Jumbo took his champagne bottle from the ice bucket and drank about a third of it. He put the bottle down, belched hugely.
Then he said, “Fuck Dawn. These guys are gonna kill me, and you’re worrying about some little slut from the fucking local boondocks?”
“Exactly,” I said.
Jumbo guzzled some more champagne.
“I tell you what I know, you’ll help me?”
“If I believe you,” I said.
“How I gonna do that?” Jumbo said. “How can I make you believe me?”
“Can’t,” I said. “Gotta hope I do.”
“That fucking sucks,” Jumbo said.
“Does,” I said. “Doesn’t it.”
Jumbo looked at his bodyguard.
“Lock the fucking door,” Jumbo said. “Can you handle that?”
Don stood up and locked the door to the trailer.
“Useless fuck,” Jumbo said.
“Hard to figure why you’re having trouble finding help,” I said.
58
Outside, the rain was pounding. Inside the trailer, the plan was working better than I had ever hoped.
“Okay,” Jumbo said. “I’m fucking her.”
“Dawn,” I said.
“Who the fuck else?” he said. “Little Bo Peep?”
“Or her sheep,” Z murmured.
“Hey, man, you wanna hear or not?”
“Sure,” Z said.
“I don’t know what he tole you,” Jumbo said to me. “But I’m speaking the God’s-honest truth.”
“Keep it up,” I said.
“So we done pretty much everything I know how to do,” Jumbo said, “which is a lot, and she wants me to try something new. So I’m game; she takes out this scarf from her purse, and ties it around the bedpost, then she loops it around her neck, but she keeps hold of one end, you know, so she can tighten it or loosen it. And then she tells me to do her again. That’s what she said, ‘Do me again.’ So I’m game, and I do, and she tightens up the scarf and loosens it and tightens it, and it’s like she passes out for a few seconds, and then loosens up and wakes up and, you know, really goes crazy. We been drinking some champagne and doing some dope most of the evening. I was kind of fucked up and starting to feel sick, so I tell her to hold on, and I go in the bathroom and... I’m sick for a while... and then I’m feeling better... and I clean up and come out, and she’s hanging off the bed. She’s got the scarf wrapped around her hand for some reason, and it didn’t loosen.”
“You think she passed out?” I said.
“Yeah,” Jumbo said. “And — my luck — rolls off the bed and fucking chokes herself.”
“Scarf was still around her wrist,” Z said. “When I went in.”
“And you had Z pretty everything up,” I said.
Jumbo was looking out the window at the rain and the murky figures under the awning.
“Yeah, man,” Jumbo said. “There is important money in this picture. I’m trying to save it, you know?”
“Heroic,” I said.
“It’s not my fault,” Jumbo said.
“You know how she got to the hotel?” I said.
“Yeah,” Jumbo said.
He continued to slug champagne from his bottle.
“Talk about a hoot, man,” Jumbo said. “Her old man drove her in. He knew where she was coming, too. Even gave her a note to give me.”
“The note say something about insurance?”
Jumbo raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” he said. “It did. How you know all this shit?”
“I’m a trained investigator,” I said.
“Whaddya gonna do about Stephano?” he said.
“Nothing yet,” I said.
“But I told you the honest-to-God truth.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But the thing is, Stephano is not after you, at least at the moment. He’s here to kill me.”
Jumbo looked out the window again. There was nobody under the awning next to the truck. He looked back at me and started to speak, and stopped, and sat down suddenly.
He seemed smaller, as if he had imploded.
59
It had gotten dark earlier than usual because of the clouds and the rain. We drove back from South Boston along Atlantic Ave in heavy traffic made heavier by the rain. Stephano and company had been parked next to us at the set, and were now behind us as we inched along.
“This is getting annoying,” Z said. “Every time I see him, I think this is it. Is this when the balloon goes up?”
“The readiness is all,” I said.
“Whatever,” Z said. “It’s working on me... which is why I suppose he’s doing it.”
“One reason,” I said.
“There’s another one?”
“It excites him,” I said.
“And it gives him the chance to pick his spot,” Z said.
“It does,” I said. “But he won’t act until the tension gets too big for him to hold off any longer.”
“You mean like sex,” Z said. “Foreplay, foreplay, then zoom.”
“Something like that,” I said.
We inched forward in the dense rush hour. The windshield wipers worked steadily. In the glistening rain, the traffic lights were jewel-like.
“Maybe we should pick our spot,” I said.
“And hope he’s ready?”
“If our spot looks really good to him,” I said, “maybe he’ll become ready.”
Z nodded. I began to push against the traffic, deking and diving as if maybe I were in a panic.
“First thing,” I said. “You want somebody to chase you, you gotta run.”
Stephano stayed with us. In maybe forty minutes we pulled into a construction site, off Mystic Ave in Somerville, where a warehouse was being rehabbed into apartments. Most of the apartments would have a view of Somerville. Some expensive ones would offer the Mystic River.
We parked close, and made a dash through the rain into the building.
Even as our eyes adjusted, it was palpably dark inside. As we felt our way in, we encountered gutted-out lumber and tool stands, loose wires, sawhorses, and bales of insulation. Behind us, the doorless opening where we’d entered was a very slightly paler shade of black. There was a large obstacle in front of us, which felt like a pallet of bricks. We wedged around it and stopped and looked back at the faint opening where we’d entered.
“Now what?” Z said.
“We wait and see what develops,” I said.
“Crees great warriors of the High Plains,” Z said. “Crees mostly don’t fight in warehouses.”
“One might,” I said.
“What if they don’t follow us in?” Z said.
“Then the plan didn’t work,” I said.
“Then what?” Z said.
“We find another way to outwit them,” I said.
60
The floor of the warehouse was concrete. There was no insulation in any of the exterior walls. The hard rain on the roof sounded through the whole building like a drum.
It took a half-hour, but the plan kicked in. There was just a hint of movement in the lesser darkness of the entrance.
“See that?” I murmured.
Z said, “Yes.”
Then the electric purr of Stephano’s voice cut through the blackness and the drumming of the rain.
“You can run, Spenser,” he said. “But you can’t hide.”
“He thinks we’re trying to hide?” Z said softly.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Isn’t even a little afraid we might have set him up?” Z whispered.
“Too arrogant,” I whispered. “And probably too eager. It’s like he was dating us and we led him into the bedroom.”
“And he’s too hot to think,” Z whispered.
“Be my guess,” I whispered.
“Been there,” Z whispered.
I smiled in the darkness.
“Most of us have,” I whispered.
“You coming out of your hole, Tough Guy?” Stephano purred. “Or I gotta drag you out, squealing, by the tail.”