”
“It doesn’t?”
I shook my head, sipped some lousy beer. “Tomorrow morning, when one of us checks in with him, the Broker’s almost certainly going to pull the plug. The shit will fly in this town when the Commander turns up burned blacker than everybody he ever hated, with a bullet hole in his head.”
“Maybe not by tomorrow morning...”
“Maybe not. But I’ll talk to Broker on a very secure line where I can spell everything out. Hell, maybe I should call him tonight and wake him up. Then there’s Delmont.”
Eyebrows rose over the awful eyes. “What about Delmont?”
“Well, his body’s going to be found on a side street, in the trunk of his Charger, where we’re going to dump it a good distance from here.”
“We are?”
“Yeah. We’re going to get dressed and I’ll drive the Charger and you follow me in the Impala. Can you see out of those things?”
“Sure.”
Maybe. But he looked like one of the Mole People.
“It is kind of a shame,” he said.
“Knock it off about Delmont already.”
“No, not him. Dumping that Charger. I came by plane, you know. I could use a car, sweet ride like that.”
I grunted a non-laugh. “That ‘sweet ride’ is registered under Delmont’s own name. Apparently the Dogpatch branch of Associated Assassins is just fine with a member using his own name and his own vehicle on the job. And keep in mind Delmont and Starkweather were killed by the same gun — mine, remember? I’ll switch out barrels on the nine mil, sure, but the bullets will connect the two kills. Which is why the Broker is likely to yank us out of here. Delmont’s racist pedigree combined with the late Commander’s Nazi résumé will put the spotlight on local racial matters, which’ll surely lead to increased protection and attention for Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd. Our target, remember?”
“Yeah,” Boyd said, sitting up now. “Best dump the Charger.”
“And Delmont.”
“And Delmont. But, really, he wasn’t so bad.”
“Go put some pants on.”
Fucking Odd Couple was right.
We dumped the car ten blocks north, in a black area. That was a risk, two white guys making a drop like that, since we might be remembered if seen; couldn’t count on us all looking alike to them. And we are talking about a bright yellow muscle car. But we chose a residential area that was quiet and basically asleep, so we should be fine.
I left the keys in the unlocked car, which might give somebody a nice surprise, followed by a not nice surprise, when the trunk got opened. Anything that confused the issue was good.
We stopped at a phone booth outside a closed gas station and I put in a call to the Broker. Again, it went right to him, maybe because it was so late. I told him I needed an absolutely secure line, so we could call a spade a spade, a remark the Broker took as me being cute but was completely accidental.
“My house was swept today,” he said.
“My compliments to your housekeeper.”
“I meant electronically swept.”